Loyalism

Loyalism means to support a Christian, patriotic and traditional view. In Britain, this view was Protestant, and supported the monarchy (usually as long as it was pro-Protestant). The same can be said to apply throughout its Empire and Commonwealth. In the USA loyalism took the form of patriotism, it was also Protestant, and supported the rule of law. The roots to the loyalist tradition directly connect to the English Reformation, but is not strictly monarchist, as in the case of both the Cromwellian Commonwealth-Protectorate and the history of the USA.

The political movements which are descendant from this by the twenty-first century had moved far beyond a Protestant view, though there were segments with strains of anti-left wing modernist liberalism, anti-Islam and/or anti-Catholicism.

The broad wealthy Anglo-Saxon Protestant loyalist view is steeped in a tradition around the understanding of Holy Scripture, and the symbolism that derives from it. It is also militant or political action-based in the sense it views the Bible as a template and foundation for real world application.

Within the English-speaking culture the influence of Protestant Christianity is paramount. The King James Bible is a principal component of this, and the symbolism that is found with the Bible is itself revealing. An important reprint of the original 1611 Bible was made in 1833, and on the contents page there is a Maltese Cross.

The frontispiece of the original 1611 Bible illustrated various important facets of the Christian message, including the apostles, tribes of Israel, Moses and Aaron, the members of the Trinity in symbolic form, the four evangelists and their respective angelic-beast representations (angel, lion, bull and eagle) and the vulning pelican. There is a rich and important thread of symbolism represented.

BELOW: Title page of the King James Bible.

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Ireland

In 1534 and 1536 Parliament (under Henry VIII) passed Acts to take the lands and goods of the Order of St John of Jerusalem in England and Ireland, because the Order there had continued to support the Pope rather than be loyal to the king of England. Thus, the Order was dissolved in England, the titles revoked and the goods and lands confiscated.

However, in Scotland, the Order continued unabated. M’Call’s history of Mid-Calder and Torphichen records that the old Sir James Sandilands, seventh Laird of Calder, had converted to Protestantism and was a friend of reformer John Knox. In 1556 Knox came back to Scotland for some time, and stayed at Calder for a period that year. The old Sir James died in late 1559. His son, the first Lord Torphichen was a strong Protestant as his father was, and it is said that it was under patronage and protection John Knox held the Lord’s Supper at the Sandilands’ home, Calder House. However, the older Sir James was likely still Laird there and alive at that time. An unfinished painting of the event still exists.

The seventh Laird’s second son, Sir James Sandilands, had joined the Order of Malta in 1640, and he was recommended by Sir Walter Lindsay, Preceptor in Scotland, to take over as his successor. The seat of the Order in Scotland was located at Torphichen near Linlithgow. The younger Sandilands became Preceptor in 1547. A Protestant and a respected figure in Scotland, he was made ambassador to France in 1559 and 1560. There the Cardinal of Lorraine accused Sandilands of violating his obligations as a Knight of a Holy Order, supporting of heretics and stirring up rebellion. Apparently Sandilands was turned out of Torphichen, and M’Call suggests that the Order was suppressed by Catholics in Scotland. However, they evidently lacked the ability to do so much. Sandilands surrendered his title in 1564 to the mercy of Queen Mary, Queen of Scots, who then made him Lord St John and conferred upon him the lands and possessions of the Order of St John under the noble title of Lord Torphichen, to be held in perpetuity. Thus, the Catholics practically had been thwarted from stopping the Protestant Lord St John.

The Order is thought in general histories (and certainly Catholic ones) to have practically ceased in Scotland, though historian Formhals lists some sources which indicate that the Order continued in Scotland. It is also known that many of the Knights who had not converted to Protestantism were still around. A question may also be raised about the Protestant Knights, and any continuing fellowship with the Lords of Torphichen.

Some histories point to certain supporters of the Stuarts, and there are some references to Preceptors of the Hospital of Scotland: William Schaw in 1589, Schaw and John Boswell of Auchinleck in 1600, and George or Gilbert Hay in 1642. These names seem to be those of Freemasons, and are listed by Robert Formhals, which may correspond with the story that the Seton or Seaton group of remaining Catholic knights, who did not embrace the Reformation like Sandilands did, and who eventually became (as was alleged by historian T. H. Gilmour and others) involved in the Freemasonry, where apparently they kept alive the Order in the 17th century. However, both Formhals’ and Gilmour’s points are tenuous, and appear to correspond to a known and now generally repudiated Freemason and Jacobite theory about the Templars’ alleged survival within the Order of Malta in Scotland and consequently is designed to link the Knights of Malta with the Freemason lodge of Kilwinning in Scotland. (In fact, a far advanced story exists about the Templars that that encompasses a diverse range of events including the burning of Clerkenwell and the possession of the Shroud of Turin.)

The Masonic preservation view of the Scottish Malta Order was not promoted in all Scottish histories of the Black Order from the 19th century, where examples of materials from the Protestant Black Order of Malta expressly denied Masonic links. Incidentally, author R. E. A. Land attempted to argue that a link could be made from the Order in the island of Malta through French Freemasonry in Paris in the 18th century through to the Protestant Black Order (of Malta). It is a fact that some of the Knights in Malta were Freemasons. However, all direct links to Freemasonry can be considered unnecessary at best, as the Masonic Knights of Malta (Masonic degrees) are clearly separate to the Order of St John proper.

The American historian G. W. Welsh (following Gilmour) argued in 1923 that although not connected any more to Malta or Rome in Scotland, James Sandilands was interacting with a body of lords and effectively openly Protestantised the Order in 1553. This is 11 years before he surrendered the lands to Queen Mary of Scots, and was made Lord Torphichen.

From the time of his ennoblement in 1564, it could be implied very strongly that Sandilands was still continuing the identity of the Order, seeing the actions of Queen Mary of Scots allowing this, by the title Lord St John and holding the estate of Torphichen Preceptory. Certainly there is no evidence that the Order was officially or expressly suppressed, either in Scotland or from Malta, but broadly speaking, at least in relation to the English leadership of the English Langue, the headship and control of the English Langue reverted to Malta.

Yet it is very plausible that among Scottish Protestants there was a desire to perpetuate an identity of the Order. Welsh implies that various of the lords in Scotland were connected, including James Stewart, Earl of Moray, who was regent for King James. Incidentally, it was King James who was responsible for the English Bible tradition of 1611. Sandilands himself was a privy councillor for King James, future king of England. Sandilands died in 1579, his title being inherited by his brother’s son.

In turn, Welsh points out, that it was Scottish Protestants who, connected with those in the Sandliands-Knox circle, were planted in Ireland under King James. Although Welsh also indicates a Masonic lineage of sorts, including the fact that King James was a Mason, he also speculated that the identity of the Order St John could have been brought into the plantation of Ulster, so that by the time of the 1640s, it could be “revived” in Ireland, he wrote, “At this time the Protestants revived their Scotch organisation to protect themselves and it was secret.”

The prospect of a secretive organisation is not unlikely in 1643 in Ireland, since secret organisations existed before and after. Examples include clubs from the 1660s in support of the Cromwellian cause (in England), from 1686 in support of King William’s cause (in England) and from about 1690 in support of Protestant ascendancy (in Ireland). Besides of course Freemason lodges existing throughout Britain in the same period, as well, other conspiracies, including the Sealed Knot, potentially elements of the Popish Plot, etc. Besides, there were the networks of Thurloe, the various sides in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, the Rosicrucians, the Hartlib Circle, the Green Ribbon Club, the Jesuits, etc.

So a Protestant Knights of St John existing is not unlikely. In the same period, the Bailiwick of Brandenburg (essentially the German Langue) had become Protestant, and fully broke away from Malta in 1581. This Bailiwick continued with much success as an independent branch of the Order, through the Thirty Years’ War, and becoming a Prussian Order.

Incidentally, M’Call reports that in 1633, “upon the resumption by Charles I of the superiority of all church lands, John, Lord Torphichen, felt apprehensive that his rights as the successor of a religious order might be prejudiced thereby, and after petitioning parliament, he obtained an award of His Majesty, following a resolution of the Privy Council which was to have the force of an Act of Parliament, that the resumption should be held in no degree to encroach upon the superiorities of the barony of Torphichen in Linlithgowshire.”

This indicates the possibility of thought that the idea of the perpetuation of the Order still existed well into the 17th century, and that its headship was connected to the then Lord Torphichen. Further, that Protestants against King Charles before and into the 1640s, might associate with the Order, as the fifth Lord Torphichen, who died in 1649, was on side with the English Parliament, therefore part of the Puritan party. The principal Puritans at that period were the Presbyterians, and as Presbyterianism was having a strong effect at that time throughout the British Isles (in fact the closest point the English came to the Scottish Presbyterians), the Sandilands name was heroic and there could have been a positive view towards a Protestant form of the Order.

It is reported by a range of histories of the Black Order, that when the Catholics infamously massacred many Protestants in Ireland from 1641, the Protestants organised themselves by introducing into Ireland (i.e. reviving) a Protestant Order of St John in 1643, as a secret organisation to protect the Protestants. This new form of the Order certainly changed the nature of the Order, but was not inconsistent with the spirit of the Order.

The Cyclopædia of Fraternities records that the “fraternity was known in 1643, two years after the massacre of Irish Protestants in 1641, when it was said to have been introduced into Ireland for the protection of those who had providentially escaped,” which was likely to have been at Dublin. Shortly afterwards, Oliver Cromwell came and aided the Protestant cause in Ireland.

The fifth Lord Torphichen, being on side with the Scottish Presbyterians and the English Parliament, the broad Puritan party, might have been looked to as a figurehead. It is plausible that some Scottish settlers in Ireland would have hearkened back to the concept of the militancy of the Order, when the Catholic Irish rebelled in 1641, as some Scottish settlers organised the Lugan force in Derry, some worked with a Scottish force in Carrickfergus and other Scots (especially those who had lost their possessions) made their way to Dublin.

The earliest reference in the histories seem to agree upon is 1643, but the details are very scant, and those histories seem to be quoting a common tradition. The suggestion that the Order was introduced into Ireland seems to indicate that there was some link or acknowledging of Scotland, as the Order had turned Presbyterian in Scotland less than a hundred years before.

