                               STB-JL99.txt

                              MASONIC HISTORY

                              WHAT IS NEEDED

                             By: A. G. Markham

In November 1996, Brother A. G. Markham delivered a paper to Quatuor
Coronati Lodge #2076, titled Some Problems of English Masonic
History. This paper was then printed in the 1997 Volume 110, ARS
Quatuor Coronatorum Transactions. From that paper the July 1999
Short Talk Bulletin was extracted. Because of the length of the
paper we, could not use all of the material and had to delete the
reference notes.

It is the feeling of MSA that this paper has enormous importance for
all Freemasons. We have divided this Short Talk Bulletin into two
parts. Part One-History and Part Two-Recommendations and
Conclusions. The very brief history of early Freemasonry in Europe
is both concise and informative. Part Two, Conclusions and
Recommendations, is very, very significant. In this section Brother
Markham explains the importance of involving professional general
historians, who are not members of the Craft, to help show
Freemasonry as "the remarkable historic institution, beneficial to
humanity, which it is. -Editor

                              PART I-HISTORY

In the 1600s Freemasonry was restricted to the British Isles and was
a private matter, rarely recorded in writing; least of all in
Ireland, and less so in England than in Scotland.

This is a major problem; and it is surprising that we know as much
as we do about English Masonry of the 1600s. It is possible to see
the existence of a remarkable brotherhood of non-operative masons,
based on well recognised custom (including, notably, secret modes of
recognition and those curious archaic documents the Old Charges),
spread more or less all over the nation, crossing class boundaries
in a very class conscious age, harmoniously and convivially uniting
men, including, I would accept, those of differing political
persuasions, and practising mutual charity. But this evidence is
limited in detail and does not extend to dispelling the mystery of
its origins, a mystery, which, though since to some extent cherished
by masons, has also lent itself to misinterpretation by writers,
both masonic and antimasonic.

In Scotland, written records of the 1600s show the existence of a
considerable number of lodges of operative masons, with a proportion
of non-operative brethren, some of them of high social rank, but
without sufficient involvement to take control, so that the lodges
remained operative in overall character as late as the 1720s. A
wider organisation of these lodges is suggested through provisions
of the Schaw Statutes of 1598/1599. Scottish masons had rudimentary
ceremonies of admission, when the secret "Mason Word" was imparted,
and versions of the Old Charges deriving from English originals. It
is certain that Freemasonry existed in Ireland during, at least,
part of the 1600s, but little more is known of it beyond a few
questionable artefacts bearing masonic symbols.

Despite some improvement in the 1700s, lack of evidence, due to
confidentiality, is a continuing problem; but, there is no doubt
that in the 1720s a dramatic upsurge of English Freemasonry took
place following the formation of a Grand Lodge by four nonoperative
London lodges in 1717. This Grand Lodge flourished and greatly
extended the number of lodges under its authority from 1721 onwards,
when the practice started of having members of the peerage as Grand
Masters, though mainly as figureheads. Two areas of masonic ideas
can be associated with this upsurge, the first being moral rules
known as the Charges of a Free-Mason, contained in a Book of
Constitutions compiled at the request of the Grand Lodge by James
Anderson, which was published (openly) in 1723; and the second being
found principally in an exposure (of confidential matters) in
catechism form known as Masonry Dissected, published by Samuel
Prichard in 1730, which is concerned with secret modes of
recognition and related ritual rather than moral provisions.

In the 1720s and '30s these two streams of ideas passed from England
into British territories overseas (particularly the American
colonies) and into continental Europe through France, where, for
example, the exposure written by the Abbe Gabriel Louis Perau, known
as Le Secret des Francs-Macons, published in 1742, describes the
ideas as practised with little variation in France at that time, and
demonstrates, better than anything written in English, why
Freemasonry was received with great acclaim.

