Wallace, Robert Hugh (1860–1929), Orangeman, soldier and political activist, was born in English Street, Downpatrick, Co. Down, on 14 December 1860, son of William Nevin Wallace, solicitor and landowner, and his second wife, Catherine Mary (d. 1877), daughter of Francis Charles Annesley (1775–1832), naval captain and fourth son of the second Earl Annesley. He had one full brother, a captain in the King's Shropshire Light Infantry.
The Wallace family had a long connection with Downpatrick, where Robert's paternal great-grandfather James Wallace and grandfather Hugh Wallace served as seneschal. The latter founded a highly successful solicitor's firm, Hugh Wallace and Co. of Downpatrick and Belfast. His son William Nevin Wallace considerably increased the family fortunes by working as a parliamentary lawyer and by some fortunate inheritances; he also served as secretary and treasurer to Down cathedral board from disestablishment in 1870 until his death in 1895, when he was succeeded in both positions by Robert Hugh Wallace, who held them until his own death and served for a number of years on Down and Connor diocesan council.
Robert Hugh Wallace was educated at Harrow and Brasenose College, Oxford, graduating in law (1883) and MA (1886). He was called to the English bar at the Inner Temple (1886), but did not practise because of his father's desire that he should succeed him as head of the family firm of solicitors. Accordingly, Wallace was enrolled as a solicitor in the Irish courts in 1890. He also acted as a land agent and owned extensive property in Belfast and counties Down and Armagh; through a further bequest, he acquired Myra Castle near Strangford, Co. Down, which became his principal residence. Wallace's considerable wealth underpinned his extensive social, political and military activities. He was a deputy lieutenant for Co. Down (serving as high sheriff in 1908) and an active member of the county grand jury.
An active freemason, who eventually attained the 33rd degree, Wallace became grand junior warden of Ireland, and until his death was grand first principal of the Royal Arch Chapter of Down and treasurer of the Victoria Jubilee Masonic Annuity Fund for the Province of Down, increasing contributions received from the county from £70 to over £1,000. He also served on the board of general purposes of the Grand Lodge of Ireland. At the time of his death he was the third-highest-ranking mason in Ireland.
Fond of foxhunting and yachting on Strangford Lough, he was also given to antiquarian research, frequently lecturing local associations on such topics as the history of the South Down Militia and the penal laws against catholics (which he argued had been legitimate attempts at political self-defence rather than expressions of religious bigotry (Down Recorder, 16 November 1912)). He published several articles on military history in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology. In 1899 he began a history of Orangeism, but subsequently abandoned it and made his source materials available to R. M. Sibbett (qv). The surviving fragment of Wallace's account, notable for its use of oral tradition and for combining some critical acumen with its generally apologetic approach, was published by the education committee of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland in 1994. Wallace also completed a history of Downpatrick, which remained unpublished (PRONI, Wallace papers, D1889/8/4). In 1897 he helped to reconstruct the mediaeval high cross outside Down cathedral.
Wallace joined the junior branch of the Orange order at the age of eight, and in childhood he and his brother paraded through Downpatrick during Orange festivals, wearing miniature sashes and beating drums. As an adult he was a member of Eldon LOL no. 7, a high-status lodge for the social elite. In the 1890s he was deputy grand secretary of the County Grand Orange Lodge of Down.
Under the Liberal government of 1892–5, Wallace was a leading member of Downpatrick Unionist Club, an outspoken advocate of resistance to Gladstone's second home rule bill, and a delegate to the 1893 anti-home rule convention held in Belfast. In 1899 he was an unsuccessful unionist candidate in a rowdy contest for the Downpatrick division of the new Down County Council, though he was simultaneously elected to Downpatrick Urban District Council and became one of that body's two representatives on the county council. Wallace later cited expressions of anglophobia by newly formed nationalist local councils – 'legalised Fenian lodges' (Ulster Echo, 13 July 1903) – as showing what could be expected from a home rule parliament. He also ran the Orange order's emergency committee (1908–10), which recruited labour for landowners boycotted by nationalists. Despite his staunch unionism, Wallace's private relations with catholics were relatively good. During the 1899 county council elections, he denounced claims that he discriminated against catholics, pointing out that he had repeatedly used the services of the catholic auctioneer who made the allegations, and also employed a catholic surveyor.
Wallace had a strong family connection with the South Down Militia (5th Royal Irish Rifles (RIR)), which had a large Orange membership, and joined the regiment as a second lieutenant on 29 March 1879; after successive promotions, he became lieutenant-colonel and battalion commandant (22 January 1898) and honorary colonel (22 March 1899). He led the South Downs to service in the South African war in April 1901. The battalion guarded lines of communication in the Orange Free State against Boer guerrillas, while a section served as mounted infantry in anti-guerrilla 'sweeps', regularly suffering casualties. They returned home in July 1902; Wallace received the CB and the Queen's South Africa Medal with five clasps as well as mention in despatches. While in South Africa, he kept a diary (PRONI, D1889/4/13) much more critical of the British military command than his public utterances.
Wallace was a regular composer of occasional verse. His best-known ballad, 'The South Down Militia' (originally called 'The terrors of the land'), a half-humorous celebration of the regiment, was composed in South Africa and is still sung, played and recorded by Orange and military musicians. He himself frequently sang it on social occasions, for his connection with the regiment was as much social as military; he regularly organised and paid for celebrations and excursions, which he saw as reinforcing the regiment's identity. In 1907 he received a five-year extension of his command, serving as commander of the RIR militia brigade in 1908 and of the RIR special reserve battalion (1909–11). He finally retired as commander of the militia on 5 January 1913.
