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93-571: Cotton Mather FRS ( / ˈ m æ ð ər / ; February 12, 1663 – February 13, 1728) was a Puritan clergyman and author in colonial New England , who wrote extensively on theological, historical, and scientific subjects. After being educated at Harvard College , he joined his father Increase as minister of the Congregationalist Old North Meeting House in Boston, Massachusetts , where he preached for

186-583: A Unitarian congregation by the mid-19th century, as did many of the other state churches in Massachusetts. Massachusetts' state churches (largely Unitarian and Congregationalist, including First Church), were officially disaffiliated from the government in 1833. In the 19th century, the First Church moved to Back Bay in Boston. The building at 66 Marlborough Street in Boston dated from 1868, and

279-555: A measles epidemic in 1713. On July 5, 1715, Mather married widow Lydia Lee George . Her daughter Katherine, wife of Nathan Howell, became a widow shortly after Lydia married Mather and she came to live with the newly married couple. Also living in the Mather household at that time were Mather's children Abigal (21), Hannah (18), Elizabeth (11), and Samuel (9). Initially, Mather wrote in his journal how lovely he found his wife and how much he enjoyed their discussions about scripture. Within

372-625: A "pesthouse". In 1716, Onesimus , one of Mather's slaves, explained to Mather how he had been inoculated as a child in Africa . Mather was fascinated by the idea. By July 1716, he had read an endorsement of inoculation by Dr Emanuel Timonius of Constantinople in the Philosophical Transactions . Mather then declared, in a letter to Dr John Woodward of Gresham College in London, that he planned to press Boston's doctors to adopt

465-763: A Chair (all of whom are Fellows of the Royal Society ). Members of the 10 Sectional Committees change every three years to mitigate in-group bias . Each Sectional Committee covers different specialist areas including: New Fellows are admitted to the Society at a formal admissions day ceremony held annually in July, when they sign the Charter Book and the Obligation which reads: "We who have hereunto subscribed, do hereby promise, that we will endeavour to promote

558-607: A Horse, addressed himself to the People, partly to declare that [Burroughs] was no ordained Minister, partly to possess the People of his guilt, saying that the devil often had been transformed into the Angel of Light. And this did somewhat appease the People, and the Executions went on. As public discontent with the witch trials grew in the summer of 1692, threatening civil unrest, the conservative Cotton Mather felt compelled to defend

651-534: A better vehicle for preserving the Puritan orthodoxy in New England. In 1718, Cotton convinced Boston-born British businessman Elihu Yale to make a charitable gift sufficient to ensure the school's survival. It was also Mather who suggested that the school change its name to Yale College after it accepted that donation. Cotton Mather sought the presidency of Harvard again after Leverett's death in 1724, but

744-580: A commentary and interpretation of the Christian Bible in light of "all of the Learning in the World". Mather, who continued to work on it for many years, sought to incorporate into his reading of Scripture the new scientific knowledge and theories, including geography , heliocentrism , atomism , and Newtonianism . According to Silverman, the project "looks forward to Mather's becoming probably

837-575: A cut in the skin with exudate from a patient with a relatively mild case of smallpox ( variola ), to bring about a manageable and recoverable infection that would provide later immunity. By the beginning of the 18th century, the Royal Society in England was discussing the practice of inoculation, and the smallpox epidemic in 1713 spurred further interest. It was not until 1721, however, that England recorded its first case of inoculation. Smallpox

930-432: A few years of their marriage, Lydia was subject to rages which left Mather humiliated and depressed. They clashed over Mather's piety and his mishandling of Nathan Howell's estate. He began to call her deranged. She left him for ten days, returning when she learned that Mather's son Increase was lost at sea. Lydia nursed him through illnesses, the last of which lasted five weeks and ended with his death on February 15, 1728. Of

1023-492: A freed slave, became the first African American allowed to become a member of the church. In the 18th century, Charles Chauncy was a minister at First Church for sixty years, where he gained a reputation for opposing what he believed was the emotionalism of Jonathan Edwards during the Great Awakening . A schism developed at the turn of the 19th century: this Trinitarian Christian church eventually transformed into

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1116-620: A general pardon, bringing the witch trials to an end. The last major events in Mather's involvement with witchcraft were his interactions with Mercy Short in December 1692 and Margaret Rule in September 1693. Mather appears to have remained convinced that genuine witches had been executed in Salem and he never publicly expressed regrets over his role in those events. Robert Calef , an otherwise obscure Boston merchant, published More Wonders of

