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PICKERING, TIMOTHY .- Papers (See Historical Index to the Pickering Papers, in Mass. Historical Society, Collections, Sixth Series, Vol. VIII ; Boston, 1896)-The Pickering Papers are stored in the custody of the Society.
322 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY LITERATURE
SAMPSON, DEBORAH. See MANN, HERMAN.
SEWALL, SAMUEL .- Diaries, 1674-1729 (3 vols., Mass. Historical Society, Collections, Fifth Series, Vols. V-VII; Boston, 1878-1882).
TYLER, ROYAL .- The Algerian Captive (2 vols., Walpole, N. H., 1797). WARREN, JOSEPH .- Oration Delivered March 5th, 1772 . . to Commemo- rate the Bloody Tragedy of the Fifth of March, 1770 (Boston, Edes and Gill, by order of the town of Boston, 1772).
WARREN, MERCY .- The Group (Boston, Edes and Gill, 1779).
WARREN, MERCY .- History of the Rise, Progress and Termination of the American Revolution (Boston, E. Larkin, 1805).
WARREN, MERCY .- Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous (Boston, I. Thomas and F. T. Andrus, 1790).
WILLIAMS, JOHN .- The Redeemed Captive (Boston, 1707).
WOOLMAN, JOHN .- Considerations on Keeping Negroes (Phila., Printed by B. Franklin and D. Hall, 1762).
CHAPTER XI COTTON MATHER, PARSON, SCHOLAR AND MAN OF AFFAIRS
BY KENNETH B. MURDOCK Assistant Professor of English, Harvard University
THE FAME OF COTTON MATHER
On July 27, 1713 the Council of the Royal Society of London nominated Cotton Mather for membership. Early in 1714 he had word that he, "in an Infant Countrey, entirely destitute of Philosophers", had been elected to a body which he thought of as "among the Glories of England, yea, and of Mankind." Nine years later the Society, to correct an error in its records, balloted once more on his name, and, at one of the most crowded meetings in its history, presided over by Sir Isaac Newton, confirmed his election.
Few Americans had been thus honored, and the recognition accorded Mather is the more marked because he had never been in England, so that his claims upon the Society were based solely upon his reputation outside of Massachusetts. However unscientific and unscholarly what he and Halley and Newton and the English "virtuosi" chose to call scholarship, his English friends seem to have made no mistake in singling him out from his countrymen for such dignities as they could confer. They anticipated posterity, which has made him the most famous of New England Puritans. The nature of his fame is more debated now than it could have been by the Fellows of the Royal Society two centuries ago; for, since his death, he has been by some praised more than he deserved and by others harshly treated to an extent not merited even by his obvious defects. As Professor Kittredge said in 1911, "When a Boston preacher who died almost two hundred years ago can still divide our local republic of letters into hostile camps
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at a moment's notice, the presumption is that he amounted to something."
In his life and interests may be seen some of the tangled threads woven into the Massachusetts history of his period. He was an actor, if sometimes a minor one, in many events of that far-off day, and because he was something perilously like a genius-good or bad-his playing of his rôle is worth watching. Other men, who contributed more to history, were less renowned, and lack his significance as one of the rare in- dividuals who, by some magic of personality, live in memory as the striking local figures of their centuries.
ANCESTRY AND EARLY LIFE (1663-1675)
Cotton Mather lived all his life, from 1663 to 1728, in Boston, the place of his birth. From 1685 until his death he was minister at the Second Church in that town.
His ancestry undoubtedly shaped part of his career. He was the grandson of Richard Mather and John Cotton, both pioneer preachers and founders of New England Congrega- tionalism. His father was Increase Mather, the most influen- tial New England Puritan of his generation and for years the recognized leader of the Massachusetts church. Increase was President of Harvard College and brought it safely through some of its most critical years. His son was his colleague at the Second Church until his death, and the ideals of the older man became in most matters the ideals of his son.
