Note: This material was scanned into text files for the sole purpose of convenient electronic research. This material is NOT intended as a reproduction of the original volumes. However close the material is to becoming a reproduced work, it should ONLY be regarded as a textual reference. Scanned at Phoenixmasonry by Ralph W. Omholt, PM in June 2007.
THE COLLECTED "PRESTONIAN LECTURES"
1975-1987
(Volume Three)
Other volumes in this series:
The Collected Prestonian Lectures Volume One 1925-60
The Collected Prestonian Lectures Volume Two 1961-74
© 1988
Quatuor Coronati Lodge, London
Published by
Lewis Masonic for Ian Allan Regalia Ltd
Terminal House, Shepperton, TW 17 8AS
who are members of the Ian Allan Group
First published in collected form in England, 1988
by kind permission of
The Board of General Purposes
of the United Grand Lodge of England
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
The Collected Prestonian Lectures, 1975-1987
I. Freemasons
I. Freemasons. Quatuor Coronao Lodge
366' .l HS395
ISBN 085318 157 8
CONTENTS
List of illustrations iv
List of Lectures 1975-1987 iv
Introduction v
Year The Prestonian Lectures
1975 Anthony Sayer. Gentleman: The
Truth at Last T. Beck 1
1976 Preston's England Brig. A.C.F. Jackson 19
1977 The Tyler or Outer Guard R.A. Wells 34
1978 Grand Stewards 1728-1978 C. Mackechnie-Jarvis 54
1979 250 Years of Masonry in India G.E. Walker 83
1980 Robert Freke Gould F.J. Cooper 104
1981 The Grand Lodge of England
According to the Old Institutions C.N. Batham 122
1982 The Government of the Craft Sir James Stubbs 172
1983 The Pre-Eminence of The Great
Architect in Freemasonry R.H.S. Rottenbury 194
1984 Getting and Giving masonic Know
ledge H. Mendoza 204
1985 ... not only Ancient but useful and
necessary Officers.. . 'The Deacons S. Bruce 221
1986 The Old Charges W. McLeod 260
1987 The Role of the Innkeeper in Masonry C. Gotch 291
List of Illustrations
William Preston. 1790 engraving by Thompson. Frontispiece
Andrew Montgomery. 'Gardner of ye Grand Lodge' (1738) 35
First page of 1723 List of Lodges 50
Admission ticket to the Grand Festival 1736 80
Book Plate of Laurence Dermott 131
Earliest Record of Deacons in England 229
Deacons' Jewels of 1805 and 1813 246
Deacons' Jewels. Sun and Moon 248
Medallians on the Sword of State of Grand Lodge 1730 250
The Lecturers
1975-1987
1975 W Bro R. Theodore Beck, PDepGSupt Wks
1976 W Bro Brig. A.C.F. Jackson, CVO, CBE
1977 W Bro R.A. Wells, PAGDC
1978 W Bro Charles MacKechnie-Jarvis, PSGD
1979 W Bro G.E. Walker, OBE, PAGReg
1980 W Bro F.J. Cooper, TD, PSGD
1981 W Bro Cyril N. Batham, PAGDC
1982 RW Bro Sir James Stubbs, KCVO, PSGW
1983 W Bro Richard H.S. Rottenbury, PAGDC
1984 W Bro I.H. Mendoza, PAGDC
1985 W Bro Sinclair Bruce, PAGDC
1986 W Bro Prof. Wallace McLeod
1987 W Bro Christopher Gotch, PAGSupt Wks
INTRODUCTION
EXTRACT FROM THE GRAND LODGE PROCEEDINGS FOR 5 DECEMBER 1923.
In the year 1818, Bro William Preston, a very active Freemason at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries, bequeathed ú300 3 per cent. Consolidated Bank Annuities, the interest of which was to be applied `to some well‑informed Mason to deliver annually a Lecture on the First, Second, or Third Degree of the Order of Masonry according to the system practised in the Lodge of Antiquity' during his Mastership. For a number of years the terms of this bequest were acted upon, but for a long period no such Lecture has been delivered, and the Fund has gradually accumulated, and is now vested in the MW the Pro Grand Master, the Rt Hon Lord Ampthill, and W Bro Sir Kynaston Studd, PGD, as trustees. The Board has had under consideration for some period the desirability of framing a scheme which would enable the Fund to be used to the best advantage; and, in consultation with the Trustees who have given their assent, has now adopted such a scheme, which is given in full in Appendix A [See below], and will be put into operation when the sanction of Grand Lodge has been received.
The Grand Lodge sanction was duly given and the `scheme for the administration of the Prestonian fund' appeared in the Proceedings as follows:
APPENDIX A
SCHEME FOR ADMINISTRATION OF THE
PRESTONIAN FUND
1. The Board of General Purposes shall be invited each year to nominate two Brethren of learning and responsibility from whom the Trustees shall appoint the Prestonian Lecturer for the year with power for the Board to subdelegate their power of nomination to the Library, Art, and Publications Committee of the Board, or such other Committee as they think fit.
2. The remuneration of the Lecturer so appointed shall be ú5 5s Od for each Lecture delivered by him together with travelling expenses, if any, not exceeding ú1 5sOd, the number of Lectures delivered each year being determined by the income of the fund and the expenses incurred in the way of Lectures and administration.
3. The Lectures shall be delivered in accordance with the terms of the Trust.
One at least of the Lectures each year shall be delivered in London under the auspices of one or more London Lodges. The nomination of Lodges under whose auspices the Prestonian Lecture shall be delivered shall rest with the Trustees, but with power for one or more Lodges to prefer requests through the Grand Secretary for the Prestonian Lecture to be delivered at a meeting of such Lodge or combined meeting of such Lodges.
THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES
4. Having regard to the fact that Bro William Preston was a member of the Lodge of Antiquity and the original Lectures were delivered under the aegis of that Lodge, it is suggested that the first nomination of a Lodge to arrange for the delivery of the Lecture shall be in favour of the Lodge of Antiquity should that Lodge so desire.
5. Lodges under whose auspices the Prestonian Lecture may be delivered shall be responsible for all the expenses attending the delivery of such Lecture except the Lecturer's Fee.
6. Requests for the delivery of the Prestonian Lecture in Provincial Lodges will be considered by the Trustee who may consult the Board as to the granting or refusal of such consent.
7. Requests from Provincial Lodges shall be made through Provincial Grand Secretaries to the Grand Secretary, and such requests, if granted, will be granted subject to the requesting Provinces making themselves responsible for the provision of a suitable hall in which the Lecture can be delivered, and for the Lecturer's travelling expenses beyond the sum of ú1 5sOd, and if the Lecturer cannot reasonably get back to his place of abode on the same day, the requesting Province must pay his Hotel expenses or make other proper provision for his accommodation.
8. Provincial Grant Secretaries, in the case of Lectures delivered in the Province, and Secretaries of Lodges under whose auspices the Lecture may be delivered in London, shall report to the Trustees through the Grand Secretary the number in attendance at the Lecture, the manner in which the Lecture was received, and generally as to the proceedings thereat.
9. Master Masons, subscribing members of Lodges, may attend the Lectures, and a fee not exceeding 2s may be charged for their admission for the purpose of covering expenses.
Thus after a lapse of some sixty years the Prestonian Lectures were revived in their new form and, with the exception of the War period (1940‑46), a Prestonian Lecturer has been appointed by the Grand Lodge regularly each year.
It is interesting to see that neither of those extracts announcing the revival of the Prestonian Lectures made any mention of the principal change that had been effected under the revival, a change that is here referred to as their neli~ form. The importance of the new form is that the Lecturer is now permitted to choose his own subject and, apart from certain limitations inherent in the work, he really has a free choice.
Nowadays the official announcement of the appointment of the Prestonian Lecturer usually carries an additional paragraph which lends great weight to the appointment.
The Board desires to emphasize the importance of these the only Lectures held under the authority of the Grand Lodge. It is, therefore, hoped that applications for the privilege of having one of these official Lectures will be made only by Lodges which are prepared to afford facilities for all Freemasons in their area, as well as their own members, to participate and thus ensure an attendance worthy of the occasion.
INTRODUCTION
The Prestonian Lecturer has to deliver three `official' lectures to lodges applying for that honour. The `official' deliveries are usually allocated to one selected lodge in London and two in the provinces. In addition to these three the lecturer generally delivers the same lecture, unofficially, to other lodges all over the country, and, on occasions, to lodges abroad. It is customary for printed copies of the lecture to be sold ‑ in vast numbers ‑ for the benefit of one or more of the masonic charities selected by the author.
The Prestonian Lectures have the unique distinction, as noted above, that they are the only lectures given `with the authority of the Grand Lodge.' There are also two unusual financial aspects attaching to them. Firstly, that the lecturer is paid for his services, though the modest fee is not nearly as important as the honour of the appointment.
Secondly the lodges that are honoured with the official deliveries of the lectures are expected to take special measures for assembling a large audience and for that reason they are permitted ‑ on that occasion only ‑ to make small nominal charge for admission.
In 1965 a collection of 27 Prestonian Lectures was published entitled The Collected Prestonian Lectures 1925‑60 and this was reprinted in 1984. It covered the period from the time of the revival of the lectures until 1960 with the exception of the following three lectures that were omitted because of their esoteric content.
1924 W Bro Capt. C.W. Firebrace, ‑ The First Degree PGD
1932 W Bro J. Herron Lepper, PGD ‑ The Evolution of Masonic Ritual in England in the Eighteenth Century
1951 W Bro H.W. Chetwin, PAGDC ‑ Variations in Masonic Ceremonial Editorial versions of these three lectures were published by Quatuor Coronati Lodge in volume 94 of Ars Quatuor Coronatorum.
In 1983 The Collected Prestonian Lectures
1961‑74 was published and all fourteen lectures covering the period were printed in full.
This third volume contains all of the lectures from 1975 to 1987 and therefore brings the collected series as up to date as is possible. With the exception of the three lectures mentioned above the remaining 54 lectures are now contained in these three collected volumes. It should be emphasised that the opinions expressed and the accuracy of the statements made are the responsibility of the individual lecturers. Most of those honoured by the United Grand Lodge of England in being appointed as Prestonian Lecturers had previously distinguished themselves, not only as masonic scholars, but in other aspects of masonic life. Many of the lecturers were, and are, Past Masters of Quatuor Coronati Lodge and in this book which contains thirteen lectures, no less than eight are members of the lodge.
It must be pointed out that not only this collection but also the individual lectures are copyright. In every case permission to publish these lectures has been
THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES
obtained from the authors, their heirs or assigns and the publishers are indeed grateful for their help and co‑operation in making this publication available.
1988 The Publishers
ANTHONY SAYER, GENTLEMAN
THE TRUTH AT LAST
THE PRESTONIAN LECTURE FOR 1975
THEODORE BECK
INTRODUCTION
When I informed a very learned brother of the Title of my Paper it immediately produced the following comments `That a Biographical Study was very unusual for a Prestonian Lecture and that the subject was a challenging one'. He also implied that it was likely to be provocative and explosive and I readily accept these observations as `Fair Comment'.
It will I hope be clear to Brethren why I chose biographical research when I say that to me the development of Speculative Masonry is the history of men and it is the individual's construction and interpretation of ritual that makes it memorable, exciting and alive. The Challenge and the Sting stem from the following pungent comments made some time ago when discussing Anthony Sayer with a Masonic Scholar many years my senior who pontifically pronounced as follows:
(a) That although our knowledge on Sayer was of the slightest all that could be known was known.
(b) That no man with hands like that could be a gentleman (he was of course referring to the Mezzotint of the lost painted portrait by Joseph Highmore).
(c) That he was a nobody.
(d) That being Grand Master didn't do him any good.
My immediate reaction to his remarks was as follows:
(a) Utterly untenable.
(c) Whatever his detractor might say he did reach the top of the tree.
(d) The Apotheosis or glorification of Anthony Sayer was not the purpose of the exercise.
(b) So far as (b) was concerned a delayed reaction to this came after I had shown the mezzotint to a group of medical experts who unanimously pronounced that the unusual hands revealed a man severely afflicted by arthritis.
As the story develops we shall deal with these and other aspects in depth.
One of the most difficult but essential factors in understanding the spirit and condition of the times in which Sayer found himself is to recreate the atmosphere or perhaps a better word is the smell of these times and in the 17th and 18th centuries Cities and populous places did smell strongly and abominably. It has long been my considered opinion that not only was Speculative Masonry of
2 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES
English birth alone but also that it was the result of a sudden explosion in the first decades of the 17th century and not of gradual development from operative Masonry.
The three principal characters involved were utterly unaware of the influence their works would play in this particular field although they created enormous effect at the time in the realms of their own particular choice.
These individuals were:
(1) Palladio of Vicenza, that immortal Architect.
(2) Dr John Dee, Scientist, Occultist, Alchemist and Secret Agent to Queen Elizabeth 1.
(3) Christian Rosencreutz (Rosie‑Crucian is almost certainly an Anglicised and bastardised version of the Rosenkreuzes `Mythical' followers of this `mythical' person.
The influence of these persons lies not only in their writings but how others wrote on them and of them. Editions of their books or commentaries on them appeared in the 17th century. All the books in this connection to which I shall refer, or most of them, were published in the life time of Sayer's father.
You may well wonder where this argument is leading and I am now permitted to inform you that Anthony Sayer was by profession a Bookseller and is so described even when at the point of death. The mists of obscurity now slowly begin to clear.
The Books of Palladio exerted an enormous influence on the English scene. The most influential was I Quattro Libri Dell' Architettura and the edition of 1601 published in Venice largely owed its practical precedence to the high standard of fine illustrations and printing which until then had not been achieved. Inigo Jones owned a copy of this edition which he annotated. Palladio's system enabled the English Nobility and gentlemen of taste and intelligence to design buildings from the scale of Somerset House to that of the elegant country seat of the well to do and provided the catlyist between this moneyed class and the operative masons. The amateur of taste and the operative mason each could make a valuable contribution to the project. The former was glad to embrace the practical side of building and the latter had an opportunity to study design and be accepted on more or less equal terms by his employer.
John Dee (1527‑1608) A great mathematician and very extraordinary person in the republic of Letters and in the Occult. To quote his own words: `Anno 1542 I was sent by my father Rowland Dee to the University of Cambridge there to begin with Logic, and so to proceed in the learning of good Arts and Sciences.' His assiduity in making astronomical observations, which in those days were always understood to be connected with the desire of penetrating into futurity, brought some suspicions upon him, which was so far increased by a very singular incident which befell him, as to draw upon him the imputation of a conjuror or magician, which he could never shake off for 60 years after.
This incident was soon after his removal from St John's College on being chosen one of the Fellows of Trinity where he was assigned to be the under‑reader of the Greek tongue. `Hereupon' says he, `I did set forth, and it was seen of the University,
ANTHONY SAYER, GENTLEMAN THE TRUTH AT LAST 3
a Greek comedy of Aristophanes named in Latin Pax; with the performance of the scarabaeus or beetle, his flying up to Jupiter's palace with a man and his basket of victuals on her back; whereat was great wondering, and many vain reports spread abroad of the means how that was accomplished.' Disturbed with such reports he left England but later returned and was accepted at the Court of Elizabeth. Nevertheless his credit at Court was not sufficient to overcome the public odium he lay under on the score of magical incantations which was the true cause of his missing several preferments. At Mortlake where he had made his home, he was greatly feared as a practitioner in Black Magic and the mob set about his house scattering and destroying the bulk of his vast library which contained many manuscripts. That he was greatly feared is understandable from his close associations with one Edward Kelley, a notorious sinister figure and a dealer in necromancy of whom John Weaver writes in his Ancient Funerall Monuments published in 1631 Chapter IX 'Of such malefactors ... who violated sepulchres. This diabolical] questioning of the dead, for the knowledge of future accidents, was put in practice of the foresaid Kelley; who, upon a certaine night, in the Parke of Walton in le dale, in the county of Lancaster, with one Paul Waring (his fellow companion in such deeds of darknesse) invocated some of the infernall regiment, to know certaine passages in the life, as also what might bee knowne by the devils foresight of the manner and time of the death of a noble young Gentleman, as then in his wardship.' Kelley, who had previously inquired 'what Gorse was the last buried in Low‑churchyard, a Church thereunto adjoyning', was told that a poor man had been buried that very day. Kelley, Waring, together with a servant of the young Gentleman, an assistant who was well paid and who 'did helpe them to digge up the carcass of this poor caitiffe', betook themselves to the lonely churchyard at dead of night, and after certain conjurations over the cadaver they had so profanely and beastly disinterred, 'by their incantations, they made him (or rather some evil] spirit through his Organs) to speake, who delivered strange predictions, concerning the said Gentleman. I was told thus much by the said Servingman, a secondarie actor in that dismall abhorrid businesse. And the Gentleman himselfe (whose memorie I am bound to honour) told me a little before his death, of this conjuration by Kelley: as he had it from his said Servant and Tenant; onely some circumstances excepted, which he thought not fitting to come to his Master's knowledge,' 'The blacke ceremonies of that night being ended', Kelley and Waring packed away, leaving their wretched accomplice a prey to great horror. Weever justly comments: `These injuries done against the dead who ought to sleepe in peace untill the last sound of the Trumpet, have ever beene, even amongst the very Pagans themselves, esteemed execrable.' The new century saw the beginning of a reversal from the enlightenment and enquiring liberalism of the neo‑Platonists and Renaissance Magia and the mounting of a nation wide drive against all suspected of witchcraft and black magic.
King James I himself was vehemently opposed to witchcraft and in fairness to the King he had good reason to be. There certainly was a secret society practising magic as a weapon against the King and all these incidents led to James writing his Three Books on Demonalogy which he based on his personal examination of
4 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES
witches who had confessed. It is therefore not surprising that in the first year of his reign on 19 March 1604 James asked Parliament to enact a Statute which would help 'uproot the monstrous evils of cncharters'. It was a far more drastic law on this subject than any that had preceded it. 'If any person,' it stated, 'shall use practise, or exercise any invocation or conjuration of any evil and wicked spirit, or shall consult, covenant with, entertain, employ, feed or reward any evil and wicked spirit, to or for any intent and purpose, or take up any dead man, woman or child out of their graves or the skin, bone or any part of any dead person, to be used in any manner of witchcraft, sorcery or enchantment whereby any person shall be killed, destroyed, wasted, consumed, pined or harmed in his or her body, or any part thereof; that then every offender, their aiders, abettors and counsellors shall suffer the pains of death.' Though the Bishops of the House of Lords found the Statute 'Imperfect', it was rushed through Parliament and put on the Statute Book on 9 June 1604. James was taking no chances.
Dee was seized with a blind panic and took steps to establish his innocence by presenting a petition to Parliament urging them to pass 'An Act Generall against slander, with a specific penal order for John Dec, his case'. Certainly his plea for a Law against slander was not out of place for it would have been a safeguard for the innocent and feeble minded who for years to come were to suffer cruelly from the Witchcraft Statute which was often cited under pretexts of personal vengeance, sadism and terrorism resulting in diabolical persecution and the stoning and burning of harmless lunatics condemned of these malpractises.
Dee continued his invocation until 7 Sept 1607, which is the last date in the journal which was published by Meric Casaubon D. D. Lond in 1659 under the title of A True and faithlul Relation of irhat passed, for mans' years betxveen Dr John Dee, a Mathematician of great Fame in Queen Elizabeth and King James, their reigns and some Spirits ... out of the original copy Ivritten with Dr Dee's own hand, kept in the library of Sir Thomas Cotton Knt Baronet.
Casaubon's view was that Dee was deluded by Devils and little better than a black magician be that as it may the Government of the day endeavoured to suppress the book but was defeated by the speed with which the book sold.
It is unfortunate for Dee's reputation that his curious cabbalistic Treatise on the elements was later to be used as a basis for a revival of black magic in the 18th and 19th centuries. It is also of significance that it is alleged it was a basis for Rosicrucianism.
Certainly it would seem there are certain parallels between the aims and principals of Rosicrucianism and the ideas set out by Dee in his writings. Theosophy and the principals of reincarnation appear to form the modern elements of Rosicrucianism and both Dee and the Roscicrucians drew on ancient Egypt for their inspiration. To the uninitiated it would seem_ that man can experience 'momentary flights of the soul and become one with the universe and receive a flow of great understanding.' That highly successful man Elias Ashmole who on the 16 October 1646 was elected a brother of the Free and Accepted Masons snapped up any scrap of information on John Dee and Aubrey states that 'John Dee's printed book of Spirits is not above the third part of what was writ, which were in Sir Robert
ANTHONY SAYER, GENTLEMAN THE TRUTH AT LAST 5
Cottons Library, many whereof were much perished by being buried, and Sir Robert Cotton bought the field to digge after it'.
Dee's influence on those seeking to penetrate the veil of futurity was enormous. Indeed Dee's influence on Ashmole caused the latter to publish in 1650 a treatise by Dr Arthur Dee (eldest son of John) relating to the Philosopher's Stone together with another tract on the same subject by an unknown author. He published these pieces under a fictitious name; the title runs thus: Fasciculus Chemicus or Chemical Collections expressing the Ingress and Egress of the secret hermetic science ... whereto is added the Arcanum or grand secret of hermetic Philosophy.
It is clear from the study of the minutes of early Lodges that the members were voracious for information on every possible subject particularly the secrets of futurity and were prepared to obtain them by any means. A late example of which is exemplified by Dr Stukely F.R.S. who in 1717 removed to London and was one of those who revived the Society of Antiquaries. Considering these were some remains of the eleusinian Mysteries in Freemasonry, he gratified his curiosity and was constituted Master of a Lodge in 1723. He became Rector of St George's, Queen Square, London and died 3 March 1765 and was buried at East Ham, Essex. When Stukeley's grave was accidentally discovered in 1886, his coffin found at a depth of about six feet was found to be in a good state of preservation. On it was a brass plate bearing a simple inscription in Latin and ornamented with scroll work and a goat's head. To the Antiquary and all versed in black magic the goat was a potent and exceedingly sinister symbol. The survival of the Noah tradition and necromancy are still evident in the Third Degree.
The famous Statute against witchcraft of 1604, 1 Jas 1, remained in force until 1736, Stat 9, Geo II but though England has repealed the laws against witchcraft The Divine Law she cannot repeal 'Thou shalt not suffer a Witch to live'.
I. THE UBIQUITOUS SAYERS
The surname Sayer has variants as Sawyer and even Sare though the last form is rare. There are centres for the surname in Norfolk, Berkshire, Kent, Durham, York and Surrey. The name appears in many London Parishes and the Liberties thereof and in many Parish Registers SAYER and SAWYER are used for the same person and in the minutes of Old King's Arms Lodge (in Anthony's time in King's Arms Lodge) both Sayer and Sawyer are used. In spite of the surnames' wide distribution a compensating factor is that the Christian name Anthony is most unusual. In the case of the Berkshire Sayers four Anthonys in successive generations (c 1624‑1770) occur but in the case of the Norfolk Sayers `a very old county family' only one Anthony occurs being born in 1698. In both counties the name was an import through marriage. In the former case the Pyseley's in the latter the Oldfields.
Now two golden rules for genealogists are:
1. Verify your references.
2. Beware of probabilities.
Let us begin by verifying‑Anthony Sayer's burial entry: Church of St Paul's Covent Garden Parish Register No. 4 Burials 1739‑1767.
6 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES
1742 Jan 5th Anthony Sayer from St Giles in the Fields.
Now let us turn to the obituary which is extracted from the London News of Saturday, January 16th to Tuesday, January 19th 1742. `Buried St Pauls Church Covent Garden. A few days since died, aged about seventy years. Mr Anthony Sayer, who was Grand Master of the most Antient and Honourable Society of Free and Accepted Masons in 1717. His corpse was followed by a great number of gentlemen of that Honourable Society of the best quality, from the Shakespears Head Tavern* in the Piazza in Covent Garden and decently interid in Covent Garden Church.' It is a matter of considerable interest to compare the obituaries of James Anderson the author of the Constitutions (first issued in 1723 with a second edition of 1738) with that of Sayer's already quoted: The York Courant No 712 29th May to 5 June 1739 Deaths The Rev and Learned Dr James Anderson, at his house in Exeter Court, a noted Dissenting Minister. Author of the Royal Genealogical Tables and of several Theological and Historical Works, and the Constitutions of the Ancient and Hon. Society of Free and Accepted Masons lately published (1738). He was a Person of great Learning and Abilities, and reckoned a very facetious Companion.
