The Ecclesiastical Court, of Boston, Massachusetts, hands down Rex v. Hutchinson: Governor John Winthrop—who served as both judge and prosecutor—sentences Anne Hutchinson, a religious dissenter, to banishment from the colony for arguing the “Covenant of Grace” (Ephesians 2:8-9) as opposed to the “Covenant of Works,” which is preached by the Puritan Church.  Anne Hutchinson (an Antinomian), her husband and their children, are forced to walk the entire journey, in the dead of winter, to the colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations: “Mrs. Hutchinson … I do cast you out and deliver you up to Satan that you may learn no more to blaspheme, to seduce, and to lie!  And I do account you from this time forth to be a heathen and a publican [tax collector].”

       NOTE: In courts of this era nearly two-thirds of judges were former prosecutors. 

       [updated 6/20/2026]