Increase Mather (1639-1723), American colonial representative, president of Harvard College, and author, was the most prominent member of the second generation in Massachusetts colony. Born in Dorchester, Mass., where his father was first minister,...

Increase Mather's son Cotton Mather was much better known to succeeding generations of New Englanders than was the father, perhaps because he published much more than Increase Mather, and because he made the transition into the eighteenth century more...

THE LAST AMERICAN PURITAN. The Life of Increase Mather, by Michael G. Hall. Wesleyan University Press. 438 pp. $35. Three hundred years ago this April anxious spectators clustered on Beacon Hill watching a police boat shadow the square-rigger President, standing out for England....

About a year before the death of Oliver Cromwell and shortly before the subsequent unraveling of the Protestant regime in England, Increase Mather was keenly enthusiastic about his personal prospects. Like a number of other colonists during Cromwell's Protectorate, he had abandoned the...

In the following excerpt from a work first published in 1925, Murdock recounts Mather's involvement in the witch trials and argues that Mather has been unfairly labeled throughout history as a proponent of the executions when he was instead a voice for temperance and moderation.

In the following excerpt, Lowance analyzes Mather's attempts to combine scientific knowledge with theology to formulate explanations for occurrences in both nature and society, and also praises Mather for being forward-thinking and progressive in his scientific writings.

In the following essay, Middlekauff asserts that while Mather's stated purpose in his scientific writings was to discredit scientific explanations of natural occurances, it was also this interest in science and his knowledge of the difference between appearance and reality that enabled him to help end the witch trials.