The Winthrop Woman by Anya Seton

Author:Anya Seton [Seton, Anya]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

CHAPTER TWELVE

THAT WHOLE YEAR of 1637 was the most troubled that the Bay Colony had known. By March Winthrop had consolidated all the ministers but Cotton with the two powerful magistrates, Thomas Dudley and John Endecott. They were ready for attack and they moved. They hailed Wheelwright before the General Court, accusing him of contempt and sedition, as evidenced by his Fast Day speech. The Hutchinson party was thunderstruck and then rallied to the defense, violently protesting the allegation, and its methods, and averring that these hearings behind closed doors remarkably resembled the tyrannies of the detested Star Chamber in England. Fifty-eight of Boston's most prominent citizens signed a remonstrance demanding proper procedure and indicating sympathy for Wheelwright. John Underhill's name headed this petition, which had Governor Harry Vane's and William Coddington's passionate approval. Vane and Winthrop thereupon held stormy private sessions, from which the young governor and his deputy emerged each angrier and more obdurate than ever.

Winthrop's party was, however, compelled by Boston's outcry and the Governor's authority to temporize until the May elections. Moreover as the spring advanced they were all forced into a brief truce by the recognition of acute danger on their western borders. The Pequots were on the rampage.

Plymouth had for some time been writing anxious letters to the Bay. Roger Williams had been sending warning messages from Providence, where he had caned himself a little settlement in the wilderness after banishment from Massachusetts. Boston paid scant attention until Haynes and Hooker both wrote from Connecticut describing the horrors of a Pequot massacre at Wethersfield. Nine of its inhabitants had been scalped and roasted alive; two girls had been captured.

That was different. These were people whom the Bay Colony knew, for they had come from Watertown. The menace became real. The Bay hastily prepared for war.

Elizabeth was at Watertown as she had been since the day after her January visit to Mrs.Hutchinson. Robert had been in a fever to leave Boston before Winthrop should hear of Elizabeth's disgraceful behavior, and she, a little frightened herself, had obeyed his pleadings. She was all the more willing because, as a climax to the strange experience at Mrs. Hutchinson's and Elizabeth's consequent remorseful softening towards Robert, they had come together again as man and wife. He had lain in her arms that night, and she had known bodily release, and some contentment. The contentment deepened when she shortly afterwards found that she was with child. Depressions and doubts vanished; in a state of calm well-being she ceased to think much of Mrs. Hutchinson, especially as reports from Boston indicated that after the inconclusive hullabaloo over Wheelwright, the conflict had quietened. Nor obviously had Coddington reported Elizabeth's visit after all.

Margaret's occasional letters were as affectionate as usual, and ended as usual with "Your uncle sends his love, and prayers for your favor in Christ." So Elizabeth was able to reassure Robert.

One morning during the second week of May, Elizabeth was in her garden, sitting on a bench under the

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