USA > New Jersey > The Catholic Church in New Jersey > Part 2
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The laws promulgated by the Duke of York in 1664 required the establishment of a church in each parish. This was inter- preted by Governor Andros and his council as requiring all per- sons to contribute, whether belonging to the congregation or not, and he asserted that this was not an infringement of the liberty of conscience, "as some pretend." This last was aimed at the Dutch, in the minority in some parishes, who complained that the articles of capitulation, August 7th, 1664, guaranteeing to the Dutch "liberty of their consciences in divine worship and church discipline," were thereby violated.
Colonel Dongan, a Catholic, afterward Earl of Limerick, suc- ceeded Andros in 1683. One of his first acts was to summon a provincial assembly, thus giving to the people of the colony what they had not hitherto enjoyed, a voice in the framing of the laws and the administration of the government. This was the conces- sion of a Catholic proprietor, and was carried into effect by a Catholic governor, at the very time when the colonists of New England were deprived of their charter. The first act of the first assembly of New York was the "charter of libertys," passed October 30th, 1683, and reads as follows: That no person or persons which professe ffaith in God by Jesus Christ shall, at any time, be any wayes molested, punished, disquieted, or called in question for any difference of opinion, or matter of religious con- cernment, who do nott actually disturbe the civil peace of the province, butt thatt all and every such person or p'sons may, from time to time, and at all times, freely have and fully enjoy, his or their judgements or consciences in matters of religions through- out all the province, they behaving themselves peacefully and quietly, and nott using this liberty to licentiousness, nor to the civil injury or outward disturbance of others." Another provision was, that whereas all the Christian churches then in the province seemed to be privileged churches, they were thereby secured in their property and discipline, and the like privileges were guaranteed to other Christian churches coming into the province, in regard to divine worship and church discipline.
Some years anterior to these events are discerned the first traces of Catholicity in New York. In 1622 there were two Catholic soldiers in Fort Orange, now Albany; and, when Father Jogues, the saintly apostle of the Indians, escaped from the Iro-
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quois, in 1642, he found "a Portuguese woman and a young Irish- man on the Island of Manhattan, whose confession he heard (Bayley, C. C., on Island of N. Y., 17)." The young Irishman is said to have come from Virginia.
When Dongan arrived in New York, he was accompanied by an English Jesuit, Father Thomas Harvey, who remained there seven years. He was joined by Father Henry Harrison, S. J., Father Charles Gage, S. J., in 1685-86, and two lay brothers. There was a Catholic chapel in Fort James, just south of Bowl- ing Green; and an attempt was made to open a classical school on the King's Farm, near or on the site of Trinity Church.
We are informed "that Papists began to settle in the colony under the smiles of the Governor." Even at that day Wood- bridge, N. J., was known for the fine quality of clay found there -"the finest in the world." This attracted many settlers, and among them some Catholics, since we find Fathers Harvey and Gage visiting both Woodbridge and Elizabethtown, the capital of East Jersey, settled by Carteret, and named for his own wife. The old records show Hugh Dunn, John and James Kelly, to be in Woodbridge in 1672, and Robert Vanquellen, or La Prarire, a native of Caen, France, in 1668, and Surveyor-General of that sec- tion of New Jersey, 1669-70. The documents connected with Leisler's usurpation give us another glimpse of the presence of Catholics, for "they allege that the Papists on Staten Island did threaten to cut the inhabitants' throats and to come and burn the city ; that eighty or a hundred men were coming from Boston . .. several of them Irish and Paptists; that a good part of the soldiers in the fort already were Papists; that M. de la Prearie (the same Vanquellen, whose name was pronounced and spelled out of all semblance) had arms in his house." One of the most prominent Catholics in New York in that day was Major Anthony Brockholes.
