Guy Fawkes Day & Pope Night ~ Celebrating Anti-Catholicism

Guy Fawkes Day and Pope Night are two manifestations of the same anti-Catholic 'holiday', one on each side of the pond.

I learnt this bit of doggerel from my Hampshire-born, Church of England Gran when I was just a wee lad.

Remember, remember the Fifth of November,
Gunpowder Treason and Plot,
I don't see no reason
Why Gunpowder Treason
Should ever be forgot.

Guy Fawkes, Guy Fawkes, t’was his intent
To blow up the King and Parli’ment.
Three-score barrels of powder below
To prove old England’s overthrow;
By God’s providence he was catch’d
With a dark lantern and burning match.

Holla boys, Holla boys, let the bells ring.
Holloa boys, holloa boys, God save the King!

The Church of England even had a special liturgy for the day, which lasted until 1859.

In 1858 The Earl of Stanhope made a motion that the government should ask the queen to abolish the liturgy because it was politically obsolete and unfair to Catholics. The main cause for this action was a growing violent tendency of street celebrations. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the bishop of London along with other peers supported him. The duke of Marlborough, a Tory suggested that the liturgy be rewritten. This idea did not receive support. Victoria went along with the censors. In March 1859 the statute requiring the liturgy was repealed. Once state involvement was removed the celebration was persecuted at the local level until such time as a compromise was made between law enforcement and bonfire societies who were willing to control their activities.

It was called 'A Form of Prayer with Thanksgiving; to be used yearly upon the Fifth Day of November for the happy Deliverance of the King, and the Three Estates of the Realm, from the most Traiterous and Bloudy intended Massacre by Gun-Powder.'

Church of England - Guy Fawkes’ Day Liturgy

Instead of the normal Collect of the Day, this was used:

Eternal God, and our most mightly protector, we thy unworthy servants do humbly present ourselves before thy Majesty, acknowledging thy power, wisdom, and goodness in preserving the King, and of the Three Estates of this Realm assembled in Parliament, from the destruction this day intended against them. Make us, we beseech thee, truly thankful for this thy great mercy towards us. Protect and defend our Sovereign Lord the King, and all the Royal Family from all treasons and conspiracies: Preserve them in thy faith, fear and love; prosper his Reign with long happiness here on earth; and crown him with everlasting glory hereafter in the kingdom of heaven; through Jesus Christ our only Saviour and Redeemer. Amen.

And it was stipulated that after the Creed if there were to be no Sermon, there should be read one of the six 'Homilies against Rebellion', from the Book of Homilies.

On the other side of the Pond, in the Colonies, the equivalent was Pope Night, a 'holiday' also kept on 5 November. It was the Colonial version of Guy Fawkes Day, and it was equally anti-Catholic.

Plymouth, Mass. a town full of Puritan 'Dissenters' who were opposed to the Church of England but were just as anti-Catholic, celebrated the first recorded Pope Night in 1623 when sailors lit a bonfire. The fire blazed out of control and burned down several nearby homes. That was so much fun the other seacoast towns took up the celebration. Pope Night spread to Marblehead, Newburyport and Salem in Massachusetts, Portsmouth in New Hampshire and New London in Connecticut. The festivities generally featured fires, drinking and mockery of elites and authorities.

The American version had no liturgical celebration outside the Church of England in the Colonies, and it soon devolved into an occasion for drinking, rioting, and anti-elite protest by the working class.

Gang violence became part of the tradition in the 1740s, with residents of different Boston neighbourhoods battling for the honour of burning the pope's effigy. By the mid-1760s these riots had subsided, and as colonial America moved towards the traitorous rebellion (1765-1783), the class rivalries of Pope Night gave way to anti-British sentiment. Under the leadership of Pope Night organizer Ebenezer Mackintosh, Boston's North and South End gangs united in protest against the Stamp Act of 1765.