The Grand Lodges (1717-1813) Chapter Eleven THE FIRST GRAND LODGE (1717) THE first Grand Lodge-the first in the world-was founded in London in 1717, but there is a tendency among masonic scholars to hold that the real milestone of masonic history was not then, but thirteen years later -namely, in 1730, when the publication of one of the early irregular prints, Prichard's Masonry Dissected, clearly testified to much recent development in ceremonial and esoteric ritual. The historians take 1730 not only as the turning-point in ceremonial matters, but also in the recognition and more human understanding of the great principles which since those days have been closely associated with freemasonry. Lodge ceremonials of 1717, some historians believe, were probably more or less as they had been even before 1700, but by the year 1730 much had happened. This, so far as it concerns the pre-1700 period, is only a conjecture on their part, and in the absence of evidence either way it is just as reasonable to presume that there had been a steady development of ceremonial since the days of the Acception, and with it a growth in the number of lodges and their membership. This seems the more reasonable view, and it is possible that masonic authors are being rather too definite in making 1730 the critical year. True, the year gains importance chiefly because of Prichard's exposé then published, in which he was professing to reveal rituals that were then being worked by the English lodges, and which must have been worked for at least two or three years.
The importance Of 1730, therefore, is not that in that year some vital change was made in masonic ritual, but that in that year there was published what was claimed to be a revelation, which was read by thousands of masons throughout the country, who, hitherto entirely dependent on a ritual handed down by word of mouth, may from that date have allowed themselves to be influenced by the contents of an irregular print. Whether, then, the pivotal date in matters of ritual, etc., be 1730 or a year or two earlier, we may be sure that the founding of Grand Lodge in 1717 was in itself the occasion or the occasioner-the spring-head, if you will, but not designedly so-of much that happened in the next ten years. It was the success of the first Grand Lodge that produced Prichard's exposé. The quickening of masonic interest, the new breath that vitalized symbolic masonry-these could not easily have come, perhaps might not have come at all, to a handful of independent lodges mutually indifferent to each other's existence. The year 1717 remains the great date, and 1730 or thereabouts the unexpected sequel.
That the advent of Grand Lodge in 1717 was a 'revival' of the Quarterly Communications and Annual Assembly was Anderson's claim in his Constitutions, but for this to be accepted as a literal fact we should need to know for certain that there had been a national, or at least a regional, masonic authority capable of calling together such gatherings. No such evidence is available, although statements are made in the old manuscripts that annual assemblies of the old operatives were held. The Roberts print (date of 1722) mentions, for instance, that an assembly of Masons had been held in December 1663.
The first Constitutions tell us that the four lodges " thought fit to cement under a Grand Master as the Center of Union and Harmony." But this hardly explains what may have been in the minds of the founders. We may well suppose that the need was felt for a central authority to which the London lodges could look, as without it any considerable growth in the number of lodges and their membership might bring about chaotic conditions, but it is possible that this motive was combined with a number of others.
Some students are convinced that part of the object was to restore or strengthen something of the old guild system, and they point to the organization of freemasonry on 'livery' lines, to its system of government and the names of its officers, to its 'livery' (masonic clothing), and so forth, as evidence of such intention. The idea gains colour from the strong supposition that members of the Masons Company were members of one or more of the 'four old lodges,' and there is at once suggested an analogy between the restricted jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge and the sphere of action allowed to the London Company of Masons, which was limited to seven miles.
Many masonic historians have made no secret of their belief that there was a strong connexion between the idea of the first Grand Lodge and that of the club, and they have thought it necessary to emphasize what they regard as the fact-that late in the seventeenth and early in the eighteenth centuries masonic gatherings could certainly be described as convivial affairs.
G. W. Speth, for example, whose writings command respect, believed that the lodges of the accepted masons had some amount of mystic ceremony, but apart from that were convivial societies. Of course the lodges met in taverns, for there was nowhere else to go, the taverns being the customary meeting-places of the day. In them, and in the coffee-houses and chocolate-houses, clubs were born (in great numbers following 1717), and the early lodges, undoubtedly club-like in their ways, had perforce to meet there also. The club was a product of the seventeenth century, the first known use of the word occurring in 1659. The club idea received a great fillip from the writings of Joseph Addison and Richard Steele (see p. 163), who edited their famous Spectator actually in a club, the members of which were of the most diverse character and represented the more intelligent and important classes of society. Addison wrote in the Spectator that Man is said to be a sociable animal, and we take all occasions and pretences of forming ourselves into those little nocturnal assemblies which are commonly known by the name of Clubs. Our modern celebrated clubs are founded upon eating and drinking, which are points wherein most men agree.... When men are thus knit together by a love of society, not a spirit of faction, and do not meet to censure or annoy those that are absent, but to enjoy one another ... there may be something very useful in these little institutions and establishments.
It is obvious, then, that the Premier Grand Lodge was formed at a time when club life was just moving into great popularity, and it is easy to imagine that many a lodge of that day was, in a way, a kind of club. But to suggest that one of the chief aims in founding Grand Lodge was either to bring a club into existence, or to link masonic lodges more closely with the club movement, is fundamentally wrong. Apparently the 'knife and fork' mason who wanted a masonic club had already something of the sort in the 'convivial' assembly of his lodge, and it is difficult to see that to have added a meeting of Grand Lodge just four times a year, and one Assembly with Feast annually, would or could have done much in meeting any further desire that our early Brethren may have felt for club life. We may be quite sure that if the members of the 'four old lodges' wanted more of that life they knew exactly where to find it, or how to get it, without bringing into existence a Grand Lodge, which could do so little towards satisfying such a need.
While one of the four lodges consisted largely of well-to-do men, the three others included many artisans and craftsmen, in whose minds there might well have been another idea-that of forming a friendly society which would watch over its members and their families in time of illness or need. As a matter of fact, a private society of a strongly masonic nature, founded in 1737, was actually a friendly society, its rules and regulations consisting of sixty-six pages of skilfully drawn rules and six pages of members' names, trades, and addresses. The members were exclusively freemasons known to be ready and willing to pay their debts and under forty years of age. A member received £5 upon the death of his wife, but only once. The society developed into a regular lodge, and finally became the Vacation Lodge (No. 55 when it ceased to exist in 1801), all traces of the benefit society having disappeared by 1753. The benefit society idea is further alluded to on later pages (see P. 486).
All these ideas, and many others quite unknown and even unconjectured, may have animated some of the founders of Grand Lodge, but there seems no reason to doubt that the four lodges came together for the main purpose of doing more or less what we know they succeeded in doing-of bringing into existence a masonic centre with a Grand Master, Quarterly Communications, an Annual Assembly and Feast, and having some sort of authority, rather hazy at first, over the London lodges and their members, and finally, in all probability, to consider the preparation of a new constitution.
With the decay of the operative fraternities, the Old MS. Charges had long lost most of their usefulness, but they contained some valuable matter which it was desirable to save and make permanent in rather different form. Those old manuscript constitutions were designed for different days, different men, and wholly different conditions. We may well read into the objects of the new Grand Lodge an intention to produce a set of articles, in the light of which all matters relative to the Craft could be regulated and decided.
"They could not escape History," a notable saying of Abraham Lincoln, applies to the decision of the 'four old lodges' to form a Grand Lodge. Their modest organization extended from St Paul's Churchyard, in the east, to Channel Row, Westminster, in the west-less than two miles as the crow flies-but from it has grown the world-wide organization of symbolic freemasonry.
We have two accounts, and two only, of the founding of Grand Lodge. One is by Dr James Anderson, who is not known to have taken any part in the event, and who published his account twenty-two years later in the 168.second edition of his Constitutions. The second account is by an anonymous author, who about 1763 published The Complete Freemason; or Multa Paucis for Lovers of Secrets.
Anderson's account is short, and, although open to doubt in one or two details, is believed to be substantially correct. This is exactly what he says and all he says: A.D. 1716, the few Lodges at London ... thought fit to cement under a Grand Master as the Center of Union and Harmony, viz. the Lodges that met, At the Goose and Gridiron Ale-house in St Paul's Church-Yard.
2. At the Crown Ale-house in Parker's-Lane near Drury-Lane.
3. At the Apple Tree Tavern in Charles-Street, Covent-Garden.
4. At the Rummer and Grapes Tavern in Channel-Row, Westminster.
They and some old Brothers met at the said Apple-Tree, and having put into the Chair the oldest Master Mason (now the Master of a Lodge) they constituted themselves a GRAND LODGE pro Tempore in Due Form, and forthwith revived the Quarterly Communication of the Officers of Lodges (call'd the GRAND LODGE) resolv'd to hold the Annual ASSEMBLY and Feast, and then to chuse a GRAND MASTER from among themselves, till they should have the Honour of a Noble Brother at their Head.
On St John Baptist's Day, in the 3d year of King GEORGE l., A.D. 1717, the ASSEMBLY and Feast of the Free and accepted Masons was held at the foresaid Goose and Gridiron Ale-house.
Before Dinner, the oldest Master Mason (Now the Master of a Lodge) in the Chair, proposed a List of proper Candidates; and the Brethren by a Majority of Hands elected
Mr ANTONY SAYER, Gentleman, Grand Master of Masons,
{Capt. Joseph Elliot, Grand
{Mr Jacob Lamball, Carpenter Wardens
who being forthwith invested with the Badge of Office and Power by the said oldest Master' and install'd, was duly congratulated by the Assembly who pay'd him the Homage.
SAYER Grand Master commanded the Masters and Wardens of Lodges to meet the Grand Officers every Quarter in Communication at the Place that he should appoint in his Summons sent by the Tyler.
From Multa Paucis we get some further details, but little of importance, although it has always been thought that its author had at his disposal information not known to or used by Anderson.
The leading facts to be derived from both accounts are that at a meeting of four lodges, with the oldest Lodge Master in the chair, Quarterly Communication known as Grand Lodge was revived, and that it was resolved to hold an Annual Assembly and Feast at which to choose the 169.Grand Master. At this assembly, duly held, Antony Sayer was elected Grand Master, and a Captain and a Carpenter were elected Grand Wardens. Although the idea is distinctly conveyed that the four lodges were reviving the Quarterly Communication, we have no record that any such quarterly communication had ever previously been held.
Multa Paucis says that the four lodges met together on St John's Day, and that the Masters and Wardens of six lodges assembled together. This statement has led to much argument, but most students feel that there were actually four lodges, and not six, present at the meeting.
A glance at the 'four old lodges' themselves will well repay the trouble. One of them, the original No. 4-the number it still bears-meeting at the Rummer and Grapes, Westminster, appears to have been a lodge of accepted and speculative masons who had no connexion at that time with the mason trade. When, in 1723, we know something of its membership, we find the Master is the Duke of Richmond and its members are aristocrats and others of social quality. This lodge gave to freemasonry its second Grand Master (Payne) and third (Dr Desaguliers). Dr Anderson, to whom the early book of Constitutions is chiefly due, was also a member.
The three other lodges must have contained a fair sprinkling of artisan members or master artisans, who are likely to have provided the masons, carpenters, and blacksmith who reached the rank of Grand Wardens during the first six years of Grand Lodge; and we may well conclude that there had originally been in these lodges a strong operative element, whereas the lodge at the Rummer and Grapes (No. 4) either never had or had long forgotten any operative origin. It contributed many Grand Officers in those early days and obviously had an influential membership. In due course it became the Old Horn Lodge, later still the Somerset House Lodge 0774), and finally the Royal Somerset House and Inverness Lodge in 1828. It has met at the Freemasons' Tavern and, since 1865, at Freemasons' Hall.
The lodge at the Goose and Gridiron, St Paul's Churchyard, became in 1761 the West India and American Lodge; it was a Masters' Lodge from 1760 to 1769, and became the Lodge of Antiquity in 1770, a name it continues to bear in great honour. It is the famous No. 2, which has met at the Freemasons' Tavern and at Freemasons' Hall since 1781. The Grand Stewards' Lodge (no number), dating from 1735, and Grand Masters' Lodge, No. 1, founded in 1756, alone precede it in the list of lodges. 170.The lodge at the Crown, Drury Lane, expired in 1736 and was revived, unsuccessfully, in 1752.
