tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-92026956417854524042024-03-12T23:57:24.512+00:00Grand Lodge at YorkWelcome to the official Blog of The Grand Lodge of All England at York, the Ancient and Honourable Society and Fraternity of Freemasons meeting since time immemorial in the City of York. The Grand Lodge at York is the original exponent of genuine Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry. In the year A.D. 926 the Grand Lodge at York was established by Royal warrant of King Athelstan, granted in perpetuity to the Grand Assembly of Masons at York. Prince Edwin of York was appointed its first Grand Master.Peter Clatworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00030262957884154625noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202695641785452404.post-64907664252855460932008-08-28T15:36:00.127+01:002008-08-30T01:20:20.247+01:00Oaths, Oath Taking, Equivocation and Mental Reservation<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiajZprxxlj8T9eoqRKmgNkHTpEd7uw5Dx9lNTgCIpNzHBChYSdOzv9ODoXF3UrrN24Gu5eW6J1yogSpbTlJ5yloO4rNNLaRXN6KLeSngOwiD0ORPg6iHcEMlOuT2_CaIRpPbI8XGWgrBhW/s1600-h/bible.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5240098920436203618" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; CURSOR: hand" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiajZprxxlj8T9eoqRKmgNkHTpEd7uw5Dx9lNTgCIpNzHBChYSdOzv9ODoXF3UrrN24Gu5eW6J1yogSpbTlJ5yloO4rNNLaRXN6KLeSngOwiD0ORPg6iHcEMlOuT2_CaIRpPbI8XGWgrBhW/s200/bible.jpg" border="0" /></a>
<br /><div align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">The widely, but not universally, held notion that the oaths and obligations entered into in Masonry are essentially symbolic, and that it does not matter what book or document is used as a volume of the sacred law during ceremonies, gives rise to a debate about whether oaths are in any real sense necessary in Anglo-Masonic jurisdictions.<span style="color:#000099;"> </span><span style="color:#3333ff;">1</span> Those Continental jurisdictions which have done away with the requirement for candidates to profess a belief in God, a "Supreme Being", are necessarily less involved in this debate, as the oaths are, and have always been, essentially sacred in nature.
<br />
<br /></span><span style="color:#333333;">T</span><span style="color:#333333;">he nature and necessity of oaths and oath taking is currently under general discussion in the United Kingdom, due to the social and demographic changes which have occurred in recent years, and so it is time for Freemasons to consider carefully the nature of the oaths and concomitant obligations current within their fraternities.
<br />
<br /></span><span style="color:#333333;">F</span><span style="color:#333333;">reemasonry has never been immune to the forces of social and constitutional change, and has often in its global history been faced with the problem of choosing between adaptation, change, and resistance, if and when offered the choice. Sadly there are many historical examples of change being imposed upon jurisdictions where they were unable for one reason or another to articulate an appropriate response to the impetus for change.
<br />
<br /></span><span style="color:#333333;">The developing debate, within and outside Freemasonry, about the nature, viability, and the effects of oaths and oath taking requires freemasons to take account of the situation, and, along with other institutions, Freemasonry has a need to carefully consider the concepts involved and the consequences which accrue from such change. The danger is, of course, that Freemasonry could allow traditional oaths and obligations to be quietly dropped from its ceremonies, without due consideration, in order to accommodate the secularists, and that a vital element within Masonic tradition could be lost, or what might be worse, rendered empty and meaningless.
<br />
<br />What would for many be totally unacceptable, would be the development of a situation in which ceremonies were generally entered into and empty phrases used, in a parody of sacred reverence, which would be hurtful to many of those within Masonry for whom there remains an essentially spiritual or religious dimension.
<br />
<br />Albert C. Mackey's presumed position on the nature and status of Masonic oaths is often put forward as an authority for claiming that such oaths are far less powerful and significant than the actual words used would imply. In fact, some maintain that it is an error to even claim that oaths, in the religious or legal sense, are employed at all. However, even a cursory glance at Mackey's <em>Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences</em> published in 1874 will show that Mackey relies upon the view of a Doctor Harris for the manifestly incorrect opinion that:
<br />
<br /><em>What the ignorant call the oath, is simply an obligation, covenant, and promise exacted previously to the divulging of the specialities of the Order, and our means of recognizing each other; that they shall be kept from the knowledge of the world lest their original intent should be thwarted, and their benevolent purport prevented.
<br />
<br /></em>To the contrary of Doctor Harris's opinion, an oath in any conventional British sense is understood to involve the making of a formal statement or statements, or in declaring a truth of a claim or promising to fulfil a pledge, often calling upon God or a sacred object as a witness. Failure to observe such an oath would, of course, carry with it a severe penalty. It is hard to conceive of any sensible definition which relates to the Anglo-Masonic tradition in which the obligation is not entered into by way of an oath, moreover, an oath made in a religious or sacred sense.
<br />
<br />Another point touching Masonic ceremony, but quite evaded by Mackey, is that it is general in oath taking, that something possessing a numinous quality, something involving a sacred or holy conotation is held, touched, or deliberately placed in the vicinity, at the time of the administration of the oath. It is difficult to ignore in this general approach to the administration of oaths, the current Masonic necessity for a Holy Book/Volume of the Sacred Law to be present at such administrations.
<br />
<br />Before assessing the significance of the debate for Freemasonry, there are two other areas within British society to be considered, where the current debate about oaths and oath taking is taking place. First in respect of Britsh Citizenship, and the second regarding the relevance of the Hippocratic Oath within the British medical profession, before considering the theological and mythological background to the debate, including the concepts of equivocation and mental reservation.</span></div><span style="color:#333333;"></span><span style="color:#333333;">
<br /><div align="center">
<br /></span></div><span style="color:#333333;"><strong>Oaths, British Citizenship and the Medical Profession</strong></span><strong><span style="color:#333333;">
<br /></span></strong><span style="color:#333333;">One wonders at the degree of invective directed at Lord Goldsmith for his recent but merely tentative suggestion that school-leavers might be encouraged to swear an oath of allegiance to Queen and country, in the context of encouraging the notion of British Citizenship. However, it was not the anticipated broadsides from Baroness Kennedy, for whom the proposals were "puerile" and "rather silly" and John Dunford of the Association of School and College Leaders, who considered any citizenship ceremony a "half-baked idea," but the seeming absence within society generally of the recognition that there is a means of binding people together whilst promoting the general good, by means of oath and ceremony. Indeed, there seems to be to-day a disturbing lack of interest in what is involved in oath making, despite its continuing and frequent use within our society.
<br />
<br /></span><span style="color:#333333;">Of course one objection loudly voiced against oath-taking is precisely that it does have the ability to bind a defined group of people together, rendering other persons <em>"outsiders,"</em> an objection often heard within the context of medicine and medical practice. However, the religious element within oath-taking is capable of protecting against the type of abuse usually referred to by such objectors, but continuing with the example of oath-taking within the medical profession, one needs to consider the current debate regarding the Hippocratic Oath.</span>
<br /></span></strong>
<br />
<br /><p><span style="color:#333333;">The Hippocratic Oath is traditionally sworn in a university by medical students or graduates about to embark upon a medical career. Whilst there are those who maintain that the Hippocratic Oath was written by either Hippocrates or one of his students in 4 B.C., or possibly by the Pythagoreans, the earliest actual evidence for an oath administered in a university and recognizable as the Hippocratic Oath is restricted to the sixteenth century, and there seems to be no evidence for the oath being sworn regularly by such persons until as late as 1804. </span></p><span style="color:#333333;">
<br /><p><span style="color:#333333;"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239596003336312322" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 220px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 185px" height="204" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiPBqR2BGf-DQWhOCIznR-CXyHUosxkpxBBPystgHDW_sFTAWzk9l2z12Fug6JjO_Y6npe8iQ355SLW9xmadtgZ2GNBb7D6SJONYy5-DMxfoe7ym20iEaAmnQOxZrHIJEJovN_Mcz7jmTDj/s200/Hippocraic+Oath.JPG" width="241" border="0" /></span></p>
<br /><p>Whatever the genesis of the oath, the fact remains that it promotes two essential features. First, the faith of the patient in the doctor's moral avowal, an essential aspect one would have thought in a post-Shipman society, and secondly the setting apart of the doctor in a medical brotherhood. However, in the United Kingdom the Hippocratic Oath is not sworn in all medical schools, and the oath has undergone many revisions, the most recent being that undertaken by the British Medical Association, an independent trades union. The question posed within the medical profession is whether the mere incantation of a formal oath accompanied by obligations has the power to bind the entrant to the profession, or whether the casual entry into an oath without any committment is actually nothing more than an act of cant hypocrisy. This is especially so, as the medical profession has been governed under the terms of various Medical Acts since the nineteenth century, and recent developments within the General Medical Council including the increased lay element, have certainly eroded the notion of the medical profession being independent.</p>
<br /><p></span></p><span style="color:#333333;">It is at this point that the current debate about oaths and oath-taking bears most directly upon the Moderns form of Anglo-Masonry which continues to require a belief in a Supreme Being. Masonic obligations are found within a context which takes for granted both the existence of a Deity and an after-life. In such an environment, an oath made without refernce to deity appears to be more akin to a declaration, a statement of intent perhaps, but in any case nothing more than the proffering of an unattested form of guarantee.</span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixkGBJyoFaCeUXp_vIgMVIuci-u2NYFRiSOF6XKVwLVujKVst5zQF1eNJSFdtWxARFYr9FayA5t7c8YbZt4sWhN3CWxr1Uyyxud9l7U1fh8G0z_tTqoFEwVpIyQ3zkkyxA2Z-RkJB1g3z7/s1600-h/Donald+Finley+Olympic+Oath+London+1948.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5239603040171181250" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0px 10px 10px 0px; WIDTH: 231px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 148px" height="132" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEixkGBJyoFaCeUXp_vIgMVIuci-u2NYFRiSOF6XKVwLVujKVst5zQF1eNJSFdtWxARFYr9FayA5t7c8YbZt4sWhN3CWxr1Uyyxud9l7U1fh8G0z_tTqoFEwVpIyQ3zkkyxA2Z-RkJB1g3z7/s200/Donald+Finley+Olympic+Oath+London+1948.jpg" width="221" border="0" /></a> <span style="color:#333333;">The Olympic Oath best represents this form, and the guarantee is clearly non-existent. The Olympic Oath was originally called for by Baron Pierre de Coubertin in 1906, and was first used in 1920, since when it has undergone a number of revisions. A later development has been the construction of a judges'' oath. </span>
<br />
<br /><p><span style="color:#333333;">The current athletes' oath declares, in the absence of any attestation:</span></p>
<br /><p><span style="color:#333333;"><em>In the name of all competitors I promise that we shall take part in these Olympic Games, respecting and abiding by the rules which govern them, committing ourselves to a sport without doping and without drugs, in the true spirit of sportsmanship, for the glory of sport and the honour of our teams".</em></span></p>
<br /><p><span style="color:#333333;">Without a religious context, in Masonic terms a real belief in God, a "Supreme Being", a Masonic oath is a hollow undertaking, one which renders the insincere oath taker a hypocrite. In the face of such a situation, the question must be posed whether an oath is really necessary within Freemasonry, or whether an unattested pledge or declaration would serve as well. </span></p>
<br /><p><span style="color:#333333;">Turning back to the medical profession, the students of Imperial College, London designed their own "Declaration" as an alternative to the Hippocratic Oath, so, the argument might go, why should Freemasonry maintain oaths at all? Why not construct a declaration or pledge, especially given the looseness of the term "Supreme Being" found currently within a number of Grand Lodges?
<br />
<br /></span><span style="color:#333333;">In order to refute the possibility of our oaths being replaced by pledges or declarations, it is necessary to consider the theological and mythological background to oaths within regular Freemasonry.</span></p>
<br /><p align="center"><span style="color:#333333;"><strong>The Theological and Mythological Background to Oaths</strong></span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">From earliest times, organised Freemasonry has drawn upon a Judaeo-Christian tradition. This tradition is one in which some earlier religious forms have been accommodated, including a reverence for stone. In northern Europe, true oaths have always been considered to be of a permanent nature, and to have been <em>"stone like"</em> in their durability. We know from the writings of the Danish medieval historian Saxo Grammaticus (c.1150 to c.1206), who had been asked by Bishop Absalon to write a history which included that of the heathens, that in earliest times when the "ancients" chose a king they would stand on stones proclaiming in this act the steadfastness of their commitment, and likening it to the enduring nature of the stones themselves.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">One may also consider within this tradition the continuing symbolic importance of the Stone of Destiny, or as it is sometimes called the Stone of Scone, used in the coronation of the British monarch as part of this notion of steadfastness and commitment found within the northern European tradition. The actual stone, a sandstone block, weighing a little over three hundred and thirty pounds, was captured by Edward I in 1296 and placed in Westminster Abbey, where, as part of the throne of Edward the Confessor. it has been used ever since by English and British monarchs during their coronation ceremonies.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">Although some claim biblical origin for the stone, and that it is a holy relic, what is known is that Dalriadic, Scottish, English, and then British monarchs have employed the stone realising its profound symbolic power. The stone, returned to Scotland on St Andrew's Day 1996, retains its potency for political exploitation. Alex Salmond, Scotland's First Minister, claimed earlier this month <em>(August 2008)</em> that the stone captured by the English King, whom Mr Salmond bitterly refers to as "the most ruthless king in Christendom", was a fake, and that he believes that the true stone was hidden from King Edward somewhere in the Perthshire hillside.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">We know too that in classical times the <em>Iuppiter Lapis</em> (Jupiter Stone) was considered to represent the god Jupiter, and in a sense was the god, as Jupiter's role as the divine law giver was confirmed by the fetial, one of the twenty priestly officials concerned with international relations, when standing at that point as the representative of the people, in the act of treaty making. The terrible penalty for breaking the oath entered into was made plain at the time of sacrifice which formed an integral part of the ceremony.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">Stone has, of course, always possessed a profound relevance within the ceremonies of Freemasonry, and the Old and New Testaments are repleted with religious and ceremonial references to stone. We know that in England early Christian churches were often built upon already existing religious sites. Such sites were frequently marked out by the presence of sacred stones, as is likely to be the case with St Mary's Church at Eversley, in north-Hampshire, where a sarsen stone is located between the font and the choir stalls. Charles Kingsley served as Rector at Eversley from 1844 to 1875, and we will return to Kingsley later, when considering the nature of mental reservation, along with Kingsley's disagreement with John Henry Newman over its use when making statements of fact, or belief.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">We read in the Old Testament frequent references to the steadfastness of stone, and the token of permanence proffered by it. The stone set by Samuel between Mizpeh and Shen and named "Ebe-nezer", betokened the help of the Lord. </span><span style="color:#3333ff;">2 </span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">There is, as Sir James Frazer made abundantly clear, a common custom of swearing upon a stone, and Frazer thought it likely that it was the strength and stability of the stone that provided confirmation of an oath. </span><span style="color:#3333ff;">3 </span><span style="color:#333333;">The strength and stability of the stone could be readily contrasted with the frailties to which mortal men were heir.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">The notion of "confirmation" in respect of oaths is vitally important if the true nature of an oath is to be recognized. Such confirmation demands the invocation or referral to a power greater than that of the mortal person sworn.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">When God made his ever-lasting promise to Abraham, a promise found in Genesis, "He sware by Himself", because it was not possible to swear by any greater power. </span><span style="color:#3333ff;">4</span><span style="color:#333333;"> It is this aspect of oath making, the nature of the supreme power evoked, which makes oaths and obligations indispensible within Freemasonry, as well as requiring within Freemasonry a real belief in God, a "Supreme Being". If the prevaracations and devices found recently upon some Masonic websites, designed to avoid the need for a real belief in God, a "Supreme Being" holds sway, then the whole basis for the obligation entered into by the candidate simply disappears.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">The great advantage recognized by our Masonic predecessors, who followed a Judeo-Christian approach when framing our Constitutions and our ceremonies, was within this tradition, as the writer of Hebrews makes clear, there was a standard of confirmation by which the actual obligation entered into could be judged or measured:</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;"><em>For men verily swear by the greater; and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife</em>. <span style="color:#3333ff;">5</span> </span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">"Strife" in this context is, of course, a bitter or heated dispute in which the ordinary word is of insufficient weight to settle the matter, but an oath for confirmation of one's intent relies upon the same standard applied to one's obligation.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">An obligation for our Masonic predecessors was just that, a promise or duty entered into under terms involving a penalty. The nature of the Masonic penalty is outside the scope of this article, but the nature of the oath itself is clear, both in terms of its religious solemnity and its permanence. The oath in its clear meaning stands opposed to the devices of equivocation and mental reservation.</span></p>
<br /><p align="center"><strong><span style="color:#333333;">Equivocation and Mental Reservation</span></strong></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">Both terms have a well established and recognized role within logic and canon law, and offer relief for those who would wish for some purpose or another for their words to mean less, or other than would appear to be the case. Both terms are encountered frequently today within Freemasonry, but with perhaps less understanding that was formerly the case.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;"><em>Equivocation</em> and its more literary counterpart, <em>amphibology</em>, provide for the misleading use of a term which possesses more than one meaning. Its provenance is essentially that of ambiguity, an example being that of Moses Hadas, the American teacher and classical scholar, <em>"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book - I'll waste no time in reading it."</em></span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">It is the area of deliberate and desired ambiguity, rather than in the area of the careless or ill-defined, that Freemasonry is concerned. Used in this devious manner, one party may employ distinct and separate meanings or undertakings which can be rendered as equivalent to that proposed or under consideration, with the potential for loss or harm occurring to the genuine party. Where a man's word is meant to be his bond, deliberate equivocation represents the opposite of Masonic virtue, and our predecessors also found in this device of subterfuge a clear and real danger to the very existence of the institution of Freemasonry.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;"><em>Mental Reservation. </em>The philosopher, Saint Raymund of Pennafort, dealt in his <em>Summa</em> of 1235, with the question as to whether, in dire circumstances, it might be permissible to lie. Raymund took the view that when one is asked by murderers bent on taking the life of someone hiding in the house whether that person is in, no answer should be given; and that if this betrays him, his death will be imputable to the murderers, not the other's silence. However, Raymund then proceeds to enunciate what to-day is considered to be the doctrine of <em>wide mental reservation</em>. For Raymund, the person questioned might use an equivocal expression, such as, <em>"He is not at home"</em>, a mental restriction or reservation being employed in the <em>mind</em> of the person responding to the question.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">The doctrine of mental reservation was developed in the sixteenth century, notably by the moral theologian, Martin Aspilcueta, who became a professor of canon law at Toulouse and at Cahors, and who, at the age of eighty, defended his friend Archbishop Carranza before the Inquisition. For Aspilcueta, in appropriate circumstances, a person questioned might mentally add some qualification to the words he speaks, and those words added to the mental qualification could provide for a true assertion, one in accordance with fact. In other words there is no need for the element of ambiguity that there is in the earlier doctrine.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">The examples given in respect of Saint Raymund and Martin Aspilcueta, are in respect of dire or grave situations, but turning again to Masonry, our early Constitutions stem from times in which it was much easier than to-day for one to fall into grave circumstances. In Masonry, truth is held to be a virtue, and in a mason's dealings with others, false witness is held to be reprehensible. It is therefore safe to assume that in our lodges, when a requirement for answers to be given without equivocation or mental reservation is made, the requirement is perfectly clear.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;"><em>Kingsley and Newman.</em> There can be no form of lampooning more uncomfortable to those targeted than that addressed to those who are found to have engaged in the activity of encouraging others to believe in what they themselves do not. Where those subject to the lampoons are men of faith and belief, the discomfort is all the more felt. Such was the fate of two of the most highly regarded clergymen and intellectuals of the nineteenth century, a fate Freemasonry ought ever to guard against. The men referred to are the Reverend Charles Kingsley, and the man who was to become the Cardinal-Deacon of St George in Velabro, John Henry Newman.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">The reduced influence of organized Christian religion in the United Kingdom of to-day makes it difficult to appreciate either the intellectual strength of the clergy of former years, or the depth of feeling</span><span style="color:#333333;"> engendered by religious and moral debate. It is therefore not surprising that some of the best minds of the Victorian period considered the question of oaths as well as the question of equivocation and mental reservation.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">Of the many protagonists of the Victorian period, we consider Charles Kingsley (referred to earlier in the section dealing with the sarsen stone at St Mary's Church, Eversley), and his long-time opponent, John Henry Newman, later Cardinal Newman.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">Kingsley was born at Holne in Devon on the 12th June 1819, the same year as Queen Victoria. His interests marked him out as a man of those times. He was a parson of the Church of England, an amateur naturalist, a Christian Socialist of the "Muscular Christian" type, an educationalist, poet and novelist. He is to-day, one supposes, most remembered as the author of <em>The Water Babies</em>, originally written between 1862 and 1863 as a serial for Macmillan's Magazine, and first publised in its entirety in 1863.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">Newman had been born in London on the 21st February 1801, the son of a banker. He is celebrated as the Cardinal-Deacon of St George in Velabro, the leader of the Tractarian Movement, and as a philosopher, man of letters, and a divine. It is expected that the Commission of Theologians which is due to meet in Rome in September of this year <em>(2008)</em> will recommend to the Pope that he <em>beatifies</em> him in a process leading to sainthood.