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[11th Edition Encyclopedia Britannica entry for Orangemen.] ORANGEMEN, members of the Orange Society, an association of Irish Protestants, originating and chiefly flourishing in Ulster, but with ramifications in other parts of the United Kingdom, and in the British colonies. Orangemen derive their name from King William III. (Prince of Orange). They are enrolled in lodges in the ordinary form of a secret society. Their toasts, about which there is no concealment, indicate the spirit of the Orangemen. The commonest form is "the glorious, pious and immortal memory of the great and good King William, who saved us from popery, slavery, knavery, brass money and wooden shoes," with grotesque or truculent additions according to the orator's taste. The brass money refers to James II.'s finance, and the wooden shoes to his French allies. The final words are often "a fig for the bishop of Cork," in allusion to Dr Peter Browne, who, in 1715, wrote cogently against the practice of toasting the dead. Orangemen. are fond of beating drums and flaunting flags with the legend" no surrender," in. allusion to Londonderry. Orangeism is essentially political. Its original object was the maintenance of Protestant ascendancy, and that spirit still survives. The first regular lodges ~were founded in 1795, but the system existed earlier. The Brunswick clubs, founded to oppose Catholic emancipation, were sprigs from the original Orange tree. The orange flowers of the Liliuin bulbiferum are worn in Ulster on the 1st and 12th July, the anniversaries of the Boyne and Aughrim, Another great day is the 5th of November, when William III. landed in Torbay. |
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