She was accused of fostering sedition in the church, and was then confronted with charges relative to the meetings of women held at her house. This she successfully parried.
It looked indeed as if she would surely be acquitted, when by an impassioned discourse upon special revelations that had come to her, and an assertion that God would miraculously protect her whatever the court might decree, she impugned the position of her judges and roused keen resentment. Because of this it was that she was banished "as unfit for our society." In the colony records of Massachusetts the sentence pronounced reads as follows: "Mrs. Hutchinson (the wife of Mr. William Hutchinson) being convented for traducing the ministers and their ministry in this country, shee declared voluntarily her revelations for her ground, and that shee should bee delivred and the Court ruined with their posterity; and thereupon was banished, and the meanwhile she was committed to Mr. Joseph Weld untill the Court shall dispose of her."
Mrs. Hutchinson passed next winter accordingly under the watch and ward of Thomas Weld, in the house of his brother Joseph, near what is now Eustis Street, Roxbury. She was there until March, when, returning to Boston for further trial, she was utterly cast out, even John Cotton, who had been her friend, turning against her.
Mr. Cotton did not present an heroic figure in this trial. Had he chosen, he might have turned the drift of public opinion in Mrs. Hutchinson's favour, but he was either too weak or too politic to withstand the pressure brought to bear upon him, and he gave a qualified adhesion to the proceedings. Winthrop did not hesitate to use severe measures, and in the course of the struggle Vane, who deeply admired the Boston prophetess, left the country in disgust. Mrs. Hutchinson was arraigned at the bar as if she had been a criminal of the most dangerous kind. Winthrop, who presided, catechised her mercilessly, and all endeavoured to extort from her some damaging admission. But in this they were unsuccessful. "Mrs. Hutchinson can tell when to speak and when to hold her tongue," commented the governor, in describing the court proceedings. Yet when all is said, the "trial" was but a mockery, and those who read the proceedings as preserved in the "History of Massachusetts Under the Colony and Province," written by Governor Hutchinson, a descendant of our heroine, will be quick to condemn the judgment there pronounced by a court which expounded theology instead of law against a woman who, as Coddington truly said, "had broken no law, either of God or of man."