THE SOLEMN LEAGUE AND COVENANT
Ulster Day, Saturday the 28th of September, 1912, was kept as a day of
religious observance by the Northern Loyalists. So far as the
Protestants of all denominations were concerned, Ulster was a province
at prayer on that memorable Saturday morning. In Belfast, not only the
services which had more or less of an official character--those held in
the Cathedral, in the Ulster Hall, in the Assembly Hall--but those held
in nearly all the places of worship in the city, were crowded with
reverent worshippers. It was the same throughout the country towns and
rural districts--there was hardly a village or hamlet where the parish
church and the Presbyterian and Methodist meeting-houses were not
attended by congregations of unwonted numbers and fervour. Not that
there was any of the religious excitement such as accompanies revivalist
meetings; it was simply that a population, naturally religious-minded,
turned instinctively to divine worship as the fitting expression of
common emotion at a moment of critical gravity in their history. "One
noteworthy feature," commented upon by one of the English newspaper
correspondents in a despatch telegraphed during the day, "is the silence
of the great shipyards. In these vast industrial establishments on both
sides of the river, 25,000 men were at work yesterday performing their
task at the highest possible pressure, for the order-books of both firms
are full of orders. Now there is not the sound of a hammer; all is as
silent as the grave. The splendid craftsmen who build the largest ships
in the world have donned their Sunday clothes, and, with Unionist
buttons on the lapels of their coats, or Orange sashes on their
shoulders, are about to engage on what to them is an even more important
task." He also noticed that although the streets were crowded there was
no excitement, for "the average Ulsterman performs his religious and
political duties with calm sobriety. He has no time to-day for mirth or
merriment, for every minute is devoted to proving that he is still the
same man--devoted to the Empire, to the King, and Constitution."[37]
There is at all times in Ulster far less sectarian enmity between the
Episcopal and other Reformed Churches than in England; on Ulster Day the
complete harmony and co-operation between them was a marked feature of
the observances. At the Cathedral in Belfast the preacher was the Bishop
of Down,[38] while a Presbyterian minister representing the Moderator of
the General Assembly, and the President of the Methodist College took
part in the conduct of the service. At the Ulster Hall the same unity
was evidenced by a similar co-operation between clergy of the three
denominations, and also at the Assembly Hall (a Presbyterian place of
worship), where Dr. Montgomery, the Moderator, was assisted by a
clergyman of the Church of Ireland representing the Bishop.
The service in the Ulster Hall was attended by Sir Edward Carson, the
Lord Mayor of Belfast (Mr. McMordie, M.P.), most of the distinguished
visitors from England, and by those Ulster members whose constituencies
were in or near the city; those representing country seats went thither
to attend local services and to sign the Covenant with their own
constituents.
One small but significant detail in the day's proceedings was much
noticed as a striking indication of the instinctive realisation by the
crowd of the exceptional character of the occasion. Bedford Street,
where the Ulster Hall is, was densely packed with spectators, but when
the leader arrived, instead of the hurricane of cheers that invariably
greeted his appearance in the streets, there was nothing but a general
uncovering of heads and respectful silence. It is true that the people
abundantly compensated themselves for this moment of self-restraint
later on, until in the evening one wondered how human throats could
survive so many hours of continuous strain; but the contrast only made
the more remarkable that almost startling silence before the religious
service began.
The "sense of ceremony" which _The Times_ Correspondent on another
occasion had declared to be characteristic of Ulstermen "in moments of
emotion," was certainly displayed conspicuously on Ulster Day. Ceremony
at large public functions is naturally cast in a military
mould--marching men, bands of music, display of flags, guards of honour,
and so forth--and although on this occasion there was, it is true, more
than mere decorative significance in the military frame to the picture,
it was an admirably designed and effective spectacle. It is but a few
hundred yards from the Ulster Hall to the City Hall, where the signing
of the Covenant was to take place. When the religious service ended,
about noon, Sir Edward Carson and his colleagues proceeded from one hall
to the other on foot. The Boyne standard, which had been presented to
the leader the previous evening, was borne before him to the City Hall.
He was escorted by a guard consisting of a hundred men from the Orange
Lodges of Belfast and a like number representing the Unionist clubs of
the city. These clubs had also provided a force of 2,500 men, whose
duty, admirably performed throughout the day, was to protect the gardens
and statuary surrounding the City Hall from injury by the crowd, and to
keep a clear way to the Hall for the endless stream of men entering to
sign the Covenant.