1209-459: A half, he is the youngest student ever admitted to that institution. At around this time, Cotton began to be afflicted by stuttering , a speech disorder that he would struggle to overcome throughout the rest of his life. Bullied by the older students and fearing that his stutter would make him unsuitable as a preacher, Cotton withdrew temporarily from the college, continuing his education at home. He also took an interest in medicine and considered

1302-501: A new building at the 66 Marlborough Street location. The current building incorporates the ruined street facade and " puddingstone " steeple tower of the previous church on the site (by Ware & van Brunt, 1868), which had burned in 1968. After a call for designs, the congregation voted for the proposal by Paul Rudolph , which was completed in 1972. The light-flooded, soaring interior is finished with Rudolph's characteristic bush hammered "corduroy concrete" surfaces. Decades later,

1395-420: A statement, drawn up by Cotton Mather and presented to Governor Phips and his council a few days later, entitled The Return of Several Ministers . In that document, Mather criticized the court's reliance on spectral evidence and recommended that it adopt a more cautious procedure. However, he ended the document with a statement defending the continued prosecution of witchcraft according to the "Direction given by

1488-795: A time when the English Parliament was threatening to repeal the Massachusetts Charter. With the Mathers' support, Dudley was appointed governor by the Crown and returned to Boston in 1702. Contrary to the promises that he had made to the Mathers, Governor Dudley proved a divisive and high-handed executive, reserving his patronage for a small circle composed of transatlantic merchants, Anglicans, and religious liberals such as Thomas Brattle , Benjamin Colman, and John Leverett . In

1581-652: A young Bostonian had opposed the old Puritan order represented by Mather and participated in the anti-inoculation campaign, later described Mather's book Bonifacius , or Essays to Do Good (1710) as a major influence on his life. Cotton Mather was born in 1663 in the city of Boston, the capital of the Massachusetts Bay Colony , to the Rev. Increase Mather and his wife Maria née Cotton. His grandfathers were Richard Mather and John Cotton , both of them prominent Puritan ministers who had played major roles in

1674-737: Is confirmed by the Council in April, and a secret ballot of Fellows is held at a meeting in May. A candidate is elected if they secure two-thirds of votes of those Fellows voting. An indicative allocation of 18 Fellowships can be allocated to candidates from Physical Sciences and Biological Sciences; and up to 10 from Applied Sciences, Human Sciences and Joint Physical and Biological Sciences. A further maximum of six can be 'Honorary', 'General' or 'Royal' Fellows. Nominations for Fellowship are peer reviewed by Sectional Committees, each with at least 12 members and

1767-421: Is nominated by two Fellows of the Royal Society (a proposer and a seconder), who sign a certificate of proposal. Previously, nominations required at least five fellows to support each nomination by the proposer, which was criticised for supposedly establishing an old boy network and elitist gentlemen's club . The certificate of election (see for example ) includes a statement of the principal grounds on which

1860-399: Is now a general agreement that his beliefs were very typical of the period, that he acted as a moderating force in the context of the trials, and that he never directly participated in the proceedings. He advised the judges against using spectral evidence and offered recommendations to proceed with caution lest innocent people come to harm. In the end, Mather's role in the witchcraft episode

1953-469: Is still overshadowed by the specter of Salem witchcraft." Cotton Mather was an extremely prolific writer, producing 388 different books and pamphlets during his lifetime. His most widely distributed work was Magnalia Christi Americana (which may be translated as "The Glorious Works of Christ in America"), subtitled "The ecclesiastical history of New England, from its first planting in the year 1620 unto

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2046-514: The Magnalia he also attempts to transcend the religious separatism of the old Puritan settlers, reflecting Mather's more ecumenical and cosmopolitan embrace of a Transatlantic Protestant Christianity that included, in addition to Mather's own Congregationalists , also Presbyterians , Baptists , and low church Anglicans . In 1693 Mather also began work on a grand intellectual project that he titled Biblia Americana , which sought to provide

2139-474: The Selectmen , powerless to stop it, "severely limited the length of time funeral bells could toll." As one response, legislators delegated a thousand pounds from the treasury to help the people who, under these conditions, could no longer support their families. On June 6, 1721, Mather sent an abstract of reports on inoculation by Timonius and Jacobus Pylarinus to local physicians, urging them to consult about

