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Closing the Gates Celebrations – Siege of Derry Begins
Shutting of the Gates
Generally the first Saturday in December – commemorating the 7th December (OS*) anniversary of the Apprentice Boys’ Shutting of the Gates. *Old style calandar.
The Apprentice Boys of Derry Commemorative events begin at midnight Friday, on the eve of the next day’s commemoration, with the firing of a cannon. 1 shot and then 3 shots symbolises the Thirteen Apprentice Boys who shut the gates against the advancing armies of King James.
Members of the Parent Club will then walk around the walls taking part in the Touching of the Gates: commencing with Ferryquay Gate, moving on to Bishop Gate, Butcher Gate and finally Shipquay Gate. This represents a symbolic closing of the gates.
Early morning, the Siege flags are erected on Walker’s Plinth.
The effigy of Governor Lundy is brought out of the Memorial Hall and erected on a scaffold located in Bishop’s Street. Lundy was a Governor of the City during the Siege. He deserted his position and the besieged people, leaving under the cover of the night dressed as an ordinary soldier. In fact, he later served William III; Lundy was a traitor to the City, though not to the King.
At 10am in the morning the General Committee of the Apprentice Boys Association opens in the Memorial Hall. All visiting Clubs parade from Waterside Railway Station, departing at 11.30am, to the Memorial Hall via Hawkin Street.
The main parade leaves Society Street at 1.15pm, via the Diamond, to Carlisle Road and up Wapping Lane to St Columb’s Cathedral for the Annual Thanksgiving Service for the Shutting of the Gates, which commences at 2.00pm.
At the conclusion of Divine Service a Wreath is laid by the Officers of the host Parent Club on the Siege Heroes Mound in the grounds of the Cathedral.
The parade then re-forms and returns to Bishop Street for theBurning of Lundy, which takes place at approximately 4pm.
Before Lundy is set alight the soles of Lundy’s boots are removed and presented to a member of the Parent Club, or to a selected Club, as a commemorative memento of the Year’s Duties to the Association.
The Governor and Officers of General Committee take the salute in Bishop Street as the Parade returns to the Waterside via London Street. With the visiting Branch Clubs returning to their transport, the Governor and Officers return to the Memorial Hall to close General Committee at around 5.00pm.
The Shutting of the Gates is smaller than the summer’s Relief of Derry Commemorative Parade. Those who attend are mostly Parent Clubs and a number of visiting Clubs.
BBC News – Orange Order: Educational visits prove a hit with Catholic schools
Orange Order: Educational visits prove a hit with Catholic schools
5 November 2014
On the trail of King William – the Orange Order has launched a new educational poster for schoolchildren.
Educational visits by the Orange Order have proved more popular in Catholic schools than in those mainly attended by Protestants, the order has said.
The aim of the outreach programme is to explain both the history and current role of the organisation.
So far, 58% of the visits have been to Catholic schools, 33% to schools mainly attended by Protestants and 8% to integrated schools.
A spokesman for the order said the figures were “surprising”.
To support their outreach programme, the Orange Order has launched a new educational poster, designed as an alphabetical guide to the people, places and events that shaped the organisation’s history.
The ABC poster follows William of Orange, a Dutch Protestant, on his way to victory over his uncle, the Catholic James II, at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland.
In the poster A is for Aughrim, site of a key battle in the war, while B is for the Boyne, where the battle commemorated by the Orange Order every year on 12 July was fought in 1690.
The order aims to continue its school visits programme, by invitation, to expand on the history featured on the poster.
‘Committed to diversity’
David Scott, the order’s community education officer said the enthusiasm of Catholic schools, and the fact that Protestant schools were not quite so keen, was surprising.
One of the Catholic schools visited was St Paul’s High School, Bessbrook, County Armagh, whose principal is former Gaelic Athletic Association star Jarlath Burns.
Pupils also travelled to the site of the Battle of the Boyne when the order launched a new schools workbook in May.
“These are little steps but we are up for it. We are not in any way scared. It is all to do with understanding that everybody who puts on an Orange sash is not bitter or bigoted and the same for anyone who pulls on a GAA jersey”
Jarlath Burns St Paul’s High School
“We are committed to the community relations diversity agenda and we celebrate the diversity that exists within our world and community,” Mr Burns said.
“We welcome any opportunity for people to explain their culture and we’re all about creating discerning individuals – educating the whole child.”
To that end, the police and the Orange Order have been invited to the school.
St Paul’s also took its pupils in uniform to watch the Gay Pride parade in nearby Newry – a point that Mr Burns admitted raised a few hackles, but made an important point about diversity and understanding.
Talking about the links with the Orange Order, he said: “In the last year, David Scott has come into the school and spoken and we’ve been to the Boyne.
“We are actually having a panel discussion in the school next week.
“These are little steps, but we are up for it. We are not in any way scared.
“It is all to do with understanding that everybody who puts on an Orange sash is not bitter or bigoted and the same goes for anyone who pulls on a GAA jersey.”
‘Amazing uptake’
The poster and the talk offers young people studying history at Key Stage Three, a window into the Orange Order.
Mr Scott said: “We aim to try and put history into its proper context and to support the teacher, educationalist and student in the classroom environment.
“We want to give young people a better understanding so that they can explore and discover history, not based on the knowledge they may think they have, on hearsay or on other people’s opinions.
