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The first female heretic on the North American shore was Anne Hutchinson. Arriving in the Puritan theocracy of Boston in 1634, Hutchinson became a serious threat to that church-state when she began holding discussion groups for women in her home, daring to critique the sermons and theology of male ministers. Authorities became alarmed when men, too, began listening to her, and her follower Sir Henry Vane even (temporarily) defeated John Winthrop as governor. Hutchinson's supporters were persecuted, Hutchinson was banished by the Massachusetts General Court for sedition and heresy in 1637, then she was excommunicated, "cast out" and delivered to "Satan as a "Heathen" and a "Leper." Her Quaker supporter Mary Dyer was hanged in the Boston Commons in 1660 as a heretic, and the Salem witch trials followed. Hutchinson's followers settled briefly on the island of Aquidneck, Rhode Island, and under her influence, adopted a civil, secular government which made the first declaration of religious freedom in America: "It is ordered that none shall be accounted a delinquent for doctrine" She was the first woman in America to demand the right of individual judgment upon religious questions.
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