2232-426: The post-nominal letters FRS . Every year, fellows elect up to ten new foreign members. Like fellows, foreign members are elected for life through peer review on the basis of excellence in science. As of 2016 , there are around 165 foreign members, who are entitled to use the post-nominal ForMemRS . Honorary Fellowship is an honorary academic title awarded to candidates who have given distinguished service to

2325-539: The variolation method of inoculation as a means of preventing smallpox contagion, which he learned about from an African-American slave who he owned, Onesimus . He dispatched many reports on scientific matters to the Royal Society of London , which elected him as a fellow in 1713. Mather's promotion of inoculation against smallpox caused violent controversy in Boston during the outbreak of 1721. Scientist and United States Founding Father Benjamin Franklin , who as

2418-653: The "Haunted Children" by prayer and fasting. He also took in the eldest Goodwin child, Martha, into his own home, where she lived for several weeks. Eventually, the afflictions ceased and Martha was admitted into Mather's church. The publication of Mather's Memorable Providences attracted attention on both sides of the Atlantic, including from the eminent English Puritan Richard Baxter . In his book, Mather argued that since there are witches and devils, there are "immortal souls". He also claimed that witches appear spectrally as themselves. He opposed any natural explanations for

2511-517: The Boston revolt were summoned to London to answer the complaints against them. The administration of Massachusetts was temporarily assumed by Simon Bradstreet , whose rule proved weak and contentious. In 1691, the government of King William and Queen Mary issued a new Massachusetts Charter . This charter united the Massachusetts Bay Colony with Plymouth Colony into the new Province of Massachusetts Bay . Rather than restoring

2604-579: The Country in those matters, taking home one of the Children, and managing such Intreagues with that Child, and after printing such an account of the whole, in his Memorable Providences , as conduced much to the kindling of those Flames, that in Sir William 's time threatened the devouring of this Country. Similar views, on Mather's responsibility for the climate of hysteria over witchcraft that led to

2697-484: The Dutch Prince William of Orange . News of the events in London greatly emboldened the opposition in Boston to Governor Andros, finally precipitating the 1689 Boston revolt . Cotton Mather, then aged twenty-six, was one of the Puritan ministers who guided resistance in Boston to Andros's regime. Early in 1689, Randolph had a warrant issued for Cotton Mather's arrest on a charge of "scandalous libel", but

2790-696: The Inhabitants of the Earth, and of the Sea; for the Devil is come down unto you, having great Wrath; because he knoweth, that he hath but a short time." In the sermon, Mather claimed that the witches "have associated themselves to do no less a thing than to destroy the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, in these parts of the World." Although he did not intervene in any of the trials, there are some testimonies that Mather

2883-493: The Invisible World in 1700, bitterly attacking Cotton Mather over his role in the events of 1692. In the words of 20th-century historian Samuel Eliot Morison , "Robert Calef tied a tin can to Cotton Mather which has rattled and banged through the pages of superficial and popular historians". Intellectual historian Reiner Smolinski, an expert on the writings of Cotton Mather, found it "deplorable that Mather's reputation

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2976-588: The Laws of God, and the wholesome Statues of the English Nation". Robert Calef would later criticize Mather's intervention in The Return of Several Ministers as "perfectly ambidexter, giving a great or greater encouragement to proceed in those dark methods, than cautions against them." On August 4, Cotton Mather preached a sermon before his North Church congregation on the text of Revelation 12:12: "Woe to

3069-516: The Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts and chief judge of the Salem witch trials. Mather's book constitutes the most detailed written defense of the conduct of those trials. Mather's role in drumming up and sustaining the witch hysteria behind those proceedings was denounced by Robert Calef in his book More Wonders of the Invisible World , published in 1700. In the 19th century, Nathaniel Hawthorne called Mather "the chief agent of

3162-409: The Mathers represented, as well as upon the local autonomy of Massachusetts. The colonists were particularly outraged when Andros declared that all grants of land made in the name of the old Massachusetts Bay Company were invalid, forcing them to apply and pay for new royal patents on land that they already occupied or face eviction. In April 1687, Increase Mather sailed to London , where he remained for

3255-456: The Rev. Benjamin Wadsworth . The practice of smallpox inoculation (as distinguished from to the later practice of vaccination ) was developed possibly in 8th-century India or 10th-century China and by the 17th-century had reached Turkey. It was also practiced in western Africa, but it is not known when it started there. Inoculation or, rather, variolation , involved infecting a person via

