The Battle of the Boyne - why is it still remembered, 300 years on?

enquiringmind (46)in #dtube • 5 years ago

Transcript

Every year as the 12th July approaches, I see an event marked in the calendar which brings back unsettling memories for me.

And that event is the Battle of the Boyne (Northern Ireland), because it's a Northern Ireland holiday.

For me, that event brings back memories of sectarian graffiti sprayed on walls in the town where I grew up. That town was in North Lanarkshire in Scotland. And although that graffti wasn't directed at me personally, it was a disturbing reminder of that sectarian violence that was all too common at the time – that was the 1970s and 1980s.

The graffiti would say "Battle of the Boyne 1690" or just "1690", and it would also often be accompanied by the letters "FTP", which were basically an insult to the Pope.

There was sectarian violence, and there was a particular murder that I remember, of a young teenage boy – very upsetting, a real tragedy. And it's stuck in my mind ever since.

So that's why I'm always a little bit unsettled when I see that date.

I grew up in the Protestant tradition. My father was an Anglican, and my mum has always been Quaker, which is a type of Protestant religion. And I personally don't have a particular interest in religion. I really don't have any views about Protestantism or Catholicism.

I've nothing against commemorating a historical date. It's just that this one always seems to be quite prominent in the calendar, so I'm inclined to find out why that is.

I do know something about that time, because I've always been interested in history, and I studied history at university. I had a kind of vague knowledge about it, and I wanted to learn more.

And I found out some quite interesting things.

Why did the Battle of the Boyne happen?

The Battle of the Boyne was the outcome of a power struggle based around royalty and religion. Two kings were fighting at the time: King James and King William.

King James's brother, Charles II, had died in 1685 with no legitimate heir, and that's why James, his brother, succeeded to the British throne in 1685.

James had married Lady Anne Hyde 25 years earlier, and they had two daughters, Mary and Anne. Both were brought up as Protestants.

Seven years after their marriage, James and his wife converted to Catholicism. This was not made public until 1673, when James refused to swear an anti-Catholic oath under the terms of Parliament's Test Acts.

James's wife died in 1671, and two years later, he married Mary of Modena, a devout Catholic. Mary was the daughter of the Duke of Modena in Italy.

James and Mary were married by proxy – in other words, only James was actually present at the marriage ceremony, which took place on 20th September, 1673.

Many British Protestants feared that the marriage had been arranged by the Pope, and that it heralded the re-establishment of Britain as a Catholic nation.

Four years later, James's daughter Mary married William III of Orange, in The Netherlands. William was also James's nephew, the son of his sister.

James preached religious tolerance for Catholics and Protestant Dissenters, but at the same time he used his powers to place Catholics, who at that time, made up only one-fiftieth of the population in England, in high offices.

There were attempts by Parliament to pass an Exclusion Bill, which would have excluded James from the throne. But this attempt failed.

On 10th June, 1688, Mary gave birth to a boy, James Francis Edward Stuart. This raised great fears among Protestants that there might be a Catholic succession.

The "Glorious Revolution"

On 30th June, seven Protestant nobles wrote to Prince William of Orange, who was married to James's daughter Mary, offering support if he were to bring an army to England.

William had already been planning to invade the British Isles, but used the invitation to assure the public that this was not a Dutch takeover.

When William arrived at Brixham, in England, on 5th November, 1688, many in James's army switched allegiance to him, as did James's daughter Anne. This event was eventually to become known as the Glorious Revolution.

James tried to flee to France. He was captured, but William decided to allow him to escape, not wanting to make him a martyr. He went to France, where he was given a palace and a pension by King Louis X1V.

Both the English Parliament and the Scottish Parliament now viewed James as having abdicated. Apparently he'd dropped the Great Seal of the Realm into the Thames during his flight.

His daughter Mary was declared queen, and she ruled jointly with her husband William of Orange as king.

The Bill of Rights

The English Parliament passed a Bill of Rights which declared that no Roman Catholic would be permitted to ascend the English throne, and that no English monarch could marry a Roman Catholic from then on.

But the Irish Parliament declared that James remained king. At the urging of James, the Irish Parliament passed an Act for Liberty of Conscience that granted religious freedom to all Roman Catholics and Protestants in Ireland.

War in Ireland

In March 1689, James landed in Ireland with an army of 6000 French troops. He managed to assemble 23,500 troops, but King William had 36,000.

Now, this is where the story gets quite interesting. Because William – despite being the Protestant king of a Protestant country – actually had the backing of the Pope, Pope Innocent initially, who died, and was then succeeded by Pope Alexander VIII.