“The uptake has been amazing from the maintained school sector that is traditionally viewed as the Catholic sector,” he said.
“It has been a wee bit more challenging in the controlled school sector which would be deemed to be Protestant. We are not sure why. Perhaps there is more willingness from the maintained school sector – they seem more curious, more inquisitive and more keen to learn.
“It is just a theory, but perhaps in the controlled sector, they think they know enough about the tradition because the majority of pupils come from the Protestant tradition. We are not really sure what the nuts and bolts of it are.”
‘Shared future’
The trail is very much about history.
Debate about the more modern conflict surrounding loyal orders parades in Northern Ireland comes up very rarely said Mr Scott.
“We are only in the early stages of the idea and the concept of a shared future,” he said.
via BBC News – Orange Order: Educational visits prove a hit with Catholic schools.
Sectarian attacks continue – Cookstown: Orange Order hall attacked in ‘hate crime’
16 November 2014
Cookstown: Orange Order hall attacked in ‘hate crime’
An Orange hall in County Tyrone has been damaged in an attack that police are treating as a hate crime.
Two windows of the building on Fairhill Road, Cookstown, were smashed overnight.
A year ago, the Orange Order said a boulder was thrown through a window of the hall.
Ulster Unionist Party councillor Trevor Wilson said the latest attack was “an act of wanton vandalism”.
“It’s a shame that a hall could elicit such hatred in the minds of people who have nothing positive to offer the community,” he said.
via BBC News – Cookstown: Orange Order hall attacked in ‘hate crime’.
Background to the Gunpowder Plot
England’s Gunpowder Plot of 1605
5/11 The Greatest Act of Religious Terrorism in History.
Forget 9/11 or ISIS the most dangerous and ambitious terrorist plot was planned in Britain by a group of religious fanatics. They were not Islamic fundamentalists but Roman Catholic community leaders inspired by the hate message of their church.
Cloaked with zeale of Superstitious Religion,
aymed in deed at the Subversion of the State,
and to induce an horrible confusion of all things.
Proclamation of James I against the Gunpowder Plotters,
7 November 1605.
It used to be common in England that as the fifth of November approached, children would stand on street corners with stuffed figures of a man and ask passers-by the question, “A penny for the Guy?” The Guy in question was an effigy of the arch-traitor Guy Fawkes. When the evening of November 5th arrived, 
all the Guys would be taken to an area of bonfires and burned in ceremony.
The holiday
known as Guy Fawkes Day commemorates the foiling of a plot by Guy Fawkes and other Catholic extremists to blow up King James I and his Parliament in 1605. To this day yeoman warders search the Houses of Parliament at the opening of Parliament for explosives. This holiday and its rituals have been repeated in differing forms for over four centuries, but they have their origins in a very tense and nervous time in English history.
War, Depression, Famine, Disease
In 1600 England was facing an uncertain future fraught with various dangers. It was a time of bad news on multiple fronts.
The war with Spain began in 1588 with the great victory over the Spanish Armada, but the conflict had continued to drag on for over a decade with fading hopes of decisive victories.
Economic depression developed as the war drained England’s manpower and treasure while it stifled trade.
Bad weather caused poor harvests, and poor harvests lead to famine. Famine weakened the population’s resistance, leading to epidemics of contagious disease.
England’s war with Spain prompted the restive Irish to rebel in 1594 under the leadership of Hugh O’Neill, the earl of Tyrone. His skillful leadership prevented the English from
suppressing the rebels. Even Queen Elizabeth’s favorite, the dashing Robert Devereux, the earl of Essex, proved unequal to the task of defeating Tyrone. Instead he let Tyrone wear down his army of sixteen thousand men in a matter of twenty-one weeks during 1599 and promptly abandoned his command to return to London, much to the dismay of Elizabeth I.
Ireland appeared lost,
but thanks to the generalship of Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, both the Irish and a relief expedition of Spanish troops were defeated at Kinsale in 1603. Ireland remained an English possession but just barely.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth
in 1600 had been queen for over forty years and was now in her late sixties. Yes, she had lived significantly longer than her grandfather, father, brother, and sister. But that didn’t matter much to the queen, who raged against old age and refused to admit that her death was approaching. She also refused to clarify her wishes concerning the issue of succession, choosing to spend her energy in a May-December flirtation with the Earl of Essex. Many of her subjects were scandalized, while others were positioning themselves for the succession. Most people assumed her successor would be James VI of Scotland, although other plausible claimants waited their opportunity.
Elizabeth I had lingered too long on the stage of history. Her people longed for a change.
International Religious Conflict – Pits Protestant against Catholic
England’s war with Spain symbolized a wider struggle between Protestant and Catholic powers in Europe. Within England, a Catholic minority kept the Protestant majority nervous. Were the Catholics traitors in the midst of their own country? Would they help cruel Spanish armies to invade England and reestablish Catholicism? Most English Catholics vehemently denied these charges, but a few harbored irreconcilable grievances.
The English government was also divided by the competition between William Cecil and his son Robert on the one side and the ambitious and arrogant Earl of Essex on the other. By 1600 Essex’s star was fading. His failure and dereliction of duty in
Ireland had lost him the regard and favor of Queen Elizabeth, who began to rescind the privileges and sources of wealth she had bestowed on him.