While absent in South Africa, Wallace was nominated as official Unionist candidate in the Down East by-election of February 1902, in which his status as 'the khaki candidate' and strong local credentials were emphasised. He was narrowly defeated by James Wood, the Russellite liberal candidate (see Thomas Wallace Russell (qv)). At the 1906 general election, the Down East seat was recaptured for the Unionist party by James Craig (qv), with Wallace as chief local organiser. Craig and Wallace developed a strong personal friendship, Craig describing Wallace as 'the mainstay of East Down' (31 January 1910; PRONI, D1889/3/18). Wallace turned down subsequent parliamentary candidacies to concentrate on the Orange order and the militia. He was an active committee member of the Irish Unionist Alliance, and in 1905 a founding member of the Ulster Unionist Council, but it is above all his Orange activities which mark him as a key member of the less patrician and more aggressively Ulster-centric, post-1899 Ulster unionist leadership, dominated by professionals and businessmen from east Ulster.
Wallace served as county grand master of Belfast (1903–21) in succession to Edward Saunderson (qv), and led the official Orange Institution's struggle to contain the breakaway, working-class Independent Orange Order led by T. H. Sloan (qv) by making aggressive populist calls for protestant unity against the catholic-nationalist threat. His duties were administrative as well as political; one of his proudest achievements was the organisation of a fund for Belfast Orange widows. He was grand secretary of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland (1903–10), and from 1911 grand secretary to the newly formed Provincial Grand Lodge of Ulster, established for closer liaison with Ulster resistance to the third home rule bill. He held the honorific title of grand president of the Grand Orange Council of the world (1909–12) and was deputy grand master of the Grand Black Chapter of Ireland.
Because of the age and peripheral location of the order's grand master, the fourth earl of Erne (John Henry Crichton (qv)), Wallace was the key figure in the mass mobilisation of the Orange order behind the anti-home rule campaign of Edward Carson (qv). He was a member of the executive committee of the nascent Ulster provisional government, of the volunteer advisory board and of the personnel board, and of the five-member committee that drafted the constitution of the provisional government. His prominence is indicated by a contemporary postcard (reproduced on the cover of English and Walker, Unionism) in which Wallace is one of 'four aces' held by the red hand of Ulster, the others being Carson, Craig and Bonar Law. As early as December 1910, Wallace began to organise drill training for members of the Orange order in preparation for the revival of the home rule threat once the house of lords' veto was abolished; it was Wallace who first secured legal advice (from J. H. M. Campbell (qv)) that two magistrates could authorise drilling, and it has been argued (though not universally accepted) that large-scale drilling by the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) first began in east Down.
On 'Ulster Day' (28 September 1912), Wallace was present at Belfast City Hall as commander of the section of Carson's honour guard recruited from the Orange order. He is visible in photographs of Carson signing the Ulster covenant. Later in the day, Wallace ceremonially presented Carson with a banner said to have flown over William III (qv) at the Boyne. Wallace commanded the North Belfast Regiment of the UVF (1912–14), and was generally regarded as a hawk within the Ulster Unionist Party leadership, actively engaging in arms smuggling and supporting the distribution of arms to the UVF rank and file. However, health problems curbed his active involvement throughout 1913 and he resigned his UVF position in January 1914 after suffering a breakdown due to overwork.
On the outbreak of the first world war, Wallace was recalled to the colours. Placed in command of Donard training camp near Newcastle, Co. Down, on 11 September 1914, he recruited and trained first the 17th and then the 19th battalions, RIR, with considerable success until his retirement for health reasons (gout and depression) in January 1918; he was awarded the CBE for his services. During the conflicts of the early 1920s, Myra Castle was fired on by the IRA. On the formation of the Northern Ireland state, Wallace accepted nomination to the NI privy council but declined a baronetcy and membership of the Senate of Northern Ireland.
Wallace married (1895) Caroline Wilhelmina Twigg, with whom he had a son and three daughters. He also privately acknowledged and supported a daughter in England by a pre-marital relationship (PRONI, D1889/1/1/2). His last years were marked by declining health, though he remained active in freemasonry and Orangeism, and worshipped in Down cathedral the day before his sudden death on 23 December 1929. He is buried in the churchyard beside Down cathedral, and commemorated by a stained-glass window (erected by the masonic Grand Lodge of Ireland and the Provincial Grand Lodge of Down) showing Hiram king of Tyre and Solomon constructing the Temple in Jerusalem.
The fact that Wallace never held a parliamentary seat and was not active in the new Northern Ireland state apparatus; the tendency of accounts of the Ulster crisis to personalise it through Carson and Craig; and the eclipse of the Wallace dynasty after his only son's death in a boating accident in 1930 and the closure of Hugh Wallace and Co. in 1945; help to explain the longstanding failure to recognise his full significance as a central organiser of early-twentieth-century Ulster unionism. His career sheds much insight into the adaptation of local Ulster elites to new political and economic circumstances during the nineteenth century, the role of the male camaraderie of lodge and mess room in socio-political life, and the way in which older gentry-led Orange and local military structures provided the steel frame around which the façade of official Edwardian unionism was constructed.
Wallace's personal War Office file is in the British National Archives in Kew (WO339/16249). There are collections of Wallace papers in the Down County Museum in Downpatrick (DB1008 2002–140) and PRONI (D1889), and letters in other PRONI collections (e.g., D627/434/6 and D1507/A/4/25).