But the French were not content with limiting the movement to the
supposed moral customs, secrets and ritual of stonemasons, and soon
related it also to ideals of knighthood, seeing the achievement of
equality more as a levelling up than as a levelling down, as in
England, though the wearing of masons' aprons continued as a
feature. Possibly from an association with a Jacobite Scot living in
France, the Chevalier Michael Ramsay, these knightly ideals were
embodied in numerous additional related degrees, known as "Scottish
Rites", producing a proliferation of ceremonial, but having, in
fact, no clear connection with Scottish Masonry. Some of these
degrees, notably the Strict Observance (which, deriving from France,
was developed in Germany), exceeded acceptable standards, and
brought Freemasonry into disrepute before they disappeared; but
others have, of course, continued respectably and extensively in
developed form up to the present day.

Despite excesses, the masonic movement was successful beyond all
imagination; and within a very short space of time. In 1738,
Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales and, in 1739, Crown Prince
Frederick of Prussia were made masons. Frederick of Prussia was the
future Frederick the Great, who, on his accession as king in 1740,
became a protector of the Craft. Francis Stephen, Duke of Lorraine,
made an English mason as early as 1730, is said to have introduced
masonic ceremonial into his coronation as Holy Roman Emperor in
1745.

In a later period, shortly before the French Revolution, masons
included among their numbers both royalists and prospective
revolutionaries and, later still, not only six of the sons of George
III, but also most of the former non-commissioned officers of the
army of Louis XVI who became Marshals of France under Napoleon. More
significantly, great men, such as Montesquieu , Mozart, Goethe,
Franklin and Washington became members of the craft. Washington wore
a masonic apron in the masonic ceremony which took place at the
laying of the foundation stone of the United States Capitol in the
new city of Washington in 1793.

All this success was achieved despite strong antimasonic opposition
from the Church of Rome, commencing in 1738, and to a fluctuating
extent, from some of the absolutist monarchies of Europe, influenced
by groundless defamations of Masonry, such as allegations that
masons had instigated the French Revolution.

The formation and development of the English premier Grand Lodge
from 1717 onwards may be seen, in retrospect, as the most important
feature in this period of masonic history. When, in the late
eighteenth century, particularly in Germany, excesses arose in the
attempted development of Masonry and its rituals, including attempts
to use them for commercial gain, it was to the pure ideals of
"English Masonry" that a return was sought. Eugen Lennhoff  wrote
with regard to the reforming work of Friedrich Ludwig Schroder:

"... All those superfluities which, in the course of time, had been
added to the simple symbolism of English ritual, with all its
beauty, were cast out by Schroder...''

We have seen that in 1742, Perau, a Frenchman (and the French have
rarely been admirers of English culture) presented Masonry largely
as it had arrived from England as an ideal system. Again, Lennhoff,
when writing of the Charges of a Free-Mason of 1723 referred to them
as:

"... a masonic Magna Charta; the will to avoid anything tending
towards disunion; the yearning for 'friendly alliance with
antagonists' ..."

But English commentators have tended not to appreciate these as
great achievements or even to see them as English.

This is the next problem of masonic history to which I wish to
refer, namely a failure properly to assess the significance of
English Masonry as offered to, and accepted by, the world from the
1720s onwards, a seeming mental short sightedness, which has failed
to grasp the overall historical perspective.

The Charges of a Free-Mason of 1723 have been largely unappreciated
by the accident of being included in the same volume as the
legendary history, written in similar vein to the legendary
histories in the Old Charges (including evident absurdities). Both
have been attributed to James Anderson (seen at the same time,
inconsistently, as innovator of important masonic ideas and author
of history which was not only unreliable but ludicrous); and this
belief has persisted despite the fact that, as will be shown, the
impossibility of such a view as to Anderson was explained by
Professors Knoop and Jones nearly fifty years ago. The result is
that the potential value of examining the Charges and legendary
history to trace earlier tradition has, generally speaking, been
ignored.

