In the name of God - Implementing Religious Tolerance

by Anna Belfrage

In 1963, my parents decided to brave the unknown. They said farewell to family and friends, waved goodbye to Sweden, and set off for exotic South America. In the sixties, this was a relatively drastic thing to do – but compared to the emigrants of the previous centuries, my parents had something of a walk in the park, with the added benefit of knowing that, should they want to, they could always go back home and it wouldn’t take them more than a couple of days by plane.

In the 17th century, airplanes were not even on the drawing board. The ships that crossed the Atlantic were small and fragile, and the probability of dying in a shipwreck was relatively high. Add to this the risk of being attacked by pirates, or being blown off course, and one wonders that anyone actually dared to set off for new lands. Maybe they were braver than I am –or maybe they didn’t feel they had a choice.

Many of the early settlers in the American Colonies emigrated due to religious issues. Interestingly enough, while the English government had little tolerance for Puritans, Quakers, Catholics, Presbyterians and what have you back home, they seemed not to have minded overmuch when these people settled in the faraway colonies – still English dominions, but at a sufficient distance to allow the heart to grow (somewhat) fonder. Maybe this tolerance rather reflected the government’s interest in increasing their fiscal income. Or maybe it was as simple as “out of sight, out of mind”, because seriously, who in Bristol or York would be all that bothered by what happened on the other side of the world?

The young colonies were no more tolerant than England – but with different religious preferences. Virginia quickly became an Anglican stronghold, further reinforced during Sir William Berkley’s long tenure as governor. Massachusetts was firmly in Puritan hands – strong, capable and somewhat sombre hands – and then there was Maryland, where for the first time in history an Act of Toleration was implemented in 1649. (The fledging Rhode Island passed a series of laws in the 1630’s that protected religious freedoms, but nothing as explicit as Maryland’s Act)

Let us take a step back, and consider just how turbulent the 17th century was from a religious perspective. The Reformation movements of the 16th century spilled over into the new century, and with the Protestant view that man was fully capable of reading the Bible and understanding it all on his own, the door was opened wide on multiple interpretations, resulting in a plethora of Protestant orientations, all of them with their own distinctive set of beliefs. At one end of the spectrum was Calvin and the Presbyterian school of thought, at the other the far more moderate (lax in the eyes of the more rabid reformers) Church of England.

Gustavus Adolphus victorious during the Thirty Years' War

Ultimately, the unrest of the 17th century was never about faith as such; it was about power. The Thirty Years’ War was clad in the guise of defending the faith, but was about expanding the power base and wealth of certain states (such as Sweden and France) while curtailing that of others, notably the Hapsburg Empire. How else to explain the interesting fact that Catholic France bankrolled a substantial part of Protestant Sweden’s war efforts?

Inconsistency was rife: on one hand, France allied itself with Sweden, on the other it viciously oppressed the Huguenots, this culminating in the Huguenot revolts and the Anglo-French War. England had to retreat from the war due to Charles I’s increasing problems at home (he had his own vociferous religious protesters), leaving France’s Protestants to their fate.

In England, the Church of England – and the government – was distrustful of all religious faiths outside the Anglican Church. Catholics were hounded, would continue to be hounded for decades. Puritans were seen as dangerous dissenters and were forced to flee in large numbers, first to the welcoming Dutch States, eventually to Massachusetts. When the situation for Catholics (or ‘recusants’) became intolerable, many of them opted to go overseas as well, and fortunately for these papists there was a small colony in America that welcomed them with open arms, namely Maryland.

Cecilius Calvert

Maryland at the time was a private possession. It was owned by Cecilius Calvert, a Catholic peer, and as such it welcomed Catholic immigrants with open arms. Actually, the colony welcomed immigrants of any Christian denomination with open arms, and as a consequence the colony’s population very quickly came to be dominated by Puritans.

Calvert was set on creating some sort of safe haven for his co-religionists, and he quickly concluded that persecution of non-Catholics was not the right way to go about it – after all, Maryland was the colony of a Protestant country. Besides, Calvert seems to have been a wise man, who urged all his colonists to set their religious rivalries aside and concentrate on building a prosperous new country – which of course benefited Calvert financially.