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">Kingsley had for many years taken the view that superstition and untruthfulness militated against Christianity, and when in January of 1864 he reviewed Volumes VII and VIII of Froude's <em>History of England</em> for Macmillan's Magazine, he included in the review the opinion that:</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><em><span style="color:#333333;">Truth for its own sake has never been a virtue of the Roman clergy. Father Newman informs us that it need not, and on the whole ought not, to be; that cunning is the weapon which Heaven has given the saints wherewith to withstand the brute male force of the wicked world which marries and is given in marriage.</span></em></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">Kingsley relied for support for his comments about Newman's attitude regarding truth upon one of Newman's sermons entitled <em>Wisdom and Innocence, </em>which had been published years before, in 1844.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">Unfortunately for Kingsley, Newman had actually said that the weapons, with which the Church defends herself, prayer, holiness, and innocence, are to the world of physical strength so incomprehensible that it must believe that the Church conquers by craft and hypocrisy. <em>"The words "craft" and "hypocrisy" are but the versions of "wisdom" and "harmlessness", in the language of the world."</em></span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">Kingsley apologised for his having <em>"so seriously mistaken" </em>Newman in the February edition of Macmillan's Magazine, but there followed, instigated by Newman, a most acrimonious debate conducted in print between the two men, they never actually met with each other, a debate which it is generally agreed Newman won, but at a cost.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">It was organized Christian religion in the United Kingdom which counted the cost of what became a highly publicized debate about the nature of truth and belief in the affairs of the Church, and the spectacle the affair presented to a general public still inclined towards religious faith and observance.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">The editor of the <em>Athenaeum</em> wrote of how briskly, <em>"do we gather round a brace of reverend gentlemen when the prize for which they contend is which of the two shall be considered the father of lies</em>". <span style="color:#3333ff;">6</span> </span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">The editor of the<em> Athenaeum </em>was an educated man, and the periodical was intended to be read by other educated men, men who would have been expected to immediately have recognized the wit, but also the barb, of suggesting that at least one of the two clergymen was to be considered the father of lies because, of course, the author of the<em> Gospel of St John</em> clearly identifies the devil in such terms. </span><span style="color:#3333ff;"><strong>7</strong></span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">Any institution whose fundamental beliefs and activities are found to be without true significance to its membership is likely to suffer ridicule from the rest of society. No amount of public relations work designed to lessen the need for the absence of significance is likely to redress such a situation. This is what makes the current debate about oaths and oath taking important for Freemasons within the United Kingdom.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">For the rich ceremonial and moral integrity of Anglo-Masonry to be maintained, it is necessary to preserve vital elements of Masonic ritual, and to encourage comprehension of the nature of oaths and oath taking, as well as the Masonic relevance of notions such as equivocation and mental reservation. This will do more to foster the cause of Freemasonry than will the efforts of those who seem to think that there is merit in presenting Masonic ritual to the general public as some sort of harmless but ultimately pointless amateur dramatic activity.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">The possible objection that taking oaths might foster fellowship and group identity within a group, and render others <em>"outsiders"</em> should be considered, precisely because fellowship and group identity are produced in such circumstances. By retaining the vital sacred and moral elements, traditional within Freemasonry, such a situation may be celebrated, and any objection overcome with full confdence. Freemasonry is, after all, a brotherhood of Masons, not of general society, which is in any event, the intended ultimate beneficiary of our Masonic endeavours.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">It is to be hoped that the sacred, will continue to possess relevance within Anglo-Masonry, and that candidates will not be encouraged to believe that the obligations they enter into by way of oath are devoid of either meaning or significance, or that the presence of the Holy Book/Volume of the Sacred Law is necessary, only as part of the <em>Mise en scene.</em></span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#cc0000;">NOTES ON THE AUTHOR:</span><span style="color:#333333;"> Richard Martin Young is a retired Law Lacturer and Grand Chancellor of the Grand Lodge of All England.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="color:#333333;">----------------------------------------------------</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:#333333;"><span style="color:#3333ff;">1.</span> The term</span> "Anglo-Masonic" is meant to incorporate those jurisdictions whose lineage is traceabe to the British Isles.</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:#3333ff;">2.</span> 1 Samuel v12</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:#3333ff;">3.</span> Sir James Frazer, <em>The Golden Bough,</em> p33</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:#3333ff;">4.</span> Hebrews 6:13</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:#3333ff;">5.</span> Hebrews 6:16</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:#3333ff;">6.</span> Susan Chitty, <em>The Beast and the Monk, </em>p.230</span></p>
<br /><p align="left"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color:#3333ff;">7.</span> John 8:44</span></p>
<br />Peter Clatworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00030262957884154625noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202695641785452404.post-63619609860600025362008-08-20T15:00:00.135+01:002008-08-29T18:50:05.689+01:00Elias Ashmole and the Warrington Lodge<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7FGuKLTxCAaziWT_Km9Csscjw969Je9-Lb3ZNmekaam6ln1lMvGK_VK_tPvtXUYbRnLI9u5W8t9ToaoQP8Rksy-Yo06RgIieA4kIzx37WOkM62crqBbVfUpJIYSUgkYefqcmvuAlEfB_7/s1600-h/Elias+Ashmole.htm"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5236962955072147762" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; WIDTH: 131px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 176px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7FGuKLTxCAaziWT_Km9Csscjw969Je9-Lb3ZNmekaam6ln1lMvGK_VK_tPvtXUYbRnLI9u5W8t9ToaoQP8Rksy-Yo06RgIieA4kIzx37WOkM62crqBbVfUpJIYSUgkYefqcmvuAlEfB_7/s200/Elias+Ashmole.htm" border="0" /></a>Robert Freke Gould in his "History of Freemasonry Its Antiquities, Symbols, Constitutions, Customs, Part 2", deals with the question of Elias Ashmole's initiation into Freemasonry:<br /><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">"Although the admission of Elias Ashmole into the ranks of the Freemasons may have been, and probably was, unproductive of the momentous consequences which have been so lavishly ascribed to it, the circumstances connected with his membership of what in South Britain was then a very obscure fraternity - so little known, indeed, that not before the date of Ashmole's reception or adoption does it come within the light of history - are, nevertheless, of the greatest importance in our general enquiry, since, on a close view, they will be found to supply a quantity information derivable from no other source, and which, together with the additional evidence I shall adduce from contemporary writings, will give us a tolerably faithful picture of <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">English Freemasonry </span>in the seventeenth century.<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">The entries in Ashmole's "Diary" which relate to his membership of the craft are three in number, the first in priority being the following:-</div><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify"><blockquote><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">"1646, Oct. 16, 4.30. P.M. - I was made a Free<br />Mason at Warrington in Lancashire, with Coll: Henry Mainwaring of Karincham in<br />Cheshire. The names of those that were then of the Lodge [were] Mr Rich. Penket<br />Warden, Mr James Collier, Mr Rich. Sankey, Henry Littler, John Ellam Rich: Ellam<br />& Hugh Brewer."</div></blockquote>The "Diary" then continues :--<br /></div><blockquote>"Oct. 25. - I left Cheshire, and came to London about the end of this month, viz, the 30th day, 4 <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Hor. post merid.</span> About a fortnight or three weeks before [<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">after!</span>] I came to London, Mr Jonas Moore brought and acquainted me with Mr William Lilly: it was on the Friday night, and I think on the 20th of Nov."</blockquote><blockquote>"Dec. 3. - This day, at noon, I first became acquainted with Mr John Booker." </blockquote><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">It will be seen that Ashmole's initiation or admission into Freemasonry, preceded by upwards of a month, his acquaintances with his astrological friends, Lilly and Booker.<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">In ascending the stream of English Masonic history, we are deserted by all known contemporary testimony, save that of the "Old Charges" or "Constitution," directly we have passed the year 1646. This of itself would render the proceedings at Warrington in that year of surpassing interest to the student of Masonic antiquities. That Ashmole and Mainwaring, adherents respectively of the Court, and the Parliament, should be admitted into Freemasonry at the same time and place, is also a very noteworthy circumstance. But it is with the internal character, or, in other words, the composition, of the lodge into which they were received that we are chiefly concerned. Down to the year 1881 the prevalent belief was, that, although a lodge was in existence at Warrington in 1646, all were of the "craft of Masonry" except Ashmole and Colonel Mainwaring. A flood of light, however, was suddenly shed on the subject by the research of Mr W. H. Rylands, who, in perhaps the very best of the many valuable articles contributed to the now defunct <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Masonic Magazine</span>, has so far proved the essentially <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">speculative</span> character of the lodge, as to render it difficult to believe that there could have been a single <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">operative</span> Mason present on the afternoon of October 16, 1646. Thus Mr Richard Penket[h], the <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Warden</span> is shown to have been a scion of the Penkeths of Penketh, and the last of his race who held the family property.<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">The two names which next follow were probably identical with those of James Collyer or Colliar, of Newton-le-Willows, Lancashire, and Richard Sankie, of the family of Sonkey or Sankey, as they were called, landowners in Warrington from a very early period; they were buried respectively at Winwick and Warrington - the former on January 17, 1673-4, and the latter on September 28, 1667. Of the four remaining Freemasons named in the "Diary", though without the prefix of "Mr," it is shown by Rylands that a gentle family of Littler or Lytlor existed in Cheshire in 1646; while he prints the wills of Richard Ellom, Freemason of Lyme [Lymme], and of John Ellams, husbandman, of Burton, both in the County of Cheshire - that of the former bearing date September 7, 1667, and of the latter June 7, 1689. That there were the Ellams named by Ashmole cannot be positively affirmed, but they were doubtless members of the same yeoman family, a branch of which had apparently settled at Lymm, a village in Cheshire, about five miles from Warrington. Of the family of Hugh Brewer, nothing has come to light beyond the fact that a person bearing this patronymic served in some military capacity under the Earl of Derby in 1643.<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">The proceedings at Warrington in 1646 establish some very important facts in relation to the antiquity of Freemasonry, and to its character as a speculative science. The words Ashmole use, "the names of those who were <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">then</span> of the lodge"," imlpying as they do either that some of the <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">existing</span> members were absent, or that at a previous period the lodge-roll comprised other and <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">additional</span> names beyond those recorded in the "Diary," amply justify the conclusion that the lodge, when Ashmole joined it, was not a new creation. The term "Warden," moreover, which follows the name of Mr Rich. Penket, will of itself remove any lingering doubt whether the Warrington Lodge could boast a higher antiquity than the year 1646, since it points with the utmost clearness to the fact, that an actual official of a subsisting branch of the Society of Freemasons was present at the meeting.<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: center"><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">"Finis p me</span><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Eduarda : Sankey</span><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">decimo seato die Octobria</span><br /><span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Anno Domini 1646"</span><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: left"><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Commenting upon the proceedings at the Warrington meeting, Fort remarks, "It is a subject of curious speculation as to the identity of Richard Sankey, a member of the above lodge. Sloane's MS, No. 3848, was transcribed and finished by one Edward Sankey, on the 16th day of October 1646, the day Elias Ashmole was initiated into the secrets of the craft." The research of Rylands has afforded a probable, if not altogether and absolute, solution of the problem referred to, and from the same fount I shall again draw, in order to show that an Edward Sankey, "son to Richard Sankey, gent.," was baptized at Warrington, February 3, 1621-1.<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">It therefore appears that on October 16, 1646, a Richard Sankey was present in lodge, and that an Edward Sankey copied and attested one of the old manuscript Constitutions; and that a Richard Sankey of Sankey flourished at this time, whose son Edward, if alive, we must suppose would have been a young man of four or five and twenty. Now, as it seems to me, the identification of the Sankeys of Sankey, father and son, with the Freemason and the copyist of the "Old Charges" respectively, is rendered as clear as anything lying within the doctrine of probabilities can be made to appear.<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">I assume then, that a version of the old manuscript Constitutions, which has fortunately come down to us, was in circulation at Warrington in 1646. Thus we should have, in the year named, speculative, and, it may be, also operative masonry, co-existing with the actual use, by lodges and brethren, of the Scrolls or Constitutions of which the Sloane MS, 3843 (13), affords an illustration in point. Upon this basis I shall presently contend, that having traced a system of Freemasonry, combining the speculative with the operative element, together with a use or employment of the MS, legend of the craft, as prevailing in the first half of the seventeenth century - when contemporary testimony fails us, as we continue to direct our course up the stream of Masonic history, the evidence of manuscript Constitutions, successively dating further and further back, until the transcripts are exhausted, without apparently bringing us any nearer to their common original, may well leave us in doubt at what point of our research between the era of the <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Lodge</span> at Warrington, 1646, and that of the <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Lodge </span>at York, 1355, a monopoly of these ancient documents by the working masons can be viewed as even remotely possible.<br /></div><br />The remaining entrie in the "Diary" of a Masonic character are the following:-<br /><blockquote>"March 1682<br />"10. - About 5 P.M. I recd: a Summons to appr at a Lodge to be held the next day, at Masons Hall London.<br />"11 - Accordingly I went, & about Noone were admitted into the Fellowship of Free Masons.<br />"Sr William Wilson Knight, Capt. Rich: Borthwick, Mr Will: Woodman, Mr Wm Grey, Mr Samuel Taylor & Mr William Wise.<br />"I was the Senior Fellow among them (it being 35 years since I was admitted) There were prsent beside my selfe the Fellowes after named,<br />"Mr Tho: Wise Mr of the Masons Company this prsent years. Mr Thomas Shorthose, Mr Thomas Shadbolt, xxxxx Waindsford Esq., Mr Nich: Young, Mr John Shorthose, Mr William Hamon, Mr John Thompson, & Mr Will: Stanton.<br />"Wee all dynerd at the halfe Moone Tavern in Cheapside, at a Nobledinner prepaired at the charge of the New = accepted Masons."</blockquote><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">From the circumstances, that Ashmole records his attendance at a meeting of the <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Freemasons </span>held in a hall of the Company of <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Masons</span>, a good deal of confusion has been engendered, which some casual remarks of Dr Anderson, in the Constitutions of 1723, have done much to confirm. By way of filling up a page, as he expresses it, he quotes from an old Record of Masons, to the effect that, "the said Record describing a <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Coat of Arms,</span> much the same with <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">that</span> of the LONDON COMPANY of <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Freemen Masons</span>, it is generally believ'd that the said <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Company</span> is descended of the ancient <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Fraternity</span>; and that in former Times no Man was <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Free</span> of that <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Company</span> until he was install'd in some <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Lodge</span> of <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Free</span> and <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Accepted Masons</span>, as a necessary Qualification." "But" he adds, "that laudable Practice seems to have been long in Dissuetude."<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">Preston, in this instance not unnaturally, copied from Anderson, and others of course have followed suit; but as I believe myself to be the only person who has been allowed access to the books and records of the <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Masons' </span>Company for purposes of historical research, the design of this work will be better fulfilled by a concise summary of the results of my examination, together with such collateral information as I have been able to acquire, than by attempting to fully describe the superstructure of error which has been erected on so treacherous a foundation.<br /></div><br /><div style="TEXT-ALIGN: justify">This I shall proceed to do, after which it will be the more easy to rationally scrutinise the later entries in the "Diary". "<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Editor:</span><br /><br />In summary, Robert Freke Gould proves from his research and sources that:<br /><br />1) Elias Ashmole was <span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">not</span> the first recorded incident of the initiation of a speculative Freemason in England as has been claimed.<br /><br />2) Ashmole was initiated into an English Speculative Masonic Lodge in Kermincham, Warrington, in 1646 .<br /><br />3) The Lodge at Kermincham, Warrington was a speculative Freemason's Lodge of long standing.<br /><br />4) When Ashmole travelled to London to be made a Fellow of the Craft, the ceremony took place in a speculative Freemasons' Lodge meeting in the <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">hall</span> of the Masons' <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Company.</span><br /><br />5) The Lodge at Warrington could not have been a stand-alone<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"> independent</span> Lodge as has also been claimed because:<br /><blockquote>a) Ashmole's initiation was attended by <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">"an actual official of a subsisting branch of the Society of Freemasons"</span>;<br /><br />b) Ashmole's initiation must have been accepted as being entirely regular, by the Freemasons of the London <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">Lodge;<br /><br /></span>c) The acceptance of the regularity of Ashmole's initiation could only have been the case if Sankey's Lodge, the London Lodge, and the Lodge at Warrington all worked in accordance with, and provided hand-written copies of, <span style="FONT-STYLE: italic">"The Constitutions of Masonrie" </span>recognising the Ancient Landmarks of a Freemason.</blockquote><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg86tLegeQ737yvopFVIG2nOsDRuXftW2Y75hpOQdiQbnmW9HEBvxI2AkH1Y5Yphdcr6itiuzoyDE4-FqEo734Lm3URLIdgVdj8agMgW5gBEV77PssZn0m8L1c85f9UyU0xc69DofWAao45/s1600-h/Robert+Freke+Gould.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5236962828774473202" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; CURSOR: pointer" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg86tLegeQ737yvopFVIG2nOsDRuXftW2Y75hpOQdiQbnmW9HEBvxI2AkH1Y5Yphdcr6itiuzoyDE4-FqEo734Lm3URLIdgVdj8agMgW5gBEV77PssZn0m8L1c85f9UyU0xc69DofWAao45/s200/Robert+Freke+Gould.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-family:Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,Sans;font-size:85%;">Robert Freke Gould was a lieutenant in the 31st Regiment, English Army. He later qualified as a barrister. From 1868, he is best remembered as an early proponent of the authentic school of masonic research and for his three-volume <i>History of Freemasonry</i> (1883-1887).</span><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------<br /><br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOcz1SsDLzmctApwgQrFZQ7ypxHpFqCUcSa95n7_uM4duChsz-RNa8fnEDMZNrZ_wPJRDVVmgx7p76I1RokPCskquh_1zf-bK_aWdSSO58iBxLq1l3_NkpkSSghj8mbNh5fO8rQgOYP7dR/s1600-h/Elias_Ashmole_by_Cornelius_Neve.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5237441616932748178" style="FLOAT: left; MARGIN: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; WIDTH: 277px; CURSOR: pointer; HEIGHT: 365px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOcz1SsDLzmctApwgQrFZQ7ypxHpFqCUcSa95n7_uM4duChsz-RNa8fnEDMZNrZ_wPJRDVVmgx7p76I1RokPCskquh_1zf-bK_aWdSSO58iBxLq1l3_NkpkSSghj8mbNh5fO8rQgOYP7dR/s200/Elias_Ashmole_by_Cornelius_Neve.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Biography - Elias Ashmole:</span><br /><br />Elias Ashmole (23 May 1617 – 18 May 1692) Politician, Antiquary, Soldier, Astrologer, was a member of The Royal Society. His interests were antiquarian as well as scientific.<br /><br />Elias Ashmole was born in Breadmarket Street, Lichfield in Staffordshire. His father was a saddler and his mother was the daughter of a wealthy Coventry Draper. He attended Lichfield Grammar School and was a chorister at Lichfield Cathedral. He went to live in London in 1638 and became a Solicitor. He married Eleanor Mainwaring (1603–1641) a member of the poor but aristocratic family. Eleanor died whilst pregnant.<br /><br />Ashmole supported Charles I in the Royalist cause and at the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1642 he left London for the house of his father-in-law at Smallwood in Cheshire. He was appointed King's Commissioner of Excise at Lichfield in 1644. Soon afterwards he was given a military post at Oxford where he served as an ordnance officer for the King's forces. During this time he studied mathematics and physics at his lodgings, Brasenose College. 1645, he left Oxford to accept the position of Commissioner of Excise at Worcester. Elias Ashmole was given the additional military post of Captain in Lord Astley's Regiment of Foot, part of the Royalist Infantry. In July 1646, he retired once more to Cheshire after the surrender of Worcester to Parliamentary forces. Three weeks previously he learned of the death of his mother from the plague. On October 16th, 1646 he was initiated a Freemason at Warrington.<br /><br />In 1647, Ashmole approached several rich widows in the hope of securing a good marriage. In 1649 he married Mary, Lady Mainwaring, the daughter of Sir William Forster of Aldermaston, a wealthy thrice-widowed woman twenty years his senior. She was related to his first wife and was the mother of grown children. The marriage was not a success. She laid suit for a separation and alimony but it was dismissed by the courts in 1657. His marriage to Lady Mainwaring did however, provide Ashmole with her first husband's estates which left him wealthy enough to pursue his interests, including botany and alchemy.<br /><br />During the 1650s, Ashmole devoted a great deal of energy to the study of alchemy. In 1650, he published<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"> Fasciculus Chemicus</span> under the pseudonym <i>James Hasholle.</i> In 1652, he published his most important alchemical work,<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"> Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum</span>, an extensively annotated compilation of metaphysical poems in English. In 1658, his final alchemical publication was<span style="FONT-STYLE: italic"> The Way to Bliss. </span>After the publication of this work his interest waned in favour of other pursuits. However, his works were avidly studied by other natural philosophers, such as Issac Newton.<br /><br />In 1656. John Tradescant, who with his father had built a vast collection of exotic plants, mineral specimens and curiosities legally deeded his collection to Ashmole. The terms of the deed left the collection to Ashmole on Tradescant's demise. Tradescant died in 1662. His widow contested the deed but it was vigorously defended and the matter was settled in Chancery in Ashmole's favour.<br /><br />Ashmole embarked on further catalogues, including one of the Roman coin collection of the Bodleian Library. This task was completed in 1666 after eight years of work.