The Popes were involved in a "Grand Alliance" of several countries throughout Europe that aimed to curb the power of the warmongering French king Louis XIV. Louis was seen as having expansionist ambitions.

James made a lot of headway throughout Ireland initially, but on the 1st July, 1690, William's army triumphed at Battle of the Boyne (the River Boyne).

James fled back to France, never to return to British shores.

So this is another anomaly. The Battle of the Boyne actually took place on the 1st July – yet the commemoration date is the 12th.

Apparently this is because the old Julian calendar, which was devised by Julius Caesar, was several days behind the Gregorian calendar. The Gregorian calendar was adopted in the 18th century in the UK.

But this would place the battle on the 11th July, not the 12th.

The 12th commemorates the Battle of Aughrim, which took place a year later on the 12th July, and this is seen as the decisive battle of the Williamite War in Ireland.

But confusingly, the Battle of Aughrim took place on the 12th July according to the old style Julian calendar, and according to the modern Gregorian calendar, it would have taken place on the 22nd July. So this really raises more questions than it answers!

The reasons probably lie within the Orange Order, which was founded 100 years later, in 1795.

The Orange Order is a Masonic-style Protestant fraternal order, named in tribute to William of Orange. It has lodges in Ireland, in Scotland, in the US and throughout the British Commonwealth.

Today, there are Orange Lodge marches in July, during what's known as the "marching season". These generally pass off peacefully. But this wasn't always the case when I was growing up. We were always warned, often half-jokingly, not to wear orange if we were passing through certain areas, or green if we were going through other areas.

And in certain areas, that wouldn't be a joke at all.

So I'm not suggesting that the Battle of the Boyne should not be in the calendar, because I'm not into banning things. That never works. It's just that it raises questions in my mind when I see it in the calendar year after year. It just makes me wonder what's going on.

That on the one hand, so many politicians will say how bad sectarianism is, and make efforts to calm sectarian tensions – but at the same time, this inflammatory date appears in the calendar year after year. And that just seems a bit strange to me.

Especially when you think about the fact that King William – or King Billy as he's known in Scotland and Ireland – this figure of Protestant triumph, was actually partly financed by the Pope. At least partly financed. Some suggest that he got quite a lot of money from the Pope for this campaign.

And that seems so ironic to me. Because when you look at the people at the top, it's always their particular power struggles, their expansionist aims that cause all these wars. They'll base the wars on these divisions. But they don't seem to personally care about these divisions.

I'm sure that King James II was a devout Catholic. So maybe sometimes they do have genuine religious feelings. But usually it's just all about their ambitions.

I'm not saying that this was all a big grand plan that was plotted right from the 1690s. But it does seem that when the people at the top see that everyone's fighting over a particular cause, they're quite happy to inflame those divisions, if it helps their aims.

And there's a really interesting example of this. Because apparently, according to some historians, the Orange Order was actually deliberately strengthened by the British government in the 1790s.

This is arguable. I've only read about this – I haven't read all the documents. It seems to make sense, because in the 1790s, the governments of Europe were absolutely reeling at the French Revolution.

The British government was terrified that it could happen here. And there was the Society of United Irishmen that started around the same time. It was also a Masonic-style fraternal order. But its aims were religious tolerance, and it supported the French Revolution.

The government was horrified about this.

So according to some historians, the British government tried to strengthen the Orange Order, from 1796, in response to their fears of the United Irishmen, and the United Irishmen's support for the French Revolution.

There are a couple of Irish nationalist historians who hav e been quoted on Wikipedia as arguing that "The government's goal was to hinder the United Irishmen by fomenting sectarianism, thereby creating disunity and disorder, under pretence of a passion for the Protestant religion."

John Mitchell wrote that "The government invented and spread fearful rumours of intended massacres of all the Protestant people by the Catholics.

Historian Richard R Madden wrote that "Efforts were made to infuse into the mind of the Protestant, feelings of distrust to his Catholic fellow countryman."

So it seems so sad to me that over the last couple of hundred years, so much blood has been spilt over these issues, where sometimes the people involved don't even really understand what they're all about.

So that's the story of the Battle of the Boyne – and that rather confusing date that appears in my diary year after year.

Links

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-32883513

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1582225/Vatican-bans-book-revealing-secret-of-pope.html

Image credits

River Boyne:
Photo by Jonathan Billinger for geograph.org.uk

Catholicism image:
https://pixabay.com/photos/bible-candles-rosary-third-faith-642449/

https://pixabay.com/photos/prison-prison-cell-jail-crime-553836/

Orange banner depicting William: