Alone in a 17th-century courtroom, Anne Hutchinson ran intellectual circles around the most powerful men in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, then deliberately flipped the table with a theological bombshell that guaranteed her banishment. This deep dive unpacks how one woman’s intellect threatened to topple a nascent colonial society.

Educated by her dissenting minister father, Hutchinson emigrated to Boston and turned weekly gatherings in her home into the most popular intellectual hub in the colony. Her preaching of a covenant of grace over works ignited the antinomian controversy and set her against Governor John Winthrop.

• Her father Francis Marbury and the rare theological education he gave his daughter
• How the theology of grace bypassed the male-dominated church hierarchy
• Her courtroom strategy weaponizing oaths and English common law
• Her claim of direct divine revelation that handed the court a conviction
• Her exile, tragic death in Kieft’s War, and eventual 1987 pardon