The Shadow of Solomon: The Lost Secret of the Freemasons Revealed

In the Welsh sector (which included the Shropshire and Cheshire border country) there were three prominent Jacobite lodges to which many of the nobility and gentry belonged. In the south were the Sea Serjeants of Carmarthen, whose headquarters was the Masonic Lodge at the Red Lion in Market Street.

In mid-Wales was the Tory gentle-men’s Montgomeryshire Club of Twenty-Seven, while the north oper ated through another Tory lodge called the Cycle of the White Rose.

This was headed by Sir Watkin Williams Wynn, Lord Lieutenant and Member of Parliament for Denbighshire. The Cycle was headquartered at Sir Watkin’s house at Winnstay; then (following his death in 1749) at his widow’s property, Llangedwyn Hall near Oswestry.

In 1747, the estate house of Berse Drelincourt was built near Wrexham for Mary, the widow of Peter Drelincourt, Dean of Armagh, to become a masonic charity school for the residential education of children born to exiled Jacobite nobility. Technically, the school was registered as an orphanage and, for reasons of strict security, access was forbidden to outsiders. Lady Anne Primrose (Mary’s daughter) eventually became director of operations.

The style of Freemasonry worked within Tory lodges (such as the Sea Serjeants and the Cycle of the White Rose in the Welsh regions) was somewhat akin to that which led to the Antients’ Grand Lodge foundation in 1751, thereafter referring to the premier Grand Lodge as the Moderns. In 1760, Robert Jones of Glamorgan became Grand Master of the Welsh Freemasons, and was also a member of the One Ton lodge in Noble Street, London, along with the Black Lion lodge in Jockey Field.

A close friend of the political activist John Wilkes, he also attended other Tory lodges in London at the Antwerp Tavern, the Turk’s Head and The Shakespeare. Prior to Jones’ appointment, the Carmarthen Grand Masters of the 1750s were Sir Edward Mansell of Trimsaran and David Gwynne of Talaris from 1754. (Plate 10 illustrates a summons of The Globe Lodge, Fleet Street, during this era.)

The following example of the scale of the inter-lodge hostility that prevailed at this time comes from the Transactions of the Antiquarian Society and from London’s Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Review, 1755. Unable to infiltrate the Tory’s Red Lion lodge in Market Street, Carmarthen, at a time when borough elections were taking place, the Whigs instituted their own new lodge at the nearby Greyhound in Bridge Street. Arguments led to scuffles which, in turn, led to several injuries and the killing of the Red Lion barber, whereupon wholesale warfare erupted in the streets as reinforcements came in from out of town. The Tories occupied the castle, and the Whigs took the town hall. ‘In short’, wrote one correspondent, ‘the town is full of fire, smoke and tumult.’

Another report stated that people were ‘armed with guns, swords and other offensive weapons—threatening, assaulting, beating, knocking-down, wounding, maiming, shooting at and killing several’.

After the disturbances had died down, the rival masonic lodges each began legal proceedings against the other.

This was the state of Britain’s Freemasonry in the 1740s and 1750s, at a time when the premier Grand Lodge lost 72 of its 271 member branches, yet the official records are remarkably quiet. William, 5th Lord Byron (great-uncle of the poet), was elected as Grand Master in 1747, and was never seen again in a masonic lodge until he nominated a successor in 1752.

Subsequently, he caused public feeling to well up against Freemasonry when he killed his neighbour, William Chatworth, in a sword fight at the Star and Garter in London’s Pall Mall.

Even the individual member Freemasons whose lodges were tied to premier Grand Lodge were unhappy at this time, and they were especially angered when a Bill of Incorporation was presented to Parliament by their masters in 1768. By virtue of its terms, the feeling against the concept was intense, and members complained that it would constitute a legal way for the hierarchy to misappropriate their charity contributions for other purposes. At the outset, Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford and son of Robert (the late Prime Minister), had written to a colleague, ‘The Free Masons are in such low repute now in England…I believe that nothing but a persecution could bring them into vogue again.’