The lodge at the Apple Tree Tavern, Covent Garden, became the Lodge of Fortitude in 1768 and the Lodge of Fortitude and Old Cumberland in 1818, having been a Masters' Lodge from 1803 to 1813. This historic lodge had the honour of providing the first Grand Master, Antony Sayer. It has met at many places in the neighbourhood of Soho, Long Acre, and Great Queen Street. Though third on the list originally, it lost its pride of place by accepting quite unnecessarily a " Constitution " from Grand Lodge in 1723, by reason of which it became No. 11 in 1729 and, after the Union, No. 12.
There were probably two serious reasons for the new Grand Lodge restricting its jurisdiction to the lodges in London and Westminster. One was a tradition that came down to it from the London Company of Masons, whose own jurisdiction had extended only seven miles; the other was that the founding lodges were of London, and in those days of slow travel were conscious only of London. It may come as rather a shock to realize that the London represented by the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge in 1717 did not exceed three square miles, and that the total area of built-up London at that time included only another two. On the north-east the houses stopped at about Shoreditch Church; in the north they fell far short of Islington, Sadler's Wells, and St Pancras; in the west the town more or less ended at Bond Street, which had open pasture as its outer neighbour. Tothill Fields adjoined Westminster on its west and south. The site of Freemasons' Hall was seven minutes' walk from thie open fields, which almost touched Grey's Inn and actually surrounded Tottenham Court. From the Hall of the Masons' Company, near Guildhall, a person walking in any direction except westward would within a mile reach open fields. South of the river there was Lambeth (chiefly marsh), Southwark, the northern part of what is known as Bermondsey, and Rotherhithe. That was all.
The 'four old lodges' had Westminster as their horizon, and, having united themselves into one organization, apparently sat back content. We do not actually know whether any lodges joined them in the first three years, and possibly-it is a point on which much hinges-there was no arrangement in existence by which they could do so, or by which new lodges could be founded. The 'four old lodges' believed themselves to be of time immemorial, and it is of course possible that they may not have recognized that new lodges could have come into existence. Nevertheless 171.there must have been lodges, both inside and certainly outside the territory of the jurisdiction, and all the masons in them just as 'regular' in every sense as those in the 'four old lodges,' being themselves members of time-immemorial lodges having an inherent right to meet and work. Each of the unaffiliated lodges must have been a law to itself, and while it recognized as a Brother every true mason that entered through its portals, it did not dream of exercising jurisdiction over any other lodge, or of submitting itself to any jurisdiction claimed to be exercised by any other body. Obviously the new Grand Lodge had to meet from the very beginning the opposition of lodges and Brethren who regarded themselves as equals in every sense.
By finding the means whereby old lodges could come under its banner, and by which new lodges could be brought into existence, Grand Lodge quite suddenly began to grow, almost certainly at first by the addition of other London lodges, but very soon, and in spite of the original restriction of its jurisdiction, of country lodges as well. Grand Lodge was quick to increase its area of influence so as to include lodges within ten miles of London or within the 'Bills of Mortality,' the latter a curious phrase having its origin about five hundred years before when London began to issue weekly lists of deaths. (A patent renewed by Charles I in 1636 incorporated the parishes of the City of London and of the City of Westminster and of the Borough of Southwark and fifteen adjoining parishes, others being added later. The district so impressed was known as being within the Bills of Mortality. The Bills were superseded in the I840's.)
If we look at the curious 'engraved list' of lodges of 1725, when the new Grand Lodge had existed for only eight years, we find it to include scores of lodges, of which many must have been newly constituted, and by this year Grand Lodge was actively building up the nucleus of a national organization. (See Plate IV.)
Anderson stated in his early Constitutions, "Now several old Brothers that had neglected the Craft, visited the Lodges; some Noblemen were also made Brothers, and more new Lodges were constituted."
The new Grand Lodge had three quiet years followed by a period of great activity, in which the original four lodges appear to have grown to the considerable number of sixty-four; that is the number shown in the engraved list Of 1725. Of these lodges, fifty were in London and the others were in Edgworth, Acton, Richmond (Surrey), Bath, Bristol, Norwich, Chichester, Chester (three lodges), Fulham, Greenwich, Brentford, Reading.
172.Freemasonry, which at its emergence in the preceding century had been so great an attraction to antiquaries and other learned men, now again attracted them in considerable numbers. Antiquarianism was a vogue in the early eighteenth century. The present Society of Antiquaries came into existence in the same year as Grand Lodge, and included in its early membership the brothers Roger and Samuel Gale, the Rev. Dr William Stukeley, Addison, Steele, Gay, and many other well-known men.
One of these, Dr Stukeley, the antiquary, has his own particular niche in masonic history. His diary entry for January 6, 1721, says, "I was made a Freemason at the Salutation Tavern, Tavistock Street [Covent Garden, London], with Mr Collins and Capt. Rowe, who made the famous diving engine." Then follows a most curious remark which has been much debated by masonic writers.. "I was the first person made a Freemason in London for many years. We had great difficulty to find members enough to perform the ceremony. Immediately upon that it took a run and ran itself out of breath thro' the folly of the members." In the same year, on December 27, 1721, his diary records, "We met at the Fountain Tavern, Strand, and by the consent of the Grand Master present, Dr Beal (the D.G.M.) constituted a Lodge there, where I was chose Master."
Masonic writers have been tempted to take Stukeley's words far too seriously. We can easily suppose that he attended a lodge on an off-night, and it was the ignorance of the novitiate added to his natural extravagance of language that largely led him to write as he did.
From a memoir prepared by Gould we learn that Williarn Stukeley was born in 1687, was both doctor of medicine and a clergyman, and evidently a man of gifts. He died suddenly in 1765, and we get some light upon his temperament from the words of Dr Warburton, Bishop of Gloucester, who wrote:
There was in him such a mixture of simplicity, drollery, absurdity, ingenuity, superstition, and antiquarianism, that he often afforded me that kind of well-seasoned repast, which the French call an Ambigu, I suppose from a compound of things never meant to meet together. I have often heard him laughed at by fools, who had neither his sense, his knowledge, nor his honesty; though it must be confessed that in him they were all strangely travestied.
An historian has said that Dr Stukeley's " extravagancies, great as they are, must be considered as the occasionally wild colouring of that bright ray of genius." In the light of these extracts it is easy to see that in the statement that has been so often quoted he had probably rushed to a conclusion built on false premises. In his research work on place 173.names he brought ridicule upon himself by doing the same sort of thing.
But Stukeley does help us to understand why the antiquaries of his day came into speculative masonry, when he confesses that "his curiosities led him to be initiated into the mysterys of Masonry, suspecting it to be the remains of the mysterys of the ancients." He wrote books on those mysteries, and we can assume that he found in freemasonry much that was satisfying to him, for during his sojourn at Grantham, for some years following 1726, he "set up a lodg of freemasons, wh lasted all the time I lived there." When Stukeley's grave was accidentally discovered in 1886, his coffin, at a depth of about six feet, was found to he in good preservation, with an embossed brass plate ornamented with scroll work surmounted by a goat's head, and bearing a simple inscription in Latin. To the antiquary of the early eighteenth century and to all dabblers in medieval superstition the goat's head was a potent and often sinister symbol.
Grand Lodge was in its earliest days a modest organization. Its officers were a Grand Master (elected annually) and two Wardens. Its members were the Masters and Wardens of the 'four old lodges' that had founded it and of any lodges that afterwards adhered to it (as to which we know little). These 'private' lodges each had its Right Worshipful Master, a Secretary, sometimes a Treasurer, a Tyler or somebody acting as Tyler, and Stewards or Brethren acting as Stewards. In many lodges until after 1813 the Treasurer, when there was one, was junior to the Secretary. In the lodges of the first half of the eighteenth century the period of election for the Master might he quarterly, half-yearly, or yearly.
There was nothing new in the appellation of Grand Master. The literature of the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries frequently mentions the term, one instance being that of Wolsey, who, in the course of a great entertainment to French nobles at Hampton Court, not long before his disgrace, "desired the Grand Master, Anne de Montmorency, to pledge him cup and all, the which was worth 500 marks." There was a Grand Master of Water and Forests in France at about the same time, and probably long before. Latimer in a sermon before Edward VI in 1549 said, "God is great Grand Mayster of the Kynges house."Knolles in 1603 speaks of "Otto, grandmaster of the Templars."
The first Grand Master, Antony Sayer, was a 'gentleman,' but not a rich one, and he is believed to have been the first petitioner to Grand 174.Lodge for relief-not his only occasion of applying for help. He became Tyler of King's Arms Lodge, meeting at the Cannon, Charing Cross, and occupied that position at the time of his death. He was followed as Grand Master by George Payne, and then by John Theophilus Desaguliers, and then again by George Payne, these three being the only Grand Masters not of royal or noble birth.
Antony Sayer left but little mark on freemasonry; George Payne left many marks; while Desaguliers, to change the metaphor, played an important part in the early history of organized freemasonry. Desaguliers was Anglo-French (Jean Théophile Des Aguliers), born at La Rochelle, France, and brought to England when two years old. A Professor of Experimental Philosophy at Oxford, and a disciple and great admirer of Isaac Newton, he wrote a poem entitled The Newtonian System (1728) and A Course of Experimental Philosophy (1734). He was a Fellow and Curator of the Royal Society, and Chaplain to the Prince of Wales. In the 1744 two-volume edition of the second of the two works mentioned he gives a prophetic hint of the present-day atomic theory and of the possible splitting of the atom. Here are his exact words, written about two centuries before his prophecy was realized:
As long therefore as the original Particles remain entire, there may for ever be Bodies made or Compos'd of them, which shall have the same Nature and Texture; But if these could be broken, worn away or diminished, then the Nature of corporeal Things, which is dependent on these, might be changed.
A Deputy Grand Master was appointed in 1721. Grand Lodge had a Secretary in 1723 (W. Cowper, Clerk to the Parliaments) and a Treasurer also, but neither of these officers had the status of a Grand Officer at that time.
Past Grand Masters were given a vote in Grand Lodge in 1724, Past Deputy Grand Masters in 1726, and Past Grand Wardens in 1727. In 1741 the Treasurer, Secretary, and Swordhearer became members of every quarterly communication of Grand Lodge, but they did not in this way automatically become Grand Officers. The first Grand Chaplain was appointed in 1775 on the occasion of laying the foundation-stone of Freemasons' Hall. There were two Grand Architects, the first of them appointed at the same time as the Grand Chaplain. An acting Grand Master, or Pro Grand Master, was appointed in 1782, when the Duke of Cumberland was elected Grand Master. (There is a Pro Grand Master only when the Grand Master is a Prince or 175.Blood Royal.) There was a Grand Portrait Painter in 1785-the only one. Grand Deacons were not known until after the Union in 1813.
For the first three years of Grand Lodge power of election and appointment were in the hands of the members attending that body, but in June 1720 it was agreed that for the future the new Grand Master should have the sole power of appointing his Grand Wardens and-in the event of "Noble Brothers" being Grand Masters-a Deputy Grand Master. In the following year the Grand Master Elect ordered the Grand Wardens to take some Stewards to assist at the approaching festival (for some reason it was not done), and in 1723 six Stewards were publicly thanked. In this we have the starting-point of the Grand Steward system.
The Grand Master Elect proposed his officers in 1723 and they were elected by ballot, but after that date the Grand Master Elect appointed his officers, the Brethren attending Grand Lodge having no voice in the matter.
The six Stewards thanked for their services in 1723 were, it is thought, in the following year ordered to prepare a list of twelve Stewards to serve at the next feast. By 1732 each Steward was nominating his successor, and in 1735 Grand Lodge resolved that "for the future all Grand Officers (except the Grand Master) shall be selected out of that body" -that is, from among the Past Stewards. This has been called an astounding act, but Gould explains it by saying that the Grand Stewards themselves corresponded pretty closely to the Grand Officers of our own times. In the same year (1735) the Grand Stewards were granted the right to form themselves into a special lodge, which should be represented by twelve members, each having one vote, at each communication of Grand Lodge, instead of by the ordinary three members-namely, the Master and Wardens-and that Past Stewards should wear a particular jewel and the usual red ribbon. Then, in 1736, Grand Lodge was declared to consist of the four present and all former Grand Officers; the Master and Wardens of all regular lodges; and the Master, Wardens, and nine representatives of the Stewards' Lodge. The nomination of stewards remained as a right of the Stewards' Lodge, and in 1771 an unsuccessful effort was made to transfer the nomination to the London lodges in rotation. In 1779 it was decided that of the Past Stewards only those who were members of the Stewards' Lodge and contributed to its funds should be eligible for Grand Office. In 1792 the Stewards' Lodge became the Grand Stewards' Lodge, 176.with the right to head the list of lodges without a number-a position it still holds. It has met at Freemasons' Tavern and Freemasons' Hall since 1777. Its members wear crimson aprons and collars.