3348-439: The Royal Society has been described by The Guardian as "the equivalent of a lifetime achievement Oscar " with several institutions celebrating their announcement each year. Up to 60 new Fellows (FRS), honorary (HonFRS) and foreign members (ForMemRS) are elected annually in late April or early May, from a pool of around 700 proposed candidates each year. New Fellows can only be nominated by existing Fellows for one of

3441-509: The Salem trials, were repeated by later commentators, such as the politician and historian Charles W. Upham in the 19th century. When the accusations of witchcraft arose in Salem Village in 1692, Cotton Mather was incapacitated by a serious illness, which he attributed to overwork. He suggested that the afflicted girls be separated and offered to take six of them into his home, as he had done previously with Martha Goodwin. That offer

3534-1344: The Society, the oldest known scientific academy in continuous existence, is a significant honour. It has been awarded to many eminent scientists throughout history, including Isaac Newton (1672), Benjamin Franklin (1756), Charles Babbage (1816), Michael Faraday (1824), Charles Darwin (1839), Ernest Rutherford (1903), Srinivasa Ramanujan (1918), Jagadish Chandra Bose (1920), Albert Einstein (1921), Paul Dirac (1930), Winston Churchill (1941), Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1944), Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis (1945), Dorothy Hodgkin (1947), Alan Turing (1951), Lise Meitner (1955), Satyendra Nath Bose (1958), and Francis Crick (1959). More recently, fellowship has been awarded to Stephen Hawking (1974), David Attenborough (1983), Tim Hunt (1991), Elizabeth Blackburn (1992), Raghunath Mashelkar (1998), Tim Berners-Lee (2001), Venki Ramakrishnan (2003), Atta-ur-Rahman (2006), Andre Geim (2007), Bai Chunli (2014), James Dyson (2015), Ajay Kumar Sood (2015), Subhash Khot (2017), Elon Musk (2018), Elaine Fuchs (2019) and around 8,000 others in total, including over 280 Nobel Laureates since 1900. As of October 2018 , there are approximately 1,689 living Fellows, Foreign and Honorary Members, of whom 85 are Nobel Laureates. Fellowship of

3627-663: The Society, we shall be free from this Obligation for the future". Since 2014, portraits of Fellows at the admissions ceremony have been published without copyright restrictions in Wikimedia Commons under a more permissive Creative Commons license which allows wider re-use. In addition to the main fellowships of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS & HonFRS), other fellowships are available which are applied for by individuals, rather than through election. These fellowships are research grant awards and holders are known as Royal Society Research Fellows . In addition to

3720-595: The award of Fellowship (FRS, HonFRS & ForMemRS) and the Research Fellowships described above, several other awards, lectures and medals of the Royal Society are also given. First Church in Boston The church congregation was established in 1630, when the settlers on the Arbella arrived at the site of present-day Charlestown, Massachusetts . John Wilson was the first minister, and

3813-483: The book Wonders of the Invisible World (1693), attracted intense controversy in his own day and has negatively affected his historical reputation. As a historian of colonial New England, Mather is noted for his Magnalia Christi Americana (1702). Personally and intellectually committed to the waning social and religious orders in New England, Cotton Mather unsuccessfully sought the presidency of Harvard College . After 1702, Cotton Mather clashed with Joseph Dudley ,

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3906-612: The cause of science, but do not have the kind of scientific achievements required of Fellows or Foreign Members. Honorary Fellows include the World Health Organization's Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus (2022), Bill Bryson (2013), Melvyn Bragg (2010), Robin Saxby (2015), David Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Turville (2008), Onora O'Neill (2007), John Maddox (2000), Patrick Moore (2001) and Lisa Jardine (2015). Honorary Fellows are entitled to use

3999-562: The children that Mather had with Abigail and Elizabeth, the only children to survive him were Hannah and Samuel. He did not have any children with Lydia. On May 14, 1686, ten days after Cotton Mather's marriage to Abigail Phillips, Edward Randolph disembarked in Boston bearing letters patent from King James II of England that revoked the Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company and commissioned Randolph to reorganize

4092-480: The colonial government. James's intention was to curb Massachusetts's religious separatism by incorporating the colony it into a larger Dominion of New England , without an elected legislature and under a governor who would serve at the pleasure of the Crown. Later that year, the King appointed Sir Edmund Andros as governor of that new Dominion. This was a direct attack upon the Puritan religious and social orders that

