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The Autobiography of Increase Mather The Autobiography of Increase Mather I-DÎTED BY M. G. HALL j^ STRETCH a point to call this maTiuscript an W autobiography. Actually it i.s a combinatioa of aiito- biograpliy and political tract and journal, in which the most formal part comes first and the rest was added on lo it as occasion offered. But, the whole is certainly auto- biographical and covers Increase Mather's life faithfull}'. It was tlie mainstay of Cotton Mather's famous biograpliy Pareniator, which appeared in 1724, and of Kenneth Mur- dock's Increase Miiîher, whicli was published two liundred and one years later.^ Printing the autobiography Jiere is in no way designed to improve or correct Mather's biog- raphers. They have done well by him. But their premises and purposes were inevitabiy different from liis. I'he present undertaking is to let Increase Matlier also be lieard on tlie subject of himself. Readers who wish to do so are invited to turn witliout more ado to page 277, where tliey may read the rjriginal without interruption. For tjiose who want to look before they leap, let me remind tliem of tlie place Increase Mather occu[!Íes in tlie chronology of his family. Three generations made a dy- nasty extraordhiary in any country; colossal in the frame of ' Cotton Msther, Pami'.at'^r. Mnnoirs if Remarkables in the Life and Death o/ the F.vtr- MemorahU Dr. Increase Múíker (Boston, 1724). Kenneth B. Murdock, Incrfasr Mathfr, the Foremost .Imerican Puritan (Cambridge, 1925)- Since 1925 three books bearing importantly on hicrcase Mather have been published: Thomas J. Holmes, Im-rfasf Mathfr: A BibH"graphy cf His Work; (Cleveland, 1931); Samuel K. Morison, Harvard (I liege in '.hf Sevir.iKnih Century (CantbriJge, 1936); Perry Miik-r, The Nnv England Mind: frun: Cokny to PTÍA^ÍKC! (,Ca:abriJ>;e, 1953). 272 AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY [Oct., New England history: Richard Mather (1596-1669); In- crease Mather (1639-1723); Cotton Mather (1663-1728). Here was overlapping but no overshadowing. Each was a man of peculiar genius and unique infiuence on his society. In the same breath it is necessary to assert that each was a product of the age in which he lived. Increase Mather was certainly not typical but his autobiography is a representa- tion of both the individual and his times. The autobiography consists of three parts. Mather finished the first part on Christmas Eve, 1685, when he was forty-six years old. He wrote the second part in August, 1694. The third part is a succession of entries in journal form which occur irregularly from 1694 to 1715. Part one is a conventional seventeenth-century Puritan autobiography drawn up by a man past middle life for the instruction of his children, particularly that the example of his religious experience may help them to lead sanctified lives.'^ Thus Mather's autobiography begins with the salu- tation, "dear children," and comes to its real close on page 314 with these sentences: "Thus have I related the story of my owne life for more than 46 years. And I have done it for my children, that so they might sett their hope in God." Unfortunately Mather could not restrain himself from adding paragraphs about each of his children and further paragraphs of select examples of religious fervor taken bodily from his diaries. The critical years in his own religious life had come in 1671-72, and it was in terms for- mulated then that Mather finally closed this didactic, devo- tional letter to his children. This first part of the autobiography is the hardest for modern ears, because it is cast in an archaic style, and be- cause it is essentially devotional reading. Once over these » See, for example, "Autobiography of Thomas Shepard," Colonial Society of Massa- chusetts, Publications, XXVII (i93î). 34S-40O- 1961.] THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF INCREASE MATHER 273 hurdles the reader has two rewards. One is the story of Mather's life as he saw it himself. We today with all the disadvantages of hindsight find it hard to believe that Increase Mather could ever have turned out other than a devout Puritan or the champion of Massachusetts Bay Colony. Yet such possibilities were real enough to him. We can only appreciate the story when we forget that we know how it will end. The other reward is to read with what unfiagging self-analysis this man tested out his faith and how he came at last to believe. The second part of the autobiography is nothing like the first. It is not devotional reading but political reading; its purpose was not to instruct in piety but to justify Mather as politician and statesman. In 1688 Mather had made a hair's-breadth escape from an unfriendly government in Massachusetts. He fled to London where he importuned King James on behalf of the dissenters