Threatened with ruin,Essex decided to purge Elizabeth’s government of his enemies through acoup d’etat, even if it meant taking her prisoner. His preparations aroused suspicion, forcing him to launch his coup without much hope of success on 8 February 1601. It failed in a single day. The authorities arrested Essex, who was swiftly tried and just as swiftly executed on 25 February.
With the elimination of Essex, Robert Cecil became the supreme power in the Elizabethan court. But the attempted coup and its violent aftermath had severely shaken the Queen’s health. She began to deteriorate noticeably, even as she remained in denial about her mortality, and doggedly clung to life. When at last she died on 24 March 1603, the succession of James VI as James I of England proceeded smoothly on the surface. Underneath raged a torrent of discontent and intrigue.
James I, like Elizabeth I, faced the problem of war with Spain, a costly and lingering conflict with no apparent end in sight. The new king had some difficulty recognizing that England was not
nearly as wealthy a kingdom as he thought it was.
Unlike Elizabeth,
James I bore the political problem of being Scottish. Adversaries for centuries, England and Scotland disliked one other intensely, harboring deep cultural prejudices and widespread political mistrust. James also bore the burden of hope that accompanies any major political change. The coming of a new monarch created optimism among both English Catholics and radical Protestants that James I would change their circumstances for the better. They were bound to be disappointed.
The first Catholic plan, known as the Bye Plot, originated with the secular priest William Watson, who was profoundly disappointed by James I’s failure to immediately reduce the penal laws that oppressed English Catholics. The plan envisioned the kidnapping of James I, who would be forced during captivity to overturn the oppressive laws against Catholics. An uprising was planned to coincide with the kidnapping.
The plot failed after Jesuits betrayed the conspirators to government officials. The traitors were tried and convicted — and this time, James I showed no mercy. The Catholic conspirators, the priest Watson, and sympathizer George Brook were savagely executed.
With plots against his rule launched by both Catholics and Protestants, King James I, somewhat timid to begin with, became seriously apprehensive about his security.
1604 brought peace with Spain but no legal relief to the Catholic minority of England, although James I was not particularly interested in persecution. Still, a small group of Catholic extremists remained disgruntled and alienated from their government and their countrymen. Hence the third and most memorable plot, the one that gave rise to a lasting holiday.
Although Guy Fawkes is the plotter commonly remembered today, the real leader of the conspiracy was Robert Catesby. A member of a Catholic family of Warwickshire, he was also a descendent of William Catesby, the minister of Richard III who was executed in the aftermath of the Battle of Bosworth Field. Robert had good reason to resent the crown.
Robert Catesby had paid dearly for his participation in the Essex Rebellion of 1601, suffering imprisonment and ruinous fines on his estates. The persecutions of his fellow Catholics also aroused his ire. When the accession of James I brought no relief, Catesby conceived a plan to blow up James I and the English Parliament. In the aftermath of death and destruction, he would rise from the ashes to reestablish Catholic rule.
Let’s Blow ‘Er Up.
On 20 May 1604 he unveiled his scheme to other disgruntled Catholics at the Duck and Drake Inn along the Strand in London. His fellow conspirators at that time were Thomas Winter, John Wright, Thomas Percy, and Guy Fawkes.
Fawkes was born into a Protestant family, but he converted to Catholicism and fought in the Spanish army against the Dutch rebels in the Netherlands. Most importantly to the conspiracy, Fawkes was a man who knew gunpowder.
The group ultimately expanded to the ill-omened number of thirteen.
Thomas Percy, one of the thirteen, was a relative of Henry Percy, the ninth earl of Northumberland. Thomas also collected rents for the Earl, making him a trusted servant. In fact, the Earl secured Thomas Percy a position as a gentleman pensioner without having Thomas swear the Oath of Allegiance, something that would have presented a genuine ethical dilemma for a good Catholic. That favor would come back to haunt the Earl, who would eventually be accused of being part of the Gunpowder Plot and punished with imprisonment in the Tower of London for sixteen years — all for doing a favor for a relative. Let it be a salutary lesson for us all.
The plotters sought to rent a house next to the Houses of Parliament so they could tunnel under the building and place gunpowder underneath it. This plan represented a significant and difficult mining operation. Fortunately for Catesby and his fellows, they got an opportunity to rent a storage room right under the Parliament building, which saved them from having to complete their tunnel. Gradually they filled the room with gunpowder, which was in great surplus because the war with Spain had recently ended with the signing of the Treaty of London. What weaker allegiance than an arms merchant?
The band of thirteen managed to place some thirty-six barrels of gunpowder in the storage room. After being some eighteen months in the making, it appeared for a brief moment that the plot might work, that the Parliament buildings would be obliterated, that the neighborhood around it in Westminster would be devastated, and that the path to power would be paved in a thundering flash of fire and smoke.
Events both human and political soon spoke otherwise, turning and twisting in unexpected ways against the gunpowder plotters.
Some of the conspirators faced issues of will brought about by qualms about blowing up the Catholic lords who would be in Parliament on the fateful day. Someone went so far as to warn the Catholic Lord Monteagle by sending him a letter on 26 October 1605. The shaken young lord promptly took the letter to Robert Cecil, the earl of Salisbury and James I’s chief minister. Although Cecil did not take the warning particularly seriously at first, the government’s suspicions were aroused.
Then on the night of 4 November and the early morning of 5 November, a search party lead by Sir Thomas Knyvett discovered Guy Fawkes in the storage room with all that gunpowder. A great act of terror had been prevented.
