Was King Billy of the Boyne infamy gay?

realitykeeper

Ulster Unionists commemorate the battle of the Boyne but was their beloved Dutch King Billy gay? This clip from the excellent Dutch movie Admiral would suggest he was: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oNwFEl8w20 and several other clips from the same movie indictate likewise.

Next time the Unionists commemorate the Battle of the Boyne, maybe they might like to invite a lot of gay people to celebrate the life of King Billy with them. Maybe they could get a baker to make the gay cake. Now doesn`t that sound sweet?

Here is the full movie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRoKBEu5eyc

is_that_so

Is there anything that's not a YouTube video that might suggest this? Otherwise this just looks like clickbait.

Peregrinus

Rumours circulated in his own time that he had homosexual favourites; these rumours were assiduously propagated by his Jacobite opponents, but were taken seriously by his supporters as well - seriously enough to warn him about the unusual degree of favour which he showed to a number of young, handsome men, some of whom he brought with him from the Netherlands, and to whom he granted English titles and court positions. (Their descendants still enjoy English titles today.)

William had no children with his wife, whom he married for dynastic reasons when she was just 15 years old (and he was 27). He only had one known mistress, which by monarchical standards of the time meant he was regarded as practically celibate. His intense friendships with younger men are not in dispute, but historians disagree about how much veracity there might be in allegations that these relationships were actively sexual.

Ipso

Odds are he wouldn’t have been the only one in the village.

What's the world coming to. Next they'll also be claiming the Roman Catholic Church supported him...

realitykeeper

Deleted User wrote: »

What's the world coming to. Next they'll also be claiming the Roman Catholic Church supported him...

How was the Holy Catholic Church to know?

realitykeeper

is_that_so wrote: »

Is there anything that's not a YouTube video that might suggest this? Otherwise this just looks like clickbait.

No need, Peregrinous agrees. And, this additional info is compliments of joeguevera: https://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/belfast-and-beyond/king-billy-early-champion-gay-rights

Peregrinus

realitykeeper wrote: »

How was the Holy Catholic Church to know?

Oh, darling, everybody knew.

Ash.J.Williams

The battle of the boyne was in fact a tiff between two gay lovers

Peregrinus

Ash.J.Williams wrote: »

The battle of the boyne was in fact a tiff between two gay lovers

Lovely idea, but no. While James VI and I was of questionable sexual disposition, James VII and II, who was Willam's adversary at the Boyne, seems to have been entirely heterosexual; indeed, actively so to an almost embarrassing degree.

joeguevara

Certainly not new. Many articles on it going back years. Here is one from amnesty in 2008.

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/blogs/belfast-and-beyond/king-billy-early-champion-gay-rights

realitykeeper

Peregrinus wrote: »

Oh, darling, everybody knew.

But sweetheart, surely you are not suggesting there were no clossets in the 17th century.

realitykeeper

Peregrinus wrote: »

James VII and II, who was Willam's adversary at the Boyne, seems to have been entirely heterosexual; indeed, actively so to an almost embarrassing degree.

That must have been quite a feat given that a monogamy was practically akin to celibacy for monarchs of that time.

Peregrinus

realitykeeper wrote: »

Surely you are not suggesting there were no clossets in the 17th century sweetheart.

There were many, ya hot thing ya. But a life lived as publicly as that of the King of England could not be closeted. Remember, this is a man for whom getting out of bed in and getting dressed was a state occasion to which courtiers were invited every morning. Virtually everthing he did, even the most mundane of things, was observed and commented on by numerous witnesses.

We have the questions we have about his relationships with younger men precisely because everybody knew about them, and gossiped about them; they were played out in public. And the gossip wasn't just at Hampton Court - there was a regular lively correspondence between people in William's court in London and in the pretender's court in France in which all the news and gossip was exchanged, and from France it spread everywhere. Jacobites in Rome and Jacobites in Paris were writing to one another about William's supposed taste for young men. Of course the papal court knew about the rumours; how could they not? Their suport for William was not an expression of moral approval of his character or habits, but a power-play - Wiliam was at odds with Louis XIV of France and so was the papacy; therefore the papacy supported William of Orange.

Peregrinus

realitykeeper wrote: »

That must have been quite a feat given that a monogamy was practically akin to celibacy for monarchs of that time.

James was unuusual in that he married "beneath him" (he married a commoner), and he married for love, against the opposition of his family (and also of hers). His marriage to Ann Hyde lasted 11 years, endin with her death from breast cancer. It produced 8 children, of whom only 2 survived to adulthood. By all accounts the marriage was a close one; the couple were affectionate, and were very good friends as well as being husband and wife, something not taken for granted at the time. Ann became a Catholic early on in their marriage, and it is generally taken to be her example and her influence which led James to convert some years later. James was fond of his children and his role as a father which, again, was not something to be taken for granted at that time, and in that class.