The significance of the Charges of 1723 has also been largely
unrecognised, I believe, because of the pre-occupation of modem
masons with ritual; the Charges being seen as a relic to be largely
ignored in preference to ritual. But in the eighteenth century, it
was the Charges with their simple yet profound virtues of brotherly
equality, harmony and charity which enabled Freemasonry to achieve
its lasting success, and to outride persecution by the Church of
Rome, the caprices of absolutist monarchies and the French
Revolution; and which, though emerging into continental Europe and
the wider world with the Enlightenment, were to continue as a living
force when the Enlightenment had become outmoded. Ritual, generally,
was in a varying and unsettled state during that period.

To consider a further point, an implication may be drawn that as
Anderson was Scottish (and the son of a prominent Scottish mason),
the content of the Charges of 1723 is probably Scottish, although
the Charges (which were adopted in the Irish Constitutions virtually
in the same form in 1730) have never been adopted in the Scottish
Constitutions, even now. Coupled with the fact that as the oldest
surviving masonic catechisms are Scottish, and have some resemblance
to Masonry Dissected (though much shorter), and through the Schaw
Statutes and the Mason Word, it would follow that Masonry is, to all
intents and purposes, Scottish in origin. The views of David
Stevenson are recently familiar to us; but David Murray Lyon, an
eminent Scottish masonic historian of a hundred years ago and
protagonist of Scottish Masonry, was ready to allow that when John
Theophilus Desaguliers, Past Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of
England, was welcomed as a brother mason at the Lodge of Edinburgh
in 1721, it was likely that he introduced the Edinburgh masons to
speculative Masonry, Scottish Masonry still being largely operative.

                               PART II-CONCLUSION AND

                               RECOMMENDATIONS

These final points are perhaps the most serious problems of masonic
history, but I shall refer to them briefly in the light of what is
widely known and what I have already said. The first of these is
AntiMasonry. It is clear that there have been adverse reactions
continuously, side by side with evidence of the existence of
non-operative Masonry, from the 1600s to the present day, which have
varied between ridicule and accusations of conspiracy and
subversion. Anti-Masonry has been a happy hunting ground repeatedly
for journalists with nothing else to write about; but, far more
seriously, has been the basis of attacks on Freemasonry by important
religious bodies who have felt impelled to adopt this attitude
apparently in the belief that no one needs secrets unless they have
something wrong to hide. These attacks have been taken to the
extremes of persecution by the Inquisitions of the Church of Rome,
and by absolutist monarchies and Fascist and Communist
dictatorships.

The second of these problems is that, despite its very interesting
historical character, Freemasonry has never been understood by
non-masonic historians as part of general history. I believe that
these two problems should be related together because an
authoritative sympathetic understanding of the history of Masonry,
even with some areas of doubt, might be a useful answer to
Anti-Masonry. The use of professional historians in the tracing back
of early features of masonic history against general historical
background is also important because a reasoned interpretation of
such features may have relevance to its essential meaning.

In these ways, professional general historians would have two main
functions; first, in interpreting, and confirming or resolving the
interpretation, of fragmentary early masonic history against general
background; and, secondly, in interpreting the broad perspectives of
early and later masonic history so as to integrate them as part of
general history.

Masonic historians would also have two important functions here;
first, in furnishing, in an accurate, complete and unbiassed manner,
details of masonic history to form the basis of the work of
historians who were not masons; and, secondly, in bearing in mind
that areas of masonic history which are fragmentary must have
explanations based somehow on fact and reason, and that pursuit of
truth with strict objectivity does not justify emphasising supposed
anomalies without attempting sensibly to resolve them by research
into background history with the assistance of professional
historians.

In the end, one would like to think it possible to show a proper
recognition of Freemasonry as the remarkable historic institution,
beneficial to humanity, which it is; and to demonstrate this
notwithstanding anti-masonic attacks; and despite the incapability
of explaining masonic origins entirely; but with, overall, a better
image, by being more acceptable to reason and being accepted by
nonmasonic historians of high professional standing. It is plainly a
difficult task, but what justification is there for not attempting
it? It is sometimes said that by defining problems one is already
part way towards solving them. This has been a hoped-for objective
of this paper, though with no claim to comprehensive coverage or
success; but as a modest attempt towards the advancement of masonic
knowledge.