In masonic circles, the most frequently given reason for the hostile 18th-century conflict between the Antients and the Moderns is that the Antients must have been Irish and unable to gain access to the English lodges—so they started their own! But the truth is far more straightforward than that. Whether English, Scots, Irish or Welsh, it was a party-political feud. The Antients were essentially Jacobite Tories, whereas the Moderns were mostly Hanoverian Whigs.

The Dunkerley Episode

Prince Frederick predeceased his father in 1751 and, when George II died in 1760, he was succeeded by Frederick’s eldest son as King George III. Soon afterwards, following an induction meeting at the Horn Tavern in London, three of the new King’s brothers—the Dukes of Gloucester, York and Cumberland—were each given the spuri ous title of Past Grand Master by premier Grand Lodge.

This ensured that the Royal Family was wholly attached to their branch of the Craft, while also giving the impression to outsiders that Grand Lodge had a more solid foundation than in reality. From that point, the scene was set for a masonic institution headed by Hanoverian royalty, as it remains today.

The American War of Independence (1775-83) was a major world event in masonic terms since George Washington, John Hancock, Benjamin Franklin and other Founding Fathers of the emergent new Republic were Freemasons. But how could these eminent men be attached to a fraternity that was so heavily influenced by the very royal house whose colonial authority they challenged?

This fascinating aspect of transatlantic history is more than worthy of its own section in this book, and it shall be examined in detail in chapter 17. Meanwhile, the point to hold in mind is that the Tory Ancients and the Whig Moderns were competitive, antagonistic, and supported wholly conflicting political viewpoints. There were two distinct and opposing forms of Freemasonry in the latter 1700s, and the relationship between America and the Tory faction was far stronger than any academic history book is ever likely to reveal.

In 1782, Prince Henry, Duke of Cumberland, was installed as overall Grand Master in London and, with this formal royal patronage, the masonic cause of the Moderns was considerably strengthened. Another prominent character of the moment, known as Thomas Dunkerley, was an illegitimate son of George II. Born in 1724, he served (from the age of 10) in the Royal Navy, and his royal birthright was not announced until he was over 40. Having been initiated into Freemasonry in 1754, Dunkerley formed lodges in many of the ships in which he served, and when his parentage was recognized he was granted a personal income and rooms at Hampton Court Palace. Subsequently, he became Provincial Grand Master in numerous regions.

The Duke of Cumberland died in 1790, whereupon his nephew, the Prince of Wales (later King George IV), took up the reins as Grand Master—at least nominally. In practice, he appointed a deputy to carry out the functions of the post.

In 1791, Dunkerley decided to introduce high degrees of a presumed Knight Templar style into English Freemasonry. He formed the Supreme Grand and Royal Conclave, inviting George III’s young son, Prince Edward (the later Duke of Kent), to be overall Patron of an Order that would assume control of the said high degrees. But Dunkerley died in 1795, and no one really knew what the Supreme Grand and Royal Conclave was. It seems to have been little more than Dunkerley himself, possibly with the aid of a friend’s sister, whom he referred to in correspondence as the Lady Patroness. There were, however, a number of regionally affiliated ‘encampments’ (lodges) whose members appointed Thomas Parkins, Lord Rancliffe, to succeed Dunkerley. But in all the 11 years of his appointment, Rancliffe only attended one meeting,

which was one more than the Duke of Kent attended!

Legal Exemption

During this period, and following the French Revolution (1789-99), an innovatory concept of voting was put forward by the British author Thomas Paine in his The Rights of Man. He suggested that people should have the right to appoint and change their own governments. This was too much for the Georgian politicians—Paine was indicted for treason and fled to Calais in 1792. By that time, almost every town in Britain had a Constitutional Information Club, or a Society of Friends. In 1793, the British Convention of People’s Delegates was held in Edinburgh and, in response to their plea for better workers’ representation, the Government duly transported the leaders to the colonies. Hostilities were then commenced against the French who, along with the Americans, were said to have fuelled a widespread anti-Hanover mood in Britain.