The English Parliament had funded landing a Scottish liberation force into northern Ireland in 1642, though it does not seem that the Order was specifically “introduced” by the Scottish army which had no stake in Ireland other than being paid to be there. But this does show, as is well known from all histories of events from that period, that in the early 1640s, there was a high point of agreement and even unity between the English Parliament and the Covenanter Scottish Presbyterians. The English Parliament, which largely had become inclined towards Presbyterianism at that time, not only funded the Scottish liberation in northern Ireland, but eventually the English Parliamentarians even signed the Covenant and went on to make the Westminster Confession in line with Presbyterians views.

Dublin and its surrounds (the Pale) was the Anglo-Irish centre in Ireland. Dublin was the seat of the government, as well as being a Protestant religious and military stronghold. In light of the growing pro-English Parliament and broadly Puritan feeling among the Protestant Anglo-Irish, and that fellow Scottish Presbyterians were in the same situation, and the inclination of the Anglo-Irish in Dublin towards Presbyterianism, it follows that they would have been most receptive to the Presbyterian view and potentially the associated idea of the Order of St John.

Although viewed as Scottish tradition, there are significant reasons as to why and how the Order was in Dublin, as afterward (in 1797) that is where the Black Order was to be found. There are indications about Dublin in 1643, and why those Anglo-Irish Protestants there would have been so receptive toward accepting the tradition of a Presbyterian knighthood from Scotland.

The context of what was going on in Dublin in 1643, who was there, and why the English Parliament-aligned Protestants would embrace the Order of St John, was not just because of the Presbyterian tradition of the Order, but because of other specific links to the Order in Ireland itself. The general point can be made that Dublin, while the capital of Protestant resistance, was also the old home of the Order in Ireland, with its Irish headquarters there at Kilmainham.

Robert E. A. Land recorded that the Chapter General in Malta in 1631 had made some arrangements to combine the Commanderies of Kilbarry, Killara and Crook (in County Waterford), and erected them into the combined Commandery into a Magistral Chamber of the Priory of Ireland and annexed it forever to the Grand Master’s table in Malta. Kilbarry Commandery was the property of the Tenth Earl of Ormond in the dissolution of Henry VIII, and Land suggests that the ruling of 1631 may have created a link between the First Duke of Ormond and the Knights of Malta.

The Catholic Irish rebelled in 1641, when Ormond was still an Earl, and he was a military leader loyal to King Charles in fighting the Catholics using Dublin as his base. The Catholics took over most of Ireland, further massacring Protestants, particularly in Ulster, while Ormond successfully defended the Pale (the district around Dublin). In August 1942 Ormond was made a Marquess and received the thanks of the English Parliament. At the same time the Parliament and King Charles were preparing to fight a civil war against each other in England.

However, for those in Ireland, the Catholic threat and their horrible massacres (which have since been airbrushed) were an existential threat.

King Charles gave Ormond command in Ireland, and in 1643 Ormond attempted to make peace with the rebel Catholic Confederacy. At the same time, the Scottish forces were fighting the Catholics, and the north eastern part of Ireland sided with the English Parliamentarians against the king, as did other pockets in Ireland. Ormond’s peace attempts succeeded with Ormond effectively handing over most of Ireland to the Catholic Confederates. This was a major blow to the Protestants, and particularly incensed the Puritan party in Dublin. Ormond was instructed by the king to send over to England a large amount of troops as well as to attempt to keep the then Parliament-aligned Scots at bay in northern Ireland. This left Ormond essentially controlling the Pale and Kildare, the Scots in the north, a patchwork of hold out Protestants while the Catholics ravaged the land.

Ormond found many of the Protestants in Ireland were siding with the pro-Puritan and (at that time) Presbyterian-aligned English Parliament and his peace with the Catholics in 1643 turned many Protestants against him. While it could be possible that Ormond may have been involved in an Order of St John, the indication is that the organisation was about protecting Protestants, which fits more with the actions of the Scots and the Parliament-aligned Protestants, not Ormond or the side of King Charles.

There is yet stronger evidence which indicates a link to Order of St John with the Anglo-Irish Puritans. From 1641, the Anglo-Irish Parliament at Dublin, which initially was acting under King Charles, was attempting to resist the Irish rebels who were massacring and displacing the Protestant settlers.

The English Parliamentary faction there, who strongly objected to Ormond’s peace with the Irish Catholic Confederates in 1643, included some of the Irish members of the Dublin Parliament and their friends, notably George FitzGerald 16th Earl of Kildare, Major Michael Jones, Sir Francis Hamilton (Bt), Captain William Ridgeway, Mr Fenton, Sir Charles Coote (Bt), Captain W. Parsons, Sir Robert Meredith and Sir John Temple.

Michael Jones, a lawyer in Dublin, joined Ormond’s army in 1641 and Jones was promoted to a captain of cavalry.

(Jones was the son of the Bishop of Killaloe who recorded many of the outrages the Irish perpetuated against the Protestants and sent these reports to London, causing an outcry at the Catholic atrocities.) Michael Jones was in the Earl of Kildare’s regiment, and was selected by the Parliamentary (Puritan) faction to represent their objections to Ormond’s peace directly King Charles in Oxford.

In November 1643 when Ormond was put in charge of Ireland by the king, Michael Jones congratulated him in the name of the Earl of Kildare indicating that Jones was now Kildare’s right hand man. The Earl of Kildare’s family had been extensively involved in the Order of St John in Ireland, and his ancestors had even built several of the Order’s Preceptories, including the Black Abbey (or Preceptory) at Tully, in County Kildare, which in 1643 was near the (temporary) Catholic-Protestant border.

Moreover, among the Earl's ancestors, the great Ninth Earl of Kildare had been involved with the Brotherhood of St George in the fifteenth century, and the Eleventh Earl of Kildare was involved in a similar proposal plotting a return of the Order of St John in Ireland in 1548 (after Henry VIII had shut it down) also hiding under the name of the Brotherhood of St George. (It was well known at that time that the Order of St George was a cover name, and that it was known to really be the Order of St John.)

Kilmainham at Dublin had also been the headquarters for the Priory of St John in Ireland for centuries. Therefore, it is extremely plausible and entirely natural that it was at Dublin that the Protestant Order of St John was set up, with its members being those Puritans who sided with the English Parliament, such as Michael Jones, Sir Charles Coote and the Earl of Kildare as leader.

When Jones discovered that Ormond was sending him and 6,000 troops to fight Parliament in England, instead of speaking to King Charles (as his own faction had planned) he went and joined the Parliamentary forces in Cheshire and become the governor of the city of Chester in 1646. Jones then went back to Ireland and blockaded Dublin forcing Ormond to surrender in 1647. Jones then became governor of Dublin and took control of the region.

In the same period as Jones was in England, Coote went to Derry and fought for Parliament there. With Cromwell’s arrival in August 1649 and conquest of Ireland had Jones serving as Cromwell’s second in command until his death in December 1649, which indicates the broad group associated with the Earl of Kildare was seen as very influential, as the Kildares had been the major power in Ireland for centuries.

Seeing as the very Order of St John in Ireland people acted in 1643, and there was also an alignment with the Scottish Presbyterians, this points to a hitherto unknown confluence of factors. Further, later history and interdenominational conflict between Anglicanism and Presbyterianism may be responsible for those aligned to a Presbyterian viewpoint to not consider the Kildare connection. In the scheme of things a Kildare connection would motivate a Sandilands-Scottish Malta Order connection in 1643. Further, this would make Dublin rather than Ulster the centre of the 1643 appearance of the Order, which is consistent with all the facts and common sense.

How far this Order of St John of 1643 reached can only be speculated, but it must be considered within the historical context of those times.

Anthony Morgan, of the Hartlib Circle, went to Ireland at the same time as Oliver Cromwell did, and was involved with various other members of the Hartlib Circle there. Morgan was consequently knighted by Cromwell. Moreover, the Earl of Kildare was married to Robert Boyle’s sister, Boyle (son of the Earl of Cork) himself being a Hartlib man, eventual founder of the Royal Society, etc. Another Boyle sister, Katherine Jones, or Lady Ranelagh, was also part of the Hartlib Circle.

Other Hartlib figures include William Petty. Thus, plausible connections can be made with Scottish Protestants and their connection to and memory of the Order in Torphichen, the Anglo-Irish Protestants at Dublin with the Earl of Kildare who were directly connected to the Order in Ireland, Oliver Cromwell himself and his eventual government and the Hartlib Circle.

The Order of St John in Ireland is likely to have been inspired by the model of the then Protestant form of the Order in Brandenburg (Germany), which was engaged in a war with the Catholics ravaging the Holy Roman Empire. The parallels between the situation in both places are obvious, as well the known fighting spirit of the Knights of Malta who were famous for fighting Turks against all the odds, hence their organising for protection. In the context of the Wars of Religion (the Thirty Years’ War in Europe and the Wars of Three Kingdoms in Britain) the Protestant Knights of St John were not in a fight against the Turks, but against the Roman Catholics.

BELOW: George FitzGerald, the 16th Earl of Kildare.

Loyalist tradition

The tradition of having to organise with security against an enemy can be found in various Bible stories or with the Maccabeans who fought a civil war in Greek Judea. The early Christians themselves had to adopt certain secure ways of operating right under Rome as the underground church.

In the context of the Reformation and ensuring belligerence between Catholics and Protestants, it follows that there was some element of secrecy around militia activities.

In the time of threat of invasion or uprising in Protestant England under Queen Elizabeth I (in 1586), spontaneous defensive groups were set up in various regions, going by the name of Loyal Protestant Associations. In the English Civil Wars Puritan associations were set up, which were superseded in Eastern England by the New Model Army (the old model being the regional militias).

Thus, in 1643 Ireland it makes perfect sense that, in the face of Catholic massacres and their take over of much of Ireland, and the ceasing of hostilities by the Royalists against the Catholic threat, that an organisation calling itself the Order of St John did undertake to protect the Protestants in Ireland.

The victory of Oliver Cromwell in Ireland therefore must have been met with great relief and support from the Protestants. Cromwell went on to become the ruler of the three kingdoms.

After the years of the strong rule of Puritan Oliver Cromwell, supporters to his cause were everywhere but weakened. These became known as the Whigs. Meanwhile, those who followed after the Royalists were called Tories.

The Whiggish loyalists throughout Britain struggled to stop the rise of Roman Catholicism. When King James II brought trouble to the realm with his departure from accepted tradition, it was actually primarily Tory loyalists who appealed to King William of Orange from Holland.

From 1686 there was a Protestant association based in England which was planning to bring over the Protestant King William so as to counteract the threat of Roman Catholicism. In 1688, when King William of Orange arrived, they held their meeting in Exeter, which was the forefather of all the anti-Jacobite or pro-Hanoverian loyalist movements.

