Orange Order

Home > History > Modern Europe > British and Irish History

Orange Order, a Protestant political society dedicated to sustaining the ‘glorious and immortal memory’ of King William III and of his victory at the Boyne. It was instituted in September 1795, following the victory of the Orange Boys, an offshoot of the Peep of Day Boys, over the Defenders at the battle of the Diamond: the Protestant victors retired to the village of Loughgall, where, in the inn of James Sloan, they formally established the Orange Order.

Although the immediate origins of the order lay in the heightened sectarian animosity of the 1790s, it benefited from a longer 18th‐century tradition of Protestant reverence for the memory of William III; it also drew on the ritualistic and organizational precedents established by the Freemasons, and indeed by the Defenders. The bitter combination of sectarian and economic resentments which fuelled the order is evidenced by the Armagh outrages that followed its creation. The order spread rapidly through south and west Ulster in the late 1790s, penetrating both the yeomanry and regular army: in addition it spread socially, recruiting landed gentlemen.

The order was at first both brutally loyalist and intensely anti‐unionist: it was associated with the bloody suppression of the insurrection of 1798, and—because of the prospect of Catholic emancipation—with opposition to the Act of Union. Politically suspect, and a threat to public order, Orangeism was a highly ambiguous asset to the British government, and successive chief secretaries (such as Robert Peel) sought to counter its influence. In 1825 the order was suppressed under the terms of the Unlawful Societies Act. It survived in the form of the Brunswick clubs, and was revived on the lapsing of the act. However, in 1835 a parliamentary select committee, set up by a Whig government dependent on O'Connell's support (see lichfield house compact), delivered a highly critical report: it was demonstrated that the order had successfully infiltrated both the yeomanry and the army. The English lodges disbanded in February 1836; and later, in April, the Grand Lodge of Ireland also voluntarily dissolved.

Orangeism survived, albeit at a local level, and—certainly in the mid‐19th century—without broad support from the Protestant gentry or middle classes. The movement benefited from success in several minor but bloody sectarian clashes, notably at Dolly's Brae (1849). The order was also sustained in the mid‐19th century through a pervasive popular culture which brought its symbolism and rhetoric into many Irish loyalist homes. In 1867 Orangeism found a champion in William Johnston, who led the movement in a defiance of the Party Processions Act.

Johnston prefigured a wider landed interest in the Orange Order. Faced with the challenge of the Land League, the landlords of southern Ulster joined the order in the early 1880s: of these new landlord recruits, the most significant was Edward Saunderson, who used the order to promote a broadly based unionist movement in 1885–6. This genteel patronage combined with the home rule crisis of 1886 to encourage the massive growth of Orangeism in late Victorian Ulster. The Orange Order provided an organizational resource for Ulster Unionism during the second and third home rule crises and in 1920–2, during the first years of the Northern Irish state.

The order remains an essential adjunct to Ulster Unionism. However, its political role resists glib definition. The order has been formally represented within the structure of the Ulster Unionist Party since 1905. All leaders of the Ulster Unionist Party have been members of the order, as were all but three Unionist cabinet ministers between 1921 and 1969, and 87 out of 95 Stormont backbenchers and junior ministers in the same period. Yet, equally, there are Unionist traditions which have been deeply antagonistic to the order; and for some Unionist representatives ( Terence O'Neill and his followers) membership of the order has seemed merely a political device.

There has also been a recurrent, though still unsuccessful, effort to dissociate the Ulster Unionist Party from the order: this has gained momentum since 1995 in the context of the controversial Orange protest at Drumcree, Portadown, over marching rights on the nearby Garvaghy Road. If contemporary Ulster Unionism remains bound to its late Victorian, and evangelical Protestant, roots, the formal link with the Orange Order may remain. If the party is able to choose a more secular and reasoned constitution, then the order need no longer function as the touchstone of Unionist integrity.

Bibliography

Dudley Edwards, Ruth , The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions (1999)
Haddock‐Flynn, Kevin , Orangeism: The Emergence of a Tradition (1999)
Senior, Hereward , Orangeism in Ireland and Britain, 1795–1836 (1966)

Alvin Jackson

Orange order. An Irish protestant organization run along masonic lines and dedicated to the preservation of the protestant constitution and the ‘glorious and immortal memory’ of King William III, the victor of the Boyne (1690). The order was founded in Loughgall (Co. Armagh) in September 1795 by the protestant veterans of a sectarian clash, the battle of the Diamond. It infiltrated the army and yeomanry, and was associated with the bloody suppression of the 1798 rising. Although it experienced a rapid initial growth, both geographically and socially, the order came under parliamentary scrutiny in 1835: the select committee report into its activities was couched in such critical terms that it went into voluntary dissolution. In the later 19th cent. the order enjoyed a revival: it was the vehicle by which the populist demagogue William Johnston mounted an assault on the Party Processions Act in 1867; and it was one of the organizational foundations of popular unionism in the early and mid-1880s. Since 1905 the order has been formally connected with the Ulster Unionist Party. The order continues to attract a large Ulster protestant membership (perhaps 80,000–100,000). Its most public face is the highly organized summer marches.

Alvin Jackson

Orange order An Irish protestant organization dedicated to the preservation of the protestant constitution and the ‘glorious and immortal memory’ of King William III, the victor of the Boyne (1690). the order was founded in Loughgall (Co. Armagh) in September 1795 by the protestant veterans of a sectarian clash, the battle of the Diamond. In the later 19th cent. the order enjoyed a revival, and was one of the foundations of popular unionism in the 1880s. Since 1905 the order has been formally connected with the Ulster Unionist Party. Its most public face is the highly organized marching season.