In preparing remarks for book talks that I plan to give in the coming months, you may find this segment (5. Motivations) of historical interest. It is the principle reason for my ten-year effort to finish the novel. Your comments are most welcome. (Stan Williams)
5. Motivations
My writing of The Wizard Clip Haunting was significantly motivated by what is generally unknown about the persecution of Catholics in England, Ireland, and how that persecution came to the British Colonies and became imbued into the culture of the United States. Let me review the history of the British contribution to the Protestant Reformation that has so imbued American culture to this day. A great deal of what I’m going to share is reflected in the novel as the prime motivation, not just for me the writer, but as the deep seated motivation for many of the Wizard Clip characters. My hope is that the novel will shed light on the origins of our culture and encourage us to avoid the prejudices of the past.
I grew up being taught that America was established as a safe haven for religiously persecuted Europeans; particularly which religious sects were being persecuted and by whom I was unsure. I did know that the Pilgrims and Puritans, for some reason, were at odds with The Church of England, but I didn’t know much more than that.
As a teenager in the 1960s in the Midwest, I recognized a strong bias against Catholics who lived in our suburban neighborhood. I didn’t understand this completely, except for what my mother inferred...that the Catholics were idolaters, not Christian. That my school chum next door was Catholic had something to do with it, in so far as he took after his Dad who drank a lot of beer, smoked packs of cigarettes, and swore a lot. It didn’t take much to persuade me that my mother was right.
Penal Laws - UK & Ireland
But it wasn’t until my college years that I became aware of the 17th and 18th century British penal laws, which outlawed all things Catholic, even to the point of imprisoning citizens, confiscating their land and possessions, animals, heritage rights, and executing priests who refused to be exiled. The penal laws also made celebrating the Catholic Mass and transubstantiation illegal. Other laws barred Catholics from voting, holding office, owning land, bringing religious items from Rome into Britain, and prohibited the publishing or selling of Catholic materials.
I had no idea about any of this. It surprised me. More research was clearly necessary.
The source of the penal laws was Henry VIII and his political and moral battle with the Vatican when Pope Clement VII refused to annul his marriage with Catherine of Aragon because, due to miscarriages and still births, she had not given him a male heir but only one daughter, Mary. In 1529 Henry banished Catherine from court, and persuaded his political fixers to arrange his marriage to Anne Boleyn, which they did.
The next year, in 1530, Henry took revenge on the Vatican. He convinced parliament to start work on a series of laws that would come to be known as the penal laws. Over the coming years they:
- Established Britain’s break from Catholicism
- Confiscated all Catholic property, land, monasteries, convents, and possessions
- Made Henry the head of the newly formed Church of England
- Outlawed Catholicism in English life, and
- Transferred significant wealth from the Catholic Church to the English Crown.
- After that, it was only natural for Pope Clement VII to excommunicate Henry, or we might say, Henry VIII excommunicated himself.
The penal laws were refined and expanded over the years, and eventually implemented in Ireland, which dramatically affected the life of several main characters in the novel. There were, however, attempts to mitigate the laws during the reigns of Catholic monarchs Mary Tudor (1553–1558) and James II (1685–1688).
In the early 17th century, certain British Catholics, although persecuted, were not idle. During the reign of Protestant James I, a group of Catholics tried to assassinate the king and the House of Lords in what is known as the Gunpowder Plot. On 5th of November 1605 the plot was foiled and several of the Catholic rebels were executed including the man guarding the explosives in the undercroft of the House of Lords. That man was Guy Fawkes. Thus, every November 5th in England, and even in the British colonies, groups of Protestants celebrated the foiling of the plot with Guy Fawkes Bonfires where they burn the Pope in effigy. During America’s Revolutionary War, General George Washington, recognizing the sacrifice many Catholics were giving to the war effort, tried to ban the celebrations, but he couldn’t change the culture.
The penal laws lasted roughly 250 years. With the Roman Relief Act of 1791 and others through 1926, the penal laws were finally, but not completely, nullified. In 2013, the British parliament passed the latest of these relief acts which allowed the spouse of the king or queen to be Catholic, but never the monarch, who must be Protestant.
