Brass money and wooden shoes
A
good friend of mine took a trip to Donegal a week or so back and found the
place retained that windswept beauty which makes it a popular destination for
tourists as well as those with family connections there. The trip home on the
ferry wasn’t quite as relaxing though as many of the passengers were orange
folk making their way to Scotland for the annual parade in Glasgow. We’re often
told that the order is a fraternal organisation which celebrates the religious and
civil freedoms brought about by the Williamite victories in a war 336 years
ago. With a total lack of self-awareness, they treated their fellow passengers
to such folk classics as ‘no Pope of Rome’ and the ‘Famine song.’ It seems
those religious freedoms and liberties don’t extend to their Catholic
neighbours.
As
with many facets of history, the mythology created by the propagandists of the
day are believed more readily by some than the hard historical facts of what actually
occurred. When William of Orange, a very capable battlefield general, took to
the field in that far off war, he was facing his father-in-law James II, having
married James’ daughter, Mary in 1677. James was allied to the French King Louis
XV, known as the ‘Sun King’ and the man who built the magnificent palace at
Versailles. Louis was an absolutist monarch who was trying to control the power
of the Catholic church in France and expand French influence in Europe. This
led to a power struggle in Europe which became known as the ‘Nine years war.’ Pope Innocent XI sought an alliance with,
among others, William of Orange, in order to hinder Louis’ ambitions. Indeed,
the pope came from a banking family which actually helped fund William’s war
with James II. So it was that when news of William’s victory at the Boyne
reached Rome, Pope Innocent ordered a mass of thanksgiving. It was more
important to him that the French King’s ambitions be curbed that James should
win back his throne.
When
James’ army was decisively defeated at the battle of Aughrim in 1691; a
bloodbath that left 7000 dead, his cause in Ireland was lost. He fled to the
continent leaving the Irish who supported him to their fate. This earned him
the nickname among the Irish of ‘Séamus an cac.’ (James the shit.) Once William’s
position of King of England, Scotland and Ireland had been secured, his
supporters controlled the narrative and the tales of his glorious victory were
spun. He never did ride into battle on a white horse- that made any commander a
conspicuous target for the enemy. He was a brave and able commander, far more
so than James but the white horse legend was a theatrical device to portray him
as a Christian saviour. In a recent TV programme presented by Lucy Worsley, she
said, ‘A white horse heralded the arrival of a divine conqueror or even Christ
himself.’
You
may recall a few years ago that some young folk in Bristol toppled the statue
of a slave trader named Edward Colston and pushed it into the river. During
Colston's involvement with the Royal African Company from 1680 to 1692, it is
estimated that the company transported over 84,000 African men, women and
children to the West Indies and the Americas, of whom as many as 19,000 may
have died on the journey. Colston was a fabulously wealthy man who gifted King
William £1000 worth of shares in the Royal Africa Company. (about £200,000
today) It should be said that monarchs from Elizabeth I to George IV were
involved in this sordid trade. Modern research suggests that by 1807 the
British crown was the biggest buyer of enslaved people on Earth. As the company
prospered, the king received a healthy income from this iniquitous trade. Of course, we tend to judge people from the
past through modern eyes but it is still disconcerting that the King of England
was making money from the slave trade. When the trade was finally outlawed in
the British empire in the 1830s, the government paid out £20 million in
compensation (about £17 billion today) not to the freed slaves, but to the ‘owners’
who lost their ‘property.’ This was 40%
of the UK budget in 1837.
This
article isn’t a clumsy attempt to discredit William but merely to show that
myth and history merge into each other until some can’t discern the difference.
There is an Orange toast which goes; ‘to the glorious, pious and immortal
memory of the great and good King William, who saved us from popery, slavery,
knavery, brass money and wooden shoes.’ In reality he didn’t save hundreds of
thousands of Africans from slavery but they’d rather forget that part. So too
his alliance with Pope Innocent, but then mythology has always been more
important than reality to some. William is the good guy riding on the white
horse coming to save us, isn’t he?
Like
him or not he exerts great influence on British and Irish history, his colour is even on
the flag of the Irish nation and his image adorns the walls of more than a few
homes in north-east Ireland. I wonder what he’d make of it all today? He might
echo the words of Voltaire who said, ‘History is nothing more than a pack of
tricks we play on the dead.’
