Jane Hawkins

Midwife; wife of Richard Hawkins, whom she married at Bluntisham, Huntingdonshire, in July 1602, recorded as “Jaine ANGELL” (FreeREG). Banished from Massachusetts in 1638 and 1641 as Anne Hutchinson’s associate, not for “Quakerism” as Mollie has it (p. 129); the Quakers came later.

At St Ives in April 1629 she fell “into a rapture or ecstacy.” On 28 Apr Bishop Williams of Lincoln reported that “Jane Hawkins, of St. Ives … having fallen into a rapture or ecstacy, has uttered strange things, in verse.” He called her “a witty, crafty baggage”: her verses ran “three days and three nights in an auditory of very near 200 people,” while the vicar Mr. Tokey and his curate copied “some thousands” of lines “which the poor woman (she is but a pedlar) did dictate,” until he seized them. On 5 May he reported that the vicar had read an acknowledgment of “the woman’s imposture” in church, and that the people “cry out against the woman” (Calendar of State Papers Domestic 1628-29, pp. 530-531, 537).

By about 1635 she was in Boston. Winthrop calls her “the midwife, one Hawkins’s wife, a rank familist also,” and says Mary Dyer’s stillborn child of 17 Oct 1637 was “viewed of none but Mrs. Hutchinson and the midwife, one Hawkins’s wife.” When examined, Jane “at first … confessed only, that the head was defective and misplaced.” He says “she grew into great suspicion to be a witch, for it was credibly reported, that, when she gave any medicines, (for she practised physic,) she would ask the party, if she did believe, she could help her,” and adds “that she used to give young women oil of mandrakes and other stuff to cause conception” (Journal 1:266-268). She “had much familiarity with the devil in England, when she dwelt at St. Ives” (2:8).

On 12 Mar 1637/8 the court ordered that until she left, “shee is not to meddle in surgery, or phisick, drinks, plaisters, or oyles, nor to question matters of religion, except w’th the elders for satisfaction” (Records of Mass. Bay 1:224). In 1641: “Jane Hawkins is enioyned to depart away to morrow morning, & not to returne againe hither, upon paine of severe whiping … & her sonnes stand bound in 20l to carry her away.”

She and her sons kept asking for her return. On 22 May 1650 she was allowed “to come & stay in this jurisdiction one moneth any time this summer” to visit her children (Records of Mass. Bay 3:189). In May 1651 the court answered “the petition of James, Jobe & Thomas Hawkins for the returne for theire mother to liue in this jurisdiction”: it could not give way, “not knowinge how to satisfy themselues about this woman” (3:228). On 23 May 1655 she was allowed two months “to transport herselfe for England” (3:394); in 1656 a further petition with her sons was not granted (3:413).

At Portsmouth, Rhode Island, on 25 Aug 1656, as “Jane Haukines late wife to Richard Haukines aforesaid deceast,” she assented to a deed of her son Job’s land, signing by mark, “Jane Haukines hir marke” (Early Records of Portsmouth, p. 327). On 19 June 1658 “the widdow Hawkins” held land at Portsmouth next to her son-in-law Thomas Brookes (p. 353); that this was Jane is our inference.

Her granddaughter Mary Hawkins married John Kneeland, a Scot of Boston, and Mary’s grandson Samuel Kneeland became a Boston printer and newspaper publisher.

Open questions

• Her parents and baptism. WikiTree (Angell-540) cites TAG 89:307-308 and NEHGR 114:207-211, which have not been read.
• Her death, after June 1658 if the “widdow Hawkins” of Portsmouth was she.