on 18 March 1629/30 while still in England, and he sailed to New England the following month with the Winthrop Fleet. His first wife died during their first winter in Massachusetts, and he returned to England aboard the Lion in 1631, remaining there for two years. During this visit to England, he married Mary Moseley in Terling, Essex, and she went to New England with him in 1633. She was admitted to the Boston church that summer. Coddington was a leading merchant in Boston, and he built the first brick house there. He was elected an assistant every year from his arrival in New England until 1637. He was the colony's treasurer from 1634 to 1636, and a deputy for Boston in 1637. He was also a Boston selectman in 1634, and was on several committees overseeing land transactions in 1636 and 1637. Antinomian Controversy As a member of the Boston Church, Coddington was pleased when John Cotton arrived in the colony in 1633, as he was one of the most noted Puritan ministers of the time. The two men had been friends in England, and Cotton had arranged in a 1630 letter for a hogshead of meal to be sent to Coddington, who was at Naumkeg (Salem) at the time. Cotton became a minister of the Boston Church, joining minister John Wilson. In time, the Boston parishioners could sense a theological difference between Wilson and Cotton. Anne Hutchinson was a theologically astute midwife who had the ear of many of the colony's women, and she became outspoken in support of Cotton and condemned the theology of Wilson and most of the other ministers in the colony. Differing religious opinions within the colony eventually became public debates. The resulting religious tension erupted into what has traditionally been called the Antinomian Controversy, but has more recently been labelled the Free Grace Controversy. Many members of Boston's church disagreed with Wilson's emphasis on morality and his doctrine of "evidencing justification by sanctification", meaning that one demonstrates salvation by living a more holy life. Some of Wilson's opponents labeled his views as a covenant of works, while Hutchinson told her followers that Wilson lacked "the seal of the Spirit". Wilson's theological views were in accord with those of the other ministers in the colony except for Cotton, who stressed "the inevitability of God's will" (which he termed a covenant of grace) as opposed