Pope Night (also called Pope's Night, Pope Day, or Pope's Day) was an
anti-Catholic
Anti-Catholicism is hostility towards Catholics and opposition to the Catholic Church, its clergy, and its adherents. Scholars have identified four categories of anti-Catholicism: constitutional-national, theological, popular and socio-cul ...
holiday celebrated annually on November 5 in the
colonial United States. It evolved from the British
Guy Fawkes Night
Guy Fawkes Night, also known as Guy Fawkes Day, Bonfire Night and Fireworks Night, is an annual commemoration list of minor secular observances#November, observed on 5 November, primarily in Great Britain, involving bonfires and firewor ...
, which commemorates the failure of the
Gunpowder Plot
The Gunpowder Plot of 1605, in earlier centuries often called the Gunpowder Treason Plot or the Jesuit Treason, was an unsuccessful attempted regicide against James VI and I, King James VI of Scotland and I of England by a group of English ...
of 1605. Pope Night was most popular in the seaport towns of
New England
New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...
, especially in
Boston
Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
, where it was an occasion for drinking, rioting, and
anti-elite protest by the
working class
The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...
.
Gang violence became part of the tradition in the 1740s, with residents of different Boston neighborhoods battling for the honor of burning the pope's effigy. By the mid-1760s these riots had subsided, and as colonial America moved towards the
American Revolution
The American Revolution (1765–1783) was a colonial rebellion and war of independence in which the Thirteen Colonies broke from British America, British rule to form the United States of America. The revolution culminated in the American ...
(1765–1783), the class rivalries of Pope Night gave way to
anti-British sentiment
Anti-British sentiment is the prejudice against, persecution of, discrimination against, fear of, dislike of, or hatred against the British Government, British people, or the culture of the United Kingdom.
Argentina
Historically, anti- ...
. Under the leadership of Pope Night organizer
Ebenezer Mackintosh, Boston's
North
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography.
Etymology
T ...
and
South End gangs united in protest against the
Stamp Act of 1765.
Local authorities made several attempts to crack down on the festivities. In 1775, to avoid offending Canadian allies,
George Washington
George Washington (, 1799) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. As commander of the Continental Army, Washington led Patriot (American Revoluti ...
issued an order forbidding any troops under his command from participating. The last known Pope Night celebration in Boston took place in 1776, though the tradition continued in other towns well into the 19th century.
History
The earliest known celebration of Pope Night took place on November 5, 1623, in
Plymouth, Massachusetts
Plymouth ( ; historically also spelled as Plimouth and Plimoth) is a town in and the county seat of Plymouth County, Massachusetts, United States. Located in Greater Boston, the town holds a place of great prominence in American history, folklor ...
. A group of sailors built a bonfire, which raged out of control and destroyed several nearby homes. By the late 17th century, annual festivities on November 5 were a New England tradition. Major celebrations were held in Boston,
Marblehead,
Newburyport,
Salem, and
Portsmouth
Portsmouth ( ) is a port city status in the United Kingdom, city and unitary authority in Hampshire, England. Most of Portsmouth is located on Portsea Island, off the south coast of England in the Solent, making Portsmouth the only city in En ...
. In 1702, locals in Marblehead held a
bull-baiting and distributed the meat to the poor.
Mid-18th century
Over the years the celebration became more elaborate. By the 1720s, simple bonfires had been replaced with parades in which effigies of
the Pope
The pope is the bishop of Rome and the visible head of the worldwide Catholic Church. He is also known as the supreme pontiff, Roman pontiff, or sovereign pontiff. From the 8th century until 1870, the pope was the sovereign or head of sta ...
and
the Devil
Satan, also known as the Devil, is a devilish entity in Abrahamic religions who seduces humans into sin (or falsehood). In Judaism, Satan is seen as an agent subservient to God, typically regarded as a metaphor for the '' yetzer hara'', or 'e ...
were carried through the streets on a platform before being burned. The celebrants came from what were called the "lower orders" of society: sailors, laborers, apprentices, lesser artisans, servants, and African-American
slaves
Slavery is the ownership of a person as property, especially in regards to their labour. Slavery typically involves compulsory work, with the slave's location of work and residence dictated by the party that holds them in bondage. Enslavemen ...
. Active participants were all males; there is no record of any females taking part except as spectators.
Pope Night was celebrated the most consistently and boisterously in Boston, due in part to the large number of sailors there. In the 18th century, sailors occupied the lowest rung of the social ladder; many were criminals, deserted soldiers, and runaway slaves. As a major seaport, Boston had a large contingent of maritime workers for whom a night of drinking, fighting, and insulting the
elites had great appeal. Pope Night gave the common people a chance to express their dissatisfaction with the
status quo
is a Latin phrase meaning the existing state of affairs, particularly with regard to social, economic, legal, environmental, political, religious, scientific or military issues. In the sociological sense, the ''status quo'' refers to the curren ...
on the pretext of condemning
popery
The words Popery (adjective Popish) and Papism (adjective Papist, also used to refer to an individual) are mainly historical pejorative words in the English language for Roman Catholicism, once frequently used by Protestants and Eastern Orthodox ...