in New England. When James ran before William of Orange, Mather re- joiced and importuned William. Then he importuned Queen Mary, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, and Quaker William Penn, and indeed every man and woman with influence at court whom he could reach. What came out of all this was the Massachusetts Charter of 1691, which in turn became the pivot of Massachusetts politics. When Mather returned to Boston he entered into a bitter feud with the country party under the leadership of Elisha Cooke. Since Mather had spent liberally in London, he petitioned the General Court for a return on his expenses. The second part of the autobiography was written at this time and with these political objects in mind. Sometime later it was attached to part one. In form this second part consists of numbered paragraphs, one through twelve (flve is missing), in which Mather took up certain topics: i. escape from Boston; 2. voyage, ar- 274 AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY [Oct., rival, first address to King James; 3. relations with Roman Catholics at court; 4. important men and women inter- viewed; and so forth. It is not introspective like the first part, but is packed instead with names and dates and so is rich fare for the historian. Towards its end this part con- tains Mather's own simple and straightforward remarks about the Salem witchcraft trials, which were in full swing when he returned to Boston. He more than any other person brought those trials to a stop. When Increase Mather added part two to what he had written a decade earlier, he had to write a transition between the one which ended in 1685 and the other which began in 1688. This transition, taken, as is so much of it all, from his diaries, occupies pages 319-322. October, 1696, seems to be the most probable date for the first of the miscellaneous entries which make up part three. The next entry, written in 1703 and covering the years 1700-1703, describes his bitterness at being ousted from the presidency of Harvard College. Even Increase Mather, however, mellowed with age—not much, but some. A long entry written in June, 1711, when he was 72 years old, is a summary of all that had gone before, an autobiography in miniature. The anxieties of early years, the ambition and querulousness of middle life were gone, and in their place had come a gentle thankfulness for the blessings of a full life—a strange mood for Mather and one not continued in the few entries which follow. The autobiography thus assembled from diverse parts ceased to interest him, and soon the manuscript peters out in the present tense amid the grumblings of the ancient but headstrong divine. In its physical appearance the manuscript of the auto- biography is an unruled notebook of twenty-seven leaves sewn together without cover and measuring about seven by eight inches. Into it has been sewn the additional eleven 1961.] THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF INCREASE MATHER 275 leaves which make up part two. The pages of this insert are numbered independently. Several leaves are mutilated by- being cut with knife or scissors.' The text given here, although it is the first to be printed, is the culmination of a succession of publishing endeavors. First credit goes to Rev. A. P. Marvin, who prepared the transcription from which this and two intervening texts descend. Marvin came in the i88o's from nearby Lancaster, Massachusetts, to browse in the American Antiquarian Society's library. He was fascinated by the manuscript autobiography and asked permission to copy excerpts. Permission granted, he went on to the difficult task of making a full transcript. Several years later Marvin asked permission to incorporate quotations from this transcript in an article he hoped to publish. The Society refused per- mission and expressed undisguised displeasure that he had made the transcript at all. Marvin thereupon proved him- self the gentler party by voluntarily giving to the Anti- quarian Society his only copy of the autobiography. The next scholar to edit the autobiography was Worth- ington C. Ford, editor of the Massachusetts Historical Society from 1909-1929. Ford used Marvin's transcript. He had the whole typed just as Marvin had written it out, then made pen-and-ink corrections as he compared it with Mather's original. Next came AUyn B. Forbes, editor for the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and later Director of the Massachusetts Historical Society, who planned to publish the autobiography and the extensive Mather diaries together. He had the new text re-typed, thus in- corporating Ford's corrections into Marvin's text. Then Forbes compared this to the original and made further • The manuscript is in the possession of the American Antiquarian Society.
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