Richard Rutledge Kane

Richard Rutledge Kane (1841–1898) was a Church of Ireland minister, an outspoken Irish unionist and Orangeman, and an early patron of the Gaelic League. A dominant personality in the life of Belfast, his funeral procession in 1898 was purportedly one of the largest seen in the city.

Anglican clergyman Kane was born in Newtownstewart, Co. Tyrone, was raised a Methodist but joined the established Church of Ireland as a teenager. He was ordained as a priest in 1869, and held various clerical positions before graduating from Trinity College Dublin BA and LLB in 1877, MAin 1880, and LLDin 1882. In 1882, he was appointed rector at Christ Church, Belfast, a position he held until his death. Christ Church in College Square had been erected in 1833 to serve "the poorer classes of Protestants.

Unionist and Orangeman Kane was a strict Protestant, and regularly denounced what he perceived as the sins and errors of the Roman Catholic Church. Politically he was a conservative and unionist. From 1885, he was the Orange Order County Grand Master of Belfast, and was a Deputy Grand Chaplain of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland. He was also a Vice-President of both the Belfast Conservative Association and the Ulster Loyalist Anti-Repeal Union.

Kane toured Ireland and England and, hosted by an extensive Orange-Order network in Canada and the U.S., seeking support and understanding for unionist resistance to Irish home rule. After the first Home Rule Bill was defeated in the House of Commons on 8 June 1886, Irish Home-Rule MPs in the House accused Kane and his Presbyterian counterpart, Hugh "Roaring" Hanna, of fomenting the violent rioting in Belfast that followed. Kane did not counter the rumour that they were on a punitive mission for the government, and declared that, unless they were disarmed, 2000,000 armed Orangemen would relieve them of their weapons.

As a signal of determination of northern Protestants to resist the restoration of an Irish parliament in Dublin, in advance of the second bill Kane helped organise in Belfast the Ulster Unionist Convention of 1892, 12,000 delegates, elected by Unionist associations across the country, and several thousands spectators, attended.

Kane opposed the Irish National Land League of Charles Stewart Parnell and Michael Davitt, citing the violence employed in the Land War as an augur of what Catholic-majority rule would entail. The nationalist press referred to Kane as "the Shooting Rector", a reference to his purported suggestion in 1880 that for every landlord killed, a priest should be shot. The Branch president was Kane's parishioner, Dr. John St Clair Boyd.

Commemoration Kane’s funeral in November 1898 was reputedly "one of the largest the city had ever seen, with an estimated sixty thousand people watching the funeral procession". A memorial at the Clifton Street Orange Hall over whose opening he had presided in 1885, commends Kane as a "Faithful Pastor, Gifted Orator, and Loyal Irish Patriot".