November 5 was known as Pope Day in colonial America. It was on November 5 in 1605 when Guy Fawkes and other conspirators in London planned to blow up Parliament along with King James I. The conspirators hoped to spark a rebellion that would lead to the crowning of a Catholic monarch and a return to Roman Catholicism in England. This so-called Gunpowder Plot was discovered and Fawkes and others were executed.
In Boston, the day was an unofficial holiday for workingmen, apprentices and the have-nots of the town. On that day, they formed mobs, a North End mob and a South End mob, and virtually ruled the town.
Nancy Dawson, Admiral Byng, Joyce Jr.
In the weeks leading up to November 5, leaders of each mob separately and secretly fashioned grotesque effigies—presumably crafted out of straw, rags, and bits of wood—and place them on a cart, about 40 feet long and six feet wide, which would be a kind of rolling stage for the effigies. Always, the central effigy, seated in the middle of the cart, would be an immensely fat and preposterous pope. Joining the pope on the cart would be other effigies of real or imagined figures. The effigies might include, for example a female scarecrow called Nancy Dawson; British Admiral John Byng hanging from a gibbet; Joyce Jr. riding an ass; and the Devil, with pitchfork and tail. Nancy Dawson was a famous London actress and dancer. Byng had been court-martialed and executed in 1756 for failing to relieve the Mediterranean island of Minorca from a French siege. Joyce Jr.—George Joyce—was the leader of a force that captured King Charles I in 1646 during the English Civil War.
On November 5, the carts—one in the North End and one in the South End—would appear, usually about dusk. Noisy crowds of men and boys would push the carts from place to place, each preceded by a boy with a bell who would shout his well-known ditty: “Don’t you remember, the fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot. I see no reason, why gunpowder treason should ever be forgot. From Rome to Rome the pope is come amid ten thousand fears. With fiery serpents to be seen at eyes, nose, mouth and ears. Don’t you hear my little bell go chink, chink, chink. Please to give me a little money to buy my pope some drink.”
Dance with the Pope; Kiss the Devil
The cart would slowly make its way accompanied by a cacophony from conch shells, drums, whistles and horns. From time to time boys, their clothes covered with tar and feathers, would leap onto the cart to dance with the pope and kiss the Devil.
The carts would stop in front of grand houses where the effigy of the Devil would be lifted high in the air on a pole to peer with great red eyes into second-story bedrooms.
Residents were expected to play along, greet the paraders at the door, and pass out coins or dole out rum punch. Invariably, the two mobs would meet, leading to mayhem, each side defending its own pope while attempting to capture the other’s. Deaths were not unheard of, even before the fighting began. In 1764, a boy was crushed to death by a cart early in the day. This didn't stop the mobs from eventually having their usual brawl that evening.
Each Pope Day wound down from exhaustion. The bloodied men and boys from both mobs would march together, pulling the carts to the town gallows. There a great bonfire would consume all save the cartwheels and the heads of the effigies.
The strange event was not unique to Boston. Others like it, but usually smaller and less violent, took place in many other colonial towns, as well as in Britain. Besides being a patriotic occasion, the event was also, obviously, anti-Catholic. However, records from Boston do not describe mob attacks specifically against any of the town’s few Catholics.
Sam Adams, Ebenezer Mackintosh, and the Stamp Act
When opposition to the Stamp Act emerged in Boston in the 1760s, some leading opponents of the hated stamp tax—including probably Sam Adams—recruited the leader of the South End mob, Ebenezer Mackintosh, to lead his Pope Day mob, as well as others who might want to join, in violent actions against the stamp tax. Under Mackintosh’s direction, this mob destroyed or damaged several targeted buildings to intimidate suspected supporters of the stamp tax.
The Mackintosh mob formed one element of the Sons of Liberty, the loosely organized opponents of the Stamp tax who, as the years passed and frustrations grew, seized upon the idea of independence.
Sources:
Anderson, George P., “Ebenezer Mackintosh: Stamp Act Rioter and Patriot,” Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Volume XXVI, Transactions 1924-1926. Boston, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 1927.
Forbes, Esther, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In. Boston, Houghton Mifflin Co., 1942.
Nash, Gary B., The Unknown American Revolution: The Unruly Birth of Democracy and the Struggle to Create America. London, Penguin Books, 2005.
Tudor, William, The Life of James Otis of Massachusetts. New York, Da Capo Press, 1970.
Brian Deming - Brian Deming has a master’s degree in American history from Northwestern University. He has taught U.S. history and media history at ...
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