Maybe those early colonists were tired of strife. Perhaps Calvert’s urgings had them rubbing along equably. Already in 1639, the colony passed an ordinance that had a generally worded comment as to the rights of man, but when the English Civil War broke out, the underlying religious differences surged to the surface, and for a couple of years Maryland was under Protestant dominion before the Calvert family regained  control. Worried by the violence that had erupted in his colony, Lord Calvert drafted an Act of Toleration, not only to protect the minority Catholics, but also to assure the recent Puritan colonists in Providence (Annapolis) that they would have freedom of worship.

The Act of Toleration is in many ways a precursor to the First Amendment in the American Constitution. In a world full of religious strife, it was an innovative attempt to heal rather than breach. In many ways it was imperfect, granting freedom of worship only to Trinitarian Christians. To deny the divinity of Jesus Christ could lead to execution, thereby closing the gate in the face of Unitarians and Jews. The colony’s Puritans chafed under some of the wordings, made uncomfortable by accepting a law drafted by a Catholic. (To them, swearing fealty to Calvert was to indirectly swear fealty to the Pope, who according to Puritan tenets was anti-Christ. Interestingly enough, those early Puritans found a way of accommodating this conundrum within their conscience)

What is of particular interest in Calvert’s Act is that it contains the first attempts to curtail hate speech. As per the Act of Toleration, the word “heretic” and religious insults in general were forbidden. Well before the rest of the world woke up to the need to reinstate civility in religious discourse, Calvert attempted to draw up a framework of rules that would force people of different convictions to treat each other with respect.

In 1654, the Act of Toleration was repealed. Two years earlier, Calvert’s government had been overthrown, the colony seized by Protestant forces loyal to the new Parliamentarian Government in England and led by William Claiborne. The Puritans went on a spree once the Act was repealed. Catholic churches were burnt, Catholics were persecuted and forbidden to practise their religion. All in all, not at all a godly behaviour...

Fortunately, Calvert regained control, and in 1658 the Act was once again passed by the colonial assembly. This time, it would survive until 1692, when the Maryland Puritan Protestants overthrew Calvert’s rule yet again. And this time, the Act was permanently abolished, Catholicism was banned and the Church of England became the colony’s official church in 1702 – something that can’t have pleased the Maryland Puritans all that much.

Not until the American Revolution would freedom of worship be reinstated in Maryland, but when the Founding Fathers of the United States drew up their documents, they clearly found some inspiration Maryland’s Toleration Act. I think Lord Calvert would have been pleased.

Anna Belfrage is the author of three published books, A Rip in the Veil , Like Chaff in the Wind and The Prodigal Son. The fourth book in The Graham Saga, A Newfound Land, will be published in November of 2013. Set in seventeenth century Scotland and Virginia/Maryland, the books tell the story of Matthew and Alex, two people who should never have met – not when she was born three hundred years after him. For more information about Anna and her books, please visit her website, www.annabelfrage.com

The Great Famine, Irish Diaspora, and the Ripper Connection

by Ginger Myrick

As I am addressing this post to an audience of fellow Anglophiles, I am working under the assumption that the majority have seen the movies starring Cate Blanchett as Elizabeth I. Who among us can forget Clive Owen as the dashing and somewhat insolent Sir Walter Raleigh nonchalantly interrupting Elizabeth’s court to present her with gifts from the New World?

“What have you brought me?” she demands sternly.

“Patata, Majesty. You eat it. Very nourishing,” he answers with a devilish gleam in his eyes and a cheeky grin playing about his lips.

And thus, the potato came to Britain. Well … maybe it didn’t happen exactly like that, but it is generally agreed that the potato was introduced to Jolly Old England sometime in the latter part of the 16th century, and quickly became a hearty supplemental food source. Bangers and mash, bubble and squeak, shepherd’s pie, fish ‘n’ chips—where would British cuisine be without it? And not only has the spud had a large impact upon the diet, it has also exerted a widespread influence on the people and culture themselves.

Although Sir Walter Raleigh cannot claim full responsibility for importing this versatile tuber to Great Britain, he is credited with bringing potatoes to Ireland and planting the first of them in the garden at his estate near Cork. Eventually they made their way to the table, and by the early part of the 18th century, the majority of the population in Ireland had become dependent upon a single variety both as a food source and fodder for livestock.

The Irish Lumper is a hardy strain of potato that is known to adapt and thrive in any type of soil. Making this a primary crop may sound like a fantastic idea, but lack of genetic diversity in a plant species can lead to vulnerability to disease and subsequent exhaustion. During the first half of the 19th century that is exactly what happened.

