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U: ^Mailt da c .t axamplaira qui sunt paut-ttta uniquas du point da (u biWiofrjphiqua, qui pauaant modifiar una imapa raproduita. ou qui pauaant a«i|ar una modification dam la mtthoda normala da f ihnaia font ci-da*aous. □ Colourad papas/ ^^tat da coulaur □ Patasdamapad/ Papas andommiiiai □ ft- rastorad and/or laminatad/ Papas rattaurtas at/ou paNicuMat QPapn diseolourad. stainad or foiad/ P*l □ Papas datachad/ Patas dtad^as 0Showthrough/ Transparanca □ Quality of print aarias/ Oualitt in*|ala da I'imprassion D Continuous pagination/ ion conttnua HIndudas indaxlasi/ Comprand un (das) indax Title on haadar takan from:/ La titra da l'en-t(ta proaiant: □ Titia paga of issua/ Paga da titra da la livraison I I Caption of issua/ D Titra da dtpart da la liaraison Masthaad/ Gin*riqua (piriodiquasi da la tinaison lOX ^ 14X I8X 22X »X XX U ^^ J n 12X 1(X 20X 24X ^~"^ ^■^^ 7IIX '"--' L_J 19* Tha copy fllmcd hara hat baan rapreducad thanka to tha ganaroaitv of: National Library of Canada L'aiiamplaira film* fut raproduit grtc* 1 1* gtntroait* da: Blbllothiqua natlonala du C a n ada Tha imagaa appoaring hara ara tha baat quality pottibia eontidaring tha eondltien and laglblllty of tha original copy and In kaaplng with tha filming contract tpocif Icationa. Lm imagaa lulvantat ont ttt raproduita* avac la plua grand coin, compta ttnu da la condition at da la nottatt da Taiamplaira filmi, at an conf ormM avac laa eondltlena du contrat da Original coplaa in printad papar eovara ara fllmad baginning with tha front cover and anding on tha laat paga with a printad or llluatratad impraa- sion, or tha back cover whan appropriata. All othor original eopiaa ara filmed baginning on th* f irit paga with a printad or llluatratad Impraa- aion. and anding on the laat paga with a printad or itiuatratad impreeaien. Laa aiiemplairea orlginauji dont la couvarture an papier eet ImprimOa tont fllmto an commancani par la premier plat at an terminani toit par la damitre page gul comporte una emprainta d'impraaaion ou d'illuatration, aeit par la lacond plat, aalon la oat. Toua laa autrat aKamplairat originaya aont filmta an eommanfent par la premlAre paga qui compono una ampreinte dimpreaaion ou d'INuatration at en terminant par la damitra page qui eompoita une telle emprainta. The laat recorded freme an eech microfiche ahaU contain tha lymbol -^ (meaning "CON- TINUED"!, or the lymbol ▼ Imeaning "END"), whiehavar appllea. Mapa, plataa. charta, etc.. may *>• filmed et different reduction ratioi. Thoae too large to be entirely Included in one espoaure are filmed beginning in the upper left hend comer, left to right and top to bonom. aa many frame* at required. The following diagrama illuttrate the method: Un dee aymbeiaa tuivana apparaitra tur la darniAre imega da cheque microfiche, telon le cat: la aymbole -^ tignifie "A SUIVRE". le tymbole ▼ tignifie "FIN". Let cartet. planehaa. tableaux, etc.. peuvent itre filmta i dee Uua da rMuction difftranu. Lortque le document eat trop grand pour itra reprodult en un leul ciich*. 11 eat film* * partir da I'angia tup*riaur gauche, de gauche * droite. et de haut an baa. en prenant la nombra d'imagea ntcaaaaira. Laa diagrammat tuivanit lUuatrent la mdthoda. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 MKXOCOPV HKHUTION TUT CHART (ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 3) 1^ 1.25 iai2J |2J la ^ lata i& 1.4 ■ 16. ^ ^^PPLIED I^A/GE Inc less ^oil Wain SlrMl BochMtBr. Nam Yofk I4609 USA (716) 4S2 -OSDO-Ption* (71 e) 286- 59S9 - Fa> OTHIS WRITIHOI IT DR. SATON Tm» RiABT OP nn Cbhmi Hhtoiioal Rilmioii n TU Lisn or Mooiu TaocaaT, TU Caimoa or IrsuiiD a Nota Sooiu An tbi ToBT CLnoT or tu Bitolutioii. TBI RuToaT or Kiro'i CoiniTT, Kota Scotia, HaAat or Taa Aoadiav Lamix AcAOua Laoam ajis LTaiot. AoAOUa BAlLAIt, Foam or tbb Caanrua TaAa. Taa Iiorm or taa Nilb aid Oraaa Foaxi. ALax A W Daa UoNdtt raa CoLoauaa. OaaaALoaiCAL Baaroaai or Out Bonoa FAMiuat. KoaooaAraa oa laa OLiratioa HAMiLToat, Lian.- CoL. Orao Hahiito-i or OLirairoa, axd IIatt Oiaaa VAULiaa Aao laDirtDOAL Haa. Db. mathek byles From the original painting by Copley. 1774 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES THE NOTED BOSTON TORY PBEACHER POET. AND WIT 1707-1788 BY AHTHUH WENTWORTH HAAHLTON EATON D.OX., r.it.s.c. luntTRAnD WITH tuxT orauTiirof raov ouonrAi PAlHTnrOfl BY COPLCT, TH« FXLRAUB AXD OTHBU BOSTON W. A. BUTTERPIELD 1014 BX7A60 ^3 2400 O""""". MM, »» ▼• *• BnTTBBniLDL " " "■ •»,D.».A. Vo FEEDEBICK LEWIS GAT, A.B. WHO*. VALHABL. COLLTCTIOK OF BTLn 1I41ID«0«»T» AJID POBTRAin HAS MUCH WRICHCD MT KHOWL- *OaX or MATBU BTtM, AMD TO WHOM I All OTHBRWISB IHDUTBD FOB HILT nr KT WOBX, WITH ancBBB BBOABD I DIDICATB THIS BOOK THE AUTHOK I. n. in. IV. V. VI. vn. vni. K. X. XI. xn. CONTENTS The Famods AfATBmi Btlbb BiBTH, EnUCATIOK, Joi7BNAU8TlC WBiTmas Obdination and Fibst Mabbiaqb Events m Eabljer Mxnistbt Pabtobate at Homs Stbebt Chubch Doctor Btub as a Pobt . Doctor Btles's Humour . DiBMISBAL raoM BIB ChUBCH . Trial before the Town . Social Standing. Friendships Last Yeabs The Btles Fault .... Notes .... Chief Published Writings Manuscript Letters. Indix . 'Ml 1 IS 87 «7 74 92 117 142 161 177 196 2(U 22A 240 246 249 ya ILLUSTRATIONS Dr. Mather Byles .... Froniupieet From the original pointing 1^ Copley, 1T74, in the poueasion of William Bruce Almon, Eaq., M.D. ^ TO Moa rAea Hcv. Increaae Mather X4 From the original painting by Vandenpriet, IMS, in the ponession of the Mauachuietti Biitotical Society. Bev. Cotton Mather, by Peter Pelham . . SS From an engraving by Peter Pelham. His Excellency Jonathan Belcher, by R. Phillips 40 From a meiiotint engraving by Faber. Province House 44 From a drawing by M. P. Kenway. Dr. Mather Byles 48 From the original painting by Peter Pelham, is the poiKsaian of Mr. Frederick Lewia Gay. Hollis St. Church 66 From Bonner's map of Beaton. 1769. Thomas Hollis, by James Highmoie . 74 From an engraving by Peter Pelham. ix ILLUSTRATIONS AlexMder Pope, hy Arthur Pond n«B>aeB|nTJB(byBoubnkai. Dr. Iiaac WstU ftw M tOfimTiK by Tn>tter, 178S. A Canon of e. wonb by Dr. Bylea . Rom the N«w EajUnd PmIo, Stogw. Facsimile fwm tk, BwMd. of tt. HoIIi. St. OiBn*.' 177». Bev. Homaa Prince, by John Greenwood '^"^ " "«»™f by Peter Pdhta. Dr. Benjamin Franklin '>oni«n enpaving by T. B. Welch. Dr. Mather Byles . Bev. MatW Byles, Jr. ■0 VAca rtm . IM IM no MS 178 186 196 nwn u origiiul ptintiiig in tlu rniaUk Lewii G»y. olMr. Mather Brown IVom M origin.1 piUnluig by hinwlf . in th. bJ "»«o(Mr.R«lerickLewi.G.y. •"""*»• Miss Catherine Bylea From the origiiul pMtiii, by Heniy PeUum. View of Boston Common JVom u engnviiig by Stmuel Hill. 178». MS 214 S16 SIS THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES CHAPTEB I The Fauoub Matieb Btlxb From the shadows of pre-Bevolutionary Boston no single figure emerges in whom sympathetic historians find a greater variety of interest than in the Tory preacher, poet, and humourist, who ap- pears commonly in our annals as the "famous" or "celebrated" Doctor Mather Byles. In days when religious discus- sion was acrid and local political feeling ran high and vituperation of opponents was often incredibly bitter, Mather Byles's witticisms kept Boston laughing im- moderately for at least a generation, and no doubt tended not a little to the soften- ing of asperities in the popular life, and * THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES it is naturaUy u one of New England*! earlieit humourists that Byles has been most conspicuously mentioned in periodicals Md books. But the man has an interest far wider than that of a "punning divine," the age through which he lived was the most dramatic in our annals and his own life lacks no single element that gives the time picturesqueness, while the aloofness from politics he persistently maintained puts him out of the category of those who in the fierce Bevolutnnary struggle actively helped or hindered ciie great cause to which the majority of his fellow townsmen gave their ardent support. That no one has hitherto taken the trouble to write the life of Mather Byles is not strange. He was a grandson of Increase and a nephew of Cotton Mather, and his striking personaUty, his keen intel- lectual gifts, and his prolific writings give him a worthy place beside those remarkable men, but he lived through the Bevolu- THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES 8 tion and in that momentout conflict gp 'e countenance to the losing side, and amc^g the Congregational ministers of New Eng- land, as with the PatrioU generally, he stood for the rest of his life, and his name continued to stand when he was dead, as a synonym for disloyalty and treachery of the basest kind. Moreover, at the evacuation of Boston his only living son, Mather Byles, Junior, went to Halifax with Howe's fleet, and in the Anglican church of St. Paul in that town, and in Trinity Church, St. John, New Bruns- wick, later, pursued the ministry which he had previously exercised at Christ Church, Boston, and when he died, all his descendants were living, as most of them have since lived, under the British flag. Mather Byles has lately been brought before us picturesquely, and probably in a rather truthful way, in that charming imaginative brochure, that has had wide 4 THE FAM0U3 MATHER BYLES rewling. "Earl Percy'i Dinner Table." In that book, we find him during the ■iege of Boston, among British oflScers in •carlet tunics and gold Uce, or in the blue uniforms of His Majc^'.y's Royal Navy, and rich gentlemen mercLuits of the town in silk and brqcade, in velvet and lace, — Lieutenant-Colonel John Gunning, Francis Lord Rawdon; Lord Holland's son, Hon. Henry Edward Fox, Captain Evelyn of the King's Own, the young Cuthbert CoUing- wood. Major John Pitcaim, Colonel Isaac Royal, and Roger Sheaflfe — sipping his port, and throwing the company into fits of laughter by his witty sallies on "the holy hypocrisy which is ruining the prov- ince," cr on much less important personal themes. But " Eari Percy's Dinner Table " is only the latest writing in which Doctor Byles figures, no faithful chronicler of Rev- olutionary Boston but exploits his "per- sistent Toryism," or his "irrepressible wit," and no conscientious reviewer of early New THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES ft England literature but hu lomething to My about the poetry and the published dii- counes of this brilliant descendant of the famous Mathers, and enthusiastic disciple of the poet Pope. For more than forty years Doctor Byles was the faithful pastor of Boston's Hollis Street Congregational Church, and his Jtrildng gifU as a preacher, and the close relationship he bore to the Mathers and Cottons, make him an important figure in New England ecclesiastical annals. But he was besides a literary man of much ability, and reviewers of early New Eng- hmd prose and poetry, while not always enthusiastic in praise of his literary pro- ductions, have never failed to take respect- ful notice of his work. In the social life of Boston, moreover, Byles occupied a highly important place, and the marked preference he uniformly showed for persons of high official and social rank quite evi- dently created against him in the minds 6 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES of his more democratic brethren of the Massachusetts clergy, a strong antagonism, that greatly increased their bitterness against him when he finally gave the weight of his influence against the popular cause in the Revolution. Doctor Byles married twice and by both marriages allied himself with influential families among the ruling class, and in his aristocratic sympathies, as in his persistent loyalty to England, his family, as was natural, deeply shared. As we have previously said, a conspicuous refugee within the British lines and later resident in Halifax, Nova Scotia, whither like most of the royal- ists of Boston, in March, 1776, he fled with General Howe, was his only living son, who for several years previous to the breaking out of the Revolution had been the Rector of Christ Church, in the north end of his native town. That like the rest of the Tories in the Revolution Doctor Byles was sentenced THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES 7 to banishment our biography will presently show, but although formally proceeded against by the authorities as a person inimical to the welfare of the sUte, on account of his advanced age it may be, or perhaps from some lingering feeling that the sacredness of his office as a minister of the ruling faith of New England should exempt him from the severest treatment accorded political offenders, he was not sent out of the Colony, but was suffered to remain, a despised and lonely figure however, in Boston, to the ena of his days. Of his last remaining descendants in Bos- ton, his two unmarried daughters, the Misses Mary and Catherine Byles, as of their brother Doctor Mather Byles. Junior, before this book ends we shall have some- thing to say. These ladies survived their father and lived on till about the middle of the nineteenth century in the old house in Tremont Street which their father had purchased in 1741. the most picturesque 8 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES figures in Boston, cherishing fondly the rec- oUecUons of the past, hating the Republic whose birth extreme ill-fortune had com- pelled them to see ushered in, and guarding sacredly their household treasures and pre- cious heiriooms for the descendants of their brother, who lived under England's rule. Of the actual forms and faces of many ancient worthies of New England we are often able to gain only the vaguest im- pression, in the cases of some, however, we are left in no possible doubt. Of Doctor Byles's friend Doctor William Walter. Rector of Trinity Church, Boston, we have the minute information that he was a handsome man. tall and well pro- portioned, with a serene countenance, in- dicating a serene temper, and that in the street he commonly wore an ample blue cloak over his cassock or long frock coat, a full-bottomed wig, dressed and powdered, knee breeches of fine black cloth, black silk stockings, and "square quartered" THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES shoes with sUver buckles, his head covered with an impiessive three-cornered or cocked hat. Concerning Doctor Byles's appear- ance tradition has been Imost as explicit, he was ^ther large, rather tall, rather fine looking, altogether of commanding pres- ence, and both in and out of the pulpit he had a pleasing manner and voice." How he commonly dressed we are nowhere plainly told, except that his wig was ample, as the fashion dictated, that he wore a cassock or long, close-fitting coat, probably with a single row of buttons from the waist to the neck, that the three-cornered hat was also his head covering, and that he usually carried a heavy cane. When he was summoned to appear before the members of his church for trial he is described as having appeared in full flow- ing robes, of course with bands, but since we do not feel certain regarding the time when gowns came to be worn by New England Congregational ministers in the 10 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES pulpit we do not feel quite sure of the accuracy of this account. We are fortunate in having three admir- able portraits of Doctor Byles, and these, taken at different times in his career, in- troduce us very familiarly to his face. The first of these portraits, like the well- known portrait of Cotton Mather that greets us in so many publicaUons. was painted by Pelham, evidently almost im- mediately after Doctor Byles began his ministry, the other two were painted by Copley, one it is believed in 1768, the other in 1774, the same year in the early summer of which this great painter left Boston finally for Europe. In aU three of these portraits Doctor Byles is represented in some sort of classical drapery, it is pos- sible, indeed, an ordinary pulpit gown, the gown in Pelham's portrait, however, being painted a rich red. In all, his wig is full and curling, and in the latter two his face shows the strong characteristics we have THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES 11 become so familiar with in him as we have studied his life. Pelham's portrait sacri- fices strength to attractiveness in the sub- ject, Copley's, one painted when Doctor Byles was about sixty-one, the other when he was about sixty-seven, show him an accomplished looking, elderly man, with strong sense of superiority, keen intelli- gence, great nervous energy, a high-bred IU)man nose, eyes that might easily sparkle with enlivening humour or gleam with fierce sarcasm, and a firm, decided mouth, from which might come the most kindly encouragements or the most scathing and bitter rebukes. A commanding personal- ity, in which high principle predominated, but where serious outlook on life was frequently tempered with an almost riotous sense of humour, and lofty appreciation with dislike and contempt — this is the character of Doctor Byles that the fine portraits of him by Copley prr lent to our minds. I ii 1« THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES Of these three distinguished portraite of Mather Byles the earliest one. that by Pelham, and the first of the two Copleys. are owned by Mr. Frederick Lewis Gay of Brooklme, Massachusetts, the second Cop- ley IS still in the possession of Doctor Byles's descendants, its present owner being William Bruce Almon, Esq., M.D.. of Halifax, Nova Scotia. This Copley por- trait of Doctor Almon's, with the owner's kind permission we ar« able to present as the frontispiece of our book. CHAPTER II BiHTH, Education. Jouhnalistic Wbitings In the last decade of the seventeenth century, when Boston was a little town of about ten thousand inhabitants, its square mile of area coextensive with the peninsula on which it was built, the "Neck," about two hundred feet wide at Dover Street, uniting the peninsula with the neighbour town of Roxbury, there came into the North End of Boston, from Winchester, Hants, England, a respectable saddler named Josias Byles. Until after the Rev- olution, well on into the nineteenth cen- tury in fact, the north part of Boston, including Dock Square and Hanover Street, and the extreme North End, about Copp's Hill, a region peopled now almost entirely 13 14 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES by Italians, was the home of a large num- ber of the most active and prosperous, and indeed influential, people of the town. In 1711, a little later than the time of Josias Byles's arrival, the Honourable Wil- liam Clark bought land on what is now North Square^ and built a handsome house there, his friend Thomas Hutchinson, father of the last royal governor, building one near that was evidently meant to out- shine his in magnificence. Facing North Square stood the Old North or Second Church, the meeting- house of the religious society whose aflFairs were ruled, and for the most part ruled wisely, for over seventy years, by ministers of the historic Mather family, the Reverend Doctor Increase Mather, his son the illus- trious Cotton Mather, and for a while, until serious disaffection arose in the society and he moved away with a portion of his people and founded a new society, the Rev. Doctor Samuel Mather, Cotton REVKREND INCREASE MATHER From Uie urigiual p&Inting by Vanderspriet, 16S8 S! !i BIRTH AND EDUCATION w Mather's much lew important «on.« When Josiaa Byles came to Boston, Doctor In- crease Mather was well along in his min- istry of the Old North Church.' and his son Cotton was colleague with him, the older minister living on North Street, the younger probably then as later living on Hanover Street, not far from the church. Josias Byles may have come to Boston late in 169S or early in 1694, for he had a young child buried in the Granary Buiying Ground in April of the latter year, and he undoubtedly settled at once in the North End. When he came his family consisted of his wife Sarah and three or four young children, and after he had lived two or three years in Boston, on the 11th of October, 1696, he con- nected himself formally with Doctor In- crease Mather's church. In Boston the Byleses had at least four children bom and soon after the birth of her youngest child M» Byles died. Within a year after her 1 1 J W THE PAMOUS MATHER BYLES death, on the 6th of October. 1708. « widoj^, and with several young childn.n. • «addler and in not remarkably good cir- cumstance.. Joaia. Byles married, rather anibitioualy we should suppose, his pastor Rev. Incre^e Mather's second daughter. EliMbeth. widow of William Greenough. a lady of between thirty-seven and thirty- eight years old. Mr. Byles being then about forty-seven. After his second marriage and probably before. Josias Byles lived, so traditicu «y«. m what became in 1821 Tileston Street, a street first formally hiid out about 1806. which runs from near the lower end of Hanover Street to Salem Street and is the northern } undary of the block of which North Bennet Street 18 the southern. In less than five years however, after his second marriage, to' «ie last pursuing the saddler's trade, Mr Byles suddenly died, but from these less than five years dates the Byles family's V! BIRTH AND EDUCATION 17 chief aubaequent importance in Boston. The precise event in which the family's conspicuousness takes iU rise is the birth on the lath of March, 1707, a little less than a year before the father died, of a son whose coming into the world uuited indissolubly the comparatively unknown Byles family with the great ecclesiastical houses of Mather and Cotton. To this son, who may have appeared rather un- expectedly, for so far as we know Elizabeth Byles had never borne a child before, in recognition of his distinguished ancestry on his mother's side the name Mather was promptly, most appropriately given. That Josias Byles should have married, as far as we can tell without protest on the part of its members, mto the notable Mather family, shows conclusively that the late-emigratmg Englishman was re- garded as a man of much worth, and his general good standing is further declared by Chief-Justice Sewall's respectful men- ! 1 11 -' i 18 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES tion of him in his famous Diary, where, under date of "Midweek. March 17 1707/8." he records: "my Country-man! Mr Josiah Byles dyed veiy suddenly." Soon after he writes: "Reginald Odell dies suddenly. Heard of it at Mr Byles Funeral." But it is quite as evident that the saddlery in Tileston Street had not yielded its proprietor very large profits, for although when Josias Byles died he left a gentlemanly will, in which he bade his children by his first wife behave with dutiful respect towards their stepmother, and charged his eldest son Josias. Jr. to give his stepmother all the help he could in canying on the saddler's trade if she wished to continue it. he left veiy little property for his widow and her child or indeed any of his family, and M? Byles soon had to be helped by her kind brother Cotton. In his journal, on the 23d of December. 1711. Cotton Mather writes: I have a Sister, a Widow, in some Wants BIRTH AND FDUCATIOM 19 and Straits. I will dis >-n3e Releffs unto her particularly in regard of her Habit." And again, January' 17, 1714 : "I have a Widow-sister, who greaUy needs to be putt into a Way of subsisting herself, and to be animated unto the use of her own vigorous Endeavours for that Pur- pose." Still again, January 31, 1714 : "I must proceed with further Contrivances and Assistances, that my Widow-sister may be well provided for." When the widow Byles's son Mather was a little over seventeen, his grandfather. Increase Mather died, and in this learned, methodical minister's wiU, which he had written about five years before his death, we find the aged testator saying: "What I give to my daughter Elizabeth I desire may (if his mother can) be improved towards y" education of her only son (my grandson Mather Byles) in Learning, be- cause he is a child whom God has blessed with a strong memoiy & ready capacity «0 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES & aptness to leam. I leave it as my dying Request to his uncle my son Cotton Mather, to take care of y« education of y* child as of his owne. If he shall obtain subscriptions for his education for y* minis- try (as he knows I have done for more fatherless children y" one) I am persuaded y* his owne children will not fare y* worse for his being a father to a fatherless chUd. To prevent his being Chargable as much as I can I give him my wearing apparel excepting my chambei cloak w°^ I give to my executor. "If ye Lord shall take away Mather Byles by death before he is of full age (or if he shall not be employed in y* work of y* ministiy it is my mind & will y' then y* Books bequeathed to him shall be given to such other of my grand children as shall be preachers of y» Gospel of Christ according as my executors shall dispose." A fourth part of his library the testator bequeaths to his fatherless grandson Mather m BIRTH AND EDUCATION 21 Byles, in case Byles shall be "educated for & employed in y work of y ministiy," which he much desires and prays for. and he mentions certain books he wishes him to have, leaving others, however, to be chosen by his executors. That Cotton Mather already felt the proper interest in his nephew is shown by an entry in his diary of the ISth of April, 1711, in which he says feelingly: "I must be much of a Father to the fatherless child of my Sister Biles. One thing I particularly now propose; that I will give him the little Book of 'Good Lessons for Children,' and give him a Peece of Money for ever^ one of the Lessons that he learns without a Book." « Later, he several times speaks with the greatest solicitude of his nephew's poor physical condition. The boy is said to have been put to school at the North Latm School in Bennet Street, near his home, and at this institution he probably got his preparation for college. In 17«1 82 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES Byles entered, as a matter of course, the college at Cambridge, cf which his grand- father Increase had been president for sixteen years, where his uicle Cotton had graduated in 1678, his uncle Nathaniel in 1685, and his uncle Samuel in 1690, and of which every one of his ministerial relatives who had lived in and near Boston, by virtue of his clerical o£Sce had been an overseer.' But towards the end of his college course his health became extremely <)Oor and it was feared he was going to die of consumption. March 18, 1724, his uncle Cotton writes: "My poor Nephew, under Languishments, what shall be done for him?" April 1st, 1724, he writes : "The dangerous condition of my Nephew M. B. in regard of his Entring into a Consumption requires me to do all I can for him; es- pecially to prepare him for what he may be coming to." April 22d he writes : "My Kinsman, M. B., being fallen, I doubt, into a Consumption, I must with all possible ' i m ill: BIRTH AND EDUCATION SS Goodness and Concern sett myself to do all that I can find proper to be done for a Nephew in such circumstances." In the autumn of this year Byles's life was evi- dently despaired of, for on the «8th of Octo- ber Cotton Mather writes: "Lord what shall I do, for my two Nephews, whose Life drawes near to the Grave ? " In spite of his uncle's fears, however, Byles fully recovered, and in 1725, when a little over eighteen, left college with his bachelor's degree.' The Harvard class of which Mather Byles was tie thirteenth member in social rank, a dozen of the sons of public officials and others coming before him, at gradua- tion numbered forty-five, but though earlier dasws had had a large proportion of ministers among their members, this class had besides Byles, so far as we can dis- cover, only two who adopted a ministerial career.' Whether Byles himself for a time after graduation wavered in his choice of a profession we do not know, nor have we ! U<| ■J !'i|l j I ■'tiii «4 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES learned what if any subsequent training he took for the ministry, but it was 1789 before he seems to have been thought of for a parish, and it was not until late in 1733 that he was ordained.' It would be exceedingly interesUng to know if we could precisely what the relations were between Byles and his fellow students and the tutors of the college during the four years they spent together at Harvard, but on this point likewise we have little light. That Byles gave special attention to litera- ture, especially poetry, is clearly the case but from his general intelligence and love of learning there is no reason to doubt that he gave creditable care to the routine studies of his Freshman, Sophomore, Junior Sophister, and Senior Sophister years. In October, 1723, a committee of visitation, of which Judge Scwall was chairman, made a curious report on the moral con- dition of the Harvard student body, in which they say: "Although there is a BIRTH AND EDLCATION iS considerable number of virtuous and stu- dious youth in the college, yet there has been a practice of several immoralities; particularly stealing, lying, swearing, idle- ness, picking of locks, and too frequent use of strong drink; which immoralities, it is feared, still continue in the college, notwith- standing the faithful endeavours of the rulers of the House to suppress them." Of the two contrasted groups mentioned in this fierce arraignment of the students of Harvard in 1723 we judge that Mather Byles and his intimate friends stood among the "virtuous and studious youth," rathf-r than among the swearing and lying young gentlemen who picked locks and were too frequently given to the use of strong drink, but we should also like much to know whether the anger of the whole student body and of Byles among the rest was not fiercely aroused by such a defamatory report of tJie college as had been officially given by Sewall and his censorious band. 26 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES ^^lilll: ■!