the Province; for Kev. Francis Makemie, Founder of Presbyterianism in America, on March 28, 1707, wrote to Rev. Benj. Colman: "The penal laws are invading our American sanctuary without the least regard to the Toleration Act, which should justly alarm us all." [Pa. Mag., No. 2. vol. v. 1881, p. 224.]
Such were Penn's principles, professions and acts.
How did his followers act? Did they do as he proclaimed?
Let us take the "History of the United States," one of Sadlier's Excelsior Series of Catholic School Books.
This history has been prepared because the histories in the Public Schools are "a conspiracy against truth," as regards Catholics and their doings in this country. Yet it contains the following:
"Though William Penn granted religious toleration throughout his own colony, still in maintaining it towards Catholics he was bitterly opposed by his own people."
So while Penn is not saddled with the charge of the big histories, the odium is now placed on his followers.
A few sentences prior the people are described as "emigrants, mainly Quakers."
Yet there is no foundation whatsoever for this declaration that they bitterly opposed "the maintenance by Penn of religious toleration towards Catholics." Take these facts as proof:
Pennsylvania was the only colony except Maryland from which Papists were not excluded from the first hour of their settlement. After 1692, it was the only colony that did not prohibit the public exercise of the Catholic religion, and for forty years prior to that time our Religion was not free even in Maryland. It was, indeed, a haven from oppression, and a Catholic even from the Catholic-founded colony of Maryland, was considered as having reached an asylum or sanctuary when within Pennsylvania's borders, for in April, 1690, Cap. Goode, writing to Jocob Leisler, of New York, about two, whom he describes as "strangers, Irishmen and Papists," says, "they made their escape towards Pennsylvania."
There is not a sign to show that the Quakers during Penn's time here, or when he was in England, or after his death, at any time "bitterly opposed" Catholics practising their religion.
On the contrary, quite the reverse. The complaint to England about the Mass of 1708 amounted to nothing injurious to Catholics. They were here, they came and went, as did others. Priests visited them regularly, and the founder of the little chapel of St. Joseph's is traditionally related to have come to this city in the garb of a Quaker. Perhaps so. It was that of Friends in truth, and he could be safe at any rate.
But after Father Greaton concluded to build a little chapel, and, if we take our Catholic school history as correct, among those who "bitterly opposed" his presence where did he build? Why, of all places in our city, the one he would have avoided if that charge were true—right beside the Quaker Almshouse, back of Walnut Street. That alone is proof of the utmost cordiality and friendship existing between the two peoples, and there are people yet living who remember the passage-way between the two. And when in July, 1734, Governor Patrick Gordon informed his Council that a house lately built in Walnut Street had been set apart for the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion, where several persons resorted on Sundays to hear Mass openly celebrated by a Popish priest," and he thought "the public exercise of that religion contrary to the laws of England." on what grounds did the forty or less Catholics maintain their right to freely and publicly exercise their religion? That they had a right to do so by "the Charter of Privileges granted to this Government by the late honorable proprietor."
The laws of England were against them but they appealed to the Charter of Penn. Governor Gordon was not a Quaker. It was to a Quaker document Catholics appealed, and they were not molested. To show still further, and perhaps more