Unfortunately for Cotton Mather many of his generation lost before 1728 the Puritanic ardor which had inspired his forbears and still inspired him. A newer day brought up its young men to serve new gods; New England changed and dwellers therein changed with it. Trade became more im- portant than Calvinism, and a worldly spirit, less common in the early years of the colony, grew stronger day by day. Therefore, Cotton Mather often found his inheritance and training at odds with much that other men of his age looked upon as good. He had to make more than one awkward choice between denying what he had been brought up to revere and fighting on in the face of odds too strong to be overcome. Usually he chose to fight at whatever odds, and thence came
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EDUCATION
tragedy. He never experienced the woe of seeing the old piety, the old conception of Massachusetts as the promised land of Puritanism, the old reverence for religious and moral values, quite abandoned; but he lived to see signs of change everywhere. In some directions he welcomed change. He was himself a pioneer among his fellow colonists in his inter- est in some lines of scholarship; and his attitude toward science led him into a position more advanced than that held by most scientific men of his time. But, wherever what he conceived to be the duty of every man to God was involved, he refused innovation or compromise.
As a boy he was puritanically sure that his peccadilloes were grave sins; but in his father's eyes he was "Sanctified by the Holy Spirit of God" even in infancy. He "began to pray, even when" he "began to speak," and at the age of seven or eight "composed Forms of prayer" for his schoolmates and "obliged them to pray." They repaid him, naturally, by "Scoffs" and "Blows."
EDUCATION (1675-1684)
As a boy, he went in summer to the Boston Latin School. In winter, because he was too delicate to face bitter weather, he studied church history at home. "At the Age of little more than eleven years" he could speak Latin and write it in both prose and verse. He had read most of the New Testament in Greek, and had begun to study Hebrew. He entered Harvard when he was twelve. There he was hazed by more robust and less pious students, but proved himself diligent, reading "Hundreds of books," and keeping a "Diary" of his studies.
One detail of his college career explains part of his later work. "For my Declamations," he says, "I ordinarily took some Article of Natural Philosophy for my subject." He was handicapped by an impediment in his speech, and feared that he could not carry on the family tradition by entering the ministry, so that for a time he turned to the study of medicine. His later scientific work was, therefore, not the chance dab- bling of a complete amateur or a mere ambitious petitioner for attention from scientific scholars. By natural bent as
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well as by such training as he could get in Massachusetts he was partially equipped for the scientific studies which he later pursued so eagerly.
He graduated in 1678, with the distinction of being the youngest who had ever taken a bachelor's degree at Harvard. His defect of speech was conquered, and in 1680, then seven- teen years old, he preached his first sermon. Six months later he was asked to act as his father's assistant at the Second Church of Boston. In 1681 he took his A.M. at Harvard. Called to minister to a congregation in New Haven, he re- fused to leave home, and, in February, 1682, when the invita- tion was repeated, he had already been elected pastor of the Second Church. He was formally ordained there in May, 1685.
Thus far he appears as the precocious student, invincibly devout, interested in the souls of others as well as in his own, possessed of a smattering of science, and in theology well versed enough to be thought worthy of leadership in one of the largest churches in the colonies. His diaries show some- thing of what lay beneath the surface. Intensely emotional in his religion, given to seeing in the most commonplace events direct messages from God, fiercely determined to per- fect himself, introspective to a degree, many pages of his diary display a man difficult for modern observers to under- stand. Nervously sensitive, much of his inward struggle seems merely neurotic; certainly he lacked the mental balance which might have made him more likeable. In 1685 he was sure that an angel talked with him, and throughout his life he was the victim of similar delusions. However much one may scoff at them, one cannot laugh away the fact that they were real to him.
Essentially he was no hypocrite, and even though some of his records of himself seem to rationally minded critics of a cooler headed day wildly exaggerated, he need not be blamed, perhaps not even pitied. In his inner life, his conflicts with himself, his communings with heavenly visitors, his agonies of prayer, were both solace and the source of a fervent desire to do God's work on earth. Neurotic, hot-headed, fanatic- each of these adjectives applies to him at times, but no one of them sums up the full quality of his nature. His ideal
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ENTRY INTO POLITICS
may have been bad; what he understood as God's work may not have been worth doing. None the less his enthusiasm, his constant preoccupation with dreams, fears, and visions, more real to him than they can ever be to us, may be respected if not admired by generous minded critics; and only through recognition of their reality to him and their hold upon him can the tale of his life be made intelligible.
