Richard Mather (1596 - 1669), was a Puritan clergyman in Colonial Boston, Massachusetts. He was father to Increase Mather and grandfather
to Cotton Mather, both also celebrated Boston divines.
Biography
Mather was born in Lowton, in the parish of Winwick, near Liverpool, England, of a family which was in reduced
circumstances but entitled to bear a coat-of-arms.
He studied at Winwick grammar school, of which he was appointed a master in his
fifteenth year, and left it in 1612 to become master of a newly established school at Toxteth
Park, Liverpool. After a few months at Brasenose College, Oxford, he
began in November 1618 to preach at Toxteth, and was ordained there, possibly only as
deacon, early in 1619.
In August-November 1633 he was suspended for nonconformity in matters of ceremony; and
in 1634 was again suspended by the visitors of Richard Neile, archbishop of York, who, hearing that he had never worn a surplice
during the fifteen years of his ministry, refused to reinstate him and said that "it had been better for him that he had gotten
seven bastards."
He had a great reputation as a preacher in and about Liverpool; but, advised by letters of John Cotton and Thomas Hooker, he was persuaded to join the
company of pilgrims in May 1635 and embarked at Bristol for New England. He arrived at Boston on August 15,
1635, in the midst of one of the most catastrophic hurricanes of the colonial era. Pastor of Dorchester until his death in
1669.
See also
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia
Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public
domain.
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