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Illustrated Episode · Volume I, chapter 22 · 8 November 1637

The court knows wherefore

A pale woman in a dark gown and white coif stands alone on a plank floor before a grave man in black who raises a hand to silence her, while rows of seated men in black watch from the benches.
Newtown, Massachusetts, November 1637. Anne Hutchinson stands alone before Governor Winthrop and the General Court, which has just voted to banish her, and asks one thing: wherefore? Winthrop answers, "Say no more, the court knows wherefore and is satisfied." Rothbard's point is that the court felt no need to justify itself before reason, natural justice or the public, and gave no reason at all. Chapter 22 of Conceived in Liberty.

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Adapted from Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Mises Institute, 2011), CC BY 3.0.

What happened

On 7 November 1637 the General Court of Massachusetts Bay called Anne Hutchinson before it at Newtown. Governor John Winthrop presided, Deputy Governor Thomas Dudley sat beside him as her harshest accuser, and the nine magistrates and thirty-one deputies on the benches were her prosecutors and her judges at once, because the colony had no independent judiciary and its legislature was its supreme court. She stood on the open floor and answered them. On the second day she spoke of direct revelations from God, and the court voted to banish her, with only two members against. Winthrop pronounced the sentence. She asked, "I desire to know wherefore I am banished?" He answered, "Say no more, the court knows wherefore and is satisfied." Rothbard's comment is that it "was apparently enough for the court to be satisfied; no justification before the bar of reason, natural justice, or the public was deemed necessary" (CiL, p. 182). Winter had set in, so the court kept her under guard at the house of one of her enemies. In March 1638 the church excommunicated her, and in April she went to join her husband at Aquidneck. Rothbard's point is that the men who wrote the law were the men who tried her under it, and they answered to no one for the result.

Sources

  1. Murray N. Rothbard, Conceived in Liberty (Auburn, Ala.: Mises Institute, 2011 single-volume ed.), vol. I, ch. 22, pp. 180-186. CC BY 3.0. Rothbard
  2. 'The Examination of Mrs. Anne Hutchinson at the Court at Newtown', November 1637, transcription at Famous Trials, University of Missouri-Kansas City (accessed 2026-09-29); the contemporary record printed in David D. Hall, ed., The Antinomian Controversy, 1636-1638: A Documentary History (1968). Primary source
  3. John Winthrop, Winthrop's Journal, 'History of New England,' 1630-1649, ed. James Kendall Hosmer, vol. I (New York: Scribner's, 1908), pp. 239-241 (the court of 2 November 1637 and its proceedings against Wheelwright and Mrs. Hutchinson). Primary source
  4. 'The Trial of Anne Hutchinson (1637): An Account', Famous Trials, University of Missouri-Kansas City (accessed 2026-09-29): dates, the thatched meetinghouse at Newtown, nine magistrates and thirty-one deputies, the chair called for. Secondary source
  5. 'Anne Hutchinson', Wikipedia (accessed 2026-09-29): baptized 20 July 1591, aged 46 at the trial of November 1637, the trial opened 7 November. Secondary source
  6. David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 'Massachusetts Dress Ways'. Secondary source