Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 2.djvu/777

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BOSTON


703


BOSTON


72, became a Fellow, and was received into the Church it Brome. in Snffolli, in 1576. Resigning his Fellow- ihip in 1-580, lie u cnt to Reims, where he was ordained iriest, 4 March. 1.381, and in April was sent to Eng- and. He landed at Hartlepool and became a most zealous missioner, so that the persecutors made ex- raordinary efforts to capture him. At last, after nany narrow escapes, he was taken at Waterhouses, the house of William Claxton, near Diu'ham, betrayed )y one Eglesfield, 5 July, 1593. The place is still visited by Catholics. From Durliara he was conveyed

o London, showing liimself tliroughout "resolute,

jold, joyful, and pleasant", although terribly racked n the Tower. Sunt back to Durham for the July \ssizes, 1594, he behaved \\-ith undaunted courage ind resolution, and induced his fellow-martyr, George 5walweU, a convert minister, who had recanted hrough fear, to repent of his cowardice, absolving lim pubhcly in court. He suffered at Dryburn, out- lide Durham. He recited the Angelus while mounting he ladder, and was executed with extraordinary brutality; for he was scarcely turned oft' the ladder ivhen he was cut down, so that he stood on his feet, md in that posture was cruelly butchered alive. An iccoimt of his trial and execution was written by an ■ye-witness. Venerable Christopher Robinson, who uffcred martyrdom shortly afterwards at Carlisle.

British Museum MS. Lansdoume. 75, f. 44; Ch.\lloner, ^^emoirs: Sharpe. Memorials of the Rebellion of IS69; Foley, Records, III; Catholic Record Society, Miscellanea (Christopher llobinson's account), I; Cooper in Diet. Nat. Biog. Waine- IVRIGHT. Venerable John Baste (London. Cath. Truth Soc, 1907); GoLDiE, The Martyr of Waterhouses in Ushaw Maga- dnc, 1902, 1903.

Bede Cam.m.

Boston, Archdiocese of, comprises Essex, Middle- cx. Suffolk, Norfolk, and Plymouth counties in the ^t;itc of Massachusetts, U. S. A., the towns of Matta- Kii.M'tt, Marion, and Wareham excepted, embracing in area of 2,4(i5 square miles. The see was erected S April, 1808, and created an archbishopric in 1875. When the first Bishop of Boston was consecrated liis jurisdiction extended over all New England and a mere handful of Catholics. There are now eight dioceses in the same territory with about 100,000 Catholics of whom 850,000 are within the limits of the Archdiocese of Boston where the first bishop found a scant hundred. The growth of the Church has been due mainly to the immigrants at- tracted by the advantages offered by the great and varied manufacturing interests of New England. The Irish came first, after tliem the French Canadians, the Italians, the Poles, the Portuguese, and repre- sentatives of nearly all the peoples of the globe.

Early History. — Early Irish emigration to America took place in three distinct periods, from 1621 to 1653; from 1653 to 1718, and from 1718 to 1775. But the mistake must not be made, as it often is, that these immigrants were all Catholics. Many of them were not, and those who were had few inducements to settle in the Puritan colony where their Faith was held in detestation. Some who were sold to the Barbadoes in the time of Cromwell were afterwards found in the Massachusetts settlements. One of these, Ann Glover, and her daughter had

ed in Boston before she fell a victim, in 1688, to Cotton Mather's witchcraft mania. In his "Mag- nalia" he calls her "a scandalous old Irishw'oman, very poor, a Roman Catholic and obstinate in idol- atry". Robert Calef, a Boston merchant who knew her, saya "Goody Glover was a despised, crazy, poor old woman, an Irish Catholic who was tried for afflicting the Goodwin children. Her behaviour at her trial was like that of one distracted. They did her cruel. The proof against her was wholly de- ficient. The jury brought her guilty. She was hung. She died a Catholic" (More Wonders of the Invisible World, London, 1700). Other immigrants came as


bond slaves or "redemptioners" and were not so steadfast in the Faith as Goody Glover. Their en- vironment precluded any open manifestation of their religion or the training of their children in its precepts. As an instance of many such may be cited the fa- mous Governors Sullivan of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Their grandfather was one of the "Wild Geese" who fled with Sarsfield from Limerick to France. His son married Margaret Browii, a fellow "redemptioner", and with their six children all drifted into Protestantism. One of their sons. General Jolm Sullivan, of Revolutionary fame, writing on 5 September, 1774, of the "Quebec Act" that gave religious freedom to the Catholics of Canada under British rule, denounced these co- religionists of his grandfather as "determined to extirpate the race of Protestants from America to make way for their own cursed religion".

Traces of the Church in New England begin with the arrival of the Jesuit missioner, Peter Biard, among the Abenaki Indians of Maine in June, 1611. Others, notably Father Gabriel Druilletes (15 Au- gust, 1643), followed. About the same date, the ship of La Tour, the French commander of Canada, which visited Boston harbour had "two friars" on board, but they did not land. In September, 1646, another French ship, commanded by D'Aulnay, also having two priests on board, was in port. The priests visited the governor, who entertained them at his residence. Four years later Father Druilletes visited Boston to confer with General Gibbons as to the details of a trading pact and alliance with the Ca- nadian French against the Iroquois. The governor entertained him for two weeks at his home, which was on what is now Washington Street, near Adams Square (Memorial Hist, of Boston, II, p. xiv), and it is surmised that he said Mass in private there during that time. John Eliot, John Enaicott, and otlier noted men of the time were among those he met there and who united in urging him to prolong his visit, though their efforts were unsuccessful. The "Andros Papers" (quoted in Memorial Hist, of Boston) de- clare that in 1689 there was not a single "Papist" in all New England. They began to drift in soon, however, for in the Boston "VVeekly Rehearsal" of 20 March, 1732, is this statement: "We hear that Mass has been performed in town this winter by an Irish priest among .some Catholics of his own nation of whom it is not doubted we have a considerable number among us." During the war with France one hundred French Catholics were arrested in Boston in 1746 "to prevent any danger the towTi may be in", but the sheriff much to the disgust of their captors, refused to hold them. In 1756 the e.xiled Acadians, of whom nearly 2000 had landed in Massachusetts, were denied the services of a priest because, as Governor Hutchinson declared, "the people would upon no terms have consented to the public e.xercise of religious worship by Roman Catholick priests". The Boston "Town Records" (1772, pp. 95-96) while admitting that toleration in religion was "what all good and candid minds in all ages have ever practiced" excluded "Roman Catholicks" be- cause their belief was "subversive of society".

With the Revolution, however, came the dawn of a better era, the upsetting of religious as well as political barriers, and the beginning of the slow but sure growth of the Church which has resulted in the wonderful change of the present. A favourite New England diversion was an annual procession, on 5 No- vember, of the Pope and the Devil in celebration of the famous "Gunpowder Plot". In Boston it was usually attended by riot and violence. In 1775 Washington, while at Boston, issued an order in which he could not "help expressing his surprise that there should be officers and soldiers in this army so void of common sense" as to thus insult the re-