As the authorities interrogated Fawkes under torture, they began to gather details of the conspiracy. Their information led them to the village of Holbeach, where the conspirators had decided to make a stand. During the ensuing fight, Thomas Percy, Robert Catesby, and some others were killed or mortally wounded. The rest were taken prisoner. They would later be tried and gruesomely executed by hanging, drawing, and quartering.
For James I and the EnglishProtestants, death and loss of power were averted. They had been saved again. And a frightful resurgence of Catholicism in England had been prevented.
The Gunpowder Plot ended in a stillbirth, but it was not to be forgotten. In late January 1606, Parliament passed a statute entitled “An Act for a Public Thanksgiving to Almighty God Every Year on the Fifth Day of November.” It began a tradition of celebrating the deliverance of England from the Gunpowder Plot that has lasted to the present.
For the British people of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, the Fifth of November served to build and preserve their national and Protestant identities. It should also remind us in our age of Islamic terrorism and global economic collapse that things could be, and once were, worse.
We yield thee our unfeigned thanks and praise, for the wonderful and mighty Deliverance of our gracious Sovereign King James the First, the Queen, the Prince, and all the Royal Branches, with the Nobility, Clergy, and Commons of England, then assembled in Parliament, by Popish treachery appointed as sheep to the slaughter, in a most barbarous and savage manner, beyond the examples of former ages. From this unnatural Conspiracy, not our merit, but thy mercy; not our foresight, but thy providence delivered us.
—“Prayer of Thanksgiving to be used yearly upon the Fifth Day of November,” The Book of Common Prayer.
Remember Remember
Today we mark the Great Protestant Anniversary of 5th November which marks both the birth on the 4th as well as the landing of William of Orange and the preservation of the Crown and Parliament against the Catholic terrorist plot known as the Gunpowder Plot.
Members of McNeillstown ILOL 46 joined with other lodges at Lisnagaver Installation Night, Rasharkin to mark the traditional Thanksgiving Day when our Protestant Crown and Parliament were saved from the greatest act of religious terrorism the world has ever seen. Forget ISIS the Gunpowder plotters planned to topple the government of the day in a 5/11 Plot.
REMEMBERING OUR DELIVERANCE
Such was the miraculous deliverance of the government that they passed a law to annually mark the day with acts of religious devotion and thanks giving. This developing into a national day of celebration and thanksgiving, know more commonly as Guy Fawkes night or Bonfire night.
Sadly in the last century in Ireland the event which also marked the landing of William of Orange, has been forgotten by both church and state. While it remains popular in England we wish to see its revival here in Ireland. It is a day unlike any other in a nations history. While America and other new nations can look to an Independence day when their state was created or secured, we in the UK can llok to this this day on which not once but twice in history God saw fit to deliver this nation from its greatest foe.
The day is still marked by the Independent Orange institution, and an act of devotion was carried out when the Worshipful Master of Lisnagaver Bro. William Fenton read from our Laws and Ordinances the decree to remember and give thanks. Sadly a nation which forgets so marvelous a deliverance will be forced to repeat the peril from which it was once preserved. Today as terrorism still threatens democracy we remember that it was the Church of Rome which first created the concept of political terrorism in Europe. Sadly we see that while in those days such Catholic terrorists were punished as traitors, today they appear to be rewarded.
Tonight our Grand Master spoke of the significance of this great memorial and announced that we would be making special efforts to mark it in the years to come with plans already in motion to make next years event a bigger and more prominent event. We intend to see how the Day is marked in England and how historically it was used as a holiday for the entire community.
The Significance of the Williamite Revolution Settlement
Lecture at the Opening Seminar of the European Institute of Protestant Studies
Professor Arthur Noble
In the short time allocated to me I am going to attempt a simplified analysis of the significance the Williamite Revolution Settlement in its broader context, both historically and constitutionally.
The term ‘Revolution Settlement’ refers collectively to the provisions stretching from the Bill of Rights of 1689 to the Act of Settlement of 1701, both inclusive. These and the intervening pieces of legislation were the culmination of the great historical struggle of this country against the Papacy, and together they secured our Protestant Throne and Constitution and all the rights and liberties which are guaranteed thereby. Doctrinally speaking, these were the fruit of the Reformation, but their enactment was not secured until after the Siege of Londonderry and the Battle of the Boyne.
The Monarchy versus the Papacy in British History
The significance of the Revolution Settlement is inextricably linked to the principle of the Monarch as Defender of the Protestant Faith. The uniqueness of our Monarchy is a result of the history of our nation. In the centuries before the Reformation that history was dominated by a long struggle for the freedom of our Kings and Queens from the domination of the Papacy, but even after the victory of the Reformation and following the Williamite Settlement the attacks by the Vatican on our independence from its control have continued in ever more subtle ways.
In mediaeval times the historical claims by the Vatican to be above civil governments were staunchly and openly maintained against Britain. Papal aggression led to the signing of the Magna Carta, granted by King John at Runnymede in 1215, which was the very foundation of British liberty and provided for the trial of freemen by the civil law. This great document was, in a sense, the mediaeval forerunner of the Revolution Settlement.
In 1392 Richard II also anticipated the Revolution Settlement by declaring:
[…] the Crown of England hath been so free at all times, that it hath been in no earthly subjection, but immediately subject to God touching the regality of the said Crown, and no other.