Subsequently, the long-standing Habeas Corpus Act was suspended by prime minister William Pitt (the Younger) in 1794, so that citizens could be kept in prison indefinitely without need for trial. Following Pitt’s Unlawful Oaths Act of 1797, Government spies roamed the country, bringing in anyone who belonged to a workers’ group that Westminster deemed seditious, and they were duly sentenced without a hearing. (It was under the terms of this Act that the Tolpuddle Martyrs of Dorset were arrested long afterwards in 1834, and charged at the Dorchester Assizes with ‘administering unlawful pledges of loyalty’.) Even the Royal Navy did not escape the harsh judgements in 1797. Most sailors were pressganged into service, only to be treated abominably with miserable pay and conditions. But when seamen of the Fleet at Nore (near Sheerness) demonstrated for a revised ship-board policy and a grant of two meals a day instead of one, their leaders were hanged.

At this time, Britain was in a desperate position; France had conquered the Netherlands, and controlled the Dutch Fleet. France had also made an alliance with Spain, and practically controlled the Spanish Fleet.

Then, within a general stirring of public unrest, Pitt made it unlawful to speak, write or to have any opinion against the Government. He sent German troops into Ireland in 1797, prompting an Irish rebellion in the following year, which led to the arrest and death of the prominent leader Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Pitt then introduced the Unlawful Societies Act in 1799, whereupon workers’ groups and unlicensed public meetings of any kind were forbidden anywhere in Britain. The coming together of men into any form of club or society for negotiation of improved working conditions or wages was henceforth defined as a punishable conspiracy. In fact, any organization which held secretive meetings came under the wrap of this Act which, potentially, could have closed all the masonic lodges. Given the royal patronage that applied, however, Pitt was pressured and obliged to relent in favour of Grand Lodge so that Freemasonry was made uniquely exempt from the law.

The Sussex Years

One of the Duke of Kent’s brothers was Prince Augustus, Duke of Sussex, who (despite his Hanoverian status) married twice into Jacobite families. He was first married in Rome to Lady Augusta Murray, daughter of the 4th Earl of Dunmore, on 4 April 1793. But this marriage was formally annulled in the following year because it had not been sanctioned by King George III, and therefore contravened the Royal Marriages Act of 1772. Much later, Augustus married Lady Celia Saunders, daughter of the 2nd Earl of Arran, on 2 May 1831. She was granted the style Duchess of Inverness, but the marriage was similarly deemed to be in breach of the Act.

However, in 1793 (the year of his first marriage) Augustus had resigned his right of succession to the British Crown, and pursued his own course irrespective of the restrictive Hanoverian statute.

In 1812, Sussex was installed as Grand Master of the Supreme Grand and Royal Conclave, but in the following year, with the Antients and Moderns finally amalgamated, he was also invited to become Grand Master of the new United Grand Lodge, which did not condone the higher degrees of the Conclave. This placed the Duke in a difficult situation, but he decided to accept the office and ride out the storm. In addition to that (and following some heated disputes about who had rights of supreme authority over the masons in France), Augustus was afforded another position in 1819, when selected to head the French Supreme Council in Britain.

This greatly appealed to him because, in contrast to Dunkerley’s pseudo-Grand Conclave, it was a Templar-style institution with its roots in the exiled Stuart Rite, and would grant him the high-degree patent in Britain.

By virtue of his family ruining his first marriage, Augustus was rather more inclined towards Stuart than Hanoverian sympathy, and so he accepted the nomination. The trouble was that he could not tell his masonic colleagues in England about the plan, and therefore had his masonic secretary make the arrangements. This man was Joseph Hippolyte da Costa, the Portuguese mason who had been extricated by his English friends from papal custody, and who wrote about the Dionysian Artificers (see page 34). In the event, the office proved to be a title without a function because there was nothing the Duke could do to further his appointment without making his French collaboration known.