■ Ml'; I liii In Doctor Byles's Freshman year in college appeared his first literary produc- tion b print. The New England Courant, the third newspaper to be published in Boston, made its earliest appearance on Monday, August 7, 1721, its owner, editor, and printer being James Franklin, Benja- min Franklin's older brother. The jour- nalistic cerecr of James Franklin was a somewhat turbulent one, for the spirit of its editor was distinctly aggressive, and in his newspaper "the government of the province and its principal agents, the clergy, and various individuals, were at- tacked by the editor and his correspon- dents, without much regard to public or personal character." • In 1721 and 1722 an engrossing subject of discussion in Boston' was the value of inoculation for small- pox, the strongest champions of vaccina- tion being the venerable Increase and his son Cotton Mather and its most vigorous and unsparing opponent the editor of the m JOURNAUSTIC WRITINGS 87 New England Courant. In favour of in- oculation, Increase Mather published a prmphlet, entitled " Several Reasons, prov- ing that Inoculating or Transplanting the Small-Fox is a lawful Practice, and that it has been blessed by God for the sav- ing of many a Life," whereupon, and for their general advocacy of vaccination, the Courant lampooned both Mathers unmerci- fully, the Boston OazetU, on the other hand, taking their part and exalting the practice highly. In the course of the controversy, in which personalities were indulged in to a degree which even in these days of news- paper license seems almost impossible. Doctor Mather sent his grandson Mather Byles to Franklin with a manuscript article giving an account of the success of inocula- tion in London, which Byles told the jour- nalist he himself had copied from the London Mercury. Franklin published the article, but later declared in his paper that the transcriber had changed it, so that it was « THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES quite different from the original article in the Mercury. Charging Byles, whom he calls "our young spark," with deliberate falsehood in reference to the article, he also takes occasion to say that any measure whatever advocated by ministers was sure to be from the devil, and at least implies that both Increase and Cotton Mather had given currency to malicious state- ments concerning the conduct of his paper. In a letter to Franklin, which this editor prints in his journal of January S9 to February 6, 17««, Doctor Increase Mather says: "M^ Franklin, I had ThoughU of taking your Courant (upon Tryal) for a Quarter of a Year, but I shall not now. In one of your Courants you have said that emor, William Dummer, Esq., formerly Lieutenant-Govenior and Commander-in- Chief of this Province, Benjamin Lynde, Esq., Thomas Hutchinson, Esq., and Adam Winthrop, Esq. His Excellency with his children and family followed the corpse, all in deep mourning; next went tke several relatives according to their respec- tive degrees, who were followed by a great many of the principal gentlewomen in town; after whom went the gentlemen of His Majesty's Council, the reverend Min- isters of this and the neighbouring towns, the reverend President and fellows of Harvard College, a great number of officers both of the civil and military order, with a multitude of other gentlemen. His Ex- cellency's coach, drawn by four horses, was covered with black doth and adorned with escutcheons of the coats of arms both of his Excellency and of his deceased lady, and during the time of the procession h it 60 THE FAMOUS BIATHER BYLES the half-minute guns began, first at His Majesty's Castle William, which were followed by those on board His Majesty's ship Squirrel, and .oany other ships in the harbour, their ci'ours being all day raised to the heig'-f us usual on such occasions. ... On me following Sunday his Excellency's pew and the pulpit at the South Church were put into mourning and richly adorned with escutcheons, and the Reverend Thomas Prince preached a sermon, which was printed by J. Draper, with the customary black border and death's head." " In reading of this magnificent funeral dis- play one is struck with the liberal use in it of armorial bearings, and since the governor's grandfather, Andrew Belcher of Cambridge, the first of the family in New England, was the son of a cloth- worker in London, and he the son of a weaver in Wilts, is compelled to wonder in passing where these Belcher arms were '^ ll EABLIER MINISTRY 61 obtained." But a matter of much more interest to our present biography is the fact that soon after the funeral, Mather Byles wrote an "Epistle in verse" to his Excellency on the death of his lady, which he piously prefaces in the following way: "As your Excellency has long honoured me with a particular triendship. Gratitude demands that I attempt your Service: and as you are now in mourning under the Hand of God. "In order to this, the muse has once more resumed her Lyre, and her Aversion to Flattery you will receive as her best Compliment. Instead of copious Pane- gyric upon the Dead I have chosen rather in solemn Language to admonish the Liv- ing: and when others perhaps would have embraced so fair an Opportunity for an Encomium on your Excellency, I have only taken the Freedom of an Ex- hortation. I know you will be pleased to observe that while I employ the Num- M THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES bers of the Poet, I never forget the Chaimc- ter of the Divine. "lam "May it please your Excellency "Your Excellency's "Affectionate Nephew and most " humble Servant "M. Byleb." The poem is as follows : "Belcher, once more permit the Muse you lov'd, By honour, and by sacred Friendship mov'd, Wak'd by your woe, her numbers to prolong. And pay her tribute in a Funeral song. "From you, great Heav'n with undisputed voice Has snatch'd the partner of your youthful joys. Her beauties, ere slow Hectick fires consum'd, Her eyes shone cheaiful, and her roses bloom'd : Long lingering sickness broke the lovely form. Shock after shock, and storm succeeding storm. Till Death, relentless, 3f Iz'd the wasting clay, Stopt the faint voice, ijxd catch'd the soul away. EARLIER MINISTRY 69 "No more in Convene iprightiy ihe appear*, With nice decorum, and obliging airs : Ye poor, no more expecting round her atand. Where soft compassion stretch'd her bounteous hand. "Her house her happy skill no more shall boast By all things plentiful, but nothing lost. Cold to the tomb see the pale corpse convey'd. Wrapt up in silence, and the dismal shade. "Ah ! what avail the sable velvet spread. And golden ornaments amidst the dead t No beam smile there, no eye can there discern The vulgar co£Sn from the marble um : The costly honours preaching, seem to say, 'Magnificence must mingle with the clay.' "Learn here, ye Fair, the frailty of yotir face, Ravish'd by death, or nature's slow decays : Ye Great, must so resign your transient pow'r. Heroes of dust, and monarchs of an hour ! So must each pleasing air, each gentle fire. And all that's soft, and all that's sweet, expire. "But you, O Belcher, mourn the absent Fair, Feel the keen pang, and drop the tender i ■'•ax : rl ll! MKtOCOnr MSOWTION TBT oun (*^4SI orxl ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 1.0 I.I ^ 1^ £ 1^ ^ 1 12.0 igL25|u ^^ .J /APPLIED IIV^CSE Inc 64 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES The God approves that nature do her part, A panting bosom, and a bleeding heart : Ye baser arts of flattery away ! The Virtuous Muse shall moralize her lay. "To you, O Fav'rite Man, the Pow'r supream Gives wealth and titles and extent of fame, Joys from beneath, and blessings from above. Thy Monarch's plaudit, and thy people's love. "The same high Pow'r, unbotuded and alone. Resumes his gifts, and puts your mourning on. His Edict issues, and his Vassal Death, Requires your Consort's — or Your flying breath. "Still be your glory at his feet to bend. Kiss thou the Son, and own his Sovereign hand. For his high honours all thy pow'rs exert. The gifts of Nature, and the charms of Art : "So over Death the conquest shall be giv'n. Your Name shall live on earth, your Soul in heav'n. Mean time my Name to tiiine ally'd shall stand EARLIER MINISTRY 65 Still our warm FViendship mutual flames ex- tend, The Muse shall so survive from age to age And Belcher's name protect his Byles's page." In 1741 Doctor Byles bought a house of his own and we presume immediately moved his family into it. Within ten years, or a little more, of her marriage, Anna Gale had borne her second husband six children, the eldest of these a second Mather, the youngest but one receiving appropriately the name of Belcher. Of these six children, however, only three survived their mother," who herself died April twenty-seventh, 1744. In the News- Letler of May third, 1744, it was recorded : "Last Thursday night died, and on Mon- day last was decently interr'd, M"' Anna Byles, the amiable and Vertuous Consort of the Rev. Mr. Byles." " That Doctor Byles held his first wife in proper esteem and reverence and that he genuinely la- mented her death is shown by a sermon he i ! 66 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES preached soon after her funeral, in which he extolled her virtues and commemorated fittingly her calm and beautiful end. "Never," he said feelingly, "did these eyes see death vanquished in a mo-e com- plete manner; nor did I ever witness to so steady and uninterrupted a peace of mind {-r so long a time together, upon a death I u before now. The king of terrors lay contemptible at the feet of this truly Christian heroine. Her speeches were wonderful and glorious. . . . She said (the most joyful words to me that ever I heard, before a room full of witnesses, else I think that I should not so publicly mention it, though she had often spoken the same thing to me alone), 'I bless God that I ever saw you: the doctrines of grace, in the comforts of which I die, have been more clearly explained and applied to my heart under your preach- ing, and in your conversation, than ever they were by any one else. And I say FROM BONNERS MAP OP BOSTON. 17(19, SHOWING HOLLIS ST. CHURCH J I k EARLIER MDJISTrlY 67 this for your encouragement in your min- istiy.'" Although the bereaved minister had young children to be cared for, and his own personal comfort to regard, he waited a little over three years before marrying again, then on the 1* of June, 1747, the Reverend Jo» Sewall, d!d.,. of the Old South ofliciating, he married a second wife, Rebecca Tailer, daughter of the distinguished Honourable William Tailer, deceased," a lady not less highly connected than his first wife, for her father, who was a gentleman of family and fortune, had twice been lieutenant- governor of Massachusetts, and once act- ing governor, and had long lived in fine style in Dorchester, where he had a hand- some country seat. By this marriage Doctor Byles allied himself with another considerable group of aristocratic families, for the Tailers were connected with the Brinleys, Byfields, Cradocks, Dudleys, and {.I 'lii 111 68 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES Lydes, the interrelationship among which pre-Revolutionary Boston first families is such an intricate tangle that no one who had not much genealogical skill could possibly make it out. To the conspicuous names we have just given should be added also the Royalls and Boylstons, for shortly after the Tailer-Byl^s marriage, occurred that of Rebecca Tailer's brother, Doctor Gillam Tailer, with Elizabeth Boylston, and of her sister Abigail to Jacob Royall, Esq. The house bought by Doctor Byles in 1741, which was destined to be his home for the rest of his own life and the home of his unmarried daughters, the Misses Mary and Catherine Byles, until their deaths, respectively in 1832 and 1837, was a plain wooden, perhaps gambrel- roofed, house which stood endwise to the street, on the site of the building known as the "Children's Mission," and its door- yard, on Tremont Street nearly opposite the entrance to Common Street. The EARLIER MINISTRY 69 land on which the house stood was pur- chased by Peter Harratt, a bricklayer, from Governor Belcher, in 1732, and the house was probably erected soon after by the buyer. Before 1741 Harratt died and in that year his widow Catherine sold it to Doctor Byles." The house is described in an "instructive and amusing" game called "Cards of Boston."" printed in 1831 by Miss Eliza Leslie of Phila- delphia, as "a very ancient frame building at the comer of Nassau and Tremont streets," the outside nearly black, sUnd- ing in a green inclosure, shaded with large trees. Probably in the veiy year she printed the game. Miss Leslie, a writer of some local reputation, sister of the painter Charlps Robert Leslie, visited Boston, and m 1842 in Graham's Magazine gave an entertaining description of the house both without and within, and of its quaint owners, the then aged daughters of Doctor Byles. "After passing the beautiful Com- 70 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES mon," Mua Leslie says, "my companion pointed out to me at what seemed the termination of the long vista of Tremont Street, an old black-looking frame house, which at the distance from whence I saw it seemed to block up the way by standing directly across it. It was the ancient residence of Mather Byles, and the present dwelling of his aged daughters, one of whom was in her eighty-first and the other in her seventy-ninth year. This part of Tremont Street, which is on the south- eastern declivity of a hiU, carried us far from all vicinity to the aristocratic section of Boston. At length we arrived at the domain of the two antique maidens. It was surrounded by a board fence which had once been a very close one, but time and those universal depredators 'the boys' had made numerous cracks and chinks in it. The house (which stood with the gable end to the street) looked as if it had never been painted in its life. Its expos- EARUEB MINISTBi' 71 ure to the sun ax- 1 rain, to the heats of a hundred summers and the snows of a hundred winters, had darkened its whole ouUide nearly to the blackness of iron. Also, it had even in its best days been evidently one of the plainest and most unbeautified structures in the town of Boston, where many of the old frame houses can boast of a redolence of quaint ornament about the doors and windows and porches and balconies. Still there was something not unpleasant in its aspect, or rather its situation. It stood at the upper end of a green lot, whose long thick grass was enamelled with field flowers. It was shaded with noble horse-chestnut trees relieved against the clear blue sky, and whose close and graceful clusters of long jagged leaves, fanned by the light summer breeze, threw their chequered and quivering shadows on the grass beneath and on the mossy roof of the venerable mansion." The house. Miss Leslie further 72 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES minutely tells her readers, was a gambrel- roofed house, which when Tremont Street was extended beyond its original terminus had had a piece taken off its southeastern end or "side." After Doctor Byles's second marriage there soon appeared in succession in the Tremont Street house, three more children, whom their parents named respectively, Joseph, Mary, and Catherine," the first of these like several of his little half brothers dying young, the second and third, however, the Misses Mary and Catherine Byles, living far beyond the Revolution, until they had become very old. The second wife of Doctor Byles, of whom we have very little knowledge, lived until July twenty-third, 1779, when she too, as we learn from her daughters' wills, was buried in tomb No. 2 in the Granary Burying Ground. That both Doctor Byles's marriages were as happy as marriages commonly are we have no EARLIER MINISTRY 78 reason not to suppose. At the time of the Revolution, when the Doctor was in sore disgrace politically in the town, a young minister, John Eliot, with youthful censoriousness, and with evident familiarity with the town's gossip, is reported to have said that "the women all proclaimed"" that the misfortunes that had come upon Doctor Byles were a judgment on him from Heaven for his ' 1 treatment of his wives, but this gratuitous fling is the sole reflection of the kind we have ever seen made on Mather Byles. CHAPTER V Pastorate at Holub Street Church On the long active ministry of Mather Byles at Hollis Street, which terminated really though not formally when the occu- pation of Boston by the British in the Revolution sent the greater part of his parishioners out of the town, we have considerable light. The facts we have, however, are chiefly of the ordinary details of parochial administration and of sermons preached year after year, many of which, soon after preaching. Doctor Byles put into print. The Hollis Street congrega- tion was never an influential congregation like the congregations of the First Church or the Old South, though from the start it had on its communion roll many respect- able names," but we have every reason to n HOLLIS STREET PASTORATE 75 beKeve that Doctor Byles'a mmistiy to his parishioners was earnest, foithful, sympa- thetic, and kind. In spite of his intellectual activity and general learning, Mather Byles made no original contribution to New England theology. The period his ministry covered, indeed, was one not of entire theological inactivity but certainly of marked lack of constructive energy in theological and theologico-political things. The work of shaping Congregationalism, in which those stem theocrats, his great- grandfathers John Cotton and Richard Mather had borne chief parts, had long been accomplished, the dispute over the half-way coveubui had lost much of its original fervour, the political and religious indignation which had been visited on Increase Mather on his return from Eng- land because of the defects of the Charter of 1691 had subsided like other similar indignations, and the only remarkable stir- f 76 TBE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES ring of the Boston churches until the Revolution was the Great Awakening under Whitefield in 1740-'4«. The period of Doctor Byles's ministty is described by New England church historians as on the whole one of comparative formalism and general lack of spiritual enthusiasm. Dur- ing the time, however, religious thought was not inactive, religious thought never stands entirely still, under the leadership of a series of strenuous thinkers it was moving quietly in two opposite ways. Of these two movements the most striking was what is known as Hopkinsianism, which affirmed as Calvinistic logic had never done before the absolute sover- eignty of God, and the necessity for un- conditional submission, even to the point of willingneas to be damned for his gloiy, of the human soul to Him. At the .pposite pole from this tremendous irrationalism was the moderate assertion of the validity of human reason, of Chauncy, Mayhew, HOLLIS STREET PASTORATE 77 Briant, and others, of eastern Massachu- setts, an assertion which was to strengthen and grow until the beginning of the nine- teenth century, when Unitarianism, fully- developed, should come into existence through those able rational leaders Chan- ning and Wai«. But the thought of by far the larger number in the period of Byles's life ran on what is properly called "Old Calvinist" lines. The famil- iar doctrines of man's depravity, inherited from fallen Adam, redemption through the sacrificial death of Christ, and the arbitrary bestowal by God of divine grace to bring about repentance in the elect, — these conventional tenets of Calvinism were tenaciously but conservatively held." But the further belief was held by the Old Calvinists that however fixed by eter- nal decrees the fate of men might be, the common means of grace, prayer, reading of Scripture, and attendance on preaching, honestly used "put men in a favourable mm 78 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES way for obtaining the more special and effectual bestowments of divine help es- sential to salvation,"" and to this Old Calvinist party Doctor Byles emphatically belonged. Reading his sermons one finds in him absolutely no traces of a disposition towards the extreme views of Hopkins, nor does the least tendency appear towards Unitarian thought, but he eveiywheie af- firms the main positions of Calvinism, and with apparently entirely unquestion- ing faith. In the common view of his day that from beginning to end the Scrip- tures were the inerrant message of God he profoundly shared, but as in politics so in religion his attitude was essentially non- controversial, and his chief aim in preach- ing was to bring what he conceived to be the teaching of the Scriptures with con- vincing power to the practical life of men. With a narrower range of intellectual in- terests than his uncle Cotton Mather, he yet shared unmistakably in the peculiar HOLLIS STREET PASTORATE 79 mental temperament of his uncle, but although he had as unwavering confidence in the value of saintly death-bed expe- riences and with as fervid imagination revelled in the unspeakable glories of the unseen Heaven where after death the chosen saints were to go, he yet escaped the amazing credulity of Cotton Mather and showed little of the superstition that characterized that extraordinary man. For the most part the style of his sermons is simple and direct. Occasionally, over- powered by his subject he indulges in the strained elegance of fine writing, but gen- erally his writing, while not at all lacking in smoothness, is remarkably forcefid and clear. To these merits of expression he often adds the power of a rich and vivid imagination, and we can well understand how with a magnetic presence in the pulpit and a musical voice he quickly earned for himself the reputation of a brilliant preacher. !i 80 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES As we review, even hastily, the sermons and essays of Doctor Byles, written during his pastorate, that have been printed, as indeed his poetry throughout his life, we cannot help regretting that after his death some kind friend had not cared enough for him to collect his writings into two or three volumes, for some of his productions, both in prose and poetry, are of lasting interest. In the next chapter we shall speak of the fine imagination dis- played in his noble sermon on "The Flour- ish of the Annual Spring," we cannot refrab from giving here an extract printed by Duyckinck, in his "Cydoptedia of American Literature," from his essay, "The MediUtion of Cassim, the Son of Ahmed." first printed in the New England Weekly Journal some time in 1727, and afterward reprinted in 1771 with the second edition of his sermon on "The Present Vileness of the Body and Its Future Glorious Change by Christ," from Acts HOLLIS STREET PASTORATE 81 17:18. Speaking of the worm changing into a butterfly Byles says: "You have beheld the dead Silk-worm revive a Butter- fly, the most beautiful and curious of all the splendid Race of Insects. What more entertaining Specimen of the Resurrection is there, in the whole Circumference of Nature? Here are all the wonders of the Day in Miniature. It was once a despicable Worm, it is raised a kind of painted little Bird. Formerly it crawled along with a slow and leisurely Motion: now it flutters aloft upon its guilded Wings. How much improved is its speckled Cover- ing, when all the Gaudiness of Colour is scattered about its Plumage. It is spangled with Gold and Silver, and has every Gem of the Orient sparkling among its Feathers. Here a brilliant spot, like a clear Diamond, twinkles with an unsullied Flame, and trembles with num'rous Lights, that glitter in a gay Confusion. There a Saphire casts a milder Gleam, and shows like the 89 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES blue Expanae of Heaven in a fair Winter Evening. In thia Place an Emerald, like the calm Ocean. diq>laya its cheerful and vivid Green. And cloae by a Ruby — flames with the ripened Blush of the Morning. The Breast and Legs, like Ebony, shine with a glorious Darkness; while its expanded Wings are edged with the golden Magnificence of the Topaz. Tlius the illustrious little creature is fur- nished with the divinest Art. and looks like an animated ComposiUon of Jewels, that bier ', their promiscuous Beams about him. lius O Ctunm. shall the Bodies of Good Men be raised; thus shall they shine, and thus fly away." That the "Great Awakening" of 1740- '42 influenced very deeply the HoUis Street Church or its pastor we have no reason to think, for the records of the Church during that time do not show any very remarkable increase in the number of admissions to communion.