After the reconquest of the province, King Charles appointed Andros governor, specifying, at the same time, that in case of the death of Andros Lieut. Anthony Brockholes was to succeed him in his office. Brockholes, of an old Catholic family of Lan- cashire, England, was known to be a Papist, and would have been excluded from holding office, were it not that the "Test Act " of March 23d, 1673, did not apply to the British American Plantations. Brockholes was an efficient officer and served the colony well, until the Leisler usurpation, when a price was set upon his head, and he and Arent Schuyler sought in New Jersey refuge from the
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storm. In 1696 they together bought five thousand five hundred acres of land, and large tracts in other parts of the State, extend- ing in part from Paterson to Pompton, where Brockholes passed to the end of his days a very retired life. He entered a matri- monial union, so often fatal to the heritage of faith, espousing Susanna Maria, daughter of Paulus Schrick, a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, in which their children were all bap- tized. They were, of course, brought up Protestants, and his son Henry made a gift to the Dutch Reformed Church of Paterson " for one acre of land I give to the good will I owe, and the regard I have, for the low duch (sic!) Reformed Church of Holland." Pew No. I of that church belongs to his heirs forever. Henry Brockholes, or Brockholst, as the family later pleased to spell the name, was a member of the New Jersey Legislature in 1717. Thus, the faith that resisted unto blood the persecution of Ed- ward and Elizabeth, collapsed utterly through an unfortunate union with one of alien faith.
In the ship Philip, which brought Carteret to this country, there were thirty emigrants, several of whom were Frenchmen, skilled in making salt, which was evidently intended to be the staple of New Jersey. They were, doubtless, Alsatians, since in that province extensive works of that kind were found; and this conjecture is supported by the fact that they were Catholics whom Fathers Gage and Harrison visited at the close of the seventeenth century, and other priests at a later period.
The peace of Westminster, which concluded the war between the Dutch and the British, unsettled the position of the proprie- tors in the colonies. In the opinion of many jurists, who were consulted, the old patents were void, and on the strength of this opinion Charles again granted to his brother James, Duke of York, all that he had previously conveyed. James did not regret this decision, as he was anxious to recover the territories he had squandered on Berkeley and Carteret. But these wily courtiers had learned well their lesson, and were able to parry the blow. Berkeley, on his return from the lieutenancy in Ireland, was made ambassador to France.
Shortly after the treaty, in consideration of £1,000, Berkeley sold to John Fenwick, an old Cromwellian soldier, in trust for Edward Byllinge, a broken-down London brewer, his undivided half of New Jersey, together with such "franchises, liberties, govern- ments, and powers as had been granted to him in 1664." This deal was concluded before Charles made his second grant to
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James. As for Carteret, he finally succeeded in wheedling James into confirming his grant in severalty of that portion of New Jersey extending south as far as Barnegat, and west as far as Rankokus Kill, or Delaware River.
Dongan was removed from office in 1691, and the Assembly of New York passed a resolution that all laws made by the late Assembly were null and void; and thus the first anti-Catholic legislation was enacted, to be the more fully exploited by the law-makers of July 31st, 1700.
This is the preamble: " Whereas, divers Jesuits, priests, and papist missionaries have of late come, and for some time have had their residence in the remote parts of this province, and other of his Majesty's adjacent colonies, who, by their wicked and subtle insinuations industriously labored to debauch, seduce, and with- draw the Indians from their due obedience unto his most sacred Majesty, and to excite and stir them up to sedition, rebellion, and open hostility against his Majesty's Government." It then enacted that every priest, etc., remaining in or coming into the province after November Ist, 1700, should be "deemed and accounted an incendiary, and disturber of the public peace and safety, and an enemy to the true Christian religion, and shall be adjudged to suffer perpetual imprisonment." In case of escape and capture to suffer death. Harborers of priests to pay £200 and stand three days in the pillory. (Laws of N. Y., p. 38.)
On September 16th, 1701, a law was enacted by which " papists and popish recusants are prohibited from voting for members of Assembly or any office whatever, from thenceforth and forever." (Col. of Laws, i., p. 42.)
How truly does Lecky remark " that among the Irish Catholics, at least, religious intolerance has never been a prevailing vice, and those who have studied closely the history and character of the Irish people can hardly fail to be struck with the deep respect for sincere religion in every form which they have commonly evinced " (England in the Eighteenth Century, ii., 423). It is a memorable fact that not a single Protestant suffered for his religion in Ireland during all the period of the Marian persecution in England (ibid.).
Leisler was a religious fanatic, a worthy predecessor of the new governor, the Earl of Bellomont, whose father, Colonel Coote, had been one of the bloodiest butchers of Irish Catholics in Cromwell's time. The son inherited all the sanguinary and fiendish ferocity against the Catholic religion of his father, coupled with the shrewder statecraft of the unprincipled politician.