ENTRY INTO POLITICS (1685-1689)
In 1685 Cotton Mather as pastor of the Second Church became an Overseer of Harvard College. In the next year he married Abigail Phillips, daughter of a leading citizen of Charlestown. His recovery from an illness shortly after set him upon redoubled efforts to do good. He organized Sunday evening prayer-meetings, and resolved to do what he might to stamp out the Episcopalianism which was creeping in with Governor Andros and his supporters. But it was not until the Revolutionary period of 1688-89, that he first had to shoulder great responsibilities.
By 1688 Massachusetts, deprived of her charter, was in a position which seemed to demand intercession on her behalf in London if she was to prosper. In some quarters Andros was unpopular, and Congregationalists in general felt that his activities and Randolph's were dangers to New England's erstwhile orthodoxy. Accordingly, in April, Increase Mather as representative of the colony set sail for England to plead the cause of his brethren there. James II was believed to be in a mood conciliatory toward nonconformists. Some of Andros's acts seemed to lay him open to attack. The elder Mather was chosen to plead the churchgoer's case against the royal governor and to urge the restoration of the charter under which Congregationalism had been politically supreme. He did not return to Boston for four years.
In his absence his son, still in his twenties, must not only conduct the Second Church single-handed, but also, so far as in him lay, fill his father's shoes. Increase Mather had managed to oppose the English governmental policy, to stimulate popu- lar feeling against it, and to protect Harvard and, so far as might be, the community, against Anglicanism, while avoiding
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any open breach with Andros. With his policy his son sympa- thized, and from 1688 to 1692 he tried to carry it on in Massachusetts.
Events moved rapidly. Realizing that a revolt against Andros was probable, Cotton Mather joined with other citi- zens to plan to take command of the situation if need arose. He drew up the famous Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merch- ants, and Inhabitants of Boston, which was issued as the mani- festo of the rebels against Andros on April 18, 1689. In this he put to good use his skill as a writer, already shown in some seven publications printed as the first products of his marvel- lously prolific pen. At a meeting in Boston he pled for moder- ate action by the people. He was threatened with arrest by the government, but the revolt came quickly enough to save him.
THE WITCHCRAFT EPISODE (1690-1705)
Politics, and his duties as Fellow of Harvard College, begin- ning in 1690, did not exhaust his energy, for he found time to write a book on witchcraft. This, his Memorable Providences, has brought him undue obloquy. It contained an account of several "cases of witchcraft," including one which Mather himself had investigated and in which he had tried to save a victim of supposed diabolical possession by fasting and prayer. This book, like others circulated in the colonies, may have helped to prepare the minds of Massachusetts men for seeing in later events at Salem Village the work of the devil. That Cotton Mather wrote to spread delusion there is no reason to suppose, for in 1689 witchcraft was viewed as a crime re- grettably common and penalized by the laws of England and her colonies. Scientists and divines wrote of witches, and to believe in their existence was then no sign of excessive credu- lousness. Mather's Memorable Providences testifies merely to his interest in certain phenomena which his age interpreted erroneously. Read with the writings of many other scholars of the late seventeenth century, it is no more ridiculous in what it considers as fact and no more baneful in tendency than theirs.
The details of Cotton Mather's connection with the witch- craft excitement of 1692 belong in the history of that excite-
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THE POLITICIAN
ment as set forth in another chapter of this work, rather than in a brief account of his career. A few points are funda- mental and deserve mention here. In the first place, he drew up a document giving to the judges of the witch court the advice of the Boston clergy, for which they had asked. This advice, the interpretation of which has been much disputed, is clear in at least two respects. It urged that the agents of the law continue the prosecution of all who were suspected of witchcraft; and it urged caution as to the sort of evidence to be accepted in proving guilt. This caution, if it had been observed, would have made impossible most of the convictions at Salem. Secondly, though Mather as divine and scientific student was tremendously interested in the witch trials, he attended no one of them. He did go to Salem on several occasions to pray with the prisoners, and he was present at the execution of George Burroughs, seizing the opportunity to assure the crowd, moved by the victim's dying speech, that the sentence was just. Just it was, probably, by the standards then recognized in English and colonial courts; and however absurd these standards seem now, to criticize Mather for ac- cepting them is simply to blame him for a lack of prophetic insight into the course later to be taken by science and law. Third, Mather wrote of the trials, preached on witchcraft, and, no doubt, helped thereby to keep popular excitement alive. Fourth, in 1693 he interested himself in another case which seemed to him to be one of witchcraft, but he treated it by doing what he could for the victim by prayer and counsel, and made no attempt to start prosecution or to publish what he wrote of the affair. Finally, it should be remembered that before 1700 he expressed himself publicly and definitely as convinced that the errors of the witch court had caused some innocent folk to suffer; all his "witchcraft books" and such active concern as he had with trials for that crime belong to the first thirty years of his life.
