On an icy November afternoon in 1637, in the thatch-roofed Cambridge meetinghouse of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 40 magistrates sat ready to pass judgment on a woman whom they believed posed the gravest threat yet to the fragile social and political order of the seven-year-old colony: Anne Hutchinson, a 46-year-old mother of 12 living children and the foremost female Puritan intellectual and spiritual leader. Her ostensible crime? Holding weekly meetings with other women to discuss Scripture. Hutchinson’s biblical exegesis and spiritual advice had grown so popular that the crowds had swelled to include one-fifth of Boston’s population. Counted among them were many men who were political opponents of the current governor, John Winthrop, the lead prosecutor.