In the two centuries or so leading up to the Great Famine, the potato crop in Ireland experienced several failures. Official records count a total of 24 going back to 1728. They were accepted as a matter of course, and none of them impacted the Emerald Isle with the degree of devastation that resulted in the years between 1845-1852. The increasing dependency upon the food crop, the frequency with which it failed, and the introduction of a seemingly unstoppable disease, all combined to create a disaster of epic proportions.

Although there were many social issues that paved the way for the Great Famine, the obvious cause was the blight, which attacked the crop with voracity and obliterated the food source of an entire nation. Regardless of the complex arguments over contributing factors and the assignation of blame, the grim consequence was the same. By 1848 the Irish people began to die of starvation. It is estimated that at least one million deaths resulted. This was the immediate outcome, but the effects would be felt for decades to come.

It is reported that another million Irish emigrated to Great Britain, Australia, Canada, and the U.S. The majority of people affected by the famine were poor and could hardly choose a luxurious mode of transport. They were desperate and forced to accept whatever means available of escaping the horrors of their homeland.

They piled into boats bound for more promising lands, most often with substandard to illegally dismal accommodations. With little or no access to food and water, and crowded to capacity, these ships became hotbeds for disease and most of them arrived at their destinations with only a small percentage of their cargo. Due to their high mortality rates, these vessels became known as “coffin ships”.

Of those who made the trip safely and arrived intact in America, many of them found refuge in the port cities of New England. At one time, as many as 300 Irish nationals per day disembarked in New York, seeking a better life in the New World. By 1855 a quarter of the population in Manhattan was of Irish descent, that ratio growing to over half by the turn of the century. They formed their own communities, Five Points and Hell’s Kitchen among them, two of the most notorious for gang warfare.

Also of note is the large number of Irish who participated in the U.S. Civil War. The Union Army recorded slightly less than 150,000 native Irishmen among their forces. The Confederate Army employed a lesser amount but still enough to warrant the formation of their own units. These divisions bore symbolic Irish banners and names, and upheld traditional practices such as attending mass before heading into battle.

In the early 1800s, there was already an abundance of Irish manpower on the market in the U.S. It was welcome in the face of the booming industrial period, advancing technological developments, and westward expansion. The labor was utilized in lumbering, the steel industry, and construction in the big cities building canals, roads, and railways. The large numbers of humanity affected by the famine and the mass exodus from their homeland caused another substantial surge in the workforce.

Approaching the midpoint of the century, jobs became scarce, and many advertisements for employment began to specify “No Irish.” But because of their willingness to work cheaply, often at a fraction of the cost of other laborers, wages were driven so low that eventually it became an unwise business decision not to hire them. Fortunately, the industrial revolution experienced a second wave and the economical workforce was put to good use.

Over half of the population that made its way from Ireland to America was female. Aside from the large numbers who sought jobs in factories and mills, many found positions of domestic service in hotels or private households. Although the conditions and wages were better than those offered by factory work, their employers’ attitudes toward them were often disdainful, treating them little better than the slaves they had been hired to replace.

As with many women in similarly dire situations, a large percentage who could not find a respectable way to earn a living turned to plying a more practical trade. They became prostitutes, easy prey for those with sinister intent. In such a dangerous profession, it was not uncommon for them to be assaulted, beaten, or even murdered.

At the same time their fellow countrymen were making their way to America, many dispossessed Irish looked for refuge closer to home. They found their way to the overcrowded and poverty-stricken streets of “Dickensian” London, where they suffered like prejudice and were obligated to take comparably low positions of employment. Girls placed in equally precarious situations sought similar solutions, subjecting themselves to the same perils as their counterparts in the U.S. This happened in the areas of the East End, in particular a certain district called Whitechapel, where a fellow named Jack earned a ghoulish and fitting sobriquet for himself in the months between 1888 and 1891.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

As is often the case with natural disasters, the Great Famine showed no discrimination, and the people of Ireland were affected without regard to social standing. Supremely talented people and those who would have otherwise been considered genteel were forced into positions of servitude to eke out a living in their newly adopted American homes.

Along with other aforementioned premises, this is a possibility of which I take full advantage to create a chilling and compelling tale of romance and macabre in my latest release, Work of Art. It is the story of Del Ryan, an intelligent and talented Irish clairvoyant, who finds love and murder in 19th century New York. To learn more about this and two more historical novels, El Rey and The Welsh Healer, please visit GingerMyrick.com.