Richard Mather

 

Richard Mather the first minister of the Chapel was born 1596, in Lowton in the parish of Winwick, Lancashire, 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 the newly established school at Toxteth Park, Liverpool. Later after some time spent studying at Brasenose College, Oxford, in late 1618 he was called by the people of Toxteth to return, but this time as minister of their newly completed Chapel, he began to preach at Toxteth in November 1618, and as the law of the day demanded, was ordained by Bishop Morton at Chester, possibly only as a deacon early in 1619, though this was not of his own choice and the Chapel itself was never designated as Anglican, as the congregation was Puritan.            He was minister of the Chapel for over 15 years and during that time he never wore a surplus or special garb to preach, which was "against the rules" of the day, whilst he did use the authorised common book of payer, he supplemented his sermons with some of  the other Protestant ideas coming from Europe such as Lutherism and Calvanism.   Because Toxteth Park had been owned by the Crown since the time of King John, it did not have a local Parish Church and was not subjected to the inspections that the Archbishops instigated annually. It was only when the land was sold by the Crown that this anomaly came to light. Riders were sent from Richard Neile, the then Archbishop of York in 1633 and 1634, who, hearing that he had never worn a surplice during the fifteen years of his ministry, suspended him for his nonconformity and refused to reinstate him saying that "it had been better for him that he had begotten seven bastards".

He had a great reputation as a preacher in and about Liverpool; but, advised by letters from John Cotton and Thomas Hooker of his now lack of opportunities, he was persuaded to join the company of pilgrims in May 1635 and embarked at Bristol docks for New England.

On 4 June 1635, Richard, wife Katherine, and children Samuel, Timothy, Nathaniel, and Joseph, all set sail for the New World aboard the ship "James". As they approached New England, a hurricane struck and they were forced to ride it out just off the coast of modern-day Hampton, New Hampshire. According to the ship's log and "The Journal of Richard Mather, his life and death" in 1670 by Increase Mather, the following was recorded;

At this moment, their lives were given up for lost; but then, in an instant of time, God turned the wind about, which carried them from the rocks of death before their eyes. ...her sails rent in sunder, and split in pieces, as if they had been rotten ragges. They tried to stand down during the storm just outside the Isles of Shoals, but lost all three anchors, as no canvas or rope would hold, but on 17 August 1635, torn to pieces, and with not one death, all one hundred plus passengers of the "James" managed to make it to Boston Harbour. He arrived at Boston on 17 August 1635, after weathering the Great Colonial Hurricane.

As a famous preacher "he was desired at Plymouth, Dorchester, and Roxbury”. He went to Dorchester, where, after a delay of several months, in August 1636 there was constituted by the consent of magistrates and clergy a church of which he was until his death in Dorchester on 22 April 1669 the pastor, he oversaw the baptism of Dorcas Ye Blackmore, one of the first African American Christians in New England, and Mather worked to help free her.

He was father to Increase Mather and grandfather to Cotton Mather, both celebrated Boston theologians. He was a leader of New England Congregationalism and his family and descendants had great influence on New England, sitting on the board of Harvard University and instrumental in the setting up of Yale University. The Mather school which is named after him is the oldest free public school in America and he contributed the preface to the "Bay Psalm Book" the first book printed in the American Colonies.

Mather was buried in the Dorchester North Burying Ground in April 1669.