<br /><br />At the Restoration of Charles II, his loyalty to the Crown was rewarded with political offices. He was appointed Secretary and Clerk of the Courts of Surinam and Comptroller of the White Office. He was also appointed to the office of Commissioner and then Comptroller for the Excise in London. Later he was made the Accountant General of the Excise. This post made him responsible for a large portion of the King's revenue which gave him a considerable income as well as the power of patronage.<br /><br />The King commissioned Ashmole to prepare a catalogue of the coins and medals held in the Royal Collection and appointed him to the commission responsible for tracing items from the collection which had been dispersed or sold by the parliamentary regime. Ashmole involved himself in the organisation of the coronation.<br /><br />His most significant appointment was to the College of Arms as Windsor Herald of Arms in Ordinary in June 1660. In this position he devoted himself to the study of the history of the Order of the Garter, which had been a special interest of his since the 1650s.<span style="TEXT-DECORATION: underline"><br /><br /></span>Ashmole became one of the founding members of the Royal Society in 1661, but he was not a very active member although he proposed a design for the Royal Society's coat of arms.<br /><br />By 1665 he was collecting information for his <i>Antiquities of Berkshire</i> and, in 1672, published <i>The Institution, Laws and Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter</i> and was considered a leading authority on court protocol and ceremony.<br /><br />On 1 April 1668, Lady Mainwaring died, and on 3 November of the same year Ashmole married Elizabeth Dugdale (1632–1701), the much younger daughter of his friend and fellow herald , the antiquarian Sir William Dugdale. The marriage was childless.<br /><br />In 1675, he resigned as Windsor Herald, perhaps because of factional strife within the College of Arms.<sup class="reference" id="cite_ref-Hunter_3-5"><a title="" href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elias_Ashmole#cite_note-Hunter-3"> </a></sup>He was offered the post of Garter Principal King of Arms, which traditionally came with a knighthood, but he turned it down in favour of his father-in-law, Sir William Dugdale.<br /><br />The Restoration led to the re-establishment of the Church of England. Ashmole remained a Royalist and presented new service books to Lichfield Cathedral. In 1684, Sir William Dugdale wrote to his son-in-law that "the vulgar sort of people" were not "yet weaned from the presbyterian practises, which was long prayers of their own devising, and senseless sermons".<br /><br />In 1678 Ashmole stood for Parliament in a by-election for the Constituency of Lichfield. He lost. He then put himself forward as a candidate in the General Election of 1685. Although he was the most popular candidate, he was pursuaded to stand down by King James II in favour of Court favourite, Richard Leveson.<br /><br />During the 1680's, Ashmole's health began to deteriorate. He continued as an excise officer throughout the reign of James II and retained this post until his death, although he became much less active in public affairs.<br /><br />During the period before his death, Elias Ashmole collected notes on his life in "Diary" form to serve as source material for a biography. The biography was never written, but as we see from above, these notes are a rich source of information on Ashmole and his times.<br /><br />Ashmole died at his house in Lambeth on the 18th of May 1692. He was buried at St.Mary's Church, Lambeth on 26 May.<br /><br />Ashmole bequeathed the remainder of his collection and library to Oxford for the Ashmolean Museum. Two-thirds of his library now resides in the Bodleian at Oxford.<br /><br />Ashmole’s widow, Elizabeth, married a stonemason, John Reynolds, on 15 March 1694. They had no children and on her death seven years later the house and lands in Lambeth passed into Reynolds’s hands. </div></div></div>Peter Clatworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00030262957884154625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202695641785452404.post-66697179764472953542008-03-14T12:12:00.025+00:002008-08-01T15:39:07.658+01:00Benjamin Franklin: An English Freemason?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8BEe0WVittOx8lE8HWLvRN11ZigbLGbHverbvGa9ujibq5EiCHkmeV-vGZ0il4h27z5RWHz7OxOGHh2dRt5ZQg-GBSWjJCW5vrFoqloz9TD78ixXey_-g36VRB9-vsReHOEk8OJ1c8cgW/s1600-h/Benjamin+Franklin+High+Resolution+Portrait.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 174px; height: 220px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8BEe0WVittOx8lE8HWLvRN11ZigbLGbHverbvGa9ujibq5EiCHkmeV-vGZ0il4h27z5RWHz7OxOGHh2dRt5ZQg-GBSWjJCW5vrFoqloz9TD78ixXey_-g36VRB9-vsReHOEk8OJ1c8cgW/s200/Benjamin+Franklin+High+Resolution+Portrait.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5177581224130930690" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">Despite our familiarity with his name and image, Benjamin Franklin remains an enigma. <span style=""> </span>Once we peer beneath the surface, and rid ourselves of those too easy images of the scientist and American revolutionary, much of the complexity of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city>’s character and beliefs, and, indeed, of eighteenth century Freemasonry, are revealed. <span style=""> </span>Such a prospect promises much for English Free</span><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">masonry today as it seeks to recover its earlier vitality and rele</span><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">vance. <span style=""> </span>Benjamin Franklin is too important a figure in Freemasonry to leave exclusively to the realms of American history, ideology, and sentiment. <span style=""> </span>Even though we may feel free to share him with those who see his role simply and uncritically as that of an American mason and patriot, the Englishness of Franklin demands attention.<o:p></o:p></span> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">Neither Franklin, the history of the American Revolution, nor eighteenth century Freemasonry, fall into those ready and simple categories many would desire for them, yet each can help to explain the other. <span style=""> </span>In particular, by considering the religious and moral outlook espoused by <st1:city st="on">Franklin</st1:city> during his extraordinary life, one can refer those aspects to Masonic concerns and attitudes current in <st1:city st="on">Franklin</st1:city>’s life-time, and thereby gain useful insights into <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city>’s philosophical outlook and its relationship to Freemasonry per se.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">Fortunately, despite the ideology spun about him, much of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city>’s biographical data is readily available and verifiable; we also have the advantage of a good deal of his writing and correspondence. <span style=""> </span>The difficulty lies in releasing the man from the simplistic ideological structures which have rendered him “the first American” and a Freemason <i style="">par excellence</i> of the period.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">In truth, despite the high regard in which <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city> is rightly held, he had a less than inspiring moral life in his early years, and his deep commitment to an American republic is at the very least questionable. <span style=""> </span>There have even been suggestions that he may indeed have been a “double agent”. <span style=""> </span>There is the evidence of Franklin’s relationship with Sir Francis Dashwood, the founder of the Knights of St Francis of Medmenham Abbey, the Hell Fire Club, at whose House he stayed in 1773 and again in 1774, but more convincingly, there is the extant correspondence of John Vardill, a British spy, which reveals that Franklin passed to London information about shipping which caused great losses to the colonists.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFY08L3sbcvQ2HnyK9Zlt1AXBUZf0h0nfFueQ0k3RPTZVAdZ7APsxAbLfZE1Q6Q2Ryxh6EtXMyCcZ-asAAd0ItuvFJYK-rMC8I6_RIGhuVipjTNp9foGT8kpL5M3TLl5JCg7MTVrT1BXkt/s1600-h/Benjamin+Franklin+Discovers+Electricity.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 127px; height: 176px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFY08L3sbcvQ2HnyK9Zlt1AXBUZf0h0nfFueQ0k3RPTZVAdZ7APsxAbLfZE1Q6Q2Ryxh6EtXMyCcZ-asAAd0ItuvFJYK-rMC8I6_RIGhuVipjTNp9foGT8kpL5M3TLl5JCg7MTVrT1BXkt/s200/Benjamin+Franklin+Discovers+Electricity.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5177579583453423586" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">What does single <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Franklin</st1:city></st1:place> out, leaving aside his magnificent scientific achievements, which are not considered here, is his profound commitment to reason and inquiry, Liberal Christian theology, and to benevolence of an individual and personal kind. <span style=""> </span>In these areas his religious, philosophical and Masonic views are enlightening, relevant, and important to Freemasons of today. <span style=""> </span>However, Benjamin Franklin was, very much, a man of his times. <span style=""> </span>Those times were complex, difficult, and involved. <span style=""> </span>He was, from birth, exposed to religious and political values derived from his family’s English roots, forged through struggle and contention. <span style=""> </span>This sense of Englishness pervaded his outlook and family environment, and was the reason his illegitimate son William retained his loyalty to <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region>, preferring to live and die in the land fought against by his father, much to his father’s chagrin. <span style=""> </span>Franklin himself embodied peculiarly English virtues, including an advanced pragmatism in personal, religious and political matters.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">Franklin</span></st1:city><span style="font-family:Tahoma;"> valued his wide range of English friends and associates, including Bishop Jonathan Shipley, at whose home, Twyford House, just outside <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Winchester</st1:place></st1:city>, Hampshire, he wrote the first part of his autobiography.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">Franklin</span></st1:city><span style="font-family:Tahoma;"> was born on 17<sup>th</sup> January 1706 in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Boston</st1:city> <st1:state st="on">Massachusetts</st1:state></st1:place>. <span style=""> </span>He was the fifteenth child out of the seventeen born to Josiah, and his second wife Abiah. <span style=""> </span>Both sides of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city>’s family were English and of a marked dissenting outlook as regards their religious views. <span style=""> </span>The dissenting tradition in English Protestantism of the period held to a focus on the ability of the individual to employ human reason in respect of both the Christian faith and also as regards moral questions, and <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city> clearly used this focus as regards both his religious faith and the conduct of his life. <span style=""> </span>Because of the relationship between Church and State in the English context, the family’s religious outlook had obviously political overtones. <span style=""> </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Franklin</st1:city></st1:place> was, therefore, like many others of his class and station, to be exposed to the competing claims of politicians and religionists throughout his life.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">The ability to reconcile and overcome competing claims and, where necessary, to strike out on a different, if lonely course, was shared by both Benjamin and his son.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">The stress on the use of an individual’s reasoning abilities as opposed to the mere acceptance of external authorities challenged church and government, but was not seen as something which in itself damaged belief in God. <span style=""> </span>There was, as Stromberg points out, too much confidence in the perceived harmony between reason and religion for reason to be considered inimical to religion.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">Franklin</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family:Tahoma;"> exhibits an independent not to say idiosyncratic attitude to morality, political loyalty, and Freemasonry which is redeemed by his constancy in applying reason to his actions. <span style=""> </span>Acting in reason appears to justify <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Franklin</st1:city></st1:place>’s actions, at least to himself, and whilst his detractors may, with good cause, question his conduct; his determination to rely upon reason as the great arbitrator of conduct can hardly be condemned.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">Franklin</span></st1:city></st1:place><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">’s commitment to the process of self-examination through reason provided him with the ability to eschew his youthful addiction to low women, although it did not dispense entirely with his delight in female company.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">Reason and understanding, as seen in the sense of eighteenth century English political philosophy, drew heavily upon the formulations provided by John Locke (1632-1704), <span style=""> </span>following England’s own Revolution of 1688. <span style=""> </span>Locke’s two <i style="">Treatises on Government</i> (1689), his three letters on <i style="">Toleration</i> (1689, 1690, and 1692), and his <i style="">Essay Concerning Human Understanding</i> (1690) provided Englishmen at home and in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">America</st1:place></st1:country-region> with a solid and reliable basis for rational constitutional development. <span style=""> </span>The espousal of Locke’s political analysis by the American colonists, and the inclusion of his concepts in their constitutional fabric is evidence of the English contribution to the form of government arrived at in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Philadelphia</st1:place></st1:city>.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">The American colonies had been founded by individuals and trading companies rather than the Crown. <span style=""> </span>Whilst the governors of the colonies were appointed by the Crown, their powers were nothing like as great as is often assumed, and were in fact focused upon trade and defence. <span style=""> </span>In any case, any despotic governor would have been confronted by the powers of the elected assemblies which were responsible for legislation and taxation.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">Contrary to the deliberately anti-British sentiment of films such as “<i style="">The Patriot</i>,” directed by Roland Emmerich, it is not fanciful to suggest that in some ways the American Revolution was the English Revolution fought overseas. <span style=""> </span>The substantial degree of support for the American cause amongst Englishmen is evidenced by the speeches of politicians, and the conduct of military officers who shared something of the colonists’ sense of grievance.<span style=""> </span>Of the many Englishmen and English groupings of this persuasion who can be quoted, mention of Admiral Howe, Lord Amherst, Lord Chatham, the Duke of Richmond, and Edmund Burke, together with the Rockingham group of Whigs, and the Lunar Society will suffice here. <span style=""> </span>Burke made the most obvious point when he said, “An Englishman is the unfittest person on earth to argue another Englishman into slavery”.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">A vital point often glossed over or else entirely neglected by those who seek to present the American Revolution as being a war between American settlers and English oppressors, is that the cause of the war was largely to do with the refusal of the authorities in England and America to encourage the development of what can be termed <i style="">English Liberty</i>. <span style=""> </span>Thomas Hutchison, when Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts had called for an “abandonment of what are called English liberties”.<span style=""> </span>It is not to be supposed that the development of liberty in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region> was any more attractive to the English authorities of the time either.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">We know that <st1:city st="on">Franklin</st1:city>, at least in the early 1760s, was a supporter of both the Hanoverian dynasty and the <st1:place st="on">British Empire</st1:place>. <span style=""> </span>Seeger claims that <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city> at one time considered George III to be “a virtuous and generous king”.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">During his second, and prolonged, six year visit to <st1:country-region st="on">England</st1:country-region> beginning in 1757 <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city>’s objective was to plead the cause of the colonists as Englishmen. <span style=""> </span>He was of the party that sought taxation with representation, and believed that a more direct relationship between <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region> and the American colonies would ease the difficulties between them. <span style=""> </span><st1:city st="on">Franklin</st1:city> was by this time an experienced Freemason, and had published an early edition of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city>’s <i style="">Constitutions</i> in 1734. <span style=""> </span>He would have been fully aware of the injunction in the <i style="">Constitutions</i> against civil unrest, and was, in any case, anxious to resolve the difficulties between the colonists and the Crown.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">It is now impossible to ascertain with certainty when Freemasonry was first introduced into the American colonies. <span style=""> </span>However, it is conventional to accept the existence of Masonic structures known as “time immemorial lodges”, those organizations of British origin which lacked, and indeed, did not require, a warrant or grant from any Grand Lodge in order to <i style="">practice</i> Freemasonry. <span style=""> </span>Indeed, the speculative and philosophical aspects of Freemasonry of the period seem resistant to the constraints inherent in any form of Grand Lodge regulation, and the concept of Masonic independence is discernable not only in America but in Masonic institutions such as the Time Immemorial Assembly at Cork, and in the private lodges of Munster. <span style=""> </span>In this respect, the Grand Lodge of Munster itself has an independent history going back at least as far as December 1726.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">The regulatory nature of Grand Lodges was, of course, unknown in the early part of the eighteenth century. <span style=""> </span>In this context it is helpful to note, as Jeremy Pemberton did in his 1984 Address to the Grand Lodge of South Australia that the first Annual Assembly of the four <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city> lodges that came together on 24<sup>th</sup> June 1717 did not constitute “in any sense a regulatory body.”<span style=""> </span>Regulation by Grand Lodges is certainly a later phenomenon, and obtained gradually, and not without difficulty or objection.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">The Freemasonry Franklin first engaged in was of this independent type. <span style=""> </span>Even prior to his entry into Freemasonry, <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city> had recognized the potential of an organization of individuals dedicated to the benefit of society. <span style=""> </span>In 1727 he had combined with a group of nine (sometimes given as twelve) like minded Philadelphians to form the Junto, also known as “The Leather Apron Club”. <span style=""> </span>The club met to discuss philosophical and cultural matters, and began a lending library. <span style=""> </span>It took as its concern the need to promote public protection including a fire watch.<span style=""> </span>Despite its small beginnings, the club was effective, and its members eventually came to form the nucleus of the American Philosophical Society.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><st1:city st="on"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">Franklin</span></st1:city><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">’s Masonic career dates from his induction in 1731 into a time immemorial lodge, <st1:city st="on">St John’s</st1:city> Masonic Lodge, <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Philadelphia</st1:place></st1:city>. <span style=""> </span>The account books (ledgers) of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">St John’s</st1:place></st1:city> Lodge of Philadelphia date from 24<sup>th</sup> June 1731, and indicate that the lodge was in existence at least by December of the previous year. <span style=""> </span>We know that the first warranted lodge in America was the Lodge of St John at Boston in Massachusetts, which dates from 1733, so clearly, if either Franklin’s own account of his induction into Freemasonry, or the genuineness of the ledgers of St John’s Masonic Lodge are accepted as credible, and their seems no reason to doubt either of them, then the existence of a Masonic lodge outside the warranted authority of an English Grand Lodge in America at this early point must be accepted, and its vitality recognized.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">As with other aspects of eighteenth century Freemasonry, radical changes were being effected as to the religious context of Freemasonry. <span style=""> </span>The subsequent determination of the Duke of Sussex to complete the de-Christianization of the Craft and Royal Arch following ratification of the Articles of Union in 1813, for whatever purpose is ascribed to this radical development, represents the continuing questioning of the role of theology and religiosity within Freemasonry. <span style=""> </span>It is impossible to disguise or ignore the overtly religious and Trinitarian connotations within Craft Freemasonry, and the overtly Christian nature of the Royal Arch prior to the changes introduced by the Duke of Sussex and the introduction into English Freemasonry of the concept of the Great Architect of the Universe. <span style=""> </span>This latter title or designation of God is intriguing not only because of the liberal notion of the Godhead which it implies, but because of the Rosicrucian elements it incorporates.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-EtJZdbAmFfwacnaMg_AJ7R9T8Qsgud8P3zJz26f2qP0ueIZ-h-ILvWEmYKMbffd82TrbhvI_PyQQDbNpI7ARSuYvmJsvprJRlqXaPBSsma9vaEiEmTOKh0UTSrZXnYx8YK9OlVsOPAFO/s1600-h/Ancient+of+Days.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 158px; height: 226px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-EtJZdbAmFfwacnaMg_AJ7R9T8Qsgud8P3zJz26f2qP0ueIZ-h-ILvWEmYKMbffd82TrbhvI_PyQQDbNpI7ARSuYvmJsvprJRlqXaPBSsma9vaEiEmTOKh0UTSrZXnYx8YK9OlVsOPAFO/s200/Ancient+of+Days.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5177582121779095570" border="0" /></a><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">Blake’s 1794 rendering of the Great Architect of the Universe, complete with compasses, in his <i style="">Ancient of Days</i>, is perhaps the one such image of deity with which people are most familiar.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">Whilst this is not the place to discuss Blake’s concept of Urizen, or of possible Rosicrucian influences upon Blake’s work, it is helpful to recognize the Rosicrucian notion of God as the Architect of the Solar System, and the connections between Rosicrucianism, Alchemy and Freemasonry. <span style=""> </span>For the Rosicrucian Michael Maier, the hermetic philosophers attempted to “reach the intellect via the senses”.<span style=""> </span>This does not seem far from the aims of Masonic ritualism of the eighteenth century, or indeed, of today. <span style=""> </span>However, <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city> would have been exposed initially to a Masonic form radically different to that subsequently introduced through the force of the Moderns.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">The possible Rosicrucian connections with eighteenth century Freemasonry are worth considering. <span style=""> </span>This is made more relevant because of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city>’s interest in alchemy. <span style=""> </span>For Yates, there is within Freemasonry several elements found within Rosicrucianism, but, in line with A. E. Waite, she identifies divergence too.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">It is in the combination of esoteric religion, ethical teaching and philanthropy that Yates finds the greatest similarity between Freemasonry and the Rosicrucian Brothers.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">The degree to which Franklin’s notion of Freemasonry coincides with Rosicrucian thought, and the extent to which eighteenth century Freemasonry considered Deity involved with human life is of relevance to any consideration of the significance of religion within Freemasonry. <span style=""> </span>With regard to the status of religious thought as opposed to mundane rationality, David Shugarts has pointed out that, in respect of the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence, beginning <i style="">“We hold these truths…”</i> Jefferson, who drafted the Declaration, whilst drawing upon Locke, George Mason and others, passed the draft on to <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city> for editing. <span style=""> </span>Shugarts notes that <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Franklin</st1:city></st1:place>, avoiding any religious justification, rendered the draft <i style="">“We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable”</i> into the form <i style="">“self-evident”</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">Shugarts suggests that one of the grounds for <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Franklin</st1:city></st1:place>’s audacity is that he is a Freemason.<span style=""> </span>However, Russell pointed out in 1946 that that particular passage in the Declaration actually models itself upon <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Euclid</st1:city></st1:place>.<span style=""> </span>Were Shugart to be correct, and it is a fascinating suggestion, such an act would cast doubt on the degree to which Franklin’s conception of Deity allowed for Providence in the lives of men, and, if we follow Shugart’s reasoning, whether Freemasonry, especially given the changes subsequently introduced by the Duke of Sussex, progressively held a similarly restricted view of Providence, or the power of divine authority.