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

colony of Maryland his son and successor, equally desirous of encouraging the settlers to maintain the form of worship they desired, took no clergymen officially, but erected chapels for each creed, leaving the people to arrange for a ministry as they chose. Father Andrew White and another Jesuit Father came out with the first settlers as gentlemen adventurers, under the proposals issued by Lord Baltimore, bringing out mechanics, laborers, and farmers. As proprietors they took up lands, and those who followed them did the These plantations afforded a support to the Catholic clergy in Maryland, down to the suppression of the Society of Jesus, the chapel being attached to the residence of the priest, for the laws of the colony forbade any separate structure for Catholic worship, and when Rev. Mr. Carroll landed in 1774 there was not, so far as we know, a public Catholic church in the province of Maryland.

same.

The Rev. Mr. Carroll, some years later, thus described the condition of Catholics in Maryland during the three quarters of the century: "Attempts were frequently made to introduce the whole code of penal English laws, and it seemed to depend more on the temper of the courts of justice than on avowed and acknowledged principles that these laws were not generally executed as they were sometimes partially. Under these discouraging circumstances Catholic families of note left their church and carried an accession of weight and influence into the Protestant cause. The seat of government was removed from St. Mary's, where the Catholics were powerful, to Annapolis, where lay the strength of the opposite party. The Catholics, excluded from all lucrative employments, harassed and discouraged, became, in general, poor and dejected.

"But in spite of their discouragements their numbers increased with the increase of population. They either had

CONDITION OF CATHOLICS.

49

clergymen residing in their neighborhoods or were occasionally visited by them; but these congregations were dispersed at such distances, and the clergymen were so few that many Catholic families could not always hear Mass, or receive any instruction so often as once in a month. Domestic instructions supplied, in some degree, this defect; but yet very imperfectly. Amongst the poorer sort, many could not read, or if they could, were destitute of books, which, if to be had at all, must come from England; and in England the laws were excessively rigid against printing or vending Catholic books. Under all these difficulties, it is surprising that there remained in Maryland, even so much as there was, of true religion. In general Catholics were regular and inoffensive in their conduct; such, I mean, as were natives of the country; but when many began to be imported, as servants, from Ireland, great licentiousness prevailed amongst them in the towns and neighborhoods where they were stationed, and spread a scandal injurious to true faith. Contiguous to the houses where the priests resided on the lands, which had been secured for the clergy, small chapels were built; but scarcely anywhere else; when divine service was performed at a distance from their residence, private and inconvenient houses were used for churches. Catholics contributed nothing to the support of religion or its ministers; the whole charge of their maintenance, of furnishing the altars, of all travelling expenses, fell on the priests themselves, and no compensation was ever offered for any service performed by them, nor did they require any, so long as the produce of their lands was sufficient to answer their demands. But it must have been foreseen that if religion should make considerable progress, this could not always be the case."

Account of condition of religion prepared by Bishop Carroll about 1790. It was first published in the "Metropolitan" for 1831 by Rev. C.

The Catholics in Maryland from the time of the settlement of that province had been subject to the Vicar-Apostolic of England, and when the Vicariate-Apostolic of the London District was established to the bishops to whom successively the management of that part of England was confided by the Holy See. The missionaries extending their labors to New York, Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, carried the same jurisdiction to those colonies. This jurisdiction was not derived from any express act of the Holy See, but arose like that of the Archbishop of Rouen in Canada, from the fact of vessels sailing from ports in the jurisdiction of European bishops who gave faculties, under a settled law of the Church. Bishop Challoner tells us that the Jesuit missionaries in Maryland used at first to ask rather for approbation than for faculties. But after Pope Innocent XII., by his Brief issued February 14, 1702, ordained that all missionaries in Vicariates-Apostolic should obtain faculties from the bishops in charge, and not exercise any functions without them, the Maryland missionaries applied regularly for faculties.'

"All our settlements in America have been deemed subject in spirituals to the ecclesiastical superiors here, and this has been time out of mind; even, I believe, from the time of the archpriests. I know not the origin of this, nor have ever met with the original grant," wrote Bishop Challoner in 1756. "I suppose they were looked upon as appurtenances or appendixes of the English mission. And after the division of this kingdom into four districts, the jurisdiction over

C. Pise, who translated it from a French version. The citation here is from Bishop Carroll's manuscript.

1 Pope Innocent XII. had already by his Brief "Ad Pastorale Fastigium," January 12, 1697, revoked all personal exemptions of religious of any order in Spanish America. Hernaez, "Coleccion de Bulas," Brussels, 1879, i., pp. 499–500.