The Newcastle Journal No 10 Saturday 9 June 1739 Last night was interr'd in Burnhill Fields the corpse of Dr Anderson, a Dissenting Teacher, in a very remarkable deep grave. His Pall was supported by five Dissenting Teachers, and the Rev Dr Desaguliers. It was followed by about a Dozen of Free‑Masons, who encircled the Grave; and after Dr Earle had harangued on the Uncertainty of Life, etc without one Word of the deceased, in a most solemn dismal Posture, lifted up their Hands, sigh'd and struck their Aprons three Times in Honour of the Deceased.
The impression left after reading these obituaries is strikingly different. Sayer though in greatly reduced circumstances clearly still commanded loyalty and affection from those with whom he mingled and the phrase `decently interid in Covent Garden Church' bears witness to a social status. Whether we approve or not there was a social convention in the 18th century of burial precedence e.g. Chancel, Central Nave, Aisles etc and finally Churchyard. A license had to be paid for and the Rector or Vicar benefitted thereby. Additional fees were also required for monuments or monumental inscriptions and grave stones and inscriptions cf.
Jan 13th 1743 An account of money received for laying grave stones. Received of Mr William Reason for the Liberty of laying a grave stone over the grave of Mrs Margaret Oldfield in the Deans Walk 8.8.0.
1 made a careful search of the Churchwardens accounts covering the years 17421744 inclusive for any comparable reference to Sayer but without success. In the normal course of events the Parish Clerk would have submitted details of all burials and the charges made for same. These items would be submitted as ,vouchers' but once the totals had been approved by the Churchwardens and Vestry Clerk would either be stored or in due time destroyed. The result here is *At which the Stewards Lodge was meeting at this time.
ANTHONY SAYER, GENTLEMAN THE TRUTH AT LAST 7
that we have quarterly totals (with a few exceptions as above) under the recurring heading `An account of money received for Burials in the Church and Churchyard and use of the Palls in .. . ' However on searching the Church Wardens Accounts for 1742 1 was rewarded by discovering the following: An A/C of money received for Pews and Seats Church Wardens Accounts March 5 1742 (the quarter in which Anthony died).
"MR SAYER the Bookseller, being a Gift to the Poor for his seat in the Church, having no Warrant 1‑1‑0'.
We have here for the first time proof of Sayer's profession. Through the courtesy and assistance of the Clerk and Assistant Clerk of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers I was enabled to search their records from 1600‑1750. They concurred with me in my opinion that relaxations took place in the Company after The Great Fire and that whilst Publishers, Printers and Book Binders had to be Free of the Company Book‑sellers did not.
The following Sayer entries were found: Christopher Sayer Bound 28 Jan 1616/7 Christopher Sayer sonne of John Sayer of Batersey in ye County of Surrey, gent, lately putt himself in apprentice to Lawrence Lisle Citizen and Stationer of London for ye terme of 8 years from this day of his Master Lawrence Lisle, Bookseller. We know as follows, he was bookseller in London 1607‑1626 The Tigers Head, St Paul's Churchyard, Son of William Lisle of Paddington, Co Middlesex, yeoman. Christopher was living in 1623 but never became Free of the Stationers Company.
Robert Sayer, Mapseller, Freedom by Redemption 6th September 1748. For details of which the Chamberlain's Court of the City of London kindly allowed me to inspect the Certificates.
Robert Sayer, Printseller, by Redemption, Ladbroke, Mayor.
Tuesday 6th day of September 1748 in the twenty second year of the reign of King George II of Great Britain, etc. Freedom of this City by Redemption in the Company of Stationers. Paying into Mr Chamberlain for this City's use the sum of Forty six shillings and eight pence. If this is not presented in three months it is void.
Son of James Sayer, late of Sunderland in the County of Durham, Gent, deceased. Thos. Shackleton, Haberdasher Elias Jones, Carman Robert Walton, Vintners Andrew Broson, 7th September 1748 Partridge Thomas Longman, Warden.
Robert Sayer had a very full and successful career, he was received in to the Livery in 1753 and became a member of the Court in 1783 his last appearance on which is 1791. He was publisher, map and print seller from 1751‑1794. He succeeded Philip Overton at the Golden Bush, opposite Fetter Lane, Fleet Street; (afterwards No 53 Fleet Street). One of the leading publishers in his day, his publication of maps and prints were very numerous, among them being a general view of the City of London 1751, a view of the Monument 1752, The Small British Atlas 1753 ... an Atlas of the Mundern System 1774.
John Bennett entered into partnership with Sayer in 1775 and together they
8 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES
published several works. The American Atlas: The North American Pilot: The West Indian Atlas: and The Large Map of Yorkshire. Bennett remained in partnership until 1784; from that date to 1794 Sayer continued to publish various maps and charts and was finally succeeded by Lawrie and Whittle.
James Sayer, mapseller, son of Robert. Became Free by Patrimony 4th July 1775, A member of the Livery 22nd December 1778. Died 10 Dec 1803, at Richmond Surrey.
His addresses are listed Fleet Street 1786‑1794, Queen Square Bloomsbury 17951798, Bedford Row 1799, Richmond Co, Surrey 1800‑1803.
Thomas Sayer Apprenticed 3 December 1754, Son of John Sayer of Eastcheap (Haberdasher, Hats) to Thos. Crump of Warwick Lane. Bookbinder. Free I November 1763.
William Sayer Apprenticed 5 August 1755. Son of Mark Sayer* of Academy Court, Chancery Lane, Taylor, to Robert Sayer printer. Thomas did not obtain his Freedom of the Company.
From the foregoing names it will be noted there were Sayers associated with printing and the Book Trade from the beginning of the 17th up to the beginning of the 19th century, with Anthony Sayer mid way in time between Christopher Sayer gent, of Surrey and Robert Sayer gent whose father was of Sunderland, Co. Durham.
Many books were published in the 17th and 18th century on the theme 'does trade extinguish gentry' and the accepted view was that it did not. Conversely it was not easy for a tradesman (unless highly successful) to be accepted as a gentleman. In the case of Christopher and Robert both could claim the right to bear a Coat of Arms and what is more the Arms were the same.
2
THE PORTRAIT
There is an old and true saying 'Show me a portrait and I can save you a thousand words' and fortunately although the portrait by Joseph Highmore is lost we have an excellent and rare mezzotint by John Faber taken from the portrait. It is this mezzotint which has on it the following engraved wording Anthony Sayer, Gent, Grand Master of the Masons.
This evidence of the wording is in my view of enormous significance for at this time Sayer was in contact with a wide cross section of the community for the City of London and of Westminster. The upper crust being composed of the nobility and gentry. The last Heralds Visitation was admittedly in 1688 but snobbery and privilege were rife and styling himself a gentleman if his claim was false would have brought upon him that cruellest of penalties; ridicule. I have come across no example yet of this print where erasure or omission of the word has occurred.
To searchers for the portrait I would offer one word of warning, it may not show Sayer with the apron (the flap of which is upturned in the mezzotint). The reason is as follows: In the possession of the District Grand Lodge of the Punjab there is a 'Proof before Letters' of the engraving. In this particular example no *In the Burial Register of St Giles in the Fields is the following 1741 May 10 Catherine of Mark Sayer (presurnably his wife).
ANTHONY SAYER, GENTLEMAN THE TRUTH AT LAST 9
apron is shown and I am convinced this implies that in Highmore's portrait the apron may be lacking.
It is my considered opinion that the mezzotint was executed in 1717. There are two reasons for this
(1) The wording refers to `Grand master' which we know was in 1717 and
(2) Prints are produced to sell and the year when Sayer was at his Masonic Zenith was when sales were likely to be the highest. The fact that Sayer himself was a bookseller with doubtless many bookseller friends would be certainly no hindrance to sales.
Searchers after the Sayer portrait should be reminded that in 1926 the following advertisement appeared in The Times, No 44331, London, Friday, July 23rd, on the front page (Adverts), it ran thus: Freemasons' ‑ Painting, Anthony Sayer, First Grand Master, by Highmore. Price ú100.‑Write box 34,953. The Times 42 Wigmore Street W.I.
Bro Albert F. Calvert examined this painting and satisfied himself conclusively that it was a contemporary portrait touched up and definitely not Sayer and that the wording thereon had been recently faked.
NOTE
In 1762 Joseph Highmore for the reason given below moved to Canterbury and as a consequence decided to sell his collection of paintings. The Sale took place at LANGFORD'S, GRAND PIAZZA, Covent Garden on the 5th March, 1762. It had been suggested that Sayer's Portrait had been included in this sale. I therefore approached the Keeper of the Library of The Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington and in addition to the details mentioned above was informed that only one copy of the catalogue was recorded in LUGT'S Repertorie of Sales and that copy was in the Cabinet des Estampes of the RIJKSMUSEUM, Amsterdam.
On writing to that Museum I had a most courteous reply from the Assistant Librarian the gist of which was `I would like to inform you that I can not trace the portrait of Anthony Sayer. There are however many portraits but often without a name.' BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES These notes prove that the painting of the Portrait and the execution of the Mezzotint could both have been produced in 1717.
Joseph Highmore Esq An eminent painter he was born in the parish of St James Garlickhithe, London, June 13, 1692, being the third son of Mr Edward Highmore a coal‑merchant in Thames Street. Having such an early and strong inclination to painting, that he could think of nothing else with pleasure, his father endeavoured to gratify him in a proposal to his uncle, who was serjeant painter to King William, and with whom Mr (afterwards Sir James) Thornhill had served his apprenticeship. With good reason the offer was declined, and he was articled as clerk to an attorney on July 18, 1707 but this was so much against his own declared inclination, that in about 3 years he began to form resolutions of indulging his natural disposition in
10 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES
his favourite art by having continuously enjoyed his leisure hours in designing and in the study of geometry, perspective, architecture, and anatomy; all without any instruction except books. He had afterwards an opportunity of improving himself in anatomy, by attending the lectures of Mr Cheseldon, before entering himself at the Painters Academy in Great Queen Street, where he drew for 10 years and had the honour to be particularly noted by Sir Godfrey Kneller. On June 13, 1714 his clerkship expired and on March 26, 1715, he began painting as a profession and settled in the City. In 1761 on the marriage of his daughter to the Rev Mr Duncombe, son to one of his oldest friends, he took a resolution of retiring from business and disposing of his collection of pictures, which he did by auction during March 1762. Soon after he moved to his son‑in‑law's at Canterbury where he spent the remainder of his life. He died on March 3rd 1780 and was buried in the South aisle of Canterbury Cathedral leaving one son Anthony, educated in his own profession.
Highmore was Junior Grand Warden in 1727 when he was described as a `Painter'.
(The rate books show that in 1739 he was living in Newton Row) John Faber This artist was a native of Holland and at first practised portrait painting on vellum, but afterwards he applied to Mezzotint in which line he executed a number of plates. He resided for many years in England and died at Bristol in 1721, leaving a more famous son who died in 1756.
The following description of the manner in which Sir Cecil Wray's portrait came to be painted may be of interest. It is taken from the Minutes of Old King's Arms Lodge of which Sayer was Tyler until his death in 1742.
Monday December 1st 1735 A Motion was made that the Foot Cloth made use of at the Initiation of new members should be defaced on Acct. of convenience. Carried Nem contradicente.
A Second Motion was made that our Right Worshipful Brother Sir Cecil Wray's picture late DGM and the cloth mentioned should be applyed to that purpose and that our Bro West* should be appointed to draw the same and that the Lodge do pay for it when done.
Bro West was pleased to desire that he might have the pleasure to present the Lodge with Sir Cecil's Picture if his Worship will do him the Honour to sit for him, this was a most acceptable proposition to the Society and Bro West's Health was proposed and drank to with great satisfaction.
Monday 7 June 1736 Bro West was pleased to bring his kind Present of our late Friend and Venerable Master Sir Cecil Wray according to his proposal of Dec 1st last which happened to be finished but just before it pleased Almighty God to call him to Himself which appeared to the Society to be done with so much Dexterity and Happiness that it was by a Majority carried that in Order to make this worthy Bro some sort of amends and to show a decent gratitude for the same it would be proper to make him a present of ten guineas which with some fourteen pounds that the frame and case came to and which the Lodge ordered should be handsomely done suitable to the subject and the goodness of the picture at the last Chapter. In order that this necessary Expense should not sink the funds of the Lodge too far that *Robert West, Face painter in Holborn, initiated in Old King's Arms Lodge 4 November 1734.
ANTHONY SAYER, GENTLEMAN THE TRUTH AT LAST I I the following Motion be inserted in the next circular Letter to be distributed in July that none may plead ignorance thereon, viz; It is thought proper by the Lodge for the support of the public Fund and the Honour of the Lodge to raise a general contribution of one half guinea each. It has already been carried once. Your special Attendance is therefore desired on this Occasion to give your Assent or Dissent on this Head.
3. A BREEDING GROUND OF THE MASONIC HIERARCHY An area where the most intense masonic activity was taking place in the 17th and 18th centuries extended from St. Paul's Churchyard in the East, to Westminster in the West, And St. Giles in the Fields from the North to the River Thames in the South. Further afield, and entered on the first pages of the original Minute Book of Grand Lodge were, regular constituted Lodges at Edgware, Acton and Richmond the first due to Desaguliers and the last due to the influence of Sayer.
Examination of Parish registers in the above mentioned area indicates that Sayers, whether related to Anthony or not, were moving westward. In the 17th century the area around St. Giles in the Fields was an aristocratic one but later it became so densely populated and so notorious that to dwell in a garret in St. Giles was a symbol of utter destitution or degradation. Indicative of the fearful conditions was the building of St. George's in Bloomsbury to enable the gentry and better quality to avoid the risks of attending church at St. Giles in the Fields. Sayer, latterly, certainly worshipped at St. Paul's Covent Garden.
The limits of area quoted above contained four Lodges which we know were invoked in the formation of the First Grand Lodge in 1717. Their places of meeting were: 1. The Goose and Gridiron Ale‑House in St. Paul's Churchyard (now the Lodge of Antiquity No 2).
2. The Crown Ale‑House in Parker's Lane (Lodge erased in 1736).
3. The Apple Tree Tavern in Charles Street, Covent Garden, Anthony Sayer's own Lodge (now the Lodge of Fortitude and Old Cumberland No 12).
4. The Rummer and Grapes Tavern in Channel Row, Westminster (now the Royal Somerset House and Inverness Lodge No 4).
The location of others can be plotted from the early lists of Lodges.
It is acknowledged that Grand Lodge in 1717 was an innovation applying with close limits to the Cities of London and Westminster only. The idea behind the project was for the principal officers of the few Lodges within these narrow bounds to meet together quarterly in brotherly communication and once a year hold a Grand Assembly and Feast. Outside these gatherings Grand Lodge did not exist except as an ethereal or abstract image consisting of the Grand Master and his two Grand Wardens only. So far as a central controlling body was envisaged it was only of strictly limited territorial control ‑ as described above ‑ within the Cities of London and Westminster and their immediate environs.
There is to me more than a possibility that the germ of co‑operation may have sprung from the idea of the so called `territorial lodges' which can be traced in Scotland to the beginning of the 17th century. These did not appear in England 12 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES at that time. In the North of England however at the beginning of the 18th century there do appear lodges of a 'territorial' type but with no official status, eg those at Alnwick in Northumberland and Swalwell County Durham. There are various indications of co‑operation among Scottish Lodges. The so called St. Clair charges of 1601 and 1628 show that five lodges united in 1601 and seven in 1628 then finally nine lodges to support the claim to exercise jurisdiction over the Masons of Scotland. From the beginning of the 17th century there was without question an intermingling and transference between England and Scotland. The counties of Northumberland and Durham ‑ particularly the latter ‑ played a big part, for Sunderland was a Port by which many Scots entered England. James Sayer father of Robert, as we have seen came from Sunderland and it was from the North that the 'Mason Word' became increasingly used in the South and was a foretaste of the ritual change to come. Of the four old Lodges already mentioned No 4 easily outstripped the other three in aristocratic membership, to have it in control over the other three would have caused umbrage but a nebulous 'Grand Lodge' of three individuals was acceptable to all. The increasing coastal coal trade between Durham and London no doubt played its part in introducing Northern masonic influence. The coal trade played an important part in the economics of the City of London, and levies made on its sale in London were used to finance many projects including the building of Churches. It also brought South some Northern influences. Joseph Highmore's father was an eminent coal merchant. Robert Sayer the distinguished bookseller received his Freedom of the City on September 1 st 1748 and the Stationers Company described his father as James Sayer, late of Sunderland in the county of Durham, gent, deceased. Robert became one of the leading Publishers in his day and succeeded Philip Overton at the Golden Buck, opposite Fetter Lane, Fleet Street. He lived in Queen Square Bloomsbury, Bedford Row and died at Richmond. Between the years 1618 and 1748 we have, including Anthony, no fewer than five Sayers; publishers, bookbinders, printsellers and map sellers. I consider it not unlikely that Anthony was associated with John Overton. All these Sayers lived and worked in the area described and the Piazza Covent Garden is referred to again and again.
4. THE INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUALS ON A FRATERNITY If my earlier statement that `accepted or speculative Masonry is the history of Men' is accepted, the first three Grand Masters are admirable examples. ANTHONY SAYER, GEORGE PAYNE AND DR JOHN THEOPHILUS DESAGULIERS. These three men, all of them commoners, merit the classification of Grand Originals. The last named, DR DESAGULIERS is the best known and most eminent of the three ‑ both in his career and as a mason. He was elected a Fellow and Curator of the Royal Society in 1714. He introduced the reading of lectures in experimental philosophy to the Metropolis and was Chaplain to the Duke of Chandos and to the Prince of Wales. He also played a great part in reorganising ritual and originated the formation of a General Charity. Information on his career is readily accessible.
Of the Second Grand Master, GEORGE PAYNE, much less is known. He has ANTHONY SAYER, GENTLEMAN THE TRUTH AT LAST 13 generally been described as a learned antiquarian but no evidence is available that he was ever elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. I did however find the following in the Minutes of Old King's Arms Lodge. Monday, August 1 1737 `Part of the Architecture of Palladio were read by the Master to which the Society were very attentive and the late Grand Master our Bro Payne thereupon gave the Lodge a curious Acct. of the manner of building in Persia'. Little has been discovered of Payne's private life his will is dated Dec 8 1755 and was proved by his wife on March 9 1757. He died on Jan 23 1757. He is described as of St. Margaret's Westminster. He died at the house in New Palace Yard, was Secretary to the Tax Office and was comfortably off. He was deeply respected by the brethren of the `Old Lodge at the Horn' and the craft generally. He compiled the General Regulations which were afterwards finally arranged and published by James Anderson in 1723. His last appearance in Grand Lodge was in November 1754.
ANTHONY SAYER ‑ Gentleman and Bookseller ‑ was elected and invested First Grand Master on St. John Baptist's Day 1717. The only record of the proceedings has to rely on an account by James Anderson, who as a historian must be considered suspect. The account is too well known to require repetition but the following points must be borne in mind. The proceedings opened by the senior past master present, taking the chair for the show of hands. It is clear from this there were other names (or name) submitted, probably Payne or Desagulier or both. Sayer won, by what margin we know not, was proclaimed and invested. Anderson (always suspect) states four Lodges were present, names them and refers to other past masters being present. Samuel Prichard (author of Masonry Dissected) gives the number as six lodges and is probably right. On election not only was Sayer concerned with the problem of co‑operation and co‑ordination but with providing Speculative Masons with an acceptable image to the public at large. There is no doubt at this time that speculative masonry was highly unpopular, mistrusted and feared. The argument of the following unique Broad Sheet of 1698 is not easy to refute.
TO ALL GODLY PEOPLE IN THE CITIE OF LONDON Having thought it needful to warn you of the Mifchiefs and Evils practifed in the Sight of GOD by thofe called Freed Mafons. I fay take Care left their Ceremonies and fescret Swearings take hold of you; and be wary that none caufe you to err from Godliness. For this devllifh Sect of Men are Meeters in fecret which fwear againft all without their Following. They are the Anti Chrift which was to come leading Men from Fear of GOD. For how fhould Men meet in fecret Places and with fecret Signs taking Care that none obferve them to do the 14 THE PRESTON[AN LECTURES Work of GOD; are not thefe the Ways of Evildoers? Knowing how that GOD obferveth privilly them that fit in Darkness they fhall be fmitten and the Secrets of the Hearts layed bare. Mingle not among this corrupt People left you be found fo at the World's Conflagration.
Set forth as a Warning to this Chriftian Generation by M. Winter, and Printed by R. Save at Gray's Inngate, in Holbourn, 1698.
It must be made clear that `Antichrist' is not used in the Anti Popery sense but in the terms of St. John's Epistle 1, 2:18‑22.
In order to realise the pervading belief in the occult at this time it is sufficient to mention Pandaemonium, or the Devils Cloyster by Richard Bovet 1684 (probably born 1641 and described as Richard Bovet, Armiger, Wadham College, Oxford) described by those who should know, `as without question one of the most extraordinary works in the immense library of occult research.' Here is reported the belief (also by St. Clement and St. Augustine) that the flood was to be the cure of devil worship. Shem and Japhet followed Noah in good works but Cham or Ham instituted his own son Mizraim into the forbidden science incurring Noah's curse. Bovet also refers to `the idolatry of the Great Ages after the Flood'.
Sayer's real problem and those of his successors in title was to change the vestiges still remaining of necromancy and the occult into an acceptable form by speculative explanation.
Thus the age old tradition of Noah's three sons raising the corpse of their dead father `for to try if they could find anything about him for to lead them to the vertuable secret which this famous preacher had, for I hope all will allow that all things needful for the new world were in the ark with Noah'. This was transformed into the five points of fellowship with its speculative and moral explanation stage by stage. The dire warning is that the Master or Magician questioning the spirits must remain in the circle, the barrier and protection against evil and not be enticed out by any pretext or illusion ‑ this becomes watered down to ‑ that being a point from which a master mason cannot err. The essential secrets of the operative mason were retained (a) How to form a right angle. (b) How to lay levels and prove horizontals. (c) How to erect uprights whilst fixing them on their proper bases ‑ these were the essentials for the operative mason and all these three are essential to ensure stability. This was the title stability which Sayer selected for his ritual. His goal for the order was however more than stability it was respectability.
S. SAYER'S IMPACT ON RITUAL Sayer's election as Grand Master from amongst other strong contestants for that office was due to the following factors: ANTHONY SAYER, GENTLEMAN THE TRUTH AT LAST 15 (a) He lived and worked in the vicinity (b) He was a gentleman, possibly the only one in style and background from amongst three out of the four Lodges.
(c) As a bookseller he possessed a degree of learning and erudition (d) A natural reluctance from the three lodges of widely varying cross section ‑ operative masons and tradesmen to be bossed by a member of a lodge consisting of members of the nobility and highranking members of the armed forces.
It is more than possible that he originally formulated the need for Lodges to co‑operate and confer.
Always bearing in mind that it takes time for an idea, however excellent or revolutionary, to be implemented it is not easy and sometimes impossible to pinpoint the Individual responsible. These factors soon became evident after 1717 ie masonry must be given a boost Historically. A more interesting story and climax reflected in the ritual with more involvement of individuals and a universality by omitting references to the Trinity, the latter an integral part of the Guild and Operative masonry by Mediaeval times.
