members of the organization
together. The Orange conspiracy, if {276} we may call it so, had been
spreading its ramifications energetically during the later years of
George the Fourth's reign, and had succeeded in obtaining the
countenance, and indeed the active support, of many peers, of at least
some bishops, and even of certain members of the royal family. The
Duke of York, who at that time stood nearest in the succession to the
throne, was a patron of the societies, and was invited to become Grand
Master of the whole organization. The invitation would in all
probability have been accepted if the Duke had not been assured, on the
most authoritative advice, that a secret organization of such a nature
was distinctly an illegal body. When the Duke died, and it seemed all
but certain that the next King of England must be his brother William,
Duke of Clarence, the Orange lodges transferred their allegiance to the
Duke of Cumberland, who consented to become their Grand Master.

[Sidenote: 1835--Wellington and the British Crown]

The Duke of Cumberland, as we have already seen, was a Tory of the most
extreme order; an inveterate enemy to every kind of reform and every
progressive movement, a man who was not merely unpopular but thoroughly
detested among all classes who valued political freedom, religious
liberty, and the spread of education. Soon after William the Fourth's
accession to the throne a new impulse was given to Orangeism by the
King's yielding to the demand for popular reform, and by the measures
and the movements which began to follow the passing of Lord Grey's
Reform Bill. The Orangemen all over these countries then began to look
upon the Duke of Cumberland as their natural leader, and there can be
little doubt that in the minds of many of them, in the minds of some of
the most influential among them, there was growing up the wild hope
that the Duke of Cumberland might become King of England. The Orange
lodges became a vast secret organization with signs and passwords, a
mysterious political confraternity, the Grand Master of which was a
sort of head centre, to adopt a phrase belonging to a more modern
conspiracy, and performing, indeed, something like the part which
Continental Freemasonry at one time {277} aspired to play. The Orange
lodges in Great Britain and Ireland swelled in numbers until they had
more than three hundred thousand members solemnly and secretly sworn to
obey all the orders of the