4185-452: The context of Queen Anne's War (1702–1713), Cotton Mather preached and published against Governor Dudley, whom Mather accused of corruption and misgovernment. Mather sought unsuccessfully to have Dudley replaced by Sir Charles Hobby . Outmaneuvered by Dudley, this political rivalry left Mather increasingly isolated at a time when Massachusetts society was steadily moving away from the Puritan tradition that Mather represented. Cotton Mather

4278-496: The cultural map, recall such later American works as Moby-Dick (to which it has been compared), its effort to rejoin provincial America to the mainstream of English culture recalls rather The Waste Land . Genuinely Anglo-American in outlook, the book projects a New England which is ultimately an enlarged version of Cotton Mather himself, a pious citizen of "The Metropolis of the whole English America". Silverman argues that, although Mather glorifies New England's Puritan past, in

4371-459: The death in 1701 of acting governor William Stoughton , Dudley began enlisting support in London to procure appointment as the new governor of Massachusetts. Although the Mathers (to whom he was related by marriage), continued to resent Dudley's role in the Andros administration, they eventually came around to the view that Dudley would now be preferable as governor to the available alternatives, at

4464-605: The deaths in Boston during 1721. Meanwhile, Boylston had inoculated 287 people, with six resulting deaths. Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society ( FRS , ForMemRS and HonFRS ) is an award granted by the Fellows of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural knowledge , including mathematics , engineering science , and medical science ". Fellowship of

4557-595: The declaration attributed to the deposed officials. The authorship of that document is uncertain: it was not signed by Mather or any other clergymen, and Puritans frowned upon the clergy being seen to play too direct and personal a hand in political affairs. That day, Mather probably read the Declaration to a crowd gathered in front of the Boston Town House . In July, Andros, Randolph, Joseph Dudley , and other officials who had been deposed and arrested in

4650-561: The disease was spreading at an alarming rate. As a new wave of smallpox hit the area and continued to spread, many residents fled to outlying rural settlements. The combination of exodus, quarantine, and outside traders' fears disrupted business in the capital of the Bay Colony for weeks. Guards were stationed at the House of Representatives to keep Bostonians from entering without special permission. The death toll reached 101 in September, and

4743-623: The establishment and growth of the Massachusetts colony. Richard Mather was a graduate of the University of Oxford and John Cotton a graduate of the University of Cambridge . Increase Mather was a graduate of Harvard College and the Trinity College Dublin , and served as the minister of Boston's original North Church (not to be confused with the Anglican Old North Church of Paul Revere fame). This

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4836-466: The events in Salem, and it would remain admissible until 1712. There was, however, debate among experts as to how much weight should be given to such testimonies. On June 10, 1692, Bridget Bishop , the thrice-married owner of an unlicensed tavern, was hanged after being convicted and sentenced by the Court of Oyer and Terminer, based largely on spectral evidence. A group of twelve Puritan ministers issued

4929-476: The events surrounding the Salem witch trials of 1692–1693. As a consequence of those trials, nineteen people were executed by hanging for practicing witchcraft and one was pressed to death for refusing to enter a plea before the court. Although Mather had no official role in the legal proceedings, he wrote the book Wonders of the Invisible World , which appeared in 1693 with the endorsement of William Stoughton ,

5022-466: The fellows offered the position to the Rev. Joseph Sewall (son of Judge Samuel Sewall , who had repented publicly for his role in the Salem witch trials). When Sewall turned it down, Mather once again hoped that he might get the appointment. Instead, the fellows offered it to one of its own number, the Rev. Benjamin Coleman, an old rival of Mather. When Coleman refused it, the presidency went finally to

5115-528: The fellowships described below: Every year, up to 52 new fellows are elected from the United Kingdom, the rest of the Commonwealth of Nations , and Ireland, which make up around 90% of the society. Each candidate is considered on their merits and can be proposed from any sector of the scientific community. Fellows are elected for life on the basis of excellence in science and are entitled to use

5208-502: The first Puritan missionary to the Native Americans, to Sir William Phips , the incumbent governor of Massachusetts at the time that Mather began writing), plus dozens of brief biographical sketches, including those of Hannah Duston and Hannah Swarton . According to Kenneth Silverman , an expert on early American literature and Cotton Mather's biographer, If the epic ambitions of Magnalia , its attempt to put American on

5301-415: The fits, believed that people who confessed to using witchcraft were sane, and warned against all magical practices due to their diabolical connections. Mather's contemporary Robert Calef would later accuse Mather of laying the groundwork, with his Memorable Providences , for the witchcraft hysteria that gripped Salem three years later: Mr Cotton Mather, was the most active and forward of any Minister in

