Occult Theocracy Chapter LIV - LVII

CHAPTER LIV

THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR

AMERICA

(Founded prior to 1790)

In an address by Col. W. J. B. Macleod Moore, of the Grand Cross of the Temple Royal Arch, Grand Prior of the Dominion of Canada, published in The Rosicrucian and Masonic Record, page 167, we find that, in America, Templarism is founded on the craft degrees of Masonry and that one is inseparable from the other.

The earliest records in the United States of a Templar Lodge meeting are dated 1790.

OCCULT THEOCRASY BY LADY QUEENBOROUGH (EDITH STARR MILLER)

PUBLISHED POSTHUMOUSLY FOR PRIVATE CIRCULATION ONLY

VOLUME II

CHAPTER LV

THE UNITED IRISHMEN

(Founded 1791)

In 1791, the Society of The United Irishmen was founded by Theobald Wolfe Tone and Napper Tandy, both of whom were high in rank in the Masonic lodges. The organization sought to unite Catholics, Protestants and Dissenters in order to throw off the oppressive yoke of England or, to use the graphic language of Tone himself, " to subvert the tyranny of our execrable government, to break the connection with England, the never failing source of all our political evils, and to assert the independence of my country — these were my objects. To unite the whole people of Ireland. " '

The priesthood and the nobles however stood solidly behind the English power ; but the social conditions imposed by England on its Irish-Catholic subjects rendered that country a fertile soil for the sowing of the Revolutionary seed. These disabilities are described by Lecky in the following article which appeared in Macmillan's Magazine, January, 1873.

" To sum up briefly their provisions, they (the English) excluded the Catholics from the Parliament, from the magistracy, from the corporations, from the university, from the bench and from the bar, from the right of voting at parliamentary elections or at vestries of acting as constables, as sheriffs, or as jurymen, of serving in the army or navy, of becoming solicitors or even holding the position of gamekeeper or watchman. They prohibited them from becoming school masters, ushers, or private tutors, or from sending their children abroad to receive the Catholic education they were refused at home. They offered an annuity to every priest who would forsake his creed, pronounced a sentence of exile against the whole hierarchy, and restricted the right of celebrating the mass to registered priests, whose number, according to the first intention of the Legislature, was not to be renewed. The Catholics could not buy land, or inherit or receive it as a gift from Protestants, or hold life annuities, or leases for more than thirty-one years, or any lease on such terms that the profits of the land exceeded one-third of the rent. A Catholic, except in the linen trade, could have no more than two apprentices. He could not have a horse of the value of more than £5, and any Protestant on giving him £5 might take his horse. He was compelled to pay double to the militia. In case of war with a Catholic Power, he was obliged to reimburse the damage done by the enemy's privateers. To convert a Protestant to Catholicism was a capital offence. No Catholic might marry a Protestant. Into his own family circle the elements of dissension were ingeniously introduced.

A Catholic landowner might not bequeath his land as he pleased. It was divided equally among his children, unless the eldest son became a Protestant, in which case the parent became simply a life tenant, and lost all power either of selling or mortgaging it. If a Catholic s wife abandoned her husband's religion, she was immodiately free from his control, and the Chancellor could assign her a certain proportion of her husband's property. If his child, however young, professed itself a Protestant, he was taken from his father's care, and the Chancellor could assign it a portion of its father's property. No Catholic could be guardian either to his own children or to those of another. "

The investigations of R. C. Clifford detailed in his book The Application of Jacobinism to the Secret Societies of Ireland and Great Britain led this author to the conclusion that The United Irishmen and The Illuminati bore one another a close resemblance and, in his Diary, Wolfe Tone himself refers frankly to having on " several occasions pressed his friends the Jacobins to try to extend their clubs through the North. "

The history of the United Irishmen is largely the history of Theobald Wolfe Tone.

In a note to page 77 of his Autobiography, we are given the following information concerning the origin of The United Irishmen. "Before Tone's arrival in Belfast a political club, composed of Volunteers, and directed by a Secret Committee, was in existence. Among the members of the club were Neilson, Russell, the Simses, Sinclair, McTier and Macabe after which Tone remarks " Mode of doing business by a Secret Committee, who are not known or suspected of co-ope- rating, but who, in fact, direct the movements of Belfast. "

After also drawing attention to the above, Captain Pollard in The Secret Societies of Ireland, page 14, proceeds to make the following observation : — « The enormous influence of the French revolution had begun to make itself felt in the councils of the secret associations, Jacobin missionaries spread the doctrine of the revolution, and a new spirit of militant republicanism was born. These emissaries from France aimed at bringing England low, and spreading the doctrine of world-revolution by means of an alliance between the Catholic malcontents of the south and the Republican Presbyterians of the north. "

Suppressed in 1794, the order had reorganized in 1795 as a secret republican revolutionary society with subordinate societies and committees and had absorbed that of The Defenders.