There is no doubt that the Protestants of the Cromwellian era now undertook to hold Ireland against the Catholics. Famously, William the Third won battles in Ireland at Derry and at the Boyne River, which victory is still remembered by Irish Protestants on the 12th of July.

The Williamite War began the long years of trouble with the Jacobites. Over the next decades there was the constant threat of the return of the Jacobites and a constant need to support the Hanoverian hegemony. In Scotland, a loyal militia was formed to keep the Jacobites at bay, which became known as the Black Watch. In Ireland many Independent Volunteer Corps formed to protect Protestant interests. These also developed political associations or clubs. It is through these that the Dublin connection of the 1643 Order of St John would have survived.

Various Loyalist Societies or Associations existed since the Williamite Wars. The Boyne Society began in Enniskillen, but there were also groups based around Derry, Aughrim and Dublin, being the Apprentice Boys, the Aughrim Association and the Royal (Boyne) Society. The Loyal Boyne (Orange) Society of Antrim also existed. All of these groups were spread more widely than their founding cities or areas.

These groups fulfilled different functions, particularly, as a veterans group, as a militia group, as a gentlemen’s group. There was also a growing development of them into secret societies with the influence of Freemasonry. It must be pointed out that Freemasonry freely adopted from existing ideas, so the notion that some groups “borrowed from Freemasonry” might actually be the reverse.

With the threat of Jacobite rebellions in Scotland, and related Catholic rebellions in Ireland, the King’s Own Regiment (known as the Lancaster) had its officers found The Loyal and Friendly Society of the Blew and Orange in 1733 or 1734. The word “blew” is the old spelling of blue.

Various other militia or Yeomanry groups formed in Ireland through the 18th century facing the threat of Roman Catholic rebellion. One important movement was the Loyal Protestant Association. With the events surrounding the Battle of Culloden in 1745, Alexander McAulay of Belfast was involved in the formation of the Loyal Protestant Association, and sent word of the details to the Bishop of London, who passed on the message throughout England and Scotland. Over the decades there was indeed a Protestant Association movement, for example, in England with high level members they produced material against Roman Catholic teachings.

Over the years the various different Loyalist groups were superseded by the Orange Order (1795) along side the Royal Black Institution (1797).

BELOW: A sketch of King William III from The Protestant Standard (Sydney).

Boyne Societies

That King William was a second Cromwell is well attested to, and it is likewise obvious that the forces which fought the Catholics and which aligned to Oliver Cromwell in the 1640s likewise supported King William III in his war with 28 years between the death of Cromwell and the arrival of King William III.

The same pattern was followed, of defensive organisations, which continued in Ireland as means of continuing to enforce the victory of the Williamite War.

The first Boyne Society or Association is thought to have formed as early as 1690, because it is mentioned in 1695 and in official records in 1710. Ogle, the Orange historian, records that this organisation, with its signs of mutual recognition, began in Enniskillen, was made up of war veterans who served in the Williamite wars. The organisation included their near kin who supported William III, though the organisation gradually expanded in Ulster to all classes, and was found throughout Ireland within a few decades.

Particularly from the 1740s, the Boyne Society had a strong presence known across Ireland, in Dublin, Armagh, Wexford, Enniskillen, Fermanagh, Tandragee, Drogheda, etc. In fact, these units, being so widespread, were recognised, paid and commissioned by the government to do militia duties after the French Revolution in 1789. Ogle reported extensively on their activities during that period, even showing that their oath was a basis for that of the Orange Order.

The passwords and signs of the Boyne Society are partially known. One person would put an open left hand onto his right shoulder, representing a wound that King William III received in the Battle of the Boyne. The other person would respond by putting his right arm across his breast, as if in a sling, just as how the king did when he rode his horse during the battle.

The password is thought to derive from when the Jacobite forces besieged Londonderry in 1689, and when friendly forces from Enniskillen marched to help, using the password: “Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel,” to which the other replied, “I AM hath sent me unto you.”

The Boyne Society would also march each year on the 1st of July and the 4th of November. (Due to calendar reforms, the 12th of July became the preferred date for marching.) The Aughrim Society also held a march in Dublin every year.

Ogle recorded that, “Many noblemen and Gentlemen of property and standing lent their influence to the Society, and openly encouraged its extension. So effective and material were the exertions of the members of the Boyne Society, in the protection and encouragement of the Protestant settlements, that His Majesty King George the Second, openly supported them, and declared they were the great mainstay of the Church and English connection in that kingdom.” This was in 1736, which would further encourage Societies and Yeomanry groups throughout Ireland, for which records exist particularly from the 1770s.

The Boyne Society at Enniskillen had a long connection there, both in its early years, and by its prolific leader, Col. Bagwell in the 1770s. Members of these groups were often called Boynemen.

The French Revolution caused a wave of concern throughout Britain, and loyal associations were set up everywhere, even in the Colony of New South Wales under the Governor’s orders. There was a shift from the threat of “popery” to the more present danger of radicalism.

In Ireland, the combination of Catholicism and the ideas of the French Revolution were troubling. The influence of radicalism resulted in the formation of a “United Ireland” (Irish independence) movement made up of both poor Presbyterians and Catholics.

Complicating matters were thuggish bands of Protestants and similar bands of Catholics who were wrecking houses and property of the other side around the economic control of linen production. It was out of this conflict that the first lodge of the Orange Order was born. The Battle of the Diamond took place in 1795, where the Protestants won decisively and eventually forced thousands of Catholics out of the County Armagh. In the battle, the Catholics managed to burn down the pub which was being used as a headquarters for a group of Protestants. Several key locals then gathered at the site and pledged the creation of a new secret society, the Orange Order.

Thus it was completely natural that in 1795 there was the formation of a more particularly Lodge-style group known now as the Orange Institution based upon the previous Boyne Societies and other separate groups.

Catholics were stirring throughout the land, and in response to this threat, the Orange Order swept throughout Ireland and the rest of Britain. However, the Catholics found the greatest organisation in the radical “United Ireland” movement, which ironically was led by some Presbyterians. These were aligned to France, and in 1798 they unsuccessfully rebelled, being defeated in the Battle of Vinegar Hill. (A similar rebellion in New South Wales was crushed in 1804 by the government and Loyal Associations.)

The Protestant establishment found that the Orange Order (founded 1795) was the best means to counteract the Radicals, and so within two years it was being purged of its thuggish elements and was quite respectable. In 1798 organisation was reformed and it took on a simplified and Anglican character. Thus, in 1798, the Orange Order was instrumental in resisting the “United Ireland” rebels, who were backed by French promises of arms and were mainly Catholics.

The Orange Order drew upon and replaced a variety of previously existing groups. As a semi-secret society, it was modelled loosely upon the lodge system, though not Masonic itself. The lodge system was necessary method of keeping business in house, and for building bonds of friendship among members.

The Orange Order was partially suppressed in Ireland in 1823 and 1825, but continued in Scotland and England. The growth and influence of these movements was aided by the fact that the son of British King George III, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, was chosen Grand Master for the Orange Order. In 1836 to 1845 the Order was also banned, though obviously continued underground. In 1836 the Grand Protestant Confederation was founded in England to take the place of the Orange Order, which was particularly strong in Manchester and Liverpool, and this eventually merged with the revived Orange Order.

The Grand Protestant Confederation was essentially the same as the Orange Order, what might be called the English Orange Order, but avoided the appearance of being Ireland-centric and had a mutual benefit society element. Both this and its twin, the Orange Order, offered two degrees: the Orange and the Plain Purple. The Orange Order also came to tolerate the Black Institution in the mid-19th century. By the 20th century the Orange Order also accepted the more masonic Royal Arch Purple Degree.

In 1903, the Independent Orange Order was formed. As a whole, the Orange Order boasted tens of thousands of members across the English-speaking world, but dwindled rapidly in the latter part of the 20th century onward.

BELOW: Australian Orange, Royal Arch Purple and Royal Black members.

Hodge

Salter

The Knights of the Boyne

The roots behind the Orange Order and the origins of the relationship between it and the Black Institution, and much of the content of the Orange and the Black can be largely explained by what is to be found in the Royal Boyne Society, and an associated shadowy group on gentlemen called The Knights of the Most Glorious Order of the Boyne.

The Royal Boyne Society was first known as the Royal Society and it was based in Dublin. It was more secretive and elite than ordinary semi-secretive Boyne Societies. There is no known beginning date of the Royal Boyne Society, but it is known that by 1725, it had a developed amount of ritual somewhat comparable to Freemasonry known as the coloured degrees.

Academic studies report that members of this society were restricted to the Protestant gentry, but later admitted all classes of loyalists. Members of this society became known as Orangemen. While the Royal Boyne Society began with a confined membership of gentry and officers, the gentry and officers later were members of a second, exclusive degree or tier, called The Knights of the Most Glorious Order of the Boyne, which was confined to a smaller number of people.

The Royal Orange Boyne Society and the Boyne Society seem to be two different manifestations of similar organisations. The Boyne Society operated as a militia unit in Dublin, and was known as history records that the Boynemen paraded with arms, and were involved in keeping the peace in the town. While the Boynemen were used for military purposes, the Orangemen were involved in lodge meetings.

It is suggested that the membership of this Order was confined to those who could trace their descent from men who fought under King William at the Boyne. Only men of Protestant parents could join this club.

The Royal Boyne Society was not restricted to Dublin either. The Armagh County Museum has displayed a wall chart of the Loyal or Royal Orange Boyne Society, which has various symbols on it, including what is found in the modern day Orange, Arch Purple and Black Institution degrees.

The wall chart is displayed two sections. The first section contains various symbols and Biblical scenes. The second shows what appears to be the sites of King William III’s battles.

The first chart has, at the centre, an archway, with the words HOLINESS TO THE LORD. Within and around it are an array of symbols, such as, a sun, a moon surrounded by stars, a three-sticked candle, an anchor, a ladder with the letters FHC on each rung (faith hope and charity), a large eye, an anchor, an open bible, a five-pointed star, a rooster, a lamb, a skull and cross-bones, a triangle with twelve candles, the Ark of the Covenant, a beehive, etc. etc.

Around the edge are various pictures, relating to Jericho, Joshua and the twelve stones as well as Moses’ grape-carrying spies, the separation of the tribes, Gideon and the men drinking water, Elijah and the cloud the size of a man’s hand, Noah’s ark and David and Saul.

