REMEMBER, REMEMBER, THE FIFTH OF NOVEMBER

Guy Fawkes Day was celebrated in colonial New England with great passion. It was called Pope’s Day in the New World and was a day/night filled with great mayhem, drinking, political agitation, some property damage, and ended in a great bonfire. The day featured parades and processions with heroes and villains present in effigy and usually the Pope depicted as the Devil. These real and imagined characters were pulled around the towns on a wagon in the manner of a parade float where tribute was extracted at various houses of prominent citizens. The custom did not die out until about 1890 when it was known to youthful vandals in Portsmouth New Hampshire as “Pork Night” and its purpose had been long forgotten.
The last real Popes Day in Boston was in 1764. By then, the larger towns like Boston had fallen into the habit of having 2 Pope wagons from different ends of town and the rival gangs spent the day fighting to destroy the other side’s Pope wagon. This fighting could include clubs and cudgels and people were often maimed or killed. Despite accidentally running over and killing a toddler that year, the town sheriff, constables, and military officers were unable to put an end to the days rioting. As was the custom, the winning and losing sides rioted until the early morning hours of the next day and then burned both Pope Wagons on the Boston Common as an act of reunification. Sam Adams was not a man to be kept up all night without doing some scheming. He observed that the mob was beyond the control of the authorities over nothing but foolish effigies. In short order he courted the “captains” of the rival Pope Day gangs and united them permanently as the Sons of Liberty. They were given the high purpose of acting as a trained political mob for the gentlemen plotters meeting at the Green Dragon Tavern. The rest of the story should be well known to you.