The Archdiocese of Newark is a Latin Church ecclesiastical jurisdiction or archdiocese of the Catholic Church in northeastern New Jersey, United States. Its ecclesiastic territory includes all of the Catholic parishes and schools in the New Jersey counties of Bergen, Union, Hudson and Essex (where the city of Newark is located). The Archbishop of Newark presides from the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark. He is metropolitan for all the New Jersey dioceses. The Archdiocese of Newark is a metropolitan see with the four suffragan sees of the ecclesiastical province being the Diocese of Camden, the Diocese of Metuchen, the Diocese of Paterson and the Diocese of Trenton. History Background As early as 1672 the records show that there were Catholics at Woodbridge and at Elizabethtown, and the Jesuit Fathers Harvey and Gage, Governor Dongan's chaplains in New York, visited them. Other priests came at a later period. Several of these pioneers were Alsatians who had come over with Carteret to engage in the salt-making industry. William Douglass, elected from Bergen, was excluded from the first General Assembly held at Elizabethtown, 26 May 1668, because he was a Catholic. Two years later he was arrested and banished to New England as a "troublesome person". The whole atmosphere of the colony was intensely anti-Catholic. The law of 1698 granted religious toleration in East Jersey, but "provided that this should not extend to any of the Romish religion the right to exercise their manner of worship contrary to the laws and statutes of England". In West Jersey, the pioneers were Quakers and more tolerant. It is claimed that John Tatham, appointed Governor of West Jersey in 1690, and the founder of its pottery industry, was really an English Catholic whose name was John Gray. Father Robert Harding and Father Ferdinand Farmer (Steinmeyer) from the Jesuit community in Philadelphia, made long tours across the State in the eighteenth century ministering to the scattered groups of Catholics at Mount Hope, Macopin, Basking Ridge, Trenton, Ringwood, and other places. The settlement at Macopin (now Echo Lake) was made by some German Catholics sometime before the Revolution. During the Revolution, the Spanish agent Don Juan de Miralles, died 28 April at Morristown, 1780. Father Seraphin Bandol, chaplain of the French Minister, came specially from Philadelphia to administer the last sacraments. Bandol conducted the funeral and Washington and the other officers attended the ceremony. When