. The boisterous and often violent festivities were permitted only because the anti-papal theme made them acceptable to the
ruling class
In sociology, the ruling class of a society is the social class who set and decide the political and economic agenda of society.
In Marxist philosophy, the ruling class are the class who own the means of production in a given society and apply ...
.
At least two fatal accidents occurred on Pope Night, possibly due to heavy drinking. In 1735, four apprentices drowned while canoeing home from
Boston Neck
The Boston Neck or Roxbury Neck was a narrow strip of land connecting the then-peninsular city of Boston to the mainland city of Roxbury (now a neighborhood of Boston). The surrounding area was gradually filled in as the city of Boston expan ...
after the bonfire. In 1764, a carriage bearing an effigy of the pope ran over a boy's head, killing him instantly.
Riot acts
Boston's elites were appalled by the increasingly rowdy festivities. One resident, complaining to a local newspaper in 1745, referred to the revelers as "rude and intoxicated Rabble, the very Dregs of the People, black and white", and urged the authorities to crack down.
In 1748, the Justices of the Peace announced that "whereas sundry persons have heretofore gone about the streets ... armed wh. clubs & demanding money of ye inhabitants and breaking ye windows of ye who refuse it", they planned to send out constables to keep the peace. Similar notices were published over the next four years, to no avail. In 1753 the
Great and General Court passed an act forbidding "all riotous, tumultuous and disorderly Assemblies" from "carrying pageants and other shews through the streets and lanes of the town of Boston and other towns of this province, abusing and insulting the inhabitants". The court passed similar acts in 1756, 1758, 1763, and 1769, but the locals were determined to have their fun.
The 1769 Riot Act imposed penalties for
shaking down wealthy residents:
Authorities apparently could not rely on the militia to keep order on Pope Night. A possible explanation is that the militiamen themselves were among the revelers. Local militiamen participated in the market riot of 1737 and the
Knowles Riot of 1747, and instigated the
Montgomery Guards Riot of 1837. Following an accident on Pope Night in 1764 in which a boy was killed, the "Sheriff, Justices, and Officers of the Militia" were ordered to destroy the North and South End popes, but were unable to control the crowd, which numbered in the thousands. No mention is made of the militia's rank and file.
Decline
The passing of the Stamp Act in March 1765 caused a good deal of unrest in the American colonies. The
Sons of Liberty
The Sons of Liberty was a loosely organized, clandestine, sometimes violent, political organization active in the Thirteen American Colonies founded to advance the rights of the colonists and to fight taxation by the British government. It p ...
were a leading group of American dissidents at this time. The
Loyal Nine
The Loyal Nine (also spelled Loyall Nine) were nine American patriots from Boston who met in secret to plan protests against the Stamp Act 1765. Mostly middle-class businessmen, the Loyal Nine enlisted Ebenezer Mackintosh to rally large crowds ...
, a group of nine area businessmen, led the Sons of Liberty and were a link between the common people and wealthier classes. That summer the Loyal Nine arranged the unification of the North and South End mobs. On Pope Night 1765, townspeople held a "Union Feast", with a single procession led jointly by the South End mob leader, Ebenezer Mackintosh, and the North End leader, Samuel Swift. The two mobs stopped battling each other, and Mackintosh became the leader of the united group.
John Hancock
John Hancock ( – October 8, 1793) was an American Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father, merchant, statesman, and prominent Patriot (American Revolution), Patriot of the American Revolution. He was the longest-serving Presi ...
and other patriot merchants provided them with food, drink, and supplies. In author Alfred Young's view, Pope Night provided the "scaffolding, symbolism, and leadership" for resistance to the Stamp Act in 1764–65.
The passage in 1774 of the
Quebec Act
The Quebec Act 1774 ( 14 Geo. 3. c. 83) () was an act of the Parliament of Great Britain which set procedures of governance in the Province of Quebec. One of the principal components of the act was the expansion of the province's territory t ...
, which guaranteed French Canadians free practice of Catholicism in the
Province of Quebec
Quebec is Canada's largest province by area. Located in Central Canada, the province shares borders with the provinces of Ontario to the west, Newfoundland and Labrador to the northeast, New Brunswick to the southeast and a coastal border ...
