BYLES, Mather, American clergyman: b. Boston, 26 March 1706; d. there, 5 July 1788. He was graduated at Harvard in 1725; was ordained to the ministry in 1733 and was placed over the church in Hollis street, in Boston, in the year 1733, and obtained a distinguished posi tion among the contemporary clergy. He was learned after the manner of those times, and was more addicted to literary recreations, and had a keener relish of the later humanities than was then common among the members of his profession. As a proof of his recognized excel lence in polite letters, we may accept the fact that he was the correspondent of some of the chief poets and authors of England. He was himself a votary of the muses in a small way, and a volume of his miscellaneous poems was published in 1744. He gave an early expression, too, to the loyalty which distinguished his char acter through life, in a poem on the death of George I and the succession of his son, in 1727, when he was but 21 years of age. He also tempered the bereavement which Governor Belcher had suffered in the loss of his wife in 1734, by such consolation as an elegiac epistle could convey. It is not likely, however, that his name would have been preserved to this time had his reputation depended on the merits of his poetical effusions. The cheerful flow of his spirits and frank gaiety of his conversation seem to have been something out of the com mon way, and to have left an enduring mark on the memories of that generation. His piety was
tinctured with no asceticism, and the lively sallies of his sprightly imagination, always kept within the limits of decorum, were restrained by no fear of injuring his personal or clerical dignity. He was an ardent Royalist and in 1777 was sentenced to banishment, but was allowed to remain under guard in his own house. This severity was soon relaxed for a while, and afterward renewed. One of the stories told of him is, that wishing to have an errand done at a distance, he asked the sentry to undertake it. The man objected on the ground that he could not leave the door un guarded; on which the doctor volunteered to be his substitute, and, accordingly, was seen by some one in authority, in powdered wig and cocked hat, with a musket on his shoulder, walking up and down before his house, keeping guard over himself. His release from custody soon followed, on which occasion, alluding to these changes of treatment, he said that he had been "guarded, regarded and disregarded." His son, Mather, b. 1736; d. 1814, was also a clergyman and became the rector of the Tories, who, expelled from Boston, founded Saint John, New Brunswick.