The City Hall in Belfast is a building of which Ulster is justly proud.
It is, indeed, one of the few modern public buildings in the British
Islands in which the most exacting critic of architecture finds nothing
to condemn. Standing in the central site of the city with ample garden
space in front, its noble proportions and beautiful façade and dome fill
the view from the broad thoroughfare of Donegal Place. The main entrance
hall, leading to a fine marble stairway, is circular in shape,
surrounded by a marble colonnade carrying the dome, to which the hall is
open through the full height of the building. It was in this central
space beneath the dome that a round table covered with the Union Jack
was placed for the signing of the Covenant by the Ulster leaders and the
most prominent of their supporters.
To those Englishmen who have never been able to grasp the Ulster point
of view, and who have, therefore, persisted in regarding the Ulster
Movement as a phase of party politics in the ordinary sense, it must
appear strange and even improper that the City Hall, the official
quarters of the Corporation, should have been put to the use for which
it was lent on Ulster Day, 1912. The vast majority of the citizens,
whose property it was, thought it could be used for no better purpose
than to witness their signatures to a deed securing to them their
birthright in the British Empire.
At the entrance to the City Hall Sir Edward Carson was received by the
Lord Mayor and members of the Corporation wearing their robes of office,
and by the Harbour Commissioners, the Water Board, and the Poor Law
Guardians, by whom he was accompanied into the hall. The text of
Ulster's Solemn League and Covenant had been printed on sheets with
places for ten signatures on each; the first sheet lay on the table for
Edward Carson to sign.
No man but a dullard without a spark of imagination could have witnessed
the scene presented at that moment without experiencing a thrill which
he would have found it difficult to describe. The sunshine, sending a
beam through the stained glass of the great window on the stairway,
threw warm tints of colour on the marbles of the columns and the
tesselated floor of the hall, sparkled on the Lord Mayor's chain, lent a
rich glow to the scarlet gowns of the City Fathers, and lit up the red
and the blue and the white of the Imperial flag which draped the table
and which was the symbol of so much that they revered to those who stood
looking on. They were grouped in a semicircle behind the leader as he
stepped forward to sign his name--men of substance, leaders in the
commercial life of a great industrial city, elderly men many of them,
lovers of peace and order; men of mark who had served the Crown, like
Londonderry and Campbell and Beresford; Doctors of Divinity, guides and
teachers of religion, like the Bishop and the Moderator of the General
Assembly; Privy Councillors; members of the Imperial Parliament;
barristers and solicitors, shopkeepers and merchants,--there they all
stood, silent witnesses of what all felt to be one of the deeds that
make history, assembled to set their hands, each in his turn, to an
Instrument which, for good or evil, would influence the destiny of their
race; while behind them through the open door could be seen a vast
forest of human heads, endless as far as eye could reach, every one of
whom was in eager accord with the work in hand, and whose blended
voices, while they waited to perform their own part in the great
transaction, were carried to the ears of those in the hall like the
inarticulate noise of moving waters.
When Carson had signed the Covenant he handed the silver pen to
Londonderry, and the latter's name was followed in order by the
signatures of the Moderator of the General Assembly, the Lord Bishop of
Down, Connor, and Dromore (afterwards Primate of All Ireland), the Dean
of Belfast (afterwards Bishop of Down), the General Secretary of the
Presbyterian Church, the President of the Methodist Conference, the
ex-Chairman of the Congregational Union, Viscount Castlereagh, and Mr.
James Chambers, M.P. for South Belfast; and the rest of the company,
including the Right Hon. Thomas Sinclair and the veteran Sir William
Ewart, as well as the members of the Corporation and other public
authorities and boards, having attached their signatures to other
sheets, the general public waiting outside were then admitted.
The arrangements for signature by the general public had fully taxed the
organising ability of the specially appointed Ulster Day Committee, and
their three hon. secretaries, Mr. Dawson Bates, Mr. McCammon, and Mr.
