Anti-Catholicism

Anti-Catholicism, or anti-popery to use the contemporary term, was one of the most prevalent characteristics of New England culture before the American Revolution. Expressions of anti-popery could be found in the churches, schools, taverns, streets, and newspapers of colonial New England . It was an important part of the rhythm of life in New England before the American Revolution.

Anti-Catholicism permeated English culture by the end of the seventeenth century. It found expression not only in Foxe Actes and Monuments but in the streets of England as well. David Cressy has demonstrated that a "Protestant calendar" existed in Elizabethan and Stuart England that gave the people ample opportunity to commemorate important days in the English Protestant year. For example, the English regularly celebrated Guy Fawkes Day (Gunpowder Treason Day) with the ringing of bells and the burning of bonfires. Each year Englishmen honored the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's accession (November 17) in a similar manner. By the end of the seventeenth century, public demonstrations in England frequently included the burning of the pope and the devil in effigy.

Popular celebrations with an anti-papal theme occurred whenever Britain defeated one of her Catholic foes. Crowds gathered to salute Vice-Admiral Edward Vernon and to celebrate his triumph over the Spanish at Porto Bello in 1739. Similar celebrations greeted the news of the fall of Louisbourg in 1745 and the capture of Quebec in 1759. The potency and persistence of popular anti-Catholicism became apparent in 1780 when thousands of Londoners participated in the Gordon Riots which were sparked by a parliamentary act to repeal anti-Catholic legislation.

Both anti-Catholicism and the interaction of Catholic and Protestant can be seen in the large category of Catholic texts which were read by both sides and altered by Protestants. This could be achieved by expurgation, or even the innocent signs of punctuation could be used to reform a text. Lines 9 - 10 of Henry Constable's poem 'Sweete hand the sweete, but cruell bowe thou art' reads in the original, 'Now (as Saint Fraunces) if a Saint am I, /the bowe that shot these shafts a relique is ...'; but in one manuscript copy the brackets have been placed instead round ' (if a Saint) ', injecting Protestant scepticism while leaving the comparison intact. More puzzling is the occasional phenomenon of texts attributable to outlawed Catholic Englishmen or containing unmistakably Catholic sentiments, issued by mainstream presses without comment. Chapter two will discuss this phenomenon of Catholic seepage, in relation to Robert Southwell. Sometimes, as with poems which copy Southwell's Saint Peters Complaint, this appropriation could take the form of imitation: but it was an imitation that did its best to downplay the importance of the text that inspired it.

Peter Lake has spoken of a 'process of binary opposition, inversion or argument from contraries' as characteristic of both learned and popular culture in early modern Europe , and especially conspicuous in anti-Catholicism.