Again, in 1534, Henry VIII acted on the same principle with a Parliamentary Act abolishing the Papal supremacy in England and proclaiming the independence of his Crown. He was only partially successful, though in 1537 the Parliament at Westminster did decree “the utter abolition of the jurisdiction of the Pope of Rome”.
From then onwards, however, throughout the period leading up to the Reformation, the claims of the Papacy were steadily built up and enforced with varying success, and although the Reformation dealt them a major blow, a struggle of another century and a half had yet to take place before Britons became convinced that the independence of their Throne was unattainable while a Papist sat on it, because their liberties and those of their children would be strangled or bartered away.
The Significance of the Reformation in shaping the Revolution Settlement
The Revolution Settlement was made possible by – and was the culmination and crowning glory of – the great doctrinal Reformation which had taken place a century and a half beforehand, in the sixteenth century. We must therefore appreciate what we owe to the Reformation before we can understand its part in shaping the Revolution Settlement.
The Reformation gave us all that was worth having: liberty of conscience, liberty of faith, freedom of discussion and freedom of the press. Doctrinally speaking, no monopolising priest could now come and stand as a barrier between the sinner and the Lord Jesus Christ; but the Reformation also brought us social blessings and political greatness. In his book Popery its Social Aspect, R.P. Blakeney writes:
The Reformation has been the stay, and bulwark, and glory of England. […] When Britain became Protestant, taking the Word of God for her guide, – when the principles of the Bible regulated all her actions and legislation, – when she acknowledged it as her first duty and highest privilege, as a nation, to advance the cause of Christ, and framed her laws and institutions to that end only, – when she had cast off all connexion with Popery, declaring it illegal even to enter into diplomatic relations with Rome, […] she enjoyed the favour of Heaven, and became great; her people rose in character and intelligence, and manliness and honesty distinguished their conduct. Her arms prevailed; and the British constitution and British laws – the best that ever existed – were the admiration and praise of all the earth.
Rome’s Attempts to undo the Reformation
Rome, nevertheless, continued her assaults. We might mention the attempt by Pope Pius V to subvert the Protestant Queen Elizabeth I. In 1569 he issued a bull which declared her “an heretic, and a favourer of heretics”, and throughout her reign at least 21 assassination attempts in 25 years were made on her by the Vatican. Again, in 1588, the Pope urged Philip of Spain to attempt to destroy British liberty and Protestantism by means of the Spanish Armada. Another Romanist attack was the failed Gunpowder Plot of 1605 in the reign of King James I, who gave us the Authorised Version of the Bible.
Before the 17th century ended, our Monarchs themselves were to be used subversively by the Papacy to endeavour to destroy the Reformation and the Protestant Throne. Charles II and James II were both Roman Catholics.
Charles II (1660-1685) was a secret Papist, but James II (1685-1688) was publicly converted to Romanism and tried to re-impose Popery on England by passing an Act of Toleration. He violated the principles of Constitutional government and of the Reformation, and for this treacherous dealing he justly forfeited his Crown. Having succeeded in papalising the army in Ireland, he met his doom, as all Ulster people know, on the banks of the Boyne.
The Course and Provisions of the Revolution Settlement
Let us now examine specifically the course and provisions of the Revolution Settlement and its contribution to the Constitutional freedoms which we have enjoyed for the past 300 years.
When William, Prince of Orange, landed on our shores in 1688, he pledged himself to maintain our Protestant liberties, and ascended the English Throne as William III (1689-1702). The Convention Parliament declared on 28th January, 1689, that King James II had “endeavoured to subvert the constitution of this kingdom, by breaking the original contract between King and people” and had “by the advice of Jesuits […] violated the fundamental law”. He had therefore “abdicated the Government” and the Throne was “thereby vacant”. On 13th February this resolution was extended to include the following words: “That William and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, be and be declared, King and Queen of England, France and Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging.”
At the Siege of Londonderry and the Battle of the Boyne which was to follow soon afterwards, Ulster became Britain’s Protestant bastion, and the forefathers of this great Nation – unlike the myopic weaklings who lead it today – had the wisdom to do what patriotic warriors do on the termination of a hard-fought and successful campaign: they built ramparts around their rights and liberties.
The most important of these ramparts was the Revolution Settlement itself. It established a Protestant Throne, a Protestant Legislature and a Protestant Electorate. The 1689 Act declared the rights and liberties of the subject and set the Succession of the Crown. Today Queen Elizabeth II remains the “Defender of the [Protestant] Faith”. The ‘ramparts’ were put in place through the Bill of Rights (1689) and the Act of Settlement (1701).
The Bill of Rights (1689)
From the time of William III till the present an Act has been in force which is known as the Bill of Rights. It is described as “an Act declaring the rights and liberties of the subjects, and settling the succession of the Crown”. This Act pronounced it “inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant Kingdom to be governed by a Popish Prince, or any King or Queen marrying a Papist”; and enacted “that all and every Person or Persons that is, are, or shall be, reconciled to, or shall hold communion with, the See or Church of Rome, or shall profess the Popish religion, or shall marry a Papist, shall be excluded, and be for ever incapable to inherit, possess or enjoy the Crown and Government of this Realm and Ireland and the dominions thereunto belonging”; and further, that “in all and every such case or cases the people of these realms shall be and are hereby absolved of their allegiance, and the said Crown and Government shall from time to time descend to, and be enjoyed by, such Person or Persons, being Protestants, as should have inherited and enjoyed the same in case the Person or Persons so reconciled, holding Communion, or professing, or marrying as aforesaid, were naturally dead.”
