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Of Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson: Early Modern Interplays of Religion, Science, and Politics in the Atlantic World

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Of Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson: Early Modern Interplays of Religion, Science, and Politics in the Atlantic World The “monstrous births” of Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson: early modern interplays of religion, science, and politics in the Atlantic World Martina Purucker Die Arbeit wurde im Jahr 2013 von der Philosophischen Fakultät IV – Sprach-, Literatur- und Kulturwissenschaften – der Universität Regensburg als Dissertation angenommen. Regensburg – Universitätsbibliothek Regensburg, 2016 Alle Rechte vorbehalten. In token of my admiration for his passion for science this dissertation is inscribed to Gottfried Purucker -- with thanks to H. Melville -- “The monster’s body is not immediately buried; its corpse does not at once disappear or decay, but continues to give life to a narrative long after breath has left its body.” --Philip M. Soergel, “Portraying Monstrous Birth in Early Modern Germany”-- -- (1998, 142)-- Table of Contents Acknowledgements i List of illustrations ii I Introduction 1 1.1 Setting the stage and state of the art: the monstrous births in the 1 context of the Antinomian Controversy and scholarly discourse 1.2 Approaches taken: fields of interest, notes on methods and 28 sources, project outline II Early reactions to the “monstrous births” (1637–1638) 54 2.1 “a certain strange kinde of thing”: John Winthrop, Jane 54 Hawkins, Anne Hutchinson—a colonial governor and two midwives on Mary Dyer’s “headless child” 2.2 “some strange things”: John Clarke, John Cotton, Thomas 84 Shepard—a priest-physician and two colonial Puritan ministers on Anne Hutchinson’s “mole” III A Short Story turns into a long controversy (1637–1651) 112 3.1 Publishing New World prodigies: John Winthrop’s and 112 Thomas Weld’s A Short Story 3.2 The “hand of Civill Justice”: debate on the New England Way— 145 from Scottish Presbyterians to colonial historiographers 3.3 Early modern public debate and misogynistic rhetoric: 169 Thomas Weld, John Wheelwright Jr. and Sr., Anne Bradstreet 3.4 The “hand of God”: Weld’s “finger of God” and the “Tombes- 198 Baxter debate” in the context of changing concepts of nature IV A family endeavor in interpreting prodigies (1652–1714) 222 4.1 Prologue: the Quaker threat 222 4.2 The advancement of New Science in colonial New England: 228 Increase Mather and John Spencer 4.3 The New England body politic endangered by female agency: 258 Cotton Mather’s Magnalia Christi Americana 4.4 The rise of “patriotic science”: Cotton Mather on “Curiosa 286 Americana” 4.5 Epilogue: the dawn of a new era in discourse on monstrosity 315 V Conclusion: from hybrid bodies to myths of origin 321 Appendix – Overview on primary sources (1638–1714) on the 339 “monstrous births” of Mary Dyer and Anne Hutchinson Works Cited 348 Acknowledgements As a young student, in one of my first seminars at university, I intended to write a paper on “The History of New Science.” This endeavor resulted of course in a grandiose failure, as was to be expected considering the complexities of the subject matter: in the end I did not even hand in the paper. Years later, I succeeded at least in this respect. Although I cannot claim to parallel Pliny who, in his own word, had been “perusing about 2000 volumes” (13) when drafting his Natural History , nevertheless this was a project of monstrous dimensions. Finishing it would not have been possible without the help of a number of persons and institutions. My first and greatest debt is to the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) in Boston, MA. For permission to consult manuscripts held at their care, I also wish to thank the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, MA. I am much indebted to staff, former colleagues and friends at the Bavarian State Library in Munich, and I am grateful to the Bavarian American Academy for providing me with a grant that allowed me to do research for several weeks in Boston and Cambridge, MA. And I wish to thank the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC, the University of Chicago, and ZEIT-Stiftung for giving me the opportunity to explore American manuscript collections and archives. Last but not least, I thank the British Library, the Harvard Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, and the Huntington Library for giving their permission to reproduce materials held by them. The archivists, librarians, and administrative staff of all these institutions have contributed to this dissertation by offering assistance and guidance. I regard it as a kind of divine providence that I came across Professor Udo Hebel, my doctoral advisor, from whose expertise on colonial Puritanism I profited greatly. Professor Volker Depkat gave me valuable advice on structuring the content and on the concept of the nation. For her help in translating one of the most important sources for this dissertation, I am most grateful to M. Wandtner. My thoughts will always be with her. Andrew Rink has been an excellent advisor on the English language, and all remaining errors and examples of bad style are entirely my responsibility. Last but not least, I would like to thank my friends and family, whose patience I had to stretch over quite a long period. In particular, I am grateful to Anica, Maren, and Wendelin for their manifold support. i List of Illustrations Fig. 1 Title page of A Wonder Worth the Reading (London, 1617). 