** When Whitefield first ap- HOLUS STREET PASTORATE 88 peared in BoBton in the middle of Sep- tember, 1740, he wu rer ived generally among Congi^egationaliats, and no doubt by Doctor Byles as by other ministers, with great warmth and was heartily wel- corned to the churches. On the 26*^ of the month he preached from a sca£Fold erected outside the HoUis Street meeting- house, no doubt to accommodate a larger audience than could find room within the building. From a discussion in 1743 of the effects of the revival in which several ministers took an earnest part, some ap- proving, others deprecating. Doctor Byles and his cousin Samuel Mather, with two other ministers, M^ Welsteed and M^ Gray, stood entirely aloof. In the councils of the denomination to which he belonged, called for the installation or dismissal of ministers or for other reasons, the Hollis Street Church and its pastor are frequently mentioned, as on the 18*^ of May, 1768, when the Rev. John Lathrop was ordained 84 THE FAMOUS BiATHER BYLES pMtor of the Second Church. On that occaaion the young pastor hinuelf preached the ordination lennon, Doctor Joseph Sewall offered prayer. Rev. Ebeneser Pem- berton gave the charge, and Doctor Byles gave the rig t hand of fellowship. In March. 1740, Doctor Byles offered the prayer at a Town Meeting, in the same year he delivered the sermon before the Artillery C3mpany, and probably many times he preached the "Thursday Lec- ture" in the First Church, which had been esUblished by his great-grandfather John Cotton, and which has continued to be preached almost continuously to the pres- ent time." That like his son Mather Byles, Jr., and hif daughters, in spite of his strong Toryism, Doctor Byles had, even after the Revolution, any desire to become an Angli- can we have seen no evidence. He was too near the old New England Puritan the- ocracy, and the influ..jce of the Mather dynasty was probably too strong upon his HOLUS STREET PASTORATE M mind to admit of hi* hmving much sympathy with Anglican ecclesiasticism, however much he may have sympathised with Anglicans socially, in Old England or New. In 17M, Doctor Byles received the degree of Doctor of Divinity from the University of Aberdeen, another Boston minister, the Rev. Jonathan Mayhew of the West Church, also having received a similar honour from this university fifteen years before." Shortly after the news of the conferring of his degree reached him, he wrote the Rev. Doctor John Chalrters, "Principal of King's College And Uni- versity," in which he acknowledges the honour that had been done him, and says that he had been trying to collect his pub- lished writings to send to the university library. This letter, which we have per- mission to print, is found in an old letter- book of Doctor Byles's, owned by the New England Historic Genealogical So- ciety. It reads as follows : 86 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES "To the Rev^ Doctor John Chabners Prin- cipal of the King's College and University at Aberdeen. "Rev'd Sm, "The honour which the University of Aber- deen has done me, and your good offices in particular, call for my Respectful Acknowledge- ments. I have endeavour'd to collect the Publications I have made, to send as a small Tribute to the Publick Library: but I have been able to procure but few, the rest, though some of them have past several Editions, being wholly out of Print. I hope they will have a Uttle more to recommend them, than as Trifling curiosities from a Far Country. Wishing you, and the Illustrious University, every Favour of Heaven, and asking your Prayers and Blessings, "lam "yova dutiful Son, "and most obliged "humble Servant." Doctor Byles's aristocratic tendencies, and the important social position he him- self held in Boston, as we have previously said, were of themselves calculated to \mi HOLLIS STREET PASTORATE 87 arouse antagonism against him in the minds of his more democratic brother ministers of Massachusetts, and in the feeling of many of the faithful laity as well. In the autumn of 1741, Rev. Eleazer Wheelock, one of the fotmders of Dart- mouth College, visited Boston, and under date of October 9**, evidently with enor^ mous self-satisfaction, writes in his diary: "Preached [in the Old South Church] to a very thronged assembly, many more than could get into the house, with very great freedom and enlargement. I be- lieve the childrpn of God were very much refreshed. They told me afterwards they believed that Mather Byles was never so lashed in his life." Precisely why the "children of God" of the Old South Church should have been so delighted to see Byles "lashed," or Doctor Eleazer Wheel- ock to have "lashed" him, particularly at this early period of Byles's ministry, so long before his political opinions had '-I 88 THE FAMOUS MOTHER BYLES become o£Fensive, it is not easy now to tell, but that censorious younger ministers like John Eliot and Jeremy Belknap should habitually have sneered at and ridiculed him, as they did, argues chiefly the strength of his personality, the variety of his gifts, and the supnvior position in the commu- nity he held. That he was unpopular among certain classes of laymen in Boston may be due largely to the fact that he did not strictly bind his conduct by all the conventions that had been established for men of his profession, and that he never hesitated to give voice to his opin- ions, whether they agreed with those of the majority or not. After the dissolution of his pastorate of the Hollis Street Church Doctor Byles probably saw very little of his former Congregational friends of the clergy or the laity. Many of his most intimate associates had been among the Royalists, and these had all been compelled to leave HOLLIS STREET PASTORATE 89 the town. The worthy people who now filled public positions and constituted the town's society for the most part despised and shunned him, and he in return came near to despising them, and he almost certainly kc '"t pretty closely to the society of his daughters and a very few other persons who, whether sharing his political sympathies or not, still remained loyally his friends. Had he been a younger man he would without doubt have been driven into exile with his son and the rest of the Tories, but he was too old voluntarily to remove from Boston, and the house in Tremont Street where he lived, with its contents, was almost all }'.c owned in the world. If he now regularly at- tended any religious service it was prob- ably the service of the Anglican Triniiy Church, into full communion with which his daughters either before or shortly after the Revolution entered. One inti- mate friend, however, in these years he 80 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES had among the younger Congregational ministers of Massachusetts, the Rev. Na- thaniel Emmons of Wrentham, whom Doc- tor Leonard Woods credited with having "one of the grandest understandings ever created." Doctor Emmons was thirty- eight years younger than Doctor Byles, but from about 1770 to the death of the latter in 1788 the two were deeply at- tached friends. "The parson was one of my best friends," Doctor Emmons is quoted as saying on one occasion, "and I don't know but I owe more to him than to any other man I ever knew ; for it was he who taught me never to preach what I did not fully believe, and that it is no certain mark of godliness to wear a sad coimtenance. In fact he once told me that the genuine Christian denied his profession if he was not continually jolly, for his 'calling and election' being sure he had no occasion to feel any anxiety on any subject whatever." "Doctor HOLLIS STREET PASTORATE 91 Byles was one of the best and purest men that ever lived." " That Doctor Byles was especially in- terested in natural science, and antiquarian research, and gave a good deal of attention to these studies, nolices of bis collection of curiosities, and incidental references in bis sermons, and articles enumerated in the inventory of his effects made after his death, sufiBciently' show. Among these ef- fects were geographical maps, many per- spective glasses, microscopes, mathematical instruments, globes, a microscope pyramid, solar pyramid, universal pyramid, an opaque pyramid,;a magic lantbom and apparatus, a prism, camera obscura, pyramidical camera, "tuTcle" shell burning glass, thermom- eters and a barometer, half-hour glasses, reflecting telescopes, silver coins, and val- uable prints. According to the inventory, his library numbered in all 2,806 books, valued at a hundred and forty-two pounds, twelve shillings, and tenpence. fffffrff"^ CHAPTER VI Doctor Btles as a Poet Doctor Btles's prose writing, as we have said, is almost without exception of a high order, and it would be interesting, if we could, to give wider extracts from it here than our space will allow. His poetry varies much in excellence, but a few of his poems have an exaltation of spirit and a beauty of form that make them well worthy to be remembered. In 1736, Byles published a small IS"""- volume of verse, of a hundred and eighteen pages, yrhich bore the modest title, "Poems on Several Occasions, by Mr Byles." In the pref- ace to this volume the author explains to us that the poems "had for the most part been written as the amusements of looser hours, while the author belonged *'-■; DOCTOR BYLES AS A POET 93 to the college and was unbending his mind from severer studies in the entertainment of the classics." Most of them, it con- tinues, had been several times printed in Boston, in London, and elsewhere, either separately or in miscellanies, and were now drawn together in print for the first time. In printing them, the author says, "he gives up at once these lighter pro- ductions and bids adieu to the airy Muse." The volume presents us with a considerable variety of verse, a number of hymns, verses written in a copy of Milton's "Paradise Lost," a poem to the memory of a ji'oung commander slain in battle with the Indians in 1724, a poem to an ingenious young gentleman on his dedicat- ing a poem to the author, a poem to Fictorio on the sight of his pictures, and verses addressed to Doctor Isaac Watts and others. Two years after Byles left college, in August, 1727, news reached Boston that 04 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES King George the First had died in June at Osnaburg, in Westphalia, and that George the Second had ascended the throne, and Byles wrote a poem on the double event surcharged with panegyric. Of the dead king he writes : "He dies I let nature own the direful blow. Sigh all ye winds, with tears ye rivers flow, Let the wide ocean loud in anguish roar. And tides of grief pour plenteous on the shore ; No more the spring shall bloom, or morning rise. But night eternal wrap the sable skies." But, the king is dead, long live the king! and the laureate proceeds : "Enough, my muse, give all thy tears away. Break ye dull shades, and rise the rosey day. Quicken, O Sun, thy Chariot dazzling-bright. And o'er thy flaming empire pour the light, O Spring, along thy laughing lawns be seen Fields alway fresh, and groves forever green. Let Britain's sorrows cease, her joys inlarge, The first revives within the second George." DOCTOR BYLES AS A POET M On the IS** of July, 1788, Governor William Burnet arrived at Boston, in great state, from New York, to assume the government of Massachusetts. "He was welcomed with more of pomp and parade," says Doctor George Ellis, "than had ever been observed in Boston on any previous oc- casion, and at an expense to the treasury of eleven hundred pounds. There was a caval- otde, lavish festivity, and a poetical rhap- sody anticipating the 'soaring eagle' style, by the famous Mather Byles." This poem was published in the New England Weekly Journal, but later Byles must have written another, for we have one not published in this newspafter which begins as follows : "Welcome great man to our desiring eyes ; Thou earth proclaim it and resound ye skies I Voice answering Voice, in joj-ful Concert meet. The Hills all echo, and the Rocks repeat ; And Thou, O Boston, Mistress of the Towns, Whom the pleased Bay with am'rous Arms surrounds. 99 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES "Let thy warm Trantporta blace in num'roua Pire», And beaming Glories glitter on thy Spiiea; Let Rocketo, streaming, up the Ether glare, And flaming Serpents hiss along the Air. While rising shouts a gen'ral Joy proclaim. And ev'ry tongue, O Burnet, lisps thy Name." In 1729 (May 19), Byles first published, in the New England Weekly Jmtmal, a noted poem of his that eventually bore the elaborate title, "The Conflagration, applied to that Grand Period or Catas- trophe of our World, when the face of Nature is to be changed by a Deluge of Fire as formerly it was by that of Water. The God of Tempest and Earthquake." In a note introducing it in the Journal, it is said that the author wrote the poem when he was only in his fifteenth year. If this is true, Byles's poetical gemus in- deed flowered early, for the poem is a strong one, showing traces of the influence of Milton perhaps, but indicating a native DOCTOR BYLES AS A POET 97 power of imagination and lenie of dis- crimination in the use of words that would stamp any youth as giving great promise in the field of poetical composition. Some of the lines are as follows: "But O I what sounds ate able to convey The wild confusions of the dreadful day ! Eternal mountains totter on their base, And strong convulsions work the valley's face; Fierce hurricanes on sounding pinions soar, Rush o'er the land, on the toss'd billows roar. And dreadful in resistless eddies driven. Shake all the crystal battlements of heaven. See the wild winds, big blustering in the air. Drive through the forests, down the mountains tear. Sweep o'er the valleys in their rapid course. And nature bends beneath the impetuous force. Storms rush at storms, at tempests tempests roar. Dash waves on waves, and thunder to the shore. Columns of smoke on heavy wings ascend. And dancing sparkles fly before the wind. »8 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES Devouring Amum, wide-waving, row aloud, And melted mountaina flow a fiery flood : Then, all at once, immenie the flrei ariie, A bright deitrucUon wrapi the cruckling skiei ; While all the elementi to melt coMpire, And the world blazes in the final fire." In 178* Governor Belcher's brother-in- law, Hon. Daniel Oliver, died, and Doctor Byles addressed to His Excellency an elegiac poem on the melancholy event. On the e*^ of October, 1736, as we have already shown, he indited a laudatory epistle in verse to the govemoi .-n the death of M"? Belcher, and in 1737, when Queen Caroline departed this life, he agam addressed his patron in a poem. In 1744 appeared a "Collection of Poems by Several Hands," vhich was evidently, as Moses Coit Tyler says, the offspring of an amiable conspiracy on the part of a group of literary friends of Doctor Byles, among them Rev. John Adams, to accom- plish, and with Byles's own entire ap- DOCTOR BYLES AS A POET 09 probation, the apotheosis of the HoUia Street parson, and to induce the public to believe that one of Boston's most gifted preachers was likewise a great poet. One of these adulatory poems addresses Byles in the following style : "Hail charming poet, whone distinguished lays Excite our wonder and lurmount our praise, Whom all the muses with fresh ardour fire. And Aganippe's chrystal streams inspire." Another describes Byles as "Harvard's honour and New England's hope," declares that he "Bids fair to rise and sing and rival Pope." and informs the world that "Could Janus live again, he'd wish to die. If in oblivion Byles would let him ly." Still another sings : "Long has New England groan'd beneath the Load Of too too just Reproaches from Abroad, 100 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES Unleam'd in Arts, and barren in their Skill How to employ the tender Muses Quill : At length our Byles aloft transfers his name, And binds it on the radient wings of fame ; All we could wish the Youth he now appears, A finish'd Poet in his blooming years. With anxious care we see the Stripling climb Those Heights we deem'd for mortals too sublime. And dread a dang'rous Fall . . . Yet fondly gaze, till he, above our fears Has lost th' attracting world and shines among the stars." Whatever admirer wrote this last poem printed it first anonymously in the New England Weekly Journal of August 5, 1728. In this collection of slightly twenty poems, which for the most part are "little more than weak reverberations of Pope," several are by Doctor Byles himself. One of these is "The Comet," a poem having little except smoothness to recommend it, and another a long poem with even less merit, describing a Harvard Commence- DOCTOR eYLES AS A POET 101 ment. ju this den.-ription, as usual in Pope's n.-oa5 -rr, the writer shows us the Boston folk crowdmg down to the Charles River feny, the procession forming in the Yard, the dignified president, the senate, the black-coated undergraduates, and the public, all in line, the exercises within the chapel, and then as the crowning event of the day, the grand Commencement Dinner. When Doctor Byles graduated from col- lege, Alexander Pope was in the full flush of his fame on this side of the Atlantic, having here, as is well known, many of his most ardent devotees. On the 7th of October, 1727, Byles ventured to address the great man, and his letter, the original draft of which he preserved, shows the supreme reverence in which he held him and his art. "Sir," he writes, "you are doubtless wondering at the novelty of an epistle from the remote shores where this dates its origin ; as well as from so obscure a hand as that which subscribes it. But 102 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES what corner of the earth so secret as not to have heard the name of Mr. Pope? or who so retired as not to be acquainted with his admirable compositions, or so stupid as not to be ravished with them. . . . How often have I been soothed and charmed with the ever blooming landscape of your Windsor Forest I And how does my very Soul melt away at the soft com- plaints of the languishing Eloisal How frequently has the Rape of the Loch com- manded the various passions of my mind, provoked laughter, breathed a tranquillity, or inspired a transport ! And how have I been raised and borne away by the resistless fire of the Iliad, as it glows in your immortal translation." At the close, he begs to be permitted to conclude his letter by "asking the favour of a few lines from the land which has blessed the world with such divine productions." "If you thus honour me," he writes, "assure your- self the joys you will produce in me will 'i ! ALEXANDER POPE From an engnving by Houbnken DOCTOR BYLES AS A POET lOS be inferior to none but that Poetick Rap- ture of your own Breast. Perhaps you will be disposed to smile when I confess that I have a more superstitious ardour to see a word written by your Pen than ever Tom Folio in the Tatler to see a simile of Virgil." "Sir." he subscribes his epistle. Your great Admirer and most < bedient Humble Servant. Mather Byles." On the 3^ of May. 1728. he indites a letter to the great hymn writer. Doctor Isaac Watts, which is only a little less adonng than his letter to Pope. "Rever- end and most admired Sir." he begins, "almost ever since I was first charmed well with your Lyrick poems I have had no little ambition to be known to you. I have often wished to do myself the honour of addressing you with a letter. But the fear which naturally seizes us when we approach great men has often prevented me." "New England." he later modesUy says, "has had no great reputation of pro- ii I'^ii 104 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES ducing many fine poets, nor have we been very famous for our skill in the arts of the muses. However, so it happens that we love to be dabbling in the streams of Parnassus, though the product is nothing but muddy water." In incidental notices of Doctor Byles in Boston print a good deal has been made of Byles's correspondence with these two noted English poets, and with a third English writer who more f>T less success- fully cultivated the muses, George Gran- ville or Grenville, Lord Lansdowne, who lived between 1667 and 1735." With Pope, Byles's correspondence was extremely for- mal and rare, the little man of Twicken- ham, although he sent Byles (without any word whatever) a bondsomely bound copy of his Odyssey when it appeared, apparently never warming very much to his transatlantic admirer." With Doctor Watts, an Independent minister and a Calvinist, Byles had the bond of theological m: Dr. ISAAC WATTS From an engraving by Trotter m ii! DOCTOR BYLES AS A POET 105 and ecclesia-ical as well as poetical sym- pathy, and naturally his correspondence with the noted nonconformist divine was of a much more familiar and friendly sort. Of the extent of this correspondence we are not sure, but we know that Doctor Watts sent Byles copies of some of his hynms when they appeared, and that Byles in return sent some of his poems to the English divine. Byles's correspondence with Lansdowne probably extended only to one letter from the New England poet to the noble lord. It is doubtful if any honour Byles ever received in his lifetime gratified him so much as the reception of Pope's Odyssey. In lending it once to a lady he accom- panied it with these gallant lines of his own : "Go, my dear Pope, transport the attentive fair. And soothe with winning harmony her ear "Twill add new graces to thy heav'nly song To be repeated by her gentle tongue. li lOd THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES 111 i Old Homer's ibsde tball smile if she com- mend. And Pope be proud to write as Byles to lend." That Doctor Byles had given consider- able attention to the art of poetry we have strong testimony in a sermon he preached at the Thursday Lecture, May third, 17S9, on "The Flourish of the Annual Spring." This sermon, which shows probably a finer imagination than any other he printed, i.'-. f:om Canticles 2 : 10-13, "Rise up and come away, lo the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the flowers appear on the earth, the time of the singing of birds is come. . . . Arise . . . and come away." "Of all mere men who have lived since the fall of Adam," the sermon begins, "the author of this beautiful passage is pro- nounced the wisest by the God of Heaven. And of all the books he wrote this is the most elegant, sublime, and devout. The title of the book is the Song of Songs and it well deserves the name, for it is the DOCTOR BYLES AS A POET 107 finest poetical composure now extant in the world. It is not everywhere over nice and exact in its meUphors and al- lusions, but they are bold and grand, elevated and lofty, all fire, all consecrated rapture and inspiration ! The criticks of the Art of Poetry will presently see that it is a dramatic composition of that kind to which the modems would give the name of a Pastoral Opera. That it is a dramatic performance is easily discovered, inasmuch as it consists wholly of action, dialogue, and character. It is a personal representation of passion and action, dialogue and history, all of which are the exact description of the drama. It is an opera, it seems to consist of three acts. The numbers are of the lyriek kind, and it has in it the evident intimations of musick and a chorus. And it is a pas- toral, as the scenes are mostly laid in the country, and the characters and images are principally rural. But more than .this, 'tis a 108 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES Divine Poem. It contaLis a fine picture of the loves of Christ and his Church." Soon the writer lets his fancy loose among the lovely sights and sounds and odors of the spring : "The time of the singing of birds is come, and our ears are regaled by all the harmony of the groves and forests. The idle musicians of the spring fill the fields and the skies with their artless melody. A thousand odours are thrown from every bough, and scat'er thro' the air to gratify our smell. The flowers appear on the earth, and the spring buds and rising grass dress the rich landscape and paint the scene to delight and charm our eyes. These are the pleasures of an earthly spring." Bound up with this sermon we find a musical "Hymn for the Spring," of fourteen stan- zas, five of which are as follows: "By tuneful birds of every plume Melodious strains are play'd. From tree to tree their accents roam. Soft-warbling thro' the shade. DOCTOR BYLES AS A POET 109 "The painted Meads and fragrant Field* A sudden smile bestow, A golden Gleam each Valley yields, Where numerous Beauties blow. "A Thousand gaudy Colours flush Each od'rous Mountain's Side: Lillies rise fair, and Roses blush And Tulips spread their Pride. " Thus flourishes the wanton Year, In rich Profusion gay, Till Autumn bids the bloom retire. The Verdure fade away. "Succeeding Cold withers the Woods. While heavy Winter reigns. In Fetters binds the frozen Floods, And shivers o'er the Plains." In a curious little book of sacred music, called the "New England Psalm-Singer or American Chorister," published by Edes and Gill, probably in 1770, containing "a number of psalm-tunes, anthems, and canons, in four and five parts," composed 110 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES by William Billings of Boston, the book including a frontispiece engraving by Paul Revere, is a hymn by Doctor Byles, en- titled "New-England Hymn [Adapted to America Tune]." This hymn is as follows : "To Thee the tuneful Anthem soars. To Thee, our Father's God, and ours ; This Wilderness we chose our Seat : To Rights secur'd by Equal Laws From Persecution's Iron Claws, We here have sought our calm Retreat. "See I how the Flocks of Jesus rise I See I how the Face of Paradise Blooms thro' the ThickeU of the Wild ! Here Liberty erects her Throne ; Here Plenty pours her Treasures down ! Peace smiles, as Heav'nly Cherub mild. "Lord, guard thy Favours ; Lord, extend Where farther Western Suns descend ; Nor Southern Seas the Blessings bound ; 'Till Freedom lift her chearful Head, 'Till pure Religion onward spread. And beaming, wrap the Globe around." 