From this chart it some may deduced that by appearance there may be a superficial influence of Scottish Freemasonry into the Royal Boyne Society. However, it may be that the symbols were in common use, and not specifically by Masons, or even that Masons came to borrow their own symbolism from other older sources which were the same as Protestant ones. In other words, that Freemasonry absorbed elements from other pre-existing sources.

Tracing the imagery, it is apparent that some of the ideas and symbols of the Boyne passed into the Orange, but the larger amount came to be part of both the Arch Purple and more particularly the Black Institution. Many of the Bible stories illustrated by the Royal Boyne Society became the source of the coloured degrees which were perpetuated in the Black system.

It is a fact that the Orange Order itself was began in 1795 by Freemasons. However, Orangeism has had reforms and was never intended to be Masonic, though it used a secret society style system. Like the other times in British history, there was a real threat of an Irish rising in the late 18th century because of the French Revolution. Therefore, it follows that there was a widespread and government backed organisation of Orange lodge-militias across Ireland.

As for those who had been involved in the Boyne system, it would be naturally unsatisfactory to come into the much simplified Orange system. Thus, some members being dissatisfied that the Orange Order had not taken the larger system and degrees of the higher degrees would seek to perpetuate them. With the early reforms of the Orange Order in 1798 the Orange Order made stipulations against all such degrees, with the direct effect that they stopped the Orange institution being taken over by Freemasonry itself. However, this left all the system of the previous higher degrees available. This led to some Orangemen forming an unauthorised degree that was more Masonic in nature, called the Royal Arch Purple, which they formed as a separate body. The Orange Order itself had a second degree called a Marksman degree which was basically those who were ready to go out and fight as a militia. Eventually the Royal Arch Purple became like a third degree to the Orange Order.

At the same time, those who wished for the old coloured degrees formed a bodies called the Black Men’s Association, which derived from or was synonymous (and certainly contemporary) with the New System of the Loyal Orange Boyne Society, which in turn derived from the Knights of the Boyne.

The coloured degrees were illustrative and used Biblical passages to convey some meaning, besides the Orange (Gideon), second Orange Purple degree and Arch Purple (Jacob, Moses), the Black system degrees were as follows:

Black (Joseph, Moses, Elijah) (Knight of the Encampment of Israel or Knight Companion)

Scarlet (Rehab) (Knight of the Bell)

Mark (Crossing Jordan twelve stones, Two and a half tribes) (Priestly Pass)

Blue (Wise men from the East) (Star and Scimitar)

White (David, Jonathan) (Knight of Israel)

Gold (Priest vestments) (Golden Garter or Priestly Order)

Green (Noah) (Sword and Covenant)

The Black Institution, as it is known today, emerged in 1797, but took on the coloured degrees of the Royal Boyne Society. While this has some superficial similarities to Freemasonry, it is clear that the coloured orders were Biblically inclined, and is likely the origin for several Masonic degrees. It would be reasonable to state that the Royal Boyne Association has been superseded by the Black system.

The Knights of the Most Glorious Order of the Boyne, which was very secretive, has only been assumed by scholars to be the second tier or body with which sat behind the already exclusive Royal Boyne Society. This relationship would in some way account for the precedent of the kind of relationship that the coloured degrees would have with the Orange system. Except, the coloured degrees belonged to the Royal Boyne Society which would equal the Royal Black Institution. Therefore, it would imply something greater and more exclusive than even the Black Knights.

Known facts of the Knights of the Most Glorious Order of the Boyne are that it was extremely elusive, based in Dublin, presumed to have begun in the early 18th century, but this is only because the Royal Boyne Society is thought to originate to that time (perhaps as early as 1690). One of its later members was Lord Clanbrassil, whose image was painted in 1777. A second image also exists, the wording recorded on the back of painting stating, “A Knight of the Most Glorious Order of the Boyne”.

The members of the knighthood were all nobles and leading gentlemen. It was said to have a strong Puritan strain, forbidding its members, who were required to have been brought up in the reformed religion, to become intoxicated, gamble, or interrupt the chairman when addressing the lodge.

The fact that the Royal Boyne and the Knights of the Most Glorious Order of the Boyne were active in Dublin gives significant grounds to the origins and/or influences on the Black forming in Dublin in 1797. This therefore reaffirms the obvious link between the Knights of the Black Protestant Association and the Knights of the Most Glorious Order of the Boyne.

Yet, if the Biblical degrees of the Royal Boyne Association equated the coloured degrees of the Black, what inference could be drawn about the elite Knights of the Boyne and the Black? The fact that the early materials of the Royal Black Institution referred to themselves as Knights of Malta, this opens to the fact that the Knights of the Boyne were of that older tradition.

BELOW: The earliest surviving Black Warrant from 1808, referring to its founding in 1797. Sir Arthur Wellesley praised the unit in 1809.

Cromwell and the Green Degree

The nature of the Knights of the Boyne, their secretiveness, brings together the probability that this was the modern form of the Order of St John of Dublin in 1643, and their association with the cause of Cromwell, and their connection to Hartlib Circle members. (After all, the first name of the Royal Boyne Society was merely the Royal Society, known Hartlib-based terminology, and further, though perhaps coincidentally, eventually the highest degree of the Black was the Green Degree, which might have tied to Hartlibian 17th century symbolism about agriculture. The Hartlib followers were also involved in what was called the Royal Philosophical Society in Dublin.)

The great deliverance to the Irish Protestants was the arrival of Oliver Cromwell, who went onto to become Lord Protector of England, Ireland and Scotland in the 1650s. After the fall of the Protectorate, Cromwell loyalists who were interested in supporting the Grand Old Cause (the foremost of whom were the likes of John Milton and Samuel Hartlib), early Whigs, formed a club or went by the design of the Green Ribbon. This leads to the strong possibility that the Knights of the Green were in fact linked to the Cromwellians, especially since the symbolism of the Green and artwork about Cromwell (and afterwards the same used for William III of Orange) contains noticeable illustrations of Noah’s Ark and the dove with the olive branch. The content of the old Green Degree gives a number of hints linking back to Oliver Cromwell.

There had been an Order of the Black Riband or Ribbon set up in the 1640s, in support of Charles I, who had been defeated in 1646 by Parliament. This Black Ribbon Club, led by Thomas Stanley, was primarily committed to philosophy, poetry and literature, but itself was connected to the likes of Samuel Hartlib, and through the poet Andrew Marvell, to John Milton. Although initially Royalist in leanings, members of the Order of the Black Ribbon (such as Andrew Marvell) included those who co-operated with Cromwell’s Protectorate. By the time of the Exclusion Crisis and the consequential Glorious Revolution, academics have suggested that the roots of the Whiggish Green Ribbon Club was the Order of the Black Ribbon.

The Knights of the Most Glorious Order of the Boyne is arguably the clandestine link between the Protestant Order of St John of the 17th century, itself linked back to the Order of the 16th century, and the ensuing history of the Black Institution.

Besides the Green and the symbolism around Cromwell’s Protectorate, the Black could also be a symbolic colour for the Puritans, and the Puritans being English Puritans rather than Scottish, though initially having had religious ties through Presbyterian Covenanterism, but existing in Dublin, which was an English not Scottish stronghold. Further, the cause around Cromwell had moved away from the Covenanter position. Thus, the Black, and its symbolism of the body of Joseph, Moses (the lawgiver) and Elijah could possibly represent Cromwell and William III, as well as the typical symbolism in the Black around Elijah and the patron of the Order of St John being John the Baptist. The Scarlet might indicate the English armies, beginning with Cromwell’s New Model Army. Other content too seems symbolic.

BELOW: A chart illustrating Oliver Cromwell with images of Noah’s Ark and the dove with the olive branch. The ritual of the Knights of the Green, or, Green Degree of the Knights of Malta provides details which indicate Oliver Cromwell.

The Black and the Templars

In 1797, the Royal Black Men’s “Honorable Protestant Association” emerged in Dublin. This was in line with the “New System” of the Royal Boyne Society, particularly, the Knights of the Boyne, which similar iteration in 1798 was but the latest of a system going back to the reign of King William III and before. These “Black Men” described their “noble Order” as meeting together “for the sole and only purpose of relieving our distressed and oppressed loyal Protestant brethren round the globe.” The use of the colour black was a sign of Protestantism, and it has been used since the Reformation especially among Calvinists (e.g. Presbyterians) as symbolic. The colour black, their designation as knights, and their avowed linking of themselves to their “Christian forefathers, the Knights of Malta” struggling “against Turks and Infidels” all indicated that at the outset, they viewed themselves as being a continuation of the Order of St John of Malta.

Tony Gray, a historian in the 1990s wrote a book on the Orange Order, where he stated, the Black “claim[s] a succession which goes back to the Knights Hospitallers”, and refers to the Knights of Malta. While obviously the Hospitallers during the Crusades were Roman Catholics, yet it was well known that the Scottish Hospitallers converted to Protestantism, and the Protestant Irish society founded in 1643 likewise had many reasons to connect to the legacy of the Order of the Knights of St John.

It has been suggested that in the early days, the Orange Order was primarily an Anglican Church of Ireland institution, and that in order to keep the inner secrets within Protestant orthodoxy, the Black Order emphasised the Trinity, which would exclude some suspect Protestants as well as thuggish elements. However, on occasion the very opposite claim has been made about lower class and disreputable characters joining the Black, but that could have been the case at certain times. Tony Gray indicated that it was fairly easy to go through the degrees of the Black in the 1990s, whereas in the earlier years the top degrees were more and more restricted. (At one time limited to actual gentleman.)

This disparaging of the Black may well stem from Anglican elements taking a dim view of Evangelical Presbyterians, for the Black certainly had a strong reason to be fairly Presbyterian in character, relating back to James Sandilands as an actual Knight of Malta turned Presbyterian, the 1643 party which was Presbyterian and Puritan, the Williamite war which led to the formation and continuing of pro-Whig societies again aligned with Presbyterians and Dissenters.

Considering that the Black called itself a “Protestant Association” which was in line with a movement which existed in Britain, the question has been raised how the Black could claim to be Knights of St John. The term “black” has a very strong connection to the Hospitallers, as in the term, “Black Abbey” and so forth in the Middle Ages, in reference to the black cloaks of the medieval knights and their chaplains.

