Banishment was the sentence pronounced, and after the church which had so lately caressed and courted Mrs. Hutchinson had in its turn visited upon her the verdict of excommunication, her husband sold all his property and removed with his family to the island of Aquidneck, as did also many others whose opinions had brought them under the censure of the governing powers. In this connection it is worth noting that the head of the house of Hutchinson stood right valiantly by his persecuted wife, and when a committee of the Boston church went in due time to Rhode Island for the purpose of bringing back into the fold the sheep which they adjudged lost, Mr. Hutchinson told them bluntly that, far from being of their opinion, he accounted his wife "a dear saint and servant of God."
The rest of Mrs. Hutchinson's story is soon told. Upon the death of her husband, which occurred five years after the banishment, she went with her family into the Dutch territory of New Netherlands, settling near what is now New Rochelle. And scarcely had she become established in this place when her house was suddenly assaulted by hostile Indians, who, in their revengeful fury, murdered the whole family, excepting only one daughter, who was carried away into captivity. Thus in the tragedy of an Indian massacre was quenched the light of the most remarkable intellect Boston has ever made historic by misunderstanding.
Hawthorne, in writing in his early manhood of Mrs. Hutchinson ("Biographical Sketches"), humourously remarked, Seer that he was: "There are portentous indications, changes gradually taking place in the habits and feelings of the gentler sex, which seem to threaten our posterity with many of those public women whereof one was a burden too grievous for our fathers."
Fortunately, we of to-day have learned to take our clubwomen less tragically than Winthrop was able to do.
[Illustration: OLD WITCH HOUSE, SALEM, MASS.]
One of the most interesting of the phenomena to be noted by the student of historical houses is the tenacity of tradition. People may be told again and again that a story attributed to a certain site has been proven untrue, but they still look with veneration on a place which has been hallowed many years, and refuse to give up any alluring name by which they have known it. A notable example of this is offered by what is universally called the Old Witch House, situated at the corner of Essex and North Streets, Salem. A dark, scowling building, set far enough back from the street for a modern drugstore to stand in front of it, the house itself is certainly sufficiently sinister in appearance to warrant its name, even though one is assured by authorities that no witch was ever known to have lived there. Its sole connection with witchcraft, history tells us, is that some of the preliminary examinations of witches took place here, the house being at the time the residence of Justice Jonathan Corwin. Yet it is this house that has absorbed the interest of historical pilgrims to Salem through many years, just because it looks like a witch-house, and somebody once made a muddled statement by which it came to be so regarded.