From time out of mind the traditions of masons had been expressed by the Rule of Three (three times three) (1) Noah, Shem and Japhet two of his sons and Cham or Ham the third son who incurred the curse of Noah. (2) Moses, Aholiab and Bezaleel. (3) Solomon, Hiram King of Tyre and Hiram Abif. That splendid and exciting Graham MS dated 1726 gives us the truest picture so far discovered of the pre trigradal ceremony, the latter form introduced in the lifetime of Sayer. The only major corrupt section of the Graham MS is the reference to a King Alboyne and his two sons being associated with Bezaleel, and the omission of Moses. Alboyne is a corruption of Aholiab and to overcome this problem two sons were attributed to Alboyne to maintain the pattern of three. In the formation of a three degree tradition Noah and the practice of necromancy by the three sons and its suggestion of evil magic and all other occult references were banished, the craftmanship of Bezaleel is added to a completely fabricated Hiram Legend, Bezaleel is omitted, and with the drama intensified by the death of Hiram under conditions bordering on the ridiculous, and all references to the blessed Trinity disappears in favour of Deism. Everything being done to encourage universality of appeal. The reference in the Graham MS catechism, `what is your foundation words at the laying of a building where you expect that some infernal wandering spirit hath haunted and possibly may shake your handiwork' is symptomatic of the belief in the 17th and 18th centuries of good and bad spirits or angels in continual universal strife Job 1:7 `And the Lord said unto Satan, from whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.' After the first two decades of the 18th century the age of reason began to take over, scientific explanation began to take command and scientifically explain and question the Biblical Story.
There are, I think, few who would dispute that the late Dean Inge must be regarded as an example of an extremely advanced master of the Modernist School. On Sunday 6th March, 1932, when preaching at St. Marks, North Audley Street, 16 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES London, the Dean said: 'Liberal theologians may jeer and philosophers scoff but there it is. We cannot get rid of the Devil. "Deliver us from the Evil One" is the right translation. I have not the slightest doubt that Christians are enjoined to believe in a positive, malignant, spiritual power. Two reasons alone would make the Graham MS vitally interesting (1) That it entirely bears out Dean Inge's belief and (2) It is completely non‑operative in essence and the ideas behind it are exceedingly impressive.
One is left with the inescapable conclusion that until the beginning of the 18th century Bezaleel was the outstanding personality and not Hiram. The following baptismal entry in the Parish Registers of St. Clement Danes, Strand, LondonVol. 5, Baptism 1671/2‑1700 would seem to confirm this '1672, May 9th, Basalael Jellyman the son of Basalael and Elizabeth.' I would expect to find that the father was an operative or speculative mason of standing and the surname Jellyman may well be known to specialists in Building history of the period. After 1700 Hiram would have taken precedence.
But who can doubt that Sayers misfortune prompted one of the most unforgettable incidents in the First Degree as we know it ... it cannot be denied we have many members of rank and opulence but some who perhaps from circumstance of unavoidable misfortune or calamity are reduced to the lowest ebb of poverty and distress. I will touch on this again under 'Charity'.
To sum up, Sayer witnessed and participated in a working of two degrees; was in the midst of a dramatic reform when three degrees were elaborated out of the elements of two degrees and a dramatic change made in emphasis, in personality, and in drama. He also saw a nebulous Grand Lodge, of three persons only, become a powerful working entity and the Craft put on a sound financial and commercial basis before he died in 1742.
6. SA YER'S IMPACT ON THE CHARITIES There is little doubt that individual lodges were highly suspicious of centralisation and this extended to their attitude towards a suggested joint charity. This was no doubt influenced by a natural desire to assist brethren one knows personally rather than to a general fund where the recipient is in many cases a complete stranger. The early minutes of Old King's Arm Lodge show that to their own brethren assistance was forthcoming by grants from the lodge and the odd guinea from members themselves if their compassion was aroused. Sometimes Legacies came from testators to be administered as certain persons named thought fit. The Will of John Sayer of Crownthorpe, Norfolk is an example (1719). After bequests to Ann his wife and his sons Samuel and John he makes the following 'then 1 give to poor friends belonging to our monthly meeting at HINGHAM in the county aforesaid, the sum of five pounds of like lawful money to be paid into the hands of John Stacy and Robert Myles Sen. within six months next after my Decease and leave it to their discretion to Dispose of the same'.
Anthony became Tyler of Old King's Arms Lodge (1731) and the following Minutes on the General Charity are between the years 1737‑40, two years before his death, and present a fair picture of the then general attitude.
ANTHONY SAYER, GENTLEMAN THE TRUTH AT LAST 17 MONDAY FEB 6 17378. PROPOSED BY BRo GASCOIGNE.
That this Lodge has been liable to the inconvenience of hazarding its Right of attending at the Committee of Charity by not contributing in due time to the general Charity; for want of a Proper Regulation concerning the same. A discretionary power to be lodged in the master of contributing to the Charity (at any Quarterly Communication) what sum he should think fit not exceeding one guinea, providing always that no public Chapter of the Lodge be held between the Time of such Quarterly Communication and that of receiving the summons thereto.
MONDAY THE IST DECEMBER 1740.
A letter from the Grand Secretary to the Master was read imparting that there would be a committee of Charity held at the Queens Head in Great Queen Street, on tomorrow night, when the Lodge was all of opinion that the Rt. Worshipful Master should attend.
MONDAY JAN 5 1740/41.
Our Rt. Worshipful Master acquainted the Lodge that next Wednesday will be held a Quarterly Communication at the Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, and desired to know if one guinea shall be carryed in for Charity from this Lodge which was unanimously agreed to and Bro Curzon ordered to attend then with the Warden. The Rt. Worshipful Master not sure that he will be engaged upon other business.
It had been at the Quarterly Communication of November 1724 that the centralised Charity Scheme was first brought forward. A special committee was then appointed to consider the proposal; its report was submitted to Grand Lodge and to the Private Lodges and was adopted by Grand Lodge on 28 February 1726. A committee for the Charity was appointed in June 1727 but it was not until the end of 1729, after Desaguliers had reported in March of that year, that the spirit of Charity began reviving in several Lodges and contributions began to trickle in. The misfortune of Sayer had brought reality home to them.
LATTER DAYS That his misfortune left him clear of all stigma or loss of caste is amply shown by the fact that during the remainder of his life he was Tyler of at least four famous lodges. About 1731 he was appointed Tyler of King's Arms Lodge and Lodge of Friendship No 6. In both these Lodges the indefatigable Martin Clare FRS and a great friend of Sir Cecil Wray was a leading light and one who must have felt great sympathy with Anthony. In the Lodge he is always referred to as `Our Tyler'. During March 1739/40 he received an additional gift of money, `In consideration of the late hard weather' and received compassionate consideration. In March 1741/2 a few weeks after Sayer's death his widow was granted financial relief. This is the last occasion she is referred to and I identified her with Elizabeth Sayer, widow, in the burial register of St. Giles in the Fields some six months after Anthony's death.
At the time of Sayer's death the membership of King's Arms Lodge reads like the pages of Debrett. He was buried in the Church of St. Pauls Covent Garden and as I have shown was quite an expensive business, I consider it certain the Lodge paid for his funeral and a great number of members of this Lodge and Grand Stewards lodge saw him laid to rest. Whether they paid for an inscription 18 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES I could find no evidence nor whether they paid for his widow's burial in the parish of St. Giles. It is strange that the lives of the Sayers of Pulham St. Mary, Norfolk and those of St. Mary's Battersea, Surrey, failed in the male line at this time.
Between 1719 and 1724 Sayer suffered financial disaster and was in fact one of the first recipients to receive financial assistance from Grand Lodge on the 21st November 1724. On the 21 st April 1730 he was again a petitioner. The appeal sets forth his misfortunes and great poverty. This state of affairs is made even more poignant because on 29th January 1730, the Duke of Norfolk was invested and installed at an Assembly and Feast held at Merchant Taylors Hall in the presence of a brilliant Company. No fewer than nine former Grand Masters attended on this occasion and walked in the procession ‑ juniors first, viz Lords Coleraine, Inchiquin and Paisley, the Duke of Richmond, Lord Dalkeith, the Duke of Montague, Dr Desaguliers, George Payne and Anthony Sayer.
If Sayer's position was embarrassing from the financial angle in April, it was even more so at the end of the year for on December 15th 1730, Bro Sayer attended to answer a complaint made against him; after hearing both parties ‑ some of the brethren being of opinion that what he had done was clandestine, others that it was irregular ‑ the Question was put whether what was done was clandestine, or irregular only, and the Lodge was of opinion that it was irregular only, whereupon, the Deputy Grand Master told Bro Sayer that he was acquitted of the charge against him, and recommended to him to do nothing so irregular in the future.
At this meeting the powers of the Committee of Charity were much extended. All business referring to Charity was delegated to it for the future, and the committees were empowered to hear complaints, and ordered to report their opinion to Grand Lodge.
Sayer's position had brought home to masons at large that a common charity fund was essential. They had seen a brother struck down by an undeserved calamity.
As to the charge of irregularity its form has never been agreed upon but in the fresh knowledge that Sayer was associated with the book trade my own view is that it was linked with the publication of Samuel Prichards Masonry Dissected, which proved a best seller.
I hope it will be appreciated why the opening pages are taken up with a description of the time. Pictorially of course the engravings of Hogarth's Industrial and Idle apprentices are quite superb in this respect. How forcibly Anthony Sayer's chequered life reminds us of those thought evoking words of Ecclesiastes 5:11.
I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill, but time and chance happeneth to them all PRESTON'S ENGLAND The Everyday Life of Masons of the late XVIII Century THE PRESTONIAN LECTURE FOR 1976 Brig. A. C. F. JACKSON 1. William Preston was born at Edinburgh in 1742 of middle class parents, his father being a Writer to the Signet. He was apprenticed to a printer, but moved to London in 1760. Here, he was immediately employed by the King's Printers, and he remained with this firm all his working life.
A few weeks before his 21st birthday, he was initiated into an Antient lodge, but within months he and several others of its brethen changed their allegiance to the Moderns. He soon became a fine ritualist and Master of his lodge. However, he found himself unsatisfied with the rather elementary ceremonies then in use, and began their revision. By 1772, his work had progressed sufficiently for him to hold a `Grand Gala' at which he demonstrated his new system before many distinguished Masons.
In the same year, he started a course of instruction in his Lectures, and published his book, The Illustrations of Masonry. This explained his Lecture system, and also revised and brought up to date the history of the Craft, written by Dr. James Anderson in his books of Constitutions in 1723 and 1738. The early part of this revised history, i.e. pre‑1717, can best be described as `traditional' but the later part adds to our knowledge of XVIII century Masonry. The Illustrations of Masonry ran into many editions and can be found in most Masonic libraries.
Except for a period of ten years, when he was in trouble with Grand Lodge, Preston continued with his Masonic teaching until forced to give it up owing to ill‑health. He died, after a long illness, in 1818 and was buried in St. Paul's Cathedral. Among his bequests was an endowment to finance the delivery of an annual lecture to teach the Masonic system he had developed. This was given for some years but fell into abeyance. The Prestonian Lecture was revived in 1924 and a lecturer is chosen annually by the trustees of the fund. Now, however, the lecturer may choose any Masonic subject he wishes.
2. The object of my lecture is to show what the Masons of Preston's period were like; and how they lived in and out of lodge. I have chosen this subject as I believe that, in our studies of early Masonry, we have been too inclined to treat Masonry as if it existed in a vacuum, and to neglect the social and economic background which motivated the individual Mason and directed his daily life and his Masonry. The XVIII century is well documented and, to keep the lecture within bounds, I will deal primarily with the Middle class Masons of London, of the type of William Preston, and shall seldom refer to the rich or poor; though few of the latter were Masons.
19 20 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES PART I‑ THE BACKGROUND TO MASONRY Historical Note 3. Until the Napoleonic Wars started at the end of the XVIII century, it was generally a peaceful period, particularly in the second half when the only major war‑that of the American Revolution‑had little effect on life in England. It was also a period of economic growth with the Agricultural Revolution bringing a higher national prosperity. The Industrial Revolution was yet to come, but the improvements in communications, which were to make it possible, were starting in the last decades of the century; and were also adding to the country's wealth.
With the increased prosperity of the upper and middle classes came the opportunity to enjoy leisure and the social life. Communities in the various levels of society were small enough for everyone to know everyone else. One of the results was that, in the English taverns and coffee houses, there arose little dining clubs formed by people of similar interest. Into this framework, the Masonic lodge fitted extremely well. A lodge had all the advantages of a club without the excessive gambling and drinking; and Masonic brethren, with a Tyler, could ensure a privacy for themselves which the ordinary club could not guarantee for its members.
4. The first half of the century provided the biggest changes in the whole history of Masonry. Operative Masonry had virtually disappeared, while the comparatively few lodges of the XVII century had multiplied into a number of Grand Lodges controlling many hundreds of lodges all over the civilized world. The Old Charges in their Manuscript Constitutions were developed into a printed Book o/ Constitutions and an unwritten system of three degrees. These three degrees, in their turn, had become comparatively unimportant; the main `work' being the Lectures.
The second half of the century should have been a period of Masonic consolidation and, in many respects, it was so. In England, however, Masonry was bedevilled by the feud between the premier Grand Lodge (the `Moderns') and the Grand Lodge of the `Antients', the latter started by Masons who were unwilling to accept the premier Grand Lodge's authority. Each accused the other of mutilating the ceremonies, but the real differences were small. As a generalization, the Antients may be considered as being mostly drawn from the artisan classes with their lodges tending towards being benefit societies, while the Moderns were of a higher social standard with their lodges less formal and more convivial.
5. It was not an age of political or religious toleration. Masonry, however, was in advance of contemporary thought. Masonry could not have continged at all in England through the period of the Civil Wars of the previous century if politics had entered into it. It is hard for us now to appreciate what a courageous step forward towards universal brotherhood had been the 1723 Book of Constitutions which opened Masonry to men of all religions. As was intended, Masonry now became possible to non‑Christians, but it also brought together in lodges all shades of Christianity, ignoring the legal barriers designed to keep the different sects apart. Anderson, the Presbyterian Dissenter; Desaguiliers, the Huguenot Protestant; Daniel Deville, the Jewish snuff merchant; and the Roman Catholic Duke of Norfolk could all be members of lodges.
PRESTON's ENGLAND 21 The laws of England forbade the same tolerance in civil life. Penal laws against Roman Catholics had been enacted in the reign of Queen Anne and, by the Test Acts, neither Catholics nor Dissenters could enter a university or hold public office without receiving Holy Communion according to the rites of the Church of England. In 1780, an Anglican member of Parliament, Henry Beaufoy, tried to get the laws changed: `The Saviour of the World instituted the Eucharist in commemoration of his death, an event so tremendous that afflicted Nature hid herself in darkness; but the British legislature has made it a qualification for gauging beer barrels and soap boiler tubs, for writing Custom's dockets and debentures and seizing smuggled tea'.
His motion was defeated, and these sectarian laws were not repealed for another 50 years. Nevertheless, the Mason of Preston's day would not think it unusual to meet Presbyterians. Methodists or Jews in his lodge, though owing to the Papal Bulls of 1738 and 1751, there were few Roman Catholics in Masonry.
The Start of The Day 6. The daily life of the middle class Mason of Preston's time was generally one of leisure and comfort, but it had its discomforts; one of these must have been getting up in the morning in winter in a Georgian house. In summer, this was no hardship, though many things that we would now look on as essential were missing. In winter, it would be most unpleasantly cold and dark. There were fireplaces in most bedrooms but their use was considered an indulgence reserved for sickness. Coal, however, was coming into general use in domestic fireplaces though it was expensive, of low grade and smoky. There were still no efficient matches. The flint and tinder box, carried by the majority, was difficult to work in the dark while the matches that had been invented, usually some combination of phosphorus and sulphur, were as dangerous as a Molotov cocktail. However, in the meanest household, there was a servant who started the day in even greater discomfort, and it was her duty to blow up the embers of the never extinguished kitchen fire, and light candles. When the time came for calling her employers, she would heat water and, candle in one hand and water jug in the other, go round the house waking its occupants and lighting their candles.
In the early XVIII century, nightclothes were seldom worn by either sex but, by the 1770s, the custom of wearing a shirt or a shift was starting. Nightcaps had always been worn and were a real necessity for those whose heads were often shaved and who slept in a room where, in winter, the water was frequently frozen in the basin.
7. London was reputed to be the healthiest city in the world, even if the standard was not high. Many of its houses, outside the slum areas, already had running water on all floors. Nevertheless, washing in the morning was infrequent and bathing did not become a normal custom until the middle of the next century, possibly then encouraged by Gladstone's removal of the heavy tax on soap which had been imposed by Cromwell. The morning toilet of the middle class man would therefore be scanty. He may have washed his hands and face, but that would be all. In The Diary of a Country Parson, 1758‑1802, the Rev. James Woodforde 22 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES gives details of everyday existence over nearly 50 years but never mentions washing or bathing. Most men shaved themselves, though it was difficult to keep razors sharp, and many who could afford it had themselves shaved on their way to business. Those who wore wigs had to have their heads shaved, so barbers shops were very numerous; and most combined a lucrative trade in minor medicine and surgery with their normal work.
In spite of London's reputation for health, its sanitary measures, by modern standards, were appalling. Any house that had a garden or yard had an outdoor pit system W.C. which was politely called the 'Necessary House' or 'House of Office'‑ Parson Woodforde calls his the `Jerico'. Where such an arrangement was not possible, the outlet of an internal privy was the gutter of the street outside. In the poorer parts of the city, the night‑soil was merely dumped in the road or thrown out of the window. Here it lay piled, together with the waste from all shops, until it was washed away by rain, sank into the mud, or was removed by the very infrequent rubbish collectors.
8. With such a low standard of hygiene, it was inevitable that contagious diseases, such as typhoid and dysentry, should be endemic; and many suffered from skin diseases. It is outside the scope of this paper to deal with doctoring in the XVIII century. It is enough to say that its second half saw the start of scientific medicine with, in England, such men as Jenner who discovered vaccination; Pringle who reformed hygiene; Lind who cured the Navy of scurvy; and the Hunter brothers, perhaps the first true surgeons. It was, nevertheless, generally believed that diseases were caused by impurities or foulness in the air; and there were plenty of bad smells to substantiate this theory. There were no anaesthetics, and it was still the age of traditional remedies, of clysters, purges and emetics, or bleeding and cupping by the barber surgeons. When Parson Woodforde had a sty in his eye, he rubbed it with the tail of a black cat. This seemed to help: 'I cannot but conclude it to be of the greatest service to a Stiony on the Eye‑lid. Any other Cat's Tail may have the above effect in all probability ‑ but I did my Eye‑lid with my own black Tom Cat's Tail'.
XVIII Century Dress 9. The wide disparities of dress between the various classes of the Commonwealth and Restoration had disappeared. All had adopted the clothing of the middle classes ‑ knee‑breeches, stockings and shoes ‑‑‑ which had been in fashion for more than half a century, but the coat was now cut away and much longer. To fill the gap, waistcoats, coming half‑way down the thighs had been invented. When going out of doors, the surtout, a loose greatcoat with a cape‑like collar was worn in bad weather.
10. At the start of the century, men's hair was cut very short or shaven and, at home, a turban or night‑cap was worn. The earlier full‑bottomed wigs had always been very expensive and, except for officials or state occasions, were disappearing in favour of the small wig tied at the nape of the neck. Even before Preston's time, however, men began to wear their own hair, powdered and often with a pigtail. In 1795, a tax on powder of a guinea a head, imposed by Pitt to pay for the PRESTON'S ENGLAND 23 Napoleonic wars, caused a complete change of fashion; and powdered heads and wigs disappeared for ever.
The cocked hat (tricorne) was a mark of standing, and distinction from the lower classes who wore their hats uncocked i.e. with the brim not turned up. Hats were worn indoors, even at meals. It was only in the presence of someone of a much superior station that the hat was removed. This custom, so odd to us now, could have been the reason why the Master of the XVIII century lodge alone wore a hat when the lodge was open.
11. In theory, it was the privilege of gentlemen to wear swords, but in practice, men of all classes, except perhaps the lowest, wore them. An unfortunate result of this habit was the prevalence of duels, especially after a few drinks had made a gentleman's solicitude for his `honour' overrule his normal common sense. It is probably for this reason that swords were forbidden in most Modern lodges while the Antients, drawn from the artisan classes, had no need for this rule.
London Town 12. When the Mason of Preston's time left his house and went out into the streets of London, he was entering what was fast becoming the most important city in the world. It already had a population approaching a million, nearly an eighth of the whole population of England, and ten times bigger than the next city in the country, Bristol.
Small in extent by modern standards, those living in its centre were compressed into appalling overcrowding in slum tenements where several families might live in a single room without light or water. Typical was the area near Seven Dials, north of Covent Garden, and a few hundred yards from Freemasons' Hall, into which it was unwise to go, unless forced by poverty to live there. So close together were the tenements, huts and sheds that it was possible to pass from one end of the area to the other without seeing the light of day. Such places were the private empires of gang bosses, where crimes of violence could be committed with impunity and where criminals were safe from justice. The only police, the Bow Street Runners, started by the magistrates, the Fielding brothers, in 1749, were so few and the town watchmen were so ineffectual that the forces of the law could not enter these areas at all.
The middle classes were spreading from the centre of the City into the nearby villages of Kensington, St. Pancras, Islington and Bethnal Green on the north side of the River Thames; and beyond Southwark and Lambeth to its south.
Thus London was the great urban community of the kingdom, the only place where town life and rural life were completely separate; where the country visitor was a being from another world, and probably a figure of ridicule. To the stranger, and even to the Londoner, it was a city of glamour. The River was crowded, day and night, with small boats taking passengers across to such landing places as Rotherhithe or below London Bridge to Wapping, where the forest of masts stretched for ten miles. The congested streets were a pageant of private and hackney carriages, carts laden with country produce, and sedan chairs, each fighting its way towards various destinations and carrying all classes of society. Business was transacted in hundreds of little shops and offices, often grouped by 24 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES trades, as in a modern Eastern bazaar. In the streets were hawked all the necessities of life ‑ the food no doubt being highly insanitary. Each trade had its special cry and each seller was prepared to exchange repartee with rich and poor alike.
Preston's London was at the same time a miracle of wealth and splendour, and a cesspool of poverty and vice. However, it was a city of endless opportunities, drawing into its slums each year a stream of country people who more than made up for the thousands that it killed by its diseases and overcrowding: `Such London is, by taste and wealth proclaim'd, The fairest capital of all the world, By riot and incontinence, the worst' (William Cowper. 1785. The Task.) The Pleasures of The Table 13. Breakfast was a light meal, usually eaten at home. At the start of the century, it had only been a piece of bread and a draught of light ale. With the opening up of trade of the East, tea though still expensive, even when smuggled, had become the standard drink of all classes at breakfast, with chocolate being a comparatively rare alternative restricted to ladies and high society, Dr. Johnson's breakfast, a standard one for the middle classes, was bread and butter, and tea. As the dinner hour became later towards the end of the century, more food was eaten at rising or there was a midday snack.
14. The principal meal of the day was dinner for which the fashionable time was 3 p.m. but those who worked longer hours had a less elaborate meal which they took later. Most wage earners worked very long hours indeed and it was an age of sweated labour for children. All these ate when they finished work. The middle classes, which included most of the professions, had a comparatively formal meal in the late afternoon. This they ate either at home or at one of the many eating houses or taverns which London provided.
During the century, food and cooking was improved in standard and in variety by the use of the potato, coffee, plenty of sugar, more spices, better meat, and the introduction to London of such country cheeses as Stilton, Double Gloucester and Cheddar. Any dinner would include roast meat, fowls and possibly game. Fish, except by the sea or near a river, had to be salted, but oysters, cockles and mussels were sold to all classes in huge quantities by the street sellers. Vegetables were few in variety and somewhat monotonous, with dried peas and beans, and cabbages being common. `Plumb' pudding and similar heavy puddings or pastries concluded meals. A certain French influence, in such matters as sauces, was becoming popular with the fashionable, but was treated with contempt by the conservative.
