Read The Mathers: Three Generations of Puritan Intellectuals, 1596-1728 for Free Online Page A

easy inwardly. He did not conform to the Church in most ways and in 1630, when Archbishop Laud became the leading ecclesiastical official of Charles I, he knew he was in for trouble. Trouble came in the person of a visitor from the bishop, who after suitable investigation recommended suspension, which followed in August 1633. Happily, Richard Mather had influential friends who succeeded in getting him restored in November. Still, Mather refused to change his practice. Laud and his party insisted; Richard Mather like so many others in these years continued to refuse to conform and the next year he was suspended again. This time there was no possibility of a return to his pulpit without conformity. 30
Richard knew this, and after a month of soul-searching he decided to seize the opportunity of preaching on the Lord's terms rather than on the Church of England's. That opportunity, of course, lay in New England. And in the Spring of 1635, Richard Mather, his wife, and their children set out on the Atlantic, bound for the colony of Massachusetts Bay.
The voyage provided a number of new experiences and problems. The Mathers sailed on the James , a vessel which carried many other Puritans to America. "Our Land stomachs grew weary of ship diet," Richard Mather noted in the journal he kept while on the James . 31 This entry, like many others made during the passage, betrays a concern with the conditions of life on the ocean. Such interest is understandable, for Mather knew some-

 

Page 18
thing of the history of voyages. Most ended well, with ship intact and crew and passengers breathing, but even these usually brought some kind of suffering. When stomachs grew weary of salted fish and beef, the staples of ship diet, scurvy was usually not long in coming.
A woman and her child did suffer with scurvy near the end of the voyage, but Mather and most of his company came through in good health. An unusual variety of diet proved to be possible when they tired of salt fish for they had brought provisions with them"sometimes we used bacon and buttered pease, sometimes buttered bag-pudding, made with currants and raisins; and sometimes drinked pottage of beer and oatmeal, and sometimes water pottage, well buttered."
Most of the passage was like hundreds of others. Summer on the Atlantic can be surprising with treacherous storms, but the murderous gales of the winter are usually absent. The James ran into some bad weather about ten days out, and her passengers discovered that a tiresome diet would not be all that would keep them from the dinner table. On several of these days, rain beating in through the sides of the ship to soak the beds joined the wind in making life miserable. There were other rough days, but there were calm ones too. Some days the sun burned down so hotly than any breeze was welcomed; at still other times the heat vanished and the cold reminded Mather of December at home. When the sea ran smoothly enough, the company enjoyed watching the porpoises and dolphins that played around the ship. The crew took a porpoise occasionally, one of which when opened brought to mind a familiar country scene, the slaughter of hogs. Mather was delighted by the spectacle, and the women and children found the dissection of the porpoise"his entrails, as liver, lights, heart, guts, etc., for all the world like a swine"to be "marvellous merry sport." The guts of a pig were a comfortable sight for most, and out on the sea anything that evoked the smells and the day-to-day quality of the countryside was reassuring.
The voyage ended in an experience which in its own peculiar way was even more reassuring. On Saturday, August 15, while anchored at the Isles of Shoals (off the coast of Maine), the James was struck by an easterly wind which drove the rain before it. The ship's master first attempted to hold his vessel with anchors but two gave way, taking their cables with them, and a

 

Page 19
third cable had to be cut before the sea dragged the