Frank Hall. They made provision for signatures to be received in many
hundreds of localities throughout Ulster, but it was impossible to
estimate closely the numbers that would require accommodation at the
City Hall. Lines of desks, giving a total desk-space of more than a
third of a mile, were placed along both sides of the corridors on the
upper and lower floors of the building, which enabled 540 persons to
sign the Covenant simultaneously. It all worked wonderfully smoothly,
largely because every individual in the multitude outside was anxious to
help in maintaining orderly procedure, and behaved with the greatest
patience and willingness to follow directions. The people were admitted
to the Hall in batches of 400 or 500 at a time, and as there was no
confusion there was no waste of time. All through the afternoon and up
to 11 p.m., when the Hall was closed, there was an unceasing flow of men
eager to become Covenanters. Immense numbers who belonged to the Orange
Lodges, Unionist clubs, or other organised bodies, marched to the Hall
in procession, and those whose route lay through Royal Avenue had an
opportunity, of which they took the fullest advantage, of cheering
Carson, who watched the memorable scene from the balcony of the Reform
Club, the quondam headquarters of Ulster Liberalism.
Prominent and influential men in the country districts refrained from
coming to Belfast, preferring to sign the Covenant with their neighbours
in their own localities. The Duke of Abercorn, who had been prevented by
failing health from taking an active part in the movement of late, and
whose life unhappily was drawing to a close, signed the Covenant at
Barons Court; his son, the Marquis of Hamilton, M.P. for Derry, attached
his signature in the Maiden City together with the Bishop; another
prelate, the Bishop of Clogher, signed at Enniskillen with the Grand
Master of the Orangemen, Lord Erne; at Armagh, the Primate of All
Ireland, the Dean, and Sir John Lonsdale, M.P. (afterwards Lord
Armaghdale), headed the list of signatures; the Provost of Trinity
College signed in Dublin; and at Ballymena the veteran Presbyterian
Privy Councillor, Mr. John Young, and his son Mr. William Robert Young,
Hon. Secretary of the Ulster Unionist Council, and for thirty years one
of the most zealous and active workers for the Loyalist cause, were the
first to sign. But a more notable Covenanter than any of these local
leaders was Lord Macnaghten, one of the most illustrious of English
Judges, whose great position as Lord of Appeal did not deter him from
wholly identifying himself with his native Ulster, by accepting the full
responsibility of the signatories of the Covenant.
Ulstermen living in other parts of Ireland, and in Great Britain, were
not forgotten. Arrangements were made enabling such to sign the Covenant
in Dublin, London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Bristol,
and York. Two curious details may be added, which no reader who is alive
to the picturesqueness of historical associations will deem too trivial
to be worth recording. In Edinburgh a number of Ulstermen signed the
Covenant in the old Greyfriars' Churchyard on the "Covenanters' Stone,"
the well-known memorial of the Scottish Covenant of the seventeenth
century; and the other incident was that, among some twenty men who
signed the Covenant in Belfast with their own blood, Major Crawford was
able to claim that he was following a family tradition, inasmuch as a
lineal ancestor had in the same grim fashion emphasised his adherence to
the Solemn League and Covenant in 1638.
The most careful precautions were taken to ensure that all who signed
were properly entitled to do so, by requiring evidence to be furnished
of their Ulster birth or domicile, and references able to corroborate
it. The declaration in the Covenant itself that the person signing had
not already done so was in order to make sure that none of the
signatures should be duplicates. When the lists were closed--they were
kept open for some days after Ulster Day--they were very carefully
scrutinised by a competent staff at the Old Town Hall, and it is certain
that the numbers as eventually published included no duplicate signature
and none that was not genuine. Precisely the same care was taken in the
case of the Declaration by which, in words similar to the Covenant but
without its pledge for definite action, the women of Ulster associated
themselves with the men "in their uncompromising opposition to the Home
Rule Bill now before Parliament."
It was not until the 22nd of November that the scrutiny and verification
of the signatures was completed, and the actual numbers published. They
were as follows: In Ulster itself 218,206 men had registered themselves
as Covenanters, and 228,991 women had signed the Declaration; in the
rest of Ireland and in Great Britain 19,162 men and 5,055 women had
signed. Thus, a grand total of 471,414 Ulster men and women gave their
adherence to the policy of which the Ulster Covenant was the solemn
pledge. To every one of these was given a copy of the document printed
on parchment, to be retained as a memento, and in thousands of cottages
throughout Ulster the framed Covenant hangs to-day in an honoured place,
and is the householder's most treasured possession.
