Memorialising King Billy: The evolution of Orange media

Abstract

The Orange Order founded amidst agrarian conflict in 1790s Ireland, managed to spread rapidly across the British World. The central figure of King William (‘Billy’) III figures in the myth and memory of the Orange Order. Their core beliefs include the ‘civil and religious liberty’ originating with King William and then repackaged within the Orange Order’s central tenets. This paper addresses how the Irish-founded Orange Order spread their message to include countries on the opposite side of the world such as New Zealand. Some key questions are: how did the Orange Order disseminate their message? What were the successful methods and what were the failures? What were the changes over time? These issues are important for they illuminate aspects of Irish Protestant migration and enable exploration of the fraternity’s ideology of myth and memory.