Letters from an Old Orangeman

In the autumn of 1835, as the Orange Order faced a parliamentary inquiry and the imminent prospect of being banned, an 'Old Orangeman', signing himself 'Montanus', wrote a series of articles defending the Orange brethren and telling their story. Almost forgotten since first publication, these articles together form a unique and intelligent view from inside the Order in its first cycle. Montanus discusses the Orangemen's self-organisation by the Protestant peasantry of County Armagh in 1795, their struggle against the United Irishmen, dissensions over the Act of Union, feuding with the Catholic nationalist Ribbon Society, extraordinary influence on the government of Ireland and their last-ditch opposition to Daniel O'Connell's campaign for Catholic Emancipation. Old Orangeman was a product of eighteenth-century Enlightened thought and became an eloquent warning voice against the perils of toleration and liberalism. He had been associated with the Order from its birth. He knew both its leading men and their deadly enemies, including Theobald Wolfe Tone. Most striking, perhaps, is Old Orangeman's carefully argued justification of the Order as a timely and irreplaceable bulwark against the rising tide of democracy and radicalism. These 'Letters from an Old Orangeman' are not just a personal memoir or a one-sided history, but a carefully argued political treatise on the necessity of mobilising and organising the 'reactionary democracy' in an age of popular politics. Their republication now is an important contribution not only to the history of sectarian discord in Ulster and Ireland. It supplies an important source for the study of popular conservatism and the psychology of counter-revolution in the United Kingdom and beyond. Montanus feared that he, who had 'rocked the cradle' of the Institution, might now be fated to 'follow its hearse'. His letters instead provide an unrivalled insight into one of Ireland's most tenacious and consequential survivals.