BIRTHPLACE OF ARCHBISHOP CARROLL, UPPER MARLBORO', MD.

[From a water-color by W. Seymour, executed in 1884.]

BOOK I.

LIFE OF THE REV. JOHN CARROLL TO HIS CONSECRATION AS BISHOP OF BALTIMORE.-THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE ENGLISH COLONIES AND THE UNITED STATES 1763-1790.

CHAPTER I.

HIS LIFE TO HIS RETURN TO MARYLAND IN 1774.

THE Catholic Church is a fact and a factor in the life of our republic. In spite of the antagonism shown in former days by the English government and the colonial legislatures, in spite of the bitter opposition of most Protestant sects, in spite of the Protestant bias and tone of our Federal and State systems, our public schools, our press and literature, the Catholic Church grows. It has attained such a development in the country that it numbers probably eight millions who actually profess its faith, and receive its ordinances, with perhaps some two or three millions more, who, led by hope of advancement or sinking into indifference, assume a kind of neutral position, apt to adhere to their religion if it suits their worldly prospects, inclined to ignore it for social or political ends. The influence of such a body, regarding only those who maintain the faith, unison in creed, worship, discipline, religious thought, and impulse, upon the country and its future, is certainly worthy of serious thought and consideration. To understand the actual position of the Catholic Church it is necessary to trace its past, and appreciate duly

2

(25)

the men and events which more potently controlled its life and polity.

Among these the Most Reverend John Carroll, first Bishop and first Archbishop of Baltimore, holds a commanding place. Pious, learned, sagacious, conversant with the character and ideas of the ruling classes in England, and the condition of those who suffered under the penal laws; a careful observer of the condition of affairs on the Continent, where atheism by the operation of secret societies had gained power among rulers and nobles, only to affect their ruin, he had taken a patriotic part in the struggle of America for freedom, and in full harmony with the providentially great statesmen of that critical time, sought to base the foundations of our new republic on the solid ground of eternal justice. Great experience, great trials patiently and hopefully borne, great prudence, sound judgment, the purest patriotism, intelligent loyalty to the Church of which he was an unblemished minister, fitted him in the highest degree for moulding into a body of active zeal and faith the little nucleus of Catholics in the country, which had for more than a century been under the ban of England's penal laws, copied with features of singular malignity in the colonies.

How admirably Dr. Carroll accomplished the important and delicate task confided to him, is recognized in the veneration ever since paid to his name, not only in the great and prosperous Church that has grown up from the small beginnings which he fostered, but in the universal judgment of impartial men who have had occasion to speak of him.

Notwithstanding penal laws and laws to prevent the immigration, especially of Irish Catholics, into the province of Maryland, a few arrived from time to time; among them, soon after the commencement of the eighteenth century, was Daniel Carroll, son of Keane, a native of Ireland, but related

by ties of consanguinity to the family of that name already prominent in the province. He became a thriving merchant and in time married Eleanor,' the daughter of Henry Darnall of Woodyard, a lady who had received a finished education in France, and who displayed, in forming the character of her children, a mind enriched with piety and every accomplishment to fit her for the task. John Carroll was born January 8, 1735, at Upper Marlborough, Prince George's County, Maryland, where his father had established his home. The house where the patriarch of the Catholic Church in this country first saw the light is still standing, but a dark grove of murmuring pines covers the site of Boone's chapel, where he was probably baptized, and in childhood went with his parents to kneel before the altar of God. The graveyard of the present church of the Holy Rosary was used in those old days, and probably holds the remains of some of his kindred. John Carroll's boyhood, under the training of his excellent mother, gave him the ease, dignity, and polish which marked him through life. At the age of twelve he was sent to the seat of learning which the Jesuits, notwithstanding the penal laws, had established at Hermen's Manor of Bohemia, on the eastern shore of Maryland. Here as Jacky Carroll he prepared for the course in the Jesuit College at St. Omer. Ever devoted to the education of youth, this learned order had, whenever opportunity offered, endeavored to give the sons of Catholic settlers the classical and moral training befitting their social station, but under a hostile government the existence of such academies always proved a short one. They had opened a school in Maryland soon after the settlement, of which we get occasional glimpses; then a Latin school in