A personal story illustrates the lasting effect this all has on culture today. In 20-03 I was traveling in England on business with an associate. We took a half-day off to tour Nottingham and St. Mary’s Church, which dates back to Saxon times. Recognizing us as American businessmen and tourists, we were being given a tour by the older but very gracious and considerate church sexton. He had just lifted the floor board near a pillar to show us the original Saxon rock foundation when my associated casually mentioned that we were both Catholic. Immediately, the sexton, raised up, glared at us, slammed the floorboard back into place, and stomped off. My associate turned to me and whispered, “Was it something I said?”
To this day, since America was initially British, the penal laws and their legacy are well ingrained into British and American culture.
Penal Laws - British Colonies & the United States
One of my favorite stories of this period is the Maryland experiment. In 1632 Lord Baltimore (George Calvert) was granted possession of all land lying between the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay. Lord Baltimore saw this as an opportunity to grant religious freedom to the Catholics who remained in Anglican England. Lord Baltimore died within weeks of his land grant, and so his first son, Cecil at age 26, took charge of forming the new colony, and sent his younger brother, Leonard at 25, to the New World to establish the Maryland colony with a small boatload of Protestants and Catholics, including a handful of Jesuit priests.
At fist laws were passed in the Maryland colony to give religious freedom to every one. But by doing so, the experiment didn’t last long. Soon, the population of Maryland became predominately Protestant and the Catholics were chased out of power, new laws were passed, and Catholics found themselves under penal laws once again, except they often were not enforced with severity. In 1692 the Episcopal church was established by law in Maryland. Acts were passed to prevent the growth of Popery. Priests could not say Mass, nor teach, nor perform any religious rite. Rewards were offered and imprisonment inflicted. One hundred pounds was the fine or sending a child abroad to be educated in the Catholic religion. Catholics refusing to take an oath against Catholicism forfeited their land. In 1734, Catholic worship was prohibited in Pennsylvania, and so on. Even after the Americans won the Revolutionary War, and the Constitution and Bill of Rights took effect there was still a crazy quilt of state laws regarding religion. In Massachusetts, only Christians were allowed to hold public office, and Catholics were allowed to do so only after renouncing papal authority.
In 1777, New York State’s constitution banned Catholics from public office (and would do so until 1806) and priests were still sought out and murdered by Protestant belligerents. In Maryland, Catholics had full civil rights, but Jews did not. Delaware required an oath affirming belief in the Trinity. Several states, including Massachusetts and South Carolina, had official, state-supported churches.
While some of America’s early leaders were models of tolerance, American attitudes of the general public were slow to change. The anti-Catholicism of America’s Calvinist past found new voice in the 19th century. The belief widely held and preached by some of the most prominent ministers in America was that Catholics would, if permitted, turn America over to the pope. Anti-Catholic venom was part of the typical American school day, along with Bible readings. In Massachusetts, a convent—coincidentally near the site of the Bunker Hill Monument—was burned to the ground in 1834 by an anti-Catholic mob incited by reports that young women were being abused in the convent school. In Philadelphia, the City of Brotherly Love, anti-Catholic sentiment, combined with the country’s anti-immigrant mood, fueled the Bible Riots of 1844 in which houses were torched, two Catholic churches destroyed, and at least 20 people were killed.
All this in spite of the Bill of Rights and the First Amendment of the Constitution which were ratified 53 years earlier in December 1791. Culture is often more powerful than laws.
Since researching and becoming Catholic myself in 1998, all of this information fascinated me. I wanted to somehow communicate how it was that Catholicism was trapped in a gulf of prejudice – which had originated with an egotistical and adulterous British king -- and had infiltrated the culture of Protestantism, in which I was raised.
In 2012, the Wizard Clip story was pitched to me as a movie idea, and I wrote a screenplay. I also began to research the background of the various characters—the real characters in the story—and I saw the depth of anti-Catholic bias and persecution that underscored and undergirded the Wizard Clip story.
In 2014 curiosity of some of the real characters motivated me to traveled to the Catholic archives in Baltimore, Maryland, and then trips to Middleway, West Virginia, Pittsburg, and New Orleans. Between a great many other projects, I poked away at the story’s plot and character back stories. Slowly, a large novel developed. Friends tried to persuade me to keep it short, but to tell the whole truth, and develop the characters so that the climax of the story made sense, I committed to telling a well-rounded and full story, being faithful to what I understood to be true, even if the gaps were imagined.