Looking at the emergence of the Black in 1797, the way by which the Knights of Malta of Sandilands, or the Order as it was in 1643, or the history of the Boyne Society connects together, some have tried to say that the connections are through Freemasonry. The story that part of James Sandiland’s Scottish Catholic knights eventually ended up at the Kilwinning Masonic Lodge in Scotland is repudiated by Freemasons themselves. Likewise, to try to connect actual Knights on Malta becoming Freemasons, being banished from Malta, and somehow ending up in Paris and a part of French Freemasonry, which in turn influences Irish Masonry, is fairly weak and tenuous.

The best evidence points to a straightforward history in Ireland from 1643, which in turn links back to the Order of St John as it was in Ireland when the Order was in Rhodes, and importantly hearkens back to the Order in Torphichen through the pro-Presbyterian and Scottish alliance sentiment which was even more clear among the English in Ireland than the Long Parliament in England in 1643. To be clear, the express documentary evidence for this does come from relatively late dates, but actually no later than major narratives on the era (i.e. during the reign of Queen Victoria), and other types of evidence indicate the strong likelihood of a connection from the Order of St John to the Black Order.

This leads to the point about why the Black in 1797 (as shown in 1808), and the Boyne Society in 1798, appear to use some sort of Masonic imagery. There are several reasons which can be offered.

First is that the Masonic imagery itself was taken from Protestant, Baconian, Cromwellian etc. sources. Freemasonry has a long history of suborning other imagery, orders and ideas. It is well known that the Masonic “Knights of Malta, Rhodes and Palestine” and various other Masonic degrees and orders are absorbed from elsewhere and that most of their rituals are modern era inventions.

Second is that with Freemasonry rising in popularity in the 18th century, there were various Freemasons who may have been involved in the Boyne Society. The Orange Order was founded by Freemasons. Therefore seeing as the symbolism, which was commonly used in both Protestantism and in Freemasonry, would naturally appear in the Black Order.

Third is seeing that Masonry absorbs other ideas, it also seeks to take over other organisations. This can be through both deliberate or organic means. But there is ample examples showing how an influx of Freemasonry came into the Black Order through the 19th century.

The first enemy of the Protestant tradition of the Order of St John were the Irish Catholics and Royalists. This gave way to the Jacobites. A conflict then occurred between Catholicism and Freemasonry, which particularly manifested in the French Revolution. This then inspired the United Irishmen. (By this stage there were Protestant Loyalist and United Irish Freemasons too.) The United Irishmen are the ancestors of modern anti-Loyalist forces. However, the Black as a whole, has been caught up in larger struggle against the ideological and political left.

There are Freemasons who claim to be the spiritual descendants of the medieval Knights Templar, in that the Templars go back to certain philosophical origins which are perpetuated within Freemasonry. When the Templars were suppressed, because some of their assets and people transferred over into the Order of St John (numerous properties throughout the British Isles), it is understandable that some Masons would like to trace a preservation of the Templars which would include through the Order of St John.

However, there is a stronger tendency to link together the medieval masons guilds with the Templars. Freemasonry, which arose out of the medieval guilds, was patronised in Scotland by the Stuarts. King James, for example, was part of “Royal Masonry”. Thus, those later Jacobites, who were supporters of the Stuart dynasty, became heavily involved in Freemasonry.

In fact, one particular organisation which was begun, probably by Jesuits, was the Ordre du Temple, in 1681 in Paris, which claimed a decent via English Freemasonry to the Templars. The Ordre du Temple operated as a revived Templar Order, which had an influx of Jacobites around 1688 in the face of the Glorious Revolution. The history of this organisation is very vague, however, there were early known members in 1689 in Scotland, with some suggestion that the movement (i.e. the Jacobite Templars) arose within Scotland itself.

In 1717, Freemasonry became nationally organised in England, and in 1723 the rituals were expanded. In 1724, Dean Swift recorded that Masonry had been taken over with occult ideas. He also recorded that they identified themselves as the Order of St John of Jerusalem. Indeed, the old Masons, as well as the formation of the Grand Lodge in 1717, were all oriented around the concept of the Order of St John.

In 1738 the Pope banned Freemasonry, which meant that British Freemasonry no longer was Jacobite or Roman Catholic, but in political outlook became primarily Protestant. Chevalier Ramsay, a Jacobite Presbyterian who converted to Catholicism and was involved in the Ordre du Temple went and joined the French Freemasons. In 1737, Chevalier Ramsay, possibly a Jesuit agent, then a leading figure in French Freemasonry, made inferences that the Templars were the forebears of the Freemasons, and that the Freemasons should become respectable and embrace their “real” past.

New degrees were formed as chivalric Masonry by 1743, which has been suggested to be a design by Jesuits to infiltrate British Freemasonry and to in turn restore the Stuarts to the British throne. This chivalric Masonry was absorbed into Scotch Rite Masonry and spread throughout the British Isles. However, in the Britain Isles the flavour of the higher degrees was pro-Hanoverian. Irish Freemasonry was made up of both Catholics and Protestants, so the exclusive Jacobite inference of Templarism was being lost.

The Masonic Templar degrees were developed and further created from 1769 to the 1790s by Thomas Dunckerley, which explains the rise of Templar Masonry in Ireland. In 1779 a group of Irish Freemasons obtained a warrant from Mother Kilwinning Lodge in Scotland to be able to administer Templar masonic degrees, which the did under their name of “The High Knights Templars of Ireland Kilwinning Lodge.”

There was also the “Early Grand Encampment” in Ireland which in 1805 claimed to have subsisted in Dublin for over a century. This group, or tradition, is a likely source of reference for Dean Swift who wrote of the Masonic Knights of Malta in 1724. However, the Early Grand Encampment only began issuing charters and warrants in the 1790s, and could have formed in 1780. The fact that the Templars had been in Dublin for “over a century” before 1805, besides being an exaggeration, would be connections back to old Masonic lodges, or to the activities of the Jacobites, or to back to the French Ordre du Temple, which was not a Masonic body, but a religious-oriented Order of Knights Templar. (This in fact might have been a Jesuit-Jacobite body which existed in France but not French at all.)

In the last part of the 18th century, both Irish bodies were overtly identifying themselves as Templars. While both these bodies were Masonic, though autonomous, it is also testified by Freemasons themselves that there were completely independent bodies, which they style as private encampments or preceptories, which were completely outside of Freemasonry in existence at the same time.

The Irish Masonic Templar Encampments used symbols such as a triangle with twelve lights as a symbol, were concerned with the “Holy and Undivided Trinity”, used the skull and bones, coffin and the motto “Memento Mori”. The Scottish Masonic historian David Murray Lyon even recorded a ceremony, which bears passing similarity to some elements in the Black degree of the Royal Black Preceptory and the Black Knights of Malta.

Stevens, in the Cyclopædia of Fraternities, theorised that independent Templar groups in Ireland became identified with the Orange Order early in the 19th century, and that the Scottish Malta body formed from this. Indeed there are those in the Royal Black Preceptory who assume that their body derives from either Freemasonry or the same sources as Freemasonry.

However, considering that the Jacobite Templar movement preceded integration with Freemasonry, that alone already dispels that the Black is merely the product of Masonic origins.

BELOW: A seal from the English Black which met at Spitalfields in London, dating somewhere between the 1800 and 1840. The Templar connections in this seal are obvious, including the cypher on the left which is HKT, i.e. High Knights Templar. The origin is linked by a Freemason interpreter to the south of Ireland.

The Black not Freemasonry

The question then could arise as to why the “New System” of the Boyne Society (1798) and the Black Order from 1797 both appeared to use the same content, and that there is certain similar content used by Irish Masonic Templars and independent groups.

Royal Black Preceptory historian James Frazer claims that elements could have been borrowed from Freemasonry but given new meanings. Indeed, the symbolism and degrees of the English Black, the Royal Britannic Association, and of the later Scottish Malta degree appear to be influenced by Freemasonry. But those influences are of a later date, meaning that through time, there was a growing Masonic influence.

However, it is entirely possible argue that since the inclusion of Templar rituals into Freemasonry came from France 1743 or Dunckerley 1769 onwards, that in fact the prior existence of the Boyne Society’s “Old System” to at least 1725 might suggest that Freemasonry did what it always does and borrowed rituals and imagery from the Protestant, Loyalist and Knights of the Boyne sources.

If elements were taken into the Boyne Society’s “New System” of 1798 and the 1797 Black Order in Dublin from the independent Mason-like Irish High Templars, it would only be content from part of a system that was not actually part of Freemasonry. The fact that the first known "Black" group was called thus itself actually indicates the Malta Order of St John, not the Templars, who used the colour red, and would have been called Red Lodges or Red Cross (as was later prominent in the Irish Black). Further, seeing that secret societies, except for Freemasons, were banned in 1799, it would follow that appearing to be like the Freemasons would allow them to continue an existence without interference from the authorities.

Like the Protestant Association which formed in 1745 in response to the Jacobite threat, the Black Association of 1797 was clearly focused upon being a mutual protection organisation in response to the rising threat of the French and Irish rebellion. Therefore the tendency of the Black Order must have been toward Protestant Christianity, not the teachings of Freemasonry.

Historian Anthony Buckley states that the Boyne and Black symbolism accords with that used in many organisations. The 1650s image of Oliver Cromwell standing between two pillars, with a beehive, eye of providence and other symbols therefore are entirely non-Masonic. Indeed, the symbolism of the original printing of the King James Bible of 1611 has likewise been accused of being “Baconian”, but again, is non-Masonic. So it follows that evolving Freemasonry itself took these common images and symbols and put their meanings to them.

Having said that, it is likely that at least some of the people involved with the Black Men from 1797 would have been Freemasons. The founders of the Orange Order were Freemasons, and because one could not join the Black without first being in the Orange, there is every chance that Freemasons were involved. Remembering also that there were two types of Masons: those who were recognised by the governing bodies of Freemasonry, and those in groups that were merely Mason-like. History records that in Ireland at the time there were many independent Freemason bodies, hedge Masons and other organisations which appeared to be like the Freemasons but were not.

Besides this, if the Jesuits had designed for occultism to take over Freemasonry and destroy Protestantism and the British monarchy, then it failed utterly. If Freemasonry was supposed to be a way for Catholics to get into Protestant nations, it did not work because the Pope condemned Freemasonry. The Jacobite cause entirely collapsed by 1766, when even the Papacy refused to support it. Thus, King George III would have to face the problem, not of Catholicism rebellion, but of radical revolutionaries following the French Revolution.

Ironically, if the Jesuits were responsible for weaponising Freemasonry (including the “Illuminati”), the later Catholics were right to condemn it, because it backfired by attacking the French monarchy instead, being the chief force behind the French Revolution. Thus, Freemasonry and the ideology it spread became the most potent enemy against Catholicism into modern times.

