Two Hundred Years in the Orange Citadel

At a Sunday service in June 1795, a Reverend George Maunsell, a magistrate and rector of Drumcree Church, called on his congregation ‘to celebrate the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne in the true spirit of the institution’, by attending a sermon to be given by a Rev. Devine of ‘the Established Church’ (meaning the Church of England) at Drumcree.

After Devine’s sermon, the congregation, according to one contemporary account,

‘[fell] upon every Catholic they met, beating and bruising them without provocation or distinction, breaking the doors and windows of their houses, and actually murdering two unoffending Catholics in a bog’.

It was the start of two hundred years of Orange terror in Portadown.

In July 1815, Portadown Orangemen marched to Drumcree and on the very same day a party of Orangemen returning from Middletown attacked Catholic homes at Cruskeenan and murdered a Catholic man named Patrick Grimley.

One Catholic man was shot dead, and a number of others were wounded by Orange demonstrators at Killyleagh, Co Armagh, in July 1823. Michael Campbell was returning from a fair at Caledon when he was shot dead. Four Orangemen were charged with the murder but were acquitted at the Spring Assizes.

The persistence of the Orange Order in murdering and intimidating Catholics with militaristic ‘demonstrations of strength’ was stymied to some extent with the passing of the Unlawful Oaths Act of 1823.

However, Portadown Orangemen were determined to persevere, and when the local magistrates, most of whom supported Orangeism, were obliged by the new law to prevent a 12th July demonstration, they claimed they had insufficient forces ‘at their command’ and the Orangemen marched without hindrance.

On July 29th 1826, Orangemen attacked and burned a Catholic altar in the townland of Tartaraghan, where the 1795 murders occurred, near Maghery and a few miles from Portadown. Twenty-one men were charged with the crime, but all were acquitted despite being identified by eyewitnesses.

In 1827, Portadown magistrate Curran Woodhouse, who had quit the Orange Order, attempted to persuade the Orangemen not to flout the law. He called their leaders to a last-minute meeting on the 12th of July, but his requests were rejected, and the Orangemen marched to meet up with their Lurgan allies at the Red Cow Inn, on the Portadown to Lurgan road. Reinforced by the Lurgan lodges, the 5,000 Orangemen marched into Portadown where there were only 14 policemen on duty.

On May 14th, 1828, Orangemen marched into the Co Armagh town of Blackwatertown and murdered a Catholic. One of the marchers was charged with murder and received 12 months for manslaughter.

In April 1829, Catholic Emancipation became law, and in July the Grand Lodge of Armagh issued a letter to all lodges recommending that they abstain from marching.

Portadown Orangemen ignored local magistrates and, accompanied by reinforcements from Richhill, marched through the town on the 12th of July. While there were no reports of violence in the Portadown stronghold, there were Orange riots and shootings in Armagh, Strabane, Stewartstown, Castlewellan, Enniskillen and Maghera. The Belfast Newsletter reported 20 people killed and many more wounded. Orangemen at Macken in Enniskillen shot many of the casualties.

In July 1830, Portadown Orangemen marched to Lurgan where ‘A large assembly of Orange Lodges took place here, in opposition to the wishes of the Government and the Magistracy of the county. After a great deal of silly display they retired to their homes’.

Four thousand Orangemen were reported to have taken part in the Lurgan demonstration. Five people were shot in Castlewellan, and, in Newry, the Orangemen shot two people who, they claimed, had thrown stones at them. Several Catholics were reported to have been shot when an Orange demonstration was stoned at Gulladuff, in Co Derry, where the Orangemen burned down the home of a Catholic family. Arms were seized from the Orangemen and around a dozen of them were arrested. When they appeared in court on July 25th, the members of four Orange Lodges stormed the courthouse and freed the prisoners.

On November 25th 1830, there was a riot in Maghery, when locals opposed an Orange invasion of the village. Two days later, an armed mob wrecked 29 houses in the village. Some inhabitants fled before the attack, but some were caught and beaten by the mob. Seven Orangemen were charged with offences relating to the attack. All of the Orangemen were acquitted.

On November 5th, 1833, Portadown Orangemen used the pretext of celebrating Guy Fawkes Day to challenge the enforcement of the Party Provisions Act. They did so by way of ‘the Walk’, which was then a quiet country road and is now better known as the Garvaghy Road, a densely populated Nationalist enclave.