By modern standards, the dinner meal was enormous, even as the only real meal of the day. It was usually of two courses, both somewhat similar. In 1770, William Boswell describes how he and Dr Johnson and two ladies had a modest Sunday dinner of `a very good soup, a boiled leg of lamb and spinach, a veal pye and a rice pudding'. The `pye' was baked at a public oven, and this was commended as it allowed the servants to go to church. Parson Woodforde, who took a great interest in his food and recorded in detail the dinners of the last twenty years of PRESTON'S ENGLAND 25 his life, describes a dinner for eight at which the first course was `some fresh water fish, Perch and Trout, a Saddle of Mutton rosted, Beans and Bacon, a couple of Fowls boiled, patties and some White Soup ‑ 2nd Course ‑ Pigeons rosted, a Duck rosted, Piggs Pettytoes ‑ Sweetbreads ‑ Raspberry Cream, Tarts, Puddings and Pippins'. His normal dinners were on the same scale with he and his niece on their own often sitting down to two joints. Masonic lodges only had a formal dinner at their annual feast and this was certainly on similarly heroic proportions.
Dinner at the Old Dundee Lodge in 1749 for some dozen brethen was: ú. .s. d. ú. s. d.
Ducks Pease, 3 Qts., Beans, 6 8. 0. Qts. 6. 0.
Necks of Veal Colliflowers and Cab 6. 0. bages 2. 0.
1 Ham 8. 6. Bread, Sauce, etc. 9. 0.
Wine l. 5. 0. Dressing 5. 0.
Rum, Lemons & Sugar 8. 6. French Horns (Music?) 10. 6.
Beer and Tobacco 7. 6. Tarts 7. 6.
Tyler 2. 6. Servants 2. 6.
ú5. 7. 6.
15. For some unexplained reason, smoking in fashionable society declined after the middle of the century. `Smoking has gone out' said Dr. Johnson in 1773 (Boswell, Tour of the Hebrides); and continued so for eighty years. In contrast, there was a steady increase in the use of tobacco by the rest of the population and smoking was normal in all lodges. It was the age of the churchwarden pipe, provided automatically in the type of inn where lodges met; as the tobacco to smoke in it. Many used snuff or chewed tobacco soaked in rum.
16. There was some heavy drinking among the upper classes and it was the era of the `three bottle man'. Nevertheless, nationally, the second half of the century was a big improvement on the preceding fifty years. Hogarth's engraving `Gin Lane' and signs outside drink shops such as `Drunk for Id, dead drunk for 2d, clean straw for nothing' dated from before the Act of 1751 which had spectacularly raised the duty on spirits. This turned the poor back to beer, and equally spectacularly reduced the death rate, but it only had a marginal effect on the middle and upper classes who could afford and obtain any form of drink, except possibly whisky which had not yet started to be exported from the Highlands.
The usual drinks at table were port wine ‑ fortified with cheap brandy for the English taste ‑ claret, burgundy, and brandy shipped direct from France, even in wartime. Rum from the West Indies was popular, particularly at seaports, but it was also drunk in the form of `punch', comparatively recently introduced by `nabobs' and seamen returning from the East. (Named after the Urdu word `Panch' for five, was composed of rum, sugar, lemon, spices and water). There was a lucrative trade in smuggling the heavily taxed wines and spirits, and also tea. These duties were unpopular and the smuggler was welcomed, even by respectable members of society. Many households, particularly in the rural areas, 26 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES had smugglers who visited them regularly much in the same way as Americans, during the years of Prohibition, had their own bootleggers.
Masons certainly drank no more than the general public, and often very much less. In practically all lodges, there were by‑laws ruling that brethren `disguised in Liquor' should be fined or, for repeated offences, excluded. The Shrewsbury Chronicle of 19 September 1877 reported: 'We learn that last week the new Salopian Lodge of Freemasons was regularly constituted ... by Major Charles Shirreff, Deputy Provincial Grand Master for this country; when an excellent dinner was provided and the afternoon spent with that sober hilarity and with that edifying conversation which becomes and always should distinguish Free & Accepted Masons from men of dissolute and disorderly manner'.
On the other hand, the Lodge of Amity Song Book of 1778 included the following: `Let every man take a glass in hand, Drain bumpers to our Master Grand As long as he can sit or stand With decency'.
Perhaps it was symptomatic of the drinking habits of the age that the Georgian sideboard had a specially constructed space big enough to hold a chamber pot to save a long and possibly unsteady journey to the Necessary House! Sports and Pastimes 17. For the majority of Englishmen, the formal dinner did not degenerate into the traditional drinking bout, reputed to end with the participants sliding under the table or being carried to bed by the footmen. This may have been not infrequent for the country squire who had hunted, fished or been on his land all day, and who had nothing else to do in the evening. The townsman was normally reasonably abstemious, and after dinner either joined the ladies for cards and conversation, or went out into the town to take part in its many attractions, such as the theatre, or to a coffee house to gossip or gamble; the latter being a far worse middle class vice than drinking.
At the week‑end, the Londoner took his pleasures further afield. Every inn or eating house within reach of London turned itself into a Sunday resort. There were also hundreds of cheesecakes and bun shops, the best being by the river at Chelsea, patronized by royalty and giving the name to the Chelsea bun. There was the trip up and down the river, or a visit to one of the many gardens; those at Ranelagh or Vauxhall being the most fashionable. In such gardens, there was music, usually dancing and most had a bowling green. At Vauxhall, the Mason of Preston's time could have heard the infant prodigy, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart ‑a future member of the Craft ‑ at the age of eight, playing his own compositions. Other popular attractions were the lions at the Tower of London, the waxworks, the newly opened British Museum or, for 2d, taking tea with the lunatics at Bedlam (until 1770).
For the younger people, football and cricket, with rules very different from the present ones, were played. Football had been the sport of the apprentices of London since mediaeval days and the ball, a leather‑covered pig's bladder, was PRESTON'S ENGLAND 27 unchanged since the time when King Henry V's bowmen used to get into trouble kicking one about instead of practising their archery. Cricket, first played in the villages in Stuart times, was now popular with all classes, and many grounds were available around London, including one at Mr Lord's tavern at Marylebone and another in the City at the Artillery Ground.
18. Of spectator sports, there was a big choice, duck‑hunting, badger‑baiting and cock‑fighting. The latter was legal and got such a hold on Georgian Englishmen that much of the slang of the cock‑pit has passed permanently into the language. `Pit against', `show a clean pair of heels', `cut out for', and `battle royal', when a number of cocks are pitted together, for examples. The real 'fancy‑man' if he could avoid the efforts of the local magistrate, might attend and bet on a prize‑fight, but he ran the risk of ending the day in a general melee between the supporters of the contestants and the Army.
Racing was for royalty, the nobility and the owners of the new country houses being built with the profits of the agricultural boom. It was not of much interest, as yet, to the middle classes of London, but it was starting to become important with the first running of the St Leger in 1776, the Oaks in 1779 and the Derby in the following year.
19. The most important of the public spectacles, and one of the most popular because it was free, was the public execution. The penal system of England still had its mediaeval cruelty, and men and women could be sentenced to almost indefinite imprisonment for the smallest offences. Unless they could bribe their gaolers to feed them, all but the strongest starved to death. The crimes punishable by hanging increased throughout the century until they numbered some two hundred, and included the most trivial offences. This severity often defeated itself, with juries refusing to convict for minor offences which would lead to execution. As the police were so inadequate, the worst criminals never were caught and, for those that were, it required the King in person, advised by the Lord Chancellor, in Privy Council, to confirm a death sentence. However, many criminals were hanged. In London, in 1785, there were 97 hangings at Tyburn, all attended by large crowds who would pelt the prisoner with stones and rubbish.
From the Masonic aspect, the most interesting execution was that of the Rev. William Dodd, LL.D. who was Grand Chaplain at the consecration of the new Modern Grand Lodge in May 1776. At the ceremony, Dr. Dodd selected the anthem and delivered an oration which lasted about half an hour. A few months later, he was arrested for forgery and convicted. In spite of petitions in his favour, the sentence was upheld by George 111. On the Sunday before his execution, he produced a sermon which he wished to preach to the other convicted criminals, as was the normal custom, but he was not allowed to do so as public opinion was so strongly in his favour that a riot was feared. After his execution, his body was cut down and unsuccessful efforts were made by doctors to resuscitate him. As it was the law that the bodies of executed criminals should be taken to Surgeons Hall for dissection or hung in chains, one can assume that Dr. Dodd's influential friends had their way to some extent, even though they were not able to save him from execution. The Sunday service held in prison was also a public exhibition to which admission could be bought. The convicted criminals sat in a dock in the 28 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES centre with a coffin. The sermon was usually preached by the prison chaplain who appears to have had a share in the takings. The non‑Masonic story of Dr. Dodd is given in The Macaroni Parson, by Gerald Howson, 1973.
The Character of the Middle Class Georgian 20. The manners of the XVIII century were a curious mixture of coarseness and elegance. The Georgian, particularly in the presence of ladies of his own class, might bow and posture and turn a compliment with the most courtly grace. The same man on occasions would use the most violent and obscene language not only to his equals among men, but also to women of any class inferior to his own. In similar circumstances, many women used just as bad language. References to the natural functions of the body and details of sex, in ordinary conversation, were so frequent and commonplace that they must have become as meaningless as the four letter words of the present day. When his anger was aroused, the upper or middle class man was inclined to get involved in the most unnecessary brawls, often ending in duels with a fatal result.
Costly laces and elegant clothes were worn by people who were frequently dirty and whose personal habits, by modern standards, were most unpleasant. The lack of indoor toilet facilities may have contributed to this, and any lady or gentleman, unable to find the Necessary House, or unwilling to go out of doors, would have no scruples in using the fireplace or a corner of the room.
There were, of course, many people of better manners, but it must be appreciated that the men of this period were liable to indulge in the coarsest of pleasures, and the chastity of any woman, of a level of society lower than his own, was a challenge to the virility of the Georgian male. In the country houses, the chief sport of the young gentlemen of the family seems to have been the seduction of the female servants, a pastime as much enjoyed by the quarry as by the hunter. The young woman concerned, if fortunate enough to have a child could, under the Bastardy Act of 1733, demand marriage ‑ which was unthinkable ‑ or be kept in comfort for the rest of her life.
21. It is only fair to give the other side of the picture, as it was far from being an irreligious age and there were many whose private lives were irreproachable. The Christian doctrines of the period laid down rules of conduct far stricter than in previous centuries. Churches, particularly in the country, were well filled and the proportion of communicants remarkably high. The majority of Anglican parsons took their duties seriously, looking after their parishioners and holding regular services. Unfortunately, this was not always the case. Clergymen, once appointed, were virtually irremovable and those with rich livings could not be forced to tend them and many left a poorly paid curate to do the work. Even Parson Woodforde, one of the better type of incumbent, thought nothing of leaving his parish in the care of a curate for four or five months each year. The London parson had no need to do more than preach once on Sundays if so inclined, spending the rest of his time in society or in the coffee house.
The Nonconformist ministers appear to have been more conscientious and closer to the people than their Anglican counterparts, and the revivalist teaching of the Wesley brothers reached expanding areas previously neglected by the PRESTON'S ENGLAND 29 Anglican Church or the State. As he moved across the country, John Wesley formed his supporters into small self‑governing congregations able to look after themselves; and so gave permanent roots to revivalism. Wesley's Methodism was well suited to the new towns springing up in the coal and iron areas in the North and Midlands; towns which had no tradition or background with Anglicanism. Masonry also put down roots among the middle classes in such areas which were, in due course, to become strongholds of the Craft.
22. The XVIII century saw the start of organized private charity, mainly in the provision of hospitals which the poor could attend free. Guys, Westminster, St. George's, London and Middlesex all date from this period, while there was a corresponding wave of building of small clinics and dispensaries in the counties. A general increase also in the provision of charitable schools, mostly for foundlings, was perhaps the stimulant for such Masons as the Chevalier Ruspini to found the Girls School and for the Antients, a few years later, to open the Boys.
PART II ‑ MASONR Y IN PRESTON'S TIME The Masonic Lodge and its Furnishings 23. The Mason of Preston's time would receive his summons by hand from the lodge Tyler. Meetings were held fortnightly or monthly. On the day, there was no need to hurry over dinner as, except at the annual feast when the proceedings would include a meal, the normal time of opening the lodge was six o'clock or after.
After 1776 a few lodges met at the newly built Freemasons' Hall, but the majority remained in one of the many inns which catered for small club gatherings. In the public room of the inn, the early arrival, meeting another brother could stop for a glass of ale before going upstairs to the lodge. At the door, he found the Tyler, possibly an old Mason, but equally likely to be one of the waiters of the inn, specially initiated for the office.
The average size of XVIII century lodges, particularly in London, was small; a dozen members at a meeting being a good number. The lodges were small because the brethen, probably used to the intimacy of the small clubs of the period, liked it that way. A candidate, made in a lodge, did not necessarily become a member of it, and had to be ballotted for as such after a formal proposition. Cases of initiates being black‑balled are not unknown. There was little urge for lodges to have more than the occasional candidate as there was plenty to do in `working the Lectures' without having to spend time on the degree ceremonies. London lodges, if they made many Masons, presumably did so because they wanted the fees to swell their funds. Country lodges, inclined to be larger, appear usually to have taken their initiates as members but, in all lodges, the ceremonies of making Masons, though essential, were of comparative unimportance.
The Old Dundee Lodge at Wapping had a special `Making Room' from 1763, and only those concerned with the ceremony went into it, other members remaining in the lodge room if they wished. In the 1780s, the Whitchurch Lodge By‑laws laid down that no Mason could be made, except at an emergency meeting, for which the candidate had to pay all expenses. Visitors, however, could always 30 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES demand admission to any lodge. If proved, they were admitted on payment of a small fee to cover the food and drink they might consume.
24. Towards the end of the XVIII century, lodges were comfortable places. Thanks to woodworkers like Chippendale, and to French influence, furniture was no longer the stools and benches of the previous century. Most lodges kept their own furniture at the inn where they met, and provided their Master and Wardens with large, padded arm‑chairs, carved with Masonic symbols, while the other brethen sat on well‑made chairs. For lighting, wood or brass candlesticks, elaborately carved in the richer lodges, were used for illumination and for the symbolic lighting. It was still an era of smoky candles which had to be snuffed at regular intervals. Gas was not to come for several decades and electricity for nearly a century. The first mention of gas in a lodge that the writer has been able to find is in the Minutes of the Cannongate Kilwinning Lodge No. 2, dated 15.6.1818, when `owing to the great expense of lighting the lodge room with wax and tallow candles, Resolved that the Secretary and Treasurer wait upon the Manager of the Gas Company'. In winter, a good fire of wood or coal, possibly in a mantlepiece copied from one made by the Adam brothers, made the lodge a pleasant place in which to pass an evening.
Masonic Clothing 25. Masons in lodge wore white gloves and an apron as a compulsory uniform. Towards the end of the century, a white stock was also to become 'Masonic' in many lodges, and brethren refused admission if wearing any other colour. The 1750s were a period of change for the apron. Earlier, the plain white lambskin, as used since 'time immemorial' was worn in private lodges and was lodge property. In lodge Minutes, there are frequent references to motions for `The Lodge to be new Cloathed' or 'New Aprons to be bought' when presumably the lodge bought a new set. After the middle of the century, the apron tended to become the personal property of the individual who began to decorate it as he thought fit. This was particularly so among the Antients. The two pillar motif; surrounded by Masonic emblems, was popular while a number of shops sold transfers which could be superimposed on the white skin. Many of the designs were colourful and elaborate, and examples of the later types can be seen in the Museum of Grand Lodge.
26. It was not known when Masonic jewels first began to be worn. London Companies wore regalia from very early times and, in Scotland, the officers of the Incorporations may have worn insignia of office from the XV century on. Lodges possibly copied these examples and started the custom of Masonic jewels. However in England by 1727, jewels for Masters and Wardens were usual enough for Grand Lodge to have to make regulations for their use and for the colours of the ribbons from which they could be suspended. In Preston's time, all officers, including Past Masters, wore jewels and occasional presentations of special jewels were made. Those worn by the rival Grand Lodges differed.
The Masonic Ceremonies 27. In the middle of the century, the ceremonies for making Masons and working the Lectures, though varying in lodges, were basically the same. Two decades later PRESTON'S ENGLAND 31 i.e. when Preston started teaching, some development had taken place. A lodge opened with the Right Worshipful Master (The title changed to `Worshipful Master' in English lodges at the Union of 1813) in the theoretical East. Opposite him, in the West, was the Senior Warden. In some lodges, he still had the Junior Warden on his left, but by 1770 the JW's place was tending to become fixed in the middle of the South. In Modern lodges, the other officers usually were the Secretary, Treasurer, one or two Stewards and the Tyler. Lodges of the Antients and some of the Moderns had in addition two Deacons who helped with the degree ceremonies by doing duties otherwise performed by the Wardens or Stewards. It will be seen that, in small lodges, some 50% of the brethren had to take an active part in the work of the lodge.
The Master was an important figure and did `rule and direct his lodge'. Besides conducting the comparatively short and simple degree ceremonies, he had to work the Lectures. As these were liable to develop into extemporare discussions, he needed sufficient Masonic knowledge to teach symbolic Masonry and to keep the work within the Landmarks. Masters were often in office for several years, or shared it by taking turns with other experienced brethren. The influence of a Master can be seen in the story of the Lodge of Antiquity. In a poor way about 1775, the Lodge invited the experienced Preston to join and become its Master. His teaching of the Lectures he had recently developed was so popular that the Lodge at once picked up. Unfortunately his success led to trouble through the jealousy of a few of the older members.* 28. The lodge met round a long table and, when the opening ceremony ended, the Master opened the Bible which he had in front of him, put on his hat and sat down. After any lodge business, if there was a degree ceremony to be done, the officers and any brethren who wished to take part, left their seats. The Master took up the Bible while others moved the necessary symbolic lights and stood round a diagram previously laid out on the floor by the Tyler. In early days, this diagram had been drawn with chalk or charcoal, and the candidate had later to wash it out, using a mop and pail. By Preston's time, most lodges had metal or wood plates to represent the appropriate symbols, or a floorcloth with a design on it.t Working the ceremony only took a few minutes. Then the candidate removed the diagram and retired to `restore himself'. The brethren returned to their places round the table and, when the candidate re‑entered the lodge, the remainder of the ceremony was quickly completed. Then the brethren settled down to the serious business of the evening, the Lectures.
29. There was probably little difference between the Lectures used by the two Grand Lodges except that, up to the time Preston and other Masonic teachers started their elaborations, the Moderns' were probably shorter.$ The Lectures referred to the symbolism of the making ceremonies, the form and contents of the lodge, and the duties of Masons. Symbolic references to architecture, particularly in relation to Solomon's Temple, were stressed. They were worked in catechism * The story is given in the History oJ Freemasourv by R. F. Gould, Vol 11, pp 422‑8, and in the Prestonian Lecture for 1947 by G. Y. Johnson.
t For details of the mid‑XV 111 century ceremonies, see the author's English Exposures of ' /760162, A.Q.C. 84. The Prestonian Lecture for 1928, Masonic Teachers of the XV 111 century by J. Stokes covers this subject.
32 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES form with the Master usually asking the questions. There were a number of stock questions and answers, with catch phrases, which had been in use for decades, but there was plenty of opportunity for extemporization.
30. The proceedings were leisurely and companionable, and accompanied by the eating of snacks, drinking and smoking. In some lodges, this freedom was restricted to periods when the lodge was called off. Calling‑off was frequent, so there was ample time for the drinking of toasts and the singing of songs. Contemporary Masonic books published lists of toasts, and the health of all those in the lodge was probably drunk at least once during the evening. Loyal toasts, often with the wording 'The King and the Craft' were normal* and usually the whole royal family was also toasted. 'The ladies', 'our fair sisters' and other romantic sentiments figures among the non‑Masonic toasts.
31. Hardly a Masonic book was published in the XVIII century without an appendix of songs. The 1723 Book of Constitutions had songs; the 1738 edition added others. For the Antients, their book, Ahiman Rezon, 1756, had 128 pages of songs and poetry out of 224 pages. In his Bibliography of Freemasonry, 1844, Dr. G. B. F. Kloss catalogues 213 Masonic songbooks in various languages between 1734 and 1837. By modern standards, these early Masonic songs are almost uniformly bad, with faulty scansion, indifferent rhyming and turgid sentiments. Hardly any of the music was original, most of the songs being set to existing tunes of which the majority, perhaps fortunately, have disappeared. The only song that is still in general use, the Entered Apprentice's Song, has a sentimental attachment for all Masons but, by any standards, it is no masterpiece.
A musical programme of the Dundee Lodge, dated 1784, gives an idea of the jingoistic sentiments of a period which actually was remarkably peaceful. The music played was 'God Save the King', 'Britons Strike Home', 'Rule Britannia', 'See the Conquering Hero Comes', and 'Hearts of Oak'. Songs included 'This Day a Stag must Die', 'Land of Potatoes' ‑perhaps there was an Irish brother present'Wine cannot cure', 'The Joys of a Humble State', and 'What Folly Boys to be Downhearted'. However, they all seem to have given the brethren of Preston's time a great deal of pleasure, usually ending with an enthusiastic toast and Masonic fire.
Singing was a nationally popular form of entertainment and it seems a pity the songbooks did not include some of the better songs which, in a musical period, did exist. However, the audience was a sympathetic one and it would be rare for a singer to be without an accompaniment. Few people could not perform on some musical instrument and some brother would produce a flute or a fiddle from under his chair to add encouragement. Perhaps some of the wealthier lodges might already have possessed one of the newly invented pianofortes or owned a harpsichord.
And so to Bed 32. When the lodge business was ended, some of the brethren would take supper together in the inn while others went home. It was no longer the London of Hogarth's picture 'Night' of 1738 which shows a drunken Master of a lodge being * An interesting reference to this toast and its meaning appears in the hreeawson's Guide and Compendium', by Bernard E. Jones.
PRESTON'S ENGLAND 33 helped home by an equally drunk Tyler. Of course, there were Masons who drank too much but the majority did not and, like Major Shirreff, writing to the Grand Secretary in 1788, could refer to themselves as `not a supper man' preferring bread and cheese in their own lodgings to a meal in a tavern and a late return home through the streets of London.
Until the 1800s, there was no effective police force, and travellers on all roads, not only in the country but in and around London, were liable to attack. In the early part of the century, it had been the sport of fashionable, though unpleasant, young men calling themselves Mohocks or Scowerers to assault pedestrians or upset peaceful gatherings in inns. These had mostly disappeared by Preston's time, but highway robberies were still committed almost daily on all routes leading out of London. Some roads were so dangerous that armed horsemen were available for hire to protect travellers.
The streets of London were no place in which to be after dark. Because of open fires and the many urban industries which used coal, a noisome yellow fog, restricting visibility to a few feet, was an almost nightly occurrence in winter. Even by day in summer, there was a perpetual haze over the city. If he had to be out at night, the wise man walked with care, hand on sword or pistol, listening for following footsteps and avoiding any figures which might loom out of the darkness and, as quickly, be swallowed up once more by the fog.
Few men went unarmed but, at night, mere personal protection was inadequate against the gangs which infested the streets. The sensible Mason returning home from lodge joined a group, took a cab or a sedan‑chair. If he could afford no more, he could hire, for a few pence, a link‑boy or girl who, with torches of tar or resin, would light him home; at least keeping his feet out of the filth of the streets. The ordinary, peaceful Londoner was always thankful to get to the safety of his own home; itself closely shuttered against evil‑doers and the sulphorous atmosphere.
Conclusion 33. The increase in Masonry in the latter half in the XVIII century was remarkable. Masons came from all levels of society. A contemporary list would start with most of the Royal Family, and would continue with many members of the peerage and of the social and intellectual life of the country. Some of these men had disreputable sides to their characters, but many were of probity and benevolence. Nevertheless, the most solid and responsible members of the Masonic community, and its greatest strength were the middle class merchants and professionals of the type of Preston and his associates. None of their names appears in the history of their country and few in the history of Masonry, but there is no doubt that, at this not particularly praiseworthy period of English history, such men gave the Craft a powerful influence‑ an influence that it had never been able to exert before and possibly will never achieve in the future.