111 ""ill DOCTOR BYLES AS A POET 111 That Doctot Byles had much interest in music IS shown not only by the hymn given above but by the following lines descriptive of fugue music, which appear on the tenth page of the "Psalm Singer," and are there said to be "from a miscellany of the Rev D^ Byles": "Down steers the Bass with grave majestic Air. And up the Treble mounte with shrill Career; With softer Sounds, in mild Melodious Maze. Warbhng between, the Ten^ gently Plays : Hut if th aspiring AUus join its Force. See I like the Lark, it Wings ifa tow'ring Course; ^ Thro' Harmony's sublimest Sphere it flies. And to Angelic Accents seems to rise- Rom the bold Height it hails the echoing Bass. Which swells to meet, and mix in close embrace. The diff rent Systems all the Parts divide With Music's Chords the distant Notes are ty'd; And Sympathetick Strains enchanting winde Thar restless Race, till aU the Parts are join'd : Then rolls the Rapture thro' the air around In the full Magic Melody of Sound " 11« THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES Byles's verses to Doctor Isaac Watts, in "Poems on Several Occasions," are as follows: "To the Reverend Doctor Watts, on his Divine Poems. " Say, smiling Muse, what heav'nly Strain Forbids the Waves to roar; Comes gently gliding o'er the Main, And charms our list'ning Shore I "What Angel strikes the tremb'ling Strings; And whence the golden Sound ! Or is it Watts — or Gabriel sings From yon celestial Ground t "'Tis Thou, Seraphick Watts, thy Lyre Plays soft along the Floods ; Thy Notes, the ans'ring Hills inspire. And bend the waving Woods. "The Meads, with dying Musick fill'd Their smiling Honours show. While, whisp'ring o'er each fragrant Field, The tuneful Breezes blow. "The Rapture sounds in ev'ry Trace, Ev'n the rough Rocks regale, DOCTOR BYLES AS A POET ns Fresh flow'ry Joys flame o'er the Face Of ev'ry laughing Vale. "And Thou, my Soul, the Transport own, Pir'd with immortal Heat ; While dancing Pulses driving on. About thy Body beat. "Long as the Sun shall rear his Head, And chase the flying Glooms, As blushing from his nuptial Bed The gallant Bridegroom comes : "Long as the dusky Ev'ning flies And sheds a doubtful Light, While sudden rush along the Sides The sable Shades of Night : "O Watts, thy sacred Lays so long Shall ev'ry Bosom fire ; And ev'ry Muse, and ev'ry Tongue To speak thy Praise conspire. "When thy fair Soul shall on the Wings Of shouting Seraphs rise, And with superior Sweetness sings Amid thy native Skies ; 114 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES "Still shaU'thy lofty Nuniben flow. Melodious and divine ; And Choirs above, and Saints below, A deathless Chorus I join. "To our far Shores the Sound shall roll (So Philomela sung). And East to West, and Pole to Pole Th' eternal Tune prolong." In the next chapter we shall speak in some detail of a passage-st-arms in wit that once took place between Byles and a rival humourist in Boston, a well-known man named Joseph Green. Doctor Byles had a favourite cat which he sometimes jocularly called his muse, and in the course of events the cat died. On its death Green, who whether chiefly from ill-will or solely from a love of practical joking seems to have lost no opportunity of ridiculing Byles, wrote and published an elegy on the cat. The absurd poem is as follows : "Oppress'd with grief in heavy strains I mourn The partner of my studies from me torn. DOCTOR BYLES AS A POET 115 HowshaUIsing ? what numbers ahall I chiwe ? For in my fav'rite cat I've lost my muae. No more I feel my mind with raptures fir'd, I want those airs that Puss so oft inspir'd • No crowding thoughts my ready fancy fill. Nor words run fluent from my easy quiU ; Yet shall my verse deplore her cruel fate. And celebrate the virtues of my ^at. "In acts obscene she never took delight • No caterwauls disturb'd our sleeo by ijght • Chaste as a virgin, free from every stain. And neighb'ring cats mew'd for her love in vain. "She never thirsted for the chickens' blood • Her teeth she used only to chew her food ;' Harmless as satires which her master writes, A foe to scratching, and unused to bites, able m the study was my constant mate ; There we together many evenings sat. Whene'er I felt my tow'ring fancy fail. I stroked her head, her ears, her back, and tail ; And as I stroked improv'd my dying song ^m the sweet notes of her melodious tongue : Her purrs and mews so evenly kept time She purr'd in metre, and she mew'd in rhyme 116 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES But when my dulneaa haa too itubborn prov'd, Nor could by Puss's music be remov'd. Oft to the well-known volumes have I gone. And stole a line from Pope or Addison. "Of'times when lost amidst poetic heat, She leaping on my knee has took her seat ; There saw the throes that rock'd my lab'ring brain. And lick'd and daw'd me to myself again. "Then, friends, indulge my grief and let me mourn, My cat is gone, ah I never to retwn. Now in my study, all the tedious night. Alone I sit, and imassisted write ; Look often round (O greatest cause of pain). And view the num'rous labours of my brain ; Those quires of words array'd in pompous rhyme, WUch braved the jaws of all-devouring time. Now imdefended and unwatch'd by cats Are doom'd a victim to the teeth of rats." CHAPTER vn Doctor Btles'b Huhottr Two ministers who filled a marked and honourable place in eighteenth century Boston, says a writer in the "Memorial Hbtory,"" were Thomas Prince of the Old South Church, and Mather Byles of the Hollis Street Church. "Thomas Prince shares with Cotton Mather the repuU- tion of being the most learned man in New England in the eighteenth century. He far surpassed all the Mathers in the method, accuracy, and usefulness of his writings. Mather Byles was too way- ward and eccentric a genius to make a very permanent impression, though he had remsrkable literary gifts, and a fancy which in his earlier years knew no bounds. He early obtained eminence in the pulpit, m 118 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES and in spite of his litenuy interests and the sharpness of his tongue, he maintained cordial relations with his church until the Revolution separated them, Doctor Byles taking the losing side. The tradi- tions of his overflowing wit are now the most vivid part of his reputation, and doubtless do less than justice to his piety, ability, and learning." With such an es- timate of Doctor Byles we partly but not wholly agree. That his intellectual gifts can properly be called wayward and ec- centric we do not believe, but it is per- fectly true that this brilliant descendant of Increase Mather is remembered in Bos- ton chiefly as an irrepressible humourist. In his interesting compilation of historical facts and personal reminiscences concern- ing ancient Boston, "Dealings with the Dead," MF Lucius Manlius Sargent says : "D'- Byles has been wafted down the stream of time, to distant ages, as it were, upp" a feather"; what he could never ii DOCTOR BYLES'S HUMOUR 119 have accomplished of repuuUon "by his grave discourses and elaborate poetical labours, he certainly and signally achieved by his never-to-be-forgotten quips and cnaka and bon mots and puns and funny Myings and comical doings."" " His wit " aays Doctor Nathaniel Emmons, "bubblJd up as naturally as spring water, and his witUcisms kept Boston on a broad grin for all of half a century. You heard them repeated on the streets and at the most select dinner parties. They entitled him to a monument, because they promoted the public health by aiding public diges- tion." "The first story I ever heard of Mather Byles." says M; Sargent, "was related at my father's table by the Rev Dr Belknap in 1797. It was upon a Satur- day, and Di John Clarke and some other genUemen. among whom I well remem- ber Major General Lincoln, ate their salt fish there that day. I was a boy, and I remember their mirth when after fj 1 t , I: ii : i 11 ! LI ! \ \ m THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES Dt Belknap had told the itoiy I Mid to our minister Dt Clark, near whom I was eating my apple, that I wished he were half as funny a minister as D^ Byles." The reputation for wit Doctor Byles had in Boston is very well shown by Thomas Morton Jones's well-known doggerel ballad on the Boston ministers of his time which was printed in 1774. Describing with coarse humour all the Boston ministers, Chauncy, Pemberton, Eliot, Cooper, Sam- uel Mather, and the rest, Jones says of Doctor Byles : "There's punning Byles invokes our smiles, A man of stately parts ; He visits folks to crack his jokes, llVluch never mend their hearts. "With strutting gait, and wig so great. He walks along the streets, And throws out wit, or what's like it. To every one he meets." " From such notices as these by Doctor Byles's contemporaries or the people who DOCTOR BYLES'S HUMOUR 181 lived nearer hU time than we, and from the examples of the doctor's wit that have come down to us, we arc obliged to admit that his humour rarely if ever rises above the plane of puns or amusing jokes or sharp repartee, but such as his humour was it seems to have kept Boston laugh- ing for more than a generation, and his scattered puns and smart sayings that have survived to our time not one of us who has any sense of humour can help finding more or less entertaining still. )Vhile he lived people met him as Greville says people always met Sydney Smith, prepared to laugh and if need be go into fits of merriment over his puns and quips." Doctor Byles could be fiercely satirical but his satire nad none of the sustained dignity and apparent gravity of Swift's, he could set people laughing, but his sallies always came short of the droll fun of that prince of social humourists, himself also a clergy- man, Sydney Smith. Occasionally Doctor 182 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES Byles's jokea were tinged with bitter per- sonal feeling, and it seems more than probable that his impopularity at the Ilevolution was not a little the result of cutting jibes in which he had indulged at the expense of gentlemen who in the strife between England and the Colonies had espoused the American cause. Where Doctor Byles's keen sense of humour and unusual power of wit came from it is impossible to say, he could hardly have inherited it from the serious Mathers or Cottons from whom he was descended. It was much more likely an endowment from the Byleses, but of the peculiar mental qualities of this little known Eng- lish family we have no knowledge at all. It is said that on a certain Sunday morn- ing the learned Doctor Thomas Prince was to preach for Doctor Byles, but at the hour of service had not arrived. Glancing with perturbed mind, no doubt, at the entrance to the pulpit from time DOCTOR BYLES'S HUMOUR 12S to time, the doctor began the service. But Doctor Prince, who had possibly entirely forgotten the appointment, failed to come, and Doctor Byles was obliged to preach himself. The text he announced, it is said, was "Put not your trust in princes !" The drawings for King's Chapel pre- sented by the architect, Peter Harrison of Newport, Rhode Island, and finally ac- cepted, s} owed two tiers of windows, the lower windows dot much more than half the size of the upper ; when Doctor Byles saw the drawings he exclaimed, referring to the lower tier of windows: "I have heard of the canons of the Church, but I never saw the port-holes before." ** In 1773, the Mastachusetts Gazette in- forms us, the town authorities purchased for Boston from England two or three hundred street lamps. The afternoon of the day they arrived a gossipy woman who had adopted so-called "New Light" 124 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES opinions, and was gifted with a disagree- able whining voice, called on Doctor Byles. Her conversation irritated and bored the doctor and at last in desperation he said : "Have you heard the news ?" "No, what news. Doctor Byles?" she asked eagerly. "Why, Madam," said the parson, "three hundred new lights have this morning arrived from London, and the selectmen have wisely ordered them put in irons." "You don't say so !" said the woman, whereupon she hurried away to see who else had heard the distressing news.^ A gentleman whom Doctor Byles knew very kindly sent the doctor a barrel of fine oysters. Meeting the donor's wife on the street an hour or two after the oysters came. Doctor Byles said to her: "Madam, your husband has treated me this morning in a most Billingsgate man- ner!" and so left her. The woman, who was of a nervous temperament, went home in distress, and when her husband came Sill DOCTOR BYLES'S HUMOUR 1«« to dinner told him what Doctor Byles had said. The man, it is recorded, was so annoyed at the doctor's folly that he promptly cut his acquaintance. A poor chap in agony with the tooth- ache asked Doctor Byles where he should go to have his tooth drawn. The Doctor directed iuia to a certain lonely house on the southwest side of Beacon Hill, where he told him he would find a person who would "draw it." The man went, and found, not a dentist, but John Singleton Copley, the painter. "This is a poor joke for Doctor Byles," said Copley. "I do not think my drawing your tooth would ease the pain very much." A candidate for local fame once an- nounced to the public that he would fly from the steeple of the North Church. He had already mounted the steeple, and was clapping his artificial wings to the delight of the crowd below, when Doctor Byles happened along. "What has this 126 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES \ik crowd gathered for?" said the reverend wit. "We have come, sir," said some one, "to see a man fly." "Poh ! Poh !" said the doctor moving away, "I have seen a horse fly." One day a parishioner called and foimd the minister diligently nailing list on his doors to keep the cold out. The parishioner humorously said: "The wind bloweth where it listeth. Doctor Byles." "Yes," answered the doctor quickly, "and man listeth wheresoever the wind bloweth." A certain M' Thomas Hill had a dis- tillery "at the comer of Essex and South Streets, not far from where Doctor Bel- knap's house stood, in Lincoln Street." One day Doctor Byles saw Hill in the Street and asked him, probably much to the man's surprise: "Do you still?" "That is my business," said the distiller. "Then," said the doctor, "I wish you would come with me and still my wife." What had happened to disturb the serenity DOCTOR BYLES'S HUMOUR 1«7 of the Byles household, or whether this incident occurred in the time of the first or the second M? Byles we are not informed. One night after M? Rebecca Byles and her daughters had gone to bed they were awakened by the doctor's calling loudly: "Thieves! Thieves 1" Hastily springing from their beds the women rushed to Doctor Byles's study, but found the doctor calmly writing or reading at his desk. "Where? Where?" asked the women excitedly. "There !" said the doctor, pointing quietly to the candles. Another veiy cold night the Miss Byleses were roused from their comfortable beds by their father calling to them to get up. When they came to his study he said: "I merely wanted to know whether you lay warm in bed." The Byles servant at one time was a very stupid and literal Irish girl, probably not long from the Emerald Isle. One 1«8 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES day with a look of affright and in ap- parent agitation Doctor Byles said to her: "Go upstairs and tell your mistress that Doctor Byles has put an end to him- self." The girl ran hurriedly to M? Byles and in a terrified voice gave the doctor's message. To the study quickly came M"!" Byles and her daughters. The vision that greeted them was of the rever- end gentleman waltzing about the room with part of a cow's tail he had somewhere picked up tied to his coat behind. One morning when M? Byles was iron- ing, some women visitors to the doctor were announced. M? Byles did not wish to be seen at the ironing table and allowed herself to be pushed by her husband into a closet. After a little general conversa- tion the callers expressed a wish to see the doctor's curiosities. The parson took them about the house and finally came to the closet. "My greatest curiosity I have kept till the last," he said, then DOCTOR BYLES'S HUMOUR 1S9 opening the door he presented to them his greatly embarrassed wife. The road opposite the Byles house for several seasons was almost impassable in wet weather because of the deep, soft mud. Doctor Byles repeatedly com- plained to the selectmen of the nuisance and asked to have the road mended, but without avail. One day he looked out and saw two of the city fathers standing in the mud trying to extricate from its depths the wheels of the chaise in which they had been driving. Going out of his house Doctor Byles bowed respect- fully to the selectmen and said: "Gentle- men, I have frequently represented that slough to you as a nuisance, but hitherto without any result, I am glad to see you stirring in the matter at last." One Fast Day Doctor Byles and some brother minister out of town were to ex- change pulpits. On the appointed morn- ing both ministers started on horseback, 180 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES one away from the town, the other towards it. When they came within sight of each other Doctor Byles spurred his horse into a gallop and passed the country minister at full speed. "Why so fast, brother Byles?" called out the rural parson, halting. Looking back over his shoulder Doctor Byles answered : "It's fast day I" We have seen how close the friendship between Doctor Byles and Governor Bel- cher was. A further illustration of this is to be found in a stoiy told by Doctor Jeremy Belknap, which appears in a manu- script in Belknap's handwriting, in the library of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and more briefly in print in the Massachusetts Historical Society's Col- lections.*' The story shows that if Doctor Byles could indulge in humour at the expense of others and occasionally play unwelcome practical jokes, in spite of gubernatorial dignity Governor Belcher could do the same. At some time during DOCTOR BYLES'S HUMOUR 181 hia governorship of Massachusetts, M! Belcher undertook a voyage to the east- ward (it is said to Nova Scotia) to "treat" with the Indians. The governor asked Doctor Byles to go with him, but the minister felt obliged to refuse. Governor Belcher wanted his friend's company and determined to have it, so he got the chap- lain at Castle William, in the harbour, to exchange pulpits with Doctor Byles on the following Sunday, on the afternoon of which day he had arranged to start. The Governor was going in the war-ship Scarborough, Captain Durell, and on Sun- day morning he had the ship anchor near the castle. In the afternoon he invited Doctor Byles to come aboard to drink tea, and while Byles was there the captain, as directed, weighed anchor, and the min- ister was obliged to take the voyage. But the story does not end here. When another Sunday came, the weather having been stormy. Doctor Byles found himself 182 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES ■till at lea. Of course he miut have religious service on board and he pre- pared to do so. Having taken two ser- mons with him to Castle William he was well equipped for preaching, but nobody on board had a hymn-book. Accordingly, the minister himself wrote a hymn, and it is one that has great dignity, shows a fine imagination, and is indeed quite above mediocrity. " Great God I Thy works our wonder raise. To Thee our swelling notes belong ; TVUle skies and winds and roCks and seas Around shall echo to our song. "Thy power produced this mighty frame. Aloud to Thee the tempests roar ; Or softer breezes tune Thy name Gently along the Shelly shore. "Roimd Thee the scaly nation roves. Thy opening hand their joys bestow ; Through all the blushing coral groves. These silent gay retreats below. DOCTOR BYLES'S HUMOUR 188 "See the broad tun fonake the ikiei, Glow on the wave*, and downward ilide ; ^tton I heaven opens oU it* eye*, And ttarbeama tremble in the tide. "Each variou* icene, or day or night. Lord, poinU to Thee our raviih'd *oul ; Thy glories fix ou^- whole delight, So the touch'd needle courts the pole." That the composition of this fine hymn of the sea should have exposed Doctor Byles to subsequent satire seems at least unfair, but as London in the eighteenth century had fierce rivalries that led liter- ary men into coarse satirical rhyming against each other, so Boston had its doggerel rhymesters who occasionally did what they could to turn into ridicule the literary compositions and smirch if they were able the reputations of other writers whom they disliked. As a humourist Doc- tor Byles had one acknowledged rival in Boston, who was almost exactly of his own age, and who had graduated at Har- 184 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES vard a year later than he, a merchant (the doctor sayi "distiller") named Joseph Green. Although not a pro- fessional man. Green too dabbled a good deal in literature, writing in the news- papers and occasionally venturing into print in a pamphlet. His writing was in both prose and verse, his poetry being frequently humorous and always read- able because of the smoothness with which his nimibers flowed. Towards Doctor Byles he evidently had none too amiable a feeling and he was never averse to hold- ing the minister of HoUis Street up to ridicule by parodying his poetry and in other conspicuous ways. It is said that the doctor's friend Governor Belcher was also frequently a target for Green's shots, and that this o£Bcial stood a good deal in awe of Green.*' When the fact of Doctor Byles's writing the hymn at sea became currently known in Boston, Green saw fit to ridicule both the episode DOCTOR BYLES'S HUMOUR IM and the hymn iUelf. The hymn, aa we have seen, waa ■omewi.^t minutely de- scriptive, and this feature of it especially came in for Green's satire, in ordr- to treat properly with the IxJa .• Cxn-^t-ri},, Belcher was supposed t.> uvi litea with him on the voyage a potc*',.' qjani ly pf rum, and this fact si j Gn. :. (iocs xnt fail to make trenchant allu<^ ou >o in his parody. The satire reads : "In David's Ftahns an oversight Byles found one morning o'er his tea. Alas, why did not David write A proper ptabn to sing at sea? "Awhile he paused and stroked his Muse^* Then, taking up his tuneful pen. Wrote a few stanzas for the use Of his seafaring brethren. "The task perform'd, the Bard content, Well chosen was each flowing word ; On a short voyage himself he went. To hear it read and sung on board. ■'■■:. ]4 I IS6 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES "What extanes of joy appear, VHiat pleamires and unknown delights Thrilled the vain poet's soul to hear Others repeat the things he writes. "Most aged Christians do aver. Their credit sure we may rely on. In former times, that after prayer They used to sing a song of Zion ; "Our modem parson, having pray'd. Unless loud fame our faith beguiles. Sat down, took out his book, and said, 'Let's sing a song of Mather Byles.' "As soon as he began to read. Their heads the assembly downward hung. But he with boldness did pro'jeed. And thus he read, and thus they sung, — "Tra 151* Pbalm "l^th vast amazement we survey The wonders of the deep. Where mackrel swim, and porpoise play, And crabs and lobsters creep. "Fish of all kinds inhabit there. And throng the dark abode ; ' DOCTOR BYLES'S HUMOUR 187 There haddidc, hake, and flounden are. And eek and perch and cod. "From raging winds and tempeats free. So smooth that as you pass. The shining surface seems to be A piece of Bristol glass. 