Nowadays, as prescribed in Grand Lodge Regulation 36, the Grand Master upon the Annual Installation appoints nineteen Grand Stewards, nominated respectively by nineteen separate lodges enjoying the privilege of recommendation. These lodges, known generally as the 'red apron lodges,' are: Grand Master's, No. 1 ; Antiquity, No. 2; Royal Somerset House and Inverness, No. 4; St George's and Corner Stone, No. 5; Friendship, No. 6; British, No. 8; Tuscan, No. 14; Emulation, No. 21; Globe, No. 23; Castle Lodge of Harmony, No. 26; Old King's Arms, No. 28; St Alban's, No. 29; Old Union, No. 46; Felicity, No. 58; Lodge of Peace and Harmony, No. 6o; Regularity, No. 91; Shakespear, No. 99; Jerusalem, No. 197; Prince of Wales', No. 259.
The privilege of recommendation would pass from a 'red apron lodge' to another lodge, nominated by the Grand Master, were the lodge to neglect to make its recommendation. These Grand Stewards rank as Grand Officers during their year of office. Their duties are to regulate the grand festival under the Grand Master's direction and to assist in arranging for the Quarterly Communications and other meetings of Grand Lodge, under the direction of the Grand Director of Ceremonies.
Past or present Grand Stewards alone have the privilege of becoming members of the Grand Stewards' Lodge, which, constituted as a Master Masons' Lodge, has no power of making, passing, or raising masons.
The earliest entries in the minute books of Grand Lodge relate to 1723, at the time when the first Secretary, not then called Grand Secretary, was appointed. There are no minutes whatever of any English speculative lodges before 1717. The minutes of the first (long extinct) Alnwick Lodge go back to 1701, but so far as is known that lodge was entirely operative. The earliest known minutes of Scottish lodges are dated 1598 and 1599, and those lodges also were operative.
How Grand Lodge financed itself in its first years is not clearly understood, but the expenses of any meetings appear to have been met by those present, while the secretarial expenses appear for the first seven years or so to have been made good by the Grand Master.
The first regular charge, a fee for constituting a lodge, went to the fund of general charity, and will be mentioned later.
The Grand Officers attending Grand Lodge in 1729 each paid 1s. 6d. towards expenses, and in 1736 the Grand Stewards did the same.
177.In 1753 it was ordered that a mason should not be made for less than one guinea (in addition to the Tyler's fee), the money to go to the lodge itself or to charity. In 1768 Grand Lodge imposed a fee of 5s. for every Initiation, and 2S. 6d. for registration of the Initiate, these fees providing a fund for general purposes. In 1777 the Grand Lodge fee for Initiation rose to two guineas, while the fee for constituting a lodge, which had been two guineas from 1729, rose to six guineas in London and four guineas in the country. The registration fee on Initiation was raised to half a guinea in 1788, and it is thought that fees then remained unaltered until the Union in 1813.
The old operative fraternities had their own way of meeting the needs of distressed Brethren. The Manuscript Charges enjoin Brethren to receive and cherish strange Brethren by giving them work or by helping them with money on their journey.
The Scottish operative lodges in late medieval days appear to have been quite well organized in this respect, their 'box' under the charge of the Box-master (Treasurer) providing for the assistance of distressed Brethren and even for the education of the orphans of deceased members.
The speculative masons appear to have taken a leaf from their predecessors' book, if we can judge from the many public allusions to the charitable principles of our early Brethren, although it is thought that the specific idea of charity did not make itself strongly felt in the Craft until after 1717. There may be a most simple explanation of this-namely, that up to about that time the average speculative mason was not likely to be one in need of help. judging from the few facts known to us, the type of speculative mason in the seventeenth century was not of the artisan class. Any Brethren who fell by the way were probably helped privately and unofficially, and it was only with the tremendous increase of membership following 1717, and with the corresponding extension of the membership to relatively poor men, that the need for organized charity within the Craft came to be definitely felt. We learn that in 1729 the first regular charge made by Grand Lodge, the one already mentioned-namely, two guineas for constituting a lodge, went to a fund for general charity which hitherto had depended entirely upon voluntary donations both of lodges and Brethren. The Constitutions of 1723 laid down that every Initiate was to "deposit something for the relief of indigent and decayed Brethren."
A scheme for raising a fund of general charity for distressed masons was proposed in November 1724, and at this meeting a petition for help from the first Grand Master, Antony Sayer, was read and recommended. (Another very early recipient of help was Joshua Timson, a Grand Warden in 1722. Sums of money were voted to Antony Sayer in 1730
178.and 1741, not long before his death.) A special committee appointed to consider the proposed charity fund presented a report which was adopted in February 1726; in the following year a committee to administer the charity was appointed, and the first contributions from private lodges were received by the fund in 1729.
Grand Lodge considerably extended the scope of the Committee of Charity in 1730 and referred all business relating to charity to the Committee, which was empowered to hear complaints and report thereon to Grand Lodge. By 1733 the Committee's powers were further enlarged by a resolution referring all business which could not be conveniently discharged by the Quarterly Communications to the Committee of Charity, at the same time deciding that all Masters of regular lodges, together with all Grand Officers, "present, former and future," should be members of that Committee. In this way we find the Committee of Charity acquiring many of the functions now discharged by the Board of General Purposes; in the course of time it became a Board of Masters which continued to operate through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, while the fund of general charity instituted in 1724 developed into the Board of Benevolence, to which every lodge, on behalf of all its subscribing members, now pays quarterage to Grand Lodge. This quarterage system was by no means an invention of Grand Lodge. It is taken from, or modelled on, a usage of the London Company of Masons, with whom it must go back to late medieval days, for in 1693 the Company 1( ordered that the quarterage henceforward be paid 6d. a quarter by every member" (by the way, the London Company must have had its share of difficult members, it being on record that Oswald Strong paid the sum of £1 10s. 6 d. in the, year 1709, being then over fifteen years in arrear).
With the coming into existence of lodges in various parts of the provinces it was inevitable that Provincial Grand Masters would be soon appointed, as, indeed, they were for Cheshire and for Wales by 1726. The statement that a Provincial Grand Master, the first in foreign parts, was appointed in Bengal in 1728 is subject to some little question.
Soon there were three other Grand Lodges. As from about 1724 the Old Lodge at York constituted itself a Grand Lodge. In 1725 (or thereabouts) and 1736, respectively, Ireland and Scotland followed the example and methods of the Grand Lodge of England, and without her assistance or intervention constituted their own Grand Lodges.
When the Duke of Wharton, a Past Grand Master, was in Madrid in 179.1728 he founded what is believed to be the first foreign lodge, but composed chiefly of Englishmen; he founded it on his own responsibility and therefore irregularly, a constitution to regularize it not being granted until the following year, by which time a lodge had been founded at Gibraltar and another in Bengal. All three lodges are now extinct. Tradition says that the Earl of Derwentwater formed a lodge in Paris in 1725. During the eighteenth century a considerable number of military lodges came into existence, possessing the right to meet legally at whatever place the regiment might find itself. The first such lodge was Irish, and was founded in 1732, and was followed by others. Scotland had a military lodge in 1743; while the first English regimental lodge was that of the 8th Regiment of Foot, founded in 1755. The itinerant military lodges are believed to have exercised a strong influence on the ceremonial development of freemasonry during the eighteenth century.
One of the most important things coming from the new Grand Lodge was the book of Constitutions in 1723, in itself a true lineal descendant of the Old MS. Charges of the fourteenth and perhaps still earlier centuries. Actually it appears to have come from Dr James Anderson, but it was published with a certain measure of Grand Lodge authority.
James Anderson, born about 1684 probably in Aberdeen, where he graduated Master of Arts at the Marischal College, went to London, and some time ending in 1734 was the minister of a Presbyterian chapel in Swallow Street, Piccadilly. It is not known when or where he was initiated, but he must have been familiar with the Scots terminology, usages, and historical claims. He is not known to have taken any part in the founding of Grand Lodge, or to have been present at Grand Lodge, until September 1721. After the publication of the Constitutions he stayed away from Grand Lodge for over seven years, during which time he was busy on his work Royal Genealogies, published in 1732. He wrote other books, but they were not of much consequence. He published the second edition of the Constitutions in 1738, and died in the following year.
It is not known whence he derived his doctor's degree, but a copy of his best-known work presented to his old College is inscribed in his own hand, "Jacobus Anderson, D.D" The title "Constitutions" was used by the London Company of Masons to describe their copies of the Old Charges. Anderson's original Constitutions, a book of ninety-two pages, was a private venture and his own property, as was also the second edition published in 1738. He allows the reader to infer that his books were 180.official publications with which Grand Lodge was closely associated throughout their preparation. What is known as the "Approbation," occupying two pages, states that he has drawn forth the above-written new Constitutions, with the Charges and General Regulations: and the Author having submitted the whole to the Perusal and corrections of the late and present Deputy Grand Masters and of other learned Brethren; and also of the Masters and Wardens of particular Lodges at their Quarterly Communication; He did regularly deliver them to the late Grand Master himself, the said Duke of Montagu, for his Examination Correction and Approbation; and his Grace by the advice of several Brethren, order'd the same to be handsomely printed for the use of the Lodges.
We get a somewhat different idea of the whole matter from Lionel Vibert's reconstruction of what he calls the true genesis of the work in which he suggests that Anderson appears in Grand Lodge in September 1721, and asks permission to write and publish a history of the Order to be dedicated to the Grand Master. Desaguliers perhaps associates himself with the proposition and Anderson is given permission. The following March he produces his manuscript-the History and the Master's Song. Grand Lodge, it is suggested, then directs that the "Regulations" proposed by the second Grand Master, George Payne, shall be included in the book. Anderson rewrites and modernizes the Charges of the old Constitutions, and is possibly assisted by Desaguliers and other "learned Brethren." It is complete in the following November. The Approbation is then drawn up and signed (this being what is referred to in the words "having regularly approved in MS. by the Grand Lodge "), and the book is in print in January 1723.
The frontispiece represents a classical arcade, in the foreground of which stand two noble personages-Grand Masters-each with attendants, of whom one carries aprons and gloves. On the ground between the principal figures is a diagram of Euclid's forty-seventh proposition with the Greek word "Eureka," which Anderson thought at the time was an exclamation by Pythagoras when he found the forty-seventh proposition. He believed this proposition to be the "Foundation of all Masonry, sacred, civil and military"; but the exclamation is always attributed to Archimedes on solving the problem of how to test the amount of alloy in a gold crown, and Anderson appears to have confounded the two incidents. He uses the same frontispiece in the 1738 edition, but with the cunning addition of the words Pythagoras ... became not only the Head of a new Religion of Patch Work but likewise of an Academy or Lodge of good Geometricians to whom he 181.communicated a Secret, viz. That amazing Proposition which is the Foundation of all Masonry, of whatever Materials or Dimensions, called by Masons his HEUREKA.. because They think it was his own Invention.
The Old MS. Charges brought masonry, or geometry, from the children of Lamech to Solomon, and by various steps finally to England. But Anderson traces the art from Adam himself, who instructed his son Cain in geometry and made it possible for him to build a city. He introduces Noah and his sons and Grand Master Moses; he derives all civilized architecture from Solomon's Temple; he traces the progress of the science through Greece and Sicily to its culmination in Rome. All knowledge of the art is lost in Britain after the Romans retired, but Charles Martel of France helps England to recover the true art after the Saxon invasions. Monarchs up to Elizabeth all advanced the art to the best of their ability, while Renaissance architecture, which he claims as having been introduced into England by James I, was a return to a model from which Gothic had been merely a barbarous lapse. And so forth.