The Act of Settlement (1701)
The culmination of the Glorious Revolution came with the Act of Settlement of 1701. Having laid down the succession in the Bill of Rights of 1689, Parliament now went on to clarify it more fully. Eight articles were inserted in the Act of Settlement, the most significant being the first, which declares: “That whosoever shall hereafter come to the possession of this Crown shall join in communion with the Church of England as by law established.”
The Act of Settlement also requires every English Sovereign, on coming to the Throne, to deny on oath that any man can change bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, and to confess on oath that Mary worship, and the Romish mass, are “superstitious and idolatrous”.
Both the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement were the result of determination to prevent the recurrence of such abuses that led to the Siege of Londonderry after the first Irish Parliament had passed a rash of iniquitous and tyrannical laws, including the Act of Attainder, depriving Protestants of all their rights and privileges and confiscating their land and goods.
Three Great Constitutional Principles
These two documents laid down the three great Constitutional principles of the Revolution Settlement. If these three basic principles of the Revolution Settlement should ever be dismantled, the Constitutional implications for Britain would be disastrous. She would undo two thousand years of struggling to be free, and revert to a state of serfdom to the Church of Rome such as pertained in the Middle Ages. The principles were:
- A Protestant Throne
In Act I, chapter 2, section 2 of the Act of Settlement the succession to the Crown was finally settled by the following decree:
Every person who is or shall be reconciled to, or shall hold communion with the See or Church of Rome, shall be for ever incapable to inherit, possess or enjoy the Crown or Government of this Realm and Ireland; and in every such case the people of these Realms shall be and are hereby released from their allegiance.
The principle of the victors was that a Monarch who is to rule over free men must himself be free. A King who is under the control of the Pope is not and cannot be free. He is the servant of a master who claims his whole obedience implicitly. Some may argue that Edward III and other Roman Catholic monarchs were not just such slaves; however, they were good British kings only to the extent that they were bad subjects of the Vatican. The more popish, the more slave. Whatever freedom the Kings and Queens of Britain enjoyed, they owed to their refusal to submit to the fetters in which the Pope attempted to hold them. This fact is seen repeatedly in British history. Our Sovereigns always had to maintain a running battle with the Vatican.
To those who pretend that the safeguarding of a Protestant Throne amounts to religious discrimination against Roman Catholics it must be pointed out that the Sovereign, as a man or woman, has every right to change his or her religion; the Sovereign, as Sovereign, however, has no such privilege.
The Protestant Constitution of this country is also enshrined in the Coronation Oath which the Monarch swears prior to the enthronement in Westminster Abbey. The Archbishop, in administering the Coronation Oath, first asks the Monarch: “Is your Majesty willing to take the Oath?” The Monarch answering: “I am willing”, the Archbishop then asks the King three questions, demanding of him first, if he will solemnly promise and swear to govern his people according to the laws and customs of the Constitution; secondly, if he will do his best to cause law and justice, in mercy, to be executed in all his judgements; thirdly, if he will to the utmost of his power maintain the Laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel and the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law, and also maintain and preserve the Church of England and the rights and privileges of the bishops and clergy and the Churches committed to their charge.
To each of these questions, the Monarch gives his solemn assent, and then rising out of his chair he goes to the Altar, attended by two Bishops and the Lord Great Chamberlain, the Sword of State being carried before him. There he makes his Oath in the sight of all the people, laying his right hand upon the Holy Gospel in the Great Bible and says: “The things which I have here before promised, I will perform, and keep. So help me God.” Then the King kisses the Book and signs the Oath. In this solemn manner the Monarch takes the Coronation Oath to uphold “the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law”.
Also on the accession each Monarch takes the Accession Oath before the Privy Council as follows: “I do solemnly and sincerely in the presence of God, profess, testify, and declare that I am a faithful Protestant, and that I will according to the true intent of the enactments which secure the Protestant succession to the Throne of my Realm, uphold and maintain the said enactments to the best of my powers according to the law.”
Then the Monarch takes the Oath relating to the security of the Church of Scotland.
- A Protestant Legislature
The second part of the Revolution Settlement was the establishment of a Protestant Legislature. The men of the Revolution decreed that the subjects of Great Britain would be governed by British law – law made on the soil of Britain, law inspired by the genius of British liberty, law that would conserve those rights and freedoms which had been won in the struggles of the two previous centuries. The men of the Revolution were determined to avoid a repetition of past experience.
They declared that those of the Romish communion were in no proper sense citizens of this country. Their country, they said, is their Church, their King the Pope. A man cannot be subject to two different kings and be loyal to both. No sovereign state can allow its citizens to be at the beck and call of another that also claims temporal allegiance over him. Roman Catholics are subjects of a foreign prince, to whom, without concealment, their allegiance is given, and by whom their conscience in all matters is absolutely ruled.
Every Roman Catholic bishop, after all, takes a feudal oath to obey the Pope in all things, and to fight against his enemies, and that obligation runs down through the priests to the humblest member of their community. It links them all into a great feudal confederacy whose throne is the Vatican and whose country is their Church.