Although the main business of the day was over, so far as Carson and the
other leaders were concerned, when they had signed the Covenant in the
City Hall at noon, every hour, and every minute in the hour, until they
took their departure in the Liverpool packet in the evening, was full of
incident and excitement. The multitude in the streets leading to the
City Hall was so densely packed that they had great difficulty in making
their way to the Reform Club, where they were to be entertained at
lunch. And, as every man and woman in the crowd was desperately anxious
the moment they saw him to get near enough to Carson to shake him by the
hand, the pressure of the swaying mass of humanity was a positive
danger. Happily the behaviour of the people was as exemplary as it was
tumultuously enthusiastic. _The Times_ Special Correspondent thus summed
up his impressions of the scene:
"Belfast did all that a city could do for such an occasion. I do
not well see how its behaviour could have been more impressive. The
tirelessness of the crowd--it was that perhaps which struck me
most; and, secondly, the good conduct of the crowd. Belfast had one
of the lowest of its Saturday records for drunkenness and
disorderliness yesterday. I was in the Reform Club between one and
three o'clock. Again and again I went out on the balcony and
watched the streets. I saw the procession of thousands upon
thousands come down Royal Avenue. But this was not the only line of
march, for all Belfast was now converging upon the City Hall, the
arrangements in which must have been elaborate. It was a procession
a description of which would have been familiar to the Belfast
public, but the like of which is only seen in Ulster."
The tribute here paid to the conduct of the Belfast crowd was well
merited. But in this respect the day of the Covenant was not so
exceptional as it would have been before the beginning of the Ulster
Movement. Before that period neither Belfast nor any part of Ulster
could have been truthfully described as remarkable for its sobriety. But
by the universal testimony of those qualified to judge in such
matters--police, clergy of all denominations, and workers for social
welfare--the political movement had a sobering and steadying influence
on the people, which became more and more noticeable as the movement
developed, and especially as the volunteers grew in numbers and
discipline. The "man in the street" gained a sense of responsibility
from the feeling that he formed one of a great company whom it was his
wish not to discredit, and he found occupation for mind and body which
diminished the temptations of idle hours.
From the Reform Club Carson, Londonderry, Beresford, and F.E. Smith went
to the Ulster Club, just across the street, where they dined as the
guests of Lord Mayor McMordie before leaving for Liverpool; and it was
outside that dingy building that the enthusiasm of the people reached a
climax. None who witnessed it can ever forget the scene, which the
English newspaper correspondents required all their superlatives to
describe for London readers next day. Those superlatives need not be
served up again here. One or two bald facts will perhaps give to anyone
possessing any faculty of visualisation as clear an idea as they could
get from any number of dithyrambic pages. The distance from the Ulster
Club to the quay where the Liverpool steamer is berthed is ordinarily
less than a ten minutes' walk. The wagonette in which the Ulster leader
and his friends were drawn by human muscles took three minutes short of
an hour to traverse it. It was estimated that into that short space of
street some 70,000 to 100,000 people had managed to jam themselves.
Movement was almost out of the question, yet everyone within reach
tried to press near enough to grasp hands with the occupants of the
carriage. When at last the shed was reached the people could not bear to
let Carson disappear through the gates. _The Times_ Correspondent heard
them shout, "Don't leave us," "You mustn't leave us," and, he added, "It
was seriously meant; it was only when someone pointed out that Sir
Edward Carson had work to do in England for Ulster, that the crowd
finally gave way and made an opening for their hero."[39] There had been
speeches from the balcony of the Reform Club in the afternoon; speeches
from the window of the Ulster Club in the evening; speeches outside the
dock gates; speeches from the deck of the steamer before departure;
speeches by Carson, by Londonderry, by F.E. Smith, by Lord Charles
Beresford--and the purport of one and all of them could be summed up in
the familiar phrase, "We won't have it." But this simple theme,
elaborated through all the modulations of varied oratory, was one of
which the Belfast populace was no more capable of becoming weary than is
the music lover of tiring of a recurrent _leitmotif_ in a Wagner opera.
At last the ship moved off, and speech was no longer possible. It was
replaced by song, "Rule Britannia"; then, as the space to the shore
widened, "Auld Lang Syne"; and finally, when the figures lining the quay
were growing invisible in the darkness, those on board heard thousands
of Loyalists fervently singing "God save the King."
FOOTNOTES:
[37] _The Standard_, September 30th, 1912.
[38] Dr. D'Arcy, now (1922) Primate of All Ireland.
[39] _The Times_, September 30th, 1912.