A Papistin a ProtestantAge: The Case of RichardBennett, 1667-1749 By BEATRIZBETANCOURT HARDY THE LANDINGAT MORGAN's NECK ON THE WYE RIvER MUST HAVE BEEN particularlycrowded in thelate summerand early fall of 1749. At the plantationhouse near the landing, Richard Bennett III laydangerously ill, as theMaryland Gazette informed its readers on October4. Bennett's relativesand friendsflocked to the house, streamingin and out of Bennett'sroom and milling around outside. Meanwhile, the eighty-two- year-oldBennett struggled to conductbusiness from his bed. He grew progressivelyweaker and finallydied on October11. The Maryland Gazetteeulogized Bennett as "thegreatest Trader in thisProvince" and observedthat "by his Death, the poor and needy have lost their greatest Friendand Benefactor." ' At thetime of his death,Richard Bennett was theowner of nearly fiftythousand acres and a vastpersonal estate; some considered him the richestman in NorthAmerica.2 He tradedwith Great Britain, the West Indies,and the otherAmerican colonies. He lenta large amountof moneyto a largenumber of people.3 By birthright,he should have been I Bennett'sobituary appeared in theAnnapolis Maryland Gazette on October18, 1749. Testi- monyregarding the last days of Bennett's life can be foundin TestamentaryProceedings, Liber 34, folios290-301, and Liber35, folios 29-45 (MarylandState Archives, Annapolis; hereinafterMSA). All dateshave been modernized. I wouldlike to thank the Maryland State Archives, the Maryland HistoricalSociety, and the history departments of theUniversity of Maryland at CollegePark and theJohns Hopkins University for jointly sponsoring the Maryland History Fellowship, which I held whenI wrotethis essay. An earlierversion of thisessay won the 1991 Colonial Essay Prize,sponsored by theColonial Society of Pennsylvaniaand thePhiladelphia Center for Early AmericanStudies. I also wishto thankLois Carr,Ronald Hoffman, Emory Evans, Alison Olson, JeanRusso, John Brooke, Alice Reagan, and Stephen Hardy for their help and comments. 2 See below fora discussionof Bennett'slandholdings. The AnnapolisMaryland Gazette of November8, 1749,and Gentleman's Magazine, XX (January1750), 43 calledBennett the richest manin America.Stead Lowe, an Englishmanwho had movedto Maryland,estimated Bennett's worthat ?150,000 sterlingin 1748. See Stead Lowe to brother,July 20, 1748, Drury-Lowe Papers,Dr C 1/2(Department of Manuscripts and SpecialCollections, Hallward Library, Univer- sityof Nottingham, University Park, England). 3 Accordingto Paul G. E. Clemens,"Bennett lent more money to morepeople than any other inhabitantof theEastern Shore." See The AtlanticEconomy and Colonial Maryland'sEastern Shore:From Tobacco to Grain(Ithaca and London,1980), 124. MS. HARDY is an assistantprofessor ofhistory atCoastal Carolina University. THE JOURNALOF SOUTHERNHISTORY VolumeLX, No. 2, May 1994 204 THE JOURNALOF SOUTHERNHISTORY a politicalofficeholder, a member in good standing of the native political elitedescribed by David W. Jordan:his fatherhad been an assembly- man;his stepfather, Speaker of Maryland's lower house; his grandfather, governorof Virginia;and all of his youngerhalf brothers, members of theMaryland Council.4 And yetRichard Bennett himself was never on theCouncil, never elected to thelower house, and never served as a justiceof the peace; forthe last thirty-one years of his life,he couldnot evenvote. Richard Bennett, unlike his officeholding male relatives, was a Catholic. In 1689,just as he reachedadulthood, the positionof Catholicsin Maryland began to deteriorateas Catholicslost the right to holdoffice; in 1704they lost the right to worshippublicly, teach school, and seekconverts; in 1718 theylost the right to vote.5 Historiansof thecolonial Chesapeake commonly portray the gentry as political,social, and financialleaders. However,from the work of AubreyC. Land inthe 1960s to the more recent work of Allan Kulikoff, historianshave not fullyrecognized how the experienceof Quaker and Catholicmembers of thegentry differed from that of Anglicans.6 Catholicsand Quakerswere excludedfrom the traditionalforms of politicalpower by whichKulikoff believes the gentry cemented their control:they could not serve as justicesof the peace oras assemblymen, and after1718 the Catholicgentry were deniedthe rightto vote. Catholicsand Quakers were also prohibitedfrom holding other govern- mentaloffices and practicing law-activities that proved very profitable fortheir Anglican counterparts, as Land demonstrates.8 Finally, they wereineligible to serveas Anglicanvestrymen and to participatein the wholeritual of church attendance that Rhys Isaac describes.9 4David W. Jordan,Foundations ofRepresentaive Government inMaryland, 1632-1715 (Cam- bridge,Eng., and othercities, 1987), especially 