Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/45

 and died 29 March 1879. Their youngest son, Dr. C. B. Mather, is now medical missionary in Tanganyika, Central Africa. 

MATHER, SAMUEL (1626–1671), congregationalist divine, eldest son of Richard Mather [q. v.], was born at Much Woolton, Lancashire, on 13 May 1626. His father took him in 1635 to New England, where he was educated at Harvard College, graduated M.A. in 1643, and became fellow. He was the first fellow of Harvard who had graduated there. Having already become a preacher, he returned to England, and in 1650 was made one of the chaplains of Magdalen College, Oxford, under the presidency of Thomas Goodwin [q. v.], the independent. He is said to have been incorporated M.A.; of this there is no record in the register. He frequently preached at St. Mary's. In 1653 he resigned his chaplaincy, having been appointed to attend the parliamentary commissioners to Scotland. He was at Leith, according to Calamy, for two years, exercising his ministry, but without regular charge. Returning to England, he is said to have been incorporated M.A. at Cambridge; he went over to Ireland soon after with Henry Cromwell. He was incorporated M.A. of Trinity College, Dublin, in 1654, and appointed one of the senior fellows. On 5 Dec. 1656 he was ordained in St. Nicholas's Church, Dublin, by Samuel Winter [q. v.], provost of Trinity, Timothy Taylor [q. v.] of Carrickfergus, and Thomas Jenner of Drogheda [see under JENNER, THOMAS], all congregationalists. He was morning preacher at St. Nicholas's, and preached once in six weeks as chaplain to the lord-deputy. Wood commends him for his civility to episcopal divines; he declined to act on commissions for displacing them in Munster and Dublin. At the Restoration he was suspended (October 1660) for sermons against the revival of the ceremonies. Crossing to England he obtained the perpetual curacy of Burtonwood, Lancashire, a poor chapelry with a wooden chapel, in the parish of Warrington. From this he was ejected by the Uniformity Act of 1662. He went back to Dublin and gathered a congregation, which met at his house till a meeting-house was erected in New Row. He was arrested on 18 Sept., and imprisoned on 20 Sept. 1664 for preaching at a private conventicle, but soon released. A pressing call came to him from Boston, Massachusetts, which he declined. He died at Dublin on 29 Oct. 1671, and was buried in St. Nicholas's Church. He married a sister of Sir John Stephens.

He published: 1. ‘A Wholesome Caveat for a Time of Liberty,’ &c., 1652, 4to. 2. ‘A Defence of the Protestant Religion,’ &c., Dublin, 1671, 4to. Posthumous were: 3. ‘An Irenicum: or an Essay for Union among Reformers,’ &c., 1680, 4to. 4. ‘The Figures or Types of the Old Testament,’ &c., Dublin, 1683, 4to (both published by his brother Nathaniel). He wrote also a ‘Discourse’ against Valentine Greatrakes [q. v.], the ‘miraculous conformist,’ but it was ‘not allow'd to be printed’. 

MATHER, WILLIAM (fl. 1695), author of ‘The Young Man's Companion,’ was born at Bedford, and was a grandson of a mayor of Hull. He was a churchman, but about 1661 he and his wife joined the quakers. He became a teacher, and kept a private school in Bedford. He also held an appointment as surveyor of highways, and wrote a pamphlet ‘On Repairing and Mending the Highways,’ 1696, in which he is described as ‘late surveyor.’ Besse, under ‘Bedfordshire,’ mentions that one William Mather was imprisoned in 1683 on a writ in the ecclesiastical court.

Mather's chief work, ‘The Young Man's Companion,’ published 1681, contains, in very small compass, information on nearly every practical subject. It became extremely popular, and ran through twenty-four editions. To the fourth edition, 1695, are added some verses, and fourteen chapters written by Mather's son Samuel, a clever young man, who died at the age of twenty-two. The twelfth, eighteenth, and twenty-fourth editions received successively further additions and alterations.

Mather also wrote ‘An Instrument from that Little Stone cut out of the Mountain without Hands, to break in pieces that great Image,’ &c., 1694; and another pamphlet called ‘A Novelty,’ on women's preaching, and disapproving of the women's meetings for discipline, then just established in the society. He is also probably the author of ‘A Brief Character of the Antient and Christian Quakers,’ London, 1695. About 1695 Mather began to be dissatisfied with quakerism. In 1700 he published a broadside with cut ‘Of the Quakers despising the Holy Scriptures,’ and an answer