But “Increase” or “Increased” was the representative of this class of thanksgiving names, in palpable allusion to Psa. cxv. 14:
“The Lord shall increase you more and more, you and your children.”
I could easily furnish the reader with half a hundred instances. It is probable Thomas Heley was the inventor of it. The earliest example I can find is that of his own child:
“1587, March 26. Baptized Increased, dather of Thomas Helley, minister.
“1637, Sep. 15. Buried Increase, wife of Robard Barden.
“1589, Apr. 13. Baptized Increased, d. of John Gynninges.”—Warbleton.
One or two instances from other quarters may be noted:
“1660, June. Petition of Increased Collins, for restoration to the keepership of Mote’s Bulwark, Dover.”—C. S. P.
Dr. Increase Mather, of the Liverpool family of that name, will be a familiar figure to every student of Puritan history. In 1685 he returned from America to thank King James for the Toleration Act. Through him it became a popular name in New England, although Increase Nowell, who obtained a charter of appropriation of Massachusetts Bay, March 4, 1628, and emigrated from London, may have helped in the matter (Neal’s “New England,” p. 124).
The perils of childbirth are marked in the thanksgiving name of Deliverance. So early as 1627 the will of Deliverance Wilton was proved in London. Camden, too, writing in 1614, says “Delivery” was known to him; while Adams, whose Puritan proclivities I have previously hinted at, preaching in London in 1626, asserts that Safe-deliverance existed to his knowledge (“Meditations upon the Creed”). Deliverance crossed the Atlantic with the Pilgrim Fathers (Bowditch), and I see one instance, at least, in Hotten’s “Emigrants:”