John Keogh was the leader of the Roman Catholic branch of the movement among the other supporters of which were Archibald Hamilton Rowan, Robert Emmett, Thomas Addis Emmett, Arthur O'Connor and Lord Edward Fitzgerald.

In 1795, having become seriously implicated in the treasonable activities of the Rev. William Jackson, an emissary of the French Government to the Irish Revolutionaries, Tone went to America where he saw the French Minister Citizen Adet. With his approval and instructions, Wolfe Tone sailed for France on Jan. 1, 1796 where he spent the remainder of his days planning the downfall of England. He held that " unless they can separate England from Ireland, England is invulnerable. "

From the beginning of his French intrigues, he feared treason to his cause and, in his diary, we find the following entry dated March 21, 1796, quoting General Clark in a conversation he had just had with him :

" Even in the last war when the volunteers were in force " said the General " and a rupture between England and Ireland seemed likely, it was proposed in the French Council to offer assistance to Ireland, and overruled by the interest of Comte de Vergennes, then Prime Minister, who received for that service a con- siderable bribe from England, and that he (General Clark) was informed of this by a principal agent in paying the money. So, it seems, we had a narrow escape of obtaining our independence fifteen years ago. It is better as it is for then we were not united amongst ourselves, and I am not clear that the first use we should have made of our liberty would not have been to have begun cutting each other's throats : so out of evil comes good. I do not like this story of Vergennes, of the truth of which I do not doubt. How if the devil should put it into any one's head here to serve us so this time ! Pitt is as cunning as hell, and he has money enough, and we have nothing but assignats ; I do not like it at all... "  

Six months after his arrival in Paris, Tone received a commission in the French army, and with the assistance of the Directory, General Hoche and others organized the ill fated Bantry Bay expedition of 1796. Every effort to thwart their plans was made by the French navy till, as Tone tells us in an entry dated Nov. 14 to 18, " Villaret de Joyeuse, the Admiral, is cashiered, and we have got another in his place. Joyeuse was giving, underhand, all possible impediment to our expedition. "

His successor, Rear-Admiral Bruix, however, seems to have shared the indifference of his predecessor in Irish matters, and the fact that it was " always in their (the navy's) power to make us miscarry " is mentioned by Tone in his diary.

On Dec. 15, the expedition finally started and on the 17th, in a fog, the Fraternite with two of the Admirals and General Hoche aboard got separated from the rest of the fleet leaving Tone and General Grouchy with only about half of the original expeditionary force at their disposal.

Tone's efforts to effect a landing at Bantry Bay were frustrated by Grouchy's dilatory tactics and on Dec. 26 we find the following entry in Tone's Diary :

" Last night, at half after six o'clock, in a heavy gale of wind still from the east, we were surprised by the Admiral's frigate running under our quarter, and hailing the Indomptable (Tone's ship) with orders to cut our cable and put to sea instantly ; the frigate then pursued her course, leaving us all in the utmost astonishment. "

Did Wolfe Tone think of Vergennes then ? History fails to tell us !

The activities of The United Irishmen ended with theuprising of 1798 and another attempt by the French to land troops on Irish soil. This rebellion was however also crushed, and Wolfe Tone, who was taken prisoner and ordered to be hanged, cut his throat in his cell.

For root of this movement see Chapter LIII.

For development of this movement see Chapters LXIII,

LXXXII, LXXXV, LXXXVIII.

CHAPTER LVI

THE ORANGE SOCIETY

(PROTESTANT AND MASONIC)

(Founded 1795)

The Battle of the Diamond between the Peep-o'-Day Boys and the Defenders took place on Sept. 21, 1795.

We cannot improve on Captain Pollard's documented information in The Secret Societies of Ireland from which we quote :

" On the evening of the battle a number of the delegates of the Peep-o'-Day Boys met at the house of Thomas Wilson at Loughgall. There and then the name of the Society was changed to The Orange Society, and a grand lodge and subsidiary lodges initiated. the ritual was founded on Freemasonry (1° York Rite), and the legend was that of the Exodus of the Israelites.

" The original Peep-o'-Day Society had been confined to the lower orders, but with the change in Orangeism the upper classes began to take place and rank in the organization which was secretly fostered by the Government as a counter-poise against the seditious United Irishmen. ' "

" Prom 1828, the Orange Society was under the Grand Mastership of the Duke of Cumberland, and in 1835 there were no less than 140,000 Orangemen in England, 40,000 being in London alone. These members were not Irish Orangemen, but purely English, and they were engaged in a plot which recalls the best traditions of the Palais Royal and Philippe-Egalite. The purpose of the plot was to establish the Duke of Cumberland as King of England, on the plea that William IV was still insane and the Princess Victoria a woman and a minor. "  

" The revolutionary mechanism staged by the Orangemen was in many ways similar to that of the Orleanist party of Philippe. Wild rumours were set about. Colonel William Blennerhasset Fairman, Deputy Grand Secretary of the Orange Society, was the ruling spirit of the organization, and he conspired to such end that 381 loyal lodges were established in Great Britain. Another thirty were in the army, and branches were in many of the colonies.

