Development. — The first " Orange Lodge" was found- ed in the village of Loughgall, county Armagh, Sept. 21, 1795. The immediate occasion of the crisis was a series of outrages by which Roman Catholics were for- cibly ejected from their houses and farms, twelve or fourteen houses being sometimes, according to a disin- terested witness, wrecked in a single night; terminat- ing, September, 1795, in an engagement, called, from the place where it occurred, the battle of the Diamond. The association, which began among the ignorant peas- antry, soon worked its way upwards. Tiic general dis- affection towards English rule, whicii at that time per- vaded Ireland, and in which the Romanists, as a nat- ural consequence of their oppressed condition, largely participated, tended much to identify in the mind of Protestants the cause of disloyalty with that of popery;
and the rebellion of 1798 inseparably combined the re- ligious with the political antipathies. In November of that year the Orange Society had already reached the dignity of a grand lodge of Ireland, with a grand master, a grand secretary, and a formal establishment in the metropolis ; and in the following years the or- ganization extended over the entire province of Ulster, and had its ramifications in all the centres of Protes- tantism in the other provinces of Ireland. In 1808 it extended to England. A grand lodge was founded at Manchester, from which warrants were issued for the entire kingdom. The seat of the grand lodge was trans- ferred to London in 1821. The subject more than once was brought under the notice of Parliament, especially in 1813; and, in consequence, the grand lodge of Ire- land was dissolved ; but its functions in issuing war- rants, etc., were discharged vicariously through the English lodge. The most memorable crisis, however, in the history of the Orange Society was the election of a royal duke (Cumberland) in 1827 as grand master for England ; and on the re-establishment of the Irish grand lodge in 1828, an imperial grand master. The " Catholic Relief Act" of the following year stirred up all the slumbering antipathies of creed and race, and the Orange association was propagated more vigorously than ever. Emissaries were sent out for the purpose of organizing lodges, not alone in Wales and Scotland, but also in Canada, in the Mediterranean, and in the other colonies. But the most formidable part of this zealous propagandism was its introduction into the army. As early as 1824 traces of this are discoverable, and again in 1826. No fewer than thirty-two regi- ments were proved to have received warrants for hold- ing lodges in Ireland, and the English grand lodge had issued thirty -sevtn warrants for the same purpose. The organization of this strange association was most complete and most extensive. Subject to the central grand lodge were three classes — county, district, and private kxtges — each of which corresponded, and made returns and contributions to its own immediate superior, by whom they were transmitted to the grand lodge. Each lodge liad a master, deputy - master, secretary, committee, and chaplain. The only condition of mem- bership was that the party should be Protestant, and eighteen years of age. The election of members was by ballot, and each lodge also annually elected its own officers and committee. The general government of the association was vested in the grand lodge, which consisted of all the great dignitaries, tlie grand masters of counties, and the members of another body called the grand committee. This lodge met twice each year, in May and on November 5 — the day pregnant with as- sociations calculated to keep alive the Protestant an- tipathies of the body. All the dignitaries of the so- ciety, as well as its various committees and executive bodies, were subject to annual re-election. In 1835 the association numbered 20 grand lodges, 80 district lodges, 1500 private lodges, and from 200,000 to 220,000 mem- bers. The worst result of the Orange association was the constant incentive which it supplied to party ani- mosities and deeds of violence. In the north of Ireland the party displays and processions were a perpetually recurring source of disorder, and even of bloodshed; and the spirit of fraternity which pervaded its members was a standing obstacle to the administration of the law. It was known or believed that an Orange culprit was perfectly safe in the hands of an Orange jury ; and all confidence in the local administration of justice by magistrates was destroyed. These facts, as well as an allegation which was publicly made of tlie existence of a conspiracy to alter the succession to the crown in favor of the duke of Cumberland, led to a protracted parliamentary inquiry in 1835; and the results of this inquiry, as well as a very shocking outrage perpetrated soon afterwards by an armed body of Orangemen on occasion of a procession in Ireland, tende<l so much to discredit the association, and to awaken the public mind
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to a sense of the folly and wickedness of such associa- tions, that its respectability has since that time gradu- ally diminished. So great was the popular distrust of the administration of justice in party questions, that for several years the lord chancellor laid down a rule by which no member of the Orange association was ad- mitted to tlie commission of the peace ; and although the association still exists, it is comparatively without intiuence, except among the very lowest classes in the north of Ireland.