And yet James had a string of infatuations with other women, and a string of mistresses, and was a famous letch and ogler at court. He had at least 7 illegitimate children by two of his mistresses (although some of these were born after Ann's death). Ann was deeply hurt by all this, but James seems to have seen no contradiction in his commitment to his marriage and his dalliances elsewhere.

pedroeibar1

Peregrinus wrote: »

There were many, ya hot thing ya. But a life lived as publicly as that of the King of England could not be closeted. ......

Quite. Brings new meaning to the role of the 'trusty page of the backstairs'!

Peregrinus

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Quite. Brings new meaning to the role of the 'trusty page of the backstairs'!

Listen, this guy had a courtier whose job it was to go into the sh!tter with him, and hand him toilet paper as required.

The guy was literally never unwatched. There was nothing secret about his private life, because he had next to no private life.

pedroeibar1

Poor old James - even in death he was not allowed rest. Treated as a relic he was dismembered and bits distributed to half a dozen churches/convents. I used to pass THIS on my morning commute / RER many years ago.

Peregrinus

pedroeibar1 wrote: »

Poor old James - even in death he was not allowed rest. Treated as a relic he was dismembered and bits distributed to half a dozen churches/convents. I used to pass THIS on my morning commute / RER many years ago.

And to add to the indignity, most of him is now missing, because the tomb containing the bulk of his body parts was vandalised and robbed during the French Revolution. Apparently the tomb erected for him in 1824 contains only a length of intestine.

Jellybaby1

Crikey, who'd be a king, eh?

BalcombeSt4

Ruth Dudely Edwards wrote that Patrick Pearce not might be gay, but was as a matter of fact gay. She also wrote that he sometimes had urges to fondle children & was a pedo who never acted on his urges (how she knew this was a mystery).

Now I hate Ruthe Duduley Edwrds with a passion and the last part is clear Loyalist propaganda, how the hell would she know he had these "urges". But the first part I think there's a good chance it was true, if you listen to the interviews of women from the Rising you hear he had no interest in talking or being with women.

Ascendant

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

Ruth Dudely Edwards wrote that Patrick Pearce not might be gay, but was as a matter of fact gay. She also wrote that he sometimes had urges to fondle children & was a pedo who never acted on his urges (how she knew this was a mystery).

Now I hate Ruthe Duduley Edwrds with a passion and the last part is clear Loyalist propaganda, how the hell would she know he had these "urges". But the first part I think there's a good chance it was true, if you listen to the interviews of women from the Rising you hear he had no interest in talking or being with women.

Well, there is that poem of his, Little Lad of the Tricks:

I forgive you, child
Of the soft red mouth:
I will not condemn anyone
For a sin not understood.
Raise your comely head
Till I kiss your mouth

I'd be hesitant in judging a man on the basis of a single poem, but it's still not something I'd want my name attached to.

ChrisJ84

Peregrinus wrote: »

Rumours circulated in his own time that he had homosexual favourites; these rumours were assiduously propagated by his Jacobite opponents, but were taken seriously by his supporters as well - seriously enough to warn him about the unusual degree of favour which he showed to a number of young, handsome men, some of whom he brought with him from the Netherlands, and to whom he granted English titles and court positions. (Their descendants still enjoy English titles today.)

William had no children with his wife, whom he married for dynastic reasons when she was just 15 years old (and he was 27). He only had one known mistress, which by monarchical standards of the time meant he was regarded as practically celibate. His intense friendships with younger men are not in dispute, but historians disagree about how much veracity there might be in allegations that these relationships were actively sexual.

An equally plausible interpretation is that Williams relationship with these younger men was paternal - he and Mary were childless after all. Jacobite propaganda and court jealousy / gossip would have been enough to fuel rumours of homosexuality.

It seems strange to me that we see same sex friendships, even intense ones, and immediately jump to the conclusion that they must have been lovers.

fryup

so all this time the orange order should have been the pink order

Peregrinus

BalcombeSt4 wrote: »

. . . Now I hate Ruthe Duduley Edwrds with a passion and the last part is clear Loyalist propaganda, how the hell would she know he had these "urges". But the first part I think there's a good chance it was true, if you listen to the interviews of women from the Rising you hear he had no interest in talking or being with women.

Doesn't mean he was gay, though. We have a view of marriage in which spouses should also be good, close friends, but this is quite modern. In Pearse's time it wasn't at all unusual to find heterosexual men who sought and found sexual connection with women and who made successful and happy marriages, but who sought and found social and emotional connection with other men - you could call this being heterosexual and homosocial, and this combination sustained a huge network of largely male-male social life and socialising. We might regard it as odd or even disfunctional, but that doesn't mean the men concerned were homosexual.

ChrisJ84 wrote: »

An equally plausible interpretation is that Williams relationship with these younger men was paternal - he and Mary were childless after all. Jacobite propaganda and court jealousy / gossip would have been enough to fuel rumours of homosexuality.

It seems strange to me that we see same sex friendships, even intense ones, and immediately jump to the conclusion that they must have been lovers.

Yeah, though it should be pointed out that there was scads of poetry of this type written around that time, and in the literary criticism of the period there is no suggestion that it was regarded as offensive or suspicious; it was just a particular genre of poetry. We are perhaps hypersensitised to these issues, and so we read this stuff in a different light.

