Pope Night in America

The popular Gunpowder Treason Day crossed the Atlantic with the first English settlers both to Jamestown and to New England. As early as 1623 we find William Bradford reporting a bonfire by “roistering” seamen that burned out of control. Still farther north, in Newfoundland, Governor Robert Hayman in 1628 wrote a poem celebrating the “joyfull Holy-day” inadvertently created by “Guy Vaux, and his mates.” In Boston, for decades North Enders battled South Enders on November 5, each group trying to grab the other’s effigy of the pope, the victors then burning both. Throughout the colonies, Pope Day grew to its height in the 18th century. But then came the American Revolution. George Washington scolded the Boston brawlers for “that ridiculous and childish custom of burning the Effigy of the pope,” at a time of seeking the alliance of Catholic Canada. With American colonists aiming more or less at what Guy Fawkes had intended, with religious toleration established in the First Amendment of the Constitution, and with Guy Fawkes increasingly distant and unknown, almost all celebrations of Pope Day disappeared in the 19th century.