the ‘happy union’ of 1691, but was a leader in its disruption, owing to the alleged heresies of Daniel Williams, D.D. [q. v.] On the withdrawal of William Bates, D.D. [q. v.] (who sided with Williams), from the Pinners' Hall lectureship, Mather was appointed (1694) in his place. He died on 26 July 1697, and was buried at Bunhill Fields, where a long Latin inscription was placed upon his tombstone; a still longer Latin epitaph is in Isaac Watts's ‘Lyric Poems,’ 1709, pp. 300 sq. He was of tall stature, and a dignified preacher.
He published: 1. ‘The Righteousness of God through Faith,’ &c., Oxford, 1694, 4to (his first lectures at Pinners' Hall). Posthumous were: 2. ‘The Lawfulness of a Pastor's acting in other Churches,’ &c., 1698, 12mo. 3. ‘Twenty-three select Sermons … at Pinners' Hall,’ &c., 1701, 8vo.
[Calamy's Account, 1713, p. 238; Calamy's Continuation, 1727, i. 257 sq.; Walker's Sufferings of the Clergy, 1714, ii. 196, 216; Wilson's Dissenting Churches of London, 1808, i. 231; Armstrong's Appendix to Martineau's Ordination Service, 1829, p. 80.]
MATHER, RICHARD (1596–1669), congregational divine, son of Thomas and Margaret Mather, was born in 1596 at a house still standing in Mather Lane, Lowton, in the parish of Winwick, Lancashire. His parents were of good family, reduced by ‘unhappy mortgages.’ At Winwick grammar school he was under William Horrocke, a good but severe master, who dissuaded his father from apprenticing the lad to a Roman catholic merchant. When but fifteen he was appointed master of Winwick school by Sir Peter Legh, the patron, but in 1612 he became the first master of a school newly established by the inhabitants of Toxteth Park, near Liverpool. Here he lodged in the family of Edward Aspinwall, a cultured puritan landowner. He heard puritan sermons and read puritan divinity, attaining definite religious convictions in 1614. His school flourished and attracted pupils from a distance. Jeremiah Horrocks [q. v.] is said to have been his scholar, but this seems impossible. To improve his qualifications he went to Oxford, and joined Brasenose College on 9 May 1618. It seems probable that his school was suspended while a chapel was being built at Toxteth. His stay at Oxford was cut short by a call from the Toxteth people ‘to instruct, not so much their children as themselves.’ He preached his first sermon there on 30 Nov. 1618, and was soon afterwards (certainly before March 1619) ordained by Thomas Morton [q. v.], bishop of Chester, who had formed a high estimate of his religious character. His age suggests that he was only ordained deacon; at a later date, when he had come to think episcopal ordination ‘superstition,’ he tore the parchment certificate. For nearly fifteen years he pursued his ministry at Toxteth with growing repute. He married a lady whose father long withheld his consent, through dislike to ‘non-conformable puritans.’ After this (1624), he lived in a house he had bought at Much Woolton, three miles off, but he preached at Toxteth twice each Sunday and often on holy days, held a fortnightly lecture at Prescot, and, at the request of the mayor, took part in 1629 in monthly sermons at Liverpool. William Gellibrand, the puritan minister of Warrington, on hearing him preach, said, ‘Call him Matter; for, believe it, this man hath substance in him.’ This pun shows that the first vowel in Mather was short. John Bridgeman [q. v.], Morton's successor, suspended him in August 1633 for disusing the ceremonies, but restored him in November at the instance of influential friends. The suspension led Mather to define his views of church government, which became essentially congregational. In 1634 he was again suspended, by the visitors of Richard Neale or Neile [q. v.], then archbishop of York; efforts for his restoration proved hopeless when it transpired that he had never worn a surplice. In the following year he resolved to emigrate to New England, after consulting several meetings of Lancashire puritans, and receiving encouraging letters from the Boston ministers, John Cotton and Thomas Hooker [q. v.]
Mather with his family left Warrington for Bristol on 16 April 1635. On 23 May they went on board the James, but the vessel did not sail till 4 June. They got away from Milford on 22 June, and reached Boston harbour on Sunday 16 Aug. landing next day. Mather's journal of the voyage is a graphic and interesting narrative.
After staying a few months in Boston, he had overtures from three New England settlements, and at length accepted a call from Dorchester, Massachusetts, where a congregational church was constituted, with Mather as ‘teacher,’ on 23 Aug. 1636. In this charge he remained till his death, though solicited to return to Lancashire during the Commonwealth period. He became an influential leader in the church councils of New England congregationalism. At the Cambridge synod of 1648, held for the purpose of checking the introduction of presbyterianism, three alternative schemes of congregational polity were proposed, and though one of these carried the authority of John Cotton, Mather's plan, generally known as the ‘Cambridge platform,’ was adopted. It provided for an associate