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">However, <st1:city st="on">Franklin</st1:city>, in a letter written on 9<sup>th</sup> March 1790, made plain his conception of God and the extent of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Providence</st1:place></st1:city>. <span style=""> </span>He wrote:<span style=""> </span><i style="">"I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That he governs it by his <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Providence</st1:place></st1:city>. That he ought to be worshipped. That the most acceptable Service we render to him is doing good to his other Children. That the soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its conduct in this. These I take to be the fundamental principles of all sound Religion, and I regard them as you do in whatever Sect I meet with them</i>."<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">It is in this context that the views of Benjamin Franklin are so enlightening. <span style=""> </span>Any assessment of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city>’s beliefs and interests reveals an attachment to notions involving alchemy, freemasonry, scientific endeavour, personal philanthropy, and liberal religious views.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">His involvement with the Lunar Society at Soho House, Birmingham, whose membership was drawn from scientists, inventors and natural philosophers, and who wished to bring about by the use of scientific advance the betterment of mankind, indicate how far reaching and intense his interests were. <span style=""> </span>However, at base is found <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city>’s determination to weld together these seemingly disparate elements for the good of mankind.<span style=""> </span>In this final analysis <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Franklin</st1:place></st1:city>’s personal religious views seem to have provided the impetus for his work, and the rationale for his actions. <span style=""> </span>What is clear is the resonance they have with the ideals of eighteenth century English speculative Freemasonry, and with English notions of political philosophy and liberty.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family:Tahoma;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 0, 0);">NOTES ON THE AUTHOR:</span><span style=""> </span></span><span style="font-family:Tahoma;">Richard Martin Young is a Writer, Historian, and a retired Law Lecturer.<span> </span>Richard is currently Grand Chancellor of The Grand Lodge of All England, at <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">York</st1:place></st1:city>.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;font-family:trebuchet ms;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p>Peter Clatworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00030262957884154625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202695641785452404.post-19094323142665812542008-02-11T22:41:00.002+00:002008-02-13T13:57:14.254+00:00Statement at York"York being the established Place of Masonic Government, the whole fraternity successively paid Allegiance to its Authority, and whereas the Sacred Art flourished so much, that masonry in the South came to require some Nominal Patron to Superintend its Government. A person under the Title of Grand Master for the South was appointed, with the Approbation of the Grand Lodge at York, to which the whole fraternity at large were still bound, as they were before, to pay Tribute and acknowledge Subjection. And thus Masonry flourished for many years in the South, as well as in the North, but afterwards became again at so low a Ebb in the South that in the year 1717, only four Lodges remained extant in those parts, but those Lodges ever glorified in Originating from the Ancient York Masons, which they constantly testified. And whereas those very lodges cemented under a new Grand Master for the South, and hence arose what is now called the Nominal Grand Lodge in London, whose meetings have been by some considered as General Meetings, but without any Constitutional Authority to give such Meetings a Sanction to that Title.<p>"And whereas the Grand Lodge of All England, still existing at York, is the Supreme Legislature of Masonry in this kingdom. And hath, with Lamentations. beheld that the Nominal Grand Lodge, in London, have not only forgotten the Allegiance due to this Parent State of Masonry in England, but have proceeded to insult its Dignity, and depart from every ancient Landmark of the Order, assuming such arbitrary and unmasonic Measures, as ought not to be found among Maceons.</p><p>"Besides, which, many Masters and Lodges under their Sanction have been struck off their Books on trifling occasions, and particularly on Pecuniary ones, Motives which Masons ought to blush at, and, in fine, they have adopted Measures altogether arbitrary and repugnant to the principles of the Masonic Institution, whereby the true Spirit of Free Masonry in the South of England hath been subverted, and if not timely supported by the Masonic Legislature might become totally destroyed.</p><p>"Hence however, the Grand Lodge in London, from its Situation, being encouraged by some of the Principal Nobility of the Nation, arose at Great Power, <i>and began to despise the origin from whence it sprang.</i> In an unbrotherly manner, wishing the Gr. Lodge at York annihilated, which appears by one of their Almanacks, insinuating, that although there are some Brethren remaining, who act under the Old Constitution of York, yet that they are few in number, and will soon be annihilated.</p><p>"Upon the whole, let every dispassionate Mason but weigh impartially the several Facts here stated, and he must spurn at the daring Innovation offered by the Nominal Grand Lodge in London, to so sacred and Institution.</p><p>"If he wishes to partake of Masonry in its Original Purity, he will turn his attention to that source, where it hath been Inviolably maintained and continued for Successive Ages to this Day, and where the Legislature of Masonry for this Kingdom stands fixed by its true Title 'The Grand Lodge of All England, Established at the City of York.' "</p><p><b>YORK 1779</b> </p>Peter Clatworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00030262957884154625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202695641785452404.post-15338522780931707032008-02-07T12:47:00.000+00:002008-02-10T11:59:51.326+00:00The Oxford Poem<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">"The mason poor that builds the lordly halls,<o:p></o:p></p><div> </div><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">Dwells not in them; they are for high degree;<o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">His cottage is compact in paper walls,<o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; text-align: justify;">And not with brick or stone, as others be."<o:p></o:p></p><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><p style="text-align: justify;" class="MsoNormal"><i>Edward DeVere<br />17th Earl of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Oxford</st1:place></st1:city> (1550-1604)</i></p>Peter Clatworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00030262957884154625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202695641785452404.post-77558939191158377822008-01-10T16:38:00.001+00:002008-02-13T21:13:06.757+00:00Prince Edwin of York is FoundThe Grand Lodge at York formally announces that it has traced the final resting place of King Athelstan's brother, Prince Edwin of York, the first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of All England (AD926).<p align="left"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQSK0dkiPXubMMy4VHRmaDqOlVS6YQJydEAL4TyRvx1iQWST3kUpJ9UDwZj3Gfy4lWIJ1ZilxWyDIT3CHrfFnf-9qNy7-e6MHZe2dw3ieDITk30vT00u3dq3OtSra974lFSkL1-QSHONkY/s1600-h/King+Athelstan.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 94px; height: 157px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQSK0dkiPXubMMy4VHRmaDqOlVS6YQJydEAL4TyRvx1iQWST3kUpJ9UDwZj3Gfy4lWIJ1ZilxWyDIT3CHrfFnf-9qNy7-e6MHZe2dw3ieDITk30vT00u3dq3OtSra974lFSkL1-QSHONkY/s200/King+Athelstan.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5153889582448933170" border="0" /></a></p><p style="text-align: center;">King Athelstan<br /></p><p align="left">Prince Edwin of York is chronicled in Bede's <em>Ecclesiastical History of the English People </em>where it is recorded that he ordered the construction of a church on the former Roman fortress site of Eboracum (York).</p><p align="left">Prince Edwin is also chronicled immediately after "Exemptus" King Athelstan in the Rosicrucian Chronology for the year AD925.<br /></p><p align="left">In one of Symeon of Durham's <em>Northumbrian Annals</em> dated AD933, which he used as material for his <em>Historia regum Anglorum et Dacorum</em>, he states that: "King Ethelstan ordered his brother Edwin to be drowned in the sea".</p><p align="left">William of Malmesbury expressed grave doubt about this story "on account of the extraordinary affection he <em>[Athelstan]</em> manifested towards the rest of his brothers".</p><p align="left">Records of the Abbey of St Bertin in Flandres, a few miles from Ushant, make note of King Athelstan's expressions of gratitude for their burial of Edwin, who had drowned in a storm escaping from England during a period of turmoil (AD933).<span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></p><p align="left">In the <span style="font-style: italic;">Cartulaire de l'abbaye de S. Bertin</span> it records the favour Athelstan heaped on the monastery "because the king's brother, King [<span style="font-style: italic;">sic</span>] Edwin, had been buried in the monastery of St. Bertin."</p><p align="left">The cartulary version dates the incident to 932, "In the year of the Incarnate Word". It describes how the same King [sic] Edwin, when, because of some perturbation in his kingdom, got into a ship and tried to reach this side of the sea, but the winds rose and the ship foundered in the storms and he was "swallowed down" in the midst of the waves. When his body was brought to the shore Count Adalolf received it with honour because he was a close kinsman and brought it to Saint Bertin for burial. Adalolf was also the Abbot of Saint Bertin and a cousin to both Athelstan and Edwin.</p><p align="left">The William of Malmesbury version in his <span style="font-style: italic;">Gesta regum</span> suggests ingenuity and perseverance in an armour-bearer who found and fished out his master's body and swam a ship to land.<br /></p><p align="left">This incident is confirmed by the entry in the Anglo-Saxon chronicles for the year 933: "This year died Bishop Frithestan; and Edwin the atheling was drowned in the sea".</p><p align="left">Milton Abbey in Blandford Forum, Dorset, England was founded by King Athelstan to commemorate the death at sea of his brother Edwin.</p><p align="left">Representations have been made to the relevant authorities and a further statement will be released after a formal visit to l'Abbeye Saint-Bertin by representatives of the Grand Lodge at York.</p>Peter Clatworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00030262957884154625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202695641785452404.post-5471850143356419902008-01-07T16:21:00.005+00:002008-02-13T13:36:10.753+00:00Anderson's Constitutions of 1723<div style="text-align: center;"><i style=""><span style="line-height: 150%;font-size:10;" >by Bro. LIONEL VIBERT<br />Past Master, Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076, <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">United Grand Lodge of England</st1:country-region></st1:place><o:p></o:p></span></i></div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0cm; text-align: center; line-height: normal;" align="center"><b style=""><span style="font-size:12;">THE BUILDER</span></b><b style=""><span style="font-size:12;"> AUGUST 1923</span></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 6pt 0cm; text-align: center; line-height: normal;" align="center"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8AtNvdet2E-H8t1a7xeQjYcFo3ClqdIQ_GK-v4fGedekYbP5mSco_ZvLywl-d3YnploCMDGqYjip5x22B0ccISo1nrklOHLGSMGtb9Vz5twYU5n_4Ioe6czYuXhHfw1NTGjl8-K4CRYdy/s1600-h/Lionel+Vibert.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 55px; height: 76px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8AtNvdet2E-H8t1a7xeQjYcFo3ClqdIQ_GK-v4fGedekYbP5mSco_ZvLywl-d3YnploCMDGqYjip5x22B0ccISo1nrklOHLGSMGtb9Vz5twYU5n_4Ioe6czYuXhHfw1NTGjl8-K4CRYdy/s200/Lionel+Vibert.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5152831422766283010" border="0" /></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><i style=""><span style="font-size:10;">Bro. Lionel Vibert, of Marline, Lansdowne, <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Bath</st1:city>, <st1:country-region st="on">England</st1:country-region></st1:place>, is author of "Freemasonry Before the Existence of Grand Lodges" and "The Story of the Craft" and is editor of "Miscellanea Lat</span></i><i style=""><span style="font-size:10;">omorum".<span style=""> </span>He has contributed papers to the Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, notably one on "The French Compagnonnage," a</span></i><i style=""><span style="font-size:10;"> critical and exhaustive treatise that is bound to replace Gould's famous chapter among the sources available to the rank and file of students of that important theme.<span style=""> </span>After having devoted his attention for sever</span></i><i style=""><span style="font-size:10;">al years to pre-Grand Lodge Masonry, Bro. Vibert is now specializing on the Grand Lodge era the records of which are still so confused or incomplete that, in spite of the great amount of work accomplished by scholars in the past, a work "great as the Twelve Labours of Hercules" remains yet to be done. The paper below is one of the author's first p</span></i><i style=""><span style="font-size:10;">ublished studies of the Grand Lodge era.<span style=""> </span>To us American Masons, who live under forty-nine Grand Jurisdictions and to who</span></i><i style=""><span style="font-size:10;">m Masonic jurisprudence is an almost necessary preoccupation, any new light on that formative and critical period, and especially on Dr. Anderson whose Constitutions is the groundwork of our laws, is not only<span style=""> </span>interesting but useful.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">THE GRAND LODGE THAT WAS brought into existen</span><span style="font-size:12;">ce in 1717 did not find it necessary to possess a Constitution of its own for some years. <span style=""> </span>Exactly what went on between 1717 and 1721 we do not know; almost our only authority being the account given by <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city> in 1738 which</span><span style="font-size:12;"> is unreliable in many particulars. <span style=""> </span>Indeed it cannot be stated with certainty whether there were any more than the original Four Old Lodges until 1721; it would appear from the Lists and other records we possess that the first lodge to join them did not do so till Jul</span><span style="font-size:12;">y of that year; the statements as to the number of new lodges in each year given by Anderson are not capable of verification. <span style=""> </span>It was also in the year 1721 that the Duke of Montagu was made Grand Master on 24th June, having probably joined th</span><span style="font-size:12;">e Craft just previously. <span style=""> </span>The effect of his becoming Grand Master, a fact advertised in the dally press of the period, was that the Craft leapt into popularity, its numbers increased, and new lodges were rapidly constituted. <span style=""> </span>Even now it was not anticipated that the Grand Lodge would extend the scope of its activities beyond London and Westminster, but Grand Master Payne, possibly anticipating the stimulus that would be provided by the accession to the </span><span style="font-size:12;">Craft of the Duke, had got ready a </span><span style="font-size:12;">set of General Regulations, and these were read over on the occasion of his installation. <span style=""> </span>Unfortunately we do not possess the original text of them but have only the version as revised and expanded by <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city>. <span style=""> </span>But we can understand that in a very short time it would be found necessary for these regulations to be printed and published to the Craft. <span style=""> </span>Their publication was undertaken by Anderson, who took the opportunity to write a history of the Craft as an introduction, and to prepare a set of Ch</span><span style="font-size:12;">arges; his intention clearly being to give the new body a work which would in every respect replace the Old Manuscript Constitutions. <span style=""> </span>The work consists of a dedication written by Desaguliers and addressed to Montagu as late Grand Master; a Historical introduction; a set of six Charges; Payne's Regulations revised; the manner of constituting a new lodge; and songs for the Master, Wardens, Fellow Craft and Entered Apprentice, of which the last is well known in this c</span><span style="font-size:12;">ountry (England) and is still sung today in many lodges. <span style=""> </span>There is also an elaborate frontispiece.<span style=""> </span>The work was published by J. Senex and J. Hooke, on 28th February, 1722-3, that is to say 1722 according to the official or civil reckoning, but 1723 by the so-called New Style, the popular way of reckoning. (It did not become the official style till the reform of the calender in 1752.) <span style=""> </span>The title page bears the date 1723 simply.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"> <a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEganUzkh46TavXsyTlgAfPzBt1h6muZxDHJt-IpPzD904W8P72WwMWxDVjxJR-V8wII4dc044ikQV5sGVJhP5gYrMEiwkHVp9JNy81DH4DHl9aSGAij2rdHKelLXCwsmUqWv8hcxIsDD2Kv/s1600-h/Dr+James+Anderson.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEganUzkh46TavXsyTlgAfPzBt1h6muZxDHJt-IpPzD904W8P72WwMWxDVjxJR-V8wII4dc044ikQV5sGVJhP5gYrMEiwkHVp9JNy81DH4DHl9aSGAij2rdHKelLXCwsmUqWv8hcxIsDD2Kv/s200/Dr+James+Anderson.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5152789615554623682" border="0" /></a> <span style="font-size:12;"><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:12;">Dr James Anderson<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">Dr. Anderson was born in <st1:city st="on">Aberdeen</st1:city>, and was a Master of Arts of the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">Marischal</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">College</st1:placetype></st1:place> in that city. <span style=""> </span>He was in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city> in 1710 and was minister of a Presbyterian Chapel in <st1:street st="on"><st1:address st="on">Swallow Street</st1:address></st1:street>, Piccadilly, till 1734. <span style=""> </span>He wa</span><span style="font-size:12;">s also chaplain to the Earl of Buchan, and as the Earl was a representative peer for <st1:country-region st="on">Scotland</st1:country-region> from 1714-1734, it was probably during these years that he maintained a <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">London</st1:city></st1:place> establishment. <span style=""> </span>We do not know that the Earl was a Mason, although his sons were. <span style=""> </span>When <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city> was initiated we do not know either; but it may have been in the Aberdeen Lodge. <span style=""> </span>There is a remarkable similarity between his entry in the Constitutions of his name as "Master of a Lodge and Author of this Book," and in entry in the Aberdeen Mark Book, of "James Anderson, Glazier and Mason and Writer of this Book." <span style=""> </span>This was in 1670 and this James Anderson is no doubt another person. <span style=""> </span>It just happens most unfortunately that the minutes for the precise period during which we might expect to find our author are missing. <span style=""> </span>In any case he was familiar with the Scottish terminology which he no doubt had some share in introducing into English Freemasonry.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">Nor can it be stated with confidence when he joined the Craft in <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">London</st1:city></st1:place>.<span style=""> </span>He was Master of a lodge in 1722, a lodge not as yet identified, but there is no record of his having had anything to do with Grand Lodge prior to the Grand Mastership of the Duke of Montagu. <span style=""> </span>He was not even present at the Duke's installation; at all events Stukeley does not na</span><span style="font-size:12;">me him as being there. <span style=""> </span>He himself, in his version of the minutes, introduces his own name for the first time at the next meeting.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: normal;" align="center"><span style="font-size:12;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">HOW HE CAME TO WRITE THE WORK</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">His own account of the work, as given in 1738, is that he was ordered to digest the Old Gothic Constitutions in a new and better method by Montagu on 29th September, 1721, that on 27th December, Montagu appointed fourteen learned brothers to examine the MS., and that after they had approved it was ordered to be printed on 25th March, 1722. <span style=""> </span>He goes on to say that it was produced in print for the approval of Grand Lodge on 17th January, 1722-3, when Grand Master Wharton's manner of constituting a lodge was added. <span style=""> </span>In the book itself are printed a formal Approbation by Grand Lodge and the Masters and Wardens of twenty lodges (with the exception of two Masters), which is undated, and also a copy of a resolution of the Quarterly Communication of 17th January, 1722-3, directing the publication and recommending it to the Craft.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">With regard to the committee of fourteen learned brethren and the three occasions on which the book is alleged to have been considered in Grand Lodge, the Approbation itself states that the author first submitted his text for the perusal of the late and present Deputy Grand Master's and of other learned brethren and also the Masters of lodges, and then delivered it to Grand Master Montagu, who by the advice of several brethren ordered the same to be handsomely printed. <span style=""> </span>This is not quite the same thing. <span style=""> </span>And it is to be noted that in 1735 <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Anderson</st1:city></st1:place> appeared before Grand Lodge to protest against the doings of one Smith who had pirated the Constitutions which were his sole property. <span style=""> </span>His account of this incident in the 1738 edition suppresses this interesting circumstance. <span style=""> </span>Further it is very clear from the Grand Lodge minutes that the appearance of the book caused a good deal of dissension in Grand Lodge itself, and it brought the Craft into ridicule from outside; in particular <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city>'s re-writing of Payne's Regulations was taken exception to. Anderson himself did not appear again in Grand Lodge for nearly eight years.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">The true state of the case appears to be that Anderson undertook to write the work as a private venture of his own and that this was sanctioned, since it was desirable that the Regulations at least published, without any very careful examination of his text, or of so much of it as was ready, and that when it was published it was discovered, </span><span style="font-size:12;">but too late, that he had taken what were felt by many to be unwarrantable liberties not only with the traditional Charges but also with Payne's Regulations.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: normal;" align="center"><span style="font-size:12;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">THE BOOK IS ANALYZED</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">In using the term Constitutions he was following the phraseology of several of the versions of the Old Charges, and in fact the word occurs (in Latin) in the Regius, though Anderson never saw that. <span style=""> </span>It was apparently traditional in the Craft. <span style=""> </span>The contents of the work itself indicate that the various portions were put together at different dates and <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city> tells us it was not all in print during Montagu's term of office.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">Taking the Approbation first, this is signed by officers of twenty lodges; the Master and both Wardens have all signed in all but two. <span style=""> </span>In those, numbers eight and ten, the place for the Master's signature is blank. <span style=""> </span>Mr. Mathew Birkhead is shown as Master of number five; and he died on the 30th December, 1722. <span style=""> </span>Accordingly the Approbation must be of an earlier date and of the twenty lodges we know that number nineteen was constituted on 25th November, 1722, and number twenty if, as is probable, it is of later date, will have been constituted possibly on the same day but more probably a few days later. <span style=""> </span>Thus we can date the Approbation within narrow limits. <span style=""> </span>In his 1738 edition Anderson gives a series of the numbers of lodges on the roll of Grand Lodge at different dates which cannot be checked from any independent source, and he suggests that on 25th March, 1722, there we</span><span style="font-size:12;">re already at least twenty-four lodges in existence because he asserts that representatives of twenty-four paid their homage to the Grand Master on that date; and that those of twenty-five did so on 17th January, 1722-3. <span style=""> </span>Because of <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Anderson</st1:city></st1:place>'s assertion as to twenty-four lodges some writers have speculated as to the lodges the officers of which omitted to sign or which were ignored by the author. <span style=""> </span>But the truth probably is that these lodges - if they existed at all - were simply not represented at the meeting.<br /></span></p><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFf5TicB-xf-Vv6WCN5EohfJfXJ6sN0huPo47TgcoEAddSijERk39139xrjNl1QMiduWpor2GC16XmXBpqeR98Rlott_ydOPkdJV0hu97NnXkEM_5FzBGca03V5d0ZwGVyJiDRMwnZ5BNQ/s1600-h/Philip+Duke+of+Wharton.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFf5TicB-xf-Vv6WCN5EohfJfXJ6sN0huPo47TgcoEAddSijERk39139xrjNl1QMiduWpor2GC16XmXBpqeR98Rlott_ydOPkdJV0hu97NnXkEM_5FzBGca03V5d0ZwGVyJiDRMwnZ5BNQ/s200/Philip+Duke+of+Wharton.