According to the Orange historian W. H. Wolsey, the Orangemen marched along the Walk ‘without flags or music’ but ‘in full uniform’ (meaning they wore their sashes). This was the earliest known record of an Orange march down the Garvaghy Road, and it happened at a time when the local police and judiciary felt obliged to implement the Party Processions Act.

After “Orange Jemmy” Verner was elected to the British Parliament, on January 15th, 1835, he was carried through the streets of Armagh by his supporters, who then went on a rampage through the Catholic districts. Over 150 Catholic houses were wrecked, and one old man died of exposure after being carried out of his house and laid in the snow by an armed mob. The mob burned 10 Catholic homes near Charlemont. Eleven of Verner’s supporters were charged in connection with the riots. All were acquitted.

On March 23rd a Parliamentary Select Committee was appointed to inquire into the nature and activities of the Orange institution in Ireland.

While the Select Committee was taking evidence, Hugh Donnelly, a Catholic from Drumcree, was killed by a blow to the head with a stone on Easter Monday 1835. Six of the seven Orangemen charged with the murder were found guilty on the reduced charge of manslaughter.

The evidence of violence and terror was so strong that the government forced the Orange Order to dissolve, and they voted to do so at a meeting of the Grand Orange Lodge in Dublin, on 13 April, 1836.

Yet two months after the dissolution of the Grand Lodge, on June 13th, 1836, Orange leaders met secretly in Portadown and resolved to set up a provisional Grand Lodge in the town, which is why the town is called The Orange Citadel.

An ‘outrageous attack’ on the Orangemen at Derrymacash led to the passing of the Party Emblems Act, in August 1860. This Act forbade the carrying of arms and the wearing of party colours in procession, so it effectively made every semblance of an Orange demonstration illegal.

However, in Portadown, where Orangeism had deeply infiltrated into the judiciary, the police, the press, and the Protestant Church, the organisation carried on parading. They did so despite an appeal from the Order’s Grand Master, Lord Enniskillen, who called on the ‘lower orders’ to keep the peace and stop their illegal marching. The following July, extra police were drafted into Portadown where the Orangemen went ahead with an illegal demonstration on the 12th of July.

In the run-up to the 1870 marching season, the Orangemen posted notices urging the brethren to disregard the law and march on the 1st of July. On June 30th, over one hundred members of the Royal Irish Constabulary and half as many soldiers were drafted into the town, but they did not attempt to stop the Orangemen marching on the 1st.

Residents of the Catholic enclave of Obin Street petitioned for police reinforcements to be sent to the town in advance of Orange demonstrations in July 1873. Though their petition was supported by a Justice of the Peace, no extra police were made available, and when the Orangemen returned from the county demonstration in Armagh, they marched into the ghetto.

At the trial of those of them who were charged with rioting, it was reported that as the 300 Orangemen progressed along the street, one of them rushed at a girl who was waving ‘something green’. This was said to have sparked what one RIC man described as being the worst riot he had witnessed in 20 years.

On December 18th, 1873, around three thousand loyal subjects assembled in the Fair Green, a public space close to Portadown town centre. They gathered to protest against the Home Rule Bill that was being debated in the British Parliament. That evening the mob assembled at the Catholic Church in William Street. They fired shots and smashed windows in the church and in the nearby parochial house. Then they headed for Obin Street but were stopped by the RIC in Woodhouse Street.

On August 15th, 1880, around 300 loyalists attacked Obin Street. They pulled down a Nationalist arch and damaged houses in the adjoining Curran Street area. The following day a number of Catholics were injured when St. Patrick’s Band was attacked on its way to the train station. Catholic houses in Marley Street and other parts of town were also attacked. There were similar incidents in August 1882 and 1883. In 1886 there was another Orange riot in Obin Street that celebrated the defeat of the Home Rule Bill.

On St. Patrick’s Day, 1892 all police were concentrated in Obin Street while the Orange Order marched around the town and its supporters attacked Catholic-owned shops and pubs. ‘Strong drink’, ‘Home Rule’, and ‘Papists who wanted ascendance’ were the theme of a Rev. Austin’s address to the Orangemen at Drumcree on the 10th of July that year. The brethren heard the Reverend read from Joshua 3:4: ‘Ye have not passed this way heretofore’ before returning to town to plan for parades through Obin Street again on the 12th, 13th and 14th of July.

On the 13th around 2,000 Orangemen followed Corcraine Orange band out of the town centre and into the Catholic enclave where they ran amok and smashed windows all along the street.

Part 2 to follow