In the first general assembly, held at Elizabethtown, May 26th, 1668, William Douglass, the member from Bergen, was excluded
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because he was a Catholic; and two years later he was arrested as "a troublesome person," sent to New York, whence he was ban- ished to New England and warned not to come again into the Duke's territories.
A little incident, in 1679, gives us another glimpse of the sad condition of the little band of Catholics in Elizabeth and near by.
Joseph Dankers and Peter Sluyter, followers of Labadie, an apostate Jesuit, came to America in search of land for a settle- ment. In one of their letters, under date October Ist, 1679, they say :
"At Mill Creek, a good half-hour's distance from Elizabeth- town, N. J., there was a tavern on it kept by a French papist, who at once took us to be priests, and so conducted themselves toward us in every respect accordingly, although we told them and protested otherwise. As there was nothing to be said further, we remained so to their imagination to the last, the more certainly because we spoke French, and they were French people. We slept there that night, and at three o'clock in the morning we set sail."
On November 14th they again "reached the point of Eliza- beth's Kil, where we were compelled to anchor. We all went ashore and lodged for the night in the home of the French peo- ple, who were not yet rid of the suspicion they had conceived, notwithstanding the declaration we had made accordingly."
Under date of January Ist, 1680, they were on Woodbridge Creek: "We landed here on Staten Island to drink at the house of the Frenchman, Le Chaudronnier, where we formerly passed a night in making the tour of Staten Island. He related to us what strange opinions, every one as well as himself, entertained of us."
Martin I. J. Griffin claims that Elizabeth Brittin, daughter of Lionel Brittin, the first to arrive in the Delaware (1680), father of the first white child born in these parts, on the first panel of jurors, and the first convert to the Catholic faith in Pennsylvania, was married to Michael Kearney, a prominent man in East Jersey. Now the most distinguished man of that name in this part of the colony lived about one half mile from Whippany, where he had an estate of nine hundred and ninety-nine acres, called the Irish Lott. Here he entertained in lordly style, and his hospitality won for him hosts of friends. His tomb may still be seen on a charming knoll, with pleasant views of hill and woodland on every
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side. When last seen by the writer, it was in a dilapidated con- dition.
The inscription on the huge stone is:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF CAPTAIN MICHALE KEARNEY OF HIS BRITTANIC MAJESTY'S NAVY. HE DEPARTED THIS LIFE AT THE IRISH LOTT THE SEAT OF HIS RESIDENCE IN HANOVER ON THE 5 DAY OF APRIL A.D. 1797 AGED 78 YEARS, 6 MONTHS AND 28 DAYS
IN THE NAVAL SERVICE HE WAS A BRAVE AND INTREPID OFFICER WHICH SECURED TO HIM SEVERAL MARKS OF DISTINGUISHED RESPECT AND CONFIDENCE. IN PRIVATE LIFE HE EXERCISED THE VIRTUES OF BENEVOLENCE, HOSPITAI(sic) ETY AND GENTEEL URBANITY.
In May, 1682, an attempt was made by the Legislature to secure for West Jersey a separate coinage. The necessity for small coinage was pressing, and Mark Newbie, a Quaker, one of the earliest settlers of Gloucester, was empowered to supply the demand. The act provides: That Mark Newbie's half-pence, called Patrick's half-pence, shall from and after the said eighteenth instant pass for half-pence current pay of this province, provided
PLI
EBS
OTE
A PATRICK PENCE.
he, the said Mark, give sufficient security to the speaker of this House for the use of the General Assembly from time to time being, that he, the said Mark, his executors and administrators, shall and will change the said half-pence for pay equivalent upon demand; and provided also that no Person or Persons be hereby obliged to take more than five shillings in one payment.
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There is considerable obscurity as to the manner in which these coins came into the possession of Newbie, and likewise as to their origin. By some it is thought that they were struck abroad in the reign of Charles I, or that they were minted on the Continent and authorized by the Kilkenny Assembly, and circulated by the confederates when other money was scarce in Ireland. There were several varieties, but the most common shows a king kneel- ing, playing a harp, with the motto "Floreat Rex"; and on the . obverse side is a figure of St. Patrick, with one hand outstretched, while the left clasps the archiepiscopal cross, and on the extreme right a church, with the motto "Quiescat Plebs."
