Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mayo, Richard
MAYO, RICHARD (1631?–1695), ejected divine, was born about 1631. His family seems to have belonged to Hertfordshire. In early life he was at school in London under John Singleton, a puritan divine, and he entered the ministry when very young. During the Commonwealth period he obtained the vicarage of Kingston-on-Thames, Surrey, probably succeeding Edmund Staunton, D.D., in 1648. For several years he also conducted a weekly lecture at St. Mary's, Whitechapel, London. By the uniformity act he was ejected (1662) from his living, but continued to preach in conventicles. He was one of the few who, in 1666, took the oath which exempted from the operation of the Five Miles Act. Towards the end of the reign of Charles II he settled as minister of a presbyterian congregation meeting at Buckingham House, College Hill, Upper Thames Street. After the Toleration Act (1689) his congregation removed to a newly built meeting-house in Salters' Hall Court, Cannon Street. Here in 1694, after the exclusion of Daniel Williams, D.D., from the merchants' lectureship, a new lectureship was established [see Howe, John]. Mayo was one of the lecturers. He died, after six weeks' illness, on Sunday, 8 Sept. 1695, in his sixty-fifth year. Nathaniel Taylor, his assistant, preached his funeral sermon. He left two sons, Richard Mayo, D.D., who in 1708 was minister of St. Thomas's Hospital, Southwark, and afterwards rector of St. Michael's, Crooked Lane (Watt confuses him with his father); and Daniel Mayo [q. v.]
He published: 1. 'The Life ... of ... Edmund Staunton,' 1673, 8vo. 2. 'A Plain Answer to this Question ... of Secret Prayer,' &c., 1679, 8vo ; 1687, 12mo. 3. 'A Present for Servants,' &c., 1693, 8vo. 4. 'The Cause and Cure of Strife and Divisions,' &c., 1695, 4to. Also the notes on the Epistle to the Romans in 'Annotations upon the Holy Bible,' vol. ii. 1685, fol., by Matthew Poole, &c., and sermons in the 'Morning Exercise against Popery,' 1675, 4to: in the 'Continuation,' 1683, 4to, of the practical ' Morning Exercise;' and in the 'Casuistical Morning Exercises,' 1690, 4to.
[Taylor's Funeral Sermon, 1695; Reliquiae Baxterianae, 1696, iii. 13; Calamy's Account, 1713, p. 668; Calamy's Continuation, 1727, ii. 972; Wilson's Dissenting Churches of London, 1808, ii. 9 sq.; Williams's Life of Philip Henry, 1825, p. 165; Pike's Ancient Meeting Houses, 1870, pp. 378 sq.]