Increase Mather

American religious leader, diplomat, and educator

• Born: June 21, 1639
• Birthplace: Dorchester, Massachusetts
• Died: August 23, 1723
• Place of death: Boston, Massachusetts

Maintaining Puritan beliefs in seventeenth century Massachusetts, Mather led the Congregational churches of Boston to continue the status quo and sought to retain American independence from British political control. As president of Harvard College and a renowned writer, he aided in the development of higher education and culture in New England.

Early Life

Increase Mather was born in the parsonage of his father, Richard Mather. His mother, née Katharine Hoult, was a “godly and prudent maid” whose family was not Puritan. Richard Mather, a prominent Puritan minister, was much involved in the life of the new colony and chose the name “Increase” for his son to indicate God’s favor and prosperity on the new land. Increase was to be a living reflection of the New Testament scripture that describes fruitfulness: Although one person planted and another waters, “God gave the increase.”

As with most colonial boys of that period, Increase received his elementary education from his mother, in his home. To supplement her efforts, Increase’s father tutored him in Latin and Greek grammar and later enrolled him in a nearby small schoolhouse. At age twelve, Increase entered Harvard College, from which he was graduated in 1656, planning to enter the ministry. Great Britain was then ruled by the Puritans under Oliver Cromwell, and Increase soon joined two of his brothers in Ireland for further theological studies at Trinity College in Dublin.

With the death of Cromwell in 1658, the movement to return to royal rule gained enough additional support that the Puritans lost power and Charles II ascended the throne in 1660. A staunch Puritan, Increase Mather opposed the Restoration and refused to “drink the king’s health.” Since ministers at that time were paid their salaries by the government, Mather lost his position and was even threatened with arrest. He decided to return to New England in 1661, and he became teacher of the (Congregational) Second Church in Boston.

Life’s Work

Increase Mather thus embarked upon his life’s work, that of an influential minister in colonial New England. His work consisted primarily of spiritual ministration to, and biblical teaching of, his congregation. His position, however, gave him great influence among many of the political and business leaders of the colony. He did, in fact, play a key role in Massachusetts’ struggle for freedom within the British Empire and for four years served as a diplomatic representative of the colony to the British crown.

Mather’s mother had died when he was fifteen, and, in 1656, his father married the widow of his close friend John Cotton, another distinguished minister of New England. Therefore, John and Sarah Cotton’s daughter, Maria, became Increase Mather’s stepsister. After his return from Ireland, she also became his wife. Increase and Maria apparently had an excellent marriage. She managed their household well, and his “heart did safely trust in her,” as Increase expressed it, quoting from the Book of Proverbs in the Old Testament. He was kind to her and loved her dearly, calling her a “great blessing” from the Lord and the “dear companion” of his “pilgrimage on earth.” For her part, she considered Increase “the best husband and the best man in the whole world.” With words such as these in their diaries it does not take much imagination to see a happy, romantic love in their relationship.

Increase and Maria had ten children, only one of whom died as an infant. All of them had a substantial role to play in the life of the colonies or of England. The oldest, Cotton Mather, became particularly famous, following a career similar to that of his father and grandfather.

Although Mather served his church throughout his lifetime and considered the ministry his principal calling in life, he was also elected president of Harvard College in 1681. Devoting what time he could to college administration, Mather provided a dignity and quiet stability to Harvard during many of its early and difficult years. The prestige of his new position added to Mather’s already considerable influence in the colony. It is not surprising that Mather soon found himself in the midst of a political controversy with England.

In 1678, King Charles II appointed a leading Anglican politician, Edward Randolph, collector of the king’s revenue in Massachusetts. A struggle for power ensued between the representatives of the Crown and American officials in Massachusetts. Finally, in 1683, Charles II sent to Boston a declaration that stated that unless there was “full submission, and entire resignation . . . to his pleasure, a quo warranto” would be prosecuted against the original Massachusetts charter, that is, the constitutional authority enabling Massachusetts to have its own self-government. A quo warranto proceeding was a legal investigation to determine “by what authority” an official governed or acted. Such an inquiry would have led to a revocation of the colonial charter, and Massachusetts would have lost its right of self-government.