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5153138895180036370" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgNTRln-11u8KDL4eBtjFgmBDMK4hChP7niUtJFCYDVU6BwPe3sZzLI97u81DdclD5Ng2w-zkAv6fisjZc2sUKoyzlZYWczYSWWvrZ2qWnZ1QRpoXGExxsG5hGJ2Ix6Gyd_xu6-snOQT29/s1600-h/Philip+Duke+of+Wharton.jpg"></a> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:12;">Philip Duke of Wharton<br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">The Approbation is signed by Wharton as Grand Master, Desaguliers as Deputy, and Timson and Hawkins as Grand Wardens. <span style=""> </span>According to the story as told by <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Anderson</st1:city></st1:place> in 1738 Wharton got himself elected Grand Master irregularly on 24th June, 1722, when he appointed these brethren as his Wardens but omitted to appoint a Deputy. <span style=""> </span>On 17th Janu</span><span style="font-size:12;">ary, 1722-3, the Duke of Montagu, "to heal the breach," had Wharton proclaimed Grand Master and he then appointed Desaguliers as his Deputy and Timson and Anderson, (not Hawkins,) Wardens and Anderson adds that his appointment was made for Hawkins demitted as always out of town. <span style=""> </span>If this story could be accepted the Approbation was signed by three officers who were never in office simultaneously, since when Desaguliers came in Hawkins had already demitted. <span style=""> </span>This by itself would throw no small doubt on <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Anderson</st1:city></st1:place>'s later narrative, but in fact we know that his whole story as to Wharton is a tissue of fabrication. <span style=""> </span>The daily papers of the period prove that the Duke of Wharton was in fact installed on 25th June, and he then appointed Desaguliers as his Deputy and Timson and Hawkins as his Wardens. <span style=""> </span>It is unfortunate that <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Anderson</st1:city></st1:place> overlooked that his very date, 24th June, was impossible as it was a Sunday, a day expressly prohibited by Payne's Regulations for meetings of Grand Lodge. <span style=""> </span>There are indications of some disagreement; apparently some brethren wished Montagu to continue, but in fact Wharton went in the regular course; the list of Grand Lodge officers in the minute book of Grand Lodge shows him as Grand Master in 1722. <span style=""> </span>And that Hawkins demitted is merely <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city>'s allegation. <span style=""> </span>In this same list he appears as Grand Warden, but Anderson himself has written the words (which he is careful to reproduce in 1738): "Who demitted and James Anderson A.M. was chosen in his place;" vide the photographic reproduction of the entry at page 196 of Quatuor, Coronatorum Antigrapha Vol. X; while in the very first recorded minute of Grand Lodge, that of 24th June, 1723, the entry as to Grand Wardens originally stood: Joshua Timson and the Reverend Mr. James Anderson who officiated for Mr. William Hawkins. <span style=""> </span>But these last six words have been carefully erased, vide the photo reproduction at page 48 Quatuor Corontorum Antigrapha VOL X, which brings them to light again. Hawkins then was still the Grand Warden in June 1723, and on that occasion <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city> officiated for him at the January meeting. <span style=""> </span>The explanation of the whole business appears to be that <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Anderson</st1:city></st1:place> in 1738 was not anxious to emphasize his associated with Wharton, who after his term of office as Grand Master proved a renegade and Jacobite and an enemy to the Craft. <span style=""> </span>He had died in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Spain</st1:place></st1:country-region> in 1731. For the Book of Constitutions of 1738 there is a new Approbation altogether.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">But we have not yet done with this Approbation for the further question arises, At what meeting of Grand Lodge was it drawn up? <span style=""> </span>The license to publish refers to a meeting of 17th January, 1722-23, and that there was such a meeting is implied by the reference to this document in the official minutes of June, when the accuracy of this part of it is not impugned. <span style=""> </span>But this Approbation was as we have seen drawn up between the end of November and the end of December, 1722, and between these limits an earlier date, is more probable than a later. <span style=""> </span>No such meeting is mentioned by Anderson himself in 1738. <span style=""> </span>But the explanation of this no doubt is that he now has his tale of the proclamation of Wharton at that meeting on 17th January, and any references to a meeting of a month or so earlier presided over by that nobleman would stultify the narrative. <span style=""> </span>It is probable that a meeting was in fact held, and that its occurrence was suppressed by Anderson when he came to publish his narrative of the doings of Grand Lodge fifteen years later. <span style=""> </span>The alternative would be that the whole document was unauthorized, but so impudent an imposture could never have escaped contemporary criticism. <span style=""> </span>Truly the ways of the deceiver are hard.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:12;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">THE FRONTISPIECE IS DESCRIBED<br /><br /></span></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbWsWJnj8D413TtHH2b2MackBQrWu-PlzYdPlR2LxddmZJTizTjTBKkMI720z_saMArsaBYpaxsP33n0PuqbrEJQGFyitrmO3sP2Iu-uZpxHTv3VVwGvquh42W_dmrnFRqKdIj7YOtOX3n/s1600-h/Anderson+Constitutions+Frontispies.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 199px; height: 242px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbWsWJnj8D413TtHH2b2MackBQrWu-PlzYdPlR2LxddmZJTizTjTBKkMI720z_saMArsaBYpaxsP33n0PuqbrEJQGFyitrmO3sP2Iu-uZpxHTv3VVwGvquh42W_dmrnFRqKdIj7YOtOX3n/s200/Anderson+Constitutions+Frontispies.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5152829180793354482" border="0" /></a></div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">The Frontispiece to the Constitutions of 1723, which was used over again without alteration in 1738, represents a classical arcade in the foreground of which stand two noble personages, each attended by three others of whom one of those on the spectator's left carries cloaks and pairs of gloves. <span style=""> </span>The principal personages can hardly be intended for any others than Montagu and Wharton; and Montagu is wearing the robes of the Garter, and is handing his successor a roll of the Constitutions, not a book.<span style=""> </span>This may be intended for <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city>'s as yet unprinted manuscript, or, more likely it indicates that a version of the Old Constitutions was regarded at the time as part of the Grand Master's equipment, which would be a survival of Operative practice. <span style=""> </span>Behind each Grand Master stand their officers, Beal, Villeneau, and Morris on one side, and on the other Desaguliers, Timson, and Hawkins, Desaguliers as a clergyman and the other two in ordinary dress, and evidently an attempt has been made in each case to give actual portraits. <span style=""> </span>It is unnecessary to suppose, as we would have to if we accepted <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city>'s story, that this plate was designed, drawn, and printed in the short interval between 17th January and 28th February. <span style=""> </span>It might obviously have been prepared at any time after June 25, 1722. <span style=""> </span>By it <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city> is once more contradicted, because here is Hawkins - or at all events someone in ordinary clothes - as Grand Warden, and not the Reverend James Anderson, as should be the case if Wharton was not Grand Master till January and then replaced the absent Hawkins by the Doctor. <span style=""> </span>The only other plate in the book is an elaborate illustration of the arms of the Duke of Montagu which stands at the head of the first page of the dedication.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">We can date the historical portion of the work from the circumstance that it ends with the words: "our present worthy Grand Master, the most noble Prince John, Duke of Montagu." <span style=""> </span>We can be fairly certain that <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city>'s amendations of Payne's Regulations were in part made after the incidents of Wharton's election because they contain elaborate provisions for the possible continuance of the Grand Master and the nomination or election of his successor and in the charges again, there is a reference to the Regulations hereunto annexed. <span style=""> </span>But beyond this internal evidence, (and that of the Approbation and sanction to publish already referred to), the only guide we have to the dates of printing the various sections of the work is the manner in which the printers' catch words occur. <span style=""> </span>The absence of a catch word is not proof that the sections were printed at different times because it might be omitted if, e.g., it would spoil the appearance of a tail-piece; but the occurrence of a catch word is a very strong indication that the sections it links were printed together. <span style=""> </span>Now in the Constitution of 1723 they occur as follows: from the dedication to the history, none; from the history to the Charges, catch word; from the Charges to a Postscript 'put in here to fill a page', catch word; from this to the Regulations, none; from the Regulations to the method of constituting a New Lodge, catch word; from this to the Approbation, none; from the Approbation to the final section, the songs, none; and none from here to the license to publish on the last page.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">Accordingly we may now date the several portions of the work with some degree of certainty. The times are as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">The plate; at any time after June 25th, 1722.<br />The dedication, id., but probably written immediately before publication.<br />The historical portion; prior to 25th June, 1722.<br />The charges printed with the preceding section, but drafted conjointly with the Regulations.<br />The postscript; the same.<br />The General Regulations, after Wharton's installation<br />The method of constituting a new Lodge; printed with the preceding section.<br />The Approbation; between 25th November and end of December, 1722.<br />The songs and sanction to publish; after January 17th, 1722-3, and probably at the last moment.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">Of these sections the plate and Approbation have already been dealt with.<span style=""> </span>The dedication calls for no special notice; it is an extravagant eulogy of the accuracy and diligence of the author. <span style=""> </span>The songs are of little interest except the familiar Apprentice's Song, and this is now described as by our late Brother Matthew Birkhead.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: normal;" align="center"><span style="font-size:12;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">THE HISTORICAL PORTION</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">This requires a somewhat extended notice. <span style=""> </span>The legendary history, as it is perhaps not necessary to remind my readers, brought Masonry or Geometry from the children of Lamech to Solomon; then jumped to France and Charles Martel; and then by St. Alban, Athelstan and Edwin, this worthy Craft was established in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region>. <span style=""> </span>In the Spencer family of MSS. an attempt has been made to fill in the obvious gaps in this narrative by introducing the second and third temples, those of Zerubbabel and Herod, and Auviragus king of Britain as a link with Rome, France and Charles Martel being dropped, while a series of monarchs has also been introduced between St. Alban's paynim king and Atheistan <span style="font-style: italic;">[sic]</span>. <span style=""> </span><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city>'s design was wholly different. <span style=""> </span>He was obsessed by the idea of the perfection of the Roman architecture, what he called the Augustan Style, and he took the attitude that the then recent introduction of Renaissance architecture into <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region> as a return to a model from which Gothic had been merely a barbarous lapse. <span style=""> </span>He traces the Art from Cain who built a city, and who was instructed in Geometry by Adam. <span style=""> </span>Here he is no doubt merely bettering his originals which were content with the sons of Lamech. <span style=""> </span>The assertion shows a total want of any sense of humour, but then so do all his contributions to history. <span style=""> </span>But it is worth while pointing out that it suggests more than this; it suggests that he had an entire lack of acquaintance with the polite literature of the period. <span style=""> </span>No well-read person of the day would be unacquainted with the writings of Abraham Cowley, the poet and essayist of the Restoration, and the opening sentence of his Essay of Agriculture is:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">"The three first men in the world were a gardener, a ploughman and a grazier; and if any man object that the second of these was a murderer, I desire he would consider that as soon as he was so he quitted our profession, and turned builder." <span style=""> </span>It is difficult to imagine that <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city> would have claimed Cain as the first Mason if he had been familiar with this passage.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">From this point he develops the history in his own fashion, but he incorporates freely and with an entire disregard for textual accuracy any passages in the Old Charges that suit him and he has actually used the Cooke Text, as also some text closely allied to the William Watson. <span style=""> </span>We know the Cooke was available to him; we learn from Stukeley that it had been produced in Grand Lodge on 24 June, 1721. <span style=""> </span>Anderson, in 1738, omits all reference to this incident, but asserts that in 1718 Payne desired the brethren to bring to Grand Lodge any old writings and records, and that several copies of the Gothic Constitutions (as he calls them) were produced and collated. <span style=""> </span>He also alleges that in 1720 several valuable manuscripts concerning the Craft were too hastily burnt by some scrupulous brethren.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">The former of these statements we should receive with caution; for the very reason that the 1723 Constitutions show no traces of such texts; the latter may be true and the manuscripts may have been rituals, or they may have been versions of the Old Charges, but there was nothing secret about those. <span style=""> </span>The antiquary Plot had already printed long extracts from them.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">Returning to the narrative we are told that Noah and his sons were Masons, which is a statement for which <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city> found no warrant in his originals; but he seems to have had a peculiar fondness for Noah. <span style=""> </span>In 1738 he speaks of Masons as true Noachidae, alleging this to have been their first name according to some old traditions, and it is interesting to observe that the Irish Constitutions of 1858 preserve this fragment of scholarship and assert as a fact that Noachidae was the first name of Masons. <span style=""> </span><st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Anderson</st1:city></st1:place> also speaks of the three great articles of Noah, which are not however further elucidated, but it is probable that the reference is to the familiar triad of Brotherly Love, Relief and Truth. <span style=""> </span>He omits Abraham and introduces Euclid in his proper chronological sequence, so that he has corrected the old histories to that extent; but after Solomon and the second Temple he goes to Greece, Sicily and Rome, where was perfected the glorious Augustan Style. <span style=""> </span>He introduces Charles Martel - as King of France! - as helping <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">England</st1:country-region></st1:place> to recover the true art after the Saxon invasion, but ignores Athelstan and Edwin.<span style=""> </span><span style=""> </span>He however introduces most of the monarchs after the Conquest and makes a very special reference to <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Scotland</st1:place></st1:country-region> and the Stuarts. <span style=""> </span>In the concluding passage he used the phrase "the whole body resembles a well built Arch" and it has been suggested, not very convincingly perhaps, that this is an allusion to the Royal Arch Degree.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">There is an elaborate account of Zerubbabel's temple which may have some such significance, and the Tabernacle of Moses, Aholiab and Bezaleel is also mentioned at some length, Moses indeed being a Grand Master. <span style=""> </span>He also inserts for no apparent reason a long note on the words Hiram Abiff, and in this case the suggestion that there is a motive for his doing so connected with ritual is of more cogency. <span style=""> </span>It is an obvious suggestion that the name was of importance to the Craft at this date, that is to say early in 1722, and that the correctness of treating Abiff as a surname instead of as equivalent to his "father" was a matter the Craft were taking an interest in.<o:p></o:p></span></p><div style="text-align: center;"><span style=";font-family:Tahoma;font-size:12;" ></span><span style="font-size:12;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">THE SIX CHARGES</span><o:p></o:p></span></div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">The Charges, of which there are six, are alleged to be extracted from ancient records of lodges beyond Sea, and of those in <st1:country-region st="on">England</st1:country-region>, <st1:country-region st="on">Scotland</st1:country-region> and <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Ireland</st1:country-region></st1:place>. <span style=""> </span>In the Approbation the assertion is that he has examined several copies from <st1:country-region st="on">Italy</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region st="on">Scotland</st1:country-region> and sundry parts of <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">England</st1:country-region></st1:place>. <span style=""> </span>Were it not that he now omits <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Ireland</st1:country-region></st1:place> altogether we might nave been disposed to attach some importance to the former statement. <span style=""> </span>As yet no Irish version of the Old Charges has come to light but it is barely possible that there were records of Irish Freemasonry at the time which have since passed out of sight, a Freemasonry no doubt derived originally from <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">England</st1:country-region></st1:place>. <span style=""> </span>But the discrepancy is fatal; we must conclude that the worthy doctor never saw any Irish record. <span style=""> </span>And we can safely dismiss his lodges in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Italy</st1:place></st1:country-region> or beyond Sea as equally mythical.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">Of the six Charges themselves the first caused trouble immediately on its appearance. <span style=""> </span>It replaced the old invocation of the Trinity and whatever else there may have been of statements of religious and Christian belief in the practice of the lodges by a vague statement that we are only to be obliged to that religion in which all men agree. <span style=""> </span>Complete religious tolerance has in fact become the rule of our Craft, but the Grand Lodge of 1723 was not ready for so sudden a change and it caused much ill feeling and possibly many secessions. <span style=""> </span>It was the basis of a series of attacks on the new Grand Lodge.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; text-align: center;"><span style="font-size:12;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">CONSTITUTING A NEW LODGE</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">The manner of constituting a New Lodge is noteworthy for its reference to the "Charges of a Master," and the question, familiar to us today: Do you submit to these charges as Masters have done in all ages? <span style=""> </span>It does not appear that these are the six ancient Charges of a previous section; they were something quite distinct. <span style=""> </span>But not until 1777 are any Charges of the Master known to have been printed. <span style=""> </span>It is also worthy of notice that the officers to be appointed Wardens of the new lodge are Fellow Crafts. There is also a reference to the Charges to the Wardens which are to be given by a Grand Warden. <span style=""> </span>This section appeared in the Constitutions of the United Grand Lodge as late as 1873.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on"><span style="font-size:12;">Anderson</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-size:12;"> in 1738 alleges that he was directed to add this section to the work at the meeting of January 17 and he then speaks of it as the ancient manner of constituting a lodge. <span style=""> </span>This is also the title of the corresponding section in the 1738 Constitutions, which is only this enlarged. <span style=""> </span>But its title in 1723 is: Here follows the Manner of constituting a NEW LODGE, as practiced by His Grace the Duke of Wharton, the present Right Worshipful Grand Master, according to the ancient Usages of Masons. <span style=""> </span>We once more see <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Anderson</st1:city></st1:place> suppressing references to the Duke of Wharton where he can in 1738, and yet obliged to assert that the section was added after January 17th in order to be consistent in his story.<span style=""> </span>It is not in the least likely that this is what was done. <span style=""> </span>It was to all appearance printed at one and the same time with the Regulations, which he himself tells us were in print on 17th January, and since Wharton constituted four lodges if not more in 1722 he will not have waited six months to settle his method. <span style=""> </span>We may be pretty certain that this section was in print before the Approbation to which it is not linked by a catch-word.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: normal;" align="center"><span style="font-size:12;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">THE REGULATIONS</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">The Regulations, as I have already mentioned, have come down to us only as rewritten by <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Anderson</st1:city></st1:place>. <span style=""> </span>The official minutes of Grand Lodge throw considerable light on the matter. <span style=""> </span>The first of all relates to the appointment of the Secretary, and the very next one is as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">The Order of the 17th January 1722-3 printed at the end of the Constitutions page 91 for the publishing the said Constitutions as read purporting, that they had been before approved in Manuscript by the Grand Lodge and were then (viz) 17th January aforesaid produced in print and approved by the Society.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">Then the Question was moved, that the said General Regulations be confirmed, so far as they are consistent with the Ancient Rules of Masonry.<span style=""> </span>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. <span style=""> </span>Resolved in the affirmative, But the main Question was not put.<span style=""> </span>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. <span style=""> </span>And the Question being put accordingly Resolved in the Affirmative. <span style=""> </span>We would record these proceedings today in somewhat different form, perhaps as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">It was proposed (and seconded) that the said General Regulations be confirmed so far as they are consistent with the Ancient Rules of Masonry.<span style=""> </span>An amendment to omit the words "so far ... Masonry" was negatived. <span style=""> </span>But in place of the original proposition the following resolution was adopted by a majority: That it is not, etc.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">The effect of this is that it indicates pretty clearly that there was a strong feeling in Grand Lodge that Anderson's version of the Regulations had never been confirmed; that there was a difference of opinion as to now confirming them, even partially; and that in fact this was not done, but a resolution was adopted instead condemning alterations made without the consent of Grand Lodge at its annual meeting first obtained. <span style=""> </span>I should perhaps say that the word "purporting" does not here have the meaning we would today attach to it; it has no sense of misrepresentation. <span style=""> </span><st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city> was present at this meeting, but naturally not a word of all this appears in the account he gives of it in 1738.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">Regulation XIII, or one sentence in it rather, "Apprentices must be admitted Masters and Fellow Craft only here, (i.e. in Grand Lodge) unless by a Dispensation," was at one time the battle ground of the Two Degree versus Three Degree schools; but it is generally admitted now, I believe, that only two degrees are referred to, namely the admission and the Master's Part.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">The order of the words is significant. In the Regulation they read "Masters and Fellow Craft." In the resolution of 27 November, 1725 by which the rule was annulled, the wording is "Master" in the official minutes, which is a strong indication that the original Regulation only referred to one degree.<span style=""> </span>In 1738 Anderson deliberately alters what is set out as the original wording and makes it read "Fellow Crafts and Masters," while in the new Regulation printed alongside of it the alteration of 27 November, 1725, is quoted as "Masters and Fellows" both being inaccurate; and he even gives the date wrongly.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">The second Regulation enacts that the Master of a particular lodge has the right of congregating the members of his lodge into a chapter upon any emergency as well as to appoint the time and place of their usual forming.<span style=""> </span>But it would be quite unsafe to assume that this is another reference to the Royal Arch; it appears to deal with what we would now call an emergent meeting.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">Payne's, or rather Anderson's, Regulations were the foundation on which the law of the Craft was based, it being developed by a continual process of emendation and addition, and their phraseology can still be traced in our English Constitutions today.