THE POLITICIAN (1689-1694)
In 1692 Increase Mather came home from England. He had failed to recover the old charter, but he had accepted a new one in which a few of what the colonists held to be their
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rights were better safeguarded than before. The old restric- tion of the suffrage to church members he had been obliged to give up, but he was able to ensure the orthodoxy of the new government for a time at least by getting the privilege of nominating the governor and the other officers who were to rule for the first year under the new charter.
His nominations were all adopted. The governor was Sir William Phips, a New England seafarer who, inspired by one of Increase Mather's sermons, had been baptized by Cotton Mather in 1690. The other appointees were almost all men whom the voters had elected to office when the old charter was in force. Thus, in 1692, the colony's officers owed their places to Increase Mather, and his son rejoiced mightily at the aspect of affairs.
Had he been a prophet he would have rejoiced less. The new charter, and Increase Mather's success in politics, marked the beginning of troublous days. Formerly no one not a church member might vote; and the ministers, though unable to hold political office, were looked up to by their congregations and determined in large measure who should be admitted to the churches and, therefore, to the franchise. Now, however, property holding, not church membership, was the test for the suffrage. Inevitably those who were prosperous but unortho- dox, even downright foes of Congregationalism provided they were rich enough, acquired new power in politics. Increase Mather's nomination of officers under the new charter was an effective way of preserving for a time the dominance in the colony of men who shared his views; but, once in politics, he became a target not only for those who disliked his religious tenets but also for challengers of his political doctrines. He was opposed by extreme conservatives, like Elisha Cooke, who believed that to have accepted anything short of the old charter was treachery to the colony and its church. To their hostility was added that of the Episcopalians, or those with Episcopalian leanings, of Congregationalists eager for inno- vations in polity, and of all who found distasteful the adminis- tration of Phips, Mather's nominee. He was not an able governor, and his political failure weakened the Mathers' prestige.
Cotton Mather supported his father and was exposed to
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WEAKNESS OF MATHER'S POLICY
the same attacks. His Political Fables were passed about in manuscript at this time, and proved his dexterity in a kind of writing new to him and to Massachusetts literature. They were written to defend the new charter and his father. In the same way he warmly endorsed Phips, and his Life of that worthy is not only an admirable example of his skill as a biographer but also a political document calculated to under- mine the vantage points held by Sir William's enemies. In- crease Mather surpassed his son in skill and tact, and while he managed to keep the respect of many who differed with him politically, Cotton Mather's somewhat undisciplined en- thusiasm in controversy secured him more than his share of bitter foes.
In his diary he recognizes this, but he seems inclined often to rejoice in what he believed was martyrdom. Religious issues seemed to him paramount, and it was his religious con- servatism which kept him in politics. How could the authority of the clergy be maintained? How better than by creating "public sentiment" against new standards, by educating young men to follow old paths, by preaching orthodoxy, and, more practically, by doing all that could be done to determine who was to hold the governorship of Massachusetts? Minor officers were elected by the people, who might be reached from the pulpit and through the press. The governor was appointed by the King, and Mather saw that if he had friends at court he might influence his sovereign.
