Richard Mather

Protestant minister and writer, born in Lancashire, NW England, UK. The father of Increase Mather and grandfather of Cotton Mather, he was educated locally and taught school nearby before attending Brasenose College, Oxford. In 1619 he was ordained a minister, but was twice suspended (1633, 1634) by the Anglican Archbishop Laud due to his nonconformist beliefs. He emigrated to Boston (1635), served the Dorchester Church (1635–69), and is noted for his collaborations on translations of the Psalms in the Bay Psalm Book (1640). He took the lead in defining New England Congregationalism, as seen in such works as Church Government and Church-Covenant Discussed (1643) and Platform of Church Discipline (1649). He was the chief advocate of the Half-Way Covenant (1662) that, by allowing for less than total spiritual conversion, broadened New England's established church membership and maintained the church's power.

Richard Mather (1596 - 1669), American Congregational clergyman, 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. 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; He was the father of Increase Mather, Samuel Mather, Timothy Mather, Nathaniel Mather, and grandfather of Cotton Mather. Richard Mather's descendants:

A great-great-great granddaughter Methitabel Mather-wife of Continental General Samuel Holden Parsons. Mysterious Dave Mather, a 19th Century Western lawman. John Mather, a mathematician.