Mather refused to yield to a tyrannical king. In January, 1684, he spoke the following words at a town meeting:

If we make a submissive and entire resignation, we fall into the hands of men immediately. But if we do it not, we keep ourselves still in the hands of God, and trust ourselves with his providence. And who knows what God may do for us? . . . And we hear from London, that when it came to, the loyal citizens would not make a full submission and entire resignation to pleasure, lest, haply, their posterity should curse them. And shall we do it then? I hope there is not one freeman in Boston that will dare to be guilty of so great a sin.

There was great excitement among the crowd in the hall, and the vote supporting Mather’s position carried without a single dissenting vote. Boston led the way for Massachusetts and Massachusetts for New England.

The king did indeed declare the Massachusetts charter void, but within a year he was dead and his brother, James II, ascended the throne. King James was more conciliatory toward Massachusetts than his brother had been, but he sought to control the New England colonies by placing them all in a single administrative unit under the authority of Sir Edmund Andros. Much of popular government was to be revoked in New England. In its place appeared arbitrary government under the authority of the king and the royal governor. Several of the churches in the Boston area urged Mather to act as an informal colonial emissary to discuss the matter with James II.

Randolph, with his power as representative of the Crown, secured a warrant for Mather’s arrest in December, 1687. Mather was tried for subversion on the basis of a forged letter, which he had allegedly written, criticizing the king. At a jury trial, however, the charges were disproved and Randolph was ordered to pay court costs. Not deterred, Randolph sought to arrest Mather again, on a different charge. The minister, however, disguised himself and walked past Randolph’s agent guarding his house. He was taken by a small boat to meet the ship that he had been prevented from boarding in Boston. Mather thus became a representative of the Massachusetts colonists in England for the next four years.

In May, 1688, after visiting with several Congregational ministers in London, Mather secured an audience with the king himself. In the course of their conversation, Mather requested that the king recall Governor Andros and sought to explain why he should. In several interviews with the king, Mather received assurances of goodwill but no promise of self-government for New England.

The Glorious Revolution of 1688-1689 now intervened in a bloodless coup to depose James II and to replace him with William III, prince of Orange, and Mary II, both related to the Stuart kings. Both houses of Parliament approved of the change and welcomed the Dutch armada and the new monarchs. James fled to France.

King William signed the English Bill of Rights of 1689 and showed himself a lover of constitutional government, with its stress on limited and shared powers and civil and political liberties for all English subjects (including those living in the American colonies). Mather hoped for a return to the original Massachusetts charter. In this he was disappointed. He did, however, manage to return to Massachusetts with a new charter, which restored many of the rights and privileges of the earlier charter. Unable to persuade the king to allow the colony to elect its own governor, Mather did secure the appointment as governor of Massachusetts his son Cotton’s close friend and church member, Sir William Phipps.

Mather and the new governor returned together on the same ship and arrived in Boston on May 14, 1692, just as the notorious Salem witch trials were in progress. Governor Phipps appointed a special court to meet in Salem to try the accused and in August, 1692, a group of seven ministers met with Mather at Cambridge to discuss the witchcraft trials. In an attempt to persuade the court to rule out “spectral evidence” because it was unverifiable and could be falsified by a second witness, Mather wrote a pamphlet called Cases of Conscience Concerning Evil Spirits (1693). The pamphlet was endorsed by fourteen ministers and sent to Governor Phipps. The governor then dissolved the special court handling the cases and ordered that spectral evidence be ruled out by Massachusetts courts in the future. There were no more condemnations, although by September, 1692, twenty people, mostly girls and women, had been executed in the hysteria. The governor eventually pardoned the few remaining prisoners and never again were people tried as witches in New England. Mather must be given his share of the credit for stopping the practice.

Mather was also an important literary figure in New England. He wrote more than two hundred books and shorter works. His biography of his father, Richard Mather, published in 1670, was one of the earliest examples of that genre produced in the colonies. Mather owned one of the two largest libraries in Boston and was broadly educated and well-read. Most of his writings were theological and philosophical. Influential in his own day, one work at least made an important contribution in the eighteenth century and continues to be read. An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences (1684) was an attempt to record systematically any unusual events in the lives of the colonists that Mather interpreted as examples of divine intervention. They are important for later generations as eyewitness accounts of historical events that reflect and reveal life as it was actually lived in the seventeenth century.

