"The Captive Exile Hasteth": Increase Mather, Meditation, and Authority

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 New for the Old World. If for many of these people reverse migration meant a return to home, for Mather the voyage to England meant an opportunity to resettle in that famed land from which his persecuted parents had been exiled.

The attraction to England, as the traditional center of cultural authority, remained strong among Puritan colonists. At first England was the beloved homeland they had been forced to leave; then, under Cromwell, it was (to apply John Milton's words) "the first [nation] that should set up a Standard for the [Reformation] recovery of lost Truth, and blow the first Evangelick Trumpet to the Nations" (525).¹ And so "no man ought to forsake his owne countrey, but upon extraordinary cause," counseled Nathaniel Ward, who had resettled in England ten years before Mather; "and when that cause ceaseth, he is bound in conscience to returne if he can" (25). In 1654 John Davenport reported that his associate William Hooke, teacher of the church at New Haven, planned to migrate to England "for the good of his posterity" (93). As early as 1651, rumors had spread of Davenport's own imminent departure for England for medical reasons. Several years later, however, Davenport would observe that those who returned to their English homeland had placed too much confidence in Cromwellian politics. They were mistaken, he admonished, in thinking that the New England mission was completed.

Increase did not yet personally know Davenport, though in a few years he would adopt the elder minister as a mentor. Increase gladly left Massachusetts Bay. Under the supervision of Samuel, an older brother, he studied at Trinity College in Dublin and, at the age of 20, graduated with a Master of Arts degree. With various declined offers of employment behind him, he sailed for England with great expectations. Mather's dream of public prominence seemed feasible indeed when John Howe, who had served as private chaplain to Oliver Cromwell, found a good post in Great Torrington for the ambitious young man.

But dreams are frangible, and so was the Protectorate after Cromwell's death in 1658. With the restoration of Charles II in May 1660, Mather's worldly hopes suddenly collapsed. "When the King was proclaimed," Mather resolutely reported in his autobiography, "I did out of conscience openly refuse to drink his Health . . . [and] to subscribe to some papers . . . that now wee bleeved the Times were and would be happy" (284). His briefly expressed defiance notwithstanding, there was little for him to feel good about. As if Davenport's warning had come to pass, Mather's world had turned upside down.

At first, the changes in England were not very dramatic. Charles II intended to recoup monarchical power slowly but surely, including the use of deceit and intrigue. But in 1661 his hand was forced prematurely by the insurrection of a few extreme Protestant millennialists, Fifth Monarchists proclaiming the violent overthrow of the king in preparation for the imminent second appearance of Christ. Then in the same year, Parliament took on the Cavalier hue of the Restoration court. More than dismayed by these and other developments, Increase dejectedly boarded a ship for New England.

His colony, too, soon felt the effects of the restored English court. Massachusetts Bay, the only New England province with a charter, was at risk of royal disfavor for a variety of reasons. The English court was aware of the colonial General Court's reluctance to announce its support for the new monarch until 7 August 1661, more than a year after the king's resumption of power; and it took note as well of the General Court's disregard of a royal decree (September 1661) to surrender to representatives of the Crown (for transport to England) the Quaker prisoners remaining since the execution of William Leddra (24 March 1661). These...