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: normal;" align="center"><span style="font-size:12;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">SUBSEQUENT ALTERATIONS</span><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">In <st1:country-region st="on">America</st1:country-region> <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Franklin</st1:city></st1:place> reprinted this work in 1734 apparently verbatim.<span style=""> </span>In 1738 Anderson brought out a second addition which was intended to replace the earlier one altogether, but it was a slovenly performance and the Regulations were printed in so confused a manner, being all mixed up with notes and amendments (many inaccurately stated), that it was difficult to make head or tail of them and to ascertain what was the law of the Craft.<span style=""> </span>He also re-wrote the history entirely and greatly expanded it, introducing so many absurdities that Gould has suggested that he was deliberately fooling the Grand Lodge, or in the alternative that he was himself in his dotage.<span style=""> </span>He died very shortly after. <span style=""> </span>But this same ridiculous history has done duty in all seriousness till comparatively recent years, being brought up to date by <st1:place st="on">Preston</st1:place> and others who were apparently quite unconscious of its true value. <span style=""> </span>Unfortunately that portion of the history which professed to give an account of the proceedings of Grand Lodge and for which the official minutes were at <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">Anderson</st1:place></st1:city>'s disposal is full of what one must consider wilful inaccuracies and misstatements.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">In the next edition of the Constitutions, 1754, the Regulations were rewritten by Entick, but the history was preserved. <span style=""> </span>Entick also reverted to the Charges as drawn up in 1723 into which, especially the first, Anderson had introduced various modifications in 1738, and those Charges are the basis of the Ancient Charges to be found today in the Constitutions of the United Grand Lodge of England, the only differences, except as regards the first Charge, not amounting to more than verbal modifications.<o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center; line-height: normal;" align="center"><span style="font-size:12;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">OUR DEBT TO </span><st1:city style="font-weight: bold;" st="on"><st1:place st="on">ANDERSON</st1:place></st1:city><o:p></o:p></span></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal;"><span style="font-size:12;">While as students we are bound to receive any statement that <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">Anderson</st1:city></st1:place> makes with the utmost caution unless it can be tested from other sources, we must not be too ready to abuse the worthy Doctor on that account. <span style=""> </span>Our standards of historical and literary accuracy are higher than those of 1723, and his object was to glorify Montagu and the Craft and the new style of architecture introduced by Inigo Jones and others of his school; and this he did wholeheartedly, and if in the process he twisted a text or two or supplied suitable events to fill gaps in his narrative for which mere history as such had failed to record facts, no one at the time would think any the worse of him for that. <span style=""> </span>It was a far more serious matter that he was instrumental in removing from the literature of the Craft all definite religious allusions; but as we now see, the Craft in fact owes its universality today to its wide undenominationalism and in this respect he builded better than he knew. <span style=""> </span>The Constitutions of 1723 remains one of our most important texts and only awaits publication in full facsimile with suitable notes and introduction at the hands of some Society with the requisite funds.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: normal; font-style: italic;"><span style="font-size:12;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">NOTE:</span> The Grand Lodge of All England is governed by the authority of the Old York Constitutions of A.D. 1600 (referred to in the article above as "Old Manuscript Constitutions" and "Old Gothic Constitutions") and rejects the innovations contained in the Moderns version of the Craft brought about by the activities detailed in the article written by Vibert. </span>The Grand Lodge at York has published this article as an aid to understanding at this time when the vital issues of authenticity of origin and regularity are being re-visited and evaluated by serious students of genuine Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry.<br /></span></p>Peter Clatworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00030262957884154625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202695641785452404.post-32463463458041257022007-12-30T21:23:00.001+00:002008-08-12T10:19:09.556+01:00Sussex v Sussex : The Case for Genuine Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry<div style="text-align: center;"><b><span style="font-family:Arial;">When, Where and Why?<o:p></o:p></span></b></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The answers to the questions <i>"When Freemasonry?"</i> or <i>"Where Freemasonry?"</i> began remain inconclusive and unsatisfactory due to the lack of reliable and available evidence, much of which has been either lost, destroyed or simply invented for parochial political reasons.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>No matter how firmly the alleged events at the Goose and Gridiron are presented by the <i>"historians"</i> of Freemasonry, what actually took place, and most crucially the circumstances surrounding them, are highly dubious.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Can we really be expected to believe that organised Freemasonry only began in the tiny back room of a <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city> Ale-house in 1717?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Librarian and Curator of the United Grand Lodge of England, John Hamill, identifies the nature of at least part of the problem when he states that, <i>"We don’t know enough about how Freemasonry evolved, and we don’t know enough about the early development of rituals; the earliest ritual fragments we have date from the mid-1690s onwards. We don’t know what went on before then." <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);font-size:100%;" >1</span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">What went on before is at least partly known, but the truly vital question about English Freemasonry is <i>"Why?"</i>.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>The answer to this question contains all that is necessary to put English Freemasonry back to its rightful place at the heart of English society.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">If one ponders why the membership, vitality and consequence of English Freemasonry continues to plummet and why it has become necessary to repone the Grand Lodge of All England, one must conclude that as Rudyard Kipling indicated in an earlier time of national concern, it stands in need of <i>“re-setting".</i><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><v:stroke joinstyle="miter"><v:f eqn="if lineDrawn pixelLineWidth 0"><v:f eqn="sum @0 1 0"><v:f eqn="sum 0 0 @1"><v:f eqn="prod @2 1 2"><v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelWidth"><v:f eqn="prod @3 21600 pixelHeight"><v:f eqn="sum @0 0 1"><v:f eqn="prod @6 1 2"><v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelWidth"><v:f eqn="sum @8 21600 0"><v:f eqn="prod @7 21600 pixelHeight"><v:f eqn="sum @10 21600 0"><v:path connecttype="rect" gradientshapeok="t" extrusionok="f"><o:lock aspectratio="t" ext="edit"><v:imagedata title="Augustus Frederick Duke of Sussex" src="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CHP_ADM%7E1%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_image001.jpg"><span style="font-size:85%;">Genuine Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry was appropriated by the Hanoverian dynasty in 1813 during a period of national crisis in a move designed to ensure that henceforth the Fraternity would be unable to articulate an independent response to the situation of the day.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Freemasonry was also institutionalised by the same process of patronage that the Hanoverians used to such effect elsewhere in the Kingdom.</span></v:imagedata></o:lock></v:path></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:f></v:stroke></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The overt and unwarranted conscription of English Freemasonry to the Hanoverian cause undertaken by the Duke of Sussex, and the resultant emasculating effect this subsequently and persistently produced, stands in contrast to the useful and dynamic possibilities Kipling hinted at in his Masonic references set out at a time of crisis, in his Sussex period. </span></p><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" ><o:p></o:p></span><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgfHKbaucN1c38uLHf3fBPfgxO3FEbos7bMhbc0Tvl-hqudUJRfd5rmBRBiWVrbIDdGTswViTUBdTCiT1zdFu0kk9Y9wmpdIWvjA-MGJmBQTEwFaFjsEmyl6gd1jvHi9hUHsQ1_3s6U2ow4/s1600-h/Augustus+Frederick+Duke+of+Sussex.jpg"></a><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">For members of the Grand Lodge of All England at <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">York</st1:place></st1:city>, Freemasonry without a conspicuous Anglo-Saxon element is like Hamlet without the Prince, and stands shorn of those characteristics that are necessary in the challenging circumstances of to-day.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Those who focus upon the events, real or legendary occurring in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and who because of the difficulties inherent in researching the distant past regard those centuries as a more convenient starting point for the study of Freemasonry, sacrifice the necessary appreciation of the role of myth and legend within Freemasonry.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The alleged meeting of the "Four Old Lodges" at the Goose and Gridiron in 1717, and the nature of the arrangements which led on 27 December 1813 to the inception of the United Grand Lodge of England are not rendered incontrovertible because of the relative nearness of those times to the present.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Evidence, fact and truth relative to English Freemasonry in those years is generally confused, and the terms used imprecise and misleading.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">What is often presented as fact in connection with those more recent events is as much disputed as King Athelstan’s charter of A.D. 926, and with at least as much reason.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">In the search for truth, including that relative to the facts concerning the origin of Freemasonry, Freemasons are right to seek for that degree of elucidation which myth and legend are able to impart.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Proper appreciation of the value of myth and legend, combined with an understanding of the relationship between fact and belief, aid inquiry into the nature of Freemasonry. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The reasons why the years 926 and 1717 are important relates to more than just belief or disbelief about particular events. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The legends themselves are informative, and speculation is more than idle consideration.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12pt 0cm 6pt;" align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Myth, Legend and Fact<o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Myth, legend and the proper interpretation of fact form essential conceptual tools for understanding the fundamental and characteristic role of Freemasonry within <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region>, and English society. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Failure to utilise these tools weakens the relevance of Freemasonry and aids those who desire and work towards its irrelevance.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Myth represents the use of a real or fictional story in which a recurring theme embodies in a consistent manner cultural ideals or emotions.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Consistency is essential, and realised as the situation then, and now. <span style="font-size:0;"></span><span style="font-size:0;"></span>The reality or fictional status of the material is not considered crucial, or even material.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">We subscribe to the view expressed by Childs that at one level <em>"The reality of the mythical, timeless event enters into the present moment of time."<span style="font-style: italic;"> <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);font-size:100%;" >2</span></span></em></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Legend differs from myth in that here one is concerned with an unverified or unverifiable story or event handed down from an earlier time.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The story or event may well be vital in a particular context.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>It may be desired, it may be consistent with some known fact or facts, or even acted upon, but it cannot in its entirety be established. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Indeed a legend does not need to be verified for it to have relevance or potency, because it is to some extent connected with a reality.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Both King Alfred and Robert the Bruce were in their own time, and particular situations, preoccupied with war and matters of state.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The elements of the cakes and the spider, central to each of the well-known legendary stories, need not be verified for the instructional value or context of the supposed events to be recognised.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">A legendary event may be connected with the recurring theme found in a myth, or be considered along with and in the context of a factual assertion. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The possible nexus in which these conceptual devices operate is itself worthy of study.</span></p><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" ></span><div style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Fact, refers to something which is asserted to be true. It is not credible to maintain that a historical or evidential fact can ever be put forward in the same manner as a mathematical fact. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The former are clearly subject to interpretation and it is perfectly reasonable for a fact to be disputed. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The mere recitation of a number of facts does not in itself guarantee truth although it may lead to the acceptance of a proposition.Truth is attainable, but facts currently in our possession may not secure truth. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>We are mindful of Francis Bacon’s observation contained in his essay "Of Truth"<em>, <span style="font-size:0;"><span style="font-style: italic;">"</span></span></em></span><span style="font-style: italic;font-size:85%;" >What is truth", said jesting Pilate, "and would not stay for an answer." <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);font-size:100%;" >3</span></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><a title="" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=9202695641785452404#_edn3" name="_ednref3"></a><o:p></o:p></span></div><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">In terms of Myth, the answer was present in the story itself.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Freemasons in common with everyone else are impelled to believe, but firm belief is often the companion to irrationality.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Russell highlights our dilemma by paraphrasing David Hume’s empirical philosophy, although drawing a conclusion not actually reached by Hume, <i>"We cannot help believing, but no belief can be grounded in reason. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Nor can one line of action be more rational than another, since all alike are based upon irrational convictions." <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"><span style="font-weight: bold;">4</span></span></span><br /></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Given the nature and extent of the surviving evidential material available to us with regard to the origins of Freemasonry, the contribution of philosophers such as William James can assist us in our search for truth.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">James counsels us that, <i>"We cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it." <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">5</span></span><br /></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Although recognizing inadequacies in James’s view, one can see the relevance of that view in the context of English Freemasonry. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Why should a Masonic tradition uniquely founded upon Anglo-Saxon principles not be the tradition best placed to serve the needs of the people of <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region>?<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12pt 0cm 6pt;" align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Constitutional Perspectives and the Articles of <st1:place st="on">Union</st1:place><o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Any attempt at assessing the events leading up to and including the ratification of the Articles of Union and the advent of the United Grand Lodge of England on 27 December 1813, must take account of the constitutional situation prevailing in <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">England</st1:country-region></st1:place> at the time.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Hanoverian dynasty and English Freemasonry alike, due to the alliance formed between them, rendered themselves subject to constitutional examination and evaluation through the focus of English conceptions of constitutional probity.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Due to the nature of its inception, the Grand Lodge of London and its successor organisation The United Grand Lodge of England, remains subject to scrutiny through English forms of critical analysis.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The British constitution was seen as not only something of practical benefit, but of having its genesis in traditional Anglo-Saxon theories still vibrant and central within English constitutional conceptions. </span><strong><em><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);font-size:100%;" >6</span></em></strong></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">There was also a strong and pervasive belief in the existence of a social contract existing between the People and the Sovereign.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Sir Ernest Barker, in considering Social Contract theory puts it this way, <i>"The theory of the Social Contract might be mechanical, juristic, and a priori. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>But it was none the less a way of expressing two fundamental ideas or values to which the human mind will always cling – the value of Liberty, or the idea that will, not force, is the basis of government, and the value of Justice, or the idea that right, not might, is the basis of all political society and of every system of political order." </i><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">7</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">In short, the English system was thought to recognise the existence of natural rights, firmly set within the constitution, and a constitutional tradition involving the will of the People, however defined, and going back to Anglo-Saxon times.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">James II, by violating those rights, had produced a situation in which the People had removed him and replaced him with a Sovereign bound more explicitly by way of the Bill of Rights.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The constitutional situation then, as now, bears directly upon the notion of English Freemasonry. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>It is quite possible to agree with Gardner’s contention that the revolution of 1688 has <i>“everything”</i> to do with Freemasonry, although his failure to recognize that the British constitution includes statutes dealing with constitutional law, and is therefore not wholly unwritten, undermines his argument, that British monarchs are not constitutional monarchs, although his position as Jacobite Historiographer Royal perhaps explains this blind spot. <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:100%;">8</span></span></span></span><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Walpole, Scott, Blackstone, Burke, and Locke all recognized the advantages which accrued to the constitution. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Acknowledgement of the will of the people, however expressed, and that form of expression inevitably changes over time, was ever a hallmark of Anglo-Saxon society.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12pt 0cm 6pt;" align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Athelstan, Anglo-Saxon Freedoms and the People<o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfxQvWRWNZZG1eWU47he-o27RG21K9pT4E4UqZj1qfFjyLqxTNf2yexxP0NuJRaEXH3TRu5Od33hYQqt1g7Wr-VVcNAS0WzpVaknVq-KVdnY4irj9_biI-qEiEG49o92FvmO6YxErF-Gbl/s1600-h/Athelstan.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149883013616924818" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 119px; cursor: pointer; height: 143px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfxQvWRWNZZG1eWU47he-o27RG21K9pT4E4UqZj1qfFjyLqxTNf2yexxP0NuJRaEXH3TRu5Od33hYQqt1g7Wr-VVcNAS0WzpVaknVq-KVdnY4irj9_biI-qEiEG49o92FvmO6YxErF-Gbl/s200/Athelstan.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">The Grand Lodge of All England at <st1:city st="on">York</st1:city> properly focuses its concerns upon <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region>, and recognises Athelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great, as the King who raised the English people to nationhood.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">This monarch’s achievements extended beyond <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region>. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>He may be considered the first British monarch, although the title Bretwalda (Britain Ruler) had been first claimed in the fifth century by Aelle, King of Sussex, the <st1:place st="on">South Saxons</st1:place>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Bede translates Bretwalda into the Latin Imperium, and cognizance of the status of the Christian emperors may have been part of the reason for the singular importance granted to <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">York</st1:city></st1:place> in the Anglo-Saxon period, and beyond.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Certainly Offa of Mercia both in architecture and in the matter of royal succession attempted to emulate the Christian emperors. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>In A.D. 306, the first Christian Emperor, Constantine the Great, commenced his reign at <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">York</st1:place></st1:city>, then the Roman fortress of Eboracum.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">York would retain its importance throughout the Anglo-Saxon period, and it is likely that Canute, who was the first king to call himself King of England, rather than King of the English, and who was also King of Norway, Denmark, and Sweden, and therefore aware of the vital strategic location of the city, refrained from making York his capital because of his recognition that his kingdom was that of Wessex or the West Saxons, as indeed was Athelstan’s.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The persistent claim of the West Saxons to rule the English and the fundamentally non-racist tradition of the Anglo-Saxon people can be seen from the record contained in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for A.D. 920, <i>"In this year before midsummer, King Edward went with his troops to Nottingham … he was chosen as father and lord by the king of the Scots and all the Scottish people; by Raegnald, and Eadulf’s sons, and all who dwell in Northumbria, English, Danes, Norse and others, and the King of the Strathclyde Welsh and the Strathclyde Welsh themselves." <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">9</span></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Anglo-Saxons were, and remain a people whose national consciousness is rightly based more upon geography and shared institutions and traditions than upon race. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Freemasonry can flourish in such a climate.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">In A.D. 926, Athelstan entered <st1:city st="on">York</st1:city> and was also acknowledged by the King of Scots, and the King of the <st1:place st="on"><st1:placename st="on">British</st1:placename> <st1:placetype st="on">Kingdom</st1:placetype></st1:place> of Strathclyde as their <i>“father and lord”</i>. Athelstan’s status was further reinforced by the agreement of the Welsh princes to pay him tribute. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The year in question is made more significant for Freemasons because of the authority granted to them at that time by the King.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">William Preston stated in 1738 that, <i>"... the first Grand Lodge of <st1:country-region st="on">England</st1:country-region> was formed in <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">York</st1:place></st1:city> in A.D. 926. King Athelstane sold the Masons a Royal Charter, which gave them the right to meet every year at <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">York</st1:city></st1:place> and to rule themselves under a Royal Grand Master." <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">10</span></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Similarly, Dr James Anderson’s famous declaration well supported in fact over the years by many, including Robert Graves, in respect of the Masonic Assembly convened by Prince Edwin in A.D. 926, distinguished English from Scottish Freemasonry, and promoted the Anglo-Saxon or English dimension. <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">11</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">A point often overlooked by those who demand production of this particular charter, is that in Anglo-Saxon times the actual issue of a charter could be handled by the Witan, (the Civil Service) and it often was, even though the right concerned was given by the King.