5394-704: The full title of president (1692–1701). Increase was unwilling to move permanently to the Harvard campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts , since his congregation in Boston was much larger than the Harvard student body, which at the time counted only a few dozen. Instructed by a committee of the Massachusetts General Assembly that the president of Harvard had to reside in Cambridge and preach to the students in person, Increase resigned in 1701 and

5487-540: The good of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge, and to pursue the ends for which the same was founded; that we will carry out, as far as we are able, those actions requested of us in the name of the Council; and that we will observe the Statutes and Standing Orders of the said Society. Provided that, whensoever any of us shall signify to the President under our hands, that we desire to withdraw from

5580-565: The governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay , whom Mather attempted unsuccessfully to drive out of power. Mather championed the new Yale College as an intellectual bulwark of Puritanism in New England. He corresponded extensively with European intellectuals and received an honorary Doctor of Divinity degree from the University of Glasgow in 1710. A promoter of the new experimental science in America, Cotton Mather carried out original research on plant hybridization . He also researched

5673-512: The growing clamor against the Salem witch trials. At around the same time that the book began to circulate in manuscript form, Governor Phips decided to restrict greatly the use of spectral evidence, thus raising a high barrier against further convictions. The Court of Oyer and Terminer was dismissed on October 29. A new court convened in January 1693 to hear the remaining cases, almost all of which ended in acquittal. In May, Governor Phips issued

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5766-407: The identification and conviction of all witches should be undertaken with the greatest caution and warned against the use of spectral evidence (i.e., testimony that the specter of the accused had tormented a victim) on the grounds that devils could assume the form of innocent and even virtuous people. Under English law , spectral evidence had been admissible in witchcraft trials for a century before

5859-440: The judges in the new court, John Richards , requested that Cotton Mather accompany him to Salem, but Mather refused due to his ill health. Instead, Mather wrote a long letter to Richards in which he gave his advice on the impending trials. In that letter, Mather states that witches guilty of the most grievous crimes should be executed, but that witches convicted of lesser offenses deserve more lenient punishment. He also wrote that

5952-533: The matter. He received no response. Next, Mather pleaded his case to Dr. Zabdiel Boylston , who tried the procedure on his youngest son and two slaves—one grown and one a boy. All recovered in about a week. Boylston inoculated seven more people by mid-July. The epidemic peaked in October 1721, with 411 deaths; by February 26, 1722, Boston was again free from smallpox. The total number of cases since April 1721 came to 5,889, with 844 deaths—more than three-quarters of all

6045-495: The mischief" at Salem. More recently historians have tended to downplay Mather's role in the events at Salem. According to Jan Stievermann, of the Heidelberg Center for American Studies , unlike some other ministers [Cotton Mather] never called for an end to the trials, and he afterwards wrote New England's official defense of the court's proceedings, the infamous Wonders of the Invisible World (1693). Still, there

6138-494: The most influential spokesman in New England for a rationalized, scientized Christianity." Mather could not find a publisher for the Biblia Americana , which remained in manuscript form during his lifetime. It is currently being edited in ten volumes, published by Mohr Siebeck under the direction of Reiner Smolinski and Jan Stievermann. As of 2023, seven of the ten volumes have appeared in print. In Massachusetts at

6231-510: The next four years, pleading with the Court for what he regarded as the interests of the Massachusetts colony. The birth of a male heir to King James in June 1688, which could have cemented a Roman Catholic dynasty in the English throne, triggered the so-called Glorious Revolution in which Parliament deposed James and gave the Crown jointly to his Protestant daughter Mary and her husband,

6324-512: The old Puritan rule, the Charter of 1691 mandated religious toleration for all non-Catholics and established a government led by a Crown-appointed governor. The first governor under the new charter was Sir William Phips , who was a member of the Mathers' church in Boston. Cotton Mather's reputation, in his own day as well as in the historiography and popular culture of subsequent generations, has been very adversely affected by his association with

6417-653: The only minister while the church was in Charlestown. Two years later they constructed a meeting house across the Charles River near what is now State Street in Boston, and Wilson was officially installed as minister there. In 1633 John Cotton arrived from England, and was a teaching elder at the church, helping to establish the foundation of the Congregational Church , the official state church of Massachusetts. In 1677 Dorcas ye blackmore ,

