CHAPTER IV

Grand Lodge of England
HILE praying in a little chapel one day,
Francis of Assisi was exhorted by an old Byzantine crucifix: “Go now, and rebuild my Church, which is falling into ruins.” In sheer loyal- ty he had a lamp placed; then he saw his task in a larger way, and an artist has painted him carrying stones and mortar. Finally there burst upon him the full import of the allocution — that he himself was to be the corner-stone of a renewed and puri- fied Church. Purse and prestige he flung to the winds, and went along the highways of Umbria call- ing men back from the rot of luxury to the ways of purity, pity, and gladness, his life at once a poem and a power, his faith a vision of the world as love and comradeship.
That is a perfect parable of the history of Ma- sonry. Of old the working Masons built the great cathedrals, and we have seen them not only carry- ing stones, but drawing triangles, squares, and cir- cles in such a manner as to show that they assigned
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to those figures high mystical meanings. But the real Home of the Soul cannot be built of brick and stone; it is a house not made with hands. Slowly it rises, fashioned of the thoughts, hopes, prayers, dreams, and righteous acts of devout and free men; built of their hunger for truth, their love of God, and their loyalty to one another. There came a day when the Masons, laying aside their stones, became workmen of another kind, not less builders than before, but using truths for tools and dramas for designs, uplifting such a temple as Watts dreamed of decorating with his visions of the au- gust allegory of the evolution of man.
I
From every point of view, the organization of the Grand Lodge of England, in 1717, was a significant and far-reaching event. Not only did it divide the story of Masonry into before and after, giving a new date from which to reckon, but it was a way- mark in the intellectual and spiritual history of mankind. One has only to study that first Grand Lodge, the influences surrounding it, the men who composed it, the Constitutions adopted, and its ‘spirit and purpose, to see that it was the beginning of a movement of profound meaning. When we see it in the setting of its age—as revealed, for ex-
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ample, in the Journals of Fox and Wesley, which from being religious time-tables broadened into de- tailed panoramic pictures of the period before, and that following, the Grand Lodge —the Assembly on 1717 becomes the more remarkable. Against such a background, when religion and morals seemed to reach the nadir of degredation, the men of that Assembly stand out as prophets of liberty of faith and righteousness of life.’
Some imagination is needed to realize the moral declension of that time, as it is portrayed — to use a single example — in the sermon by the Bishop of Litchfield before the Society for the Reformation of Manners, in 1724. Lewdness, drunkenness, and de- generacy, he said, were well nigh universal, no class being free from the infection. Murders were com- mon and foul, wanton and obscene books found so good a market as to encourage the publishing of them. Immorality of every kind was so hardened as to be defended, yes, justified on principle. The
1We should not forget that noble dynasty of large and liberal souls in the seventeenth century — John Hales, Chillingsworth, Which- cote, John Smith, Henry More, Jeremy Taylor — whose Liberty of Prophesying set the principle of toleration to stately strains of elo- quence — Sir Thomas Browne, and Richard Baxter; saints, every one of them, finely-poised, sweet-tempered, repelled from all ex- tremes alike, and walking the middle path of wisdom and charity. Milton, too, taught tolerance in a bigoted and bitter age (see Seven- teenth Century Men of Latitude, E. A. George).
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rich were debauched and indifferent; the poor were as miserable in their labor as they were coarse and cruel in their sport. Writing in 1713, Bishop Bur- net said that those who came to be ordained as clergymen were “ignorant to a degree not to be comprehended by those who are not obliged to know it.” Religion seemed dying or dead, and to mention the word provoked a laugh. Wesley, then only a lad, had not yet come with his magnificent and cleansing evangel. Empty formalism on one side, a dead polemical dogmatism on the other, bigotry, bitterness, intolerance, and interminable feud every- where, no wonder Bishop Butler sat oppressed in his castle with hardly a hope surviving.
As for Masonry, it had fallen far and fallen low betimes, but with the revival following the great fire of London, in 1666, it had taken on new life and a bolder spirit, and was passing through a transi- tion — or, rather, a transfiguration! For, when we compare the Masonry of, say, 1688 with that of 1723, we discover that much more than a revival had come to pass. Set the instructions of the Old Charges —not all of them, however, for even in earliest times some of them escaped the stamp of the Church *— in respect of religion alongside the
1¥For instance the Cooke MS, next to the oldest of all, as well as the W. Watson and York No. 4 MSS. It is rather surprising, in view of the supremacy of the Church in those times, to find such
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same article in the Constitutions of 1723, and the contrast is amazing. The old charge read: “The first charge is this, that you be true to God and Holy Church and use no error or heresy.” Hear now the charge in 1723:
A Mason is obliged by his Tenure, to obey the moral law; and if he rightly understands the Art, he will never be a stupid Atheist nor an irreligious Libertine. But though im ancient times Masons were charged in every country to be of the religion of that country or nation, whatever it was, yet it is now thought more expedient only to oblige them to that religion in which all men agree, leaving their particular Opinions to themselves: that 1s, to be Good men and True, or Men of Honor and Honesty, by whatever Denomination or Persuasion they may be distinguished; whereby Masonry becomes the Centre of Union and the Means of conciliating true Friendship among persons that must have remained at a perpetual distance.
