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 leaders. More than that, the emissaries of the Orange lodges contrived to make their influence widely felt in the Army, and it became clear afterwards that a large number of soldiers were sworn confederates of the association.