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>The claim that a Royal Charter was such a unique item that it could not possibly go missing is overstated.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; line-height: 15pt;" align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>The Tradition of the Will of the People in the Anglo-Saxon Period<o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Despite the existence of a number of foreign kingdoms upon English soil, the English of the period turned increasingly to the kings of <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Wessex</st1:place></st1:country-region> as their natural rulers.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The supremacy of <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Wessex</st1:place></st1:country-region> amongst the Anglo-Saxons had been due initially to King Egbert, the grandfather of Alfred the Great.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Egbert’s passage to the throne, following the death of his kinsman, King Cynewulf in 786, had not been direct. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Egbert had initially been denied the vacant throne by the Witan because strict hereditary principles did not apply in Anglo-Saxon England, and the Witan elected Beothric to succeed Cynwulf. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>It was only following the death of Beothric that Egbert’s claim to the throne was accepted, and he, returning to <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region>, became King in 802. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Due to the shift of power from <st1:country-region st="on">Mercia</st1:country-region> to <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Wessex</st1:place></st1:country-region> during Egbert’s reign the Chroniclers refer to him as the “Bretwalda”.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Anglo-Saxon Witan appears to have at least some connection, in theory if not in practice, with the Folkmoot (a meeting of the folk, the earliest known democratic structure), before which all freemen (including free Masons) had the right to appear.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The references in the Chronicles to the loud expressions of approval or disapproval made by the crowd in respect of the decisions of the Witan indicate some degree of involvement by the people in at least some of the decision making procedures of the Anglo-Saxons.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The notion of the will of the people needs to start somewhere.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>It is suggested that it is in the Witan and its functions that the inception of this notion can be first identified with certainty.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>The powers of the Witan in respect of electing or deposing a king were subject to custom, another vital constitutional element, but they certainly existed.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">That the will of the English people could be effective in Anglo-Saxon times can be seen in the method by which the virtual civil war between King Edward and Earl Godwine was ended. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The violent quarrel between the King and Earl during 1051 and 1052 was ended despite the two armies facing each other across the <st1:place st="on">Thames</st1:place>, when the King’s armies refused to fight against their countrymen.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Additionally, and crucially, Anglo Saxon theories and traditions about kingship had always contained an elective element. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>No matter how they were defined, the People, as a concept had real meaning.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The crowning of Harold on 6 January 1066, the day his predecessor Edward was buried, makes this clear. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Earl Harold had been offered the crown by the Witan despite there being other contenders with more obvious claims, and even though he had no royal blood. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>After William defeated Harold, and because he had succeeded to the throne by battle rather than inheritance, the people at his coronation on Christmas Day were asked in English and French whether they accepted William as their King. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The elective element, no matter how discharged was recognized throughout the entire period.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">During the Anglo-Saxon period a conception of nationhood, a sense of the value of custom and tradition, recognition of the need for a voice of the people, and an awareness of the value of constitutional constraints upon the powers of monarchy were developed. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>These traditional constitutional forms would serve as a bench mark which the philosophers and parliamentarians would use in future disputes regarding patronage, royal power, and the will of the people.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Whilst agreeing with Gardner’s contention that the revolution of 1688 has <i>“everything”</i> to do with Freemasonry, one should not overlook the subsequent effects upon both constitutional matters and English Freemasonry, brought about by the successors to the revolution, the Hanoverians, who came to the throne following the death of Queen Anne, the last of the Stuarts, in 1714.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; line-height: 15pt;" align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>The Hanoverians<o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Cinematic portrayals of the Hanoverians as being mad, bad, or comedic, fail to credit the dynasty with the genius for rationalisation, organisation, and enquiry it manifested during the period 1714 to 1837. <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">12</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; line-height: 15pt; text-align: left;" face="lucida grande"><v:imagedata title="Edward Duke of Kent" src="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CHP_ADM%7E1%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C01%5Cclip_image003.jpg"><span style="font-size:85%;">Whilst the degree of personal engagement generally involved is subject to debate, there can be little doubt that in areas as diverse as agriculture, military science, constitutional reform, and religion, individual members of the House of Hanover left their mark. <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255); font-style: italic;">13</span></span></span></v:imagedata></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; line-height: 15pt;" align="center"><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p><i><span style="font-size:0;"><st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on"></st1:place></st1:country-region><o:p></o:p></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqmDU32QHX1LwWa3QCGEatR8nzLKQdzErYgfSACPpJwysrtdFl8obM4uVjpuI1usYHPUIg2UcRs76cVmpzli-CRttXaiX9FSMBlmTtkVVXCNbDbkLpEu7W7roOOTt0hqeOAwc3Fe8Bv3a_/s1600-h/Augustus+Frederick+Duke+of+Sussex.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149881845385820290" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 123px; cursor: pointer; height: 171px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqmDU32QHX1LwWa3QCGEatR8nzLKQdzErYgfSACPpJwysrtdFl8obM4uVjpuI1usYHPUIg2UcRs76cVmpzli-CRttXaiX9FSMBlmTtkVVXCNbDbkLpEu7W7roOOTt0hqeOAwc3Fe8Bv3a_/s200/Augustus+Frederick+Duke+of+Sussex.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">It is beyond dispute that in the area of Freemasonry at least, the involvement of Augustus Frederick, Duke of <st1:country-region st="on">Sussex</st1:country-region> and his brother Edward, Duke of <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Kent</st1:country-region></st1:place> produced a profoundly personal, sustained, and continuing effect. <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255); font-style: italic;">14</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">During the long and eventful reign of the House of Hanover, due to its German connections, the Germanic gained in popularity in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region>. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Simultaneously, the Anglo-Saxon nature of English nationhood was stressed and used ideologically to link the </span><span style="font-size:85%;">Hanoverians with the first English kings.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Anglo-Saxon heritage provided a basis for excluding overtly Stuart sentiment generally, and Jacobite sympathy in particular, whilst strengthening the links, perhaps somewhat fancifully, between <st1:country-region st="on">England</st1:country-region> and <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Germany</st1:place></st1:country-region>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The long period between the reign of the last Anglo-Saxon King, and the revolution of 1688 which brought the reign of James II to an end, was not considered a bar to the ideological connection between the Hanoverians and the House of Wessex.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The terms <i>“Anglo-Saxon”</i> and <i>“English”</i> became increasingly coterminous. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>How much of this was purely ideological it is hard to determine, but the Stuart period, with its many problematic and continental connections, and quite persistent theories of Divine Right came to be seen as an unfortunate and overtly <i>foreign</i> interlude. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The attempt to graft the House of Hanover into <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">England</st1:country-region></st1:place>’s Anglo-Saxon past was an exercise in institutional restitution, of an ideological kind, despite a gap of over six hundred years.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The attraction of Anglo-Saxon theories and constitutional traditions provided scope for expanding notions about the will of the people. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>No matter how they were defined, the people, as a concept had real meaning, and during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries philosophers had spoken increasingly of the inherent sovereignty of the English People.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">John Locke had conceived of the people retaining still, <i>“… a supreme power to remove or alter the Legislative, when they find the Legislative act contrary to the Trust reposed in them.” <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">15</span></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Hanoverian period provides substantial evidence on the part of the Hanoverians to appropriate <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region>’s Anglo-Saxon past for their own dynastic purposes. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>One only has to think of the almost cult status granted to King Alfred in this period, yet it should be borne in mind how tenuous this link actually was. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Although the Anglo-Saxons had been Germanic in origin, the Hanoverians were recognisably German.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Queen <st1:state st="on">Victoria</st1:state>’s grandfather, George III was the actual ruler of <st1:state st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hanover</st1:place></st1:state>, her father married a German princess, whilst she, of course, married a German, and her daughter married the heir to the Prussian throne.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">It was during this period that the notion of English and British freedom being in some way derived from ancient Germanic customs gained both academic and popular support.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">However, the Hanoverians were pragmatically Teutonic rather than mythically Anglo- Saxon, and in practice the Hanoverians leaned towards an altogether more authoritarian style.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>This can be seen particularly in the area of the military, a land of delight for George II, and in the response of William IV to the widespread agitation in the late period of Hanoverian rule, when measures which even in those times were seen as overly repressive were introduced. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The Hanoverians themselves were often, as children, subjected to a frighteningly strict form of upbringing. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>One of George IV’s brothers was actually flogged for contracting asthma. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">However theoretical the will of the people was in terms of constitutional practice and political philosophy, the mob or more specifically the London Mob, was available as a political device. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The mob could still be raised and manipulated to serve a political purpose. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>No matter how ancient a pedigree could be claimed for the mob, the Hanoverians were decidedly against it. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Control, order, and discipline were, in respect of the populace, considered virtues. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Wide ranging influence on the part of the Hanoverians, and their use of extensive powers of patronage, provided them with real power, even at a time when party politics were undermining the extent of prerogative power. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>For Edmund Burke, the M.P. for Wendover, <i>"The power of the Crown, almost dead and rotten as prerogative, has grown up anew, with much more strength and far less odium, under the name of influence." <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">16</span></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Influence and patronage wrought by the Hanoverians was not limited to Parliament. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>It was used to full effect within Freemasonry, rendering the fraternity subject to the rationalising and controlling tendencies so marked in the House of Hanover.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12pt 0cm 6pt;" align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Control of English Freemasonry and the Articles of <st1:place st="on">Union</st1:place><o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">William Preston makes clear that following the events of 1717, the newly formed London Grand Lodge, however it came into existence, had from its inception the intention to radically alter the nature of English Freemasonry. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The process of conflating the vital notion of Regularity with the novel doctrine of Recognition had begun. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Indeed, the intention seems to have been to completely monopolise Freemasonry in <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">England</st1:country-region></st1:place>, aspiring to re-define Freemasonry in its own terms and in its own image.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">In direct reference, William Preston asserted that,<span style="font-size:0;"> </span><i>" … the privilege of assembling as Masons which had hitherto been unlimited should be vested in certain Lodges or assemblies of Masons convened in certain places; and that every Lodge hereafter convened, except the four old Lodges at this time existing, should be legally authorised to act by a warrant from the Grand Master for the time being, granted to certain individuals by petition, with consent and approbation of the Grand Lodge in communication; and that without such warrant no lodge should be hereafter deemed regular or constitutional." <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">17</span></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">By 1813 the degree of control had been extended. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The Duke of Sussex’s determination, post ratification of the Articles of Union between the Moderns London Grand Lodge and the Antients Grand Lodge, represents a typically Hanoverian approach to Freemasonry.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">John Hamill and his United Grand Lodge of England colleague, Bob Gilbert, note that it appears that the Duke of Sussex had in fact four main and very clearly expressed<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>intentions <i>" … to assert Grand Lodge’s authority over all the lodges of the two former obediences; to standardise; to complete the de-Christianisation of the Craft and Royal Arch; and to maintain the Craft’s superiority over any other Masonic order." <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">18</span></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Such ambitions are very much in the Hanoverian tradition, and represent one aspect of the power of influence. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>However, another lasting effect of the use of patronage and influence, one which still needlessly divides Freemason from Freemason, is the doctrine of Recognition. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>This bogus doctrine has its genesis in the exemption granted to “approved” lodges from the draconian effects of The Unlawful Societies Act, 1799.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12pt 0cm 6pt;" align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>The Doctrine of Recognition<o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The doctrine of Recognition as practiced by the United Grand Lodge of England is not only un-Masonic in nature, but it represents the residue of that grand lodge’s previous collusion in one of the most overtly and unnecessarily repressive items of legislation ever introduced into <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region>, The Unlawful Societies Act, 1799. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Much of the repressive legislation of the period, including The Treasonable Practices Act, 1795, The Newspaper Publication Act, 1797 and the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800, seem not to have been fully utilised, and there is doubt as to their need or efficacy. <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255); font-style: italic;">19 </span></span>What is clear is that they were seen as an affront to the Constitution. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Fox in 1795 challenged the government to say at once, <i>" … that a free constitution is no longer suitable to us, but do not mock the understandings and the feelings of mankind by telling the world that you are free." <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">20</span></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Essentially, it is the issue of freedom under the constitution that is the point for Freemasonry. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>However, the collusion of the three grand lodges concerned who for the sake of their own self-regulation and aggrandisement, set themselves apart from their fellow Masons, represents a continuing grievance and is even today the cause of disparity in <st1:country-region st="on">England</st1:country-region>, <st1:place st="on">North America</st1:place> and elsewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Unlawful Societies Act provided for the effective self-regulation of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of England, meeting at Freemasons Hall in Great Queen Street, London, The Grand Lodge of Masons of England, according to the Old Institution, and The Grand Lodge of Free Masons of Scotland, and the meetings of subordinate lodges or societies sanctioned or approved by those grand lodges. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12pt 0cm 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">One intention of the legislation was to provide a means by which a certificate would be furnished each year by the participating Grand Secretaries to Clerks of the Peace providing details of approved lodges. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>That intention would later be turned by the United Grand Lodge of England into an opportunistic attempt to monopolise the governance of Freemasonry in England and is a matter to be profoundly regretted, as is the action of The Conference of Grand Masters of Masons of North America’s Commission on Information for Regularity, both of which organizations improperly conflate Recognition with Regularity and by so doing damage the vital doctrine of Regularity by the introduction of the bogus doctrine of Regularity of origin, i.e. that for the purposes of Recognition each Grand Lodge shall have been established lawfully by a duly recognised Grand Lodge. <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255); font-style: italic;">21</span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 12pt 0cm 6pt;" align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>The English Masonic Tradition<o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Preston’s assertion in 1783 that the first Grand Lodge was formed at <st1:city st="on">York</st1:city> in 926, and that, <i>“There is at present a Grand Lodge of masons in the city of <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">York</st1:place></st1:city>, who trace their existence from this period”</i> represents a claim for a uniquely English or Anglo-Saxon form of Freemasonry. Moreover, it represents a Masonic tradition for <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">York</st1:place></st1:city> independent of what did or did not occur at the Goose and Gridiron in 1717, and is not dependent upon whether a charter from the days of King Athelstan ever existed.<o:p></o:p><st1:place st="on"></st1:place></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><st1:place st="on">Preston </st1:place></span><span style="font-size:85%;">is clearly informing other Freemasons of the existence of a Grand Lodge they may be unaware of, one clearly outside the influence of Hanoverian London.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">This notion of independence, of freedom, and of liberty, is characteristically English. Hamill and Gilbert, whilst considering colonial Freemasonry, acknowledge the existence of lodges of Freemasons independent of the London Grand Lodges, <i>"There is no doubt that in some areas time immemorial lodges emerged – that is, lodges started at some unknown date by groups of men who had become Freemaso</i></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><i>ns in the British Isles and who met without any authority from a Grand Lodge or a Provincial Grand Master." <span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">22</span></span><br /></i><br />The point here is that time immemorial lodges, unwarranted by London Grand Lodges, of any description, are and were known within Freemasonry, no matter how inconvenient their existence to the United Grand Lodge of England. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Freemasonry has never been confined to the sole ambit of the United Grand Lodge of England.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Hamill and Gilbert make plain the difficulty experienced by the London Grand Lodges in the 1700s which was due to the continued vibrancy of the Grand Lodge of All England at <st1:city st="on"><st1:place st="on">York</st1:place></st1:city>, which threatened the monolithic aspirations of the London Grand Lodges:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">"The situation in </span><st1:country-region style="font-style: italic;" st="on">England</st1:country-region><span style="font-style: italic;"> was exacerbated by the revival in 1761 of the Old Lodge at </span><st1:city style="font-style: italic;" st="on">York</st1:city><span style="font-style: italic;"> and further complicated matters by constituting the dissident members of the Lodge of Antiquity, </span><st1:city style="font-style: italic;" st="on"><st1:place st="on">London</st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-style: italic;"> (one of the founding lodges of the London Grand Lodge) as the Grand Lodge South of the River Trent in </span><span style="font-style: italic;">1779</span><span style="font-style: italic;">". <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">23</span></span></span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">It is no wonder that the situation was <i>“exacerbated”</i> and <i>“complicated”</i> by the <i>“revival”</i> of the Grand Lodge of All England. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Then, as now, the desire to regain what was in danger of being lost, has produced a revival of traditional English Freemasonry, determined to participate fully as a competent and confident Masonic body, and focused upon the real issues confronting English Freemasonry.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; line-height: 15pt;" align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>Kipling’s <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Sussex</st1:country-region></st1:place> Period and the Need for “Resetting”<o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Boer Wars of 1880-1881 and 1899-1902 produced a feeling of national crisis, due in large part to the lack of consensus in <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">Britain</st1:country-region></st1:place> about the military action. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The wars were not universally popular in <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">England</st1:country-region></st1:place>, and there was strong political opposition to the wars voiced in Parliament. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The lack of consensus, and the introspection it gave rise to, caused many to search for a more appropriate path for <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Britain</st1:place></st1:country-region> to take in the future. This feeling was greatly exacerbated by the horrors of the Great War, and the unrest it caused.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY9bwCmpV8aMi8_KoglXKiwGipRYTxVvy1ayxp60rQk280_jSNcJIlcXxwZHnWQDN7l7ZV6dTsOXkv2Vgb7JOBkd48fd6pRdYUjSLLn62_6JwMTiVy-BIz579zFvBP_LyFNgRhT7Po32X5/s1600-h/Rudyard+Kipling+4.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149883967099664562" style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; width: 140px; cursor: pointer; height: 163px;" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY9bwCmpV8aMi8_KoglXKiwGipRYTxVvy1ayxp60rQk280_jSNcJIlcXxwZHnWQDN7l7ZV6dTsOXkv2Vgb7JOBkd48fd6pRdYUjSLLn62_6JwMTiVy-BIz579zFvBP_LyFNgRhT7Po32X5/s200/Rudyard+Kipling+4.