If that statement had been written yesterday, it would be remarkable enough. But when we con- sider that it was set forth in 1723, amidst bitter sec- tarian rancor and intolerance unimaginable, it rises up as forever memorable in the history of men! The man who wrote that document, did we know his
evidence of what Dr. Mackey called the chief mission of primitive Masonry —the preservation of belief in the unity of God. These MSS did not succumb to the theology of the Church, and their in- vocations remind us more of the God of Isaiah than of the decrees of the Council of Nicza.
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name, is entitled to be held till the end of time in the grateful and venerative memory of his race. The temper of the times was all for relentless partisan- ship, both in religion and in politics. The alterna- tive offered in religion was an ecclesiastical tyranny, allowing a certain liberty of belief, or a doctrinal tyranny, allowing a slight liberty of worship; a sad choice in truth. It is, then, to the everlasting honor of the century, that, in the midst of its clashing ex- tremes, the Masons appeared with heads unbowed, abjuring both tyrannies and championing both lib- erties... Evcclesiastically and doctrinally they stood in the open, while Romanist and Protestant, Angli- can and Puritan, Calvinist and Arminian waged bitter war, filling the air with angry maledictions. These men of latitude in a cramped age felt pent up alike by narrowness of ritual and by narrowness of creed, and they cried out for room and air, for liberty and charity!
Though differences of creed played no part in Masonry, neverthless it held religion in high es-
1Tt was, perhaps, a picture of the Masonic Lodges of that era that Toland drew in his Socratic Society, published in 1720, which, however, he clothed in a vesture quite un-Grecian. At least, the symposia or brotherly feasts of his society, their give-and-take of questions and answers, their aversion to the rule of mere physical force, to compulsory religious belief, and to creed hatred, as well as their mild and tolerant disposition and their brotherly regard for one another, remind one of the spirit and habits of the Masons of that day.
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teem, and was then, as now, the steadfast upholder © of the only two articles of faith that never were in- vented by man — the existence of God and the im- mortality of the soul! Accordingly, every Lodge was opened and closed with prayer to the “Al- mighty Architect of the universe;’ and when a Lodge of mourning met in memory of a brother fallen asleep, the formula was: “He has passed over into the eternal East,’— to that region whence cometh light and hope. Unsectarian in religion, the Masons were also non-partisan in politics: one prin- ciple being common to them all — love of country, respect for law and order, and the desire for hu- man welfare." Upon that basis the first Grand
1 Now is as good a time as another to name certain curious theories which have been put forth to account for the origin of Masonry in general, and of the organization of the Grand Lodge in particular. They are as follows: First, that it was all due to an imaginary Temple of Solomon described by Lord Bacon in a utopian romance called the New Atlantis; and this despite the fact that the temple in the Bacon story was not a house at all, but the name of an ideal state. Second, that the object of Freemasonry and the origin of the Third Degree was the restoration of Charles II to the throne of England; the idea being that the Masons, who called themselves “Sons of the Widow,” meant thereby to express their allegiance to the Queen. Third, that Freemasonry was found- ed by Oliver Cromwell—he of all men!—to defeat the royalists. Fourth, that Free-masons were derived from the order of the Knights Templars. Even Lessing once held this theory, but seems later to have given it up. Which one of these theories surpasses the others in absurdity, it would be hard to say. De Quincey ex- plodes them one by one with some detail in his “Inquiry into the
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Lodge was founded, and upon that basis Masonry rests today — holding that a unity of spirit is better than a uniformity of opinion, and that beyond the great and simple “religion in which all men agree’ no dogma is worth a breach of charity.
II
With honorable pride in this tradition of spirit- ual faith and intellectual freedom, we are all the more eager to recite such facts as are known about the organization of the first Grand Lodge. How many Lodges of Masons existed in London at that time is a matter of conjecture, but there must have been a number. What bond, if any, united them, other than their esoteric secrets and customs, is equally unknown. Nor is there any record to tell us whether all the Lodges in and about London were invited to join in the movement. Unfortun- ately the minutes of the Grand Lodge only com- mence on June 24, 1723, and our only history of the events is that found in The New Book of Constitu- tions, by Dr. James Anderson, in 1738. However, if not an actor in the scene, he was in a position to know the facts from eye-witnesses, and his book
Origin of the Free-masons,” to which he might also have added his own pet notion of the Rosicrucian origin of the order — it be- ing only a little less fantastic than the rest (De Quincey’s Works, vol. xvi).
