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Message: [QUOTE="OneTrickPony, post: 2949249, member: 2659"] Northern Ireland is not the Irish Republic. You can still have a fistfight in Glasgow by wearing green or orange anytime the Celtics play the Rangers. William III actually pushed to have the [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toleration_Act_1689']Toleration Act of 1689[/URL] extended to Roman Catholics. [I]The historian Kenneth Pearl sees the Act of Toleration as "in many ways a compromise bill. To get nonconformists' (Protestants who were not members of the Church of England) support in the crucial months of 1688". Both the [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whigs_(British_political_party)']Whig[/URL] and [URL='https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tories_(British_political_party)']Tory[/URL] parties that had rallied around William and Mary had promised nonconformists that such an act would be enacted if the revolution succeeded. James II had himself issued an act of toleration, but the nonconformists believed their future would be more secure if the Sovereign was not a Roman Catholic.[/I] Roman Catholics were no longer hunted down after the passage of the Act, and William III was seen as an ally personally. The Orange on the Celtic Flag is a tip of the hat to the Dutchman that curbed the worst tendencies of the English Anglicans. [/QUOTE]