Perhaps their most notable exploit in armed loyalty was their attempt to dethrone, or rather to defeat in succession to the throne, Queen Victoria.

This is a chapter in their history with regard to which they are far too modest and reticent.
But the leading case in recent years is of course the attitude of the Lodges towards the Disestablishment of the Irish Episcopal Church in 1869.

The records are singularly rich in what I may perhaps call Carsonese.

Dukes threatened to "fight as men alone can fight who have the Bible in one hand and the sword in the other." Learned counsel of the Queen covenanted to "seal their protest with their blood in martyrdom and battle." Ministers of the gospel were all for kicking the Crown into the Boyne, keeping their powder dry, shouldering Minie rifles, and finally joining the lawyers in the red grave of martyrdom.
An Ulster poet (a satirist one fears) wrote a famous invocation to the statue of Mr Walker near Derry, beginning: "Come down out o' that, Mr Walker, There's work to be done by-and-by, And this is no time to stand glowerin' Betwixt the bog-side and the sky." But Mr Walker did not come down: he remained on his safe pinnacle of immortality.

And of course there was no civil war.