147-57; and EdwardC. Papenfuseet al., eds.,A BiographicalDictionary of theMaryland Legislature, 1635-1789 (2 vols. paged consecutively; Baltimoreand London, 1979-1985), I, 129-30,and I, 534-45 (hereinaftercited as BDML). S WilliamHand Browne etal.,eds.,ArchivesofMaryland(l72vols.,Baltimore, 1883-1972), VIII, 69 and 107,XXVI, 340-41,and XXXIII, 287-89; see also XXVI,539 and583-90 (hereinaftercited as Arch.Md.). ' For example,see AubreyC. Land, "EconomicBase and Social Structure:The Northern Chesapeakein theEighteenth Century," Journal of Economic History, XXV (December1965), 639-54; Allan Kulikoff,Tobacco and Slaves: The Developmentof SouthernCultures in the Chesapeake,1680-1800 (Chapel Hill and London, 1986); and TrevorGracme Bumard, "A Colonial Elite: WealthyMarylanders, 1691-1776" (Ph. D. diss.,Johns Hopkins University, 1988). A broaderformulation of therole of Marylandgentry is foundin RonaldHoffman's fine article,"'Marylando-Hibemus': Charles Carroll the Settler,1660-1720," Williamand Mary Quarterly,3d Ser.,XLV (April1988), 207-36. 7Kulikoff, Tobaccoand Slaves,281-89. $ Land, "EconomicBase," 651-52. Catholicswere able to practicein the equitycourts but notin thecommon-law courts. 9 Kulikoff,Tobacco and Slaves, 234-37; andRhys Isaac, The Transformation ofVirginia, 1740- 1790 (ChapelHill, 1982),60-65. A PAPIST INA PROTESTANTAGE 205 Despite theirexclusion from these traditional gentry activities in churchand state, Catholics and Quakers were undeniably members of the gentry.Theirexperiences suggestthathistorians should refocus thestudy of the formationand functionsof thegentry class by de-emphasizing formalinstitutional activities such as governmentofficeholding and emphasizinginformal or noninstitutionalfactors such as economicand socialleadership and kinship ties. Politicalpower and officeholding are perhapsthe most obvious and easilymeasurable gentry attributes: the recordsof courts and legislatures indicate who served in office and what theydid. Concentrationon the Catholicgentry requires further, less obviousresearch into alternative ways in whichthe gentry exercised leadershipand power and compels an acknowledgementofthe diversity of gentryexperiences. Even withinthe Catholic gentry itself, diversity existed as thegentry adaptedto itslegal disabilitiesin variousways. At one extremewas resistanceand even a sortof tribalism. Charles Carroll the Settler (1660- 1720) andhis son CharlesCarroll of Annapolis(1702-1782) represent thisposition: they bitterly resisted the political disabilities, continued to worshipas RomanCatholics, and had fewfamily ties to Protestants. In fact,one foreigntraveler to Marylandin 1765 allegedthat the younger Carrollkept "but very litle Company owing perhaps to his Distaste to the protestants."10At the opposite end of the spectrum was totalintegration intothe Protestant world. Doctor Charles Carroll (1691-1755), a mem- berof a differentbranch of the Carroll family, took the most accommo- datingposition possible: he convertedto Anglicanismin the late 1730s, raisedhis childrenas Anglicans,and became the leaderof the anti- Catholicfaction in the lower house in theearly 1750s. 11 Many Catholic gentlemenadopted positions between the two extremes of resistance and integration.Forexample, Henry Darnall III (1703-fl.1783) converted to Anglicanismand became attorney general of the colony, but his family remainedCatholic. 12 RichardBennett occupied yet another intermediate position:never disavowing his Catholicfaith, he enjoyedaccess to politicalpower throughhis close familyties to a large numberof politicallypowerful Protestants. His tremendouswealth gave him added influence,especially in economicmatters. The lifeof Richard Bennett providesa usefulcase studyof how the Catholic gentry adapted to legal disabilities. 10Hoffman, "'Marylando-Hibernus','207-36; and "Joumal of a FrenchTravellerin the Colonies, 1765,II," AmericanHistorical Review, XXVII (October1921), 74. 11BDML, I, 193-94 and 196. 12 Arch.Md., LI, 159. 206 THE JOURNALOF SOUTHERNHISTORY RichardBennett III was bornin September 1667, the second child and firstson of Henrietta Maria Neale andRichard Bennett II, whohad died fourmonths before his son's birth.The marriageof Bennett'sparents representedthe union of two families of opposing political and religious persuasions.Bennett's paternal grandfather, Richard Bennett I, was a Puritanwho had taken control of Maryland on behalf of Oliver Cromwell and Parliament;while Bennettwas parliamentarycommissioner for Marylandduring the 1650s, Catholicstemporarily lost the rightto practicetheir religion. 13 Bennett'smaternal grandfather was also a prominentman, but in a vastlydifferent context: James Neale I was a MarylandCatholic who, during the 1650s, had servedas ambassadorto Spain and Portugalon