Of Maryland, Mr. Bancroft writes that the English Revolution was a Protestant revolution.
"A convention of the associates 'for the defence of the Protestant religion' assumed the government, and, in an address to King William, denounced the influence of the Jesuits, the prevalence of popish idolatry, the connivance by the previous government at murders of Protestants, and the danger from plots with the French and Indians."
Hence, a little farther on, we read: "The Roman Catholics alone were left without an ally, exposed to English bigotry and colonial injustice. They alone were disfranchised on the soil which, long before Locke pleaded for toleration, or Penn for religious freedom, they had chosen, not as their own asylum only, but, with Catholic liberality, as the asylum of every persecuted sect. In the land which Catholics had opened for Protestants, the Catholic inhabitant was the sole victim to Anglican intolerance. Mass might not be said publicly. No Catholic priest or bishop might utter his faith in a voice of persuasion. No Catholic might teach the young. If the wayward child of a Papist would but become an apostate, the law wrested for him from his parents a share of their property. The disfranchisement of the proprietary related to his creed, not to his family. Such were the methods adopted 'to prevent the growth of Popery.'"
Mr. Bancroft adds with much truth and force: "Who shall say that the faith of the cultivated individual is firmer than the faith of the common people? Who shall say that the many are fickle, that the chief is firm? To recover the inheritance of authority, Benedict, the son of the proprietary, renounced the Catholic Church for that of England; the persecution never crushed the faith of the humble colonists."
Pennsylvania appears to form an exception to that universal animosity against Catholics. It is said that, owing to William Penn, "religious liberty was established, and every public employment was open to every man professing faith in Jesus Christ. . . . In Pennsylvania human rights were respected: the fundamental law of William Penn, even his detractors concede, was in harmony with universal reason, and true to the ancient and just liberties of the people."
Such may have been the written law—the theory; but the law as executed—the fact—was far from realizing those fine promises. As late as the end of the Revolutionary War, the Catholics of Philadelphia were compelled to hide away their worship in a small chapel, surrounded by buildings whose only access was a dark and winding alley still in existence a few years back.
It is known, moreover, that Penn himself, in 1708, forbade mass to be celebrated in the colony. According to T. D. McGee, Governor Gordon, in 1734, prohibited the erection of a Catholic church in Walnut Street; and, in 1736, a private house having been purchased at the corner of Second and Chestnut streets for the same object, it was again prohibited.
New Jersey showed her liberality in the form sacred to all the other colonies: "Liberty of conscience was granted to all but papists."
There was as yet no homogeneity in New York, the Dutch still preserving great power, and, consequently, "the idea of toleration was still imperfect in New Netherlands; equality among religious sects was unknown." If this was the case with several Protestant organizations, what must it have been with the Catholics? It is well known that no one dared openly avow his faith in the true Church, and that John Ury was hanged in 1741 for being a priest, though whether he was a priest or not is still a question.
Rhode Island had proclaimed in the beginning "entire freedom of mind;" but, after the Revolution of 1688, the colony "interpolated into the statute-book the exclusion of papists from the established equality."