Brattle, William (22 Nov. 1662-15 Feb. 1717), teacher and minister, was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Thomas Brattle, a merchant, and Elizabeth Tyng. Up to the time William was seven years old, his father was a principal participant in the controversial founding of Third (South) Church of Boston, a church advocating ecclesiastic reforms suited to the fast-growing colony. Extending the example of his father, William devoted his later life to reforming Puritan churches and education to best adapt the formerly isolated colony into the more integrated British empire of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.

At Harvard College, where he earned an A.B. in 1680, Brattle met his closest associate, John Leverett. The two men devoted the rest of their lives to the college, church, and community. For his M.A. thesis, Brattle published An Ephemeris of Celestial Motions (1682), in which he advocated adopting the Gregorian calendar reforms and searching "everything to the bottom." In 1685 President Increase Mather invited Brattle and Leverett to become the two tutors at the college. Because Mather was mostly an absentee president and the college had no professors, Brattle and Leverett were the faculty and on-site administration of the college from 1685 to 1696. The two remained leaders, sometimes unofficially, of the college until their deaths. In 1686, under the influence of the newly immigrated minister Charles Morton, Brattle and Leverett upgraded the content of the curriculum, greatly enhancing the intellectual sophistication of the provincial college. Aside from encouraging a broad range of reading and "searching things to the bottom," Brattle also modified several European textbooks for students' use. The two most influential textbooks were based on the Jansenist Antoine Arnauld's Port-Royal Logic (1662), which merged Augustinian with Cartesian epistemology and method. Brattle's logical works and courses were designed to strengthen the Puritan assurance of students while abandoning the outdated Ramist logic of the forefathers. Brattle's textbooks were used long into the eighteenth century and were widely dispersed in the form of student notebooks.

More influential than Brattle's textbooks was the example he gave to his students of an orthodox Puritan, committed to the ideals of the founders of New England but open to the beginnings of the Enlightenment and desirous of ecclesiastical reforms that would help Puritans remain powerful in an increasingly cosmopolitan colony, where Britain was imposing religious toleration. A generation of young ministers, including Benjamin Colman and John Barnard, and important laymen, including Massachusetts chief justice Paul Dudley, were educated by Brattle and Leverett, and a surprising number of accounts survive testifying that Brattle was universally loved, respected, and sought after for advice.

Brattle left the role of tutor to become minister of the Cambridge church in 1696. In 1697 he married Elizabeth Hayman. They had one son who survived to adulthood, General William Brattle, for whom Brattle Street in Cambridge and Brattleborough, Vermont, are named. Increase Mather, Brattle's lifelong patron, recommended him to the Cambridge pulpit, which permitted him to retain intimate contact with the students and faculty as unofficial chaplain and professor of divinity. In his ordination ceremony Brattle insisted that no layperson participate in the laying on of hands. This innovation along with another diminishing the role of the congregation in deciding who should be given full membership in the church enhanced the power of the minister over the laity. Many of the young ministers trained by Brattle made similar innovations. The laity of the churches tended to be more conservative and rigid, fearful of the extensive changes in society being forced by new imperial policies and rapid immigration. Brattle and the young clergy believed that ministers needed more power to embrace new members and set aside old antagonisms to other Protestant groups if Congregationalism were to continue to be a vital part of New England. Tensions reached their height in 1699 and 1700, when Brattle and his former students became embroiled in a complex power struggle over the leadership of the college and the founding of a new church in Boston, the Brattle Street Church.

Many young clergy, former students of Brattle, supported removing Increase Mather from the presidency of Harvard. Cotton Mather and Increase Mather fought hard against what Cotton described in his diary as "a company of head-strong men . . . full of malignity to the holy ways of our churches." Increase Mather eventually had to leave the presidency, and Leverett replaced him in 1707. From 1697 to 1707 Brattle was the on-site, de facto leader of the college. Increase Mather recommended that Brattle's role be formalized as vice president, but Brattle turned down the title in 1714. He also later turned down an offer to become a fellow of the Royal Society of London. Unlike the Mathers, who sought titles and recognition in London, Brattle focused on the duties and rank of being a shepherd to his congregation and students.

Brattle, a peace-loving man, tried to avoid being drawn into the controversy surrounding the Brattle Street Church. One of his students, Benjamin Colman, the church's first minister, wrote a reform Manifesto (1699) that extended ideas and attitudes long taught by Brattle. The powerful Brattle family was also involved. In the end, the new church became one of the leading churches of New England and the most visible extension of Brattle's ecclesiastical influence. On Brattle's death, Colman insisted on preaching a sermon honoring his mentor even though Brattle had requested no funeral sermon.

The struggles over the college and church died down after a few years as the young clergy who were trained by Brattle continued to fill more pulpits in New England. Brattle was above all a peacemaker, even maintaining the affection and respect of Increase Mather. Brattle similarly helped his former student Joseph Green, the new minister in Salem after the 1692 witch trials crisis, successfully bring peace to that community.

Brattle's first wife died on 28 July 1715. Sometime in late 1716, a few months before his death, Brattle married Green's widow, Elizabeth Garrish Green. Long after Brattle's death in Cambridge, one of his students, John Barnard, in praising the liberality of his education, described Brattle as "cherished by candidates for the ministry, exceeding prudent, to whom all addressed themselves for advice" (Sibley, p. 204). Such was Brattle's importance. Students long studied his textbooks, and those who knew him honored his teaching and counsel. Harvard tutor Henry Flynt, a former student of Brattle and future teacher of John Adams, wrote in his diary at Brattle's death of losing a father figure, someone with whom he could "unbosom" himself, a "comfort and relief." Brattle was a key figure intellectually and emotionally as New Englanders made the transition from colony to province.
 

Bibliography

Brattle's manuscript sermons are in the Houghton Library at Harvard University. Other manuscripts by Brattle, reminiscences by students, and student notebooks including his textbooks are scattered primarily among the Harvard University Archives, the Massachusetts Historical Society, and the American Antiquarian Society, which owns a student notebook by Joseph Sewall that transcribes Brattle's textbook derived from Henry More, Enchiridium Metaphysicum (1688). Brattle's will is published in Edward-Doubleday Harris, An Account of Some of the Descendants of Capt. Thomas Brattle (1867). See Benjamin Colman, A Sermon . . . after the Funerals of . . . Mr. William Brattle . . . and . . . Mr. Ebenezer Pemberton (1717). Increase Mather remembered Brattle in the preface to Joseph Sewall, Precious Treasure in Earthen Vessels (1717). John L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Harvard Graduates, vol. 3 (1873), and Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century (1936), give citations of the many disparate sources of information on Brattle. Recent works dealing specifically with Brattle are Rick Kennedy, "Thy Patriarchs' Desire: Thomas and William Brattle in Puritan Massachusetts" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, 1987), and Kennedy, ed., Aristotelian and Cartesian Logic at Harvard: Morton's "Logick System" and Brattle's "Compendium of Logick" (1995).

Rick Kennedy