, provoked complaints from some Americans that the British were introducing "Popish principles and French law". Such fears were bolstered by opposition from the Church in Europe to American independence, threatening a revival of Pope Night. Commenting in 1775,
George Washington
George Washington (, 1799) was a Founding Fathers of the United States, Founding Father and the first president of the United States, serving from 1789 to 1797. As commander of the Continental Army, Washington led Patriot (American Revoluti ...
was less than impressed by the thought of any such resurrections, forbidding any under his command from participating:
Generally, following Washington's complaint, American colonists stopped observing Pope Night, although according to the
Bostonian Society some citizens of Boston celebrated it on one final occasion, in 1776. Sherwood Collins argues that the tradition ended in Boston at this time not only because of Washington's order, but because most of the celebrants were likely
patriots
A patriot is a person with the quality of patriotism.
Patriot(s) or The Patriot(s) may also refer to:
Political and military groups United States
* Patriot (American Revolution), those who supported the cause of independence in the American R ...
who did not stay in Boston while it was held by the British; and, moreover, because it celebrated the failure of a plot against the British king and Parliament, who were now the enemy.
The tradition continued in
Salem as late as 1817, and was still observed in
Portsmouth, New Hampshire
Portsmouth is a city in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census it had a population of 21,956. A historic seaport and popular summer tourist destination on ...
, in 1892. In the 1880s bonfires were still being lit in some New England coastal towns, although no longer to commemorate the failure of the Gunpowder Plot. In the area around
New York
New York most commonly refers to:
* New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States
* New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York
New York may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* ...
, stacks of barrels were burnt on
election day eve, which after 1845 was a Tuesday early in November.
Festivities
At the height of its popularity, Pope Night in Boston was a three-part ritual consisting of a procession in which effigies of the Pope and other figures were paraded through the streets; a battle between the processions from the North and South Ends; and the burning of the effigies by the victors. Locals would spend weeks preparing their effigies for the celebration. The processions were organized by elected officers who, unlike traditional political leaders, came from the lower classes. One such leader was Ebenezer Mackintosh of the South End, a shoemaker who was also the town's official sealer of leather.
Procession
The procession was led by young boys who carried small effigies of the pope. According to a 1768 broadsheet sold by the "Printers Boys in Boston":
The little Popes, they go out First,
With little teney Boys:
In Frolicks they are full of Gale
And laughing make a Noise.
The boys carved the heads of their "popes" from potatoes, and mounted the effigies on shingles or boards, some small enough for a single boy to carry in his hands, others requiring two or three boys to carry through the streets. During the day they went door to door with their popes, demanding tributes from the neighbors in a tradition very similar to
trick-or-treating
Trick-or-treating is a traditional Halloween custom for children and adults in some countries. During the evening of Halloween, on October 31, people in costumes travel from house to house, asking for treats with the phrase "trick or treat". Th ...
.
Next came the large effigies, which were mounted on wheeled platforms, like
parade floats. The publisher
Isaiah Thomas, who took part in the Pope Night celebrations as a child in the 1750s and 60s, described the floats in his memoir:
The effigies' heads could also be raised, appearing to peek into second-story windows of nearby houses. The crowd shouted insults at the figures as they passed:
The floats were typically about ten to twelve feet long, although there are accounts of much larger ones. One float in Newburyport was forty feet long, and so heavy it had to be drawn by several horses; it carried additional effigies of monks and friars as well as several dancers and fiddlers. In Boston, the floats were pulled through the narrow, winding streets by men and boys. During the 1760s, when Ebenezer Mackintosh was in charge of the South End procession, he would march ahead of the float, dressed in a blue and gold uniform with a lace hat, carrying a
speaking trumpet. Besides being festive, the gaudy uniform was intended as a mockery of Boston's elites.
The "pope" was dressed in ornate, antiquated garb, and had an exaggerated
Roman nose
An aquiline nose is a human nose with a prominent bridge, giving it the appearance of being curved or slightly bent. The word ''aquiline'' comes from the Latin word ' ("eagle-like"), an allusion to the curved beak of an eagle. While some have ...
. Behind him, the Devil was coated with tar and feathers, and stood holding a key in one hand and a pitchfork in the other. After 1701, the display also included an effigy of the exiled Catholic prince
James Francis Edward Stuart
James Francis Edward Stuart (10 June 16881 January 1766), nicknamed the Old Pretender by Whigs (British political party), Whigs or the King over the Water by Jacobitism, Jacobites, was the House of Stuart claimant to the thrones of Ki ...
, nicknamed the "Old Pretender", sometimes on a
gibbet
Gibbeting is the use of a gallows-type structure from which the dead or dying bodies of criminals were hanged on public display to deter other existing or potential criminals. Occasionally, the gibbet () was also used as a method of public ex ...