Mather sought to deal honestly with the historical record: He recorded “tragical” as well as joyful endings, writing that “the Lord’s faithful servants have sometimes been the subject of very dismal dispensations.” Against the objection that God the Creator had established inexorable and immutable natural laws that He could not “violate,” Mather claimed that God was merely controlling what He had created and was outside creation and not bound by what He himself had made. It was not miracles that the colonists sought to prove, but merely that God was directly behind the events of their lives. Mather’s writings contributed to the debate that raged over Enlightenment ideas in the next century. Mather certainly agreed with the application of rationality and systematic logic to any subject. His writings and sermons clearly demonstrated that quality.

Significance

Minister, teacher, and statesman, Increase Mather was a key leader of seventeenth and early eighteenth century America. His influence was great because, to a large degree, he reflected and represented the dominant attitudes and beliefs of his time. The study of history deals particularly with both continuity and change. “Change” receives much more attention from historians because it stands out from the status quo and is often dramatic and clearly discernible amid the monotony of routine daily life. “Continuity” is usually described as historical setting or analyzed as part of the existing culture. Most of lived history, however, follows tradition and the routine ritual of everyday life. Sometimes the human value of change for the sake of intended improvement or “progress” (if such it be) conflicts with the equally human need for stability and the security of the familiar. Most people like to know what is expected of them from their society and peers and then like to fulfill those expectations. It was in this area of stability and in the perpetuation of a civilization that Mather made his greatest contribution. He was not afraid of change, but he believed in the shared values of his generation and wanted to pass those cultural values on to the next generation.

In his weekly labors within his parish, as he went about the routine duties of his position, he believed that he was fulfilling the purposes of life. In his leadership at Harvard, he sought to pass on traditional values to the next generation. In the many books he wrote, he sought to present evidence that the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay were on the right pathway and that they should “stay the course.”

One of the values he sought to preserve was that of self-government for Massachusetts within the greater British Empire. For that reason, he spent four years as a diplomat and for many other years involved himself in the political issues of the colony. Above all, he sought to perpetuate the Judeo-Christian ethic on which the colony was founded. He set a high moral tone among his own congregation but also often counseled condemned criminals and others whom he thought had gone “astray.” Through their words of wisdom, moderation, and reason, Mather and his fellow Puritan ministers and political leaders preserved the culture handed to them throughout their lifetimes.

Bibliography

Burg, Barry R. Richard Mather of Dorchester. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1976. The best single-volume history of Increase Mather’s father. Includes important background material on Increase Mather.

Hall, David D. The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972. Describes Mather’s cultural milieu and explains the popular expectations for Puritan ministers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Hall, Michael G. The Last American Puritan: The Life of Increase Mather, 1639-1723. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1988. A scholarly biography, drawing on Mather’s diaries to recount his personal life and public career.

Mather, Increase. An Essay for the Recording of Illustrious Providences. 1684. Reprint. Remarkable Providences Illustrative of the Earlier Days of American Colonisation. 1856. Reprint. Portland, Oreg.: Back Home Industries, 1997. This reprint series gives a sample of Mather’s thinking on religion and spirituality in colonial New England.

Middlekauff, Robert. The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Presents the perspective of three generations of the Mathers. Middlekauff is not as sympathetic as most other historians who study the Mathers and their time period.

Miller, Perry. The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1954. A standard intellectual history of the time and place.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. The Intellectual Life of Colonial New England. 2d ed. New York: New York University Press, 1956. Although a brief treatment of Increase Mather, this work includes an excellent history of the New England Puritans.

Munk, Linda. The Devil’s Mousetrap: Redemption and Colonial American Literature. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. A literary analysis of the sermons of three colonial New England preachers: Mather, Jonathan Edwards, and Edward Taylor. Examines the sources of their religious thought and the language they used to express their respective theologies.

Murdock, Kenneth B. Increase Mather: The Foremost American Puritan. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1925. A classic study, indispensable for a thorough understanding of the life and times of Increase Mather.

Silverman, Kenneth. The Life and Times of Cotton Mather. New York: Harper & Row, 1984. A thorough and scholarly study of Increase Mather’s son. Useful also for a broader understanding of Increase Mather’s place in American history.