The old coloured degrees of the Boyne Society and the Black Order, as based on Bible stories, do not seem to have Masonic origins nor do they seem to be concentrating on the Temple, like the Templars would. Their very purpose and mission was to support Protestantism, which cannot be said to be a specifically Masonic mission.

Part of the problem about Freemasonry and the progress of the Royal Black Knights through the 19th century has been the obvious influence or even infiltration of Freemasonry into the Black Order. In the early years of the Orange Order, the Black Order had to continue as a separate identity because the Orange Order rejected other allied degrees and Orders, including the Royal Arch Purple and all the coloured degrees of the Black system. The Black Order continued despite all odds along side the Orange, eventually being accepted as the senior body.

Those who controlled the Orange may have wanted to expel and resist any Masonic influences or takeover, as Freemasonry in part was seen as a cause of the French Revolution. There was some indication that the Orange Order might have thought the fuller system of coloured degrees might detract from both the simplicity and the straightforward Christian character of the Orange. Especially as Protestant ministers were influential in the movement.

The Canadian Orange Order accepted the Scarlet and the (original) Blue as independent Orders as part of the Orange Order family.

In the 19th century, there is strong indications that certain Black groups took straight from Masonry. The Malta degree of the Scottish Black Knights bears a great similarity to a Masonic Malta degree, indicating that one took it from the other. There is no indication of a “Malta degree” before the 1820s because the Black Order, in documentary evidence, called itself the “Knights of Malta”. R. E. A. Land says that before an actual Malta degree was adopted, the Order itself believed itself to be the Knights of Malta. They did not see the need to have a degree to become what they already called themselves.

Therefore, the Malta/St John degree of the Scottish Black body of circa 1830 was obviously an addition with no historical link other than borrowing from the Freemasons. The Templar degrees of the English Black body (the Royal Britannic Association) at the same time were also likewise late additions borrowed from Freemasonry.

There is significant evidence that Masonic elements have come into the three main branches of the Royal Black Knights. These are the Irish (the Royal Black Preceptory), the English (Royal Britannic Association) and the Scottish (Knights of Malta). By “branches”, it must be emphasised that for the longest period each branch was made up of semi-independent bodies which meant that there was some differences in degrees, naming and their order. In Ireland alone there were three Black Orders which formed a confluence in 1846, and there can be seen chopping and changing of degrees, names and the addition of a variety of degrees.

Not all degrees are from Masonic origins, but R. E. A. Land, the Cyclopaedia of Fraternities and even Royal Black Preceptory historian James Frazer specifically identified Freemasonry as being an origin source for parts of the material. Certainly the Malta, Templar, (new) Blue, Master Builder and Red Cross degrees are all Masonic and were not part of the original lists nor pictorial evidence from before circa 1830.

But besides the influx of Masonry, there was also a jumbling of the degrees, which R. E. A. Land himself was involved with in the 1880s and beyond (though he records it happening from the 1830s through to the 20th century).

The English branch of the Black Order, the Royal Britannic Association, was the most heavy borrower from Freemasonry in that it claimed to be a Templar Order. The Royal Britannic Association was based in Manchester and London, and had two Templar degrees. (Unlike Masonic Templar bodies, which open in the Templar degree and close in the Malta degree, the later Black open in the Black and closed in the Templar or Red Cross degree). The Royal Britannic Association itself seems to fall out of history in the 1930s, allowing first Preceptory to take up its Black heritage out of abeyance, and to purge it of Freemasonry. (That is, to keep a consistency with the symbolism evident in the Loyal Orange Boyne Society of Armagh, the poster of Oliver Cromwell and the front of the 1611 King James Bible.)

Incidentally, the one time head of the Royal Britannic Association was none other than the Duke of Cumberland, or, King Ernest Augustus of Hanover. Apparently he was also head of the Scottish Black Order. The Royal Boyne Society may also account for the use of the word “Royal” by the Black Institution. It is suggested that the term “Royal” being used is now said to be a reference to the Bible verse in 1 Peter 2:9 which states that believers are “a royal priesthood”, in line with the claim that they are Protestant Knights serving Christ. However, it was desirable for organisations to have a patron, whether a noble or else a member of the British royal family. This certainly was the case in the early 19th century.

The Black Order has consistently identified itself as a Malta Order, and has also been always Protestant first, not Masonic first. This sits well with the history of the Black Order as going back to the Protestants of 1643 who probably knew nothing of the secrets of Freemasonry. Thus, Preceptory upholds keeping consistency with the history of the Black Order, its roots and the Order of St John.

BELOW: A 1798 wall chart illustrating the degrees and content of the Loyal Orange Boyne Society of Armagh.

The Blew and Orange

A number of “Revolution Clubs” existed in Britain which used Orange and Blue ribbons, which met to commemorate the victory of King William and later, to support the Hanoverian succession.

The Blew and Orange was first formed in the Lancasters 4th Foot in or just after 1733. It was an elite club which supported the Hanoverian succession, with officers of that regiment as its core members, but open to others, particularly officers, nobles and especially Hanoverian royals. This organisation had medallions and goblets, with the insignia of a circle with eight points surrounding it, featuring the Hanoverian horse and motto, resting upon an eight-sided pedestal.

The colours orange and blue referred to both the House of Orange and the Dutch blue soldiers. Frederick, the Duke of York, was associated with the Blew and Orange in 1788, and this association continued to at least about 1801. The Duke of York was extensively involved with the Army throughout the Napoleonic period. On one occasion at least, the Duke of Cumberland, according a letter he wrote years later to a Parliamentary inquiry. He wrote that the Prince of Wales, the future William IV, also became a member, and he referred to the Blew and Orange as being an “Orangeman”, which shows its seniority but also pedigree to the Orange Order.

Unlike the Boyne Men and the Orange Order, which opened up to all classes, the Blew and Orange was always an elite group. The Orange Order was further spread into England by military units, as well as militias organising around Orange Lodges. Thus, the pattern of having militia units based as lodges, and then the possibility for the development of more elite black or coloured degrees.

Orange lodges (as they have been known since, to this day) were to be found in England soon after 1795. They were strongest in Manchester, where the Protestant population was in strife with Catholics there. The numbers of Protestants involved built up considerably. Historian Frank Neal wrote that, “Four men in Manchester, observing events in Ireland, quickly recognised the possibilities of the Orange Order for counter-revolutionary activities. In 1807 they set about organising existing lodges in Lancashire, intending to introduce some centralised local control. In 1808 the first Grand Lodge of the English Orange Institution was set up.”

The best known of the four men was Ralph Fletcher, colonel of the Bolton Volunteers, backwoodsman, ardent Protestant and basically a spy-ring organiser; Ralph Nixon, a shadowy figure; Samuel Taylor, colonel and sponsor of the Manchester and Salford Rifle Volunteers; and lawyer W. A. Woodbourne.

The new English Orange Institution was independent to the Irish, and operated on the same level as the Irish. Warrants were issued from the Grand Lodge in Manchester, from number one (Manchester), all around England, including London. In 1819, they set up lodges in Liverpool, which, in coming decades, would become the centre of English Orangeism.

By this stage, several ultra-Tory nobles were involved, and in 1821, the nobles asked the Manchester leaders if they would ask Frederick, Duke of York, son of George III, to become Grand Master. Because of this, and also due to temporary shut downs of the Orange Order in Ireland, the English leader of the Orange Order became the senior, known also as the Imperial Grand Master. This English Grand Lodge then operated out of London.

After the death of the Duke of York, his brother the royal prince, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, took over the Orange Order in 1828. He was also accepted as the head of Ireland. The Duke was also head of the Royal Arch Purple Chapters, which was considered the third degree of Orangeism, though independent of the Orange Order (particularly in Ireland, where the Royal Arch Purple, or RAP, was specifically disendorsed by the Orange leadership).

At the same time that the royal princes, the Dukes of York and of Cumberland became officially involved with the Orange Order in 1822, the Grand Chapter of the Royal Britannic Association was also formed. This points to the likelihood that while the Duke of York was running the Orange Order, both he, and especially the Duke of Cumberland, were working with the Royal Britannic Association.

The Royal Britannic Association, or the Royal Britannic Association of the Knights of the Camp of Israel, was none other than the head body of the Black Order in England. This had obvious direct links to the date of 1807 with the earliest known forms of the Black operating in England. There are indications that the Britannic was directly based on the Black in Dublin, though with a much more Templar and Masonic influence, as its degrees were: Scarlet, Royal Arch, Blue, White, Gold, Black, [Green] Apron, Sword and Star, Knight Templar[-Malta] and Mediterranean Pass.

The closest similarities to Freemasonry were to be found with the Britannic at that time (unlike Ireland or Scotland). While this system used the terminology “Templar”, it is very likely that this included a Masonic Malta influence, in that the terminology used at this time was of the “Templar-Malta” (e.g. on warrants).

Throughout its early history, the Black Institution used the word “Loyal” as interchangeable for “Royal”. While the use of the word “Royal” with the Britannic system seems to arise from the patronage of the royal princes, the Black Association was already called Royal from at least 1807, if not earlier.

It is uncertain if the Duke of Cumberland was already involved with the Black during the Napoleonic Wars, though Robert Formhals refers to the Duke of Cumberland’s patronage in the early 19th century, but it is unknown what records he examined, and some of his inferences seem to do with the Masonic Templar bodies in Dublin rather than the Black.

It is known that the last official meeting of the Blew and Orange was held in 1822, the same year the official Grand Chapter of the Britannic Society was formed (which indicates the integration of it with prior existing English Black Preceptories or Encampments). Historian Aiken McClellan reports that he had an unpublished history of the Royal Britannic Association, which claimed existence before 1810, and which was set up as “an organisation founded or established for the maintenance and propagation of pure evangelical truth, as contained in the written word of God, as well as the dissemination of strict moral ethics; in fact, the system, as propounded, may, with truth, be described as religion veiled in allegory and illustrated by signs and symbols.”

The Duke of Cumberland was overtly associated with the Orange Order from 1828, and was subsequently accused of using the Orange Order as a means to seize the British throne. These claims were clearly exaggerated and repeated by Roman Catholic enemies. A British Parliamentary inquiry took place, which led to the Duke of Cumberland closing down the Orange Order in 1835. In that inquiry, a Rev. James Harris testified that the Duke had always been in the chair, meaning the Orange Order in England (i.e. a distinction between England and Ireland, meaning he held the imperial patron’s position). He also revealed that the military were involved with the Britannic Association.