Anderson says that his history is collected from the general records of the Craft and their faithful traditions of many ages. Actually, Lionel Vibert tells us, he drew upon the Cooke and other manuscripts, and made additions of his own as seemed good to him. He did not then know of the existence of the Roberts MS. or he would have mentioned the General Assembly of 1663, but in his second edition he made good this omission. He drew also, of course, from the Bible and from ordinary sources, including Stow's historical works. No authority has yet been found for his story about Queen Elizabeth's commission, to the effect that, with intent to break up the annual communication, they brought a sufficient posse with them at York upon St John's Day, were once admitted into the Lodge, they made no use of arms, and returned the Queen a most honourable account of the ancient Fraternity, whereby her political Fears and Doubts were dispell'd, and she let them alone, as a People much respected by the Noble and the Wise of all the polite Nations, but neglected the Art all her Reign. In his 1738 edition lie improves the story with names and dates.
Peculiarly important are Anderson's uses of Scots terms, which undoubtedly have had a lasting influence on masonic ritual, as already frequently mentioned in these pages. He took 'Entered Apprentice' from the Scots practice of entering each apprentice in the records, the apprentice then being known as an 'entered 'prentice.' Similarly, he uses for the first time in an English work the term 'Fellow Craft' or 'Fellow of Craft,' a constantly recurring phrase in Scots operative masonry.
The history in the Constitutions is directed to be read at the admission 182.of a new Brother, and this injunction is repeated in the edition of 1738, where the history occupies 139 pages of print, requiring some two and a half hours' steady reading to get through! The celebrated Charge "Concerning God and Religion," included in Anderson's Constitutions, substituted for the direct injunction of loyalty to God and Holy Church, as given in the original Charges, the phrase: " 'tis now thought more expedient only to oblige them to that Religion in which all men agree, leaving their particular opinions to themselves." Lionel Vibert quotes Gould, who said that the diverse religious views of members of Grand Lodge at the time must have shown the necessity of uniting on a platform which would divide them the least; and the language of the Sixth Charge, as to avoiding quarrels about religion, suggests that from its first inception the Grand Lodge had followed the line, taken by the Royal Society many years before, of forbidding discussion on the topic as the only means of preserving harmony among persons of different opinions. But Anderson had no use for the "irreligious libertine" his strong expression to denote the Freethinker-and he denounces men of no religion and men to whom one religion is as good as another. He believed that no mason can ever be an atheist, and-that they need not be uneasy if some of the learned among them are ignorantly so described. He goes on to say: " The next thing that I shall remember you of is to avoid Politics and Religion"; by which he means not merely the discussion of them but "any association with them as a Society, for," he says, "our Politics is merely to be honest and our Religion the Law of Nature and to love God above all things, and our Neighbour as our self; this is the true, primitive, catholic and universal Religion, agreed to be so in all Times and Ages."
Anderson tells us that in ancient times masons were charged in every country to be of the religion of that country or nation, whatever it was. For this, he found no warrant in the Old MS. Charges, but possibly got the idea from a phrase in Cotton's translation of Montaigne's Essays.
The General Regulations, to the number of thirty-nine, are said to have been Compiled first by Mr George Payne, Anno 1720, when he was Grand Master, and approv'd by the Grand Lodge on St John Baptist's Day, Anno 1721, at Stationers' Hall, London; when the most noble Prince John Duke of Montagu was unanimously chosen our Grand-Master for the Year ensuing.
The first minute recorded in the minute books of Grand Lodge is dated June 24, 1723, and recites that the Constitutions had been before approved in manuscript by the Grand Lodge and had already been produced in print and approved. Then occurred something which made it 183.possible to say afterwards that the General Regulations had not obtained the consent of the Grand Lodge. The question was moved
That the said General Regulations be confirmed, so far as they are consistent with the Ancient Rules of Masonry. The previous question was moved and put, whether the words "so far as they are consistent with the Ancient Rules of Masonry" be part of the Question. Resolved in the affirmative, But the main Question was not put.
From this we can only gather that the General Regulations were not confirmed, but another resolution was passed, this containing words well known to every mason, for the minutes go on to record:
And the Question was moved That it is not in the Power of any person, or Body of men, to make any alteration, or Innovation in the Body of Masonry without the Consent first obtained of the Annual Grand Lodge. And the Question being put accordingly Resolved in the affirmative.
From which we conclude that whatever was new in the Regulations was of no effect. In 1738 Anderson issued a new edition of the Constitutions, and in 1756 John Entick revised the whole, and drew up an entirely new code of regulations arranged on a different system, for all of which he had authority. It is Entick's code that has formed the basis of the Constitutions of later date. and it is through Entick that we can still trace a number of phrases that go back to Anderson's original, in which connexion A.Q.C., vol. xlvi (P. 149), may be consulted by any reader particularly interested.
In all fairness to Anderson, and in spite of all the criticism to which he and his book have been subjected, the remarkable influence of his Constitutions on the course of world freemasonry must be freely acknowledged. The earliest Irish Constitutions (1730) were modelled on Anderson's. The Americans in 1735 reprinted his book word for word, and the English original, sometimes in pirated editions, went forth into every country of the world, there to play a part in transmitting the principles and tenets of freemasonry and in encouraging Brethren to found lodges on the English pattern.1
The manner of constituting a new lodge "according to the ancient usages of masons" is given in the Constitutions Of 1723, and in them it is made very clear that the new Master and Wardens were among the Fellow Crafts. A lodge was constituted by the personal act of the Grand 1 For further information on the .l, consult reprints of the original in the great masonic libraries and Lionel Vibert's paper in A.Q.C., vol. xxxvi. 184.Master or his Deputy, apparently without the issue of any written warrant; a reference to "the Grand Master's warrant" probably meant nothing more than his sanction or authority expressed by his presence or that of his Deputy.
In all probability, the instructions as to the manner of constituting a new lodge were urgently needed by the growing fraternity. In 1721, the year of which Stukeley wrote, there were a few lodges under the Grand Lodge, and some others-how many is unknown-not affiliated with it. Four years later, in 1725, there were about fifty London lodges alone on the list. Of a number of possible explanations the most likely is that lodges existing prior to 1723 were unaware of any means of joining Grand Lodge, while new lodges could not regularly come into existence because of the lack of any means of legalizing their formation or constitution. It was when these matters had been put right at the instance of the second Grand Master, George Payne, and the necessary instructions or information had become a part of the printed Constitutions, that new lodges found it easy to come into existence, and old ones to regularize their position in relation to the Grand Lodge. (It must be noted that, as in 1724, six Fellows could get together in casual association and make masons.)
Of Lodges still in existence (other than the survivors of the 'four old lodges'), the Lodge of Friendship, now No. 6, was founded in January 1721; the British Lodge, No. 8 was founded in the following year as were also the Tyrian Lodge, now the Westminster and Keystone Lodge, No. 10; the Tuscan Lodge, now No. 14; and the Ionic Lodge, now Royal Alpha, No. 16.
Many famous lodges were constituted in 1723, including the Old Dundee Lodge, No. 18; what is now the Royal Kent Lodge of Antiquity, No. 20; what is now the Lodge of Emulation, No. 21; Globe Lodge, No. 23; and others since expired. None of the lodges constituted in 1724 is now in existence, and only two of 1725-namely, the Castle Lodge of Harmony, No. 26, and Old King's Arms Lodge, No. 28. Only one other lodge founded before 1730 survives-that being St Alban's, No. 29, founded in January 1728. It must always be remembered that, as has been said, there were undoubtedly lodges in existence not affiliated to the Grand Lodge, apart from such ancient operative lodges as those of Alnwick and Swalwell. there was also the Lodge at York, a time-immemorial lodge, which met at Merchants' Hall, in the City of York, and which in December 1725 formed itself into "the Grand Lodge of ALL England held at York", it became dormant in 1740, was revived in 1761, and we know nothing of it after 1792. 185.Freemasons mentioned in Grand Lodge Minute Books Of 1723-39, and sufficiently well known to achieve notice in the Dictionary of National Biography (their names have been compiled by W. J. Williams, from whose work the information has been gleaned) include very many notable and colourful characters. There were twenty-eight of noble birth; eighteen painters, sculptors, engravers, etc.; seventeen authors, poets, dramatists, etc.; fifteen clergy and ministers; fifteen scientists, antiquarians, etc.; fourteen physicians and surgeons; twelve actors, musicians, singers, etc.; six architects; five printers and publishers; four lawyers; three men of fashion, dilettantes, etc.; and two public servants of high standing. Of a score or so of others, one was, possibly, a privateer, and another a pugilist. The former, George Shelvock, of the Horne Tavern Lodge in 1723 and 1725, commanded the privateer Speedwell, conducted an "independent cruise," sacked Payta, lost his ship and built a new one with which he captured three others, and was "acquitted on technical grounds when charged with piracy." The pugilist, James Figg, of the Lodge at the Castle Tavern, St Giles, in 1725, had an academy of boxing and swordsmanship; he fought a broadsword duel in the Haymarket Theatre to provide a spectacle for a visiting freemason, the Duc de Lorraine; and gave exhibitions of bear-baiting and tiger-fighting.
What is believed to be the first distinctive reference to a Jewish speculative mason is of the year 1732, and concerns Daniel Delvalle, or Dalvalle, "an eminent Jew Snuff Merchant," Master of the lodge at the Rose Tavern, Cheapside, in that year, and a member also of other lodges. This statement is considerably at variance with one made in AHistory of Rhode Island (U.S.A.), written in 1835 by the Rev. Edward Peterson, of Newport, RI, who was not himself a mason. He declares in that history that in the spring of 1658 fifteen Jewish families arrived at Newport from Holland, bringing with them the three first degrees of masonry, and working them in the house of Mordecai Campannall, one of their members, and continuing to do so, they and their successors, to the year 1742. This statement, of the truth of which no proof exists, has been the subject of fierce controversy, but it is now thought that the manuscript on which the statement was based was almost illegible, and that those who interpreted it made out a reading which, had they had any knowledge of the subject, they would have known was quite untenable. It is agreed that there was no speculative masonry in Holland until the eighteenth century.
186.Lodge Lectures on Non-Masonic Subjects
Some early lodges encouraged lectures on various subjects quite unconnected with freemasonry, which we may take as evidence that in those particular lodges the ceremonies were not elaborate enough to occupy a major part of lodge time, or we may hazard a guess that in some lodges the masonic lectures worked on the question-and-answer method had been severely abbreviated. However that may be, and always remembering that there were considerable diversities in lodge practice in these early days, we find the Old King's Arms Lodge, meeting at the King's Arms in the Strand, London, discussing in 1733 the question "whether it is possible that a malefactor who is shot to death may be sensible of the Report of ye piece that occasioned his loss of life" and determining "in the affirmation unless the medulla oblongata where the nerves of the whole system centre, be tom to pieces by the ball." How much better we do things to-day, but after lodge is closed, can be judged from an advertisement in the masonic Press (February 1946) offering for the delectation of dining Brethren a unique entertainment, including Sawing a Woman in Half and a Dancing Skeleton."
The public Press of the 1720's echoes the considerable interest which the public was taking in freemasonry. We find in it allusions of every sort, from the kindly, appreciative, and respectful on the one hand, to a great variety of vulgarity, scurrility, and downright, lying invention on the other. Skits on the freemasons were many, their 'leather aprons and gloves' being the point of many a jocular reference. The newspapers of the period go to show that the public was very much alive to the fact that there was a strong masonic movement in the land. We find one simple piece of evidence very convincing. Curiosity had been tickled by the publication in 1730 of Prichard's Masonry Dissected, and it is probably as a consequence of this that we find in one of the booths of the Bartholomew Fair of 1731 an opera being performed under the title of The Generous Free-Mason: or. The Constant Lady ("With the Humours of Squire Noodle, and his Man Doodle. A Tragi-comi-farcical Ballad Opera. In three acts. With the MUSICK prefix'd to each SONG. By the AUTHOR of the LOVER'S OPERA "). This opera had been printed for J. Roberts in Warwick Lane, and was sold by the booksellers of London and Westminster for a shilling. The opera itself is of no value from any artistic point of view, but that an astute showman should choose to make his bid 187.for the favour of the Bartholomew Fair rabble with a play about freemasons reveals a measure of public interest and curiosity big enough to exploit.
