THE AGE OF THE MATHERS Toward the close of the seventeenth century New England was under the

sway of the "Mather Dynasty." This illustrious family, founded by Richard Mather, an Oxford graduate and one of the compilers of the Bay Psalm Book, continued its rle as minister-magistrate to the colony under his son Increase, who for sixty years delighted his adherents and terrorized his foes at North Church, Boston; it culminated in power under the grandson, Cotton Mather, the most eminent of the Puritan divines. Of these leaders only Cotton Mather has much historical importance, though the Illustrious Providences ( 1684) of his father, Increase Mather, preserves a quaint interest in apparitions and in remarkable escapes from lightning and the sea. Perhaps the chief importance which attaches to the Mather rgime now is that it is approximately the era depicted in The Scarlet Letter.