THE TYLER OR OUTER GUARD THE PRESTONIAN LECTURE FOR 1977 ROY A. WELLS Whilst there has been a surfeit of speculative writing on the subject of the Tyler, including probable derivations of the word and its applications, nowhere do we find an official reason for the Masonic adoption of that title. In the early period he was referred to as the `Doorkeeper' or 'Guarder' and it is not until comparatively late in the development of organized Freemasonry that the word `Tyler' appears. Details of his duties arise only in piecemeal fashion but there is ample evidence that they developed similarly to those of the Beadles employed by City Councils and Trade Gilds.
Although several of the early composite Gilds included the trade of Tyler in the title, e.g., Tylers, Carpenters and Masons; Tylers and Bricklayers; Tylers and Plasterers, it does not mean that any one craft would have been involved in the internal affairs of another. From mediaeval times onward skilled workers jealously guarded their separate crafts and strictly observed lines of demarcation between their own and allied trades. Posting a sentinel was a well established pattern for trade meetings and stonemasons were no less anxious to protect the mysteries of their craft.
In 1730 Samuel Prichard quoted a Masonic catechism that may well have described an earlier trade practice: Q. Where stands the Junior Enter'd Prentice. A. In the north.
Q. What is his business.
A. To keep off all Cowans and Evesdroppers.
Q. If a Cowan (or Listner) is catch'd, how is he to be punished? A. To be placed under the Eves of the House (in rainy Weather) till the water runs in at his Shoulders and out at his Shoos.
(Masonry Dissected.) Delegation of that duty to the `Junior Enter'd Prentice' was quite practical as not only could he be spared from trade discussion but no doubt would have been the most nimble footed to chase an offender. It is an interesting derivation of the word eavesdropper.* We find another reference which may also have its roots in trade meetings: How was you admitted a Mason.
By three Solemn Knocks at the Door the last a double distance of Time and much larger. At the door before you are admitted stands an Entred Prentice with a drawn sword to guard against droppers, as they call them, from Hearkening. For in this they are very ' Oxford English Dictionary (See examples from 15th cent.) 'Euesdroppers vunder mennes walles or wyndowes ... to bere tales.' 34 36 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES cautious and the Question is frequently ask'd is the House Tiled? If safe from hearing the Answer is T' is Tiled. If not or any Person in Company not a Mason. Untiled. (Dialogue between Simon and Philip, c. 1725.) EARLY OFFICIAL REFERENCES Organized Freemasonry of today is in direct line of descent from the formation of the premier Grand Lodge in London in 1717. Within a few years a form of behaviour and government was established through the co‑ordination of material from the various Old Charges and Regulations. It was edited by Rev. James Anderson following a collection made by George Payne (Grand Master in 1718 and again in 1720). Anderson's first Book of Constitutions was published in 1723 and Regulation No. XIII in that book deals with our subject: ... Another Brother (who must be a Fellow‑Crafi) should be appointed to look after the door of Grand‑Lodge; but shall be no member of it.
The next official reference to guarding the door appeared in 1728, but it stemmed from a Resolution that was passed in Grand Lodge on 24 June 1727: Resolved Nem Con that in all private Lodges and Quarterly Communication and Generall Meetings the Ma` and Wardens do wear the Jewells of Masonry hanging to a White Ribbon (Vig.`) That the Ma` wear the Square the Sen' Warden the Levell and the Jun.` Warden the Plumb Rule.
It was to lead to an interesting incident recorded in the Minutes on 26 November 1728: It being told to the Deputy Grand Master that a Brother (who was a Warden of a Lodge) attended without in expectation of his Master's coming who had custody of the Jewels of their Lodge, and for want of which he could not gain admittance; on several Members present vouching for him, the Deputy Grand Master Ordered the Officer who kept the Door, to admit the said Brother, who accordingly took his place in the Lodge.
Whether or not the Doorkeeper entered Grand Lodge to take his order directly from the Dep. Grand Master or that it was conveyed to him through a Member is subject to conjecture. Notwithstanding, his vigilance was commendable.
DOORKEEPERS AND GUARDERS In a large number of Lodge records we find references to `Doorkeeper' or `Guarder' and those descriptions continue to be used long after the appearance of the term `Tyler'. Specimen entries on these lines are as follows: Br. Johnson be desired to attend to gard the Lodge every Lodge night, and that he be allowed eighteen pence and one pint of wine for his attendance.
(Minutes, 10 March 1731, Swan & Rummer, then No. 39, Erased 1751.) In other Lodge records the `one pint of wine'; might well read `one quart of ale'.
Andrew Montgomery is described as `Garder of Ye Grand Lodge', according to an engraving of 1738; the Lodge meeting at the Two Black Posts, Maiden Lane, THE TYLER OR OUTER GUARD 37 London, in June 1738 officially instructed 'Bro. the doorkeeper to lock up all aprons'. (Minutes, 22 June 1738, then No. 163, Erased 1801.) Generally speaking, Doorkeepers and Guarders were `Serving Brethren' and quite often were landlords of premises where meetings were held. In many cases they did not rise above the grade of Entered Apprentice and, although there are some classic exceptions, very few were members of a Lodge. As the years went by and Lodge procedure developed an Entered Apprentice was insufficiently qualified so the Tyler was Passed and Raised. Here is the way one Lodge dealt with that situation: The Lodge was convened for the purpose of raising Bro. Joshua Evans, Tyler to the Lodge, and it was agreed that he is to receive no payment for this night's attendance.
(History Indefatigable Lodge No. 237, p. 110, n.d.) And in the Rules and Orders, 1775, of Grand Masters Lodge No. 1, we find: ... a Brother well skilled in the Master's part shall be appointed and paid for Tyling the Lodge Door during the time of Communication.
TYLER AS A TITLE The first official use of Tyler as a specific title appears in Grand Lodge Minutes of 8 June 1732. It is included in an account of a complaint from several Grand Stewards against a Bro. Lewis whom they had engaged as an attendant for the Grand Feast that was due to follow the previous meeting of Grand Lodge. Lewis had been entrusted to lock up thirty dishes of meat which were for that banquet, but because of his carelessness and neglect of duty they had been taken away `by those who had no manner of Right to the same'. Upon being faced with the charge Bro. Lewis was insolent and in consequence was called before Grand Lodge where he made only `a frivolous and trifling defence'. He was about to receive an official censure when it was observed that Bro. Lewis was `Tyler' to several Lodges and `if the Grand Lodge should Strictly pursue their Resentment it might deprive him of the best part of his subsistence'. The incident ended with Bro. Lewis publicly asking pardon of both the Grand Lodge and the Grand Stewards, faithfully promising to take greater care and `behave decently', as it was so expressed, in the future. From 1732 there are countless references to Tylers and the title became common‑place.
In 1738 Rev. Anderson published the New Book of Constitutions, and the `Old Regulation XIII' dealing with the appointment of'... a Fellow‑craft' to look after the door of Grand Lodge was altered to `. . . another Brother and Master‑Mason should be appointed the Tyler, to look after the Door; . . .' In this edition Anderson included an account of the setting‑up of the premier Grand Lodge in 1717 and wrote: Sayer Grand Master commanded the Master and Wardens of Lodges to meet the Grand Officers every Quarter in Communication at the Place that he should appoint in his Summons sent by the Tyler.
38 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES That was written and published twenty‑one years after the event, before a Freemasons' Hall had come into existence; in the early period Grand Lodge had no fixed place of meeting. In using the word `Tyler' and describing the distribution of the Summonses, Anderson may well have been influenced by development that had been consolidated as general practice.
DELIVERY OF SUMMONS According to the records the Landlord of the Queen's Arms, St. Pauls Churchyard, in 1736, was `Allowed 12d each Lodge night for carrieing ye Letters to each Member'. That was changed the following year to: Ordered that the Tyler for the future do deliver out the Summons for the meeting of this Lodge, and be paid for the same One Shilling exclusively of his money for the Tyling. (Minutes, 3 July 1744, Lodge of Antiquity, No. 2.) Payment for `Carrying Somonds' was raised to two shillings the next year.
It is of interest to note that Lodge of Felicity, No. 58, had reversed this situation six years previously: July 12th 1738. This night the Lodge took into consideration the Great Expence of the Tyler and came into the following Resolution nem. con: the House [by which was meant the Gun Tavern, Jermyn Street] shall send the Summons to each Member one day before the Lodge night and that the Tyler shall have one shilling only for Tyling the Lodge.
Delivery of matter other than, or in addition to, the Summons was quite normal but one case is on record where that extension was unacceptable. A Brother resigned from Lodge of Unity, No. 69, because his Lodge Certificate had been given to the Tyler for delivery. This apparent indignity has not been dated by the Lodge historian but it was probably in the early 19th century.
DUTIES AND PA YMENT The most comprehensive outline of duties required of the Tyler is contained in the 1737 By‑laws of Lodge of Friendship, No. 6: The Doorkeeper is to have Twelvepence ev'ry time of his Attendance. He is never to be off Duty in Lodge Hours, nor be anyhow negligent or remiss in it. He is to take care of the Clothing of the Members, and Utensils of ye Lodge. He is to offer a List to be subscri'd by the Members as Visitors shall call for, to cause them (being vouch'd for) to enter their names in his List, with ye particular Lodge to which they belong, & set down who the persons are that recommend them. He is also before their admission to receive TwelvePence apiece from such Visitors, and to produce ye said List and receipts to the Master or Wardens before the Lodge is closed; He is to keep the Key of the Apron Box etc. and be ready with it always in good time; or failing in any of these, he shall lose his pay for the Night.
Comparison between Lodge records in different parts of the country and between By‑laws of different dates enables us to build up a picture of changing attitudes and developing procedure. Compare the last example, from London in 1737, with this one from Halifax thirty years later: THE TYLER OR OUTER GUARD 39 There is also to be a Tyler appointed out of the Brotherhood to stand at the door of the Lodge, with a naked sword in his hand, for the security of the same, and to give notice to the Lodge when any visiting brother shall desire admittance; he is also to refuse admittance in Lodge hours to any brother he thinks is disguised in liquor, until he has acquainted the Master therewith. He is also to attend the Master, or in his absence the Deputy Master, twice a week to receive his orders and he is to have one shilling every Lodge night for his trouble. He is to refuse admission to any member of the Lodge who is not clean and decently clad with a white cloth.
(1767 By‑laws, Lodge of Probity, No. 61, Halifax.) The injunction for Brethren to appear `decently clad with a white cloth' was certainly not confined to Halifax nor to that period as an item dated in 1812 from Newport, Monmouthshire, will shew: Bro. Hy. Griffith fined 6d for appearing in the Lodge in a coloured Handkerchief contrary to Regulations.
(Minutes 26 June 1812, Royal Cambrian Lodge, then No. 135, Erased 1830.) Now let us look at the duties and fees that were paid in a London Lodge in 1798: After the other Officers are invested and have taken their Stations, a Tyler shall be chosen and the Master shall give him charge of the Jewels, Furniture and Ornaments of the Lodge, that he keeps neat and clean, and also guards the Door and Avenues to the Lodge. To prepare two Lodges each night of Meeting, Summons the Members at least Four days before the regular Lodge nights, for which he shall be allowed the sum of Ten Shillings and Sixpence, and for every Lodge of Emergency Five Shillings, exclusive of One Shilling and Sixpence for each Badge and Collar the whole to be paid from the Funds of the Lodge.
(1798 By‑laws, Bedford Lodge, No. 157.) `DRAWING THE LODGE' The requirement `To prepare two Lodges each night of Meeting' indicates that it was also part of the Tyler's duties to set out, on the floor of the Lodge room, designs and symbols appropriate to the Degree to be conferred. In the early period they were drawn with chalk or charcoal, and clay models were used with great effect. Payment for this duty was usually separated from other fees: The Tyler's remuneration was fixed at one shilling and sixpence each Lodge night for tyling the Lodge, and two shillings and sixpence for forming a Fellow Craft or Master's Lodge.
(By‑laws, n.d., Jerusalem Lodge, No. 197.) From the same Lodge we find an item that can only have arisen from a misunderstanding or through lack of communication; a situation that Tylers do meet on occasions: The Tyler having made a mistake in forming the Entered Apprentices Lodge, the Raising was deferred till Lodge night after next.
(Minutes, 16 September 1772.) 40 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES Among the various descriptions of Floor Drawings perhaps the best comes from Jachin and Boaz which was published in 1762: He (the Candidate) is also learnt the step, or how to advance to the Master upon the Drawing on the Floor, which in some Lodges resembles the Grand Building, termed a Mosaic Palace, and is described with the utmost Exactness. They also draw other figures, one of which is called the Laced Tuft, and the other, the Throne beset with Stars. There is also represented a perpendicular Line in the Form of a Mason's Instrument, commonly called the Plumb‑Line; and another figure which represents the Tomb of Hiram, The First Grand Master, who has been dead almost Three Thousand Years. These are all explained to him in the most accurate manner, and the Ornaments or Emblems of the Order are described with great facility.
Tape and nails were used to form the larger items, and templates to outline some of the symbols were used by the inartistic. However, many Tylers possessed outstanding talent and ability, an example of which is shewn by this record: The Lodge being this Evening opened and drawn and illuminated with much dexterity by the skill of Bror. Bossemberg the Tyler of the Lodge.
(Minutes, 22 February 1742, Lodge of Friendship, No. 6.) In this instance we are entitled to think that coloured chalks were used justifying the description `illuminated'.
It can be fully appreciated that in the various perambulations in Lodge, Brethren would not be permitted to walk across the Floor‑Drawing. Thus we have a logical reason for `Squaring the Lodge', though not exaggerated to the extent that is sometimes performed today.
In July 1778 Laurence Dermott, Grand Secretary of the `Antients', could not resist a tilt at the `Moderns' on the subject of Floor‑Drawings: Nor is it uncommon for a Tyler to receive ten or twelve shillings for drawing two signposts with chalk, charcoal, etc. and writing Jamaica upon one and Barbadoes upon the other; and all this, I suppose for no other use than to distinguish where these liquors are to be placed in Lodge.
(Ahiman Rezon, 3rd Edn., 1778, et seq. Laurence Dermott.) Although it was usually the Tyler's duty to `draw the Lodge' sometimes it would be illustrated by a Member well skilled in that art. It is of interest to note that whilst the practice of `Forming the Lodge' in this manner continued for many years in various parts of the country we do find a record of a painted cloth as early as 1737: Brother William Goudge this night made a present to this Lodge of a painted cloath representing the several forms of Masons Lodges.
(Minutes, 14 March 1737, Medina Lodge, No. 35, Cowes.) Henry Sadler states this was probably the first substitute for the old custom of `drawing the Lodge' on the floor and it was the forerunner of Tracing Boards. (Thomas Dunckerley, p.160, London, 1891.) In a description of a Masonic procession which took place in Madras in 1787, William Preston recorded that it was headed by `Two Tylers with drawn Swords' THE TYLER OR OUTER GUARD 41 but, lower down the list, `The Lodge (i.e., Tracing Board), covered with white satin, carried by four Tylers.' (Illustrations of Masonry, 1788 Edn.) According to Jachin and Boaz the Tyler was not responsible for scrubbing out the drawing: The Ceremony now being ended, the new‑made Member is obliged to take a Mop out of a Pail of Water brought for that Purpose, and rub out the Drawing on the Floor, if it is done with Chalk and Charcoal. Then he is conducted back, and every Thing he was divested of is restored; and he takes his Seat on the Right Hand of the Master. He also receives an Apron, which he puts on, and the List of the Lodges is likewise given to him.
LODGE LISTS AND APRONS In an age when spurious and clandestine Freemasonry was rife it was necessary for Brethren to have information of dates and places of meetings of Regular Lodges on the Register of Grand Lodge. It was yet another duty of the Tyler to provide the List: ... the said Tyler being obliged to present to each New‑made Brother with a List of the Lodges.
(By‑laws, 1757, Lodge of Antiquity, No. 2.) At first the List was a crudely printed pamphlet but as the number of Lodges increased and the need even greater, particulars were then printed in Masonic magazines and Calendars. In principle they were the forerunners of the modern Year Book.
The List was much needed by the Tyler when attending to his duties obtaining from a visiting Brother necessary Lodge details. That information would be checked against the official List and any cases of doubt would be reported to the Master. Admission to the meeting would depend upon an investigation by a responsible member of the Lodge; a pattern that still applies.
In the early period aprons were the property of the Lodge and in some instances Candidates were required to `clothe the Lodge' i.e., to provide new in replacement. They were purchased in bulk the cost being about 1/6d each: To purchase 3~ dozen aprons for the use of the Lodge.
(Minutes, 18 November 1742, Lodge at Crown and Anchor, Seven Dials, London.) Safe‑keeping of aprons was another responsibility of the Tyler: The Doorkeeper to take care of clothing of members and utensils of the Lodge and to keep the key of the Apron Box etc. ...
(By‑laws, n.d., Lodge of Friendship, No. 6.) There was no difference between the aprons worn in Lodge and those worn by stonemasons at work. Indeed, in 1741 a Brother was fined for wearing his working apron (Minutes, 21 January 1741, Lodge at Duke of Bedford's Head). The aprons shown in all early illustrations and engravings are long ones with a bib and reached from chest to knees or lower.
The long aprons are depicted in vastly different circumstances and one of great interest is the frontispiece of Anderson's Book of Constitutions which shows the 42 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES Duke of Montagu, Grand Master in 1721, handing the Constitutional Roll to his successor the Duke of Wharton. Several persons are in attendance but because none are specifically mentioned it has given rise to speculation. However, one has some long aprons draped over his right arm and some white gloves are grasped in his left hand. I cannot think that a senior Grand Officer would be in charge of such items for it is a task more in keeping with those allocated to the Doorkeeper or Guarder.
Another engraving to note is by Benjamin Cole and is dated 1726. In the background it portrays building work in progress with three persons standing in the foreground. One holds a square, one has a plumb‑line, the centre figure not only holds the compasses but is wearing a long working apron. The upper part is not buttoned to the chest and this seems to indicate that, not being engaged upon shaping or fixing masonry, the wearer has no reason to fully protect his finery.
Yet another excellent illustration is Hogarth's painting NIGHT. It depicts the Master of a Lodge being assisted from the Rummer and Grapes Tavern by a Brother similarly clad who has a drawn sword under his arm and a key suspended from the waist. This Brother may well have been the Tyler and the key the one that locked the apron Box.
UPPER AND UNDER TYLERS In 1763 the number of Brethren attending meetings of the Lodge at the Dundee Arms Tavern at Wapping had increased so much that `Upper' and `Under' Tylers were appointed to share the work. Payment to the `Upper' Tyler varied from eight to twelve guineas a year whilst the `Under' Tyler was paid slightly less. The accounts for 1765 show that sixpence was paid for supper for each member but for the Tylers it was only fourpence each! Two Tylers were employed by Lodge of Antiquity, No. 2: One Shilling and Sixpence shall be paid each Lodge‑Night to the Head Tyler, who has the benefit of all Formations, and is to take care of the Lodge's Furniture; and Three Shillings shall be paid to the Under Tyler who is to carry the Lodge‑Letters to the Members. (4v‑laws dated 1760.) In 1820 their Tyling strength was increased by yet another: By‑law XXVIII. There shall be two Tylers and an Assistant Tyler. The Upper Tyler shall be allowed Seven Shillings, the Under Tyler Five Shillings, and the Assistant Tyler Four Shillings, for each meeting of the Lodge ...
Ample scope for speculation is provided by an item in the records of Mount Moriah Lodge, No. 34: ‑ Bro. Binks acted as I. Guard and Tyler'. (a) Did he remain outside the door of the Lodge? (b) Inside the Lodge with the door closed? (c) On the threshold and, as a compromise, leaving the door half open? No prizes are offered for the most elaborated guesswork on this subject! According to an article in Miscellanea Latomorum (Vol. XXV, p. 141), `A Minute of Lodge of Love and Honour, No. 75, Falmouth states‑November 1st, 1808, Bro. Tresider proposed that there should be two Tylers, Williamson to act at the door inside and Symons without .. .' In the next volume (p. 72) 1814 is the THE TYLER OR OUTER GUARD 43 year given as the earliest date for Inner Guard `as previously there were two Tylers'. Also that a sword `for the Inside Tyler was opposed but a Trowel was provided'.
A silver Trowel suspended from his collar was worn by the Inner Guard of Duke of Normandy Lodge, No. 245, Jersey, and this continued right through to 1906.
In Northumberland it was a custom for the Inner Guard and Tyler to be presented together, invested with `Jewels, Collars and Aprons as emblems of their respective offices' and according to the closing words in a ritual MS of pre‑union vintage, they were then instructed to take their respective stations, `the one within, and the other without the door of the Lodge'.
CLOTHING, UNIFORM, AND PROCESSIONS Distinctive clothing, livery, or just protective clothing for Tylers are described in wide variety. In 1742 The Westminster Journal printed a'Key to Procession' which had the following: Two Tylers, or Guarders. In Yellow Cockades, and Liveries, being the Colour ordained for the Sword‑Bearer of State. They, as youngest enter'd Prentices, are to guard the Lodge with a drawn Sword from all Cowans and Eaves‑droppers, that is Listeners, lest they should discover the incomprehensible Mysteries of Masonry.
A letter published in St. James' Chronicle on 9th August 1764 gave a report of a Masonic procession at Taunton which included this account: ... First came a Man with an Heroic Aspect. His Hat under his Arm, and carrying a large drawn Sword who I was told was the Doorkeeper ...
On St. John's Day, December 27, of the same year and in the same town, the members of the Lodge meeting at the Fountain Hotel proceeded from the Lodge to the church. They were headed by the town Beadles ‑ `to clear the way'; next came a `Grand Band of Musick'; then `3rd ‑ the head Tyler'; lastly, after a long list, the `Under Tyler closed ye Procession'.
The Minutes record `That a letter of Thanks be wrote to the Right Worshipful Master of the Lodge at the Jerusalem Tavern, Clerkenwell, for the use of the Tylers Dress'. Obviously the dignity of the Lodge was preserved by matching his appearance with that of the Town Beadles, even though he was arrayed in borrowed finery.
The following week partial independence was gained when the Master presented a `Tyler's Cap, trimm'd with Gold Lace and Fur'. On 1 November 1765 the members `Ordered that ye Tyler have forthwith a Watch Coat provided for him ...' (A. Q. C. Vol. 62.) In 1794, Lodge of Friendship, No. 277, Oldham, provided a Tyler's coat, cap and sashes `at a cost of úl. 0. 7 for making and 17/‑d for material'. Two years later they purchased `Jewels for Wardens and a Tylers Trowel'.
From the history of Restoration Lodge, No. 111, Darlington, we have: 44 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES 22 Feb. 1784. For the purpose of enhancing the dignity of the Lodge it was agreed and ordered that the W. Master should provide a great coat of Blue Cloth with Red Cape and Cuffs, which is to belong to the Lodge and to be made use of by the Tyler when Tyling the Lodge only.
A full description of a uniform is supplied by the following from Leicester: That the Tyler be clothed at the expense of the Lodge, with a blue coat and waistcoat and corderoy breeches, the whole with yellow buttons, pair of white stockings, and a three cornered hat; also that he be furnished with a hairy cap to wear on public occasions, the latter to remain the property of the Lodge.
(Minutes, 15 May 1791, St. John's Lodge, No. 279, Leicester.) Countless entries regarding the supply of articles of clothing either for protection or for ornament are to be found in Lodge records. On 14 December 1774 Lodge of Probity, No. 61, Halifax, `Paid one shilling for Mittens for the Tyler' and five years later `Order'd that a coat for the Tyler be provided before the next Lodge'. In 1754, Unanimity Lodge, No. 89, Cheshire, purchased for the sum of five shillings `a mitre of pigskin suitably ornamented with a crossed sword motif'. A Lodge in Cornwall resolved: that the Tyler shall have a great coat provided him at the expense of the Lodge, not to exceed two pounds in value ... which coat the Tyler is to wear on being at our several Lodges, also to make use on all other decent occasions.