The Authority of Grand Lodge not everywhere recognized
It must be obvious from what has already been said that the authority of Grand Lodge was not everywhere recognized, and it would not be surprising, were all the facts known, to find that there were some time immemorial lodges that never did recognize it. All lodges believing themselves to exist by inherent right and from time immemorial might not easily he brought to see that they could make masons only in conformity with regulations issued by an organization calling itself a Grand Lodge, and it may be suspected, too, that here and there a self-constituted body of masons of recent growth strongly asserted its right to do exactly as it pleased in any masonic matter whatsoever. We may find an instance in the society of musicians (mentioned on P. 243) formed in 1725, which had a rule that its members should be freemasons. If the society wished to admit a prominent musician who was not a mason it forthwith 'initiated' him, and then admitted him to membership. So strongly did the society uphold its claim to do what it liked that, when it received a letter of protest from the Grand Master, it ordered that the letter lie on the table!
In a later chapter we shall see that, as the decades passed, Grand Lodge encountered considerable opposition and came under the fire of much angry criticism-a condition which was allowed to develop into open warfare with the formation in due course of a new Grand Lodge calling itself 'Antient,' and calmly dubbing its rival 'Modern.'
The possibility of English freemasonry having been subjected to Jacobite influence during the few decades immediately following 1717 has often been advanced. Many theories have been ventilated, with much conjecture, little fact; with much controversy, little agreement. There have been authors who have been downright in their statements that the freemasonry of the 'Antients'-the body that set up its own Grand Lodge in opposition to the Premier Grand Lodge-was the freemasonry of the Roman Catholics and the Stuarts-that is, of the Irish and Scottish followers of the Stuart cause who fled to France about 1688, whereas the founders of the first Grand Lodge were Protestant and Hanoverian. Others have pointed out that Jacobite influence was dying down at the 188.time when the 'Antients' rose to strength, but they still appear to entertain the idea that the Jacobite party came into freemasonry, with or without the help of the Roman Catholics, with a view to using it as a mask for their efforts in the Stuart cause. A peculiar twist is given by relating the Jacobite tradition to the so-called 'Scots Masonry,' the theory being that, while freemasonry recommended itself to the Jacobite movement as providing convenient, safe, and secret meeting-places for its adherents, it was obvious that freemasonry was open to Jacobites and Hanoverians alike. It was therefore decided to create a freemasonry apart, " to be made subservient to the cause they had so much at heart, with ceremonies and secrets peculiar to itself and jealously guarded from even the Masters of Craft masonry."1 So, it is alleged, the Jacobites brought into existence the degrees known in England as 'Scots masonry' and in France as 'Maçon Écossois,' 'Maitre Écossois,' 'Maçonnerie Écossois
It is true that there are references to Scots lodges and Scots masonry in the early speculative days (Chapter IX), and no one has yet been able to tell us exactly what they mean. In various Continental cities, too, these Scots lodges were founded. But there does not appear to be any ground for believing that the degree came from Scotland. Whatever 'Scots masonry' was, it was fairly certainly French, and mention of it continued to occur and recur in lodge minutes and other records through the eighteenth century. For example, when in 1777 the famous Cagliostro was initiated in the Esperance Lodge at the King's Head, in Gerrard Street, Soho, London, he is said to have passed through the four degrees of "apprentice, companion [fellow?], Master and Scotch Master." While we may conjecture that the degree was a mixture of Royal Arch and Mark, what it really was we simply do not know.
One author has spoken of "definite documentary evidence of the existence of a Jacobite Grand Lodge of London," but it is doubtful whether masonic writers in general are aware of any such evidence.
A plausible (perhaps for that reason, doubtful) suggestion is that Gaelic words meaning, or apparently meaning, 'widow's son' were brought into masonry by the Jacobites, it being especially noteworthy that both the Old and the Young Pretenders were widows' sons, but Gaelic scholars do not accept it, based, as it is, on the likeness between the sounds of quite different words. But it has been quite seriously put forward that " the untimely death of Hiram, Abif" is an allusion to the execution of Charles I, and that the attempt to raise the Master's body is an allusion to an attempt to raise the young Prince Charles from the grave of exile to the throne of England. To add a 'convincing' touch it is 1 J. E. S. Tuckett, A.Q.C., vol. xxxii. 189.pointed out that cas is Gaelic for 'a branch of a tree,' and also for 'a young man, a lad,' and that until about 1745, when the Pretender's hopes were finally brought to naught, it was the cassia plant that was supposed to mark the Master's grave. Thus in Prichard's Masonry Dissected (1730) we have:
Q. What is a mason nam'd?
A Cassia is my name, and from a just and perfect lodge I came.
And here are some coincidences. The sprig of cassia at the head of a grave became the sprig of acacia about 1745, the year of the Jacobite rising. 'Acacia' is a Greek word meaning 'innocence' or 'blamelessness.' Among the score or so of names given to the assassins of the Master is that of Romvel, which is supposed to be a palpable hit at Cromwell, whom the Jacobites regarded as the murderer of Charles I. A warning: the more interesting and plausible the stories relating to the Jacobite legend are made, the more they must be treated with suspicion!
The fact that Jacobite allusions to the Pretenders occasionally reflected the idea of the 'widow's son' has been overstressed by masonic writers. The parallel of the 'widow's son' may have occurred as the purest accident. How, for example, does the informed reader regard the allusion in the following instance? Queen Anne had a cook, Joseph Centlivre, whose wife Susannah, a playwright, produced between the years 1700 and 1722 a score of comedies. One of them, A Gotham Election, contains this dialogue between a Jacobite mayor and a messenger coming from the Old Pretender:
THE MAYOR: Well, and how does all our friends on t'other side the water, ha? Well, I Hope?
MESSENGER: Oh fort bien, Monsieur Mayor, and Monsieur le Chevalier he varey much your humble serviteur, Begar.
THE MAYOR: 1 am very much his, 1 am sure-come Monsieur, to the Fatherless and Widow. (Drink.)
What is the reply to the Jacobite theory or tradition? Although the Roman Catholic Church was not always opposed to freemasonry, the Papal Bull Of 1738 had as one of its effects the suppression of a lodge containing purely Jacobite members. There is no actual certainty, although considerable likelihood, that the so-called 'Scots lodges' were the écossois degrees in English dress. It is not known that Jacobites had any hand in bringing those degrees into existence, although, of course, if the degree were largely the work of British people living in France, it is likely that such people would have been Jacobites; but it does not in the least follow that they invented the degrees as an instrument of their policies. Surely a lodge or degree designed to further the Jacobite cause 190.would not deliberately label itself 'Scots.' Perhaps the nearest we shall get to the truth is the suggestion that any added degree formed in France at that time gave opportunity for men of similar interests and opinions to come together. And we may note, also, a point made by F. L. Pick, that early in the eighteenth century there existed Jacobite societies, having the appearance of jolly, convivial affairs, but at the same time inspired by a serious political purpose, and that some of them took a leaf from the freemason's book by wearing regalia and adopting a peculiar formality in their meetings. He wonders whether the Jacobite tradition is not really an echo of such mock-masonic societies?
THE history of freemasonry in the eighteenth century is disfigured by a long and violent quarrel, in the course of which a rival Grand Lodge, once said to have existed from 1739, came Into official existence in 1751. Only so much of the long and involved story will be told as is necessary to an understanding of how the quarrel arose, why a separate Grand Lodge was formed, and how ultimately the two Grand Lodges came together. To the objection that there can be little interest in a quarrel which ended early in the nineteenth century it must be explained that, had the rival Grand Lodge never been formed, English freemasonry to-day would be the poorer, and not one of our Craft degrees would be as it is. But for it, the Installation ceremony might be little more than the simple chairing of the elected Master; we might have had the Royal Arch Degree and the Mark Degree, but it is unlikely that we should have had them in so rich a form. The book of Constitutions would in all probability be different and almost certainly rather poorer in some respects. Finally, a short study of the quarrel that raged in eighteenth century freemasonry tells us much of the conditions that helped to form the practices, ceremonies, and ritual that English freemasonry enjoys to-day.
At the outset it must be grasped that allusions in masonic literature and throughout this book to the 'Moderns' are allusions to the Premier Grand Lodge of England, the first Grand Lodge in the world, and to its adherents. That Grand Lodge was formed in 1717. The rival Grand Lodge was founded in 1751, and its adherents, believing that they practised a more ancient and therefore purer form of freemasonry, called themselves 'Antients ' 1 ; at the same time they dubbed those affiliated to the Premier Grand Lodge, formed decades before, the 'Moderns.' These epithets stuck. From the point of view of history they were most unfortunate and most misleading. In general, there were two main causes of the trouble. One was the apathy and neglect of the Premier Grand Lodge and its apparent inability 1 As already stated, throughout this book the descriptive title 'Antient' is without exception spelt with a 't' instead of a 'c' to obviate confusion with the ordinary word 'ancient.' 193.to rule the Craft. The other was the differences in ritual and ceremonial practice that existed or developed in the early part of the century.
As to the first of these, the Premier Grand Lodge was going through a difficult period from the 1730's to the early 1760's. Horace Walpole, himself a mason, wrote in 1743 that the freemasons were in low repute in England. A series of processions of mock-masons had cast ridicule on the Order. Its Grand Masters had taken but little interest in their duties; some of them had even neglected them. Freemasonry had lost its vogue, and even the initiation of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1737, had failed to bring it back.
A Grand Master installed in 1739 was only twenty-two years of age. After him came Scottish noblemen who already had been Grand Masters in Scotland, but they added little lustre to the office. Lord Byron (great-uncle of the poet) became Grand Master in 1747, when about twenty-five years old, and attended three meetings of Grand Lodge during his reign of five years, Grand Lodge meeting only nine times during that period. His absence, or that of his deputy, became such a scandal that some Brethren "grew so restive that they summoned by advertisement a meeting of the Craft to elect a new Grand Master," but a Past Grand Steward who attended the meeting persuaded the Brethren to be patient.
It is obvious that there was a bad patch in the history of the Premier Grand Lodge, and it was this patch that made it so easy for the malcontents to form a rival and successful Grand Lodge. Their task was so much the easier because of the weakness and inefficiency of the older organization. In the eleven years from 1742 to 1752 the Premier Grand Lodge had to strike off forty-five lodges in the London district. J. Heron Lepper computes that in the year 1755, of the 271 lodges nominally in existence only 199 were carried forward at the closing-up and alteration of the lodge numbers in 1756; so, apparently, more than a quarter of the private lodges adhering to the Premier Grand Lodge had died, though some of them, for all we know, may have changed over to the 'Antients.' The second main cause of the trouble was an even more powerful factor. In 1723 and in 1730 two notable irregular prints, so-called exposés, had been published. The first of these was A Mason's Examination, printed in three issues of The Flying Post or Postman in April 1723. The second one has already been alluded to-namely, Prichard's Masonry Dissected, a highly successful publication which went through scores of editions in England, Ireland, America, and the Continent during the eighteenth century. These prints were a measure of the considerable interest which the outsider took in freemasonry, and an indication of the public curiosity following the fuller incorporation into the masonic ceremonies of the Hiramic legend.
194.Irregular 'makings' became common. It is recorded that a tavern displayed a notice "Masons made here for 2s. 6d." That the exposés were probably largely spurious hardly affected the matter, for, using them as manuals, it was possible for a few men to get together and pretend to initiate anyone willing to pay them money. The immediate effects of these exposés may have been over-emphasized, but we must remember that there were numbers of masons all over the country who had never acknowledged the Premier Grand Lodge, which came into existence merely to group together a few London lodges. Who can say how many well-founded lodges of London and the Provinces were never included in the printed lists of 'regular' lodges issued by Grand Lodge from time to time-lodges which resented the interference of any outside body, claimed to be all-sufficient in themselves, and were absolutely sure they were working a system quite as old as, or even older than, that approved by the Premier Grand Lodge? Freemasonry had spread rapidly to France, and in Ireland and Scotland.
