Orange Order

The Orange Institution, better known as the Orange Order, is a Protestant fraternal organization based in Northern Ireland. It has been a strong supporter of Irish unionism and has had close links with the Ulster Unionist Party, which governed Northern Ireland from 1922 to 1972.

The Institution has lodges throughout Ireland, although it is strongest in the North. There are also branches throughout the British Commonwealth (especially in Scotland and Canada), and in the United States. In the 20th century, the Institution went into sharp decline outside Northern Ireland and County Donegal.

Observers have accused the Orange Institution of being a sectarian organisation, due to its goals and its exclusion of Roman Catholics and close relatives of Catholics as members.

History

The Orange Order arose out of the divisions between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland. Sixteenth century attempts by the English to impose Protestantism on the Irish had been largely unsuccessful, and so the Irish-speaking majority in Ireland, consisting of Gaelic Irish and the descendants of medieval Hiberno-Norman settlers, remained Catholic, in contrast to the post-Reformation Planters from Britain, who were mostly Protestant.

In the early seventeenth century the English, partly in response to an uprising based in Ulster, settled large numbers of English and Scottish Protestants in the province, a process known as the Plantation of Ulster.

This changed Ulster from the most Catholic and Gaelic of the four Irish provinces to the most Protestant and British, although many Catholics remained. The two communities feared and resented each other, and when James II of England was overthrown by William of Orange in 1688 most Irish Catholics (in Ulster and elsewhere) continued to support James while the Protestants supported William.

After initially fleeing to France, James arrived in Ireland in 1689 with French troops and money provided by Louis XIV, who was at war with William. James’ supporters (Jacobites) controlled most of Ireland, with the exception of Ulster.

Here the Protestants held out for William, especially at Enniskillen and Derry, which were besieged by Jacobite forces.

General Frederick Schomberg, 1st Duke of Schomberg and a small army were sent by William to Ireland, but they failed to make progress against the Jacobites. In 1690 William came to Ireland himself, and soon defeated James in the Battle of the Boyne

James fled again to France and although the Williamite War in Ireland was not resolved until the following year, William had achieved a decisive victory over James.

1835

In 1835, a Parliamentary Committee set up to investigate the activities of the Order heard from a local magistrate, William Hancock, that:

“For some time past the peaceable inhabitants of the parish of Drumcree have been insulted and outraged by large bodies of Orangemen parading the highways, playing party tunes, firing shots, and using the most opprobrious epithets they could invent… a body of Orangemen marched through the town and proceeded to Drumcree church, passing by the Catholic chapel though it was a considerable distance out of their way.”

In 1836, the British Army used artillery to quell trouble at the annual gathering at Scarva, County Down.