From this somewhat egotistical masonic era of Grand Councils and Supreme Conclaves, comes an intriguing and very ordinary sounding name, listed among all the aristocrats and royalty. It appears in the 1845 Statutes of the Temple by authority of the Grand Conclave in Scotland which states that in 1808 a certain ‘Mr Alexander Deuchar was elected Commander of the Edinburgh Templars’. These are the Statutes of a pseudo-Templar Conclave in Scotland that had a serious effect on the relationship between English and Irish Freemasons before and after the amalgamation of the Ancients and Moderns.

Alexander Deuchar was a seal-engraver who became aware of the possibility of a French Templar Council being instituted in Britain long before the offer to head such a body was made to Duke Augustus. The background negotiations had begun when the French Council was itself formed in 1804. Major Müller of the 1st Royal Foot had the ear of the Duke’s brother, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, and Deuchar conspired with Müller to approach Edward for a Charter of Dispensation to establish an anti-Jacobite Templar authority in Scotland.

Deuchar’s brother, David, was an officer in the Peninsula War (Britain against France in Portugal, 1808-14) and, during the campaign at Leira in Portugal, he stole the altar cross from a Templar chapel in the Castle of Tomar in order to aid his brother’s endeavour. In the old days, the Deuchars had served Scotland well and, from the time of Bannockburn (24 June 1314) and beyond, the Great Sword of Deuchar, with its family coat-of-arms, was a welcome sight on any battlefield. By 1745, however, the table had turned, and the Deuchar allegiance swayed, so that Lyon of East Ogil (a Jacobite supporter of Charles Edward Stuart) made it his business to carry off the prized heirloom. The sword was, nevertheless, retrieved after Culloden, to be held by the Hanoverian supporter Alexander Deuchar when he began his discussions with the Duke of Kent.

Seeing his opportunity to get a firm Hanoverian foothold in Scotland, the Duke agreed to Deuchar’s request, and the new establishment became known as the Scottish Conclave, with Deuchar as its Grand Master. However, the Duke of Kent asserted that the English Masonic rules must be followed, and that he would himself be the Royal Grand Patron of the Conclave established ‘in that part of Great Britain called Scotland’. Not surprisingly, within a few decades influential Whigs were allowed to buy their way into the Conclave. The Duke of Leeds, for example (who had no Templar training) was admitted in 1848, to become Steward of the Great Priory within just a few months, and the Episcopal Bishop of Edinburgh was similarly admitted.

The Scottish Grand Conclave was formally constituted in 1811, and falling under Deuchar’s banner of intended Scottish subjugation were several traditional Templar lodges of the legitimate Irish Grand Encampment whose warrants were from Ireland. In 1826, the Grand Master of these lodges in Scotland was Robert Martin, who wanted nothing whatever to do with the Deuchar interlopers or the Duke of Kent. The Conclave was formally denounced by the Dublin Encampment on 28 December 1827. All Encampment Templars who had succumbed to the unethically created Hanoverian protectorate in Scotland were instructed to surrender their original Irish warrants to Robert Martin. In condemning the establishment of the Deuchar Conclave, the Irish document stated, ‘Every ancient Sir Knight knows that the Duke of Kent had no more authority to do so than Deuchar himself.’

This completes an overview of the first 100 years of the new-style English Freemasonry as it evolved during the Georgian era. There is little mention in the records of those symbolic or charitable ideas that were seemingly in the minds of the original tavern-club members of the early 1700s. Apart from internal wrangling and disputes between different factions, the century was mainly concerned with the establishment of power bases and grand titles. There are references, here and there, of an evolving lodge ritual, which was added to at various stages—the first mention of the Temple pillars Jachin and Boaz, for example, occurring in 1762.