" The conspiracy prospered from 1828 to 1835, when it was exposed by Mr. Hume, M. P., and a Committee of Enquiry in the Commons was granted. As the conspiracy, however, implicated half the Tory peers, some of the Bishops and most of the Army, everything passed off quietly; important witnesses vanished, and the Duke of Cumberland as Grand Master decreed the dissolution of the Orange Society in England without recourse to violence. "

" The Volunteer movement began in 1914 in Ulster as the direct consequence of an attempt on the part of the Liberal Government to force the Home Rule Bill on that province. This unfortunate measure had passed the Houses despite the most rigid Unionist opposition, but Ulster had no intention of surrendering to its provisions without a struggle. The situation portended Civil War. A ' Solemn League and Covenant ', to resist it, was drawn up, and Ulster, organizing largely through the Orange Lodges, recruited an Ulster Volunteer Force which was completely organized throughout the North. "

" The Orange Lodges had been reorganized in 1885, when Gladstone introduced the threatening Home Rule Bill. Prior to this the Order had somewhat relapsed and had been little more than a convivial friendly society. The threat of Home Rule brought it once more to the fore as a powerful political organization, and the Ulster electorate, which had until then been predominantly Liberal, became and remained solidly Unionist. The membership of the order expanded enormously, and the existing mechanism adapted itself to the new needs of the old motto, ' No surrender. '

" The Orange Lodges had been legally drilling since January 5, 1912, when application was made to the Belfast Justices for leave to drill on behalf of Colonel R. H. Wallace, C. B., Grand Master of the Belfast and Grand Secretary of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Ulster ; but, the skeleton organization had long been in existence, as was evident by the splendidly disciplined marching of the Lodges at the great Craigavon meeting in Sept. 191 1. 3

The Ulster Volunteers, under Sir Edward Carson, rejected all suggestions for partition and proclaimed their intention of smashing once and for all the whole Home Rule movement.

The Irish Volunteers while claiming Home Rule refused to consent to the exclusion of Ulster on the ground that Ulster being Ireland it should remain Ireland, thus annulling all the efforts of Mr. Asquith, England's Prime Minister, to effect a compromise.

Further quoting Pollard : " Affairs became more and more chaotic and at last John Redmond, the leader of the Home Rule party, realized in some measure what a menace the Irish Volunteer movement was becoming.

" He decided to attempt to control them... He tried to raise funds for the advertised purpose of purchasing arms at some future date, but before this came about the members of the original committee purchased a stock of serviceable weapons with money supplied by the Irish Republican Brotherhood and succeeded in running the cargoes in at Kilcool and Howth. "  

Then came the declaration of war between Britain and Germany and the part played by Ireland during the World war is a matter of history.

Interlocked with the history of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, The Clan-na-Gael and Sinn Fein, the activities of this society after 1914 can be followed in the articles on these other organizations.

For root of this movement see Chapter LV.

For development of this movement see Chapters LXXXVIII

and CXVI.

CHAPTER LVII

THE PHILADELPHIANS

(THE OLYMPIANS)

(Founded 1798)

The Philadelphians, a Royalist Anti-Bonapartist Secret Society, was founded on masonic lines about 1798 at Besancon, France, by General Malet and organized by a Freemason, Lieutenant Colonel Oudet.

Using England as a base of operations, it cooperated for a while with the " Chouans " whose chief, Pichegru, was eventually captured and executed by order of the Directory.

After this event, the Philadelphians adopted the name of The Olympians. Most of them however, including Oudet, were shot from ambush the day after the battle of Wagram, the responsibility for their deaths being placed on Napoleon I.

In 1812 General Malet formed a conspiracy to overthrow the Empire. Among those implicated were Generals Moreau, Talleyrand, Trochot, the Comte de Noailles, the Comte de Montmorency and Fouche, who was then under the cloud of Napoleon's displeasure. General Massena, Grand Master of the Grand Orient, who at that time was in disgrace, was to have been offered the command of the troops. This daring plot almost succeeded and Fouche says that Malet carried with him to the grave " the secret of one of the boldest conspiracies which the Grand Epoch of the Revolution has bequeathed to history. " '

General Moreau, who had gone to settle in America returned to France in 1813, the last of the leaders of the Olympians. He died Sept. 2 from a wound received some days earlier.

A few moments after the death of Moreau, the Senate pronounced the deposition of Napoleon and carried out the programme of the Olympians.