The principle of a Protestant Legislature was based on the idea that only the loyal citizens of a country are entitled to take part in framing the laws by which it is governed. What could be a more glaring violation of the natural law of self-preservation than to commit the government of a country into the hands of those who are aliens to it, and who, even while professing loyalty, may be its secret and most bitter enemies? Such a decision would be national suicide. Hence the men of the Revolution restricted the task of legislating for the country to the citizens of the country, that is, to Protestants, but they did not, however, discriminate against Roman Catholics as such. They extended the protection of British law to all who lived on British soil. They guarded the persons, the lives and the property of Roman Catholics as sacredly as those of Protestants; but they excluded the former from the making of British laws because this was not one of their natural rights. To have granted them this privilege would have re-introduced tyranny into the State and sown the seeds of its gradual subversion.
It is a measure of Britain’s forgetfulness and folly that she granted Roman Catholics the franchise a century later, in 1793. Predictably, they proceeded to gain access to Parliament and to establish themselves in positions of power, denying their subversive intentions behind a cloak of emancipation or, more recently, one of civil rights. Within the past two hundred years they have succeeded in subverting the main Protestant Churches by means of the great deception of the Ecumenical Movement. Cardinal Heenan’s friendship with the late Princess Diana revealed how Rome had been trying to subvert the Protestant Throne directly in a country where Roman Catholics represent a very small minority of the population.
- A Protestant Electorate
Having provided for allegiance by British citizens to the Throne and established their submission to the Law, the men of the Revolution realised that these two principles were wanting in the case of adherents to the Papacy because Roman Catholics could bear little or no allegiance to a Protestant Throne and could show no respect for Protestant Law beyond what force or appearance might compel. In actual fact, it was argued, Roman Catholics appeal to the authoritative principles of their own creed, to their own published manifestos, and above all to – and I quote from the Act:
their repeated and desperate attempts, with arms in their hands and treason in their hearts, to establish this foreign rule over us, not content to being themselves free to submit to it. […] It matters not where their king lives […] – the fact that concerns us is that it is to him that their allegiance is sworn, and it is his law by which their conscience is ruled; and so long as they cleave to this foreign authority, we judge them outside the limits of the State and refuse them part or portion in the government of a nation to which they do not belong.
Let it be remembered, however, that if Roman Catholics were voted outside the pale of citizenship for electoral purposes, this was done not because their religion was false (which it was), but because theirallegiance was wrong. No judgement was, in fact, being pronounced on their creed. They received equal protection under the law, but were not permitted to have a part in making it.
Our Constitutional Rights
The Revolution Settlement brought with it the establishment of certain well-defined Constitutional rights. By the Bill of Rights, the Act of Settlement, and the Coronation Service, our legal rights as Protestant citizens of this country are at least threefold:
- We have an absolute right of exemption from the rule of any Papist who may claim the Throne, even though he be the heir apparent.
- We have an absolute right of exemption from the rule by any person, whether Papist, Romaniser, or lukewarm Protestant, who refuses to denounce by name, and on his solemn oath, the fundamental heresies of Rome, or who subsequently refuses to swear that he will maintain God’s law, Christ’s Gospel, and the Protestant faith, to the utmost of his power.
- We have an absolute right, if any monarch apostacizes from the Protestantism which he has espoused on oath, and becomes a Papist, or if he even “holds Communion with the See or Church of Rome”, to rise collectively and refuse to own him as our King.
These rights, won at such cost, have also, of course, been incorporated into the judicial and constitutional systems of every country in the British Commonwealth.
Results of the Revolution Settlement
What were the practical results of the Revolution Settlement? Its wisdom is attested by the instant leap upwards taken by our country amongst the nations of the world. In a word, its establishment of Protestant principles made England great. England became Great Britain, and the little British Isles sprang into the mightiest empire that the world had ever seen – not by force of arms, but by moral power. From that time Britain was obeyed to the ends of the earth, not by the force of the sword, but by the mightier force of that good name which equitable laws and free institutions won for her.
The indisputable reason for Britain’s prosperity is found in the Bible, and it is that God still does bless nations who obey Him, as he promised Eli of old in I Samuel 1:30: “Them that honour me I will honour.” God kept His promise.
Hence, interwoven with the history of the past three hundred years is the record of unparalleled political progress and unceasing commercial success. Even the Catholic Times of 10th August, 1900, admitted that all this was achieved “under the rule of Protestant sovereigns, under the guidance of Protestant leaders, under the government of Protestant Parliaments, has so associated the Pro-testant idea with England’s success that in the minds of men one is linked to the other as cause and effect.”
Rome’s Claws are growing again
The Church of Rome has been continuing to assault each and every principle of the Revolution Settlement ever since.
Ironically, Britain’s retreat from the principles of the Revolution Settlement began just over a century after its conclusion; for a great betrayal of Protestantism and the elimination of the Protestant safeguards of the Revolution Settlement commenced in earnest with the so-called Catholic Relief Act in 1829. During the second half of the 19th century Rome shadowed all of Britain’s missionary activity abroad and made a desperate effort at home to secure a renewed ascendancy in Britain and its Empire.
Britain foolishly responded by granting concession after concession, till in 1910 the Constitutional Denunciation of Idolatry and the Denunciation of Priestcraft and Popery had been eliminated from the Royal Declaration. These alterations to the Statutory Declaration were made, moreover, without an appeal to the nation, clearly to placate the Church of Rome.