Not until the 1800s did anything that might be recognized by today’s masons begin to take shape. The basic ceremonial format was settled in around 1816, while the philosophical and moral concepts were very much a product of the latter Victorian era. Despite the fact that the newly initiated Entered Apprentice Freemason believes himself to be in a privileged realm of ancient mysteries, there is actually not that much in modern ritual that can claim to be especially ancient, except in theory. This is not a criticism of current masonic practice, it is simply a recognition that the historical provenance of certain aspects is not always correct in the way it is conveyed.

6 Imperial Conquest (#ulink_ed5d1be7-e1ce-50ef-9925-652a84f31232)

The Celtic Realms

Although there was a Grand Master for Wales by the middle 1700s, there was no formally constituted Grand Lodge as such. In Ireland and Scotland, however, Grand Lodges were established as separate institutions to the Grand Lodge of England, and they remain independent today. The Grand Lodge of Ireland was founded in 1725, and the Grand Lodge of Antient, Free and Accepted Masons of Scotland in 1736.

Documentary evidence of Freemasonry in Ireland dates back to the 1600s, and the present headquarters is in Dublin. The journal Dublin Weekly of 26 June 1725 relates that two days earlier Richard, Earl of Rosse, was installed as Grand Master of Ireland, and the story of privately-run Irish lodges immediately prior to this is worth noting.

Unlike in the English system, women were not necessarily precluded from becoming masons in Ireland. A well-documented lady Freemason of the era was the Hon Elizabeth St Leger (b. 1693), sister of the 4th Viscount of Doneraile, County Cork.

Initiated in about 1715, Elizabeth’s later portrait depicts her in a masonic attitude and wearing her apron.

Following the Earl of Rosse, the Irish Grand Master from 1731 was James, Lord Kingston. His father had been a Jacobite exile with King James and, on returning to Ireland in 1693, he was charged with recruiting for the Stuart cause. The same happened with Grand Master James in 1722.

The first extant reference to Freemasonry in Ireland comes from a student graduation speech delivered at Trinity College, Dublin, in 1688. It was stated that a new college was to be established with a society of Freemasons.

The penal laws William of Orange (Billy Windmills to his Irish subjects) drew up against the people of Ireland, Protestants and Catholics alike, were extremely harsh, particularly his ruinous 1699 prohibition of Irish wool exports to England. Many have wondered why the Protestants of Ireland were shamefully treated by the monarch they had served so well at the Battle of the Boyne—especially when his wife, Queen Mary, was a convinced Protestant—but the answer is straightforward. The trade sanction was imposed in 1699, but Mary had died in 1694, leaving William as the sole ruler. His interests were not with Britain or Ireland, and they were certainly not with the Protestants. His mission throughout was to maximize Holland’s trading position against that of France. In Scotland, where the masonic tradition dates back to much earlier times, King William was equally ruthless, even though Scotland was a Protestant nation with a National Kirk. In fact, the Scots had been subjected to a blanket excommunication in the days of Robert the Bruce for standing against the Catholic King Edward of England. In this light it is surprising that for all his blatantly anti-Protestant behaviour, William III is still considered by so many to have been a champion of the Protestant cause.

When King James was deposed in December 1688, the Scots in general were most displeased at the loss of their dynastic monarchy, and in the very next year came the first Jacobite Rising. On 27 July 1689, Viscount Graham of Claverhouse (known as Bonnie Dundee), led a force of Highlanders against King William’s troops at Killiecrankie, near Perth. The Scots’ charge was successful, but Dundee was mortally wounded and died without knowing he had been appointed King’s General. A few weeks later the Highlanders were less fortunate when defeated at Dunkeld. A particularly intriguing fact, however, comes from the Benedictine abbot Dom Augustin Calmet (1672-1757). He recorded that when Viscount Dundee fell at Killiecrankie he was wearing the Grand Prior’s cross and sash of the Knights Templars—a pre-masonic Order which, according to a majority of modern reference sources, ceased to exist in 1307.