from the Providence Institution for Savings "The Old Stone Bank" History of Rhode Island, Vol. III by John Williams Haley, "The Rhode Island Historian" published by Providence Institution for Savings, 1939. pp. 30 - 33. "ANNE HUTCHINSON. In any fairly complete review of the Rhode Island narrative, one of the first individuals to draw the spotlight of attention from Roger Williams, once the Providence settlement was established, we find to be a woman, a woman of remarkable vision, power and spirit, and also the mother of fourteen children. Her name was Mrs. Anne Hutchinson, probably the first American champion of women's rights, and probably the first of her sex to challenge openly the inherited authorities, privileges and prerogatives of the so-called 'stronger' sex. Her life story is interesting; certain of her ideas concerning spiritual matters are difficult to interpret, but she influenced events and their turnings not only in Rhode Island but in the infant nation during the very beginnings of American history. Anne Marbury was born in England at some time during the last years of the reign of Queen Elizabeth; it is generally agreed that the date of her birth was in the neighborhood of 1594, when religious controversies were approaching their height in that troubled nation. Her father was a Puritan minister, preaching both in Lincolnshire and in London. Her mother was a sister of Sir Edward Dryden, father of the poet, and Anne was said to have enjoyed every advantage of education and culture that the time afforded. While she was still a child, Queen Elizabeth died and James I became the King. King James desired most intensely 'An ordered and obedient Church, its synods that met at the royal will, its courts that carried out the royal ordinances, its bishops that held themselves to be royal officers.' The Puritans disputed this royal policy of making men obey the word of the crown in matters both civil and spiritual, but their objections availed little except continued and more severe persecution." continued in part 2.