Citizens or Papists?: The Politics of Anti-Catholicism in New York, 1685-1821

Chapter 2: ‘The Encouragement Popery Had Met With’’: Catholics and Religious Liberty in Revolutionary New York

c ha pt er 2 ‘‘The Encouragement Popery Had Met With’’ Catholics and Religious Liberty in Revolutionary New York The legacy of anti-Catholicism in New York became evident in an early republican political club that became prominent late in the colonial period. One of the leading factions in the province was comprised in part of Anglicans, and their opponents included many dissenting Protestants. The latter had historically prided themselves on their religious and political distance from the Catholic Church and its center in Rome. In the 1750s, members of that faction, including William Livingston, William Smith, and John Morin Scott, formed a Whig club. The goals of the three, in the view of one of their political opponents, included ‘‘pulling down the Church, ruining the Constitution , or heaving the whole province into confusion.’’ A member of the Anglican DeLancey family derided them as ‘‘presbyterian and republican fanatics’’ who ‘‘had in the proceeding century brought their Sovereign to the block,’’ a reference to the execution of Charles I in 1649. The leaders of the Whig Club, although viewed by some as a threat to the established order of colonial New York, saw themselves as heirs to a political tradition that would have offered the province’s scattered and unorganized Catholics little encouragement that a change in New York’s political culture and structure might be 30 ‘‘The Encouragement Popery Had Met With’’ 31 of some benefit to them. At the weekly meetings of the Whig Club, members would proudly and defiantly toast ‘‘the immortal memory of Oliver Cromwell.’’1 It is not surprising that at the start of the imperial crisis between Britain and its American colonies in the 1760s, members of the province ’s dissenting Protestant denominations led the opposition to the crown in New York. Whigs, or Patriots, couched some of their initial opposition to British rule in religious terms; promising the greatest change to the status quo in New York, they raised the cry of ‘‘popery ’’ to discredit those who continued to support the crown. AntiCatholic rhetoric and imagery retained its ideological currency at the outbreak of the crisis that led to revolution. Celebrations of Pope’s Day, for example, served as a disguise for ideas and actions that were subversive and potentially revolutionary. During the uproar over the Stamp Act in November of 1765, the Sons of Liberty posted signs throughout New York City warning of ‘‘the storming of the Fort this Night under cover of burning the Pope and pretender unless the Stamps were delivered.’’ The phrase ‘‘under the cover of burning the Pope’’ had a double meaning. The Sons were proclaiming their dissatisfaction with particular imperial policies. At the same time, however, they affirmed the Protestant heritage they shared with Great Britain by celebrating the anniversary of the defeat of the Catholic plot to kill the English king in 1605.2 Patriots in New York used a religious controversy to distance themselves further from British rule in the province. Thomas B. Chandler, an Anglican priest from Elizabeth, New Jersey, published a pamphlet in the late 1760s calling for an Anglican bishop to be assigned to America. To circumvent potential charges that he was encouraging the introduction of ‘‘popery’’ into Protestant America, Reverend Chandler insisted that America’s Anglican prelate would be a ‘‘primitive Bishop’’ in the tradition of the ancient Christian church. William Livingston led the protest against Chandler’s proposal. Writing under the pseudonym, ‘‘The American Whig,’’ he de- 32 Citizens or Papists? nounced the suggestion as incompatible with the history and culture of a Protestant people. Livingston said of the possibility of a bishop coming to the colonies, ‘‘America is a Virgin as yet, undebauch’d by proud tyrannical Ecclesiasticks . . . [and] the Man of Sin who always steals a Rape under a Priest’s Garment.’’ In seeking to link Chandler ’s plan to Catholicism, ‘‘The American Whig’’ contended that the papacy itself was rooted in the development of a strong and vigorous episcopacy, arguing that ‘‘the Man of Sin is to this day a monument of the supreme height to which this ambition has mounted.’’ Even more bluntly, he accused Chandler of justifying the ‘‘horrid rites of idolatry and the solemn fooleries of popery.’’ Also, in protesting the involvement of some New York merchants in the British tea trade, Patriots held a rally outside the coffeehouse in lower Manhattan on Guy Fawkes Day, November 5, 1773.3...