[2] He held successive curacies in Kilrush, County Clare, and the Ulster parishes of Maghera, Tamlaght O’Crilly and Lifford, until in 1824 he was appointed Rector of Tamlaghtard, otherwise Magilligan,[3] where he remained until his death twenty years later.
[5] Visiting Graham in 1822, Dr Thomas Reid found he had charge of Lifford’s lunatic asylum[note 2] and was "fraught with information on almost every topic ... and distinguished for learning and talents of the first order".
[12] From 1816 onward he wrote a series of articles entitled "Annals of Irish Popery by John De Falkirk",[note 6] tracing Ireland’s ecclesiastical, civil and military history from 1535 to 1691.
During the same period he composed numerous poems and ballads, examples of which regularly appeared (generally anonymously though often credited as originating in Lifford) in the Anti-Jacobin Review[15] and sometimes reached a wider audience in the columns of newspapers and journals such as the Morning Post, The Sun, and the Gentleman's Magazine.
[24] One report of the matter implied that local hostility towards Graham followed his exposure of the "kissing priest", a Catholic clergyman in Magilligan accused of attempting to seduce the wife of a parishioner while she knelt in confession before him.
In 1830 the Londonderry Sentinel reported "general belief" that Graham had identified himself with Orangeism as a means to preferment within his church and had expected nothing less than a bishopric if the Duke of York, Grand Master of the Order, became king.
[32] At his death his association with the Order was said to have been "distinguished for his uncompromising principles and for the wholesome spirit of religious confidence which he infused into Its councils", and he was remembered for "increasing the use of his influence with the Orangemen to preserve them from infringing in the least the laws" by which their activities had become circumscribed.
[33][note 13] It was Graham’s representation of the general Protestant rather than the particular Orange interest that brought him the civic recognition evident when his health and work were regularly toasted at anniversary celebrations of the Shutting of the Gates of Derry.
In 1827 the toast was proposed by Sir George Hill, Member of Parliament (MP) for the city, who declared that Graham had "for a series of years back, been reckless of selfish considerations, devoted his time and his talents to the maintenance of the Protestant interest, and possessed a strong claim on the gratitude of the citizens of Londonderry".
But in the following year Dawson turned coat and helped pave the way for passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Act 1829,[35] which Graham regarded as the moment "the sun of England’s glory went down".
[38][note 16] When the poll for the County Londonderry Election opened in August 1830, a procession of 400 mounted freeholders entered Derry to cast their votes, Graham riding at their head "on a white charger and bearing a wand".
In February 1831, "with William the Third set in gold suspended from his neck by an Orange collar", he took control of a public meeting in Coleraine, pulling a respected local figure from his platform and knocking off the man’s hat.
[40] Acquitted on a charge of assault resulting from this affair,[41] he was shortly afterwards reported as behaving, at an election meeting in the Court House in Derry, in a manner "indescribably ludicrous and pantomimical" and "affording a triumph to the impugners of Protestantism by his wretched buffoonery".
This was composed, he said, "in the leisure hours of a life actively engaged in the defence of the Protestant religion and constitution of the realm", and his conduct of politics through poetry found space in both metropolitan and provincial English newspapers in compositions such as "Roman Catholic emancipation: a warning voice to the people of England".
Two years later came Ireland Preserved,[49] in which he reworked Mitchelburne’s "old historical drama" (from which he had borrowed in 1823) and Robert Ashton’s Battle of Aughrim, revised the lyrical catalogue from Derriana, and expanded the related biographical notes.
[53] In 1842, when a letter appeared in the press suggesting he neglected his parish, the Bishop of Derry was promptly presented with an address signed by 134 members of Graham’s Church of Ireland congregation attesting to his reliability as a minister in every respect and to his care for the poor of all denominations.
In response to criticism, the trustees of the project passed to Magilligan’s new rector a sum regarded as sufficient for completion, retaining the surplus to put up a proposed tablet to Graham’s memory in St Columb's Cathedral.
In the 1870s, the funds in hand were applied to the cost of various installations in the Apprentice Boys’ Memorial Hall in Derry, including a mural tablet for Graham in the upper assembly room.
As early as 1829, an Irish commentator observed that he had "rescued from oblivion important facts of our general and local history, long buried among nearly forgotten records of our country and which but for his indefatigable research must have been lost to posterity".
[68] And in 1861 it was doubted that the Siege of Derry "would ever have supplied the magnificent episode devoted to the subject in Macaulay’s History had the labours of the humble Rector of Tamlaghtard not gone before to facilitate the researches and kindle the enthusiasm of the noble historian".