(Minutes, 27 December 1814, Druids Lodge of Love and Liberality, then No. 127, Redruth, Erased 1834.) On 23 January 1755 the members of Old Dundee Lodge, No. 18, meeting at Wapping Old Stairs on the banks of the Thames, were not so generous: A motion made last Lodge Night `That the Tyler should be provided with a Cap and Cloak to shelter him from the inclemency' was balloted for and rejected.
On the subject of clothing a rather tragic note appeared in the accounts of another Lodge: Burying Bro. West ú2. 17. Od, and a burying suit for the Tyler, 10/‑‑. (Lodge Benevolence, No. 336, Cheshire.) Dignity and respect at all times were prime factors among Brethren and it is of interest to note the tributes that were paid to many faithful Tylers. The following is an excellent example: He was buried by the Lodge with all honours, the Brethren attending in Black, full and compleat, with White Gloves, Black Stockings, Black Buckles or Shoe Strings. New aprons were provided, the jewels and ribbons being cleaned for the occasion.
(History of Lodge of Probity, No. 61. Hanson. 1939.) SWORDS FOR TYLERS Mention of swords in Freemasonry is in either ceremonial or procedural context; I have not discovered an instance recorded of where one has been used in defence or for protective purpose. However, one cannot overlook an item in the accounts THE TYLER OR OUTER GUARD 45 of Lodge of Relief, No. 42, Bury, for 1843, which included ‑'By Bro. Warburton for grinding sword ... 2/6d'. A blunt sword for that Lodge was undesirable! Dangers in dark alleys and narrow turnings could not be ignored. Hogarth portrayed quite a few in his celebrated painting NIGHT. The dangers of the lonely journey from Hampstead to London at night were given as the reason for one Tyler to refuse to act for a Lodge unless provision for accommodation was included. The following item appeared in their accounts ‑'Tyler's Lodging, 2/6d'. (Historical Notes, St. Johns Lodge, No. 167.) Reports of Tylers `with drawn sword' in Masonic processions are plentiful but one unusual description is ‑ `Tyler with sword in mourning'. One assumes that black ribbon had been tied on it. (History, of Prov. Grand Lodge of Gloucestershitre, p. 30.) Freemasons often formed part of Trades processions and the following, which was reported in the Manchester Mercury, in 1802, may be taken as typical: A Lodge of Freemasons in the town, called Peace and Unity followed in full dress. The Bible was carried before them on a velvet cushion. This part of the procession finished with an officer called a Tyler. He was dressed in scarlet with a hairy cap, and carried a drawn sword.
(`Preston‑The Gild and the Craft', F. L. Pick, A.Q.C. 59, p. 108.) The funeral of a well respected Tyler in Somerset was treated as a Provincial `Occasion'. At an appropriate point in the ceremony the Tyler's wand and sword were broken and cast into the grave by the Prov. Grand Secretary and Master of the Lodge respectively with what is described as `the customary exclamation "Alas, our brother"'. The Brethren returned in procession to the Lodge to conclude `the Masonic duties of the day'. (Freemasons' Quarterly Review, 1850, pp. 106/7.) All varieties of swords are mentioned, from the wavy edged, purporting to represent the `Flaming sword' or sword of the `destroying Angel' of Biblical tradition, military sabres, naval cutlasses, to the scimitar used by the Tyler dressed in Turkish costume as reported in the history of Lodge Scoon at Perth in Scotland.
Quaint use of the Tyler's sword was, and maybe still is, made in some parts of Lancashire. In answer to the Master's question ‑'Has every Brother had his due?', the Senior warden replies ‑ `All except the Tyler, and I will see that he is attended to'. An extension to that form has occurred, viz., the Master sounds his gavel to summon the Tyler who, on entering the Lodge, salutes with his sword, proceeds to the Brother upon whom a Degree has just been conferred and, with flat side uppermost, points the sword to him. That Brother places one shilling on the blade, it is taken by the Tyler who then salutes the Master and retires from the Lodge.
GRAND TYLER'S STAFF OF OFFICE It has to be pointed out to many Brethren that the Grand Tyler does not `tyle' Grand Lodge, neither does he carry a sword. The sword that is carried into Grand Lodge is borne by the Grand Sword Bearer which is an office dating from 1730 when `the Sword of State' (by tradition the property of Gustavus 11 Adolphus, King of Sweden, 1611‑1632) was presented to Grand Lodge by the Grand Master, the Duke of Norfolk.
46 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES The Grand Tyler bears a Staff of Office which is surmounted by the Arms of the United Grand Lodge of England. He follows the two Deputy Grand Directors of Ceremonies who head processions into and from the Grand Temple. The Grand Tyler is not elected but is appointed by the Grand Master. Certain amendments regarding his position were promulgated in 1939: The Grand Tyler is to be an Installed Master (instead of a Master Mason) and to continue in office during the pleasure of the Grand Master (instead of Grand Lodge).
(Grand Lodge Proceedings, 7 June 1939, p. 347.) The Rules and Orders adopted by the Antients' Grand Lodge on 17 July 1751 contain reference to `Pursevant and Tyler of ye Grand Lodge'. The Moderns referred to the position as 'Tyler of Grand Lodge' and it is not until the turn of the century that we find reference to `Grand Tyler'.
Attendance at Grand Lodge is under the control of appointed scrutineers who are in charge of the Registers of Grand Lodge and it is against these that a Brother's qualification to attend is checked. Negligence in forwarding a Lodge Return can sometimes produce an embarrassing situation for a newly appointed Warden. The earlier 'List of Lodges' is hidden in the shadows of the Registers of today.
THE `SILENT TYLER' In the period when the slogan 'Go West young man' was bandied around, Freemasonry also went West! Barkerville, British Columbia, was a town in which there were some wild men and some equally wild, wild women. The local Masonic Hall had a unique device known as the 'Silent Tyler'. It was a built‑in safeguard consisting of a hinged stairway which led from the ground floor to the floor on which the Lodge room was situated. The stairs could be raised to cut off all access from the floor below and it was done by means of a wheel in the Tyler's room above. No Inner Guard was appointed in that Lodge for the first ten years because the Tyler was able to fill both duties quite comfortably. (History of Grand Lodge of British Columbia, J. T. Marshall, 1971.) UNUSUAL DUTIES Tylers have been men of many parts and in some cases they were Brethren with particular Masonic skill. The Minutes of Somerset House Lodge, No. 4, in 1787 were kept by the Tyler and he was voted two guineas for his trouble. A Minute in 1792 of Mount Lebanon Lodge, No. 173, states that the Tyler gave 'a Lecter in the first part, under an agreement made to allow him for his duties in the Lodge and attend the books 5s each night provided he found one outside to do that duty'. Mount Moriah Lodge, No. 34, has a record in 1783 that 'a lecture was given by Bro. Aldhouse, Tyler'.
It is commonly known that Summonses were delivered by Tylers but what is surprising is that in certain cases it was part of their duty also to write them and to indicate any special or urgent business that was to be dealt with at the meeting. The interest of the members of Lodge of Felicity, No. 58 had become so slack THE TYLER OR OUTER GUARD 47 that the Tyler had to be called in to open the Lodge for the meeting on 6 June 1827.
Many Lodges required their Tyler to collect the dining charge from visitors. The following is an excellent example: . . 'Tis agreed that the Tyler shall take the Visitors' money at the Door and bring it to the Mr.' to save the trouble of the Jun., Warden and Secty.
(Minutes, 5 Aug. 1740, Lodge of Antiquity, No. 2.) According to a Resolution adopted in 1785 by a Norfolk Lodge the Tyler was well involved in the `Calling Off' and `Calling On' procedure: 1. That for the future Dinner be on the table exactly at 4 o'clock each Lodge Day, and that the Tyler gives notice to the Wardens one Quarter of an hour before it is taken up. To wait Dinner for no Body.
11. That the Tyler for the future shall come into the Dining Room with his Sword exactly as the clock strikes six, leaving a Brother to tile the Lodge Room in his absence, and shall acquaint the Senior Warden with the hour; the Senior Warden with an Audible Voice shall inform the Master that `the Duties of the Lodge require the Attendance of the Members in the Lodge Room', upon which the Master and Members are to retire immediately.
III. That after the above notice of the Senior Warden if the Master and Wardens do not return to the Lodge Room in five Minutes, they shall be fined a Gallon of Claret each for the benefit of the Lodge.
(`The Great Lodge, Swgffham, Norfolk', Hamon le Strange, A.Q.C. Vol. 20.) Items causing offence to Lodge members were always committed for disposal or destruction by the Tyler. Generally they were letters or circulars but on one occasion a portrait was ordered to be burned (Temple Lodge, No. 101). From the Records of Lodge of Antiquity, No. 2, we have two examples which may be taken as typical: ... An anonymous letter addressed to the M' of this Lodge was read and consideredwhereupon a Motion was made that it should be burnt by the Hands of the Tyler ...
and another in which William Preston, the originator of the system of Lectures from which has evolved the Grand Lodge appointment of Prestonian Lectureship, wrote a pamphlet entitled A State of Facts that was unpalatable to the members. They recorded that it was `... torne and burned by the hands of the common Tyler'.
NEGLECT AND IRREGULARITIES Neglect of duty has reared its ugly head from time to time and according to the gravity of the offence met with reprimand, loss of pay, or dismissal: It being observed by the R. W. Master that several members had entered the Lodge without giving the regular masonic notice of approach. A motion was made and seconded that the Tyler be ordered in and reprimanded for his inattention to the duties of his office. (Minutes, 2 March 1784, Royal Lodge, then No. 201, united with Alpha Lodge in 1824, now No. 16.)
48 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES
At one meeting in 1763 Old Dundee Lodge, No. 18, recorded `Tyler dismissed' but no details of his offence appear. The next meeting has `Tyler re‑admitted'. Four years later they have `Tyler reprimanded' and in the same year `Tyler to clean the Lodge in 3 days or wages stopt'. In 1774 they have `Tyler dismissed' and this time they meant it because a new one was appointed.
The Tyler failed to turn up for the meeting of Lodge of Felicity, No. 58, on 15 January 1849 and as he had the keys the members went their several ways. In April of that year it was reported that one Brother's absence during the preceding twelve months was because the Tyler had not delivered a Summons to him for any of the meetings, so the members voted a refund of his subscription.
Authority for the Master to take immediate action was given by another Lodge: The Tyler shall be elected annually in the regular monthly meeting in November immediately after the election of the Treasurer, but if at any time he be accused of improper conduct a Vote of the Lodge may dismiss him and elect a new Tyler, or he may be suspended by the Master, if negligent in the discharge of his duty.
(By‑laws, 1819, Lodge of Peace and Harmony, No. 60.) Their Minutes in November 1850 record that the Tyler's resignation had been received and the Secretary has added the comment‑ `which the Lodge was pleased to accept'.
Perhaps the strangest irregularity of all came to light when circumstances branded the Tyler as an `Eavesdropper': 23 February 1815. The Tyler was discharged & paid for this Evening & likewise for the Arch. The Transactions of this Lodge having been repeated, divulged to the other Lodge in this Town [Halifax] and turned into Ridicule and as every Member declares his Innocence, it was thought that the Tyler must have been the Tale Bearer; in consequence a Ballot took place when he was by the unanimous consent of the Members discharged ... (Minutes, Lodge of Probil_y, No. 61, Halifax.) Freemasonry certainly does not transcend the frailties of human nature nor does it claim to be free from those who yield to temptation. Lodge property has been fair game at all times with collars and jewels mostly at risk: Previous to this Lodge Bro. Haggard the Tyler made his exit. On enquiry being made after the Jewells of the Lodge found from Necessitous Circumstances he had raised money on them. A motion was made and seed and Carrd that they should be redeemed at the Expense of the Lodge. Consequence of the above mentioned Unfortunate affair no Tyler attended the Lodge there not being sufficient Notice to Provide one.
(Minutes, 9 Feb. 1785, The Grenadiers Lodge, No. 66.) According to the Minutes of the next meeting the cost of redeeming the jewels was ú 1. 13. 9, and a new Tyler elected.
At Marlborough Police Court in 1850 a man was convicted of illegally pawning the jewels of all the Lodges of which he was Tyler. Regretfully, only some of the jewels were recovered. (History, of Salisbury Lodge, No. 435.) British Lodge, No. 8, was robbed of its jewels by their Tyler and although a member of the Lodge called at his house every day he was unable to influence the restoration of the property. The Secretary of the Lodge wrote to the President of the Board of General Purposes stating that the members were anxious to avoid a THE TYLER OR OUTER GUARD 49 scandal and unwilling to prosecute; nevertheless they felt the Board should be informed in order that other Lodges who engaged him might be protected. Robert Montgomery, son of the well‑known 'Garder of ye Grand Lodge' followed the same profession as Tyler but fell somewhat short of the standard. In 1764, Lodge of Emulation, No. 21, traded in their old jewels and with a cash balance of ú26. 14. 6 purchased a new set. Soon afterwards the jewels were missing and, unfortunately, so was Brother Robert. He was caught, clapped into Wood Street prison and there confessed that he had pawned them. Some items were recovered but we have no record of the sentence meted out to him. In those days it could have been very severe as theft was considered a most serious crime and the punishment for it was deportation. Only the year previously the Tyler of Lodge of Friendship, No. 44, was transported for theft of Lodge property.
From W. J. Hughan we learn of one Tyler for whom we must all have some sympathy as he was assigned the role of 'whipping boy'. The incident is mentioned in a Memorandum dated 20 November 1799 written inside the cover of the records of a Lodge which met in Rome from 1735 to 1737: Pope Clement the XII, having published a most severe edict against Masonry, the last Lodge held at Rome was on 20th August, 1737, when the Earl of Wintoun was Master. The Officer of the Lodge (i.e., Tyler), who was a servant of Dr. James Irvin, was sent, as a terror to others, prisoner to the Inquisition, but was soon released ...
(The Jacobite Lodge at Rome, 1735‑7, pp. 23, 35.) That Brother was certainly more sinned against than sinning.
FROM GRAND MASTER TO TYLER Reference has been made to the account in Anderson's New Book of Constitutions (1738) of the setting‑up of the premier Grand Lodge in 1717, with Anthony Sayer, 'Gentleman', as the first Grand Master. They were circumstances which held the prospect of dignity and prosperity but strangely this was not to be for Anthony Sayer. After his term of office he was required as a Grand Officer only once; as Senior Grand Warden for 1719. By comparison, his successor as Grand Master, George Payne, served as Junior Grand Warden in 1724 and 1725 and served as Senior Grand Warden in 1735.
Sayer must have headed into difficulties quite early because the Minutes of Grand Lodge for 21 November 1724 state: 'Brother Anthony Sayers Peticon [sic] was read and recommended by the Grand Master.' A similar situation arose at the meeting of 21 April 1730: Then the Petition of Brother Anthony Sayer formerly Grand Master was read setting forth his Misfortunes and great Poverty and praying Reliefe, the Grand Lodge took the same into Consideration and it was proposed that he should have ú20 out of the money received on Acct. of the General Charity, others proposed E10 and others ú15. The Question being put it was agreed he should have ú15 on Acct. of his having been Grand Master.
50/51
THE TYLER OR OUTER GUARD 51 THE SIGNS AND LODGES IDENTIFIED Goose and Gridiron, St. Paul's Churchyard Now LODGE OF ANTIQUITY, No. 2.
Queen's Head, Knaves Acre, Wardour Street Now LODGE OF FORTITUDE AND OLD CUMBERLAND, No. 12.
Queen's Head, Turnstile, Holborn This Lodge originally met at the Crown Ale House, Parker's Lane, and was No. 2 of the Four Old Lodges of 1717. Erased 1736.
Cheshire Cheese, Arundel Street Lapsed be/ore 1725.
Horn Tavern, Westminster Now ROYAL SOMERSET AND INVERNESS LODGE, No. 4.
King's Head, Ivy Lane Now LODGE OF FRIENDSHIP, No. 6.
Griffin, Newgate Street Now LODGE OF EMULATION, No. 21.
Three Cranes, Poultry Erased 1745.
Three Compasses, Silver Street Lapsed before 1729.
Fountain Tavern, Strand Now ROYAL ALPHA LODGE, No. 16.
52 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES The one‑time Grand Master was Tyler of various Lodges over a number of years but his efforts were not always crowned with success: Mr. Sawyer [Sayer], happening to tyle the Lodge at Forrest's Coffee House on the night whereon this society meets, disqualifies him from his regular attendance on this and the person he sometimes sends in his place not giving satisfaction on general acts. It was resolved since Mr. Sayer neither came nor sent to justify himself on this night that he be dismissed from tyling the Lodge. A new Tyler was appointed this night.
(Minutes, 9 October 1738, Lodge of Friendship, No. 6.) In December 1730 Sayer was summoned to attend Grand Lodge to answer a complaint lodged against him. There is an irritating lack of detail regarding this, but it is recorded that after hearing both parties ‑'some of the Brethren being of Opinion that what he had done was clandestine, others that it was irregular' ‑ Sayer was told by the Deputy Grand Master that he was acquitted of the charge and recommended to do nothing so irregular in the future. Sadler comments, `This reads very much like a verdict of "Not Guilty, but don't do it again!"' (Masonic Facts and Fictions, pp. 42/3). Because of the appearance of the word `clandestine' in the charge and the fact that Sayer was down on his luck, there is every possibility that in addition to acting as Tyler for Lodges on the Register of Grand Lodge he had acted for one that was not. Such Lodges were termed 'clandestine'.
Destitution pursued Sayer because the members of Old Kings Arms Lodge, No. 28, gave him ú2. 2. in 1736 ‑ 'to mend his circumstances' ‑ and in 1740 the sum of l Os. 6d. ‑'in consideration of the late hard weather'.
KNOCKS TO SUMMON THE TYLER Knocks by the Master to summon the Tyler find their origin, in principle, in Gild practice. In his Inaugural Address as Master Quatuor Coronati Lodge, No. 2076, (A.Q.C. 74.), Bernard Jones quoted a Minute dated 15 June 1644 from the records of the Cutlers Gild relating to Upper and Under Beadles: Ordered that from Henceforth ... the Beadles ... stay att the outward doore until they shall be called in And to come in to attend the will of the Court att the knocke of the Hammer.
Bro. Jones commented ‑'Can there be the slightest doubt that the Guild Beadle has, in the Craft, become the Lodge Tyler?' and with that statement I am in complete agreement. The double knock is merely a created variation from those in use in the several Masonic ceremonies.
THE TYLER'S TOAST The Tyler's Toast is not ritual but is a pleasant Masonic custom having a wide variety in presentation. An early indication of the form familiar to most Brethren is to be found in one of the Toasts in Ahiman Rezon (pp. 148‑50 1756 Edn.), following a song composed by Laurence Dermott: To all Ancient Masons, wheresoever dispers'd or oppressed around the Globe, etc.
THE TYLER OR OUTER GUARD 53 The 'etc' denies us the full wording but indicates that the Toast was so well known that it did not justify printing in full. Similar treatment was given to other Toasts. Jachin and Boaz (1762) has `The Entered Apprentice's Lecture' in catechetical form which was interspersed by various Toasts drunk with `Three Times Three'. Among the Toasts was `To all Brethren wheresoever dispersed'.
The earliest printing of the Toast in full was by George Claret in 1840 in The Whole of Craft Masonry. It appeared at the end of the Third Section of the First Lecture: The following is the charge, To all poor and distressed M .... s, wherever scattered over the face of Earth and Water; wishing them a speedy relief from their misfortunes, and a safe return to their native country if they require it.
ALL POOR AND DISTRESSED M .... S In common use nowadays is the form `if they desire it' but Dr. E. H. Cartwright quotes an addition to that: `if they desire and deserve it'. (A Commentary on the Freemasonic Ritual,f%n, p. 81.) This may well have been a wish on behalf of those Brethren unfortunate enough to have been press‑ganged but it eliminated the Brother who had been transported! It should be noted that the Tyler is not associated with any of the examples quoted.
EPILOGUE The attention of those Brethren who may be interested in an examination of ritual, procedure and duties pertaining to the Tyler, is drawn to `The Work of the Tyler', chapter four of Dr. Cartwright's book.
`Doorkeeping' has developed far beyond the duty allocated to the Junior Entered Apprentice, whose main function was to guard against `Evesdroppers' and possibly to catch any offenders. The position has grown into one of trust, of dignity, of understanding, of sympathy, of tolerance, and of dedication. It is because of the exercise of some, if not all, of those qualities that many Tylers rose to eminence, lived respected, and died regretted.
Despite all the changes the future may hold, and no doubt there will be many, let us earnestly hope the same qualities will ever distinguish the Brethren who will be elected to carry out the manifold duties of ‑ `The Tyler or Outer Guard'.
GRAND STEWARDS 1728‑1978 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURE FOR 1978 CHARLES MACKECHNIE‑JARVIS The year is 1715 and the place is London. The uncertain reign of Queen Anne has closed with the death of the Queen at the early age of 49.
The political situation is confused and the Hanoverian dynasty has commenced amid manifestations of unpopularity and mistrust. Jacobite Clubs exist in London and their meeting places and aims are being exposed by the pamphleteers. Accusation and counter accusation are rife in print and achieve reality in the abortive uprising which followed the landing of the Pretender at Peterhead in December, 1715. The outcome is well known and was greeted with relief and thanksgiving and an era of stability ensued in which Freemasonry undoubtedly played its part.
Although the transition from operative to speculative freemasonry is outside the scope of this Lecture, some account of the early years of Grand Lodge and in fact some reference to the years preceding its actual formation are material to the general theme. In matters of history generally, the bare statement of apparent fact can seldom be accepted without qualification of some kind and in this respect the history of freemasonry is no exception.
Our ancient brethren true to their obligations left little written record of their activities and some accounts written after the establishment of the Premier Grand Lodge in 1717 must be questioned.
There is positive evidence of the existence of speculative as distinct from operative masonry in the 17th Century. Lodges of freemasons at this period are believed to have been largely occasional in the sense that they were summoned at irregular intervals according to circumstance. Nevertheless the making of masons continued in London and in the Provinces with sufficient regularity to preserve a knowledge of the procedures and tenets of the Craft.
It is permissible to say that the upsurge in speculative masonry giving rise to the as yet unknown events which led to the formation of Grand Lodge occurred in London and the accepted facts are that four Lodges then meeting at Taverns in London came together and agreed to establish a Grand Lodge. We do not know whether agreement was achieved at one meeting or whether discussion was extended over months or over a year or longer, but we do know that the Premier Grand Lodge was established on June 24th, 1717 when a Feast was held at the Goose and Gridiron, this being St John's Day.
The four lodges in question were those which met, (a) At the Goose & Gridiron Ale‑house in St. Paul's Church‑Yard, now Antiquity No. 2.
(b) At the Crown Ale‑house in Parker's‑Lane near Drury‑Lane.
54 GRAND STEWARDS 1728‑1978 55 (c) At the Apple‑Tree Tavern in Charles‑Street, Covent‑Garden now Fortitude and Old Cumberland No. 12.
(d) At the Rummer & Grapes Tavern in Channel‑Row, Westminster now Royal Somerset House & Inverness No. IV.
SOME STATISTICS The strength of the four Lodges in 1717 is not known but for later years the figures are: 1723 1725 (a) 22 15 (b) 21 20 (c) 15 14 (d) 72 71 Of the four original lodges in this context, Lodge (b) ceased working around 1736. The other three, now operating under the appellation of 'Time Immemorial' can, apart from a prior place, each claim distinction on different grounds.
Thus Lodge (a) can justifiably declare itself to be the most ancient of the four and to have links with the Wren and Strong families, both prominent in connection with the rebuilding of St. Paul's Cathedral.
Lodge (c) supplied the First Grand Master, Anthony Sayer.
Lodge (d) was probably the largest of the four and certainly remained so for a number of years. George Payne (G.M. No. 2) and Dr. Desaguliers (G.M. No. 3) were among its members.