According to evidence given to the Parliamentary Committee, there were many “Britannic” or Black Lodges in Ireland, and at least four in England, in London, Manchester, Portsmouth and Cambridge. These were described in the official Parliamentary minutes as one of the oldest societies in England and a revival of an old institution.

The Britannic being old was certainly true because it could be traced back through the Blew and Orange in England, and more particularly from other strands in Ireland, and had a history back to the Revolution Clubs going back to the time of King William III.

Whether it was meant in the Parliamentary testimony that the Britannic was thought to go back to the Knights Templar, is possible, but how it made that claim legitimately is unknown, except that it could claim it through Freemason claims, or to the Jacobites and Jesuits, which itself would be troubling to admit. This is also evidence that the Black outside of England was not a Templar-oriented institution, and that it had become so in England under the patronage of Freemason members of the royal family at that time.

In England, since the Britannic was a Templar Order, that certainly did not interfere then with the work of Rev. Sir Robert Peat, who was a leader in the English Orange Order, close to the Duke of Cumberland, and doubtless connected with the English Black. Peat took the step to re-constitute the Order of St John in England, and yet at the same time the Black Order (in Ireland and then Scotland) was claiming to be the Order of Malta. The Black Knights of Malta, particularly in Scotland, seem to have recognised the Duke of Cumberland as their head.

Therefore, the Irish-Scottish Black Order considered itself to perpetuate the Scottish line of the English Langue, while Rev. Sir Robert Peat carried forward the English line of the English Langue. This is strongly indicated in how the Scottish Black described their history, whereas Peat claimed to be reviving the charter of Queen “Bloody” Mary for an English-specific basis for the Order of St John.

This distinction between the Templar idea and the Malta idea is an obvious and well testified contention in the mid-19th century Black, and has led to a broad Irish-Scottish Black position emphasising the Protestant Malta Order in Scotland and Ireland versus a broad English-Irish Black position embrancing the influence of Templarism and Freemasonry while maintaining a status of a Protestant Institution.

It is also possible to interpret that the testimony that the Black was one of the oldest societies in England and a revival of an old institution did directly mean the Order of Malta, after all the oldest documentation going back to the time of King George III did have the Black calling themselves Knights of Malta, and the Britannic and the Freemasons had long compounded the Templars and the Hospitallers together.

In 1836, a new organisation was founded at Huddersfield by J. W. Sylvester, whose father was a colonel of the Manchester and Salford Rifle Volunteers. This was the Grand Protestant Confederation, designed to stay within the law, but allowing the essence of Orangeism to be perpetuated. This was set up as a mutual benefit society. Although Manchester Orangemen joined the Grand Protestant Confederation, an Orange group operated separately in Liverpool.

The Confederation was renamed the Grand Protestant Association of Loyal Orangemen of Great Britain. The Earl of Enniskillen was made Grand Master in 1844, and was accepted in Ireland as the Grand Master in 1845 when the ban on the Orange Order was lifted. The Grand Protestant Association and the Liverpool Orange group merged in 1874.

Meanwhile Britannic Black was also exported to Canada by Ogle R. Gowan. From 1848, the Britannic was joining up with the newly formed Irish Grand Black Chapter, though some of the Britannic groups joined with and were absorbed into Scottish Black Encampment group (probably particularly in the North of England). There were still bodies of the Britannic in existence to the early 20th century, but it seems to have totally died out.

When Orangeism was founded in Victoria, that is, Australia Felix or the Port Philip District, Australia, in 1843, it was done spontaneously without warrant. Because Orangeism proper was banned in Britain, many colonists argued for the English name “Grand Protestant Confederation” rather than the Irish (or illegal) implication of the word “Orange”.

More importantly, in 1847 along side the advertisements for the Orange Order in a New South Wales newspaper appeared an advertisement for “The Loyal and Independent Order of the Knights of Manchester”. In 1848, it changed its name from “Independent” to “Patriotic”.

“There appears to have been an independent Orange Society in Sydney at this time known as ‘The Loyal and Patriotic Order of the Knights of Manchester, Commandary of William III.’ The moving spirits in this institution where J. W. Smith and G. McDonald. It appears from such scant evidence that we can obtain that the object of this institution was to preserve the traditions of the first Orange Society formed 1727, by the officers of The William III. 4th Regt. of Infantry.” (Early History of the Orange Institution NSW).

This report is especially important, because it shows that there was still an “Blew and Orange” tradition. This tradition would have been upheld by the Grand Britannic Association seeing as there was a connection between the two organisations. (Incidentally, the King’s Own Regiment had been posted to New South Wales in 1830s.) This “Order of the Knights of Manchester” was definitely not an Oddfellows organisation, leading to the conclusion that this was the first openly known “Black” group in Australia. Interestingly, its initials were LIOKM could have been intended to mean, “Loyal Illustrious Order of the Knights of Malta”. Its chief officers used Norman-sounding knightly pseudonyms. Finally, it ceased after 1848, probably because the Black Order was having a resurgence, as it was with the Irish groups joining together. Newspapers in the 1850s begin advertising Black meetings in both Sydney and Melbourne.

There is significant evidence to indicate that the Blew and Orange took in Masonic content, which therefore manifested in the Royal Britannic Association, whose members called themselves Knight Templars. This then became the source for an influx of these factors into the Irish Black when it was reforming and uniting the various Black groups in the late 1840s in Ireland.

BELOW: Frederick, Duke of York.

Scotland

The Black Association began and was centred in Ireland in 1797. The earliest known warrants and records show them as the “Honourable Protestant Association”, and name the organisation as the “Royal Black Men’s Association”, or “Knights of Malta” or “Royal Black Association”. (Documents bearing these names existed during the Reign of George III.) Those who wrote histories of the Order suggest that the Order in Ireland was either an imitation of, or a kind of revival of, the Order of St John under James Sandilands in Scotland.

It was asserted by the 19th century Scottish Branch of the Black Institution, who called themselves Knights of Malta, that the Lords Torphichen had continued some sort of patronage through time in Scotland, and this certainly is possible, given that this line was on side with Oliver Cromwell and later against the Jacobites. We find their view published in a New South Wales newspaper in 1878, “Through this line by direct succession comes the Scottish Black. In consequence of the numerous Acts of Parliament which were from time to time passed against secret societies, this branch became at times scarcely known, yet it still existed, and on the repeal of those Acts sprang up again, until finally, after the formation of the Orange Institution none were admitted into the Scotch Black who were not members of the Orange Order, whilst the other branch — that is, those knights who were opposed to Sir James after being deprived of their patrimonial interests — drew off in a body with David Seaton, nephew of Lord Seaton, at their head … obtained shelter of the wing of Masonry … We need scarcely say the Masonic branch eclipsed the other, which at times was almost; if not altogether; lost sight of until it sprung from its obscurity and became in a manner identified with Orangeism.”

This view being expressed in 1878 in New South Wales specifically rejected the Masonic tradition, and indicated that the 1643 organisation had not come from Freemasonry, nor had anything to do with Freemasonry, but must have survived through the ultra-secretive Knights of the Boyne identity, until that organisation reappeared in 1797 calling itself Black Men and Knights of Malta, i.e. the Black Order.

The 1878 information also highlights that there was indeed an almost unknown tradition and history, in opposition to the alleged (and now almost universally rejected) story about the Seton-Masonic connections.

In fact, the primary black degree appears to amalgamate two sources, one being similar to a Masonic-like Templar degree (Joseph and Moses stories), and the other being of what appears to be Biblical origin (Elijah). The link between Elijah and John the Baptist are obvious, which in turn speak to the Malta element. Robert E. A. Land suggested that the characters in the other parts of the degree also point to John the Baptist, and gave a compelling list of reasons why the associated symbolism points to the Order of St John.

(The degrees, by increments, did suffer from mutations, from the late 18th century through to the 20th century, various steps of changes took place. Even in recent decades the Royal Black Preceptory changed some words because of protests from some pharisaical types. These issues can be addressed by simple reforming, turning to older materials and undoing mistaken alterations.)

The Knights of Malta heritage of the Black Order is reported in various histories. David Bryce’s 2001 history continued to assert these claims, and Edward Roger’s old 1857 history was well aware of the Malta claims. Later histories indicate that the Black considered themselves as deriving from the Order of St John, referring to their origins being some 1000 years old (in the 20th century).

When a Grand Black Lodge was organised in Armagh in 1820, there came a shift to using the title “Templar”. This indicates a slight distinction between the Dublin originals and the Armagh organisation. A probable reason for this is because of England’s involvement.

For a period in the 1820s and 1830s, the Irish groups identified themselves as “Templars”, but the earliest documents and history of the earliest period in Dublin shows that they actually claimed to be a Malta Order.

Robert Formhals (without giving any evidence) claimed that the Order was under the Grand Master of the Order of St John prior to 1807, specifically Giovanni Battista Tommasi. Formhals reports that early on in the Black movement’s history, between 1797 and 1807, the Dublin Black were in communication with the exiled-from-Malta Order, and considered themselves a Protestant arm of that body. This assertion seems novel and unlikely.

However, it is possible that the members of the Black were in contact with the French Commission of the Order of St John, at least, Rev. Sir Robert Peat, who must have been in with the Royal Britannic Association. Peat certainly had enough credibility to actually become a leader and founder of the emerged English Langue of the Order of St John, and his closeness to the Orange and Black cannot have been an impediment to this. Peat’s Black Order position would have most naturally lent itself to the re-established Order of St John.

There are further contemporary circumstances which may also align to Formhals’ assertion. The Anglo-Bavarian Langue of the Order of St John of the last part of the 18th century was consciously designed to represent the Irish Priory. The Grand Master of Malta in 1797 was from Germany, and had previously tried to bring harmony between the Brandenburg Protestant branch and Catholic Malta knights. Diplomatic talks had been underway, seeing as the Malta Order looked for friends everywhere, because the French Revolution was starving them of income.

Most notably in all this, the Malta Order innovatively made the Tsar of Russia its Protector in early 1797. The Russian Priory was part of the Anglo-Bavarian Langue, and later, Tsar Paul I would appeal for all Christians (i.e. Protestants too) to help with the Order of St John. Their fight was now against the results of the godless French Revolution. Further, incidentally, there is the fact that an English Freemason lodge made up of Knights of Malta was operating on Malta prior to 1797. An Englishman (J. Meredyth), and after 1797, an Irishman (Sir H. R. Popham), were known to be in the Order.