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was approved by the Grand Lodge itself. His ac- count is so brief that it may be given as it stands:
King George I enter'd London most magnificently on 20 Sept. 1714. And after the Rebellion was over A. D. 1716, the few Lodges at London finding themselves neg- lected by Sir Christopher Wren, thought fit to cement under a Grand Master as the Centre of Union and Har- mony, viz., the Lodges that met,
1. At the Goose and Gridiron Ale house in St. Paul’s Church-Yard.
2. At the Crown Ale-house in Parkers Lane near Drury Lane.
3. At the Apple-Tree Tavern in Charles-street, Cov- ent-Garden.
4. At the Rummer and Grape Tavern in Channel- Row, Westminster.
They and some other old Brothers met at the said Apple-Tree, and having put into the chair the oldest Master Mason (now the Master of a Lodge) they con- stituted themselves a Grand Lodge pro Tempore in Due Form, and forthwith revived the Quarterly Communica- tion of the Officers of Lodges (call’d the GRAND LODGE) resolv’d to hold the Annual Assembly and Feast, and then to chuse a Grand Master from among themselves, till they should have the Honor of a Noble Brother at their Head.
Accordingly, on St. John’s Baptist’s Day, in the 3d year of King George I, A. D. 1717, the ASSEMBLY and Feast of the Free and Accepted Masons was held at the foresaid Goose and Gridiron Ale-house.
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Before Dinner, the oldest Master Mason (now the Master of a Lodge) in the Chair, proposed a List of proper Candidates; and the Brethren by a majority of Hands elected Mr. Anthony Sayer, Gentleman, Grand Master of Masons (Mr. Jacob Lamball, Carpenter, Capt. Joseph Elliot, Grand Wardens) who being forthwith in- vested with the Badges of Office and Power by the said oldest Master, and install’d, was duly congratulated by the Assembly who paid him the Homage.
Sayer, Grand Master, commanded the Masters and Wardens of Lodges to meet the Grand Officers every Quarter in Communication, at the Place that he should appoint in the Summons sent by the Tyler.
So reads the only record that has come down to us of the founding of the Grand Lodge of England. Preston and others have had no other authority than this passage for their descriptions of the scene, albeit when Preston wrote, such facts as he added may have been learned from men still living. Who were present, beyond the three officers named, has so far eluded all research, and the only varia- tion in the accounts is found in a rare old book called Multa Paucis, which asserts that six Lodges, not four, were represented. Looking at this record in the light of what we know of the Masonry of that period, a number of things are suggested:
First, so far from being a revolution, the organ- ization of the Grand Lodge was a revival of the old quarterly and annual Assembly, born, doubtless, of a felt need of community of action for the welfare
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of the Craft. There was no idea of innovation, but, as Anderson states in a note, “it should meet Quarterly according to ancient Usage,” tradition having by this time become authoritative in such matters. Hints of what the old usages were are given in the observance of St. John’s Day* as a feast, in the democracy of the order and its manner of voting by a show of hands, in its deference to the oldest Master Mason, its use of badges of office,” its ceremony of installation, all in a lodge quly tyled.
1 Of the Masonic feasts of St. John the Baptist and St. John the Evangelist much has been written, and to little account. In pre- Christian times, as we have seen, the Roman Collegia were wont to adopt pagan deities as patrons. When Christianity came, the names of its saints—some of them martyrs of the order of builders — were substituted for the old pagan gods. Why the two Saints John were chosen by Masons —rather than St. Thomas, who was the pa- tron saint of architecture—has never been made clear. At any rate, these two feasts, coming at the time of the summer and winter solstices, are in reality older than Christianity, being reminiscences of the old Light Religion in which Masonry had its origin.
2 The badge of office was a huge white apron, such as we see in Hogarth’s picture of the Night. The collar was of much the same shape as that at present in use, only shorter. When the color was changed to blue, and why, is uncertain, but probably not until 1813, when we begin to see both apron and collar edged with blue. (See chapter on “Clothing and Regalia,’ in Things a Freemason Ought to Know, by J. W. Crowe.) In 1727 the officers of all private— or as we would say, subordinate— Lodges were ordered to wear “the jewels of Masonry hanging to a white apron.” In 1731 we find the Grand Master wearing gold or gilt jewels pendant to blue ribbons about the neck, and a white leather apron lined with blue silk.