There is no doubt that Mark Newbie secured these coins in Ireland, as he embarked from one of its ports on the 19th of Sep- tember, 1681, in a narrow-stemmed pink called "Ye Owner's Ad- venture," under the command of Mate Daggett. After a voyage of two months he arrived "by the grace of God, within ye Capes of De La Ware," and after spending the winter in Salem, finally took up a twentieth share of land, nearly midway between Cooper's Creek and Newton Creek in what was known as the Irish Tenth.
When Sir Edmund Andros was commissioned captain-general, and governor-in-chief, in 1686, by James II, over his "Territory and Dominion of New England in America," i.e., Massachusetts Bay, New Plymouth, New Hampshire, Maine and the Narragan- sett country, to secure him in his government, two companies of regular soldiers, chiefly Irish papists, were raised in London, and placed under his orders (Brodhead, History of New York, ii., 451).
In 1687 our attention is called to the woes of another Catholic who, despite his ability and the conscientious discharge of a deli- cate office, was dismissed in disgrace because of his religion.
Mathew Plowman, a Catholic, was appointed by King James II "Our Collector and Receiver of our Revenue in our Province of New York and the Territories depending thereon in America," so that the sphere of his jurisdiction extended from Maine to Delaware, Rhode Island and Connecticut excepted. He, together with Captain Baxter and Ensign Russell of the fort of New York, were known to be Catholics, and for this the lieutenant-governor, on the accession of William and Mary, "to avoid jealousies, sent them out of the Province."
While Catholics in America were thus dismissed from office because of their religion, Lecky writes :
"The terror that was excited by the ambition of France en-
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listed a great part of the Catholic Europeans on the side of Wil- liam. The King of Spain was decidedly in his favor, and the Spanish ambassador at The Hague is said to have ordered Mass in his chapel for the success of the expedition. The Emperor employed all his influence at Rome on the same side, and, by sin- gular good fortune, the Pope himself looked with favor on the Revolution " (England in the Eighteenth Century," i., p. 22).
"It was asserted, though probably with some exaggeration, that there were no less than 4,000 Catholics in the army with which William came over to defend the Protestantism of Eng- land " (ibid., p. 294).
"The penal laws against Roman Catholics, both in England and Ireland, were the immediate consequence of the Revolution " (p. 294).
In other parts of King James's domain Catholics paid the pen- alty of loyalty to their faith.
The first execution for witchcraft, in 1688, at Charlestown, Mass., was "an Irish woman of a strange tongue " named Glover. Her daughter was accused by a child of her "master " with having stolen family linen. The "scandalous old hag" Glover was "a Roman Catholic; she had never learned the Lord's Prayer in English." She was "condemned as a witch and executed " (Bancroft, iii., 76, ed. 1842).
The first victim of the Salem witchcraft of 1691 was "Bridget Bishop, a poor and friendless old woman." She was hanged June Ioth, 1692.
The drastic laws enacted in New York, on the accession of William and Mary at the close of the seventeenth century, found an echo in New Jersey.
The law of 1698, declaring what are the rights and privileges of his Majesty's subjects in East New Jersey, directed "that no person or persons that profess faith in God by Jesus Christ, His only Son, shall at any time be molested, punished, disturbed, or be called in question for difference in religious opinion, &c., &c., provided this shall not extend to any of the Romish religion the right to exercise their manner of worship contrary to the laws and statutes of England."
When Lord Cornbury assumed the government of New Jersey in 1701, his instructions directed him to permit liberty of con- science to all persons except papists. Matters remained thus with the Catholic Church in New Jersey until the end of the Brit- ish rule.
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In her "Instructions " to Lord Cornbury, November 16th, 1702, Queen Anne, among others, directed him to have oversight that no man's life, member, freehold, or goods be taken away, or harmed, otherwise than by due process of the law; that liberty of conscience be allowed to every one "except papists," and the "test " oath be administered "for preventing dangers which may happen from papish recusants."
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Early in the eighteenth century almost every church in our State had a school attached to it. "By the side of the log church the primitive school-house was erected; and schools, supervised and supported by the church authorities, were established in all the larger settlements of East Jersey. The pioneers in West Jersey were Quakers. To them school-houses were scarcely sec- ond in importance, and were usually placed under the same roof with their place of worship" (Raum, History of New Jersey, ii., 284). Private schools were also established, sometimes in a pri- vate house, sometimes in a rude building, and here the children were taught by an itinerant school-master, occasionally a college- bred man, and, not unfrequently, a Scotch or Irish redemptioner. This leads us to some of the saddest pages of the history of the Irish race.