The Undermining of the Protestant Faith
It has been said that the three great liberties that were obtained during the reign of King William III were a free Parliament, a free press and a free pulpit. Today the European Union is encroaching increasingly on the law-making process in our Parliament; our press displays a distinct bias against Protestant fundamentalism; and many of the once soundly Protestant pulpits of many of our Churches have become choked with the doctrines of Ecumenism. The EU has been described by the Papal Nuncio in Brussels as “a Roman Catholic Confederation of States”, and it has been hailed in Roman Catholic circles as a resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire.
Our successive British Governments have been pandering to it, while the Church of England and the other Ecumenical Churches have been pandering to the Church of Rome, which has already gained a considerable section of the Anglican clergy. The question now arises as to whether Queen Elizabeth will be the last British Monarch to take the Protestant Coronation Oath. May God forbid.
The Protestant faith of Britain has been progressively undermined, and British freedoms assailed, by a disciplined and able confederacy intent on destroying them both. The determination of the Papacy to destroy religious freedom in Britain was expressed in the words of Cardinal Manning in The Tablet of August, 1859:
If ever there was a land in which work is to be done, and perhaps much to suffer, it is here. I shall not say too much if I say that we have to subjugate and subdue, to conquer and rule, an Imperial race; we have to do with a will which reigns throughout the world, as the will of old Rome reigned once; we have to bend or break that will which nations and kingdoms have found invincible and inflexible . […] Were heresy [i.e., Protestantism!] conquered in England, it would be conquered throughout the world. All its lines meet here, and therefore in England the Church of God [!] must be gathered in its strength.
We are told that our controversy with Rome is out of date, that the enlightenment of the 20th century has finally defeated any attempt to subjugate the intellect of present or future generations to a false creed, un-Christ-like in its doctrine and cruel in its practice – in other words that the Papacy of 400 years ago, having caught the spirit of the modern age, is no longer the tyrant and dictator of the past – that the pages of history relating to the reign of terror in the days of Queen Mary or the Spanish Armada or the Gunpowder Plot are facts to be eliminated from memory or the teaching of history – horrific extravagances of some remote age incapable of repetition today.
How far these spurious and untruthful arguments are the result of Jesuit cunning is not immediately evident until one considers such events as the Vatican’s massacre of 250,000 Orthodox Serbs in Croatia during World War II, the cruel treatment of many Protestant families in France or the vicious campaign of ethnic cleansing conducted against the Protestants of Northern Ireland. The bloody and brutal Inquisition is an institution which we will forget at our peril, for the Church of Rome still maintains and justifies today her ancient motto:Semper Eadem (Always the Same). Rome will never tolerate her opponents, as one of her early 20th-century Irish Bishops, Dr. Clancy, reaffirmed regarding the Inquisition:
It may be said that those laws were cruel and tyrannical. Granted; yet, surely, we are not to measure the punishments inflicted in the 16th century by the refined standards of our more educated and civilised age. […] The question whether punishment was excessive, however, does not touch the principle, that heresy may become dangerous to the public weal, and as such may be punished by the State. Indeed, the proposition is indefensible – that toleration, where error can be prevented, is intrinsically wrong.
There are churchmen in Ulster today who are arguing passionately and fervently for compromise with Rome. They have ditched the principles of the Reformation so providentially secured for us through the Revolution Settlement. The only difference is that they do not think they would suffer death and torture for opposing the tyrant, for the tyrant is masquerading as a peacemaker; he has been elevated by the Clintons and Blairs of this world to look respectable; he may be dressed in a suit, but he is a gunman; he may be posing as a politician, but he is a terrorist. There is no degree of murder or destruction, no campaign of ethnic cleansing or harassment of Protestants and Unionists strong enough to convince these churchmen of the error of their ways, simply because they are traitors, fraternisers and collaborators who are consciously and deliberately selling out their people to the enemy. They must not be allowed to succeed.
May God awaken our Nation to the urgent and vital need to turn again to His ways, to stop appeasing Romanism and its apologists, and to defend without fear or excuses the Protestant principles which made our country great.
The Protestant Reformation
On October 31, 1517 Martin Luther nailed his 95 Theses on to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg, Germany. His actions sparked the Protestant Reformation and his teachings emphasized mans sinfulness, God’s grace and salvation through faith alone. Martin Luther wasn’t the only man to protest what was going on in the Catholic churches though. Men like Huldreich Zwingli (Switzerland), John Calvin (a French theologian), and John Knox (Scotland) were also influential in the Reformation.
From these reformers comes the Five Solas:
- Sola Scriptura: Scripture alone
- Sola Fide: faith alone
- Sola Gratia: grace alone
- Solus Christus: Christ alone
- Soli Deo Gloria: to the glory of God alone
Orange Banner commemorating Luther’s Stand against the Church of Rome
Luther’s Stand Against Rome
It was Luther’s defiance of Papal Authority which challenged the largest and richest organisation in the world at that time. He denounced its errors and ignored the orders of the Pope known as ‘Papal Bulls’, burning them publicly.
He famously nailed his 95 Theses or Points exposing the error of Rome to a church door. This sparked the debate and action which led to the Protestant Reformation. As a Lodge we feel that this great event has been erased from our history, it is neither taught in school or sadly in church, and we trust through our work that it may once more inform and inspire Protestant action in successive generations.
McNeillstown True Blues ILOL No. 46 