When considering the men who are ‘making’ New England at this time, the prominent leaders, the movers and shakers, it is striking to realise how many of them are Cambridge University graduates for here, in this scene, is John Williams, yet another of that alumni. Williams’ college when he was a student, was Pembroke and so its coat-of-arms is shown on the lower border to celebrate him. Now of course, Williams is a Reverend, as all University graduates are but unfortunately for the Establishment in his new home, New England he’s turned out to be more of a free thinking clergyman than most of his bigoted fellow Puritan settlers. Soon, so much do his outspoken views on the interpretation of the Bible and belief in freedom of conscience create anger then fear among the holier-than-thou brigade in the Boston area that he’s hauled before the Massachusetts Bay magistrates. There they decide to simply remove the thought cancer carrier by deporting him. However, the resourceful William forestalls them and escapes across the sea, not back to England but to nearby Aquidneck Island. It’s renamed Rhode Island. Note the Rhode Island Red chickens in the coops.

Another preacher troublesome to the authorities is not a clergyman but a woman, Mrs Anne Hutchinson who was born in Alford in Lincolnshire in 1591. Her father was Francis Marbury, a noted preacher in Lincolnshire and it is the Marbury coat-of-arms, set in a lozenge, for a woman, that is depicted here. Anne is married to William Hutchinson also of Alford and in 1633, after sending their eldest son Edward to accompany the Rev. John Cotton to America, they have followed a year later to settle in the Boston area.

Anne is a supercharged charismatic preacher, with such enormous personal magnetic power that she moves large crowds to accept her religious prophecies and criticises the authorities’ interpretation of the Bible, so much so that she panics the general Court governing body to move across the river to Charlestown at election time. The authorities have had enough. She’s brought to court and, as shown, sentenced to deportation. However, like Williams before her she escapes with her family, first to Rhode Island to set up a democracy but when they move on later to Long Island, will nearly all be wiped out by Indians.