Orange Order of the Swan Brethren

I am found the order of the Swan Brotherhood in America. William of Orange was a member. It is going to take me five posts to get this information down.

Jon

René of Châlon, as the last descendant of the original princes, left the principality to his first cousin William of Nassau-Dillenburg (better known as “William the Silent”), who was not a descendant of the original Orange family but became the legal heir to the principality of Orange, and all of René’s lands. Thus, the principality which René had inherited from his mother was passed to his father’s brother’s son.

The principality of Orange had already passed, through the female line, from the first dynasty of Orange to the families Les Baux, and then to De Châlon.^[4] It now passed to a family which was not descended in blood at all from any of the preceding families.