'But when the winds tempestuous rise. And foaming billows swell. The vessel mounts above the skies. Then lower sinks than hell. "Our brains the tottering motion feel. And quickly we become Giddy as new-dropt calves, and reel Like Indians drunk toith rum. "What praises then are due that we Thus far have safely got, AmariKoggin tribe to see. And tribe of Penobscot." Before long Doctor Byles retorted on Green with a parody on Green's parody, which Doctor Belknap says distinctly turned the laugh on Green. Doctor Byles's parody in one form (for there is 188 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES another slightly different version) is as follows : "In ByWs hymns an oversight Green spy'd as once he smok'd his Chunk ; Alas I the Byles should never write A song to sing when folks are drunk. [Doctor Belknap in a letter to Ebenezer Hazard quotes the stanza from memory thus: "In Byles's hynms an oversight Green spy'd one evening o'er his junk ; Alas I why did not Byles indite A song to sing when folks are drunk."] "Thus in the chimney, on his block. Ambition fir'd the 'stiller's pate. He summoned all his httle stock. The poet's volume to complete. "Long paus'd the lout, and scratch'd his skull. Then took his chalk (he own'd no pen), And scrawl'd some doggrel, for the whole Of his flip-drinking brethren. "The task perform'd — not to content — 111 chosen was each Grub-street word ; DOCTOR BYLES'S HUMOUR 1S9 Strait to the tavern club he went. To hear it bellow'd round the boaid. "Unknown delights his ears explore, Inur'd to midnight caterwauls. To hear his hoarse companions roar. The horrid thing his dulness scrawls. "The club, if fame we may rely on, Conven'd, to hear the drunken catch, At the three horae-shoes or red lion Tippling began the night's debauch. "The little 'stiller took the pint Still fraught with flip and songs obscene. And, after a long stutt'ring, meant To sing a song of Josy Green. "Soon as with stam'ring tongue, to read The drunken ballad, he began. The club from clam'ring strait recede, To hear him roar the thing alone. "SONO 'Wth vast amazement we survey The can so broad, so broad, so deep. Where punch succeeds to strong gangree. Both to delightful flip. 140 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES "Drink of all amadu, inhabit here> And throng the dark abode ; Here's rum, and sugar, and small beer. In a continual flood. "From cruel thoughts and conscience fre«^ From dram to dram we pass ; Our cheeks, like apples, ruddy be; Our eyeballs look like glass. "At once, like furies, up i0e rise. Our raging passions swell ; We hurl the bottle to the skies. But why we cannot tell. "Our brains a tott'ring motion fed. And quickly we become Sick, as with negro steaks, and red like Indians drunk with rum. "Thus lost in deep tranquillity, We sit, supine and sot. Till we two moons distinctly see — Come give us 'tother pot." The phrase "negro steaks," in the last stanza but one of this parody, is an allusion to an unsavoury story at that time current DOCTOR BYLES'S HUMOUR 141 in Boston that on one occasion some prac- tical joker had imposed steaks cut from a dead negro, instead of beef, on the convivial club to which Green belonged." At some period in his ministerial career Doctor Byles had his study painted brown. In explanation of the rather dull colour he is said to have told people that he wanted to be able on occasion to say he was in "a brown study." On a certain day he went, perhaps somewhat reluc- tantly, to see a parishioner who was con- valescing from smallpox. As he entered the patient's room he piously uttered what the man took to be the familiar ecclesiastical salutation, "Pax te cuml" Doctor Byles's actual salutation, however, was, "Pox take 'em!" CHAPTER vm DiBMIBSAL FBOM HiS CHmElCH Thboughotjt New England from the earliest times, even after the government had ceased to be strictly a theocracy, church and state were so closely united that the meeting-houses were the chief places where the fires of independence in communities were kept aflame. When the war of the Revolution was in its early stages, of the various religious meeting- houses of Boston besides the Anglican churches, there was probably only the HoUis Street Church where more or less fierce denunciations of England were not heard from the pulpits and where the congregations were not strongly urged to resistance against her oppressions. The Old South Church, as is well known, was DISMISSAL FROM CHUBCH 143 the scene of some of the most stirring events of the struggle, and when the siege of Boston began, its minister like all the other Congregational ministers of the town with the exception of Doctor Andi«w Eliot of the New North Church. D«K5tor Samuel Mather, and Doctor Mather Byles, at once took refuge, with a laige part of their parishioners, in the country near. Of these ministers of Boston, and indeed of the whole body of Congregational min- isters in New England, Doctor Byles alone sympathized with the crown. In the "Memorial Histoiy of Boston" the writer on the Boston "Pulpit of the Revolution" says: Doctor Byles "tried, with un- doubted sincerity, to avoid politics in the pulpit, but his opinions were too notorious, and his sharp tongue was too free, to make his position long an agree- able one either to his people or to him- self." M? Ephraim Eliot in his historical notices of the New North Church says that 144 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES Doctor Andrew Eliot's remaining in town during the siege was enforced probably by the selectmen, so that Congregational wor- ship bLjuld be maintained; Doctor Byles, he say£ 'being in the Tory interest was neglec-e ! by most of the inhabitants, althoL; h he performed service for some time in one of the central meeting-houses." That Doctor Byles persistently refused to preach on political subjects, when all the other ministers of his denomination were doing so, seems to have produced great dissatisfaction among his people. In answer to their queries as to why he avoided politics in his sermons he is re- ported to have sententiously said: "I have thrown up four breastworks, behind which I have entrenched myself, neither of which can be forced. In the first place, I do not understand politics ; in the second place, you all do, every man and mother's son of you; in the third place, you have politics all the week, — pray let one day DISMISSAL FROM CHURCH 144 out of seven be devoted to religion; and in the fourth place, I am engaged in a work of infinitely greater importance. Give me any subject to preach upon of more consequence than the truths I bring to you, and I will preach upon it the next Sabbat! " For the unique position Doc- tor Byles held among his brethren of the Congregational clergy, in the great political struggle of the country through which he lived, it is on the whole not difficult to find the reasons. No Puritan minister in New England in his time, probably, had lived in so close friendly relations with the lead- ing government officials and their families as he, and his sympathies socially were profoundly with the more conservative class. In the second place he was a poet and the vulgar clash of political parties and the details of political administration, as with many such men, were imcongenial to him, and he preferred as much as pos- sible to let them alone. T IM THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES So far M we know. Doctor Bylea hai nowhere left on record in any detail his views on the several questions that were so fiercely in dispute in the Revolutionary struggle, but he undoubtedly had views on them all, and at times expressed them, and his views were the common ones of the Tory party, with whom his sym- pathies were. "In March, 1770," says his friend Doctor Nathaniel Emmons. "I stood with Parson Byles on the comer of what are now School and Washington streets and watched the funeral procession of Crispus Attucks, that half Indian, half negro, and altogether rowdy, who should have been strangled long before he was bom. There were all of three thousand in the procession, the most of them drawn from the slums of Boston; and as they went by the Parson turned to me and said — 'They call me a brainless Tory; but ttili lae, my young friend, which is better, to be ruled by one tyrant three DISMISSAL FROM CHURCH 147 thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants not a mile away?'" Doctor Em- mons is further quoted as saying to the friend to whom he related this incident : " "I tell you, my boy, there was just as much humbug m politics seventy years ago as there is to-day; and throwing out Sam and John Adams and John Hancock, and some few other leaders, the majority of our New England patriots were a sorry set." In the twenty-seventh volume of the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, in a note on the May family of Boston a writer says: "Doctor Byles, as is well known, was a steady opponent of the patriotic movement, of which Boston was the headquarters, and in all ways strove to ridicule it and its principal supporters. As he gave verj' free ex- pression to his feelings, his opponents, of course, were not backward in their censures of him." The statement that Miaocorv aisoiuiioN nsi cha>t (*NSI and ISO TESt CHAKT No. 2) tn t.l ■ 23 1^ A S /^PLIED IIVHGE I.-C 16S3 Cast Wain Strxl RochMltr, N** York 1*609 U&* (716) *a2 - 0300 - Phone (716) 288- 5989 - Fa. 148 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES wlule Byles refused to discuss politics in the pulpit he gave free rein to his powers of sarcasm in opposition to the Patriot cause is undoubtedly true, for while one of his deacons, Mr. Benjamin Church, sympathized with the Tories and upheld his minister, most of the Hollis Street congregation were extremely bitter against him, the May family, !^t least, withdrawing from the Hollis Street Church and uniting with the Old South. When the royal troops invested Boston most of Doctor Byles's congregation that could get away hurried out of the town, but the doctor and his family stayed, and his sUying was one of the charges brought against him when his congregation at last returned. In this day of dear judgment on the issues at stake in the Revolution, the bitterness Doctor Byles felt towards the Patriots in Boston is not hard to explain. Like his friend Copley he had no doubt long foreseen that unless England changed DISMISSAL FROM CHURCH 149 her policy towards the colonies, a revolt was ineviteble, but when the crisis came he saw so much fanaticism mingled with the true spirit of independence that like many another man of patriotic but con- servative views he was disgusted with the outbreaks of feeling he witnessed and contemptuous of the methods by which many of his fellow-citizens sought to redress their wrongs. We have spoken of his probable intimacy with Eari Percy, "I am sorry to say." wrote Percy to his father, in 1774, "that no body of men in this Province are so extremely injurious to the peace and tranquillity of it as the clergy. They preach up sedition openly from their pulpits. Nay, some of them have gone so far as absolutely to refuse the sacrament to the communicants till they have signed a paper of the most seditious kind, which they have denomi- nated the Solemn League and Covenant." To Henry Reveley, Esq., of Peckham, 160 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES Surrey, he writes: "The people here are a set of sly, artful, hypocritical rascals, cruel and cowards. I must cwn I can- not but despise them completely." "This day, five years are completed," writes Judge Samuel Curwen in his journal in 1780, "since I abandoned my house, es- tate, and effects and fronds. God only knows whether I shall cr be restored to them, or they to me. Party rage, like jealousy and superstition is cruel as the grave; that moderation is a crime, . . . many good virtuous, and peaceable persons now suffering banishment from America are the wretched proofs and. in- stances." "Would to God," he earlier writes, "this ill-judged, unnatural quarrel were ended." While the British were in possession of the town Doctor Byles and his family were evidently on terms of dose friendship with the leading commanders of the troops, and M' Harold Murdock is probably DISMISSAL FROM CHURCH 161 quite right in imagining Doctor Byles to have been an occasional guest at Eari Percy's dinner table, in the house this charming young nobleman had rented at the head of Winter Street, on the edge of the Common. But Byles's intimacy with British o£Scers did not prevent the quarter- ing of troops in the Hollis Street meeting- house, as in the Old South and the Brattle Street Churches, and when Doctor Byles's congregation came back they found to their great indignation the pews taken down and stored in the gallery, to be used as fuel should necessity require, a box stove set up in the church, the pipe of which went perpendicularly through the roof, and the floor still littered with straw, which had no doubt served the soldiers as beds. Collecting their forces, the leaders of the congregation accordingly resolved without further delay to rid them- selves of their unpatriotic pastor, whose voice they were stoutly resolved never 158 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES to hear in their pulpit again. The regular way of dismissing him would have been to call an advisory council of sister churches to review his conduct and coun- sel the church how to act. But instead of doing this they took matters promptly into their own hands and prepared to deal with the minister by themselves. In pursuance of this resolve, they gave public notice that on the 9*?" of August (1776) the church would meet Doctor Byles and give him a chance to answer the charges they had to prefer against him. When the day came the male mem- bers of the church seated themseivres ui one of the galleries, and waited for the doctor to appear. Presently he entered, dressed in gown and bands, on his head a full bush wig that had been recently powdered, surmounted by a large three- cornered hat. With due solenmity of bearing and with a long and measured tread Byles walked to the pulpit and fl 0u/£;}y . uf,^k . 4^ p^-jr ^^ Cf/ifi^ '^-P^^ £^,r^,ir-^ ^^^J\I^ ' DISMISSAL FROM CHURCH 15S ascended the stairs. Hanging his hat on a peg, he seated himself, and after a few moments silence, "with a portentous air" turned towards the gallery where his ac- cusers sat. Looking at them sternly he called out: "If ye have aught to com- municate, say on !" After a moment of terrible stillness, a small, weak-voiced dea- con arose, and unfolding a paper began feebly to read. "The church of Christ in HoUis Street" — he said. "Louder!" cried the angry Doctor Byles. Again the little deacon, trying to raise his voice, began: "The church of Christ in HoUis Street" — But again the doctor's sten- torian voice thimdered out "Louder !" A third time the deacon essayed to read, when once more he was interrupted with "Louder ! Louder, I say !" The deacon now, trembling at the minister's wrath, strained his voice to the utmost and read the specifications of unministerial and un- patriotic conduct on the doctor's part 154 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES which he and his fellow-memben had laboriously drawn up. When the third or fourth charge had been read Doctor Byles rose and shouted at the top of his voice : " 'Tis false I 'Tis false 1 'Tis false I and the Church of Christ in Hollis Street knows that 'tis false !" whereupon he seized his hat, planted it firmly on his head, and in fierce indignation dramatically moved out of the church, never while he lived to enter its doors again. The specific charges made against Doc- tor Byles by his people were, that he had stayed in town during the siege; that he had "pray'd in publick that America might submitt to Grate Brittain, or words to the same purpose"; that he "associated and spent a considerable part of his time with the officers of the British army, having them frequently at his house and lending them his glasses for the purpose of seeing the works erecting out of town for our Defense"; that he treated the DISMISSAL FROM CHURCH IM public calamity with "a grate cegree of liteness and Indi£Ference, saying when hia townspeople left their houses that a better sort of ptople would take their place, or words to that purpose " ; and that " he fre- quently met on Lord's days, before and after service, with a number of our In- veterate Enemies, at a certain place ir King Street called Tory Hall." One week later than the doctor's dramatic arraign- ment in the meeting-house the church again met and voted "that the Rev^ Doctor Mather Byles, having by his con- duct put an end to his usefulness as a Publick preacher amongst us. Be and hereby is, dismissed from his Fasteral charge." " Of the general truth of these accusations of the church against Doctor Byles we suppose there can be no doubt. Precisely what his feelings were, or indeed the feel- ings of many of his fellow ^ories, as they witnessed for years previous to the Revolu- ! !•; IM THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES tion the growing friction between the royal governors and the general court, the contest of the wriU of auistance, the riotous outbursts against the SUmp Act, the throwing of the tea into the harbour, the fights along the road between Concord and Lexington, the battle of Bunker Hill. Washington's taking command of the army at Cambridge and his memorable seizure of Dorchester Heights, we are left to imagme, but while he was far too intelli- gent and patriotic not to have been stirred by his country's grievances, Byles no doubt, with many others, felt that it was a far smaller evil to submit temporarily to British oppression, caused by the stupid obstinacy and want of statesmanlike knowledge of ministers, than violently to cast off allegiance to the British flag, and whatever influence he had as a clergy- man and a private gentleman he had nat- urally thrown wholly on the unpopular side. Thnt the British oflScers of highest DISMISSAL FROM CHURCH 157 rank in comnumd of the forces were fre- quently entertained at his house during the siege was undoubtedly true, it is even said that on this account, and because of the detestation in which he was gener- ally held for his political principles, the blmds in hu house had to be kept tightly closed in the evenings during the latter part of the siege, lest the lights shining out should make the house a target tr unfriendly shots from the soldiers en- camped on Dorchester Heights. Although the bitterest feeling against Doctor Byles existed in the minds of his fellow-ministers when they returned to their churches, it is evident that some of them entirely disapproved of the course the HoUis Street Church had taken in not seeking advice from other churches in dissolving the relations between ihem and their pastor. "It was the greatest in- jury to the ministry that ever was done when this church proceeded to dismiss 158 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES Df Byles without any kind of advice from an Ecclesiastical Council," writes young Rev. John Eliot from Boston to his friend Rev. Jeremy Belknap at Dover, June ITV", 1777. A little earlier Mr Eliot says: "Dr Byles's church is supplied by Mr. Bradford, a young gentleman, a friend of mine, a new beginner. The Doctor struts about town in the luxuriance of his self- sufficiency, looking as if he despised all ma nkin d. He never attends any meet- ing. How he doth for a maintenance, nobody knows besides him, and the only account he can give us is, 'That he doubles and trebles his money.' He is a virulent Tory, and destitute of all prudence. . . . Notwithstanding I despise Dr Byles as much as a man can hold another, yet I think y? proceedings of that church with him were irregular and unwarrantable, and hath held up a precedent for a practise that will cause y* ruin of our ecclesiastical constitution, weaken y* hands of y* minis- DISMISSAL FROM CHURCH 169 try, and lay such discouragement before candidates as will prevent their settling, and in a few years the harvest must be almost destitute of labourers. When the church at Bolton made this innovation IH Chauncy was so angiy that he would have refused holding communion with the members; yet now he justifies and was the cause of this church at Boston pro- ceeding in the way they have done. He says, 'Byles is not fit for a preacher.' So say I, but I would have had a Council, and I am certain any Coimcil would have given him his quietus." " The reason given by M^ Ephraim Eliot for Doctor Byles's summary dismissal from his pastorate is that he not only had of- fended his people by his Tory principles, but had lost their respect by indulging "in a natural vein of low wit and ridicu- lous punning." " If the latter charge b true we must accept it largely on M' Eliot's statement: we believe it has no 160 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES explicit confirmation in any other pub- lished writing. Of the abrupt termina- tion of Doctor Byles's ministry. Rev. George Leonard Chaney. a late pastor of the HoUis Street Church says : "Although ordinarily Df Byles's pastorate would have lasted till his death, at that day politics and religion were so much one that unfaithfulness to civil liberty was regarded by these patriots as an unpar- donable offence against the Church. It was on this ground that the tie between pastor and people was broken, a tie which at that time was as binding as that which wedded man and wife." CHAPTER IX Tbial before the Town After his dismissal from his pastorate a further trial and condemnation for his Tory principles awaited Doctor Byles from the Boston civil authorities. In the Records of the Committee of Correspond- ence and Safety of August, 1776, we find : "Information having been given this Com- mittee of a number of Persons who had heard Doctor Byles express himself very unfriendly to this Country, Mr Thomas was directed to require their attendance. A number of Persons appeared tnJ were examined as to what they knew relative to Doctor Byles." In a meeting held on the 17* of May, 1777. the Boston select- men in pursuance of a law that had lately been passed presented a list of names of 162 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES persons belonging to the town who had been endeavouring, as it was charged, "since the IQf" of April, 1775, to counter- act the united struggles of this and the neighbouring state," and of these offend- ing names Doctor Byles's stood second. At a special Sessions of the Peace held on the second of June, Byles was tried and convicted of disloyalty to the state and was ordered to be confined on board a guard ship or otherwise secured, until he could be sent either to the West Indies or to Europe. In the Massachusetts His- torical Society Collections is printed an extract from the Boston Gazette of June 9, 1777," which says: "At the special Ses- sions of the Peace held here on Monday last came on the trial of Mather Byles, late minister of the Gospel in this town, charged with being an enemy to the United States; when after a fair and candid ex- amination of evidence the jury returned their verdict, that he, Mather Byles, ia TRIAL BEFORE THE TOWN 168 and has been smce the lOV" of April, 1775, inimically disposed towards this and the other United States, and that his residence in this State is dangerous to the public peace and safety. He was then delivered into the custody of a proper officer, who conducted him to the Honourable the Board of War, there to be dealt with agreeable to a late act of this State, for such persons made and provided." William Tudor in his "Life of James Otis" says of Doctor Byles's trial: "On being brought before the Board of War he was treated with respect, and he was ordered to be confined to his own house for a short time." "As there seems to have been nothing absolutely treasonable in his conduct," he rather naively pro- ceeds, "it may be doubted whether he would have experienced any inconvenience on account of his political sentiments if he had not provoked enmity in other ways. He possessed in a remarkable degree a 164 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES ready and powerful wit, a quality which commonly excites more envy than good will, and unless accompanied with great discretion is often an unfortunate gift. He sor;etimes exerted this talent where good nature would have refrained, and left a lasting sting by a transient jest." In a volume of manuscript records in the Massachusetts State Archives pertaining to the Royalists in the Revolution, is to be found the following warrant issued by the Court of Sessions to the sheriff for Doctor Byles's arrest and transportation: "Whereas Mather Byles of Boston in S? county, clerk, stands convicted at Boston afores' on the second Day of June a.d. 1777 as a person who hath been from the nineteenth day of April a.d. 1775, & now is so inimically disposed towards this & the other United States of America that his further residence in this State is dangerous to the public peace and safety. You are therefore in the name of the gov- TRIAL BEFORE THE TOWN 165 eminent & people of Mass^ Bay in New England hereby directed immediately to deliver the s? Mather to the board of war of the State to be by them put on board a guard ship or otherwise secured until they can transport s^ Mather Byles ofif the continent to some part of the West Indies or Europe agreeable to a late law of 8^ State. Given under our hands and seals at Boston afores^ the second day of June in the year of the Lord 1777, John Hill Sahl. Peuberton Joseph Gbeenleaf Joseph Gabdner The warrant is endorsed on the back: "Warrant to deliver Mather Byles to the Board of War June 8? 1777." Under date of June 18, 1777, the Rev. Doctor Ezra Stiles in his diary says: "The Rev? M' Clark, Episc» Minister in Dedham, was last week adjudged by a Jury an enemy to his Country, and sent 166 THE FAMOUS liATHER BYLES on board the Guard Ship at Boston. So one Episc* and one Presb. Minister (Dr. Byles) formally tried and condemned ac- cord* to act of Mast Assembly." " What influence may have prevented the Boston authorities' carrying out the rigorous sentence they had imposed on Doctor Byles we are nowhere certainly told. It has been said in print that the doctor flatly told' the selectmen that he would not leave the town, it has also been stated that in their final dealing with the old minister the authorities considered his age, which at this time was a little over seventy. It may be, even, though it hardly seems likely, that some one or more of the other Boston ministers inter- ceded to have his sentence remitted, at any rate he was not placed on the guard ship but was confined to his own house, before which a sentinel was placed to pre- vent his being visited by or having com- munication with any friends he might TRIAL BEFORE THE TOWN 167 still have in the town. For probably two or three months, with a short interval during which the sentinel was removed, the farce of guarding the old Tory was kept up, but at last his absurd imprison- ment came to an end, and he was allowed once more freely to go about the town. In July, 1778, while Doctor Byles was imprisoned in his house the Rev. Jacob Bailey, an Episcopal clergyman, well known to us as "the frontier missionary," came from Pownalborough, Maine, to Bos- ton, on business, and was permitted to visit the old Royalist. Under date of July 23? Mr Bailey writes in his diary: "After breakfast went to visit the famous p Byles. who was detained a prisoner in his own house. He received me, ac- cordmg to his manner, with great freedom, and enterUined me with a variety of puns. He was mightly pleased with the letters I brought him from his son and grand- daughter, and instructed his daughters, a 168 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES 't ! couple of fine young Iwliei, to read them.