Guy Fawkes and his day.
A silver beaker showing images of the Devil, the Young Pretender and the Pope. ( source=Gilje,Paul, A. The Road To Mobocracy,University of North Carolina Press, 1987.
Midi Music Thomas Campion, 1567-1620, "Suite in D-min: Tombeau," 9k
From:The Road to Mobocracy, Paul A. Gilje, University of North Carolina Press, 1987
Important Dates Mentioned:
1737-"Gentlemen of his Majesty's Council, the Assembly and Corporation, and other principal Gentlemen and Merchants of this City waited upon" the lieutenant governor at Forth George, "where the Royal Healths were drank, as usual, under the Discharge of the Cannon and at Night the City was illuminated."- (Stokes, Iconography, IV, 554.
1748- Until this time the holiday was celebrated as an official holiday. Then New Yorkers adopted the custom as practiced in Boston- "parading and then by burning effigies of the pope, the Pretender, and the devil" (Weekly Journal, Nov. 7 1748, Gazette: Post-Boy, Nov. 7,1748.)
1755-Pope Day effigies were carried around the city on a bier at night:"hideously formed, and as humorously contrived, the Devil standing close behind the Pope, seemingly paying his compliments to him, with a three pronged Pitchfork...on the Back....(was ) the young Pretender standing before the Pope waiting his commands." "The procession stopped before the lodgings of the captured French general, Baron Dieskau, to reinforce the anti-Catholic message. The baron knew how to defuse a potentially dangerous situation and paid homage to the celebr atns by sending down some silver. The crowd recognized the traditional concession, returned the favor with three huzzahs, and then "march'd off to a proper Place," where they "set Fire to the Devil's Tail, burning the Three to Cinders." (no direct evidence exists for Pope Day processions for every year there are references to the dates - 1748,1755, 1757,1765, so that it is believed that processions were held each year from 1748-1764. Weekly Journal, Nov. 7, 1748, Gazette:Post-Boy, Nov.7,1748, Nov. 10, 1755, Nov.7,1757, Stokes, Iconography, IV, 673,675;Murcury, Nov.7, 1757; G.D. Scull, ed, The Montresor Journals (New York Historical Society, Collections, XIV, (New York, 1881), 338-339.)
(op.cit.:p. 22)
"During the Pope Day pagent, revelers carted effigies about town in the same manner as officials had criminals carted through the streets, they enforced a general illumination by smashing unlit windows, and they collected money to support their efforts in a kind of unofficial tax."
Gilje interprets the significance of Pope's Day Celebrations as follows:
(op.cit. pp.25-30)
" The meaning of this ritual is complex: it expressed faith in the
standing order and simultaneously questioned. it. On the surface,
Pope Day was a patriotic holiday, celebrating the Protestant succession.
All levels of society shared this patriotism, which was of particular importance
to New York's disparate Protestants, who were united on y in their ardent
anti Catholicism. But there are deeper meanings behind the ritual--meanings
that suggest that the Pope Day ceremony after 1748 also acted as an implicit
challenge to the social hierarchy. In other words, patriotic
ritual served as a screen to hide the more subtle shadows of social conflict."
(here Gilje cites Max Gluckman and Victor Turner as informing his analysis)
"The intricacies of the symbolic meaning of the Pope Day ritual are
evident when we examine
the New York crowd's selection of effigies. Although the procession
occurred on the anniversary of Guy Fawke's attempted misdeed, that Catholic
fanatic held little significance for New Yorkers in the mid-eighteenth
century. The crowd, instead, chose its own anti-catholic symbols.
The patriotic message of all three effigies is clear. The pope naturally
represented the hated Romanism, and after the failed invasions of 1715
and 1745, the Pretender epitomized the popular fear of the arbitrary
and Catholic monarchy in the Stuart mold. The devil, leading, whispering
or hovering about the scene, was a common motif representing evil in eighteenth-century
iconography."
(here Gilje cites Shaw, American Patriots and U.S. Library of Congress,
The American Revolution i n Drawings and prints...., David H. Crestwell
comp.)
"The submerged challenge to social authority is less evident.
The attack on popery may have represented, in the popular mind, a criticism
of all church hierarchy. More important is the central role of the
Pretender's effigy. It is granted, of course, that its desecration
represented an explicit statement of loyalty to the current regime.
But there may have been other, even contradictory meanings to the effigy.
The Pretender despite all his faults, was also a member of the aristocracy.
Engraved silver beakers of the New York Pope Day effigies (see above) portray
the Pretender as a Scottish lord. With sword at his side, the effigy
may have stood as a muted symbol of the aristocracy. Under the guise
of patriotism, the common folk could denigrate and humiliate this effigy,
which represented an individual ordinarily untouchable. Moreover,
there is another possible meaning to the ritual which almost negates the
loyalism of the holiday. The prominence of the effigy of the Pretender--
who lost his claim to the throne because of the perfidy of James II--may
have acted also as a reminder to the monarchy of what might become of the
Hanoverian dynasty if it behaved to arbitrarily, if it got too close to
the Catholics, or if it betrayed the people.
The evidence that these effigies served as a type of challenge to authority
is tenuous, but this interpretation becomes more compelling when
placed in the context of the commencement of the Pope Day parades.
The political and economic conditions of the 1740s and 1750s certainly
were conducive to a New York plebeian challenge to the standing order.
During these years a bitter factional rivalry divided the provincial elite
who charged one another with failing to protect the welfare of all......Thus,
as New York filled with men returning from war in 1748, the Pope Day effigy
procession long practiced in Boston, offered itself as a means to express
contrasting emotions---clearly hatred for French papists was dominant,
but perhaps also this new ritual expressed dissatisfaction with the colonial
leadership, the peace, and , subliminally , the king. Class antagonism
confused factional politics, the rise of a market economy , and conventional
and official celebration to a special plebeian holiday from 1748 to at
least 1765.....The Pope Day processions that began in 1748, the New Year's
frolics practiced throughout the century, the less regular rowdyism accompanying
official celebrations, and the sporadic rioting against impressment and
over issues like the coinage controversy of 1754--all were plebeian activities.
Youths, seamen, mechanics, laborers, and black slaves were the main participants.
The patrician might stroll across the plebeian state and might even participate
in the drama. He too, after all, was a member of the community and
shared to some degree, in the popular culture. But if he did join
in or lead the tumult, he was only temporarily entering a world in which
he might exert some influence, but a world he could never completely control.His
presence did not alter the basic plebeian character of the rioting..."
This Analysis is interesting however, it leaves me wondering- Why November?
-What happened to traditional Guy Fawkes celebrations from the earliest
times when the holiday must have been in the cultural bagage of more than
a few, and what is the relationship of the celebration not only to the
veterans returning from the war but to the countryfolk who have by
November 5just freed themselves temporarly from the land and
the harvest?
I find the observation that Guy Fawkes is not
mentioned of interest. I would think that he always represented
the Devil as in the phrase "devil in the vault."
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