Introduction

Biography

Mather was the son of Jo­si­as Byles and Eli­za­beth Ma­ther, grand­son of In­crease Ma­ther, and ne­phew of Cot­ton Ma­ther.

He mar­ried twice: to An­na Gale Noyes, a niece of Gov­er­nor Jo­na­than Bel­cher (Feb­ru­ary 14, 1733) and Re­bec­kah Tail­er (or Tai­lor), daugh­ter of Mas­sa­chu­setts’ Act­ing Gov­er­nor Will­iam Tailer (June 11, 1747).

He was edu­cat­ed at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty (AM 1728) and the Theo­lo­gic­al Se­mi­na­ry in Ab­er­deen, Scot­land (DD 1765). In his ear­ly years, his cor­res­pon­dents in­clud­ed Al­ex­an­der Pope and Isaac Watts.

In 1733, he be­came pas­tor of Bos­ton’s Hol­lis Street Church (John Pier­pont was pas­tor there, 1819–45).

During the Am­eri­can Re­vo­lu­tion, Byles was a loy­al­ist, or To­ry, and af­ter the Brit­ish eva­cu­at­ed Bos­ton, his con­gre­ga­tion vot­ed to dis­miss him.

The le­gis­la­ture placed Byles un­der house ar­rest, com­plete with a sen­try. When a vi­sit­or in­quired about the sen­try, Byles replied, Oh, that is my ob­serve-a-Tory!

When Bos­ton of­fi­cials grew wea­ry of guard­ing him and re­moved the sen­try, Byles said he had been guard­ed, re­guard­ed, and dis­re­gard­ed.

Byles is al­so known for the quote, re­port­ed­ly made to Con­gre­ga­tion­al­ist min­is­ter Na­than­iel Em­mons March 8, 1770, dur­ing the fun­er­al pro­ces­sion for Cris­pus At­tucks and oth­er vic­tims of the Bos­ton Mas­sa­cre: Which is bet­ter—to be ruled by one ty­rant three thou­sand miles away, or by three thou­sand ty­rants one mile away? Ac­tor Mel Gib­son spoke a ver­sion of this quote in the 2000 mo­vie The Pa­tri­ot.

Works

In ad­di­tion to ma­ny pub­lished ser­mons, he wrote:

• Poems on Se­ver­al Oc­ca­sions (Bos­ton, Mas­sa­chu­setts: Knee­land & Green, 1744)
• Appendix to Tate and Bra­dy (ed­it­or), by S. Knee­land (Bos­ton, Mas­sa­chu­setts: 1760)