** I observed that he had a large collection of curiosities, and the best library I had seen in this country. He is a gentleman of learning and great imagination, has an uncommon share of pride, and though agreeable when discoursing upon any sub- ject, yet the perpetua) reaching after puns renders his ordinary conversation rather distasteful to persons of elegance and refinement. He gave me a circumstantial account of his trial wher condemned for transportation. He car^ully preserved his talent for punning through the whole. I recollect one instance: when he was conducted into the apartment where his judges sat with great solemnity, who de- sired him to sit by the fire, as the weather was cold: 'Gentlemen,' said he, 'when I came among you I expected persecution, but I could not think you would have offered me the fire so suddenly.' After looking at several fine prospects, and hear- TRIAL BEFORE THE TOWN 169 ing two or three tunes on the organ by one of his daughters, I took my leave, with an invitation and promise to renew my visit." Of the doctor's trial and his conduct throughout the ordeal, and of the justice of the verdict given against him, young John Eliot, not yet ordained, with char- acteristic bitterness against the old minis- ter, and with the cocksureness of youth writes to Jeremy Belknap: "I will ac- quaint a little about our Bostonian court. The first called to the bar was the mag- nificent Doctor. He had on his large whig [sic], long band, a black coat, &c. He appeared without counsel, and upon the nomination of the g'uiy he objected to one Fallas, commonly called Fellows, be- cause he said he would not be tried by Jeliowt. The evidence was much more in favour of him than against him. All that could be proved was that he is a silly, impertinent, childish person; I should say incoa»i3tent, if his whole conduct 170 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES did not manifest him to be oae conaistent np of absurdity. ... It was to the very great surprise of every one present, as well as to the whole town, that he should be bro't in guilty. Hi« general character has been so despicaL''^ that he seems to have no friends to pity him, tho all allow upon such evidence he o't not be condemned. The women all proclaim a judgment from Heaven as r punishment for his ill treatment of his wives. Ven- geance has at length overtaken him, they say, and his present sufferings will now bring him to reflection, and he will now find that a Righteous Being taketh notice of all unrighteousness among men, and at proper times humbles the most haughty and self-sufficient. The Doctor is still confined to his house, deprived of visitors, to be removed at the pleasure of the Board of War. How are the mighty fallen !" " From Miss Catherine Byles, the doc- tor's youngest daughter, we have an in- TRIAL BEFORE THE TOWN 171 teresting account, written on the thirteenth of October, 1778, of the trial of her father by the church and the town authoritiei. Miu Byles writes: "Upon the first open- ing of the town [after the evacuation], the people among whom my father had offi- ciated for forty-three years had an irregular meeting and desired his attendance ; when a charge of his attachment to government was read, of which, as he never could ob- tain a copy, I am unable to give an exact accoimt. Among others were included his friendly disposition to the British troops, particularly his entertaining them at our house, indulging them with his telescope, &c., his prayers for the King, and for the preservation of the town during the siege. Some time after this a few lines were sent him, informing him that six weeks before (without so much as the advice of any Council) he had been dis- missed from his pastoral charge. Thus they left him without any support, or so 17* THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES much as paying his arrears, so that from the Idf of April, 1775. to this day he has received no assistance from them. They then repaired the church, which had been occupied as a barrack for the British army, and made choice of a new pastor. In May, 1777, at a town-meeting he was mentioned as a person inimical to America ; a warrant was served and bonds given for his appearance the 2°^ of June, for a trial, when as they expressed it, 'after a candid and impartial examination,' he was brought in Guilty, confined to his house and land, and a guard placed to prevent the visits of his friends; and (except the removal of the guard, which was in about two months) in this confinement has he remained ever since; and had it not been for the generous assistance of his benevolent friends he must inevitably have suflFered." " In addition to the somewhat con- temptuous witticisms in the presence of his judges in which Doctor Byles is re- TRIAL BEFORE THE TOWN 17S ported by M^ Bailey and M'. Eliot to have indulged, we have the following stories, handed down by tradition, of his humour while he was suflFering political disgrace. In his trial before the justices of the peace a certain Ebenezer , commonly known as "Ebby" was sum- moned to give evidence. The man was probably giving his testimony in too low a tone for the doctor to hear, when sud- denly the old wit leaning forward, with his hand to his ear called out: "What does that Ebby-dunce say?" "Who is that man in uniform before your house?" once queried some one of the doctor while he was being guarded by a sentinel. "O," said Doctor Byles quickly, "that is my observe-a-Tory !" One warm day during his imprisonment, Byles wanted some cool water and begged the sentinel to go to the well and get some for him. At first the soldier, a simple fellow, re- fused, but on the doctor's telling him -m 174 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES that he himself would keep guard, the man consented to go. Doctor Byles then taking the man's musket put it on his own shoulder, and with a true military air paced up and down before his door till the soldier returned. As we have said. Doctor Byles's guard was for a time withdrawn, then re- placed, and at last removed altogether. Alluding- to this fact; the witty minister is reported to have said: "I have been guarded, re-guarded, and disregarded." General Howe with his troops left Boston on the IT^ of March, 1776, and on the 20^ General Washington's troops came in over the Neck. Colonel Henry Knox, afterward General Knox, who had previously kept a fashionable book-store in Comhill and was extremely well known to Doctor Byles, was in command of the artillery, and he had grown very stout." At some point on their route through the town Doctor Byles was standing on the sidewalk watching the troops and when Knox came along he ex- TRIAL BEFORE TRE TOWN 175 claimed : "I never saw an ox fatter in my life !" When Knox was told of the pun he is said to have remarked that Doctor Byles was "a damned fool." It is recorded that ona before the Revolution, 'he doctor created almost a panic among the British troops by report- ing that on the fourteenth of June forty thousand men would rise up in opposition to them, with the clergy at their head. Doctor Byles's meaning was that the l**!" of June was to be the annual New Eng- land Fast Day, when political sermons would be generally preached and all the grievances of the colonies against England with great warmth be discussed. "We smile," says Rev. George L. Chaney, "at the possibility of finding anything for- midable in a Fast-day congregation, but in that day, in this Province, it meant, in all literalness, an army of two-score thousand men, headed by their clergy, and animated with the dangerous resolu- 'it 176 THE FAMOUS MATHER, BYLES tion to defend their liberties." From the time of the Stamp Act, in 1765, to the period of the Revolution, says the author of "Dealings with the Dead," the cry had been repeated "in every form of phraseology" that Massachusetts' grievances should be redressed. In October, 1768, the British Government sent two Irish regiments, and a detachment of trbops from Halifax to the assistance of Governor Bernard ; " some- thing short of a thousand men, in red coats, with glittering firelocks charged and bayo- nets fixed, marched through the town, with drums beating and fifes playing." Doctor Byles watching the new forces is reported to have said that Massachusetts had sent over to England to obtain a redress of her griev- ances, and that these grievances had re- turned "red-dressed." "True, Sir," said an acquainUnce standing near, "but you have two d's." "To be sure, I have," quickly answered the Doctor, "I had them from Aberdeen in 1765." " CHAPTER X Social Staxding. Friendships The place held by Mather Byles in the social life of Boston in the Provincial period was distincUy an important one. There were people in the community who disliked him. for the air of superiority he seems commonly to have worn, for the combative spirit of the Mathers. wUch he had inherited to a certain degree, for the sometimes far too caustic tone of his humour, and indeed, it is quite evident, for the humour itself, and we more than suspect from the preference he showed in social intercourse for men of po-ition and influence, but there were few, we believe, who would have ventured to question his intellectual superiority, or his right in the caUlogue of locally important men to f 178 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES a place beside the scholarly Doctor Thomas Prince of the Old South, Charies Chauncy, Byles's contemporary through all but the last year of his life, Joseph Sewall, Jonathan Mayhew, or any others of the most eminent preachers and writers of Boston or the lesser New England towns. What estimate the most critical people of his time put on his poetry we do not know, but his poems as a young man in welcome of royal governors, and the accession and death of monarchs, and in commemoration of local men and women who had occupied high official or social stations in the community, must have given him the local distinction of almost a New England poet-laureate. The exact social rank Doctor Byles had in Boston to the time of the Revolu- tion we may without much difficulty and with a good deal of certainty make out. By the time he reached manhood the supremacy of the famous Mather I: n SOCIAL STANDING. FRIENDS 179 dynasty under which he had been born had passed, his grandfather Increase, "the most powerful individual foroe in America" in his day, and his stupendous uncle Cotton, having died within less than five years of each other, the latter in February, 1728, but the prestige that these eminent relatives had for so long enjoyed was not by any means forgotten, and Byles could not have failed in some measure to inherit the distinction the Mathers had earned. As the pastor for over forty years of one of the less influen- tial churches of Boston his ecclesiastical iwsition would not necessarily have en- titled him to the social consideration he was evidently given, but at the outset of his mmisto^. if not earlier, he came into confidential relations with the rich Gov- ernor Belcher, whose niece he soon mar- ned, and his friendly intercourse with royal governors did not cease when Belcher yielded the reins of government to Shirley 180 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES or indeed probably untU G^je's brief, .tormy rule came to an end. A» the Stion drew on he identified inm^l clowly in political sympathy w,Ui the crown official, and rich merchant, and leading lawyers, who for the most part were Tories, and although many of these were staunch supporters "* the A.ghc.n Church and worshippers at King s Chapel, his intercourse with them must necessanly have been exceedingly friendly, and h.s ^M separation from the less »™toc«Uc Patriot Congregational famd.es of the town correspondingly great. „,,,., ... The Boston of Doctor Byles's WeUme. before the B«volution drove its actoowl- edged aristocracy away, was much hke a flourishing English provincial town. In 1760 it had about twenty-five thousand inhabiUnts and was probably the larges . and certainly, from the extent o its for- eign commerce, the amount of capita^ it had accumulated, and the fact that it SOCIAL STANDING. FRIENDS 181 wu the central point and chief city of the most compact population to be found on the American seaboard, the most im- portant town in the new world. It had many wharves from which vessels were constantly plying to other parts of America, the West Indies, Europe, and the Orient, the most noted of these of course being Long Wharf, Imed with ware- houses, from which busy State Street, then King Street, led to near the centre of the town. At the head of this street was the Town House, where the govern- ment in all its branches met, and beneath which some of the well-known merchants had their stores. On the summit of Beacon Hill stood the tall beacon, on cross-timbers, resting on a stone founda- tion and supported by braces. The Common was a huge grassy public field, and the Mall, which led along the eastern side of this historic inclosure, from Park Street to West Street, bordered by lux- 182 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLE8 uriant trees, the first of which were planted between 1788 and 1789, waa the fashion- able promenade. On Tremont, School, Beacon, and Washington streeU were "mansions" of considerable size and ele- gance, whose owners lived luxuriously, some of them indeed in what local his- torians are accustomed to call "princely style." One of the most conspicuous of these mansions was the fine brick house on Tremont Street built by Peter Faneuil, the richest Bostonian of his day, who died in 1742, shortly after having made his gift of Faneuil Hall to the town. There, to the time of his death, Faneuil lived elegantly, with slaves, an abundance of heavy plate, and a cellar stocked with wines. At the time of the Revolution the house was owned by John Vassall of Cambridge, who probably lived in it in winter, but Vassall, an aristocrat and staunch Tory, was proscribed and ban- ished, and the Faneuil house like his other SOCUL STANDING. FRIENDS IBS propertiea wu confiscated ud thereafter wa« occupied by humbler folk. On Beacon Street, a little to the westward of the SUte House grounds, stood Thomas Han- cock's house, one of the "noblest private mansions" in Boston, built b 1787, which in time passed to John Hancock, wuo alone of the merchant-aristocraU of Bos- ton, for one reason or another, did not give his sympathy to the royal cause. The estate that had originally belonged to Rev. John Cotton, on Tremont Street, a little to the north of Peter Fantuil's, was owned at the Revolution by William Vassall, while Richard Clarke, Copley's father-in-law. who with Joshua Winslow, Benjamin Faneuil, Jr.. and Elisha and Thomas Hutchinson, was a consignee of the tea that was thrown into the harbour, lived on School Street, a litUe below where the Parker House stands now. Of other men of prominence. William Phillips lived in the house built by his father-in- 184 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES law, Edward Bromfield, on Beacon Street, almost opposite the Atheneeum; James Bowdoin had a house, which almost rivalled the Bromfield-Phillips house "in solidity and elegance," a little to the west of this house; Gilbert De Blois had a house on Tremont Street, at the comer of Bromfield Street; Judge Robert Auchmuty, Jr., when the Revolution be- gan lived in School Street; Jonathan Snelling lived in Hanover Street; Harri- son Gray lived probably on Washington Street, north of State Street; while Gov- ernor Thomas Hutchinson, and before his death Sir Charles Henry Frankland, as b well known, lived in the extreme North End." One of Doctor Byles's intimate friends was John Singleton Copley, whose estate of eleven acres, the largest at the time in Boston, lay on the southwest side of Beacon Hill, between Beacon and Pinckney, and Walnut and Charles streets. His house of two stories was of wood. SOCIAL STANDING. FKlENDR 185 and possibly not a ver,- handsom ; one, but in it he painted some ot hla most noted portraits, and received visitors, clad magnificently in a crimson velvet, gold- laced suit, his income of three hundred guineas a year enabling him to live in a style befitting his position as Boston's most eminent "court-painter." Another warm friend of Doctor Byles for many years was a Boston bom man, slightly older than himself, who, however, early separated himself from the town of his nativity, and in the great Revolution- ary struggle sympathized with and cham- pioned not the royalist party to which Doctor Byles belonged, but the Patriots, whose actions this ardent upholder of British supremacy in New England cor- dially hated and scorned. This friend of Doctor Byles's was no less a person than Doctor Benjamin Franklin," with whom, although his early associations in Boston were somewhat different from Franklin's, a..!. \y' iS 186 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES as a boy and young man he probably had some little acquaintance. Just how this acquaintance really started we do not know, but it is evident that it began at an early age, and that the two men throughout their whole lives, though their correspondence was infrequent, never quite lost interest in each other's affairs. In an earlier chapter we have spoken of the fierce controversy on the subject of in- oculation between the Mathers and James Franklin, which occurred while Byles was a student at Harvard, and of the con- temptuous way in which the militant editor and the combative young freshman spoke of each other in print. About a year later than this, for a statement he had made in his paper, the New-England Courant, which was regarded as a serious affront to the authorities, James Franklin was imprisoned for a month, and when he was released he was forbidden to print anything that was not first rigidly cen- St it Db. benjamin franklin From an eiigra\'ing by T. B. Welch 11 SOCIAL STANDING. FRIENDS 187 sored by the Secretary of the Province or some one whom he should appoint. For some time previously Benjamin Franklin had been his brother's apprentice, and on James's release from prison the latter made Benjamin nominal editor of the paper. Although Benjamin Franklin to this time had been merely an apprentice, his formal assumption of the editorship of the Courant must now have made him somewhat known in the community, and before he left Boston for Philadelphia, which he did, however, long before his name as editor disappeared from the Courant, it is far from unlikely that Byles and he had occasionally met.** That they somehow became early acquainted is shown by an interesting correspondence between them that from various sources we have recently been able to gather up. From Benjamin Franklin's obscure editorship of the Courant, to the distinguished public position he held in his later years, is in- 188 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES deed a far cry, but from the letters to which we refer it is evident that amidst all the activit'es of his busy life and the great honours that came upon him at home and abroad he never lost his friend- ship or a certain spirit of deference for the grandson of Increase Mather, whom he had known more or less distantly in early life.' In the old letter-book of Doctor Byles's now owned by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, several letters from which we have been permitted to use, we find, undated, the following epistle, which must, however, have been written not long after Byles received his doctorate from the University of Aberdeen: "To THE HoNOtmABLE "D? Benjamin Franklin "London. "Sm; "It was with great Surprize and Pleasure, that I received your Picture from Philadelphia. SOCIAL STANDING. FRIENDS 189 And it u with no little Pride, that when the Picture introduces talk of the Original, a Theme always pleasing to the Lovers of Learning, that I can pronounce 'This was sent me by Df Franklin himself.' "But my Ambition has been strangely aug- mented by a Copy of a Letter from London, written by you to some tmknown Person, in which you Honour me with a Character so far beyond any Merits of mine that I blush to read. It was the utmost wish of one to be known only by the Title of 'Sir Phillip Sidney's Friend.' I can boast, and point to yoiir own Hand to prove it, that I have been at least Jy. Frank- lin't long Acquaintance. I had not the least Apprehension that any Foreign Honours were design'd me, till I was informed of it by a Letter from your side of the Water ; and received this Transcript of your Friendship. My Uttle offer- ing of gratitude will make no perceptible Addition to the Acknowledgements universally paid you by the whole World of literature and Science. "I should be exceedingly glad. Sir, if you could be prevail'd on to furnish me with a catalogue of your Publications. Those of thesi r" i i'i- f ■1* I 190 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES that I am possess'd of are some of the most Agreeable Ornaments of my Library. "Whatever Title my partial Friends may honour me with, none can more delight me than that of "Dear Sir, "Your most Affectionate Friend "and oblig^ "humble Servant, [Mathi» Btles] "The young Gentleman who brings you this, M^ Edward Church, is a Son of one of my Deacons. He has had a Uberal Education in our college, but now visits London on affairs of merchandize. He will be pleased to see the Doctor he has read so much of. "Shall I ask the Favour of you to forward the enclosed to Aberdeen with as little Expense as may be. "I have just been reading a beautiful Letter of yours, written Feb. 22, 1756, tin the Death of your Brother, which is handed about among us in Manuscript Copies. I am charmed with the Easy and Gay Light in which you view our Leaving this Little Earth, as Birds among the SOCIAL STANDING. FRT'JNDS 191 Immortals: and as setting out on a party of pleasure a little before our Fi)eiids are ready. The Superstition with which we Seize and pre- serve little accidental Touches of your pen, puts one in mind of the care of the bishop to collect the Jugs and Galipots with the paintings of Raphael." On the 14* of May, 1787, Doctor Byles wrote Franklin again : "Sir, "It is long since I had the pleasure of writing to you by M^ Edward Church, to thank you for your friendly mention of me in a letter that I find was transmitted to the University of Aberdeen. I doubt whether you ever received it, under great weakness by old ii„'e and a palsy, I seize this opportunity of employing my daughter to repeat the thanks which I aimed to express in that letter. Your Excellency is now the man that I early expected to see you. I congratulate my country upon her having produced a Frank- lin, and can only add, I wish to meet you where complete feUcity and we shall be for ever united. I am my dear and early friend your most affec- tionate and humble servant, ,,11, „ "M. Btles. 192 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES "P.S. I refer you to the bearer, M- Pier- pont, to inform you how my life, and that of my daughters, have I -tea saved by your poinU." The letter of Franklin's to the Principal of King's College, Aberdeen, written from Franklin's residence in Craven Street, Lon- don, for which Doctpr Byles was so grate- ful, was indeed » flattering letter. It is dated July «, 176*, and is as follows : "Sib, ,., "I have been acquainted many years with the Rev. M^ Mather Byles, of whom you tell me some account is desired. He is a native of New England, descended of the ancient Mather Family, of which there have been two Doctors in Divinity, both famous in that Country for their learning and piety. Viz. Doctor Increase Mather and Doctor Cotton Mather ; the former president of Harvard College at Cambridge. This Mr. Byles was educated at that College, where he distinguished himself by a dose and successftil application to his studies ; with the usual degrees ; and is now one of ite Visitors or Superintendents. He is pastor of a Congre- SOCIAL STANDING. FRIENDS 19S gational Church in Boiton, the Capital of New England. The principles or doctrines of thoae Churches are the same with those of the Church of Scotland, except what relates to Church Government. He is a gentleman of superior parts and learning; an eloquent preacher and on many accounts an honour to his Country. "I am Sir your most humble Servant "B. Franklin." In reply to Doctor Byles's letter of May 14, 1787, Doctor Franklin wrote the aged minister : "Phil* June 1, 1788. "Dbab Oua Friend, "I duly received your kind Letter of May 14, 87. I was then busily engag'd in attending our General Convention, which, added to the ordinary current Business of this Government, took up so much of my Time, that I was oblig'd to postpone answering many Letters of Friends which gave occasion of my mislaying some of them, & among those was yours, only last Week come again to hand. I think I never 194 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES I I si Kceiv'd what you mention reipecting the Uni- venity of Aberdeen, but the Good will I might ihow on that Occaiion was not of Importance enough to deserve your repeating the Acknowl- edgement. It was in me only paying a Debt; for I remember with Gratitude, that I owe one of my first Academical Honours to your Recom- mendation. It gives me much pleasure to understand that my Points have been of Service in the Protection of you and yours. I wish for your sake, that Electricity had really prov'd what it was at first suppos'd to be, a Cure for the palsy. It is however happy for you, that when Old Age and that Malady have concurr'd to infeeble you, and to disable you for Writing, you have a Daughter at hand to nurse you with JUi4il attention, and to be your Secretary, of which I see she is very Capable, by the Elegance and Correctness of her Writing in the Letter I am answering. I too have a Daughter, who lives with me and is the Com- fort of my declining Years, while my Son is estrang'd from me by the Part he took in the late War, and keeps aloof, residing in England, whose Cause he espous'd; whereby the old Proverb is exemplified : SOCUL STANDING. FRIENDS 194 '"My Son u my Son till he Uke him a Wife, But my Dau^ter's my Daughter all Dayt of her Life.' "I remember you had a little Collection of Curiosities. Please to honour with a Place in it the inclosed Medal, which I got struck in Paris. The Thought was much approv'd by the Con- noiseurs there, and the Engraving well executed. My best Wishes attend you, being ever your affectionate Friend and humble Servant "B. Fkanklin."" Eight years before this letter of Frank- lin's was written from Philadelphia, Doctor Byles had given his grandson, Mather Brown, on going to England, a letter to Doctor Franklin, and as we shall see in a later chapter, Franklin treated the young painter with great cordiality, and intro- duced him "at Versailles as being grand- son to one of his most particular friends in America." h ' I CHAPTER XI Last Yeabs Or Doctor Byles's life after the Revolu- tion there is comparatively little to say. A lonely figure the old minister must have been as he went silently about the town, his friends among the crown officials and rich merchants far away, in England or in Nova Scotia, his son Mather also an exile in Halifax, his former parishioners passing him with averted eyes, and every promi- nent minister of his denomination, as indeed the town and state authorities and the new occupants of the confiscated houses of the proscribed Loyalists, regarding him as a traitor to the liberties of the people and returning with interest the scorn he had earlier visited on the champions of the popular cause. Under the most depressing IM ! I Dr. MATHER BYLES From the uriginal painting by Copley, 1707 il II \ LAST YEABS 197 circumstances, however, his wit never for- sook him. In 1780 he gave his grandson, Mather Brown, a letter to his old friend Copley in England, which presumably in reference to Copley's exalted position abroad he addressed "To Mr. Copley in the Solar System." For many years Doc- tor Samuel Cooper of the church in Brattle Square had been a fellow-minister with him in Boston and of course after the Revolution that notably patriotic and highly eloquent divine had little friendly feeling toward the ex-minister of Hollis Street. In his walks out of town Doctor Cooper frequently passed Doctor Byles's house, but never deigned to call. One day Doctor Byles met Doctor Cooper and said to him: "Doctor Cooper, you treat me just like a baby I" "I hardly take you, Sir," the Brattle Square min- ister with becoming dignity replied. "Why," said the humorous Byles, "you go by, by, by I" On the occurrence. May I « 198 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES 19, 1780. of what was long known in Boston as "the dark day," a lady in alarm sent her young son to the doctor to know if he could explain the terrifying phenom- enon. "My dear." said Doctor Byles. "tell your mother I am as much in the dark as she is." "This for sententious brevity," says the author of Dealings wUh the Deed, "has nevw been surpassed, un- less by the correspondence between the comedian, Sam Foote, and his mother — 'Dear Sam, I'm in jail'; 'Dear Mother, so am I.'" Some time in 1783, Doctor Byles was seized with paralysis, and from that time until his death, some five years later, was a confirmed and gradually faUing mvaUd. We have before spoken of the frequent notices of him in the correspondence of Doctor Jeremy Belknap, who was his great-nephew, Belknap's mother having been a daughter of one of Doctor Byles's elder half-brothers.'" In a letter to Ebe- LAST YEABS 199 nezer Hazard of the IS*!