58 © The British Library Board, C.127.g.17. Fig. 2 Illustration in Ambroise Paré’s Of Monsters and Prodigies 76 as part of The Works of Ambrose Parey (London, [1691]; 595). Courtesy the Harvard Medical Library in the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine. Fig. 3 Title page of Newes from New-England (London, 1642). © 121 The British Library Board, E.144.(22.). Fig. 4 Woodcut representing the “Monster of Ravenna” in Pierre 123 Boaistuau’s Secrete Wonders of Nature (London, 1569; 139). Courtesy Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Fig. 5 Newes from New-England (London, 1642, last page). © The 124 British Library Board, E.144.(22.). Fig. 6 Title page of John Vicars’s Prodigies and Apparitions 126 (London, 1643). © The British Library Board, C.27.a.15 Fig. 7 Title page of John Winthrop’s A Short Story (London, 1644). 133 © The British Library Board, E.33.(16.). Fig. 8 Title page of A Declaration of a Strange and Wonderfull 142 Monster (London, 1646). © The British Library Board, E.325.(20.) Fig. 9 Title page of The Ranters Monster (London, 1652). © The 142 British Library Board, E.658.(6.). Fig. 10 Woodcut illustration on the title page of MP’s The Two 161 Inseparable Brothers. Or A True and Strange Description of a Gentleman (an Italian by Birth) about Seventeene Yeeres of Age (London, 1637). © The British Library Board, Rox.III.216. Fig. 11 “The trvve picture of one Picte I”—the first print in a row on 281 the Picts, added to the main part of Thomas Hariot’s Briefe and True Report of the New Found Land of Virginia [1590]. Courtesy Huntington Library, San Marino, California. All images were produced by ProQuest as part of Early English Books Online. www.proquest.com ii I Introduction 1.1 Setting the stage and state of the art: the monstrous births in the context of the Antinomian Controversy and scholarly discourse As various early modern sources hold, in the night of 17 October 1637, Mary Dyer, a member of the First Church of Boston in New England, brought forth a “monstrous birth,” as deformed infants were called up to the early modern period in both learned treatises and cheap print. 1 The stillborn girl came two months before the expected time and apparently showed strong patterns of malformation: the child supposedly lacked a head, had four hard horns over the eyes, and a crooked nose; it was covered with “pricks and scales,” had two mouths (one of which with “a piece of red flesh sticking out”), and on each foot there were “three claws” (Winthrop, Journal 254). Only a few months thereafter, Anne (or Ann) Marbury Hutchinson, a midwife and friend of Mary Dyer who had assisted Dyer in her labors, also suffered a miscarriage. Hutchinson produced “several lumps” of flesh, “every one of them greatly confused” and “altogether without form,” as the long-time Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, noted in his journal ( Journal 265). The reception history of these two “monstrous births” is regarded as one of the most promising subjects of study for scholars focusing on the colonial period of New England. Round, for example, claims that the transatlantic discourse on such prodigious events as Dyer’s stillborn daughter “provided the foundation for New England cultural formation in the first generation of settlement” (25). According to Egan, the “monstrous births” of Dyer and Hutchinson have “taken on the character of a scholarly touchstone . , to the extent that anyone who wants to rethink early American culture must interpret this trope one way or another” (144n24). Sievers regards the narrative of Dyer’s deformed child as “early America’s most famous story” (218). Why are these failed pregnancies given so much weight—especially considering that these were not the only prodigious births in early New England? 1 Since the term monstrous birth was common practice for describing children born with severe birth defects, it will also be used in this study. The term serves as a reminder that human deformity used to be interpreted in ways that differ from modern approaches. 1 There were twins joined together at some part of their bodies, children born without a tongue, with too many fingers, distorted body parts, or lacking arms. 2 Already in themselves such occurrences had the potential to dominate town talk for a while. The emotional appeal of Dyer’s and Hutchinson’s monstrous births was heightened by the fact that they happened in quick succession (in October 1637 and late spring or summer 1638); furthermore, rumors had it that Dyer’s labors had been accompanied by appalling stench and other mysterious-seeming phenomena such as a shaking bed, which could easily be interpreted by early moderns as being caused by supernatural forces; and while many cases of so-called aberrant births seem to have left their contemporaries puzzling over their deeper meaning and the reason for their occurrence, Dyer’s and Hutchinson’s miscarriages suggested themselves for propagandistic use.
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