Not saying whether Pearse was or was not homosexual, or whether he did or did not have an attraction to boys - I have no idea. I haven't read RDE's book.
But judging his behaviour and his writing by our contemporary standards and preoccupations, ignoring the context, convention and customs of Pearse's culture and society, is not necessarily the best way to try and arrive at an answer to those questions.

BalcombeSt4

Ascendant wrote: »

Well, there is that poem of his, Little Lad of the Tricks:



I'd be hesitant in judging a man on the basis of a single poem, but it's still not something I'd want my name attached to.

Yeah, but that's a poem, I don't think it's suppose to be taken literal, it could be a metahpor for Pearce kissing a newly born free Ireland or something like that.

And if you were a pedo, you wouldn't want to telegraph it all over the place either.

ChrisJ84

Peregrinus wrote: »

Yeah, though it should be pointed out that there was scads of poetry of this type written around that time, and in the literary criticism of the period there is no suggestion that it was regarded as offensive or suspicious; it was just a particular genre of poetry. We are perhaps hypersensitised to these issues, and so we read this stuff in a different light.

Totally agree, and as Balcombe says below, it's poetry and we should interpret it as such - symbolic language that's meant to make us feel something, rather than taking it literally.

Peregrinus wrote: »

Not saying whether Pearse was or was not homosexual, or whether he did or did not have an attraction to boys - I have no idea. I haven't read RDE's book.
But judging his behaviour and his writing by our contemporary standards and preoccupations, ignoring the context, convention and customs of Pearse's culture and society, is not necessarily the best way to try and arrive at an answer to those questions.

To my mind, the question of Pearse's (or William III's) sexuality is pretty irrelevant (unless or course you want to weaponise it for one reason or another). An even more interesting question than "Was he?" is "Why does it matter so much to us whether he was or not?" I imagine that historians of the future will look back and wonder why we were so obsessed by these questions.

Del.Monte

In fairness, it's only the lunatic fringe with an agenda that have any interest (?) in topics like this.

Peregrinus

In relation to William, the question of his sexual orientation is of genuine historical relevance, since allegations were made about it in his own time, and what effect those allegations might have had, how they played out, how he addressed them or failed to, etc, might all be affected by whether the allegations had any truth.

As regards Pearce, nobody in his own time seems to have had the least interest in his sexual orientation, so that issue doesn't arise. But in terms of his own psychological and social development, you could argue that his sexual orientation, in the context of his time and culture, might have influenced his personal development, his life choices, and perhaps even his views on matters such as education, the role of women in society (or in the Republican movement), etc, etc. This would all have to be speculative, of course, since we can't actually know what his sexual orientation was, but that doesn't mean that it's irrelevant or worthless. Just that any conclusions we might draw would have to be pretty tentative and provisional.

But, yeah, it's undoubtedly true that we are preoccupied by questions of sexuality and sexual orientation in ways that earlier, supposedly less progressive, generations were not. One element of this, particularly in relation to homosexuality, is that the gay community was until recently fairly marginalised and alienated, and there is advantage to them in identifying well-regarded figures from the past and claiming them for the community. (It's ironic that in the past questions of Roger Casement's sexuality were raised in an attempt to denigrate him, whereas nowadays such questions are more likely to be raised in an attempt to elevate the gay community.)

pedroeibar1

ChrisJ84 wrote: »

To my mind, the question of Pearse's (or William III's) sexuality is pretty irrelevant (unless or course you want to weaponise it for one reason or another). .........historians of the future will look back and wonder why we were so obsessed by these questions.

Del.Monte wrote: »

In fairness, it's only the lunatic fringe with an agenda that have any interest (?) in topics like this.

Agreed. Where does it stop? For e.g. there was that guy who permanently wandered around with 12 mates and never married (and he died believing his mother was a virgin!)

ChrisJ84

@Peregrinus, I see what you're saying and you have a point about William. The fact that this was something that was alleged at the time makes it of greater historical interest.

I should probably have been clearer, when I said irrelevant what I really had in mind was a narrower source / archive view of history where we would ask what happened and what does that mean, drawing reasonable conclusions from the available data. Using William as an example, we can say that he had close male companions, that his political and religious opponents sought to use that to discredit him, and try to understand why that happened. Going beyond that to try and uncover his sexuality is really into the realms of speculation, in the absence of the uncovering of any new data.

The interesting parallel between the 17th century allegations about William and the more recent speculation about Pearse is their propaganda value - which makes me especially sceptical of any conclusions drawn in the absence of any real evidence.

Peregrinus

Yes, I agree. If we look at Casement, who actually was gay, we can see that the main significance of this is not anything that it tells us about Casement the man, or his political or historical signficance, but the propaganda use that was made of it. Similarly, as has already been alluded to in this thread, one reason why the putative homosexuality of William of Orange is of interest to us is the embarrassment/annoyance that (we assume) the fact would cause to a certain class of Orangeman today. For all that these things might have some historical significance, popular interest in them today is to a substantial extend just a matter of prurience.