* of December, 1783, Doctor Belknap says; "It is not usual with me to entertain you with an account of my bodily ails and complaints, but the situation I am now reduced to by an unlucky strain in my hip bears so near a resemblance to the state in which I lately found my punning uncle. Dr. Byles (who by the way, is the only surviving brother of Thomas Byles, late of Phila- delphia, deceased) that I mention it for the sake of telling you one of his stories; and that I may give you a true idea of the man I will endeavour to relate it with its attendant circumstances. He is seventy-eight years old, and usually sits in an easy chair which has a back himg on hinges. In such a chair I found him sitting, and as I approached him he held out his hand. 'You must excuse my not getting up to receive you, cousin; for I am not one of the rising generation.'" Doctor Byles then went on to say. Doctor 200 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES Belknap says, that he had the same disease a good man he had once heard of had gone to his pastor, the Rev. M^ Willard, to complain of. W Willard was very fond of using scholastic terms and in a sermon shortly before had used the word synecdoche. Some one had told the man he had sciatica, and this word was so like synecdoche that the man felt sure the parson had used "sciatica" in his sermon and told him so. "I have," he said, "a disease the name of which you mentioned in your sermon on such a day. I cannot remember the word but it begins with «. M? Willard looked over his notes and found synecdoche, and the man said, "Yes, that's it, I have synecdoche in my hip!" In the great fire that raged in the south part of Boston in April, 1787, laying waste much of the region about Hollis Street, and burning the church. Doctor Byles's house was in so great danger that his LAST YEARS 201 hoard of books, papers, prints, instru- ments, and most of his household goods, were dislodged from their nearly fifty years' repose and thrown out in chaotic confusion in an adjoining green field. Doctor Byles was taken for the night to some hospitable house near by, but was able to return to his own house the next day;" One of the latest glimpses we get of the old minister's mind is in the letter he dictated to Doctor Franklin on the 14^ of May, 1787, which we have given at length on an earlier page. It seems probable that after his dis- missal from his church. Doctor Byles, while he was able to walk, more or less regularly worshipped with his daughters at Trinity Church. It b doubtful if he ever again entered a church of his own denomination. While, as we have said, he never so far as is recorded showed any wish to enter the ministry of the Anglican Church, as his son Mather, Jr., had long u 202 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES before done, he could not have had any great dislike for the Prayer Book wor- ship, and his friendship with Rev. Samuel Parker, Rector of Trinity, furnishes a presumption that he was more or less frequently seen at that Church. On the S^ of July, 1788, he died, and Doctor Sprague in his "Annals of the American Pulpit" says that ' Rev. Samuel Parker (afterwards Bishop Parker) was at his bedside shortly before the end came. Probably in allusion to friendly con- troversies the two had had on the subject of a threefold miuistry. Doctor Byles in an almost inaudible voice said to his friend as he bent over him: "I have almost got to that world where there are no bishops I" "I hoped. Doctor," said Mr. Parker kindly, "that you were going to the Shepherd and Bishop of Souls." The Massachu- letts Centinel of Wednesday, July 9, 1788, says briefly: "Died on Saturday last, the Reverend Doctor Byles, aged 81." LAST YEARS 20S The body of the aged divine waa laid to rest in tomb No. S in the Granaiy Burying Ground, but whether Rev. Sam- uel Parker performed the burial service or not we cannot tell." July 17, 1788, Ebenezer Hazard writes Doctor Belknap facetiously: "So the old Doctor has left off punning at last. What must the grave spirits in heaven think on the approach of so ludicrous an one as his." " September 14, 1790, Doctor Bel- knap writes Hazard: "I add for your amusement and for a laugh among a few friends, a number of articles found in the house of the late D^ Byles." These he enumerates as, five or six dozen pairs of spectacles, "of all powers and all fash- ions"; more than twenty walking sticks, "of different sizes and contrivances," about a dozen jest-books, several packs of cards, "new and clean," a quantity of whetstones, bones, etc., "as much as a man could carry in a bushel basket on his shoulder," M4 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES a large number of weights for shopi, money-scales, etc., "some in sets, and some broken," a large collection of pic- tures from Hogarth's celebrated prints, "down to the comers of newspapers and pieces of linen." He says also there was a large parcel of coins, "from Tiberius Caesar to Massachu^tts cents," a parcel of children's toys, — among these two bags of marbles, a quantity of Tom Thumb books and puerile histories, — about a dozen bird-cages and rat-traps, a set of gardeners' tools and one of carpenters' tools, a parcel of speaking-trumpets and hearing tubes, with many other things. The miscellaneous character of Doctor Byles's accumulations during his lifetime, which caused Doctor Bel- knap so much amusement, is fully borne out by 'the recorded inventory of Byles's estate. CHAPTER Xn The Btlbb Family By his first wife, as we have said, Doctor Byles had six children, three of whom, Mather. Jr., Elizabeth, and Samuel, lived to grow up; by his second wife he had three, two of whom only, the Misses Mary and Catherine lived to maturity. Mather Byles, Jr., was born in Boston January twelfth, 17S4," and graduated at Harvard College in 1751. Six years later he formally entered the Congrega- tional ministry at New London. Connecti- cut, over the church in which town he remained for between ten and eleven years. At his ordination his father preached the sermon and gave the charge, and a very impressive and serious sermon and charge these efforts of the older Mather Byles 206 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES I illf! were. The sermon as printed is entitled "The man of God thoroughly furnished to every good work," and it is a strong and earnest presentation of the minister's duty and opportunity. To his first minis- terial charge the youthful Byles brought the prestige of his distinguished Mather descent, his father's ecclesiastical, social, and literary importance, and his own edu- cation and brilliant promise, and naturally he at once became a great favourite in the Connecticut town. The chief cause of discomfort to him in) New London for a long time was the presence there of an obscure Sabbatarian sect known as the Rogerenes, with which people he soon began a violent controversy, chiefly on the question of the special day that should be observed as the day of rest. We have a portrait of the younger Byles taken, it would seem, soon after the Revolution, when he was about forty-five years old, which shows him, as he was, a man of Dr. MATHER BYLES. Jr. Frum the uriginal pumting i 'n THE BYLES FAMILY 807 somewhat delicate mould, probably smaller than his father, with a nervous, excitable face, rather thin lips, firmly pressed to- gether, and the unmistakable look and pose of an aristocratic feeling man. On the Hi' of May, 1761, Byles married at Roxbuiy, Massachusetts, his second cousin, Rebecca Walter, a daughter of the Rev. Nathaniel Walter of that place, whose older sbter Sarah x tis married to Sir Robert Hazelrigg, a Leicestershire bar- onet, and whose brother William when a few years out of Harvard embraced Epis- copacy, went to London for ordination, and a little later became Rector of Boston's Trinity Church, It is not to any one di£Scult in these days to see why the younger Mather Byles should not have remained always a Congregation- alist. He had in Boston probably asso- ciated almost as much with Episcopalians as with Congregationalists, and he was the sort of man to whom a classical liturgy and i I d 208 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES dignified ecclesiastical ceremonial would naturally strongly appeal. For the last three years of his New London pastorate he was, he says, at heart virtually an Episcopalian, and at length in April, 1768, he formally so declared himself to the people of his charge. In some way his change of feeling had become known in Boston, and suddenly, quite unexpectedly to him, he announced, the wardens and vestry of Christ Church had given him an invitation to become their Rector in- stead of minister of the New London Congregational Church. His statement of this fact and of his wish immediately to sever his connection with the Congregation- alists was received by his church with profound amazement and disgust. The people at first strongly remonstrated with him, but when they found that his mind was made up, they bitterly denounced and mercilessly ridiculed him, and on their church book recorded angrily that THE BYLES FAMILY 209 "the Rev. Mather Byles had dismul him- te{f from the congregation." To the moment of his resignation of his pastorate his popularity had been general, but now in the streets could be heard a wretched doggerel song on his conversion, called "The Proselyte," sung to the tune of the "Thief and Cordelier," while into general circulation from some local press came a "Wonderful Dream," in which the spirit of the venerable Richard Mather was introduced rpbuking his great-grandson for his degenerate apostasy from the Puritan faith. On his part M'- Byles regarded the call from Christ Church as "mani- festly a call of Providence inviting him to a greater sphere of usefulness, and plainly pointing out to him the path of duty," and at once he left New London for Boston, thence sailing for England, to be reorJained a priest of the Anglican Church. In Episcopal Orders he soon came back to his native town and began his pastorate «10 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES in Boston as Rector of Christ Church, and in this rectorship he remained until the 18* of April, 1776. On that day he formally resigned this charge, his resigna- tion probably being due largely to the fact that his royalist sympathies had become too pronounced to allow him to remain with a people, the majority of whom desired sepaktion from the British empire. The excuse he gave for resigning, however, was that he had received a call from St. John's Church, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to become Rector there. To the Portsmouth church for some reason he did not go, but when Howe's fleet sailed from Boston in March, 1776, he with his children, in company with his brother- in-law, WiUiam Walter, Rector of Trinity, and tie Rev. Doctor Caner, Rector of King's Chapel, went with the great body of Boston Tories to Halifax, and there was soon appointed, assistant to Rev. Doctor Breynton, Rector of St. Paul's THE BYLES FAMILY 211 Church, and chaplain to the British troops. In May, 1789, he removed to St. John, New Brunswick, in that town assuming the rectorship of Trinity Church, and as in Halifax, the garrison chaplaincy as well. Rev. Mather Byles, Jr., took his mas- ter's degree at Harvard, in course, in 1754, and from Yale College received a similar degree in 1757. In 1770 the University of Oxford conferred on him a doctorate in divinity. He married three times, first as we have said his second cousin, Bebecca Walter, second, in Halifax, another second cousin, Sarah, daughter of Byfield Lyde, third, also in HaUfax, the widow of an officer, M? Susanna Beid. By his first wife Rebecca, who died a little over four months before he left Boston for Halifax, he had nine children, by his second wife four, and from him, in later generations, not a few important people in the British Colonies have been descended. For the «1« THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES most part, however, these have borne other names than Byles." Of the tender relations that always existed between Mather Byles, Jr., and his father we gain sufficient idea from one of the last letters that the aged Hollis Street min- ister ever wrote. On the 24^ of February, 1787, M"? Sarah Lyde Byles died in Halifax, and the 14*^ of the following April the senior Doctor Byles by the hand of one of his daughters wrote his widowed son : "MT DEABI.T BELOVED SoN AND FiBST BoBN, "I am unable to write a Word, but my ten- der sympathy with you compels me to attempt to dictate. I feel tor your Distresses, but can only carry you afresh to Him into whose hand I have so many thousand times committed you. You Preach to others, Preach now to yourself. Carry my tenderest Blessings to Mather and my other Dear Grandchildren, whom I leave in the kind Hands of my Lord Jesus, I am "Your most affectionate and dying Parent "M. Btles." THE BYLES FAMILY «13 Doctor Byles's daughter Elizabeth, bom March twenty-second. 1737. was married as his second wife, in 1760. to Gawen Brown of Boston, a noted maker of watches and clocks." and became the mother of Mather Brown, a painter of some note, bom October seventh. 1761. who in 1780 left Boston for London, with letters from h.s grandfather to Copley and Doctor Benjamin Franklin. Brown's later sue cess m London was probably due in great measure to the fact that through FranUin he came almost immediately to the favour- able notice of Benjamin West. When he reached London. West was in Paris, and thither Brown almost immediately went. In a letter home in 1781 he writes: "Df Franklin has given me a pass, and recom- mendatory letter to the famous W West He treats me with the utmost politeness; has given me an invitation to his home I delivered him my grandfather's message he expressed himself with the greatest 814 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES m r r'jj esteem and a£Fection for him, and has since introduced me at Versailles, as being grand- son lo one of his most particidar friends in America." In another letter Brown vrites: "In consequence of the recom- mendation of Jy Franklin, who gave me letters to his fellow-townsman, the famous ly West of Philadelphia, I practise gratia with this gentleman, who affords me every encouragement, as well as M' Copley, who is particularly kind to me, welcomed me to his home, and lent me his pictures, etc. At my arrival M' Treasurer Gray carried me and introduced me to Lord George Germaine." As a pupil of West, Brown studied some time in Paris, but in 1782, and thereafter for fifty years, he painted and exhibited at the Royal Academy in Lond-jn. In England he painted, besides many noted military and naval officers and other com- moners. King George Third and Queen Charlotte, and the GentleTnan's Magazine MATHER BROWN Prem the original pamting by himself :i. THE BYLES FAMILY «i« ■tylM him "Hutorical Painter to His Majesty and the late Dulcc of York." In !"• lart years Brown grew eccentric and lived in a forlorn way; his death occurred in London on the W* of May, 18S1. Doctor Byles's sixth and last child by his first wife was Samuel, bom twenty- third of March, 1748. who studied medi- cine and seems to have already reached his profession when he died, June six- teenth, 1764. After his death his father published a litUe volume called "Pious Remains of a Young GenUeman lately Deceased," the book consisting of a touch- ing prose episUe to one of Us half-sisters whom he calls "AminU," in which he gives a fervid imaginaiy account of the experiences of his own sister, Elizabeth, inunediately after she died; and eight selected poems, the whole prefaced no doubt by Doctor Byles, his father, and the preface bearing date July seventh. 1764. «16 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES When Doctor Bylra died his only living descendants in Boston were his two younger daughters, the Misses Mary and Catherine Byles. Of these ladies in their earliest youth we hear very little, but at the time of the Revolution they come before us in a rather clear and entirely picturesque way. In 1775 Miss Mary was twenty-five and Miss Catherine twenty-two, and while the siege was in progress the British officers of highest rank, as we have shown, seem to have been frequent visitors at their father's house; one of these visitors being Earl Percy, whose letters from Boston to his father, the Duke of Northumberland, and to the Rev. Doctor Percy, editor of the noted "Reliques of Ancient Poetry," a distant relative of the Earl, were recently pub- lished in Boston. To the end of their days the Miss Byleses were staunch royal- ists, and among their most cherished recol- lections were the flattering attentions they III MiM CATHERINE B'iXES From the origiiul painting by Hmry Prilum f THE BYLES FAMILY 817 had received from Lord Howe and Earl Percy during the siege. Of Earl Percy they remembered with satisfaction that he had net only once ordered them sere- naded by a regimental band, but on some still happier occasion had promenaded with them arm-in-arm on the fashionable Mall. The Miss Byleses lived, Mary until October 1, 18S8, Catherine until July 19, 18S7, the former dying at over eighty-two, the latter at almost eighty-four, and for many years before their deaths they were regarded, as indeed they were, as lonely relics of a period very remote in Boston's social history. Some time before the death of Miss Mary Byles, Miss Eliza Leslie, of whom we have already spoken, sister of Charles Bobert Leslie the painter, came to Boston to visit, and in January and February, 1842, in Graham's Magazine, as we have said, she published some interesting reminiscences of a visit she was permitted 1 818 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES to make to these ancient spinsters. Miss Mary she describes as "a rather broad- framed and very smiling old lady, habited in a black worsted petticoat and a short gown, into the neck of which was tucked a book-muslin kerchief. Her silver hair was smoothly arranged over a wrinkled but well-formed , forehead, beneath which twinkled two small blue eyes. Her head was covered with a close, full-bordered white linen cap, that looked equally con- venient for night or for day." "Miss Catherine was unlike her elder sister, both in figure and face, her features being much sharper (in fact excessively sharp), and her whole person extremely thin. She also was arrayed in a black bombasin petti- coat, a short gown, and a close lined cap, with a deep border, that seemed almost to bury her narrow visage." The old ladies kept no regular servant, and when visitors arrived Miss Mary always came to the door. Miss Catherine, however. i! THE BYLES FAMILY 219 unfailingly produced her own eflfect by not making her appearance till callers had sat for some time in the parlour. Naturally the conversation of both sisters was much of the past, and always, as Miss Leslie says, "they gloried, they triumphed, in the firm adherence of their father and his family to the royalty of England, and scorned the idea of even now being classed among the eitoyennes of a republic, a republic, which, as they said, they had never acknowledged and never would ; re- garding themselves still as faithful subjects to His Majesty of Britain, whoever that majesty might be." To Miss Leslie these ancient ladies expressed much regret that they had not been able to prevail on their father after the Revolution to renounce America entirely and remove with his family to England, in which case, said Miss Mary, they should all have been introduced at court and the King and Queen would have spoken to them and r 220 THE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES thanked them kindly for their loyalty. In Boston it was a matter of common knowledge that on the accession of William the Fourth one of the sisters had humbly addressed his sailor Majesty, assuring him that the family of Doctor Byles of Boston had never renounced their loyalty to the throne of England and never would. One of the most conspicuous treasures of these ancient ladies was a handsome chair, brought from England long before by their grandfather, Lieutenant-Governor Tailer, on the top of which was carved a royal crown. As a special favour each visitor was permitted to sit a moment in this chair, and always the hostesses' ex- clamation, as the privileged person took his seat, was: "We wonder that you, a republican, can sit comfortably under the crown !" Of their revered father, and other members of their family, living or dead, the Miss Byleses had many remi- niscences, some of their father's witty say- THE BYLES FAMILY 221 ings they being especially proud to repeat. For their absent nephew, Mather Brown, they had deep affection, and of course no one was ever suffered to forget that this moderately successful portrait painter had the very great honour of having painted members of the Royal Family. On the walls of their parlour hung the notable portraits of Doctor Byles which we have described, the latest of the two Copleys having the greatest value in their eyes, not because of its general intrinsic merit but because it portrayed faithfully their father's cornelian ring. "My eyes," says Miss Leslie, "were soon riveted on a fine portrait of Doctor Mather Byles, from the wonderful pencil of Copley. . . . The moment I looked at this picture I knew it must be a likeness, for I saw in its linea- ments the whole character of Doctor Byles, particularly the covert humour of the eye. The face was pale, the features well-formed, and the aspect pleasantly acute. He was is SM 'jL^HE FAMOUS MATHER BYLES I' represented in his ecclesiastical habili- ments, with a curled and powdered wig. On his finger \hi j a signet ring containing a very fine red < melian. While I was contemplating t.' . admirably depicted countenance hii daughters were both very voluble in directing attention to the cor- nelian ring, which they evidently con- sidered the best part of the picture; declaring it to be an exact likeness of that very ring, and just as natural as life." In the Byles parlour abo hung an attrac- tive portrait of Mather Brown by himself, and in other parts of the house portraits of the Miss Byleses themselves, in the freshness of young maidenhood. From the time of their father's dis- missal from the pastorate of the HoUis Street Church, and perhaps before, the Byles sisters had worshipped at Trinity Church, their Rector at first being the Rev. Samuel Parker, who in 1804 became the second Episcopal bishop of Massachu- THE BYLES FAMILY tas setts," and as long as their health permit^ sd they went to service regularly on Sundays, dressed with slight regard for changing fashions, and closely veiled, "not so much for concealment as for gentility." During many of their declining years, however, they rarely went, otherwise, far beyond their own door. In their wills they re- membered scrupulously by name each of a considerable number of their brother's descendants in England or in Canada, and on the death of Miss Catherine, as had been agreed between the sisters before Miss Mary died, the treasures of the old house on Tremont Street, of which there were not a few, were almost without ex- ception removed directly to Halifax, Nova Scotia, where some of the most valuable of them still remain. NOTES Charib I ■Spngue'i "Aniub l& 110 1^ 11^ 1^1^ APPLIED INtOE In. 1C5J Eail Main StrMi RMhMt«r. Nlw Torlt 146M USA (716) 482 - 0300 - Phon. <716) 2M-59a9 -Fox 9»B NOTES •or Byles'. uncle Cotton Sfather was not ordained until seven years after graduation. •See Joseph T. Buckingham's "Specimens of News- paper Literature: with Personal Memoira, Anecdotes, and Reminiscences," Boston, 1840. " In an address to the public in the Botkm Gautte of January 89, 17«*, Increase Mather attacks the Cmrant, calling ita sUtement that he had been a supporter of that paper a wicked Ubel and saying: "I cannot but pity poor Franklin, who tho' but a Younf Man it may be Speedily he must appear before the Judgment Seat of God, and what answer wiU he give for printing things so vile and abominable? And I cannot but Advise the Supporters of this Courant to consider the Consequences of being Partaker, in other lien; Sins, and no more Coun- tenance such a Wicked Paper." -^ " The Nea England Weekly Journal in its initial num- ber announced that it intended publishing the most re- markable occurrences, both foreign and domestic, of the time. It bore the imprint, first of S. KneeUnd, then of S. Kneeland and T. Green. "D? Cotton Mather died February IS, 1788; his father, D? Increase Mather, died, as we have bdoie noted, between four and five years earlier. CHAPTBBin '• Honorable Jonathan Belcher was Governor of Massa- chusetts for eleven years. In the "Belcher Papers" (Mass. Hist. Coll., e* Series, Voh. 6 and 7) we find some mteresting correspondence between Governor Belcher in Boston and Mr Thomas HoUis in London concerning the NOTES «7 organicBtion of the parish and the building and fumiahing of the HoUis Street Church. October S, 17S3, the Gover- nor. who calla hinuelf "chief patron" of the church, writes : "Upon laying out a considerable tract of land in this town about two years ago into streets and house lots, one of the main streets was named HoUis Street, since which a number of worthy men have erected and finish'd a handsome c", whereof the Rev« Mr Mather Byles was ordain'd the pastor in Deeemb' last. He is grand- son to the Ute Hev" learned and exceUent Dr Increase Mather. Altho' this new congregation are a number of sober good Christians, yet they are not in the most plenti- ful! circumstances, and I have promist to mention to you the procuring for them by yourself & friends a smaU bell for this new c"* in HoUis Street." The beU was given by Mr. Hollis in 1734, and was "generaUy thought the beat in this country." The same year a handsome clock was placed in the interior. May t, 1741, D5 Byles formally presented to the church, from Hon. William Dum- mer, late lieutenant-governor, "a hirge and rich folio Bible, on condition that it should be read as a part of publick worship on the Lord's day among us." The con- gregation voted their thanks to Mr Dummer for this "sUtely church Bible," and May 9, 174J, reading from the Scriptures was introduced in the church. ""History of the Old South Church," by Hamilton Andrews Hill (1890), Vol. I, p. 461. "Df Byles scrupulously mentions the pUce of his wedding in the family record which he kept. It is doubt- ful whether the Congregationalists at this time often celebrated marriages in their meeting-houses. 