The war ended in Ireland in 1652. According to the calcula- tion of Sir W. Petty, out of a population of 1,446,000, 616,000 had in eleven years perished by the sword, by plague, or by famine artificially produced; 504,000, according to this estimate, were Irish, 112,000 of English extraction. A third part of the popula- tion had been blotted out, and Petty tells us that according to some calculations the number of the victims was much greater.
. . Famine and sword had so done their work that in some districts the traveller rode twenty or thirty miles without seeing one trace of human life, and fierce wolves-rendered doubly savage by feeding on human flesh-multiplied with startling rapidity through the deserted land, and might be seen prowling in num- bers within a few miles of Dublin. Liberty was given to able- bodied men to abandon the country and enlist in foreign service, and from 30,000 to 40,000 availed themselves of the permission. Slave-dealers were let loose upon the land, and many hundreds of boys and marriageable girls, guilty of no offence whatever, were torn away from their country, shipped to the Barbadoes and sold as slaves to planters (Lecky, England in the Eighteenth Century, ii., 188).
The archives of the Ministry of War of France show that
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700,000 Irish soldiers gave their hearts' blood on a hundred bat- tlefields under the fleur-de-lis and the tricolor of the French mon- archy and republic (Life of Montalembert, Lecanuet, i., 107).
In twenty years there were at least four of absolute famine, and that of 1740-1741, although it has hardly left a trace in history, was one of the most fearful on record. One writer states that 400,000 perished this year through famine or its attendant diseases (Lecky, ii., 238). The details of the sufferings and deaths are sickening and revolting. Whole parishes were desolate, and whole thousands perished in a barony.
Newnham, on "Irish Emigration," remarks: "If we said that during fifty years of the eighteenth century the average annual emigrations to America and the West Indies amounted to about 4,000, and consequently that in that space of time about 200,000 had emigrated to the English plantations, I am disposed to think we should rather fall short of the real truth " (Lecky, ii., 284).
The Abbe MacGeoghegan says: By calculation and by re- searches made in the war office it is found that from the year 1691 to the battle of Fontenoy, in 1745, more than 450,000 Irish soldiers died in the service of France.
Sir William Petty, writing in 1672, states that six thousand boys and women were sold as slaves from Ireland to the under- takers of the American islands. Bruodin estimates the total num- ber of the exiles from Ireland at 100,000. A letter, written in 1656, cited by Dr. Lingard, reckons the number of Catholics thus sent to slavery at 60,000. "The Catholics are sent off in ship- fuls to the Barbadoes and other American islands. I believe 60,000 have already gone; for the husbands being first sent to Belgium and Spain already, their wives and children are now destined for the Americas" (Persecutions of Irish Catholics, Moran, 323).
In the course of years many of these Irish exiles became proprietors of the estates on which they labored, attained great wealth, had their black slaves, who assumed their names, and to- day one may meet them, black as ebony, bearing such names as T. Kelly Smith, S. M. Burke, Rachel Dunn, J. Harris Carr, and speaking English with a rich brogue.
As late as 1785 the trade of "soul driver " was plied, and human cargoes of fifty or more were purchased from the inhuman captains of the ships which brought them over, by dealers, who drove them through the country and disposed of them to the farmers. Thus were the shipmasters compensated and enriched
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for the expenses of the immigrants' passage over-sea. "All strata of society," says B. F. Lee, "were represented among the redemp- tioners, most of whom, in New Jersey, were Palatinate Germans, Scotch, English, Irish, and Scotch-Irish, sons of good families, street waifs, soldiers of fortune, young girls fresh from farms, dis- solute women from the purlieus of London and the great cities. Some in search of a new home, some desiring to reform wayward lives, some seeking adventure, were huddled upon ships and brought to Philadelphia, New York, Salem, Burlington, and Am-" boy. Once landed, they were offered to the highest bidder, placed on show like cattle, and hurried off to near-by farms, to become assimilated in a population which was as yet shifting and hetero- geneous. The advertisements of these sales crowd the columns of the newspapers of the day. The boys were 'likely' and ' willing,' the girls 'hearty' and 'used to country work.' Here and there was one who could serve as a school-master, as a ' taylor,' or as a shoemaker. Others there were who had trades, and many were ' pock-fretten.'"
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