Freemasons from these countries were drifting into England and bringing with them ideas which had grown up not on English soil, but which, nevertheless, were dear and precious to those who held them. Grand Lodge was probably very worried, somewhere about 1730, at the number of unaffiliated masons coming apparently from nowhere and claiming admission into their lodges. Every one of these unaffiliated masons was irregular from the official point of view, and to make things difficult or impossible for them the Grand Lodge decided about 1730 to take a very serious step. This was nothing less than a transposition, or inversion, of the modes of recognition in the First and Second Degrees, and was designed to act as a veritable shibboleth in preventing the admission to its lodges of any mason who, for lack of affiliation and attendance at a regular lodge, would be unaware of the change. Gould can be read in one or two places as casting doubt on whether the alteration was in fact made, but it is impossible to read masonic history to-day and refuse to give credence to the indictment.
Grand Lodge made the alteration with the best of intentions, but in doing so was guilty of, at least, a profound error of judgment, and in due course paid a heavy price for its mistake. The alteration was regarded by many of its own members, and by the whole of the masons outside its organization, as a grievous and wholly improper interference with a landmark purporting to date from time immemorial.
It must be understood that this alteration was by no means the only difference between the working of the masons inside and those outside the Grand Lodge. Considerable differences had existed for many years, and once a rival Grand Lodge was established they would naturally be 195.accentuated. What some of these differences were will presently be explained. For upwards of a century the formation of the rival Grand Lodge was referred to as a schism, and the men who formed it as seceders. 'Schism' is literally a 'splitting,' or 'cleavage'; a 'seceder' is one who formally withdraws from membership of a body. We have plenty of evidence now to prove that the event was not a schism, for while there may have been, and probably were, a number of Brethren who went over to the rival body, for the main part that body came into existence as the result of the determined efforts of Irish and Scottish masons residing in England, helped by English masons who for the most part had never owed allegiance to the first Grand Lodge. The Foundation of the 'Antient' Grand Lodge In the 1730's bad feeling was increasing between the Grand Lodges of England and Ireland. The English Grand Lodge is said to have regarded its sister Grand Lodges with an air of condescension, and was inclined to doubt the regularity of private lodges constituted by them. For their part the Grand Lodges of Ireland and Scotland sympathized warmly with the orthodox English masons opposed to the alterations that had been made in the English ritual. This did not make for good feeling between the English and its sister Grand Lodges, and quite trivial things occurred to make the feeling worse. The Irish and Scottish masons in England resented the assumption of superiority on the part of the English Grand Lodge, and undoubtedly lent themselves quite willingly to a proposal to establish a rival Grand Lodge. They had the support of some English masons, but not to an extent that would justify the use of the word 'schism' or 'secession.'
Many lodges were far removed from London, with no means of easy access, and it is doubtful whether such lodges ever made, or were inclined to make, the alterations ordered by Grand Lodge. There is the effect, too, of the military lodges moving from place to place to be borne in mind; such lodges are known to have existed from the year 1732, and whatever their constitution, and whether in later days they held a warrant from one Grand Lodge or the other, the only ritual known in those lodges would exercise a consistent influence towards 'Antient' working.
The regulations made by the Premier Grand Lodge for the better ordering of the Craft would be looked at askance by old-fashioned Brethren, who would resent any action which they regarded rightly or wrongly as autocratic. For example, processions were truly loved by the mason of the early-eighteenth century, but processions were banned by Grand Lodge in 1747, to the annoyance of the rank and file. (The 'Antients' forebade public processions in 1799 but re-allowed them a few years later.) Such apparently simple matters as the action of Grand Lodge in prescribing minimum initiation fees and discouraging the making and passing of a Candidate on the one occasion were resented, but, whatever part they played, there can be no doubt that the differences-those introduced by Grand Lodge itself and those that had naturally grown up in lodges unaffiliated to any central authority-played a much bigger part.
So we find five lodges independent of any higher control forming themselves into a body and assuming the style of a Grand Lodge of "the old institution." The members did not number more than eighty. Many of them were Irish, and most of them were mechanics or shopkeepers, whereas at that day the average member of the lodges under the older Grand Lodge was of a higher social grade.
According to John Morgan, the first 'Antient' Grand Secretary, their title in 1751 was "The Most Ancient and Honble Society of Free and Accepted Masons." Morgan produced rules and orders, the concluding paragraph of which is worth quoting: "Lastly, this our Regulation shall be Recorded in our Registry, to show posterity how much we desire to revive the Ancient Craft upon true Masonical principles." His very first rule prescribes that Masters and Wardens do meet on the first Wednesday of every month. The 'Antient' Grand Lodge maintained this custom, and at the Union in 1813 it was taken over by the United Grand Lodge, so that to-day we find the meeting-day for the Quarterly Communications of Grand Lodge to be a survival of the 'Antient' procedure of 1751.
There appears to be good evidence that the 'Antient' Grand Lodge was constituted as a separate society on July 17, 1751, inasmuch as its rules and orders were agreed and settled by a conference appointed on that date; but so far it had no Grand Master. In the following May a minute of their Grand Committee records that this gathering "had been long held under the title of The Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the Old Institution." In the course of twenty years the Grand Lodge of the 'Antients' was presided over by many influential masons, an early Grand Master being the Earl of Blesington, a former Grand Master of Ireland. In 1771 the third Duke of Atholl came to the chair, and in 1775 the fourth Duke of Atholl, both of whom had been Grand Masters of Scotland. The fourth Duke was succeeded by a former Grand Master of Ireland, the Earl of Antrim. It almost follows that while the Grand Lodges of Ireland and Scotland looked askance at the Premier Grand Lodge they were in close communion with the 'Antients.'
In the second year of the 'Antient' Grand Lodge's existence, the Grand Secretary, John Morgan, resumed his sea-duty, and there was 197.elected in his place "a great perhaps even the greatest character in the Craft history of the eighteenth century, "Laurence Dermott, then thirty-two years of age, a man of remarkable quality and tremendous energy. He was a journeyman painter, born in Ireland in 1720, initiated in January 1740, in Lodge No. 26, in Dublin, of which he was Past Master and had been Secretary. He is believed to have become a Royal Arch mason in his Irish lodge in 1746, and to have come to England about 1747-48. Possibly he may have been a member of a 'Modern' lodge, but in 1752 he joined the 'Antient' lodge No. 9, which he soon left to join No. 10. Gould, who obviously lacked sympathy with the 'Antient,' nevertheless acknowledged that to the "force of character and demonstrative ability of Laurence Dermott must be attributed a success of the schism and the triumph of its principles." Dermott immediately proceeded to produce a set of bylaws for private lodges, and by 1756 had issued the first edition of what were actually the Constitutions of the 'Antient' fraternity. He gave them the extraordinary name of Ahiman Rezon, and in the course of a dedication to the Earl of Blesington he said that his object was "to let the young Brethren know how they ought to conduct their Actions, with Uprightness, Integrity, Morality, and Brotherly Love, still keeping the ancient Land-Marks in View."
He was thus very early insisting that his Grand Lodge was truly the 'Antient' one, and he was not long in suggesting that the old Grand Lodge represented the 'Moderns.' Gould, who admired but disliked him, shrewdly suggests that Dermott coined the epithets 'Antients' and 'Moderns' because he realized that there is a great deal in having a good cry' (a 'slogan' is what we should call it to-day). And tho' the titular 'Antients' were the actual 'Moderns,' most of the success which attended the great Schism was due to Dermott's unrivalled audacity ... both in the choice of phrases, which placed the earlier Grand Lodge in a position of relative inferiority, and in ascribing to his own Grand Lodge a derivation from the Ancient Masons of York.
But we must be careful not to father too much on Laurence Dermott, for we learn from an advertisement in 1726 relating to "Ante-diluvian Masonry" that even in those days a distinction was being drawn between "Ancient Masonry" and "the Moderns." It is likely, therefore, that any freemasons of conservative tendency might have been in the habit of regarding themselves as 'antient' and all those who differed from them as 'modern.' After all, some such phrase as "Antient and Modern" must always have been popular; we are told that when 198.Hymns Ancient and Modern was introduced in 1861 the very title secured speedy and lasting popularity in England! It is unfortunate that these particular appellations were ever adopted by masons, for they have led to much confusion. In the later part of the eighteenth century the 'Antient' lodges were commonly called Atholl lodges, from the fact that the Dukes of Atholl so long presided over them as Grand Masters. The official title of the rival Grand Lodge became in the course of time "The Most Antient and Honourable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons (according to the old Constitutions granted by His Royal Highness Prince Edwin at York, Anno Domini Nine Hundred twenty and six ... ).
Ahiman Rezon went through a great number of editions-at least eight by the time of the Union. Dermott had a smattering of Hebrew (or had the assistance of some one similarly qualified), but only a smattering, and in producing his curious title he did little more than take two Hebrew words and put them together, so forming an enigmatic title which has no true English equivalent. The Geneva or 'Breeches' Bible (1560), in the course of a table of names and their interpretations, gave 'Ahiman' as 'a Brother of the right hand,' and 'Rezon' as 'a Secretaire.' The Rev. Maurice Rosenbaum, a Hebrew scholar who did much fine work in masonic research, translates the name as 'faithful brother Secretary.' A Complete Christian Dictionary (8th edition, 1678) gives 'Ahiman' as 'a prepared Brother, one of the sons of Anak'; and 'Rezon' as 'small, lean, secret, a Secretary or a Prince.' So possibly Dermott, who undoubtedly took his Hebrew from one of the sources named, intended his title to represent some such idea as 'Brother, Secret,' or possibly 'the Brother's Secret Monitor'-very far from a literal translation, but a plausible suggestion of what might have been in Dermott's mind.1 The title was always a stumbling block to the unlearned mason, and will be found in various forms in old-time minutes, etc. One Lodge Inventory Of 1838 referred to it as "A. H. Iman's Reasons."
Just as the Constitutions of the Premier Grand Lodge were originally Anderson's own property, so Ahiman Rezon was Dermott's personal property. He compiled it rather than wrote it, taking whatever he wanted from Anderson and from Irish works by Dr F. Dassigny and others. His book recommends regular lodges as the " only Seminaries where Men (in the most pleasant and clearest Manner) may hear, understand, and learn their Duty to God; and also to their Neighbours." In connexion with 1 For further information see Cecil Adam's " Ahiman Rezon, the Book of Constitutions,' (,A.Q.C., vol. XIV).
199."A Short Charge to a New Admitted Mason" (the mason is told "not to neglect his own necessary avocations for the sake of masonry"), he gives this footnote, borrowed from a "Charge" to the Initiate printed at least sixteen years earlier:
Here you are to understand that a Mason ought not to belong to a Number of Lodges at one Time, nor run from Lodge to Lodge; or otherwise, after Masons or Masonry, whereby his Business or Family may be neglected; but yet every Mason is subject to all the Bye-Laws of his Lodge, which he is strictly and constantly to obey;-for the Attendance and Dues of one Lodge, can never prejudice neither him nor his Family.
Reference must be made to Dermott's account of the treatment of William Carroll, an Irishman, who had applied to the Premier Grand Lodge for relief and had been told (in a letter notable in masonic history):
Your being an Antient Mason, you are not entitled to any of our Charity. The Antient Masons have a Lodge at The Five Bells in the Strand, & their Secretary's name is Dermott. Our Society is neither Arch, Royal Arch or Antient so that you have no Right to partake of our Charity.1
This letter demonstrates a point stressed on other pages-namely, that the 'Moderns' had officially no place for the Royal Arch, and but for the affection felt for that degree by the 'Antients' there is at least some doubt whether the degree to-day would be a recognized part of the English system. In connexion with this, we must note that in the frontispiece to Dermott's second edition (1764) are depicted two sets of armorial bearings, in one of which, described as "The Arms of ye most Antient & Honourable Fraternity, of Free and Accepted Masons," we find the Lion, Ox, Man, and Eagle, with the Ark as crest, and the Cherubim as supporters. Companions of the Royal Arch will recognize some of these emblems (see also P. 551).
We shall fail to understand the controversy and its bearing upon present-day freemasonry unless we examine, however briefly, the differences that distinguished the two bodies. The transposition of the modes of recognition in the First and Second Degrees was an outstanding difference to which reference has already been made, and it was regarded with something akin to horror by a great many masons, whether owning allegiance to the Grand Lodge or not. There were many other differences, some of them probably going back to pre-Grand Lodge days, and 1 The punctuation, etc., of this letter has been slightly amended.