6510-474: The politics of the Massachusetts colony. Despite Cotton's efforts, he never became quite as influential as his father. One of the most public displays of their strained relationship emerged during the Salem witch trials, which Increase Mather reportedly did not support. Cotton did surpass his father's output as a writer, producing nearly 400 works. Cotton Mather married Abigail Phillips, daughter of Colonel John Phillips of Charlestown , on May 4, 1686, when Cotton

6603-436: The possibility of pursuing a career as a physician rather than as a religious minister. Cotton eventually returned to Harvard and received his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1678, followed by a Master of Arts degree in 1681, the same year his father became Harvard President. At Harvard, Cotton studied Hebrew and the sciences. After completing his education, Cotton joined his father's church as assistant pastor. In 1685, Cotton

6696-514: The post nominal letters HonFRS . Statute 12 is a legacy mechanism for electing members before official honorary membership existed in 1997. Fellows elected under statute 12 include David Attenborough (1983) and John Palmer, 4th Earl of Selborne (1991). The Council of the Royal Society can recommend members of the British royal family for election as Royal Fellow of the Royal Society . As of 2023 there are four royal fellows: Elizabeth II

6789-522: The practice of inoculation should smallpox reach the colony again. By 1721, a whole generation of young Bostonians was vulnerable and memories of the last epidemic's horrors had by and large disappeared. Smallpox returned on April 22 of that year, when HMS Seahorse arrived from the West Indies carrying smallpox on board. Despite attempts to protect the town through quarantine, nine known cases of smallpox appeared in Boston by May 27, and by mid-June,

6882-552: The proposal is being made. There is no limit on the number of nominations made each year. In 2015, there were 654 candidates for election as Fellows and 106 candidates for Foreign Membership. The Council of the Royal Society oversees the selection process and appoints 10 subject area committees, known as Sectional Committees, to recommend the strongest candidates for election to the Fellowship. The final list of up to 52 Fellowship candidates and up to 10 Foreign Membership candidates

6975-482: The responsible authorities. On September 2, 1692, after eleven people had been executed as witches, Cotton Mather wrote a letter to Judge Stoughton congratulating him on "extinguishing of as wonderful a piece of devilism as has been seen in the world". As the opposition to the witch trials was bringing them to a halt, Mather wrote Wonders of the Invisible World , a defense of the trials that carried Stoughton's official approval. Mather's Wonders did little to appease

7068-470: The rest of his life. He has been referred to as the "first American Evangelical ". A major intellectual and public figure in English-speaking colonial America, Cotton Mather helped lead the successful revolt of 1689 against Sir Edmund Andros , the governor of New England appointed by King James II . Mather's subsequent involvement in the Salem witch trials of 1692–1693, which he defended in

7161-467: The start of the 18th century, Joseph Dudley was a highly controversial figure, as he had participated actively in the government of Sir Edmund Andros in 1686–1689. Dudley was among those arrested in the revolt of 1689, and was later called to London to answer the charges against him brought by a committee of the colonists. However, Dudley was able to pursue a successful political career in Britain. Upon

7254-548: The warrant was overruled by Wait Winthrop . According to some sources, Cotton Mather escaped a second attempted arrest on April 18, 1689, the same day that the people of Boston took up arms against Andros. The young Mather may have authored, in whole or in part, the "Declaration of the Gentlemen, Merchants, and Inhabitants of Boston and the Country Adjacent", which justified that uprising by a list of grievances that

7347-495: The washerwoman's mother, Ann Glover , verbally insulted the Goodwin girl, who soon began to suffer from hysterical fits that later began to afflict also the three other Goodwin children. Glover was an Irish Catholic widow who could understand English but spoke only Gaelic . Interrogated by the magistrates, she admitted that she tormented her enemies by stroking certain images or dolls with her finger wetted with spittle. After she

7440-575: The westward movement of Boston churches from the crowded, older downtown area to the newer, more fashionable Back Bay. This area was developed for residential use after lowlands were filled in during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Second Church's Back Bay location in the Fenway was sold (it is now owned by the Ruggles St. Baptist congregation) just before the merger. After a disastrous fire in 1968, First Church and Second Church merged and built

7533-611: The year of Our Lord 1698. In seven books." Despite the Latin title, the work is written in English. Mather began working on it towards the end of 1693 and it was finally published in London in 1702. The work incorporates information that Mather put together from a variety of sources, such as letters, diaries, sermons, Harvard College records, personal conversations, and the manuscript histories composed by William Hubbard and William Bradford . The Magnalia includes about fifty biographies of eminent New Englanders (ranging from John Eliot ,