228 NOTES " Pelhun and Smibert were then painting in Boaton, Copley having not yet come on thia earthly acene. " Proceeding! of the MaiuchuMtta Hiatorica! Society, I860-18e«, pp. l«4-ljie. "Thia witticiam of D'- Bylea alao cornea to ua aa followa; "Your tabce in diatempera miiat be very bad when it haa led you to prefer Quincy to Bylea." "There aeema little doubt that thia early love affair of Dr B.vlea'a waa with Elixabeth Wendell, daughter of Abraham and Katarina (De Key) W dell, who waa baptized Auguat *0, 1704, and waa marri .prij H, 17M, to Edmund Quincy. Writing from Boaton to hia friend Ebenezer Hazard on the MH" of March, 1788, Df Bylea'a grand-nephew, Jeremy Belknap, aaya of Judge Quincy'a end : "Old Daddy Quincy died here about the time that you mention DF Croaby did at New York. He waa buried the day before TK Bylea." — "Belknap Papere," Fart 2, Haaa. Hiat. Soc. Cdl., Vol. 3, Sf Seriea, p. 5t. ChaptsbIV " At the aame time D? Bylea'a wife Anna waa received from the Brattle Street Church. " Wr Belcher waa a daughter of Lieutenant-Governor William Partridge of New Hampahire. "We have aeen thia ponderoua aermon, delivered October 17, 17M, in which D* Prince diacuasca not only the natural hiatory of death, but the viewa of death and the future held by Greek and Roman philoaophen, and many other daaaea of men, including the alavea of Africa and the North American Indiana, and in which he givea a minute account of many deatha by earthquakea, plaguea. NOTES S29 deluge., and conflagration*, since the time of Chriit. A» we read the sermon we cannot help being amazed that in any age people could have lat patienUy through such a (earful discourse. » "Yankee heraldry,"writes Professor Barrett Wendell, "ha. never been punctilious. Lon| before the Revolution people who found themselve. pro.perou. were apt to adopt armorial bearings, often far from grammatical, which are rtiU reverently preserved on .Uver, tombstone., and em- broidered hatchmento."-"A Literary Hijtory of Amer- ica," p. MS. "The« three were Blather, Jr., Elizabeth, who be- came the wife of Gawen Brown, and Samuel, a young phyucian, who died June 16, 1764, aged dightly over twenty-one, having written a little prose and poetry, which hi. father printed after hi. death. •' The burial phice of the Byles famUy from thi. time wa. Tomb No. « in the Granary Burying Ground, buUt by DT OUver Noye^ Anna ByW. father, in 1780, at the ume time that Governor Belcher built hi. tomb in thi. cemetery. " Hon. William Tailer's death had occurred at Dor- che.ter, March 8, 17S« (new .tyle). " Dr. Byle. paid for the property £S«0, the estete being dcKribed a. "aU that certain messuage, tenement or dwelling-houM, with the land thereto belonging, mtuate, lying, and being at the Mutherly end of Bo.ton afonaaid, butted and bounded a. foUow. . . . together with all and singuhir the houses, out-houses, ediSces, buildings, easement., and fences thereon .tanding." Thi. wa. the first pnqwrty the Suffolk Deed, record Mather Byle. a. 880 NOTES having owned. The bend in the nwd when the hoiue ■tood wmi long known u "Bylei*i Corner." At some tixae late in the livef of the Miit Byleees the Byles property wu deicribed by Mr. Nathaniel Bradlee aa "One old dweUing-hotue in the town of Boaton, two ■tories high, built of wood, 18} feet front and 38 feet deep. The lot of land measure* ISf feet front and 81 feet deep, containing in the whole about 11,800 iquare feet, a great part of which ia unimproved. The house itself is so much decayed from age as to be scarcely tenantable. This estate belongs to Misses M. and C. Byles, and has never been taxed by the towa." In ISS8, after the death of Miss Catherine Byles, the property in Tremont Street was sold at auction to a Roxbury man bearing the familiar name of Harrison Gray. »■• Cards of Boston containing a Variety of fact,s and descriptions relative to that City In past and present times ; so arranged as to form An Instructive and Amusing Game for young people By Miss Leslie. (Entered according to Act of Congress in the Clerk's office in the District of Massachusetts, ISSl, by Munroe and Francis.) " "The baptisms of all DF Byles's children were per- formed by their father, who recorded them lovingly on his church register aa of "my Mather," or "my Belcher," or NOTES SSI "my Samuel," "fint, accond, or third child," u the ate might be. " The Ute Rev. Df Henry S. Naah once Mid tiench- antly to hia class in Cambridge that a certain pioui church father "had lived too much with godly womoi." Chaptkr V » The persons who, November 14, 1732, subscribed the Covenant as the original members were : John Clough Joseph Payson, Henry Gibbon, James Day, Jonathf Neal, Hopestill Foster, Ebenezer Clough, Nathaniel Fi field, John Cravath, and Alden Bass, all of whom hau been in communion with other churches. Besides these there were John Blake, Thomas Trott, and Isaac Loring, who then for the first time were received into full com- munion. " See "Some Aspects of the Beligious Life of New England, with Special Beference to Congregationalists," by George Leon Walker, D.D., 18A7. ** "I can't suppose," says Bev. Samuel Phillips of Andover, "that any one . . . who at all times faithfully improves the common grace he has, that is to say, is diligent in attending on the appointed means of grace, with a desire to profit thereby . . . shall perish for want of special and saving grace." " In 1741 the number of persons admitted was six, in 174S thirteen, in 1743 five, and in 1744 nine. " The Rev. Samuel A. Eliot, D.D., says in a preface to "Pioneers of Religious Liberty in America" (1903) : "Two hundred and seventy-two years ago John Cotton, minister of the First Church in Boston, with the cooperation of his 232 NOTES minuteri.! unciatei aUbliihed what came to be known u the 'Great and Thurwlay Lecture.' Thii weekly lee- ture was in colonial timet the chief locial and ndigiaiu event in Boaton." •• Three other miniaten of Boaton, DT Chauncy, D? Samuel Cooper, and Dr Andrew EUot, had received their doctoratea from the University of Edinburgh. The Rev. Ebeneier Pemberlon, Jr., had received his from Prince^ ton. Before 1771 Harvard had given the degree of S.T.D. only once: this was in 1692, to Increase Mather. Ip 1771 Harvard gave it next to Rev. Nathaniel Appleton of Cambridge, who had graduated in 171J. "See an article by James R. Gihnore ("Edmund Kirke") in the New England Jfayanw for August, 1897, on "Nathaniel Emmons and Mather Byles." D? Emmons was pastor of the Second Church. Wrentham. In tl-js article the writer gives a pleasant account of the relations between DF Emmons and Dr Byles, as Dr Emmons himself had described them to him. In the same issue of the New England Magmne a a poem of twelve stanzas by Henry Ames Blood, entiUed "The Byles Girls" (the two daughters of Dr Byles). Chaptkb VI " Dr Isaac Watts Uved between 1874 and 1748. Alex- ander Pope between 1688 and 1744. Johnson says of Lansdowne : "He had no ambition above the imitation of Waller, of whom he has copied the faults and very litUe more." " So far as we can learn. Pope never wrote Dr Byles more than one letter. We have not seen this letter, but it NOTES S88 >wn lec- kiua Df leir 'XT. ice- .D. It ton rad 97, IK m. iie Dr lie of he ii Mud that although Dr Byles lued to ahow it with pride, it had not a remarkably pleaaant tone. IK Byle« had apparently lent Pope tome of hii own verMt, for Pope remarks with lome irony that he had feared the Muiee had fonaken England, but it wa> evident they had only taken up their abode in the new world. D^ Bylee'i latest letter to Pope, preserved in his letter book, is entirely wanting in the effervescent praise of his earlier letters. Chaptxb vn " "Memorial History of Boston," Vol. t, pp. 4tJ-427. " Mr. Sargent calls DF Byles's humour " that frolicsome vein which was to him as congenital as is the tendency of a fish to swim." " See for this ballad the New Engknd Historic Genea- logical Register, Vol. IS, p. 131. « Mackintosh is said to have rolled on the floor m an agony of laughter at one of Sydney Smith's jokes. " See "Drake's Landmarks of Boston." This story is also given as follows : The architecture of King's Chapel was unfamiliar to Bostonians generally and was at first much ridiculed. When IK Byles tare the building mcled. with some sarcasm he made the remark wc have given here. " "Memorial History of Boston," Vol. t, p. 48S, and elsewhere. « D'- Belknap tells it in its briefer form in a letter to Ebenezer Hazard, dated August 28, 1780. "Joseph Green, a Boston merchant of considerable fortune, is said to have had also the largest private library in New England. At the Bevolution he was appointed X84 NOTES • muduniu eouncUlor, though he never took the oath. Uter he wu proKribed ud twiiihed. and we Bnd him •rnong the twenty-two memben of the LoyJut dub who met weekly in London, where he ipent hi> lut yean. A crayon portrait of him wa> made by Copley. In the earlier part of hi< life, when he waa unfriendly toward* Governor Bekher, he waa not » con«rvative in his poUt- ical viewi a> he afterward became. " Thi. aUuaion ij of coune to D! Bylei'. cat, on whoM death Green had written an elegy. « For thia paiuge at arms between Bylet and Green •ee Duyckinck's "Cyclop«lia of American Literature," and Mass. Hist. Soc. CoU., «» Series, Vol. t. pp. 70-78. Chaptib vm "The friend was James H. Gilmore ("Edmund Kirke"). See in the ATfl. Enfland Magazine for August, 1807. the article we have before mentioned on "Nathaniel Emmons and Mather Byles." " For the dramaUc ending of Dr Byles's pastorate, see a sketdi of Joseph May in the N. E. Hist, and Gen Register, Vol. *7, p. 116; and the "Belknap Papen" iii the Mass. Hist. Soc. CoU., Vol. 4, p. I07. " See Mass. Hist. CoUections, O"? Series, Vol. 4 pp IM, 1«8, and pp. 10«, 107. " "Historical Notices," by Ephraim EUot, quoted in the "History of the Old South Church," Vol. », p. iSfl. Chapter IX " Mass. Hist. CoU., 6 Series, Vol. 4, part S, p. Iii. note. " Dr Ezra Stiles's "Literary Diary," Vol. t, p. 168. NOTES 8S5 •• D; Uather Bylet, Jr., luul written Mr. lUOt, inm Halifax, under date o( February 17, 1778, telling him that he (Bailey) wai entitled to apply tor fifty poundi to an English fund for the relief of diitreucd clergymen in America. — "Life of Bev. Jacob Bailey, the Frontier Miiaionary." "Bev. John Eliot wai n iprightly letter writer and hii letten are none the len entertaining becauie of the writer'! poeitive opinionj. It would Mem at if both he and Jeremy Belknap may have had lome pciwnal grudge againat Dr Bylea. " "Memorial Hiitory of Boeton," Vol. 8, p. 160. " See Knox's portrait in the third volume of the "Memorial History of Boston." ** See "Dealings with the Dead," and Drake's "History of Boston," pp. 740-748. The former reporte D! Byles as saying when he saw the troops : " Well, I think we can no longer complain that our grievances are not red-dressed I" CbaptzbX *■ It will be remembered that some of the leading Tory families, like the Brinleys and Royalls, who were obliged to leave Massachusetts at the time of the Rt vo- lution, livw'd chiefly out of town, in Cambridge, Roxbury, or Medford. •> Franklin was bom January 17, 1706, and died April 17, 1790. " The Neva-England Courant was first I ued August 7, 1721, the only earlier Boston newspapers having been the BotUm Nem-Letter, begun in 1704, and the Bmlon Ottutle, started in 1718. With these two papers the «• NOTES Comma ran •loDg uoUl June 4, I7M, when it ttopped. Between February H, 17(8, ud July tO, 17M, it wu nominally printed by Benjamin FranUin in Queen Street ; from July 17, 17M, until June 4, 17Sa, it wa< iMued in Union Street, still in Benjamin FranUin'e name. Ben- jamin, however, finally left Boiton, in October, 17«S. "Thi» letter ii printed in "Dr Franltlin't Life and Lettera." It appeared abo in "The Bower o( Taite," Karch 1, I8t8. Chaptu XI "IX Jeremy Belknap, the eminent hiatorian and liberal theologian, wai the eldeit child of JoKph and Sarah (Bylei) Belknap. He wai bom in Boeton June 4, 1744, and died June «0, 1708. In 1784, when he wai debating whether he ihould enter the miniatry or not, in diitreu of mind he wrote hi< great-uncle ezprening hia fear that he wai not fit ipiritually for the minia- terial office. To the young man'i frank letter D'. Byle* replied in the kindlieet and moat judicious and Christian way that while he is gkd of the deep piety his nephew shows he feels that he is mistakenly writing bitter things against himself. "My dear Child," he tenderly says, "it is with a mixture of pleasure and sorrow that I read your letter. I am pleased to see your great care not to enter the ministry in a state of unrenewed nature; and I am grieved at your censure upon yourself." "May God bless you, my Son," the writer closes, "and sanctify and comfort you; and introduce you with the noblest preparation into the ministry. So prays your affectionate M. Byles." To this kindly letter Belknap replies asking NOTES C87 Um uncle to pray Uut he might not be mutaken in a nutter of luch everluting importance i that he might not build on a fake foundation. •• See the " Belknap Papen," Vol. I, p. 470; "Memorial Hiitory of Boaton." Vol, S, p. 7; "Hiatory of the Old South Church," Vol. t, p. <40. " A declaration made by the daughter! of Df Bylee in connexion with the aettlement of their father'e eitata includes the itatement that a number of their friend* " raiaed a lum of money by luLacription to defray the «- pensei of hit funeral without any charge to the eatate." v. Hilt. Coll., a, SI. Chaptsb xn " Hii father baptixed him, recording the baptism affectionately as of "my Mather." He graduated at Harvard, as we have said, in 1751, but his ordination at New London did not take place until November 18, 1717, What he was doing from 17A1 to 17M we do not know, but from 17M to 17«7 he was (the STf) librarian of Har- vard College. See " Library of Harvard University, Bio- graphical Contributions," Edited by Justin Winsor, No. it; "The Librarians of Harvard College im7-1877," by Alfred Claghora Potter and Charles Knowles Bolton, Cambridge, I8V7. In the BotUm Etming-Pott of May i, 1768, we read : "On Friday last the Rev. Mr. Mather Byles, and Family, came to Town from New London; and we hear he embarks in the first Vessel for England, in order to receive Episcopal Ordination to qualify himself for Minister of Christ Church here, from whom he received an invitation, as lately mentioned." i' '-n 998 NOTES At the evMUBtion of Boaton, with acrenteen other Anglican dergymen he went to Halifax, one of theK clergymen being the Rev. Df Caner. "boit with bodily infirmities and in hi> Mventy-ieventh year." A letter from Dr Caner aoon after, from Halifax, aays: "Aa to the Clergy of Boston, indeed, they have for eleven months past been exposed to difficulty and distress in eveiy shape; and as to myself, having determined to maintaiu my post as long as possible, I continued to officiate to the snull remains of my parishioners, though without a support, till the lO"? of March, when I suddenly and unexpectedly recei\te Con- jovemor present >tu, de- iber JM, With an (Tczti. Bnglandi Epiatle" of Nova I (igned, faithful 'Boston, Congie- I IPT >f letters k in the 1 Society lid. No tiurch in iry's, in !9. LETTERS 947 JP Nathanael Walter in Glocester, Oct. 14, I7M The Right Honourable John Lord Barringtoii at Beckett House. Dec. U, 1780. The Right Honourable George GranviUe My Lord Lansdowne, Dec. M, 17S0. The Right Honourable George. Lord Lansdowne. March 4, 173). The Reverend Mr Thomas Bradbury, London, March 4, nsj. The Rev. Dr baac Watts, Jan. S. 1786/7. Alexander Pope, Esqr., Twickenham. Nod/te. Mr Junes Thomson. To be left in New-Street, Lon- oon, Jan. 4, 178(1/7. The Honourable D- Benjamin Franklin, London. No date. The Rev? Dr John Chalmers, Principal of the King's CoUege and University of Aberdeen. No date. His E-cceUency the Governor [Hutchinson], AprU 8, The HonourableA jdrewOUver, Esqr,Salem. No date M? Livingstone, sent the Day after her Husband and others had been here on a visit, when 800 dolhirs was found left in the chamber closet. May U, 1780. M' Murray, Glocester, Jan., 1781. Mr Enoch Brown, Boston, Feb. 10, 1781. His daughter-in-Uw in Halifax, on the death of his [second] wife. No date. Mr Frederick William Geyer, London, July 1, 1788. Mr Holmes, London, Nov. 4, 1788. Mr Frederick William Geyer, merchant in London, Nov. 14, 1788. I I 248 LETTERS Hi* (Uughter-in-kw in lUifu, Dee. 10, ITM. Bev. Ens SUIm. Prerident of Yale CoUege, New Haven. April IS, 1787. Df Bylei, Halifu, April 14, 1787. His Excellency Benjamin Franklin, Eiq', Philadelpliia, Hay 14. 1787. Hr Gawen Brown, Petertburg, Virginia, May 14. 1787. (Following these letters of D! Byles's are many from his daughters to various friends, especially their brother and his family in Halifax.] New IpUm. 1787. from other INDEX — . mm), Aduu, Bnr. Joko, ts, Adunib JoMph. «N. Aduni^ Suniwl, 147, IW. Alnua. Or. WiUiun Bnin, 11. AtawB. iMiily, o*H«U«^ Nov. Scotia. US. Amofy, Jokn. H. A11M17, Mn. Jalu, M. Appleton, Rev. Nathuid, IM. Aptkorp, Mn. Jobs, St. Artillefy Compuiy. 84. Attucki, Cliqiiu, 14«. AochmuUr, Judo Bobert. Jr. 1S4. .. Her. Jacobb 1V7-1M, tM. Buna. Mn. Jobn, «s. Bui, Akkn. ISl. Mdwr, Andrew, 88, S», 80. Bdcher, Andrew, Jr.. 41, 40, Belcher, Ann, 48. Belcher, (unily, 41, 80, 81, u». Belcher, Governor JonaUun, 38 M, 48, J8, ISO. 178, 888, Sit! Belcher, Mn. Jonatbim, 58-60. " Belcher lapen," 888. Belcher. Sarah, 48. Belknap, Eev. Jeremy, 88, 118, IM. 158, 188, lSS-800, 803 MS, 883, 835, 838. " Bellmap Papen," 888, 834, 837. BeUmap, Sarah (Bylea), 198. 848 Boaetl, JoMph'i aasomt ; pKjudkc* agninit him. «. «, 88; > (rind III Britiih offlccri and lUunch Tory in Uk Rcvolutiiin. >, S, 4, t, 148, IM, 151. lU, IMi wttchct funeral promfioa of Critpui Attucki, I4II: IrUi Mon hil cllurrli, », lM-197. 171, 17fl; diiapprovd of other ministeri ot the coune of the church, lt7-l«S: tried before the town and lenteoced to traniportation, but lentence not carri-d out. «. 7, BR. lei- 187 ; i- .^riioaed in hii hou«e, IM. le7; hi> daughter Cathe- rine's account of the two trial*, 170-17«; life after the Revo- lution. 88. SR, laS; friend- ■hip with Rev. Nathaniel Enuuons, 00, 01; relations with Dr. Benjamin Franklin, 18<-10Ji probably attended Trinity Church. Ml ; viaited by Rev. Jacob Bailey, 187 j ii leiied with paralyiii, 108; Dr. Belknap deacribea his infirmities, 100; taken from hia house in the great fire. MO, Ml; tender reUtions with his son. 812; visit of Rev. Samuel Parker to him V -m he was dying. M2; his death. tOt, t03: buried in the Granary burying-ground, MS; money subscribed for his funeral expenses. 237; the- ological position, 78 ; made no original eoatribnlloa to th» olofr. II : a brilliant prevher, <, 70 ; his printed sermons, 78, 70; avoids polilirs in the pulpit. 14S-14S; prays at town meeting and preachea Thursday tecturet, 84, 108; "lashed" by Rev. Eleuer Wheelock. 87; Rev. John Eliot's criticism, 78; Rev. John Eliot's account of (in 1777). IM; Ephiaim Eliot's strictumoa, MO; showed no desire to become an Anglican* 84 ; character of his ministry, 7S ; pnaence, voice, dress. R- 11; portraits of. 10-12 ; pro- lific writings. 2; attempt of friends to exalt as a great poet, 08-100; a "New EngUnd pij. t laumte," 178; Epistlea to Governor Belcher, 81-83, 08; poem of welcome to Governor Burnet, 03, 08; "The Conflagration." written in his fifteenth year. 08-08; letter to Pope, 101-lOS; cor- respondence with Pope, Watts, and Grenville. lOS, 104, 103, 288; poem to Dr. Watts, 112-114; receives the Odyssey from Pope and in- scribes lines in it, 103, 106; attention to the art of poetry, IOd-108; interest in music. Ill; interest in natural science, 01; his overflowing wit, 1. t, 4; Lucius Manlius Sargent charccteriaes bis hu- mour. 2S3 ; pun on the names Quincy and Byles. 33; pat- 252 INDEX it ;|:.f •age-at-amu with Joaeph Green. 114; Governor Bel- cher's practical joke on, ISO- IS2; Green's parody of his hymn written at sea. 133- 1S7 ; he retorts on Green, 137, 140 ; his " brown study," 141 ; witticism at his tnal before the justices, 173; humoi^ ously relieves his guard, 173, 174; frightens British troops by his joke on Fast Day, 175, 176; makes fun of General Knox. 175 ; pun on redressing New England's grievances, 176; letter to "Mr. Copley in the solar system," ^97; tells Dr. Cooper he treats him like a baby. 197; the "dark day," 198; estimate of, 118; estimate of, by Dr. Nathaniel Emmons, 90, 01 ; opinions of expressed in " Memorial His- tory of Boston." 117, 118; where his gift of humour came from, 121; William "Odor's verdict on, 168, 164; his library, 01 ; his letter^ book. 188; miscellaneous ef- fects of, MS, to*. Byles,Mather, Jr., 7; bom, 65, M5; baptiied,i37; graduated at Harvard, tOS; librarian of Harvard, 837; ordained at New London, 806; portrait y, JoMph. iS4. Mayhew, Rev. Jooatfaui, 8A, 178. "Mediution of Cunm," 80-gt. Meeting-faoiuef, chirf places where mdependence wu fos- tered, 142. "Memorial Histoiy of Boston," 117, 143, 8SS, tas. Milton's " Paradise Lost," 83. Muidock, Harold, ISO. "Nathaniel Emmons and Mather Byles," 132. Neal, Jonathan, 231. JVne England Courani, 26-34, 186, 187, 226, 236, 236. New En^^d Historic Genea- logical Society, 95. New EngUnd Historical and Genealogical Begister, 147, 223,234. "New England Hymn," pub- lished by Edes and Gill, <0S, 110. Km England Magaxint, 232. New England patriots. Dr. Emmons's opinion erf, 147. "New England Paalm-Singer," 108. New England WtcUf Journal, 34, as, 86, 100, 226. New England's GrieTaocea " Kd- dressed," 176, 23S. New light opinions, 123, 124. New North Church, 143, 238. Newport, R. I., 123. Noyes, Anna, 42. Noyes, Dr. Oliver, 42, 228. Noyes, John, 42. Noyes, Sarah (Oliver), 42. Odell, Beginald, 18. "Old Calvinism," 77, 78. Old North Church, 47, 223. Old South Church, 40, 47, 60, 87, 142, m, 227, 284, 237. Oliver, Hon. Daniel, 88. Parker, Bishop Samuel, 202. 238. Parker House, Boston, 183. Payson, Joseph, 231. Pelham, Peter, 10, 11, 228. Pemberton, Rev. Ebeneser, 84, 232. Pemberton, Samuel, J. P., 163. Percy, Earl, letters to his father and Henry Reveley, Esq., 149, ISO. Phillips. Rev. Samuel, 231. PhiUips, William, 183. Phipps, Lieut. Governor Spen- cer, 59. "Pious Remains" of Dr. Samuel Byles, 219. Pitoum, Major John, 4. Poem describing a Harvard Commencement, 100, 101. Poem on the death of King George 1st, and the ac' ession of George 2d, 84. Poem — "The Comet," lOO. Poems on Several Occasions," 82,83. Popr, Alexander, 101, 232, 233. Potter, Alfred Claghom, 237. Pownalborough, Maine, 167. INDEX S57 "0, lot. ud ud Friocc Ker. Dr. Thomu, M 47, 80, iir, lit, IIS, 178, na. Princeton College, tst. ProK Writingi of Dr. Bylei, M. Province Hoiue, deicription mod biitorj of, *a-U. Quincjr, Judge Edmund, M, tU. Quincy (amily, 5S, Hmwdon, Lord Franc'a, 4. Befugees with Howe's fieet, 8. Heid, Mrj. Su«ann«, in. Keveley, Henry, E«)., letter of Earl r rcy to, 140, I»0. Revere, i'uid, no. Ritchie fsmily of Halifai, 838. Rogerenei in New London, 808. Royall family, i3«. Royal, Col. Iiaac, 4. Sargent, Lucius Manlius, 118 11*. iSS. Second Church, Wientham, tSi. Sergeant, Peter, 43. Settlement of Dr. Byles over the HolUs St. Church, 41. Bewail, Chief~Justice, 17, 18, 84, 85. Bewail, Her. Dr. Joseph. 87, 84, 178, 8S». Sheafe, Roger, 4. Shirley, Governor, 179. Smibert, John, 888. Smith, Josiah, US. Smith, Sydney, 181, K33. Snelling, Jonathan, 184. Solemn League and Covenant, 149. Sprague's "Annals of the Amer- ican Pulpit," 88S. Stamp Act, 178. SUte Street, Boston, 181. Stiles, Rev. Dr. Ena, eztnct from diary of, W, 188, 834. St. John, New Brunswick, Trin- ity Church at, 3, 811. St. John's Church, Portsmouth. 810. St. Paul's Church, Halitai, 3, 810. Tailer, Dr. Gillam, 88. Taller, Rebecca, 87. Tailer, Hon. Lieut.-Gov. Wil- liam, 38, 87, 880, 889. Tailer family's connexions, 87, 68, Teal, Emilia Louisa, 48. "Topographical and Historical Description of Boston," 44. Tories leave for Halifax, 810. Trees aloig the Mall, 188. Trinity Church, Boston, 8, 801, 839, 840. Trinity Church, St. John. N. B.. 3, 811. TYott. Thomas, 831. Tudor's (William) "Life of James Otis," 163. 'Twice Told Tales," 43. Tyler, Moses Coit, 98. Unitarianism, moderate and advanced, 78, 77. University of Aberdeen. 83. Vassal!. John. 181. Walker, George Leon, U.D., 881. Walter, Rebecca, 6nt wife of Mather Byles, Jr., 807. «58 INDEX Walter, Rev. Nebeniiah, M. Walter, Rev. Dr. William, Hec- tor of Trinity Church, Boaton. 8, 8, «10, t3». Warnut of Court of Seniooa for aiTMt of Dr. Bylea, 1(14, IM. Watti, Rev. Dr. Iiaac, ftS, 104, txt. Webteed, Rev. William, 83. Wendell, Abraham, its, Wendell, Eliiabeth, SS, US. Wendell, Profeiaor Banett, n». Wendell, r >win* De Key, MS. Weit. Benjamin, bee met patron of Mather Brown, 21S, tl4. Weit Street, Borton, 181. Whedock, Rev. Dr. Eleuer, t7. WhiteHeld, Rev. George, 83. WilUrd, Rev. Mr., too. Wnulow, Joahua, 188. Wmior, Juatin, i37. Winthrop, Adam, £aq.. Aft. 'Yankee heraldry," tt». m. tron 14.