WEAKNESS OF MATHER'S POLICY (1695-1715)
To Phips succeeded an acting governor, Stoughton, a Con- gregationalist whom the Mathers were usually willing to trust. Then came Bellomont, and both Mathers did what they could to win his favor. But behind the scenes there was always the arch-politician, Joseph Dudley, a man unpopular among political conservatives in Massachusetts because of his affiliations with Andros, and among religious conservatives because of his Anglicanism. With him Cotton Mather chose to play a dangerous game. Dudley, how sincerely one cannot tell, wrote to Mather a letter expressing remorse for his past errors, and Mather wrote at least once to a friend in England
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urging that Dudley be made governor. Thus, when Dudley in 1702 came again to Massachusetts, he came as a man osten- sibly supported by Cotton Mather. Such a union could not last. Mather misread Dudley, who sympathized with both the religious and the political anti-Matherians. Cotton Mather promptly discovered that Governor Dudley was a "wretch," and began to write to his London friends urging that a new chief executive be sent to the colony. His efforts availed little ; Dudley remained in office till 1715, though on the several occasions when his "Toryism" or sharp political practise evoked protest, Cotton Mather was heard in the chorus of his foes. At least one pamphlet charging the governor with high crimes seems to have been by Mather, and appears to have been written at a time when its compiler was outwardly still professing good will toward Dudley.
Mather's career as a politician after 1700 may be briefly summed up. His policy was to curry favor with the governors so long as that was possible; and at the same time to keep before the eyes of the authorities in London the desires of the Congregational group to which he belonged. At the accession of Anne he took pains to cause the preparation of a congratula- tory address to her ; he did the same later for George I. From sympathizers and nonconformist ministers in England, with whom he corresponded constantly, he received timely advice as to the direction of the political wind, trimmed his sails accordingly, and through his informants tried to reach the ears of the powerful with his pleas for what seemed to him "good government" in Massachusetts.
The impression made by his dabbling in politics is not one of success. Nor does his activity in affairs of state exhibit his best side. Occasionally it seems as though personal vanity and ambition alone explained his course. He saw that as a poli- tician he had won little but abuse, and his advice to young ministers in his Manuductio includes an interesting paragraph on the preacher in politics. "Nor will it be Wisdom in you," he declares, "to go any further in appearing for any Govern- ment, [As the World now goes!] than Duty calls you to it- If you do,-I can tell, How you shall be Requited for it! If any Factions arising in the Commonwealth, solicit your Im- barcation in them, keep close to the Business of your Ministry,
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HARVARD AND YALE
and say, I am doing a great Work, so that I cannot come down, . To be a State-Martyr,-'tis what I can't advise you to . be ambitious of. I have nothing to say, for such a Crown of Martyrdom." This was written in 1726, by which time Mather's political ideas had broadened considerably, and it proves at least that he had learned by experience.
HARVARD AND YALE 1
Closely allied to politics was Mather's relation to Harvard College. In 1701 his father was forced out of its presidency by the strength of his political opponents. Cotton Mather thereupon stopped attending meetings of the Corporation, so that in 1703 his place in that body was declared vacant, and a successor elected. Harvard came to be dominated by younger men, whose religious views were less in accord with the sectarian tradition of its founders. This meant that to Cotton Mather the college seemed to be on the straight road to perdition, and he exulted when good Congregationalists in Connecticut founded a new "school" there. This he regarded as the hope of orthodoxy, and to it he transferred much of the energetic support he had formerly given to his own Alma Mater. He schemed to get Elihu Yale, an East Indian mer- chant born in Boston, to contribute to the Connecticut college, pursuing a somewhat highhanded method in virtually commit- ting the trustees to bestowing the name of Yale on the new institution. He tried, it is said, to induce Thomas Hollis to be generous to Yale as he had been to Harvard. Yet for all his interest in the new seat of learning, Mather longed to be President of Harvard.
His hopes had some encouragement. In 1703 the House of Representatives of the colony unanimously recommended that he be made President, but the Council refused to accept the suggestion. When Willard died in 1707, Mather again had visions of success, but received only one out of the eight votes cast to elect the new President. The chosen candidate, Leverett, disagreed with the Mathers on several issues. This was too much, and Cotton Mather wrote a letter to Dudley, not mentioning Harvard but berating the governor for short- comings real and fancied. This was at least an offence against
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