A PRISONER. 43 ington, who made every exertion to lessen their undeserved sufferings. All but three Fathers, who were detained as hostages, were in a short time released and ordered to leave the country. At the first intelligence of this unexpected violence toward the English houses, Henry, Lord Arundell of Wardour, who was a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, appealed to Prince Staremberg, the Austrian prime minister, in their behalf.' The Jesuits of the English province lost no time in leaving the ungrateful empire. Though he had resolved to return to Maryland, the Rev. John Carroll accompanied his religious brethren to England, and acted as their secretary in the remonstrance which they addressed to the French government against the seizure of their property. As he had renounced his paternal estate in favor of his brother and sisters, he was utterly without means. But he was known and appreciated among the highest circles of English Catholics, and was at once invited by Lord Arundell to make Wardour Castle his home. Here he enjoyed the society of the cultivated friends of that nobleman, and while acting as chaplain labored zealously among the neighboring Catholics. Wardour Castle had a deep interest to a native of Maryland, as Anne Arundell, wife of Lord Baltimore, whose name has been perpetuated in one of the counties of the State, was born within its walls. This elegant leisure was not able to detain the good priest. He felt that his real mission was in his own land; though how Providence was to employ him there he could not fore 'Carroll, "A Narrative of the Proceedings on the Suppression of the Two English Colleges"; Foley, "Records," v., pp. 173-184. see. His affectionate heart prompted him to return to his aged mother, and he felt that he must act at once. Removed as he had been from America ever since the days of his boyhood, he had never forgotten his native land or its interests. The growing aversion to English rule had not escaped his notice, and he beheld with regret that the home government instead of a course of conciliation that would have bound the colonists to the mother country, seemed wantonly, year by year, to adopt measures that alienated the hearts of the American people more and more from the sovereign and the parliament of Great Britain. That the moment would soon arrive when an appeal would be made to arms, the Rev. Mr. Carroll was too sagacious not to see. Whatever might come, the patriotic priest resolved to cast his lot with his country. Bidding adieu to the members of the order, with whom he had spent so many happy years in the religious state, and to the kind friend who had given him so delightful a home, he sailed from England in 1774, bearing faculties as a secular priest granted by the Vicar-Apostolic of London. The vessel was one of the last that cleared from England for the Chesapeake before the Revolution. Rev. Mr. Carroll arrived in America June 26, 1774, and landed at Richland, Virginia, the seat of William Brent, who had married his second sister, Ellen. His old classmate at Bohemia and St. Omer, Robert Brent, now the husband of Carroll's elder sister, Anne, lived in the same neighborhood. After enjoying the affectionate welcome of his sisters and their families, the priest thus restored to his country proceeded after a delay of only two days to the home which his mother had made for herself and her younger daughters, Mary and Betsy, on Rock Creek, in Frederick, now Montgomery County, Maryland. Her joy at the return of her loving son may well be imagined, "though the change that time had wrought in him from a lad of twelve to a man of forty, made her fail to recognize him at first, so it is said." His affection attested in his letters had cheered her widowhood, but she had scarcely dared to hope for the happiness of ever having him again beneath her roof." 1 Woodstock Letters, vii., p. 9. We are indebted for the portrait of Archbishop Carroll's mother to the courtesy and interest of Miss E. C. Brent, who allowed a copy to be made of the oil painting in her possession. CHAPTER II. RELIGION IN THE BRITISH COLONIES, 1763-1774. THE position of Catholics when the Rev. John Carroll returned to the English colonies in America was a peculiar one. More than a decade of years had elapsed since England by the aid of those colonies had crushed the power of France on the northern continent, and extorted a cession of Florida from Spain. War stimulated by fanning anti-Catholic fanaticism had triumphed, and England had a vast transatlantic realm to govern, whose direction required the utmost resources of statesmanship. But it is easier to create prejudice than to dispel it. The British government was learning the lesson. Had England's conduct in colonial affairs been based on the great and eternal principles of truth and honesty, her course would have been simple. But she could not be just to her new Catholic acquisitions without arousing elsewhere the feelings of religious hate which she had implanted and nurtured by every device and keenly-devised misrepresentation. The course of Catholics had been consistent and Christian. Sir George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore, an earnest friend of equal rights in civil and religious matters, took out to his Newfoundland colony of Avalon a Catholic priest and a Protestant minister, and chapels gave the settlers of both faiths the opportunity to worship God according to their own wish and choice. The Protestant minister returned to England to denounce this liberality and make charges against Calvert, which still stand on the records. In founding the |