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">Rudyard Kipling, well known for his support for and understanding of soldiers and the Empire, was one who, when challenged by the effect the Boer Wars had upon the national consciousness, sought for a way forward. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Kipling indicated a way forward based upon a re-setting of Freemasonry, and the re-discovery of Englishness.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Kipling, shocked by what had occurred during the war in <st1:country-region st="on">South Africa</st1:country-region>, and seeking to make sense of the turn of events, took up residence in <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sussex</st1:place></st1:country-region> and immersed himself in both a study of Englishness and in the practice of being English. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>In a letter dated 30<sup>th</sup> November 1902 he writes, <i>"<st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region> is a wonderful land. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>It is the most marvellous of all foreign countries that I have ever been in. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>It is made up of trees and green fields and mud and the gentry, and at last I’m one of the gentry …”<span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">.</span> <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">24</span></span></i></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">From this point in time, the <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">Sussex</st1:place></st1:country-region> period, Kipling in a series of poems, articles and short stories began setting out a way forward based upon English, and essentially Anglo-Saxon values.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Also, at this point, Kipling turns his attention to Freemasonry, the utility of which he has no doubt, but which now he senses offers a vital means of relief. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>However, for Kipling there are problems in Freemasonry.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Control is one aspect which needs to be addressed.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Another is ensuring that the fraternity is, to use modern terminology <i>“fit for purpose”</i>.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">It should be remarked upon, to give due credit to Kipling, that his concern for fallen soldiers was shown in his founding of two lodges connected with the War Graves Commission, one in England, “Silent Cities” the other in France. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><em></em><em></em><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Interests of the Brethren (1917)</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> </span></span><em style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"></em><span style="font-size:85%;"> <span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);font-size:100%;" ><span style="font-weight: bold;">25</span></span><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);"> </span> is set in a fictional and possibly irregular lodge, during war-time, in which military men on leave from the front draw succour from the rituals and practical creed residing there. Kipling promotes a notion of the good that Freemasonry can provide. He suggests that membership ought to be greatly increased, and speculates upon how an unwarranted lodge, due to the exigencies of the time, can assist in a great work. In raising and setting out the possibility of breaking Masonic rules, Kipling leaves the final decisions involved to his fellow-Masons.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">In <i>The Palace (1902), <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">26 </span></span></i>Kipling introduces a <i>“King and a Mason”</i> who, intending to build a palace, finds the wreck of an earlier building, which at first appears lacking in plan or design, but which is revealed as being a necessary foundation for the building of a subsequent structure.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The King tells us:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt 49.65pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">There was no worth in the fashion-there was no wit in the plan-</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Hither and thither, aimless, the ruined footings ran-</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Masonry, brute, mishandled; but carven on every stone;</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">“After me cometh a Builder. Tell him I, too, have known.”</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Swift to my use in my trenches, where my well-planned ground-works grew,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">I tumbled his quoins and ashlars, and cut and reset them anew.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Lime I milled of his marbles; burned it, slacked it and spread;</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">Taking and leaving at pleasure the gifts of the humble dead.</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">For Kipling, men, nations, and Freemasonry could be reset, by building upon earlier foundations, providing those foundations were based upon truth.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">In <i>Norman and Saxon (1911) <span style="font-size:100%;"><span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">27 </span></span></i>Kipling attempts to provide an insight into the Saxon legacy which has given form to English character. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Originally published in <i>A School History of England</i>, by Kipling and C.R.L. Fletcher, the poem represents the distinctive and, for Kipling, positive personal qualities of the Saxon, which will be resilient to change and the ultimate merging of the Saxon and Norman stock. The qualities are those that will stand <st1:place st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">England</st1:country-region></st1:place> in good stead. <o:p></o:p></span></p><span style=";font-family:Arial;font-size:85%;" ></span><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Norman Baron, speaking to his son says:<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0cm 0cm 6pt 49.65pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">"My son, I am dying, and you will be heir</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">To all the broad acres in </span><st1:place style="font-style: italic;" st="on"><st1:country-region st="on">England</st1:country-region></st1:place><span style="font-style: italic;"> that William gave me for share</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">When he conquered the Saxon at </span><st1:city style="font-style: italic;" st="on"><st1:place st="on">Hastings</st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-style: italic;">, and a nice little handful it is.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">But before you go over to rule it I want you to understand this:–</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">When he stands like an ox in the furrow – with his sullen set eyes on your own,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">And grumbles, 'This isn't fair dealing,' my son, leave the Saxon alone.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">"You can horsewhip your </span><st1:state style="font-style: italic;" st="on">Gascony</st1:state><span style="font-style: italic;"> archers, or torture your </span><st1:place style="font-style: italic;" st="on">Picardy</st1:place><span style="font-style: italic;"> spears;</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">But don't try that game on the Saxon; you'll have the whole brood round your ears.</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">From the richest old Thane in the county to the poorest chained serf in the field,</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">They'll be at you and on you like hornets, and, if you are wise, you will yield.”</span><o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Kipling’s work offers something to Freemasons to-day, recognition of the value of character, the importance of justice, right action and fair dealing. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>In the context of Freemasonry, Kipling identifies the need to renew, relieve and reset. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>For Kipling, Freemasonry is an active force which requires thoughtful consideration, and the ability to deal with difficult issues.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt; line-height: 15pt;" align="center"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b>English Freemasonry Today<o:p></o:p></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The problems and challenges facing English Freemasonry to-day can be overcome, and Freemasonry can regain its central and useful role in our society. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>However, The Grand Lodge of All England does not believe this can be accomplished by sacrificing essential Masonic elements on the altars of political correctness or fashion. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The Grand Lodge of All England at <st1:place st="on"><st1:city st="on">York</st1:city></st1:place> is wholly regular and works under the authority of The Old York Time Immemorial Constitution of A.D. 1600, and firmly rejects the arbitrary and unjustified changes which have been imposed on other jurisdictions.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The democratic ideals of Anglo-Saxon Freemasonry are represented in a fraternity well equipped for the challenges of twenty-first century <st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region>. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>All degrees conferred by the York Grand Lodge are Craft degrees, although the Master of any lodge may convene a Chapter of the Holy Royal Arch.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Grand Lodge of All England does not have Grand Lodge promotions. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>Active Grand Officers are elected by the representatives of the lodges, with no appointments by the Grand-Master Mason except those of Grand Secretary and Grand Tyler. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>The Grand-Master Mason is elected to his position and does not appoint either his deputy or his successor.<span style="font-size:0;"> </span>Although elected annually he may only serve the lodges as Grand-Master Mason for a maximum of five years.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Grand Lodge of All England confers the ten degrees of Craft Masonry upon candidates. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>From Apprentice Freemason to The Holy Order of Grand High Priest, all Masonic degrees and orders are available to all members in return for a single affordable annual subscription. <span style="font-size:0;"></span>There are no “invitation only” degrees, lodges, or orders.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Grand Lodge of All England has reclaimed the ancient penalties and words, in operating a coherent ten degree Craft system and in restoring discarded rites to their proper place.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Fuller details as to the structures and systems of the Grand Lodge of All England can be obtained from the web site at <a href="http://www.grandlodgeofallengland.org/">http://www.grandlodgeofallengland.org/</a>, along with contact details and other items of information and explanation.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The Grand Lodge of All England has an active and energetic membership, which, whilst looking forward, draws upon the resources and benefits of ancient, traditional and regular English Freemasonry.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 6pt;"><span style="font-size:85%;">The case for English Freemasonry, Sussex –v- Sussex, turns on whether the future is best served by a conception of Freemasonry dominated by the need to control and originated as a dynastic prop, or one democratic in nature, Anglo-Saxon in character, and conversant with and sympathetic to the current needs of English society.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13pt;font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b><span style="font-size:0;"><o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13pt;font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><b><span style="font-size:0;">NOTES ON THE AUTHORS:<o:p></o:p></span></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13pt;font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-size:85%;">Richard Young is Grand Chancellor of The Grand Lodge of All England, a Historian and Retired Law Lecturer. Peter Clatworthy is Grand Secretary of The Grand Lodge of All England, a Masonic Administrator, Writer and Lecturer.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13pt;font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-weight: bold;">REFERENCES:</span></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 13pt;font-family:lucida grande;"><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">1. </span>Barrett, (p.92), [Barrett, David V. (1999). Secret Societies, London: Cassell]<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">2.</span> Childs, (p.19), [Childs, Brevard S. (1960). Myth and Reality In the Old Testament. London: SCM]<br /><span style="color: rgb(0, 204, 204);"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">3.</span> </span>Francis Bacon, <span style="font-style: italic;">The Essays, </span>(1601)<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">4.</span> Russell, (p.645), [Russell, Bertrand (1975). History of Western Philosophy. Oxford: Unwin University Books]<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">5.</span> Russell, op. cit., (p.771)<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">6.</span> Horace Walpole, Sir Walter Scott and Sir William Blackstone, all praised the constitution, as did Montesquieu and Voltaire.<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">7.</span> Barker, (p.viii), [Barker, Sir Ernest. (1947). Social Contract. London: OUP]<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">8.</span> Gardner, (p.11), [Gardner, Laurence. (2006). The Shadow of Solomon. London: HarperElement]<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">9.</span> Savage, (p.119), [Savage, A. (1995). The Anglo-Saxon Chronicles. Godalming: CLB]<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">10.</span> See Grand Lodge of All England at York webpage at www.grandlodgeofallengland.org<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">11.</span> Dr James Anderson's revised Book of Constitutions, Grand Lodge of London (1738)<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">12. </span>This is not to suggest that the eccentricities displayed are not worthy of note, but to recognize the contributions made by this royal household.<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">13. </span>George I in respect of party government; George II in respect of the military and music; George III in farming; William IV in constitutional reform.<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">14.</span> Concern about preventing English Freemasonry from providing a channel for latent Jacobite or revolutionary sentiment would render royal interest understandably pragmatic, and wholly Hanoverian.<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">15.</span> John Locke. Of Civil Government, 1690<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">16. </span>Quoted in Cowie, (p.345), [Cowie, L.W. (1967). Hanoverian England 1714-1837. London: Bell]<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">17. </span>Preston: Illustrations of Freemasonry<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">18.</span> Hamill and Gilbert, (p.9), [Hamill J. and Gilbert R.A. (1991). World Freemasonry. London: Aquarian Press<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">19. </span>Prescott provides instances where, in the case of the Act of 1799, other legislation could have been used. See Prescott, (p.8), [Prescott, Andrew (2000). The Unlawful Societies Act of 1779, Canonbury Masonic Research Centre, November 2000]<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">20.</span> Debate on legislation during 1975<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">21. </span>See Basic principles for Grand Lodge recognition, dated 4th September 1929<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">22.</span> Hamill, J and Gilbert R.A. op.cit (p.86)<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">23. </span>Ibid. (p.86)<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">24. </span>Quoted in Carrington, (p.433), [Carrington, C. (1970). Rudyard Kipling, Harmondsworth: Pelican]<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">25.</span> Kipling, R., "Interests of the Brethren", in <span style="font-style: italic;">Debits and Credits, </span>(London, 1926)<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">26.</span> Kipling, R., "The Palace", in <span style="font-style: italic;">The Five Nations, </span>(London, 1902)<br /><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 255);">27. </span>Kipling, R., "Norman and Saxon", in <span style="font-style: italic;">A School History of England, </span>(London, 1911)<br /></span></p><div id="edn2" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn3" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn4" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn5" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn6" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn7" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn8" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn9" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn10" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn11" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn12" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn13" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn14" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn15" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn16" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn17" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn18" style="font-family:lucida grande;"><p class="MsoEndnoteText"><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span></p></div><div id="edn19" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn20" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn21" face="lucida grande"></div><div id="edn22"></div><div id="edn23"></div><div id="edn24"></div><div id="edn25"></div><div id="edn26"></div><div id="edn27"></div>Peter Clatworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00030262957884154625noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9202695641785452404.post-38526087764246690852007-12-30T17:34:00.000+00:002007-12-31T11:02:06.134+00:00Regularity and Recognition: The Myth and the Reality<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlAxvCA794RCaKnN3OPS87tgiBlmIKwgbYLta6Wz01Ju0tBhV0T0bhfONfcc30fpHTnH176nrS2_TuHlHkOQWujNRyCl0eBHph4xnWnNnGxr0mDPjevu8xN2NF9VdZTuRoSr9H43rtSkSw/s1600-h/John+Gordon+Graves.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlAxvCA794RCaKnN3OPS87tgiBlmIKwgbYLta6Wz01Ju0tBhV0T0bhfONfcc30fpHTnH176nrS2_TuHlHkOQWujNRyCl0eBHph4xnWnNnGxr0mDPjevu8xN2NF9VdZTuRoSr9H43rtSkSw/s200/John+Gordon+Graves.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5149823171837589602" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:85%;">If reports are correct, there is much to commend in the speech recently given by the Pro-Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England to the so-called ‘European Grand Masters’ Meeting’.<span style=""> </span>However, leaving aside the infelicitous claim to speak for ‘<st1:country-region st="on"><st1:place st="on">England</st1:place></st1:country-region>’, there are certain presumptions and confusions in the address that demand the most urgent and serious scrutiny.<o:p> </o:p></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br />Regularity is of course an essential doctrine in Freemasonry but has in recent years been subject to ill-considered assault from within the Craft itself.<span style=""> </span>It is therefore appropriate to analyse those comments of the Pro-Grand Master that seem designed to undermine and devalue a concept that all Freemasons ought to hold dear. <o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-size:85%;">There is, for example, the explicit declaration that ‘to be regular a Grand Lodge must conform to each of our basic Principles for Grand Lodge Recognition or it cannot be considered as regular’.<span style=""> </span>Given a moment’s consideration a truly outrageous claim! <span style=""> </span>Freemasonry is not, and never has been, subject to or contained within the United Grand Lodge of England. <span style=""> </span>To suggest as much is to diminish the history, role and actuality of Freemasonry. <span style=""> </span>The cart is clearly and contrivedly put before the horse, making regularity the reward for recognition. <span style=""> </span>And conveniently in so doing the two quite separate and distinct concepts of ‘Regularity’ and ‘Recognition’ are conflated.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">‘Regularity’ requires a strict acceptance and observance of the Ancient Landmarks of the Order. <span style=""> </span>Such Landmarks are visible and ascertainable and are found within any regular Grand Lodge. <span style=""> </span>Regularity is represented by adherence: nothing more, nothing less. <span style=""> </span>It is not, and cannot ever be, bestowed. <span style=""> </span>Indeed, Regularity is necessarily beyond the capacity of anybody or any organisation whatsoever to bestow, be they Grand Master or Grand Lodge. <span style=""> </span>The very best any such Master or Lodge can hope to do is to bequeath Regularity to his or its successor. <span style=""> </span>And here I can of course confirm that the Grand Lodge of All England is such a regular Grand Lodge and adheres strictly to those Ancient Landmarks that alone can make it so.<o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p><br /><br />‘Recognition’ is a very different concept. <span style=""> </span>There are, for example, devices the use of which may enable a regularly made Freemason to be ‘recognised’ by others. <span style=""> </span>Such may be said to amount to individual recognition and on this level the term is quite uncontroversial. <span style=""> </span>However, the question should be asked as to what purpose Grand Lodge ‘recognition’ actually serves, and who in fact really benefits from such a device. <span style=""> </span>It should here be noted that Grand Lodge ‘recognition’ has its genesis in late eighteenth century legislation, such as the Unlawful Societies Act, designed to stifle debate and discussion within the context of an authoritarian and politically repressive state. <span style=""> </span>We recoil from the memory of such devices and reject this latter day attempt to rejuvenate so tainted and un-Masonic a concept.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br />Far from having had thrust upon them ‘the mantle of being guardians of regularity’, the United Grand Lodge of England in fact seized upon the opportunity presented by repressive legislation to attempt nothing less than the appropriation of Freemasonry. <span style=""> </span>In contradistinction, the Grand Lodge of All England does not accept the validity of any such spurious doctrine as ‘recognition’ nor does it ‘recognise’ any other Grand Lodges nor seek such ‘recognition’ from others. <span style=""> </span>Rather, it stands as the bearer of traditional Masonic principles and disowns all attempts to subjugate and subvert genuine Freemasonry.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><br /><br />The Grand Lodge of All England has frequently and consistently published its position with regard to these two quite separate and distinct concepts of ‘Regularity’ and ‘Recognition’. <span style=""> </span>Together with a detailed historical exposition this is explained at length on our website at <a href="http://www.grandlodgeofallengland.org/">www.grandlodgeofallengland.org</a> and is authoritatively represented on a number of general Masonic websites. <span style=""> </span>It is stated in our official submission to the Commission on Information for Recognition of the Conference of Grand Master Masons of North America, in articles in the hands of various Masonic publishers and in correspondence with various interested parties.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p><br /><br /></o:p></span><span style="font-size:85%;">A Grand Lodge is, indeed, ‘either regular or it is not’. <span style=""> </span>But whether ‘recognition’ is extended or denied to one Grand Lodge by another is irrelevant. <span style=""> </span>There is in Masonic terms no historical or constitutional basis for this spurious and wholly political doctrine of ‘recognition’. <span style=""> </span>To continue to employ such a device as a means of dividing Mason from Mason is the residue of one of the least attractive, most repressive and disgraceful periods of modern Masonic history.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p><br /><br /></o:p></span><span style="font-size:85%;">From inception, the United Grand Lodge of England has sought, unsuccessfully, to exert a monopoly over Freemasonry. <span style=""> </span>What cannot be countenanced is that this aspiration should be allowed to corrupt the wholly genuine concept, vital to genuine Freemasonry, of Regularity, and to render it nothing more than a self-serving ideological notion. <span style=""> </span>This concern is made all the immediate by the compromises already entered into by United Grand Lodge of England and the dilution of Masonic principles and practices that these compromises have brought about.</span><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p><br /><br /></o:p></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Much of the difficulty the Pro-Grand Master sought to address in his speech was to do with the role of the United Grand Lodge of England within the Masonic world. <span style=""> </span>Such difficulty, however, is due to his own Grand Lodge in seeking to redefine Freemasonry in its own image and as in its own gift. <span style=""> </span>The Masonic doctrine of Regularity exists outside and is wholly independent of any Grand Lodge. <span style=""> </span>It is most emphatically not to be confused and conflated with the practice of Grand Lodge ‘recognition’ devised and instituted by the United Grand Lodge of England for its own hegemonic purposes. <span style=""> </span>And Freemasonry, even English Freemasonry, is most emphatically not to be confused and conflated with the United Grand Lodge of England.<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;"><o:p></o:p>John Gordon Graves - </span><span style="font-size:85%;">Grand-Master Mason</span>Peter Clatworthyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/00030262957884154625noreply@blogger.com0