Portsmouth Newport Rhode Island United States

Some of the leaders of the Hutchinsonian movement during Anne Hutchinson’s imprisonment have prepared to leave the colony and settle elsewhere.

Nineteen men, including William Hutchinson and John Clarke, a medical doctor and Baptist minister, meet on March 7, 1638, at the home of the wealthy Boston merchant William Coddington.

The men form themselves into a "Bodie Politick" and elect Coddington their judge.

They had initially planned to move to Long Island or present New Jersey, but Roger Williams has persuaded them to settle in the area of Rhode Island, near Williams' Providence Plantations settlement.

Coddington purchases Aquidneck island from the natives and the settlement of Pocasset (now Portsmouth) is founded.

Anne Hutchinson had followed in April, after the conclusion of her trial.

After enduring months of persecution and suffering while pregnant, Hutchinson suffers a miscarriage.

The Puritan leaders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony gloat in her suffering and that of Mary Dyer, one of her followers who also suffers a miscarriage, labeling their misfortunes as the judgment of God.

Massachusetts Bay continues to persecute Hutchinson's followers who had not followed her, and send church leaders from Boston to Aquidneck in an attempt to persuade her of the correctness of their doctrine.

Hutchinson expels the delegates from her home, denouncing the Boston church as a "whore and a strumpet".

Meanwhile, Judge Coddington begins to instigate theocratic policies in the government of the Pocasset colony.

Coddington declares that he is permitted to exercise his interpretations of the "word of God" on the settlers and to see himself as a feudal lord ruling the island, with the settlers as his tenants.

Anne Hutchinson successfully leads a movement to amend the Pocasset constitution to allow the freemen the power to veto the governor's actions and establishes the positions of three "elders" to be elected by the freemen to share the powers of the governor and thus check his power.

Hutchinson and the freemen demand an election for a government to replace Coddington, who is forced to concede.

William Hutchinson is elected governor and Coddington leaves the colony along with some of his followers, who establish the settlement of Newport at the south end of the island.

The freemen of Pocasset change the name of their town to Portsmouth, after Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, on May 12, 1639, and adopt a new government that provides for trial by jury and separation of church and state.

William Hutchinson is chosen as governor.

Coddington had returned with an armed force, which was initially repelled, but soon he arrested William Hutchinson and ordered his disenfranchisement.

The towns of Portsmouth and ...