This recital of facts prompts certain questions: Firstly, why did the four Lodges, one of whom (Antiquity) had, it is believed been meeting in London for more than 25 years, suddenly decide that a Grand Lodge was needed? Secondly, were there other Lodges who did not respond to a general call or perhaps, being newly formed, were not invited? Probably the true answer is that interest in the Craft was changing in tempo to such an extent as to give the older masons cause for concern. A governing body could hardly be justified for just four Lodges but if a sharp increase in numbers of Lodges was foreseen or perhaps was anticipated the question takes on a fresh aspect.
Support for this concept is found in the growth statistics reflected by the Masonic Census figures of 1723 and 1725 as recorded in the Minutes of Grand Lodge.
1723 1725 Lodges Members Lodges Members 52 900 77 1490 Note: An assumption has been made for lodges on the Register of Grand Lodge making no return, and an allowance for multiple membership.
It has always been accepted that certain of the Lodges which applied for a Warrant from the Premier Grand Lodge had been working for some time previously.
56 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES The surviving Minutes of Grand Lodge commence in 1723 and for detail relating to the earlier years from 1717 we are largely dependent upon Dr. James Anderson (1680?‑1739) the author of the printed Constitutions of 1723 and 1738. In the latter Anderson writes thus: Accordingly On St. John Baptist's Day, in the 3rd Year of King George l, A.D. 1717, the ASSEMBLY and Feast of the Free and accepted Masons was held at the foresaid Goose and Gridiron Alehouse.
The day was of course the 24th of June, an anniversary long associated with operative masonry. In succeeding years, the Annual Assembly and Feast continued to be held on June 24th at the Goose and Gridiron until 1721 when in consequence of the larger attendance expected, upon the election of the first noble Grand Master, John 2nd Duke of Montagu 1690‑1749 Grand Lodge met at King's Arms Tavern and the brethren afterwards marched in procession to the Stationers Hall `in proper clothing and due form' where the Feast was held and `where they were joyfully received by about 150 true and faithful, all clothed'. This was probably the first of the public processions to which further reference will be made.
So far there has been no reference to the ordering of the Feast which on the limited scale possible at the Goose and Gridiron, could be handled by the Grand Wardens in conjunction with the staff of the Inn. Now however a change was envisaged. To quote Anderson in connection with 1721: `Then the Grand Wardens were order'd, as usual, to prepare the Feast, and to take some Stewards to their Assistance, Brothers of Ability and Capacity, and to appoint some Brethren to attend the Tables; for that no Strangers must be there. But the Grand Officers not finding a proper number of Stewards, our Brother, Mr. Josiah Villeneau, Upholder in the Burrough Southwark, generously undertook the whole himself, attended by some Waiters....' THE FIRST STEWARD Josias Villeneau (?‑1753) who has the distinction of being the first named Steward in masonry was by family name and context a Huguenot refugee.
His date of birth has not been traced and it is probable that he was born in France and came to London as a child (with others of the same name) about 1685, the year of the Revocation of the Edict de Nantes. He became an Anglican and lived for most of his life in the Parish of St. Saviours, Southwark, but his name occurs as a Godparent to a child of Jean Villeneau at the French Church at Crispin Street, in 1707. Incidentally a John Villeneau was a Grand Steward in 1746.
Josias was married at St. Saviours, now Southwark Cathedral, in August 1703 and his children were baptised there. He is described in all except one of the documents seen as an Upholder, a term which possesses several conflicting definitions. His Will (Canterbury Prerog. Records) however declares him to have been an Upholsterer. His name appears from time to time in the Minutes of Vestry Meetings and on several occasions as one of the Parish Constables appointed under Vestry powers. Finally, by a large majority he was in 1744 elected Parish Clerk, a post which he retained until his death. The Office was a coveted one for GRAND STEWARDS 1728‑1978 57 which there were 6 contenders and Brother Villeneau secured upwards of 60% of the votes. His certificate of appointment has been preserved and a xerox copy has been placed in Grand Lodge archives, by courtesy of the Southwark Diocesan Registrar. Josias was buried in St. Saviours parish on December 7th, 1753.
At the investiture which followed the Feast of 1721 Bro. Villeneau was appointed Senior Grand Warden. He served the office of Right Worshipful Master of Antiquity (then No. 1) in 1723 according to the Grand Lodge list.
The position in regard to 1722 is somewhat uncertain and some authorities follow Anderson who infers that no Feast was held and that a gathering at the Stationers Hall on June 24th of that year was unofficial.
For 1723 we are given more positive advice: The Tickets for the next Feast were order'd to be Ten Shillings each, impress'd from a curious Copper Plate, and seal'd with the Grand Master's Seal of Office, to be disposed of by the Grand Wardens and the Stewards.
ASSEMBLY and Feast on Monday 24th June 1723, at Merchant‑Taylors‑Hall.
The Committee appointed to keep out Cowans came early, and the Stewards to receive the Tickets and direct the Servants.
About 400 Free Masons, all duly clothed, dined elegantly in due Form.
A landmark of this meeting was the appointment of William Cowper (16...... ‑ 1740) of the Horn Lodge, Westminster (now No. IV) as Secretary to the Grand Lodge, being the first holder of this important Office.
The 1723 Feast was served by six Stewards among whom was Edward Lambert acting for the first time. In 1724 the Feast was again held on June 24th at the Merchant Taylors Hall and the Grand Wardens were assisted as in the previous year by six Stewards. The arrangements for the Feast had evidently been under active review because at the meeting of Grand Lodge on 28th April 1724 it is recorded that It is the Grand Ma's Order that the following Regulations be Observed at the next Annuall meeting: 1st That No Wine be opened till Dinner be Laid on the Table 2nd That the Money or Ticketts be return'd to the Stewards about 14 Days before Midsummer.
3rd That the Members of Each Lodge Sitt together as much as possible at the Grand Feast.
4th That the Price of Each Tickett shall be ten Shillings.
5th That the Company shall have no Wine from the Stewards after Eight of the Clock at Night.' At the General Meeting held on the 24th June, the day of the Feast it was ordered: That the Stewards do prepare a List (for the Grand Masters perusall) of twelve fitt persons to Serve as Stewards at the next Grand Feast, And that they do make up their Accounts with all Convenient Speed that the Same may be Audited.
The next Feast was held at Merchant Taylors Hall on the Anniversary day of St. John the Evangelist on the 27th of December 1725, postponed no doubt on account of the serious illness of The Grand Master, the Duke of Richmond. According to Anderson ‑ No Stewards being appointed G. M. Richmond desired our brother John James Heidegger to prepare the Feast in the best Manner'.
58 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES Brother Heidegger (1659‑1749) was a colourful figure in the financially uncertain world of the theatre, who would to‑day be termed an Impresario. Heidegger (sometimes called John Jacob) was a Walloon (Netherlands) Protestant according to Grove's Dictionary of Music, or son of a Swiss Clergyman (D.N.B.). Musicians denigrate him and claim that he exploited Handel, for a time his partner. The latter however, notwithstanding his justifiably great fame as a composer contrived to make life impossible for our Brother in quarrelling with the Singers. Historical record shows that Handel received large sums from Heidegger whose charitable disposition is supported by contemporary comment.
Heidegger, minuted as the Grand Steward, chose two brethren to assist him one of whom was Brother Edward Lambert (16...... ‑1736 N.S.) a Confectioner resident in Pall Mall. The arrangements for this Feast were again discussed at the Quarterly Communication held on the 27th of November 1725 and the Order concerning procedure made on April 28th, 1724 repeated. In the following year Edward Lambert was apparently appointed sole Grand Steward, although Anderson says `No Stewards; but Brother Edward Lambert undertook the prepare the Feast.' Perhaps Lambert was acting in a professional capacity as Caterer? According to the Minutes of the Quarterly Communication held on Monday the 12th of December 1726, Lord Paisley, Grand Master presiding: His Lorp then acquainted the Lodge that he designed to hold a Grand feast on St. Johns Day next ensuing [i.e. December 27] at Merchant Taylors Hall Upon which Mr. Lambert was called in being the Grand Steward appointed for the Sd. feast.
The Grand Mar. read the Regulations agreed on by the Grand Lodge held next before the last Grand feast which were agreed to by this Grand Lodge with the alteration that the Ticketts not taken are to be returned by Monday next.
The Quarterly Communication and Feast appear in fact to have been held two months later on February 27th 1727 at the Hall of the Mercer's Company but no explanation for the postponement and change of venue is given.
It will be noted that the good intention of appointing twelve Stewards as planned in 1724 could not yet be given effect presumably owing to the reluctance of the Brethren to undertake the Office under the certain conditions obtaining.
The state of affairs prevailing at that time was ventilated at a special meeting of Grand Lodge held on Tuesday December 19th 1727 when the arrangements for the forthcoming Feast to be held on St. John the Evangelist's Day, December 27, 1727 were considered. Grand Lodge had been summoned by the Deputy Grand Master William Cowper, who presided in the absence of the Grand Master Lord Inchiquin in Ireland.
Anderson's account is as follows: D. G. Master Cowper in the Chair, eloquently excused the Grand Master's Absence in Ireland, and his sudden Calling them together; for that the Feast drew nigh, and that the Grand Master had, by letter, impower'd him to propose, for his Successor, the Lord Colerane Master of a Lodge, who was forthwith saluted as Grand Master Elect.
No Stewards being appointed, Brother Lambert again undertook to prepare the Feast.
GRAND STEWARDS 1728‑1978 59 The Minutes of Grand Lodge treat the matter somewhat differently and at much greater length. After the preliminaries, the Deputy Grand Master 'proceeded to give the Grand Lodge an Account of his Reasons for Summoning them at this time in the manner following Viz:' [Here follows an unusually long speech reported fully, in which our Brother discloses that of the 500 tickets printed, only 81 have been paid for. Some Lodges have not received any tickets and others not enough. With only ten days to go there was clearly an element of panic prevailing.] The Deputy Grand Master blamed 'your present Secretary' but appears to concede that his own inaction has also contributed to the confusion which has arisen. Brother Nathaniel Blackerby, Treasurer of Grand Lodge 'taking notice of the Method used by some Brethren of taking Tickets at the Hall Door, as also of the neglect complained of by the Deputy Grand Master, in the distribution of the Tickets, for the ensuing Grand Feast, proposed that the same might be taken into consideration by the Grand Lodge on St. John's day next ensuing at Mercers Hall, and desired a Minute might be made thereof.
'The Motion being made, and the Question put the same was agreed to Nemime Con. And the Brethren present were desired by the D. G. Master to come prepared with such Schemes as they should Judge proper and necessary for preventing such Irregularities for the future'.
'The Motion being made that Brother Lambert may have Liberty to advertize in the publick News Papers, That Tickets will be deposited with him till Saturday. The Question was put, and it was unanimously agreed That he may advertize the same in such manner as he shall think proper'.
The 1727 Feast appears to have been successful as the Minute includes the following: 'The other regular Healths were drank, as also Brother Lambert's with Thanks for his Care in the entertainment of the day'. The Secretary to Grand Lodge for the previous year was not reappointed! THE FIRST BOARD OF GRAND STEWARDS The question of Stewards was not raised again until the Quarterly Communication held on the 26th November 1728 and then the Grand Lodge Minutes read as follows: 'Then it was proposed that a Grand Feast should be kept on next St. John's day as Usual, which was likewise agreed to. The Deputy Grand Masters then declared he would keep the said Feast at Stationers Hall:' 'And Dr. Desaguliers proposed (that in order to have the same conducted in the best manner) a certain Number of Stewards should be chosen, who should have the intire Care and Direction of the said Feast (together with the Grand Wardens) pursuant to the printed Regulations, which, being seconded by Mr. Collis'.
'The Deputy Grand Master desired that all those who were willing to accept the said Office of Steward would advance to the Table & declare the same by signing their Names before the Chair'.
'The Earl of Inchiquin was thereupon pleased to offer himself in a very obliging manner to be one of the Stewards on that Occasion. But his Lordp. having been so lately Grand 60 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES Master, the Lodge thought it would be too great a trouble to, as well as too great a Condescention in his Lordp. to accept that Office, therefore would not suffer it. But at the same time exprest their utmost Gratitude for the Great Honour and Love his Lordp. had shown for the Brotherhood and the Craft'.
`Then the several Brethren hereafter named advanced to the Table and signed their Names respectively, to be Stewards at the next Grand Feast, in Number Twelve and in the Order following, vizt: l. Mr. Cesar Collys of the Lodge at the Rose in Mary la Bone.* 2. Mr. John Revis Master of the Globe in the Strand.
3. Mr. Samuel Stead Master of St. Pauls Head in Ludgate Street. 4.
5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. The Healths of the twelve Stewards was proposed and drank with twelve alluding to the twelve Signes of the Zodiack as well as to their Number which they returned Jointly in like manner'.
`The Stewards likewise propos'd Dr. Desaguliers Health for reviving the Office of Stewards (which appeared to be agreeable to the Lodge in general) and the same was drank accordingly.' Mr. William Benn Master of Mag Pye without Bishopgate. William Tew of D░.
Mr. Gerard Hatley of Bishopgate Coffee House.
Mr. Thomas Alford Master of the Rose and Rummer in Holbourn. Mr. H. Smart of the Cross Keys in Henrietta Street.
Mr. Thos. Reason of Tottenham high Cross.* Mr. William Hopkins Rummer Pater Noster Row. Mr. William Wilson Ship Fish Streethill.
Mr. Theodore Cherriholme St. Paul's Head Ludgate Street.
James Anderson's record differs slightly in emphasis. `Brother Desaguliers moved to revive the Office of Stewards to assist the Grand Wardens in preparing the Feast, and that their Number be 12, which was readily agreed to.' As will be seen later, from this time onwards until modified at the Union, the 12 Stewards acted as a Board, acquiring valued privileges in return for their services. 1728 is therefore regarded as the first Board constituted as such, on the proposal of Bro the Rev Dr Desaguliers.
John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683‑1744) was a freemason and scientist of outstanding ability who followed his friend George Payne (168...‑1757) into the Grand Master's Chair in 1719 and served the Office of Deputy Grand Master 1722‑24 and 1726. He was born at La Rochelle, a town on the West coast of France and was the son of a Huguenot Clergyman who escaped from France during the oppression which preceded the Revocation of the Edict de Nantes in, 1685. His father having entered the Church of England (whilst retaining his position as Pastor of one of the French Protestant Chapels in London) J. T. Desaguliers was enabled to enter Oxford University where he graduated B.A. in 1710.
He was ordained into the Anglican Church in 1712 and became Chaplain to the Duke of Chandos in 1714. Dr. Desaguliers was elected F.R.S. in 1714 and as in due course some 10 members of the Horn Lodge bore this distinction it has been suggested that they were perhaps recruited by him. Desaguliers' career as a "The Lodge at The Rose is now the Old King's Arms Lodge No. 28 and the Swan at Tottenham High Cross is the Castle Lodge of Harmony No. 26. The others are now extinct.
GRAND STEWARDS 1728‑1978 61 scientific lecturer commenced at Hart Hall, Oxford where from 1710‑1712 he was deputising for John Keill F.R.S. He established himself in London in 1713 and advertised his lectures as follows: A Course of Mechanical and Experimental Philosophy, consisting of 4 parts, viz. Mechanicks, Hydrostaticks, Pneumaticks and Opticks to be perform'd by John Theophilus Desaguliers of Hart Hall in Oxford, A.M. at Mr. Brown's Bookseller at the Black Swan and Bible without Temple Bar.
Catalogues of the experiments to be performed were obtainable from several addresses including that of Mr. George Payne at the Leather Office in St. Martin's Lane and Mr. Desaguliers at the French School at Islington.* This establishes that George Payne and J. T. Desaguliers were close friends as early as 1713 since it is unlikely that Payne, a young civil servant would have allowed the use of his office address to a casual acquaintance. George Payne's Brother, the Rev. Thomas Payne was a fellow student with J. T. Desaguliers at Christ Church College, Oxford and the two future Grand Masters, both of whom became members of the Horn Lodge (now Royal Somerset House and Inverness No. IV) may have met through Thomas Payne.
Although a procedure whereby 12 Stewards were to be appointed annually had been agreed by Grand Lodge in 1728, a difficulty arose the following year at the November meeting when an objection was raised to some of the volunteers who responded to the call for Stewards. The Deputy Grand Master, Nathaniel Blackerby, having ascertained that 5 Stewards from the 1728 Board were willing to serve again provided that they could have the liberty of filling the vacancies, it was agreed by Grand Lodge that this proposal was acceptable. At the same meeting, a Stewards suggestion that St John's Day (December 27th) was somewhat inconvenient to many of the Brethren was accepted and it was agreed to hold the Feast a month or six weeks later.
The Minutes of Grand Lodge show that the expenses of the annual Feast were proving something of a burden to the Craft generally and once again it fell to a Deputy Grand Master to attempt to rationalise the position. Thus at the meeting of Grand Lodge on December 15th, 1730, the Deputy Grand Master proposed that as the second course (at the Feast) `is very expensive to the Stewards, and discouraging to the Brethren undertaking to serve that Office might be omitted and to encourage Brethren to come to the Feast, that the Tickets might be reduced from 10s. to 7s 6d. apiece and acquainted them that the second of February was a Law Holy Day and that both Houses of Parliament did not sit that day and therefore it was reasonable to expect a greater Number of Masons would come to the Feast upon that day, nor any other in Term or Parliament time'. It is to be hoped that the cost of the second course was more than half, a crown or the Stewards would be out of pocket to an even greater extent! Perhaps they were, because although both propositions were accepted by Grand Lodge `Nemine con', the call for Stewards which followed produced only 5 names.
Once more the assistance of the Stewards of the previous Board was sought and the six Junior Stewards asked to attend upon the Deputy Grand Master `who is *Text of Advt. is given by Miss M. E. Rowbottom in a paper on Desaguliers in Trans. Huguenot Society 1965 and has been verified.
62 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES desired to fix this affair in such manner as he shall think fitt'. It is made clear at the next meeting of Grand Lodge that `when it was left to the Six Junr. Stewards who served last year to provide Stewards for the ensuing Feast that twelve Brethren had accepted the Office....' The Feast which was `concluded with Mirth and Unanimity' was held at the Mercers Hall in Cheapside on March 27, 173 1.
We are not told how the members of the Board of Stewards for 1732 were recruited but the arrangement for the Feast to be held on April 19th of this year were discussed at the March Quarterly Communication, when the names were given, the date of the Feast was fixed for April 19th and the price of the tickets agreed at half a guinea.
LANDMARKS ...
Bro Colonel John Pitt, one of the newly appointed Stewards proposed a Motion `that the twelve present Stewards, shall after dinner at the said Grand Feast each of them choose his Successor for the year ensuing which being Seconded. The Question was put and carried in the affirmative'.
`It was likewise proposed that the said Method of electing Stewards for the future shall be in the same manner and the same was agreed Nemine con'.
In March 1735 Grand Lodge considered the proposal of Dr J. Anderson to reprint the Book of Constitutions and desired him to print the names of all the Grand Masters `together with a List of the Names of all Deputy Grand Masters, Grand Wardens, and the Brethren that have served the Craft in Quality of Stewards, which was thought necessary Because it is Resolved ; That for the future all Grand Officers (except the Grand Master) shall be selected out of that Body'.
This Resolution was of extreme importance at the time since it rendered the Office of Steward not only desirable but essential to those seeking preferment in the Craft. As will be seen later the decision of Grand Lodge was qualified by another Resolution passed in 1779 but the policy of recruiting Grand Officers through this channel was abandoned at the time of the Union in 1813.
`An Address from the Body of the Gentlemen who had served the Society in the Quality of Stewards directed to the Grand Lodge was then read praying certain Priviledges in consideration of such their Services &c.
The status of the Stewards was further abated at the Quarterly Communication held on the 24th of June in 1735 when: 1. That they might meet monthly or otherwise as a Lodge of Master Masons (under the Denomination of the Stewards Lodge) and be enrolled among the Number of the Lodges as usual with the times of their Meeting 2. That they might be so far distinguished (since all the Grand Officers are for the future appointed to be chosen out of their Number ; and in order to qualify themselves to the right discharge of those Officers, when called to the same) send a Deputation of twelve from the whole Body of Stewards to each Quarterly Communication, all the twelve to have Voices, and all that come to pay half a Crown apiece towards the Expence of that Occasion 3. That no person who had not served the Society as a Steward might be permitted at a Quarterly Communication or elsewhere to wear their coloured Ribbonds or Aprons But. That such as had been Stewards might be indulged with wearing a particular Jewel by GRAND STEWARDS 1728‑1978 63 way of distinction suspended in their proper Ribbond wherever they appear as Masons the pattern of which they then offend. These were granted them upon a Division. 45 of the Assembly being on the affirmative side and 42 on the Negative.
It was also Declared That The twelve Stewards for any current year might attend in their proper colour, &c paying as usual for four Lodges*, but they are not allowed votes, nor are to be heard in any Debate unless something relating to the ensuing Feast be under Consideration.' It will be seen that the Stewards were here proposing some innovations in that, to quote Bro. Songhurst, they sought to obtain sanction to include in the composition of Grand Lodge certain Brethren who were not of necessity Masters or Wardens, and the wearing of jewels (and by inference collars) by those who were not actually holders of office. The jewel is traditionally that designed by the artist William Hogarth who served as Grand Steward in 1734, and is now worn by the Master and P.M.s of Grand Steward's Lodge. William Hogarth (1697‑1764) was a member of the lodge meeting at the Bear and Harrow, Butcher Row, Temple Bar in 1730, now St George's and Corner Stone No. 5.
The account of what transpired at the next meeting of Grand Lodge held on December 11 th, 1735 may be viewed in various ways. The Grand Master, Viscount Weymouth, was absent and all the principal officers were acting Pro tempore. The acting Deputy Grand Master informed the Brethren that the Grand Master `had received an Express this morning from Paris concerning the Death of his Lordp's Grandmother, so that he could not with decency attend the Society this Evening according to his Intention and hoped they would excuse him on account of the melancholy Occasion that detained him.' Business appears to have proceeded normally until: `A Petition and Appeal was presented and read signed by several Masters of Lodges against the Priviledges granted to the Steward's Lodge at the last Quarterly Communication. The Apellants were heard at large and the Question being put whether the Determination of the last Quarterly Communication relating to this matter should be confirmed or not. In the course of the collecting the votes on this Occasion there appeared so much Confusion that it was not possible for the Grand Officers to determine with any Certainty that the Numbers on either side of the Question were, they were therefore obliged to dismiss the Debate and close the Lodge.' The implied disorder gave rise to a new set of rules for the governing of the proceedings in Grand Lodge, proposed and adopted at the next meeting.
And that none might plead Ignorance herein it was Resolved that these Rules of Conference shall be audibly read by the publick Secretary at every Quarterly Communication after the opening of the Lodge.
An Uncommon Appearance of Harmony From the excerpts from the Minutes of Grand Lodge already quoted it would appear that our Masonic forbears were ever ready to express appreciation for services rendered and the necessaries for such toasts must have been readily available.
* Each private lodge was permitted to send to each Quarterly Communication 3 representatives, viz., W.M. and 2 Wardens.
64 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES In 1729 or thereabouts Captain Ralph Farr Winter of the Lodge of the Queen's Arms, Newgate Street, now the Lodge of Emulation, No. 21, went overseas and soon afterwards became Provincial Grand Master of East India. At the Quarterly Communication held on the 13th December 1733 Brother Thomas Edwards, a Warden of the Horn Lodge of Westminster (now Royal Somerset House and Inverness Lodge No. IV) `informed the Grand Lodge that our Rt. Worshipful Brother Capt. Ralph Far Winter Provincial Grand Master of East‑India &c, had sent over a Chest of Arack for the Use of the Grand Lodge, and ten Guineas to the General Charity being the Contribution of our Brethren in East India.