7626-454: Was ordained and assumed full responsibilities as co-pastor of the church. Father and son continued to share responsibility for the care of the congregation until the death of Increase in 1723. Cotton would die less than five years after his father, and was therefore throughout most of his career in the shadow of the respected and formidable Increase. When Increase Mather became president of Harvard in 1692, he exercised considerable influence on

7719-583: Was a fellow of Harvard College from 1690 to 1702, and at various times sat on its Board of Overseers . His father Increase had succeeded John Rogers as president of Harvard in 1684, first as acting president (1684–1686), later with the title of "rector" (1686–1692, during much of which period he was away from Massachusetts, pleading the Puritans' case before the Royal Court in London), and finally with

7812-608: Was a serious threat in colonial America, most devastating to Native Americans, but also to Anglo-American settlers. New England suffered smallpox epidemics in 1677, 1689–90, and 1702. It was highly contagious, and mortality could reach as high as 30 percent. Boston had been plagued by smallpox outbreaks in 1690 and 1702. During this era, public authorities in Massachusetts dealt with the threat primarily by means of quarantine. Incoming ships were quarantined in Boston Harbor , and any smallpox patients in town were held under guard or in

7905-473: Was designed by Boston architects William Robert Ware and Henry Van Brunt . Second Church , also known as the "Church of the Mathers", was founded in 1649 when the population spread to the North End and justified an additional congregation sited closer to those individuals' homes. From 1664 to 1741, its clergy consisted of Increase Mather , Cotton Mather , and Samuel Mather. Both churches were examples of

7998-421: Was not a Royal Fellow, but provided her patronage to the society, as all reigning British monarchs have done since Charles II of England . Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1951) was elected under statute 12, not as a Royal Fellow. The election of new fellows is announced annually in May, after their nomination and a period of peer-reviewed selection. Each candidate for Fellowship or Foreign Membership

8091-431: Was not accepted. In May of that year, Sir William Phips , governor of the newly chartered Province of Massachusetts Bay , appointed a special "Court of Oyer and Terminer" to try the cases of witchcraft in Salem. The chief judge of that court was Phips's lieutenant governor, William Stoughton . Stoughton had close ties to the Mathers and had been recommended as Governor Phips's lieutenant by Increase Mather. Another of

8184-514: Was one of the two principal Congregationalist churches in the city, the other being the First Church established by John Winthrop . Cotton Mather was therefore born into one of the most influential and intellectually distinguished families in colonial New England and seemed destined to follow his father and grandfathers into the Puritan clergy. Cotton entered Harvard College, in the neighboring town of Cambridge , in 1674. Aged only eleven and

8277-483: Was present at the executions that were carried out in Salem on August 19. According to his Mather's contemporary critic Robert Calef, the crowd was disturbed by George Burroughs 's eloquent declarations of innocence from the scaffold and by his recitation of the Lord's Prayer , of which witches were commonly believed to be incapable. Calef claimed that, after Burroughs had been hanged, Mr. Cotton Mather, being mounted upon

8370-537: Was replaced by the Rev. Samuel Willard as acting president. Cotton Mather sought the presidency of Harvard, but in 1708 the fellows instead appointed a layman, John Leverett , who had the support of Governor Dudley. The Mathers disapproved of the increasing independence and liberalism of the Harvard faculty, which they regarded as laxity. Cotton Mather came to see the Collegiate School, which had moved in 1716 from Saybrook to New Haven, Connecticut , as

8463-399: Was sentenced to death for witchcraft, Mather visited her in prison and interrogated her through an interpreter. Before her execution, Glover warned that her death would not bring relief to the Goodwin children, as she was not the one responsible for their torments. Indeed, after Glover was hanged the children's afflictions increased. Mather documented these events and attempted to de-possess

8556-405: Was thus ambivalent and conflicted. In 1689, Mather published Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcrafts and Possessions , based on his study of events surrounding the affliction of the children of a Boston mason named John Goodwin. Those afflictions had begun after Goodwin's eldest daughter confronted a washerwoman whom she suspected of stealing some of the family's linen. In response to this,

8649-424: Was twenty-three and Abigail was not quite sixteen years old. They had eight children. Abigail died of smallpox in 1702, having previously suffered a miscarriage. He married widow Elizabeth Hubbard in 1703. Like his first marriage, he was happily married to a very religious and emotionally stable woman. They had six children. Elizabeth, the couple's newborn twins, and a two-year-old daughter, Jerusha, all succumbed to

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