200.in attempting to set them out it must be made quite clear that they did not distinguish all 'Modem' lodges from all 'Antient' lodges at any one time, but that they applied in general, with probably many exceptions, over a large part of the three-quarters of a century ending nominally in 1813. It must also be made clear that the matters comprehended by this question have been much debated and every masonic scholar has his individual opinion on many of them.
(a) Transposed the modes of recognition in the First and Second Degrees. 'Antients' regarded this as a complete innovation, an alteration of a landmark, something quite impossible to be countenanced.
(b) Omitted prayers. The charge is unproved and quite unlikely to be well founded.
(c) De-Christianised the ritual, Anderson's " Constitutions" of 1723 being offered as proof. From catechisms preserved to us in various ways, we learn that the ritual had originally (perhaps only in some lodges) a definitely Christian character. It is thought, too, that the early Royal Arch system included the Christian element, one of the reasons, it is alleged, why the 'Modems' disliked the Royal Arch. In existence is the alleged fragment of a Craft ritual, apparently of some such date as 1800, which, if genuine, shows the persistence of Christian symbolism in some lodges.
(d) Ignored and neglected the Saints' Days-that is, with holding their festivals on days that were not the days of St John. These saints' days were a veritable shibboleth of the eighteenth-century mason of 'Antient' sympathies. The custom of observing these days still persists.
(e) Omitted in some cases to prepare Candidates in the customary way. It is not known how much truth there was in the accusation, but 'Antients' regarded the alleged omission as outrageous.
Abbreviated the ritual, in particular having neglected the so-called lectures, actually catechisms, attached to each degree. 'Antients' regarded the lectures as essential, and their omission as being nothing less than sacrilege.
(g) Ceased to recite the Ancient Charges at Initiations. The Old Charges had lost much of their point, and probably their omission was justified, but the 'Antients' felt that yet another landmark was being thrown over.
201.(h) Introduced austerity into the ceremonies, in particular having no place for the sword in the Initiation ceremony, except that the Tyler (and the Inner Tyler, where there was one) wore a sword. The 'Antients' wore swords in lodge, but for what purpose it is difficult to see. The French masons developed a very colourful ceremony, in which, if we may trust old French engravings, the Initiate suddenly found himself confronted by many sword-points. This undoubtedly was adopted as sound 'Antient' working, and we find it surviving to-day in the old Bristol working and in the Irish working.
(i) Allowed the esoteric ceremony at the installation of a Master to fall into disuse, although some of their lodges did work such a ceremony at an early date and continued unofficially to do so. The 'Antients' insisted upon an esoteric ceremony, and would not allow a Brother who had not passed it to be exalted to the Royal Arch Degree, which degree the 'Moderns' would not accept until a late date as any part of freemasonry. The 'Moderns' had still less place for the additional degrees, the so-called higher degrees. On the other hand, the 'Antients had a liking for the additional degrees, and particularly encouraged the Knight Templar and the Rose Croix.
(j) Departed from the ancient method of arranging the lodge. The Three Great Lights probably had different positions in lodges under the two constitutions; the situations of the Wardens, too, were different. The working was not the same in opening and closing the three degrees.
(k) Ignored the Deacon. 'Modern' lodges generally had no Deacons until about 1809, their work being done by Stewards; where 'Modern' lodges had Deacons, it was an indication of the 'Antient' influence. The Deacon was well regarded by the 'Antients' and the Irish lodges. The latter had Deacons as early as 1727. It must be said that the 'Moderns' regarded many of the particular differences in (j) and (k) as being the result of innovation by the 'Antients.'
From the above statement we can estimate for ourselves how great is the debt owed by the freemason of to-day to his 'Antient' Brethren.
The conflict between the two bodies continued until the Union in 1813. The 'Antients' in 1761 were putting forward their Grand Master as 'Grand Master of Masons.' The 'Moderns,' who had done the same thing years before, revived the idea in 1766 in connexion with their own Grand Master, Lord Blayney, the idea behind the suggestion being that the Premier Grand Lodge should presumably become the supreme masonic authority in the world. Possibly the attempt legally to incorporate Grand Lodge, about to be referred to, was intended in support of the idea.
Between the years 1768 and 1772 a vigorous but unsuccessful attempt was made to incorporate the Premier Grand Lodge by Act of Parliament that is, to obtain for it a Charter of Incorporation. The failure of the attempt was due largely to the opposition of the 'Antients,' who regarded the proposal as an act of war on themselves. Henry Somerset, Duke of Beaufort, elected Grand Master in 1767, introduced his scheme of incorporation by Royal Charter in the year following, and although at first it met with the approval of Grand Lodge, within a short time it evoked sharp difference of opinion, and during the four succeeding years was the subject of much controversy. A copy of the proposed Charter having been circulated, three lodges memorialized Grand Lodge adversely, while Caledonian Lodge entered a caveat against it in the office of the Attorney General (for which its Master had publicly to plead pardon, or his lodge would have been erased). Ultimately, the original proposal was dropped, but in February 1772 a Bill was introduced into Parliament for the incorporation of the society, and given a first and second reading. On the motion for the third reading, the Deputy Grand Master, the Hon. Charles Dillon, himself moved that its consideration be postponed sine die, which was agreed to. Within five weeks the Duke of Beaufort had retired from the Grand Mastership and had been succeeded by Lord Petre. One hundred and sixty-eight lodges had been reported in favour of incorporation and forty-three against.1
The attempt at incorporation, remarks J. Heron Lepper, caused controversy and ill-will that lived on after the scheme itself had gone to the limbo of futilities. "The failure of the scheme gave cause for rejoicing and triumphant jeers in the camp of the 'Antients,' and none of these things helped the progress towards masonic unity." For example, Sarum Lodge, Salisbury, No. 37, withheld payment of dues for nine years and denounced "the late attempt of the Grand Lodge to impose a tax on the brethren at large."
Undoubtedly the 1770's were a period of steadily worsening feeling between the two bodies, although in 1774 it was made possible for members of 'Modern' lodges having 'Antient' sympathies to obtain an authority from the 'Antient' Grand Lodge. But was there any kindly intention behind the permission? A further resolution of the 'Antients' 1 For fuller account see Ivor Grantham's paper in A.Q.C., vol. xlvi. ordered all fraternal communication to cease between themselves and lodges working under 'Modern' warrants but having an 'Antient' tendency, to which came the reply in 1777 from the 'Moderns' in the form of a special Communication held to "devise means for discouraging the irregular assemblies of persons calling themselves antient masons." The 'Moderns' forbade its members to countenance 'Antients' in any way, but its censure did not extend to lodges or masons in the Scottish or Irish Constitutions, or to those under the patronage of any Grand Lodge in alliance with the Premier Grand Lodge of England.
The war between the two bodies continued in spite of certain moderating influences on both sides. Feeling was aggravated and embittered, and remained so in many places right up to the coming of the Union in 1813, and, indeed, for a generation after that.
Anderson in his Constitutions Of 1738 had referred to foreign lodges under the patronage of "our Grand Master of England." He spoke of the "old Lodge" at York City and the lodges of Scotland, Ireland, France, and Italy "affecting independency." It is doubtful whether his condescension was well received, and equally doubtful whether the Grand Lodge of England regarded the sister Grand Lodges as being equal with itself. Underlying Anderson's words is the implication that all lodges owed allegiance to the English Grand Lodge. All the sister lodges, excepting perhaps that of France, were 'Antient' in their practices, and, when in the course of time the 'Antient' Grand Lodge was founded, the Grand Lodges of Ireland and Scotland took an early opportunity, the one in 1762, and the other in 1773, of entering into an alliance with it. From that date, or from some time before that date, the sister lodges no longer regarded the Premier Grand Lodge as the legitimate governing body in England. They were in close communication with the 'Antient' half of the fraternity, and regarded that half as representing English freemasonry. Their ceremony and ritual were closely allied with those of the 'Antients' in England, as we learn from many instances, of which two may be quoted. 'Antient' Brethren on their way to Philadelphia early in the 1750's met some Brethren in Ireland and reported that: "On comparing notes we found to our no small satisfaction, that we agreed as exactly as face answers to face in the glass."The second instance is that of an Entered Apprentice, initiated in a Bristol 'Antient' lodge, being passed to the Degree of a Fellow Craft in Cork Lodge, No. 27.
The way in which the 'Moderns' lost Philadelphia makes a curious 204.story. A lodge containing English, Irish, and Scots, with a Belfast Master, was given a warrant by the Grand Master of Pennsylvania, who, however, immediately withdrew it on learning that the Brethren were 'Antients' and would not change their ritual. The lodge applied to the rival Grand Lodge and were granted a warrant, No. 69, in June 1758. Subsequently, says J. Heron Lepper, "a Provincial Grand Master was appointed to govern the 'Antients' in Philadelphia, and in process of time the Provincial Grand Lodge there developed into the present Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania."
So far as Continental freemasons were concerned, the alterations made by the 'Moderns' led to disputes in many places, and there were arguments or quarrels in the lodges of Berlin, Vienna, Namur-to name just a few of the many where trouble must necessarily have been caused. 'Remakings' We come now to a remarkable feature of the conflict. This was the custom of 'remaking,' in lodges of one persuasion, Brethren who had been initiated in lodges of the other. The 'Moderns' undoubtedly regarded any mason made in an 'Antient' Lodge as having been initiated in an irregular or clandestine manner, and any of their own members known to have assisted in the ceremony were liable to exclusion. Even a case of association with an 'Antient' mason could bring down severe censure upon the offender.
Here is a typical instance, illustrating the practice which in course of time became quite general. In 1754 a Brother visited the Old King's Arms Lodge, then No. 38 (now No. 28), meeting in Soho, London. He "was found to be a very good Mason, but made in a Clandestine Manner in an Unconstituted Lodge," so he was " that night made in the three degrees and paid what is customary." This cost him £1 11s. The usual visitor's fee was a shilling or so. The 'Moderns' had a custom of requiring visitors to take an oath, on the Volume of the Sacred Law, that they had been regularly 'made' in a lodge constituted by the Grand Master of England.
Remaking was known as early as the 1730's, the 'irregulars' of those days being chiefly members of Irish or other foreign constitutions. Following the rise of the 'Antient' Grand Lodge, remaking became so general as to earn in some quarters its own special name-'translating' as, for example, it was called in the ('Modern') Unity Lodge, No. 183. There was often a regular remission of some part of the customary initiation fee for remaking, lodges varying greatly in the matter. The Moira 205.Lodge, then No. 92, had apparently a custom in 1758 of fining "an Antient Meason the sum of 2s. before allowing him to join."
Undoubtedly remaking was often a protest against the regularity rather than the validity of the degrees to which Brethren had been admitted elsewhere.
The story of remaking contains many absurdities. A Brother joining the ('Modern') Lodge of Friendship, Oldham, now No. 277, was 'remade' four years later. Take the case of Milbourne West, an Irish and 'Antient' mason, who had been Provincial Grand Master of Quebec, 1761-63, and elected to that office by a Provincial Grand Lodge, which functioned by virtue of a power from the Premier Grand Lodge of England, conveyed to Canada by the famous Thomas Dunckerley. When in 1764 Milbourne West applied to join the Bear Lodge, now Royal Cumberland Lodge, No. 41, at Bath, his high rank availed him nothing; he had to be remade, but no fee was charged. The reverse process was in full swing, perhaps by way of retaliation. Thus in the Anchor and Hope Lodge, Bolton, then No. 37, three members, the Worshipful Master and two Past Masters, of a 'Modern' lodge were "enter'd" on November 24, 1768; "crafted and raised Master Masons" on December 18; and in a Royal Arch Lodge "made R:L, A-M" on January 29 following.
There was the case of Bro. Joyce who was reinitiated in an 'Antient' lodge in 1784, and a month later joined another 'Modern' lodge. His experience must have been valuable when, many years later, he found himself a member of the Lodges of Promulgation and Reconciliation!
The minute book of Lodge No. 678, Markethill, County Armagh, relates that in July 1801:
Lodge Met in due form the Mast r in the Chair twelve Members presant when M r Willi m Chapman Coming to visit the Lodge in Conversation it appeared he was and pass d him selfe to be a Modern Mason belonging to the Tyrian Lodge No. 379 England and he proving so agreeable he pay d the admitance as being no Mason and Received the Diffrent degrees to a Mast Mason. Both. sides continued the practice of remaking right up to the coming of the United Grand Lodge.