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Second, it is clear that, instead of being a delib- erately planned effort to organize Masonry in gen- eral, the Grand Lodge was intended at first to af- fect only London and Westminster ; * the desire be- ing to weld a link of closer fellowship and coopera- tion between the Lodges. While we do not know the names of the moving spirits — unless we may infer that the men elected to office were such — nothing is clearer than that the initiative came from the heart of the order itself, and was in no sense im- posed upon it from without; and so great was the necessity for it that, when once started, link after link was added until it “put a girdle around the eartiann
Third, of the four Lodges? known to have taken part, only one — that meeting at the Rummer and Grape Tavern — had a majority of Accepted Ma-
1 This is clear from the book of Constitutions of 1723, which is said to be “for the use of Lodges in London.” ‘Then follow the names of the Masters and Wardens of twenty Lodges, all in Lon- don. There was no thought at the time of imposing the authority of the Grand Lodge upon the country in general, much less upon the world. Its growth we shall sketch later. For an excellent ar- ticle on “The Foundation of Modern Masonry,’ by G. W. Speth, giving details of the organization of the Grand Lodge and its changes, see A. Q. C., ii, 86. If an elaborate account is wanted, it may be found in Gould’s History of Masonry, vol. iii.
2 History of the Four Lodges, by R. F. Gould. Apparently the Goose and Gridiron Lodge — No. 1 — is the only one of the four now in existence. After various changes of name it is now the Lodge of Antiquity, No. 2.
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sons in its membership; the other three being Oper- ative Lodges, or largely so. Obviously, then, the movement was predominantly a movement of Op- erative Masons — or of men who had been Opera- tive Masons —and not, as has been so often im- plied, the design of men who simply made use of the remnants of operative Masonry the better to exploit some hidden philosophy. Yet it is worthy of note that the leading men of the craft in those early years were, nearly all of them, Accepted Masons and members of the Rummer and Grape Lodge. Be- sides Dr. Anderson, the historian, both George Payne and Dr. Desaguliers, the second and third Grand Masters, were of that Lodge. In 1721 the Duke of Montagu was elected to the chair, and thereafter members of the nobility sat in the Fast until it became the custom for the Prince of Wales to be Grand Master of Masons in England.*
Fourth, why did Masonry alone of all trades and professions live after its work was done, preserving not only its identity of organization, but its old em- blems and usages, and transforming them into in- struments of religion and righteousness? The cathedrals had long been finished or left incomplete; the spirit of Gothic architecture was dead and the style treated almost with contempt. The occupa-
1 Royal Masons, by G. W. Speth.
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tion of the Master Mason was gone, his place hav- ing been taken by the architect who, like Wren and Inigo Jones, was no longer a child of the Lodges as in the old days, but a man trained in books and by foreign travel. Why did not Freemasonry die, along with the Guilds, or else revert to some kind of trades-union? Surely here is the best possible proof that it had never been simply an order of architects building churches, but a moral and spiritual fellow- ship — the keeper of great symbols and a teacher of truths that never die. So and only so may anyone ever hope to explain the story of Masonry, and those who do not see this fact have no clue to its history, much less an understanding of its genius.
Of course these pages cannot recite in detail the history and growth of the Grand Lodge, but a few of the more salient events may be noted. As early as 1719 the Old Charges, or Gothic Constitutions, began to be collected and collated, a number having already been burned by scrupulous Masons to pre- vent their falling into strange hands. In 1721, Grand Master Montagu found fault with the Old Charges as being inadequate, and ordered Dr. Anderson to make a digest of them with a view to formulating a better set of regulations for the rule of the Lodges. Anderson obeyed —he seems to have been engaged in such a work already, and may
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have suggested the idea to the Grand Master — and a committee of fourteen “learned brethren” was ap- pointed to examine the MS and make report. They suggested a few amendments, and the book was or- dered published by the Grand Master, appearing in the latter part of 1723. This first issue, however, did not contain the account of the organization of the Grand Lodge, which does not seem to have been added until the edition of 1738. How much Past Grand Master Payne had to do with this work is not certain, but the chief credit is due to Dr. Anderson, who deserves the perpetual gratitude of the order — the more so if he it was who wrote the article, already quoted, setting forth the religious attitude of the order. That article, by whomsoever written, is one of the great documents of mankind, and it would be an added joy to know that it was penned by a minister." The Book of Constitutions, which
1From a meager sketch of Dr. Anderson in the Gentlemen’s Magazine, 1783, we learn that he was a native of Scotland —the place of his birth is not given—and that for many years he was minister of the Scots Presbyterian Church in Swallow Street, Pic- cadilly, and well known to the folk of that faith in London — called “Bishop” Anderson by his friends. He married the widow of an army officer, who bore him a son and a daughter. Although a learned man—compiler of a book of Royal Genealogies, which seems to have been his hobby—he was somewhat imprudent in business, having lost most of his property in 1720. Whether he was a Mason before coming to London is unknown, but he took a great