. Boys dressed up as devils and danced around the figures. The display reflected the prevailing belief among New England Protestants that Catholics were in league with the devil. The effigy pope's aristocratic appearance was also symbolic. Dressed in "gorgeous attire" with a large white wig and an enormous gold lace hat, the pope became a symbol of wealth as well as popery.
During the procession, masked and costumed revelers would stop at the homes of wealthy residents and threaten to break their windows unless they contributed funds for the festivities. Sometimes they broke the windows just for fun, even after the owner had made a generous donation. In Boston there were usually two processions, one from the North End and the other from the South End. According to
John Rowe (the Boston merchant for whom
Rowes Wharf is named), there were three processions in 1766.
Historian Francis Cogliano calls it a "wonderful irony" that the anti-papal processions in the colonies were so similar to the
Carnival
Carnival (known as Shrovetide in certain localities) is a festive season that occurs at the close of the Christian pre-Lenten period, consisting of Quinquagesima or Shrove Sunday, Shrove Monday, and Shrove Tuesday or Mardi Gras.
Carnival typi ...
celebrations in Catholic Europe. Both celebrations gave the lower classes a chance to act out in a disorderly and aggressive fashion, intimidating the elites. Historian Jack Tager likens the street pageantry to European
mummery or
charivari
Charivari (, , , alternatively spelled shivaree or chivaree and also called a skimmington) was a European and North American folk custom designed to shame a member of the community, in which a mock parade was staged through the settlement accompa ...
.
Battle between the North and South Ends
By the mid-18th century, violence had become an established part of the Pope Night tradition in Boston. When the North and South End processions met, they fought a street battle with each group trying to capture the other's pope. The fighters attacked each other with clubs and
brickbats, often resulting in serious injuries and even death. The publisher
Isaiah Thomas recalled in his memoir that "altho' persons were seldom killed, yet broken heads were not infrequent". As a boy, Thomas himself was nearly killed one Pope Night when he was hit in the head with a brickbat. Another resident complained to the ''
Boston Evening Post'' in 1745:
In 1752, a sailor named John Crabb was clubbed to death on Pope Night by Thomas Chubb also a sailor, and a slave named Abraham. Chubb was branded on the hand and sentenced to a year in prison for his part in the killing; it is not known what happened to Abraham.
Bonfire
The location of the bonfire varied from year to year. If the North End won the battle, the effigies were burned in a bonfire on
Copp's Hill; if the South End won, the effigies were burned on
Boston Common.
In addition to the Devil, the Pope, the Pretender, and Guy Fawkes, effigies of prominent contemporary figures were often burned on Pope Night. The actress
Nancy Dawson was sometimes included as an effigy, other times as a man in costume. Others burnt in effigy included Admiral
John Byng
Admiral (Royal Navy), Admiral John Byng (baptised 29 October 1704 – 14 March 1757) was a Royal Navy officer and politician who was court-martialled and executed by firing squad. After joining the navy at the age of thirteen, he participate ...
,
John Mein (a Tory printer, hated by the patriots), Governor
Thomas Hutchinson, various
customs
Customs is an authority or Government agency, agency in a country responsible for collecting tariffs and for controlling International trade, the flow of goods, including animals, transports, personal effects, and hazardous items, into and out ...
officials, two
Prime Ministers
A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but rat ...
of Great Britain (the
Earl of Bute and
Lord North
Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford (13 April 17325 August 1792), better known by his courtesy title Lord North, which he used from 1752 to 1790, was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1770 to 1782. He led Great Britain through most of the ...
), and the American traitor General
Benedict Arnold
Benedict Arnold (#Brandt, Brandt (1994), p. 4June 14, 1801) was an American-born British military officer who served during the American Revolutionary War. He fought with distinction for the American Continental Army and rose to the rank of ...
. Revelers threw the bodies of the effigies into the fire, saving the heads for reuse the following year.
References
Citations
Sources
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External links
Essay on Pope Nightwith sketches by
Pierre Eugene du Simitiere
* {{cite journal , title=Comparing Contemporary Islamophobia in the U.S. with Early American Anti-Catholicism of the Modern Era , last1=Merkl , first1=Kathy , publisher=Loyola Marymount University , journal=Say Something Theological: The Student Journal of Theological Studies , volume=2 , issue=1 , date=February 6, 2019 , url=https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1027&context=saysomethingtheological
1620s establishments in the Massachusetts Bay Colony
1623 establishments in the Thirteen Colonies
1892 disestablishments in New Hampshire
18th century in Boston
1740s riots
Anti-Catholicism in the United States
Colonial Massachusetts
History of Boston
North End, Boston
November observances
Plymouth, Massachusetts
Public holidays in the United States
Riots and civil disorder in Massachusetts
South End, Boston
Working-class culture in the United States