Relief was the dominant response of northern loyalists and Orangemen to the tripartite agreement of December 1925, which confirmed the border as defined in 1920. A year later, when the Prime Minister visited Newry to preside over the Grand Orange Lodge of County Down, he and ‘Lady Craig were made the recipients of very handsome presents from the Loyalists and Orangemen of Newry and District in recognition of valuable services in connection with the settlement of the Boundary question’. The agreement promised to end fourteen years of uncertainty, during which the frontier of loyal Ireland had contracted to a point where it seemed barely defensible. Under relentless pressure from successive governments as well as nationalists, the opponents of Irish self-government had effectively abandoned hope for the three southern provinces in 1911, and for the three Ulster counties with large Catholic majorities in 1916. The survival of the Irish Free State remained in doubt until 1923, and the incredibly vague terms for the proposed boundary commission created justifiable fear among loyalists that further attempts would be made to cripple the northern state by massive territorial transfers. Craig’s great success, apart from stifling the northern civil war in June 1922, was to hold the line of the six counties until Cosgrave’s government acknowledged the fait accompli.