It will have been noted that thie 'Antients' assumed or claimed connexion with York masonry, and there is no doubt that accordingly they gained much influence, inasmuch as York was at the time regarded (as it still is by many masons) as the home and origin of the "purest and most ancient of masonic systems." The York Rite and the York Grand Lodge are discussed on a later page, and in this place all that need be noted is a quotation from that fine masonic scholar, W. J. Hughan, who denied that the Old York working, known as the York Rite, is of great antiquity, but admitted that the 'Antient' claim to be really 'York masons' is not easy of confutation, seeing that it depends more on sentiment than fact for its survival. " York," he says, " is the Mecca of English Freemasonry and around it have crystallised some legends and fancies that have proved a source of weakness and difficulty to the Fraternity."
Returning to an early cause of the trouble between the 'Antients' and 'Moderns'-the transposition of certain First Degree and Second Degree details in the 1720's-it is obvious that many lodges, especially those of London, faithfully but reluctantly in most cases observed the instructions issued to them by the Premier Grand Lodge; but it seems equally certain that others, chiefly those in the country some distance from London and even some in London itself, ignored the alterations. Communication between London and the Provinces was not easy in those days, and, with a poor organization and with no effective headquarters, Grand Lodge had been unable even to inform many of the lodges of the alterations. So, at one and the same time, there were lodges observing the older working; other lodges who abhorred the very idea of the interference; and a third body who went on as before, hardly aware that anything different was required of them. In the course of time, J. Heron Lepper is inclined to believe, it became a custom in lodges to explain to the Initiate, as soon as considerations of secrecy permitted, the differences between the two systems. A group midway between the 'Modems' and the 'Antients' began to evolve and was ultimately to play a considerable part in bringing together the two conflicting parties.
J. Heron Lepper, who of all the scholars has made the closest study of the matter, regards the middle body as trimmers but calls them 'traditioners,' an unsatisfactory name but difficult to improve upon. He offers the name as an honourable designation for Brethren of the middle group who upheld two great traditions-loyalty to their Grand Lodge (the senior governing body in the world) and loyalty to the ancient forms of freemasonry; matters, as we are still taught, that admit of no innovation. The 'Traditioners' paid quarterages to the Premier Grand Lodge but were not compliant in matters of conscience.
The existence of a 'Traditioner' lodge is indicated in a number of ways, some of which were even then surprising, but with a strong 207.Grand Lodge in existence would have been quite impossible. Take the Anchor and Hope Lodge, of Bolton, for an illustration of one point. This lodge was founded in 1732 under the auspices of the Premier Grand Lodge, and at the height of the trouble between the two bodies-that is, in 1768 -it remade when necessary its joining members according to the 'Antient' forms! It has been stated that, at one time, a few lodges apparently worked either kind or both kinds of ceremony-in each of the three degrees!
A 'Traditioner' lodge would accept 'Antient' masons as visitors. Where we find a 'Modern' lodge holding a Royal Arch lodge, it is of the 'Traditioner' persuasion, the Royal Arch being the true touchstone by which to distinguish 'Modern' from 'Antient.' When there were Deacons in a 'Modern' lodge, that lodge was 'Traditioner.' That fine scholar, W. J. Songhurst, held that the spread of the additional degrees in the eighteenth century was mainly due to 'Antient' (including 'Traditioner') masons, and J. Heron Lepper says: "In every early British Knight Templar or Chevalier Rose Croix I see a probable scion of Antient Craft Masonry, whatever the allegiance of his Mother Lodge may have been. Does not the very name of the Ancient and Accepted Rite....conyain a claim concerning its origin?" The 'Traditioner lodge, then, was nominally 'Modern,' hut in things that really mattered, 'Antient."1
It was in the 1760's, when the conflict was at its bitterest, that the fortunes of the 'Moderns' took a turn for the better. By the weakness of their Grand Masters and of their organization they had suffered severely since the formation of the rival Grand Lodge. They had had a series of Grand Masters who took but little interest in their duties, but in 1764 Cadwallader, the ninth Lord Blayney, became Grand Master at the age of about forty-four. He was a professional soldier, and had been initiated in a military lodge, by which it can be taken for granted that he was actually an 'Antient' mason, although fortune had brought him to the highest office in the Premier Grand Lodge. At a period of the greatest possible difficulty he was able, by the strength of his own personality, to extend the power of his Grand Lodge and of the private lodges under its banner.
He strove to reconcile the two warring bodies, and there is a suggestion, already hinted at, that his ambition was to erect the English Grand Lodge as the supreme masonic authority in the world. He definitely aimed to restore some details of the 'Antient' form of ritual. Evidence of this 1 For further information see J. Heron Lepper's paper in .A.Q.C., vol. Ivi. intention can be seen in his visit to the Old Dundee Lodge, Wapping, where he witnessed the Initiation ceremony, and afterwards sent the lodge a message requesting the members to alter their ritual in one particular. He reappointed, as Deputy Grand Master, Colonel John Salter, a military mason and therefore an 'Antient,' who was soon to officiate at the reconstitution of a lodge (Caledonian, now No. 134), which had seceded from the rival body. This lodge changed nothing except its official allegiance, and among its members was a young freemason named William Preston (1742-1818), a printer, later Deputy Grand Secretary, and a foremost figure in a dispute between the Grand Lodge and Lodge of Antiquity, and in the curious sequel-namely, the foundation of the "Grand Lodge South of the river Trent" (see Chapter XIII). William Preston is called " the father of masonic history" from his authorship of Illustrations of Masonry, first published in 1772, and his memory is preserved in the annual Prestonian Lecture (see P. 557). He is buried in St Paul's Cathedral.
Blayney undoubtedly added greatly to the strength of the 'Moderns.' In his presence, and in that of the Duke of York who had been a mason in Germany, the Duke of Gloucester was made a mason at the Horn Tavern, Westminster-the first initiation of a royal Prince on English soil since the making of Frederick, Prince of Wales, in 1737. In the following year the Duke of Cumberland was made a mason. In 1766 Lord Blayney constituted the Lodge of Operative Masons, now Bedford Lodge, No. 157, which had existed as an operative or non-regular lodge of good repute from as early as 1739 at the least, and the early history of which, if known to us, might shed much light on the formative period of speculative freemasonry. He presided at a Grand Lodge on St John's Day in the Summer Of 1766, the first time for many years that Grand Lodge had met on St John's Day, and the return to a practice which meant a great deal to the Brethren of the seventeenth century. In the following year he appointed Thomas Dunckerley as Provincial Grand Master of Hampshire. Of Dunckerley we shall hear presently. During his Grand Mastership Lord Blayney constituted seventy-four lodges, of which nineteen are alive to-day, all bearing honoured names. Blayney was the first Grand Master of the 'Moderns' to foster the Royal Arch Degree, which until that date had not been regarded as part of the masonic system, although undoubtedly practised unofficially in many 'Modern' lodges. He himself -passed the Arch" (was exalted) during his Grand Mastership. By his Charter of Compact in 1766 he founded the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of England. J. Heron Lepper believes that Lord Blayney "set the course towards reconciliation," but that the master mind which continued the policy was that of Thomas Dunckerley, still another 'Traditioner,' "a doughty champion of the 'Modern' Grand Lodge," but himself practising the ritual observed by his opponents. Lord Blayney was succeeded in 1767 by the Duke of Beaufort, a younger man, and so much of a 'Traditioner' that Grand Lodge reverted in principle, during his Mastership, to the esoteric Chair Degree as part of the Craft working, although the official restoration did not come until 1809.
Thomas Dunckerley is a great name in eighteenth-century freemasonry. He is believed to have been a natural son of the Prince of Wales, afterwards George II, and, when he was over forty years of age, the then King, George III, grandson to the Prince of Wales just named, gave him a pension and a suite of apartments in Hampton Court Palace, and allowed him to bear the Royal Arms, to which was added the bar sinister. Dunckerley was a man of great personal charm, an educated man who was called to the Bar in 1774, but apparently hardly practised, and was admitted to high social circles. He was made a mason in 1754, held many offices in Craft and Royal Arch masonry, and also in the additional degrees. J. Heron Lepper has this to say of him:
Experience had taught him that loyalty to the 'Antient' landmarks in ritual was not incompatible with loyalty to that Grand Lodge which had mistakenly attempted to remove them. . . . an error of judgment . . . more than outweighed . . . by the efforts to raise the status of the Craft by enforcing a stricter discipline on the Private Lodges, decreeing a minimum fee for Initiation, and achieving the erection of a noble hall to be the headquarters of Freemasonry in England. Dunckerley upheld the undivided authority of his Grand Lodge on English soil. His purposed end was to make his Grand Lodge supreme by wasting his rival to death. His strategy was to allow recruits from the 'Antients' to go on working as they had always worked; and he offered them a better organisation of the Degree of Royal Arch than they had known in their original Constitution.
What Dunckerley did for the Royal Arch is briefly told in a later section, The "noble hall" above referred to was the first Freemasons' Hall, dedicated in 1776.
There can be no question that by the end of the century many of the differences existing between the ritual and practice of the two parties had in some districts become largely assimilated. It is inevitable that, in spite of all the bad feeling between them, 'Antient' and 'Modern' lodges existing side by side would imperceptibly, almost unconsciously, come in time to adopt the best points of the rival system, thus bringing about some measure, however small, of agreement. In some places the measure of agreement was quite considerable. For example, in the United States, where the conflict had waged quite bitterly, Dr Dalcho, a foremost mason personally acquainted with both systems, said, "The real difference in point of importance was no greater than it would be to dispute whether the glove should be placed first upon the right or on the left," an obvious reference to the transposition already many times referred to. We find a Duke of Atholl, Grand Master of the 'Antients,' using this simile:
I would beg leave to ask, whether two persons standing in the Guildhall of London, the one facing the statutes of Gog and Magog, and the other with his back turned on them, could, with any degree of propriety, quarrel about their stations; as Gog must be on the right of one, and Magog on the right of the other.
These quotations leave no doubt that the transpositions had been made, but they suggest, too, that there was a tendency, as time went by, to look upon them with a more understanding eye.
Unfortunately, the mutual approach to one another of the rival parties, in Bristol and some other places, cannot be regarded as conveying a truthful impression of the general state of affairs. Assimilation there undoubtedly had been. But between the extreme 'Modern' lodge and the extreme 'Antient' lodge were still very considerable differences, as in due course the Lodge of Reconciliation was to discover.
One of the greatest factors leading to reconciliation was the undoubted preference of the majority of 'Modern' Brethren for the 'Antient' working. The seed sown by Lord Blayney and Thomas Dunckerley many years before had fallen on good ground, and was now about to yield fruit -a hundred fold. No doubt a moderate party, which has left us without known record of their names, had been at work for years trying to effect a compromise between the two sides. F. R. Radice (A.Q.C., vol. lvi) well brings out the point that the bringing together of the two sides was due to the English genius for settling disputes, however violent those disputes may be. According to F. R. Radice, it is true that the original Grand Lodge had done much for the Craft: it had introduced discipline and control, but had adopted strange and revolutionary ways. The opposition, dominated by the great figure of Dermott, asserted the ancient landmarks and elicited widespread sympathy, but the fact remains that with opposing Grand Lodges in existence, disruption was inevitable. Dunckerley, the great figure of the 'Moderns,' threw overboard what could not be defended, and concentrated on what was vital-one ritual and one Grand Lodge. So we find in course of time a group of Brethren discovering the middle road, prepared to cast off the extremists on either side and to appreciate what was moderate in the views of their opponents ultimately we find this middle group effecting a balance between the two parties and imposing a settlement on them, a settlement which was a victory for neither side, but for common sense.
Very significant was a presentation to Prince Edward, later Duke of Kent, on his return from Canada in 1794, with an address signed by the Deputy Grand Masters of the rival Grand Lodges. It includes an expression of the "confident hope that under the conciliating influence of your Royal Highness, the Fraternity in general of Freemasons in His Majesty's dominions will soon be united."
Reconciliation was in sight, but still nineteen years away.