The renewed interest in orders, lodges and loyalist groups was because of the very real menace of the French Revolution. After all, the French had attempted an invasion of Ireland in 1796, and the eventual breakout of a extremist rebellion in 1798 in Dublin showed just how necessary it was for the growth of both Orange and Black Orders. Thus, Formhals’ view could be hypothetically correct that there were links forged between the Irish Protestants and various bodies of the Order of St John. He certainly wrote as though he had seen evidence, but his book lacks references, and those claims have not been found.

All the main pro-Scottish authors, being Gilmour, Welsh, Land and Formhals seem to take an unnecessarily pro-Masonic view. The 1878 New South Wales view and the views of some students of Black Order history in recent times is that the Order of 1643 in Ireland survived and passed through the Knights of the Boyne into what appeared at Dublin in 1797.

The Black Order continued in Ireland until collapsing after 1836, due to a government crackdown onto “secret” groups. The Black system arrived in Scotland in 1822, where it survived, the Scotch then becoming a Grand Lodge in 1831, continuing the original Malta tradition. When the Irish began to revive their movement in County Armagh in 1846, they turned to Scotland for warrants. However, because the Order had come from Ireland, the Irish wanted to reassert the leadership. This then led a group in Scotland to take another step, declaring itself the Imperial Grand Encampment of the Universe, Knights of Malta.

The Irish then proclaimed themselves the true and original Royal Black Association, and defied Scotland by calling themselves “Templars” rather than Knights of Malta. This is because the Scottish claimed a direct line back to Sandilands, so the Irish had every reason now to drop any reference to Malta. Documentary proof indicates that the Irish before the 1830s understood themselves to be Knights of Malta. There were, however, some in Ireland who had been aligned with Scotland (e.g. in County Antrim in 1842). The battle was essentially one about which side would control with the Orange Order. This internal battle lasted until the 1880s, with the Irish “Templars” winning out against a weaker Scotland “Knights of Malta”. Meanwhile the English Royal Britannic Association planted itself into Canada, so while Scotland had some Encampments in Canada, it was hopeful about growth in the USA. Land wrote extensively that in the 1880s Scotland found itself in an internal dispute with some of the American Encampments.

One of the greatest proofs that the early Irish Black was a Malta group was that the Dublin knights refused to join with the rest of Ireland, but remained with Scotland. However, talks were had, and eventually most Preceptories and Encampments, including many of the English Royal Britannic Association, joined with Ireland.

When the Independent Orange Order rose in the early 20th century, the remaining Protestant Knights of Malta in Ireland then allied with them.

An article from the Masonic The Builder magazine in 1917 claimed that “When the Institution first started there was but one degree, The Orange; in 1796 The Royal Arch Purple degree was added; later under what is known as The Royal Black Preceptory or Knights of Malta, the higher degrees of the order, were introduced, of which there are quite a number. The Black Preceptory or Black Knights as they are sometimes called resembles in formation the Knights Templar Order in Freemasonry, and contains many of the elements of the Masonic Knights of Malta.

“Strange as it may appear, amongst many Masonic Knights Templar and Orange Black Knights, there is a growing conviction that their origin was a bid of the Roman Catholic Church to use these orders for the purpose of overthrowing Protestantism in Great Britain. Had the Church not fallen down on its propaganda results would have been very different in the attitude of the Papacy to Freemasonry today. Fortunately things turned out for the best. Papish in origin the evolution of both these institutions has been helpful to the Reformed Faith, so we as Masonic Knights Templar or Orange Black Knights have cause to rejoice.

“The Irish Black Knights grasped the chivalric idea and incorporated it into the Orange system ... The belief remains that these orders sprung from a common origin. In the early days of the Institution undoubtedly most Freemasons were Orangemen and many Orangemen were Freemasons. This is a fact today in Ireland. But at the present time the line of cleavage between the two orders is distinctly marked and carefully maintained.

“The Loyal Orange Institution is recognised as a purely political Society, to which only Protestants are admitted, by ballot, and into which all Protestants in good standing are welcome.”

BELOW: Australian Orange, Royal Arch Purple and Royal Black members.

Corrie

Canada, the USA and Australia

Histories of the Black (e.g. the Grand Black Order or The Royal Black Knights of the Camp of Israel) refer to the fact that Knights of Malta groups existed in the “presumably about the middle of the 18th century” (wrote Aiken McClelland), which is definitely before the 1797 official founding of the Black as it is now known. The early Scottish Black was particularly jealous of its tradition, though some histories of the Black have undoubtedly been wishful thinking, such as the claim that the Order was founded by the Jewish Maccabees or the disciples in the Early Church.

At this point, it is very important to acknowledge that Rev. Sir Robert Peat, Grand Chaplain of the Orange Order, a direct associate of the Duke of Cumberland, was involved in setting up the Order of St John in England. Peat has been credited as the key reviver of the Knights of St John in Britain in 1831, known today as being responsible for St John’s Ambulance, hospitals, etc., re-charted in 1888.

England seems to have moved in another direction, rather than building the Royal Britannic Association (which always remained relatively small), the focus seems to have come onto the Order of St John, because the former was too Masonic and Templar-focused, whereas the latter was genuinely linked with Knights of Malta. Importantly, Rev. Sir Robert Peat remained a leading member of the Orange movement while undertaking this work. Further, Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, retained a close association with the Orange Order, still being called its Imperial Grand Master when he left to take the throne of Hanover.

It appears that the Duke had ordered the closing down of the Royal Britannic Association, as he had ordered the closing of the Orange Order, but in fact, there were still Britannic groups operating and continuing to meet. One James Harris stated under oath in 1835 that he had in fact written the rules for the society recently, and that the Duke was not aware of their meetings, because they were actually illegal. (Though the Duke seems to have been considered the Imperial Grand Master of the Black.)

Scotland also had a relationship with the Duke, where he was also acknowledged their Imperial Grand Master and protector. George Donaldson was Grand Master of the Black in Scotland at Glasgow in the late 1820s. From him connections can be made both the Irish Royal Black Institution, which had to “reincorporate” itself based on the Black Encampment at Glasgow, and to the fact that Donaldson went across to Canada to plant the movement there in 1831. The Scottish Black movement was also (re-)planted in England in 1842, Australia in 1868 and the USA in 1874.

In Canada, the American arm was being led by Robert E. A. Land (who had joined it in 1873), who was granted by Glasgow full power over America. The American Black groups then underwent a series of splits around the early 1880s. This was first by their removing of the requirement for members to be Orangemen.

Land in his role as the American Grand Commander, began to try to align his group to the original knighthood of the Order of St John by cutting out a majority of the coloured degrees. The Black movement had inherited its original degrees from the Royal Boyne Association. Scotland and England had also introduced a Knight of Malta or Knight of St John (as well as Templar degrees in the Royal Britannic Association) degree. Robert Land sought to reduce to five degrees matching roles in the old Order, which were, companions (Knight of Malta), hospitallers (Black) and priests (Priestly Pass or Order). He also had a commanders degree and the red cross degree.

The design to reduce the obvious Masonic (lodge-fraternity) influences caused Land to be ostracised by Scotland and he was also rejected by some fellow Canadians and Americans who remained with the old system under the title of the “Ancient and Illustrious Order of Knights of Malta” (AIOKOM), which promoted the 11 degrees of the Royal Black fraternity, and acted as Scotland’s American arm. (Other Canadians were aligned to the Irish Black, which already were against the Scottish Black.)

Land called his movement the Knights of St John and Malta. He really believed that the Black Order was genuinely descended through Jacobite involvement in Freemasonry through to French Freemasonry from Malta. There is some indication that Land was also recognised in Australia and Prussia. Although Land was living in Toronto, those Commanderies in the USA followed him with a more chivalrous focus, opening their membership to all Protestants from 1882 under the title of the “Knights of St John and Malta”.

The movement became increasingly United States-focused, under the ensuing leadership of Robert Land, Julius Pettis, James Henderson, R. P. Hallgreen, Christian Armbruster, W. H. Goff, George Robbins, John Cowan, James Streeton, R. M. J. Reed, William Buckett, James M. Goodenough, Millard Smith, Richard Treacy, Charles Hayward, John Ogden and then Joseph Burrows, until the movement virtually collapsed in 1910 due to financial mismanagement. William Buckett was re-elected Grand Master until 1925.

The Knights of St John and Malta survived through its Commanderies in California, calling themselves “castellanies”. Dr W. A. Hobday in 1906 became Commander of Los Angeles, “Bobby” Loucks succeeded him in 1918, and he revived the Commandery in 1926. Loucks became Prior of California in 1934 and was responsible for recruiting Robert Formhals in 1936.

In 1928 the Knights of St John and Malta increased its membership by a reconciliation with the Canadian Priory (the American movement had been acting independently, and Robert Land had died in 1927), and gained a boost by the addition of “Knights of St John” who claimed to have been part of the historic Spanish Order in Mexico. The name of the Order was changed to “The Sovereign Order of St John and Malta”. An influx of Roman Catholics and some Eastern Orthodox joined the Order.

By the 1950s, two Commanderies were operating independently, Pennsylvania as led by Franklin A. West, and California (known as the Priory of the Pacific) as led by Robert Formhals. West joined Pichel’s Order, and Formhals became involved with West, who were at the basis of King Peter II’s Order, and provided a direct link between the King Peter II group and the Loyal movement.

If the Protestants could see that departing from Roman Catholic excesses in the Reformation was a good thing, then by the same token, departing from the influence of Freemasonry and other ideas, would also be equally valid. If Land and Formhals could consciously remove Masonic influences from the loyalist Knights of Malta, then it is possible to promote a form of Loyalism on an entirely chivalric basis. This would mean that the content of the old degrees could be restored, other practices purged, so that Loyalism could be practised in an entirely chivalric fashion.

Seeing as Preceptory has the connection and right to both the chivalric (St John) and loyalist (Black Order) traditions, it would therefore be able to perpetuate elements through the conveyed traditions. As a true inheritor of these things, Preceptory is able to hold its rightful possession of a loyalist organisation, and do so free from obtaining any negative aspects from other sources which have beset its history.

Preceptory has a number of former members of the Royal Black Preceptory and has a good relationship with the Grand Encampment of the Protestant “Scottish” Black Ancient and Illustrious Order of the Knights of Malta in Ireland.

BELOW: Robert E. A. Land and Robert Formhals.