Byles, Mather [key], 1707–88, American clergyman and poet, b. Boston. Famous minister of the Hollis St. Congregational Church, Boston, from 1732, he was dismissed for his Tory sympathies after the British evacuation of Boston. From his uncle, Cotton Mather, he inherited a valuable library, to which he added his own unique collection. His poetry, imitative but witty, appeared in Poems on Several Occasions (1744) and other volumes; his prose includes sermons and The Flourish of Annual Spring (1741).
See A. W. H. Eaton, The Famous Mather Byles (1914, repr. 1972).
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