The Healths of Br. Winter and the Brethren in East India were drank with Thanks for their handsom Present.' The beverage was apparently permitted to `settle' for a year until the Quarterly Communication of the 31st March, 1735. With the Grand Master, the Earl of Crauford in the Chair, it is recorded that The General Healths being drank and his Lordp's in particular with the greatest Unanimity and affection, attended with Thanks for his Excellent and acceptable administration. Which his Lordp was pleased to return in good Wishes for the Prosperity of the Craft, and was pleased to say that what he had done in this matter he took to be no less his Duty than it had been his Inclination.
His Lordp was pleased to Order a large Quantity of Rack, that was made a Present of from Bengall in the East Indies to the Grand Officers to be made into Punch and to be distributed among the Brethren.
All Business being over the Grand Lodge was closed with an uncommon appearance in Harmony.' Brother Farr Winter served as Grand Steward at the 1735 Festival and later became Master of the Stewards' Lodge.
GRAND STEWARDS' LODGE The history of Grand Stewards' Lodge which will be due to celebrate the 250th anniversary of its foundation in 1985 is largely outside the scope of this Lecture. As at the time of its constitution in 1735, it bore the name Stewards' Lodge and was numbered 117. By subsequent renumbering it became successively numbers 115, 70, 60 and in 1780, number 47. In April 1792 it was ordered to be placed at the head of the list of Lodges without number, which position of honour it continues to occupy.
It is constituted as a Master Masons Lodge the membership of which is restricted to those who have served the Office of Grand Steward, subject to proposal and regular election. The Lodge has no power to initiate, pass or raise Masons. The Lodge meets before each Quarterly Communication of Grand Lodge and after closing the Brethren present proceed to the Grand Temple where they occupy seats reserved for them, in compliance with Rule 37 of the Book of Constitutions. The Installation meeting takes place in the ordinary way and is an open function to which Masonic guests may be invited. The Lodge holds an Emergency Meeting in October of each year at which the Investiture of Officers of London Grand Rank takes place and also assists Grand Lodge on the occasion of Special Festivals.
GRAND STEWARDS 1728‑1978 65 Today, Grand Stewards' Lodge is in a sound position but there have been several occasions in the past when support was lacking. Thus enthusiasm dwindled in the later 1700s and in February 1779 the Officers of Grand Stewards' Lodge successfully petitioned Grand Lodge complaining that Brethren who had served the Office of Steward were tending to neglect all attendance upon the Stewards' Lodge afterwards as members and failed to pay their subscriptions. To remedy this a Resolution was passed by Grand Lodge requiring `That in future no Brother be appointed a Grand Officer until he shall have served the Office of Steward at a Grand Feast Nor unless he be an actual subscribing Member at the time of such his appointment'. This Resolution qualifies that of March 1735, already quoted, and continued in force until the Union of 1813.
Grand Stewards' Lodge is virtually an association of those members of the 19 Red Apron Lodges who have served as Grand Stewards and its Officers are chosen from the 19 in turn, there being no regular progression or succession as in normal lodges. The Mastership alternates in successive years between the most senior of the Grand Officers of Right or Very Worshipful Status and Worshipful Brethren, all being Past Grand Stewards and members of the Lodge.
THE OFFICE OF STEWARD Bro Bernard Jones* has drawn attention to a number of precedents adopted by Freemasons from the medixval Craft Guilds and among these is the Office of Steward. In some Guilds, more senior members of the Livery were required to serve as Stewards and to accept a financial obligation as a pre‑requisite for candidature for a seat on the Court. Brethren will note some similarity of procedure in regard to promotion in our Craft Lodges.
The modern English word `Steward' is supposed to have been derived from the Anglo‑Saxon : stig=house and weard=keeper. The precise meaning of `stig' is apparently uncertain, presumably because it rarely stands alone and other words are more usual for `house' but `steward' has been with us for many centuries covering the range of related concepts with which we are familiar. Compound forms such as High Steward, Great Steward and Lord High Steward, etc., are likewise ancient but the form Grand Steward first used in Grand Lodge Minutes in 1725 appears to be peculiar to Masonry.
In all forms the appellation `Steward' implies service and responsibility. In Masonry it was and is an Office carrying both obligation and privilege but it is fair comment that in the early days while the former was obvious, the latter was somewhat unclear, and no doubt accounts for the reluctance of the Brethren to accept the nomination! The original function of the Stewards in Grand Lodge as covered by the Constitutions of 1723 was as follows: Rule XXIII `If it be thought expedient, and the Grand‑Master, with the Majority of the Masters and Wardens, agree to hold a Grand‑Feast, according to the ancient laudable Custom of Masons, then the Grand‑Wardens shall have the care of preparing the Tickets, seal'd with the Grand‑Master's Seal, of disposing of the Tickets, of receiving the Money ' Freemasonry's Debt to the Guilds. A.Q.C. 1961.
66 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES for the Tickets, of buying the Materials of the Feast, of finding out a proper and convenient Place to feast in ; and of every other thing that concerns the Entertainment.
But that the Work may not be too burthensome to the two Grand‑Wardens, and that all Matters may be expeditiously and safely managed, the Grand‑Master, or his Deputy, shall have power to nominate and appoint a Certain Number of Stewards, as his Worship shall think fit, to act in concert with the two Grand‑Wardens ; all things relating to the Feast being decided amongst them by a Majority of Voices ; except the Grand‑Master or his Deputy interpose by a particular Direction or Appointment.
RuleXXIV The Wardens and Stewards shall, in due time, wait upon the Grand‑Master, or his Deputy, for Directions and Orders about the Premisses ; but if his Worship and his Deputy are sick, or necessarily absent, they shall call together the Masters and Wardens of Lodges to meet on purpose for their Advice and Orders ; or else they may take the Matter wholly upon themselves, and do the best they can.
The Grand‑Wardens and the Stewards are to account for all the Money they receive, or expend, to the Grand‑Lodge, after Dinner, or when the Grand‑Lodge shall think fit to receive their Accounts.' It will be seen that under this arrangement any deficit on the finances of the Feast will fall on Grand Lodge. Clearly this situation was untenable and must have been changed by mutual consent in return for the privileges granted to the Stewards from time to time by Grand Lodge. The 1723 Constitutions were amended and reprinted in 1738 by Anderson with the `Old Regulations' and `New Regulations' side by side.
Rule XXIV (New Regs) reads as follows: `The Stewards now take the whole Affair upon themselves and do the best they can.
Nor are their Accounts now audited by the G. Lodge; for that generally the Stewards are out of Pocket.' The Operative Regulation in the present Book of Constitutions is Rule 36 which may be paraphrased as follows: The Grand Master shall appoint 19 Grand Stewards annually, one brother being recommended by each of the 19 Lodges currently enjoying that privilege. If for any reason the Bro. recommended declines to serve or is unacceptable, the Lodge in question must nominate a substitute forthwith. Failure of a Lodge to comply with this Rule normally results in forfeiture of its privilege.
The Grand Stewards rank as Grand Officers during their year of office but a Past Grand Steward is not a Past Grand Officer. The Rule continues as follows: The duties of the Grand Stewards are to regulate the Grand Festival under the direction of the Grand Master, and to assist in the arrangements for the Quarterly Communications and other meetings of the Grand Lodge under the direction of the Grand Director of Ceremonies. They shall so regulate the Grand Festival that no expense shall fall on the Grand Lodge and no Lodge shall, under the penalty of forfeiting the privilege of recommendation, contribute towards the expense to be incurred by any Grand Steward in the discharge of his duties. Any Grand Steward who shall accept of moneys towards such expenses, or shall neglect to pay his proportion of the necessary expenses shall forfeit all privilege or distinction acquired in consequence of his serving that office.
Shortly after their appointment the new Stewards are summoned to a meeting under the Chairmanship of the Grand Secretary who after suitable introductory GRAND STEWARDS 1728‑1978 67 remarks reminds them that they are to regard themselves as constituting a Board for which purpose they would require to elect from among their number a President, a Treasurer and a Secretary. These Officers being elected, the Grand Secretary vacates the chair in favour of the new President and withdraws. From now on the Board acts in a corporate capacity meeting from time to time for the purpose of discussing the arrangements for the next Grand Festival working closely with the Grand Secretary and his staff.
The Minutes of previous Boards are available for their inspection and there is, of course, a degree of continuity maintained by contact with previous holders of the Office in the individual Lodges. By and large, however, the new Stewards are unknown to each other, but are soon working in close harmony. According to time honoured custom, the business meetings are followed by private dinners at which during the year the Board are usually honoured by the presence of the Grand Master and other Grand Officers and in this way maintain an ancient custom observed since the beginning of recorded history of the Grand Stewards.
During their year of Office the Stewards are on duty at the Quarterly Communications of Grand Lodge and lead the processions in and out of the Grand Temple. They are at the disposal of the Grand Master for attendance at such other Masonic functions as he may desire and the Annual Investiture and the Investiture of London Grand Rank are two such occasions.
While the Grand Stewards are required to make good from their own pockets any shortfall as between revenue from the sale of tickets and costs incurred, they have no authority to vary the price of the tickets for the Grand Festival from that fixed by Grand Lodge. This point was decided by the Committee of Charity in 1794 when the action of the Board of Stewards for that year in raising the price of tickets from half a guinea to one guinea was declared improper.
DRESS AND REGALIA As well as adopting practices derived from the ancient Guilds of the City of London, Masonry has acquired something from the noble Orders of Chivalry. It is a matter of common knowledge that prominent members of the Craft have been Garter Knights and that Garter blue is the colour specified in the Book of Constitutions for Grand Rank regalia except that of the Grand Stewards, for which crimson is laid down.
It is generally considered that crimson follows the usage of the Order of the Bath which was revived in 1725 by King George I. According to the detailed account given in the British Chronologist (1775), the King appointed the Duke of Montagu to the rank of Great Master and created 36 other Knights among whom were the Duke of Richmond (M.W.G.M. 1724) and the Earl of Inchiquin, who was appointed our Grand Master in 1726. John, Duke of Montagu had been our Grand Master in 1721.
The earliest surviving references to the Stewards' crimson appears to be that in the Minutes of Grand Lodge for 17 Mar. 173 1.
68 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES Dr. Desaguliers [Grand Master 1719] taking Notice of some Irregularities in wearing the Marks of Distinction which have been allowed by former Grand Lodges.
Proposed.
That none but the Grand Master, his Deputy and Wardens shall wear their jewels in Gold or Gilt pendant to blue Ribbons about their Necks and white Leather Aprons lined with blue Silk.
That all those who have served any of the three Grand Offices shall wear the like Aprons lined with blue Silk in all Lodges and assemblies of Masons when they appear clothed. That those Brethren that are Steward shall wear their aprons lined with red Silk and their proper Jewels pendant to red Ribbons.
That all those who have served the Office of Steward be at Liberty to wear Aprons lined with red Silk and not otherwise.
That all Masters and Wardens of Lodges may wear their Aprons lined with White Silk and their respective Jewels with plain White ribbons but of no other colour whatsoever. The Deputy Grand Master accordingly put the Question whether the above Regulation should be agreed to.
And it was carried in the affirmative Nemine con.
Notwithstanding some modification in the size and shape of the Apron apparent from some surviving contemporary portraits and prints, and of course, expansion in the composition of Grand Lodge, this Resolution is largely unchanged in so far as the clauses relating to the Stewards are concerned.
Grand Stewards acquire sanction to wear red upon appointment to their office. Members of a Stewards Lodge, of which to‑day there are 19, whether by initiation or joining, wear normal Craft clothing until receiving such an appointment which may follow upon nomination to the Grand Master by their Lodge. A pre‑requisite of any nomination is an undertaking by the Grand Steward Elect to fulfil the obligations entailed. The Grand Master possesses the right of veto which has, albeit rarely, been exercised.
Grand Stewards of the year wear plain red collars as also do the Officers and Past Masters of Grand Stewards' Lodge. Past Grand Stewards collars are edged with silver (or gold in the case of two lodges). Since 1835, the Grand Stewards' Jewel has been a cornucopia between the legs of a pair of compasses.
In 1797 a Grand Steward for the year proposed that `every Member of this Board should wear a plain Blue Coat with Yellow Buttons and the initials G.S. engraved on each button, a white waistcoat and black silk breeches....'. On a show of hands this `appeared to be unanimously agreed' and Bro David Gwynne the W.M. of the Old King's Arms Lodge and a Grand Steward in 1793, who happened to be present by invitation in connection with a totally different matter `took the directions to make the same accordingly'. This style of dress was adopted again in 1798 and perhaps continued for some years but uncertainty arises owing to the absence of the Board's Minutes for several years.
The next reference to clothing appears in the Board's Minutes for 1811 when it was decided that the Stewards should wear black suits with white gloves. Reaction set in the following year when the dress approved is once more a blue coat with gilt buttons, white waistcoat, etc. Fashion however decreed that in 1813 the formal wear of 1811 should be chosen and continued henceforth.
GRAND STEWARDS 1728‑1978 69 CEREMONIAL We are indebted to Bro Dr Anderson for much of our knowledge concerning the Annual Assemblies of Masons in the years immediately following the establishment of the Premier Grand Lodge in 1717.
He makes frequent allusion to Ancient usage and custom and first mentions perambulations in connection with the Feast of 1721.
As a `Specimen to avoid Repetitions' he describes in detail the procedure at the Annual Feast of 1724 in the following terms: After Dinner G. Master Dalkeith made the first Procession round the tables, viz.
Brother Clinch to clear the Way The Stewards 2 and 2 a Breast with white Rods.
Secretary COWPER with the Bag, and on his Left The Master of a Lodge with One Great Light. Two other Great Lights born by two Masters of Lodges. Former Grand Wardens proceeding one by one, according to Juniority. Former Grand Masters proceeding, according to Juniority. SORELL and SENEX the two Grand Wardens. DESAGULIERS D.G. Master alone.
On the Left Hand On the Right Hand The Sword carried by the Master The Book of Constitutions on a of the Lodge to which the Cushion carried by the Master Sword belong'd of the Senior Lodge Richmond Grand Master Elect Dalkeith Grand Master During tn░, Procession, 3 Times round the Tables, the Brethren stood up and fac'd about the regular Salutations; and when return'd Brother Dalkeith stood up, and bowing to the Assembly, thank'd em for the Honour he had of being their Grand Master, and then proclaim'd aloud the most Noble Prince and Brother Charles Lennos Duke of Richmond and Lennox GRAND MASTER of Masons! The Duke having bow'd to the Assembly, Brother Dalkeith invested him with the proper Ensigns and Badges of his Office and Authority, install'd him in S's Chair, and wishing him all Prosperity, sat down on his Right Hand. Upon which the Assembly join'd in due Homage, affectionate Congratulations and other Signs of Joy.
After the investiture of the Deputy Grand Master, Grand Wardens and the Secretary of Grand Lodge: `Richmond Grand Master made the 2d. Procession round the Tables like the First, except that Brother Dalkeith walked first as the youngest late Grand Master, close after the former Grand Wardens; and Richmond walked alone last of all, with his Deputy immediately before him, and his two Grand Wardens before the Deputy, and before them the Sword and Constitutions.
When return'd, The Grand Master began to toast the regular Healths, the due Respects to our noble Brothers present and absent, particularly to our last good Grand Master Dalkeith. After which, the usual Expressions of Joy, Love and Friendship went round; and the 70 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES Assembly was most agreeably entertain'd with Orations, Musick and Mason Songs, till the G. Master order'd his Warden Payne to close the Lodge in good Time'.
Some variation is seen in the Account of the perambulation given in the Minutes of Grand Lodge for the Feast held on January 29th, 1730, which reads: `Lynch to clear the Way The 12 Stewards 2 and 2 Left Right A Master of a Lodge bearing The Secretary bearing one of the Great Lights the velvet Bag Junior G. Warden Senior G. Warden Two Great Lights born by Masters of Lodges in Breast Deputy Grand Master The Sword born by the same The Book of Constitutions born persons as before on the Cushion as before Grand Master Those who have been G. Masters, Deputy G. Masters and G. Wardens, two and two the Seniors going first after the G. Master The Marshal N.B.‑The Brethren sitting at the several Tables must have Directions to face about as the Procession is made, and to take the Candles off the Tables and to hold them in their hands (above their Heads) at proper Distances that the Ceremony may be more Conspicuous.
The Marshal, Mr Pyne is to bear a Truncheon painted blew and tipt with Gold'.
So much for the proceedings relating to the Festive Board. Of much greater moment were the controversial public processions which were a regular feature of the Annual Assembly and in which the Stewards took part. Again we turn to Anderson who informs us that on June 24 1721 a Grand Lodge was held at King's Arms Tavern in the morning where, having elected the Duke of Montague as Grand Master for the ensuing year `they made some new Brothers, particularly the noble Philip Lord Stanhope, now Earl of Chesterfield : And from thence they marched on Foot to the [Stationers] Hall in proper Clothing and due Form'.
This as already mentioned was the first occasion on which the Quarterly Communication and the Feast were held in separate buildings. By 1723 the `Assembly' (Quarterly Communication) and Feast were once more being held in the same building (Merchant Taylor's Hall) but the Procession was retained for another reason. `Dalkeith Grand Master with his Deputy and Wardens waited on Brother Richmond in the Morning at Whitehall, who with many Brothers duly clothed, proceeded in Coaches from the West to the East, and were handsomely received at the Hall by a vast majority.' (Anderson).
The Grand Master referred to was Francis, Earl of Dalkeith, later 2nd Duke of Buccleuch. Brother Richmond was Charles, 2nd Duke of Richmond and Lennox. `Whitehall' refers to Richmond House, which until demolished in 1819, stood on GRAND STEWARDS 1728‑1978 71 the riverside at the west end of the Privy Garden, a position now occupied by Richmond Terrace.
The records contain a number of accounts of the Processions from the London homes of the Grand Masters Elect, of which the following are typical: 1729. `Assembly and Feast at Merchant‑Taylor's Hall on Thursday, 29 Jan. 1729/30, in the 3d Year of King George ILU 'Kingston Grand Master with his Deputy and Wardens, attended the Grand Master Elect in the Morning, at his Grace's House in St. James's‑Square; where he was met by a vast Number of Brothers duly clothed, and from thence they went to the Hall Eastward in the following Procession of March, viz.
Brother Johnson to clear the Way. Six of the Stewards clothed proper with their Badges and White Rods, Two in each Chariot. Brothers without Distinction duly clothed, in Gentlemen's Coaches. The noble and eminent Brethren duly clothed, in their own Chariots. Former Grand Officers not noble, clothed proper, in Gentleman's Coaches. Former noble Grand Masters clothed proper, in their own Chariots. The Secretary alone with his Badge and Bag, in a Chariot. The Two Grand Wardens clothed proper with their Badges, in one Chariot. The D.G. Master alone clothed proper with his Badge in a Chariot. Kingston Grand Master clothed proper with his Badge, Norfolk G.M.Elect clothed only as a Mason, in one Coach. The Duke of Norfolk's Coach of State Empty The Stewards halted at Charing‑Cross till the Messenger brought Orders to move on slowly and till the Rest follow'd ; And when the Grand Master moved from the Square, Brother John Pyne the Marshal made haste to the Hall to conduct the Procession of Entry at the Hall‑Gate, viz. The 12 Stewards standing, 6 on each Side of the Passage, with their White Rods, made a Lane. Brother Johnson to clear the Way. Former Grand Wardens walk'd one by one according to Juniority. Former D. Grand Masters walk'd by one according to Juniority.
Former Grand Masters by Juniority, vi_.
Lord Colerane, Earl of Inchinquin, Lord Paisley, Duke of Richmond, Earl of Dalkeith, Duke of Montague, Dr. Desaguliers, George Payne, Esq., and Mr. Antony Sayer. Then the Stewards closed, walking Two and Two. The Secretary alone. The Two Grand Wardens together. The D. Grand Master alone.
On the Left Hand On the Right Hand The Sword born by the Master The Book of Constitutions of the Lodge to which it on the fine Cushion carried by the belonged. Master of the Senior Lodge.
72 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES Norfolk Grand Master Elect Kingston Grand Master.
Marshal Pyne with his Truncheon Blew, tipt with Gold.
In this Order they decently walk'd into the Lodge Room (while the Others walk'd into the Hall) and there the Masters and Wardens of Lodges received their G. Master with Joy and Reverence in due Form. He sat down in his Chair before the Pedestal, cover'd with the rich Cushion, upon which were laid the Constitutions and the Sword ; and the G.M. Elect on his Right Hand.
After opening the Lodge, the last Minutes were read by the Secretary, and the Election of Brother Norfolk were solemnly recogniz'd.
Adjourn'd to Dinner, a Grand Feast indeed! Assembly and Feast at Mercer's‑Hall on Saturday 30 March, 1734. D.G.M. Batson with his G. Wardens attended the Grand Master Elect at his House in Great Marlboroughstreet, with Noble Brothers, and many Others, all duly clothed in Coaches, and made the Procession of March Eastward to the Hall with a Band of Musick, viz. Trumpets, Hautboys, Kettle‑Drums and French Horns, to lead the Van and play at the Gate till all arrive....' 1737. "Loudoun G. Master with his Deputy and Wardens, the noble Brothers, the Duke of Richmond, the Earls of Craufurd and Weemes, Lord Grey of Grooby, the Stewards and many other brothers all duly clothed, attended the Grand Master Elect at his House in Pall‑Mall, and made the Procession of March Eastward to the Hall in a very solemn Manner, having 3 Bands of Musick, Kettle‑Drums, Trumpets and French Horns, properly disposed in the March....
Doubtless these processions were popular with many of the Brethren of the day and were in keeping with the pageantry of the City. They did however provide material for the cartoonists and others ill disposed towards the Craft and were abandoned in 1747.
SUCCESSION For many years Grand Stewards named their successors according to their own inclination, sometimes choosing a Brother belonging to a Lodge other than their own. In this way, the coveted Red Apron went to and fro, frequently, and not always, returning to a member of the earlier Lodge. This procedure led to the holding of multiple nominations. Thus in the late 18th Century and early years of the 19th up to the Union of the Modern and Ancient Grand Lodges in December 1813 the Brethren of Somerset House Lodge No. IV controlled three and those of Friendship, No. 6, two Red Aprons. Gradually, however, the Red Apron Lodges tended influence those of their members who became Stewards to accept a Lodge nomination for a successor, thus endeavouring to retain of the privilege within the Lodge.
The appointment of 12 Stewards continued from 1728 to 1812/13 in which year the Annual Feast was held on the 27th of December. The momentous year of the Union of the Grand Lodges of the Moderns and the Antients is approaching and although Stewards for the year 1813/14 were nominated by their predecessors, they apparently did not serve and instead, in compliance with Article VII of the Articles of Union the Grand Stewards were delegated by the Stewards' Lodge from among their Members `existing at the Union'.
GRAND STEWARDS 1728‑1978 73 The uncertainty of the future of the Grand Stewards at this time and the fact that in any event, future Grand Officers would no longer be chosen exclusively from the ranks of Past Grand Stewards appears to have tempered the enthusiasm of Brethren to accept the Office and of the 10 who met for the first time on the 12th April, 1814 to prepare for the Feast in May of that year, 7 were Past Stewards and 3 were from among those nominated by the previous Board. In order to make the appointment more attractive in this important year, it had been decided by the Grand Master, H.R.H. the Duke of Sussex, `that the price of the tickets should be increased from 15/‑ to One Guinea and that, in order that the Stewards should not be put to any expense, the balance of the cost and that of the incidentals would be defrayed out of the funds of Grand Lodge.' The Stewards for the following year, were nominated by the Grand Master and 18 were appointed. Thereafter nomination has continued to rest with the group of selected Red Apron Lodges, initially to the number of 18 and subsequently 19. The original 18 Lodges were: Grand Master's No. 1 *Globe No. 23 Antiquity No. 2 Castle L. of Harmony No. 26 *Royal Somerset House No. 4 *Old King's Arms No. 28 & Inverness *St. Alban's No. 29 *St. George's & No. 5 Felicity No. 58 Corner Stone Peace & Harmony No. 60 *Friendship No. 6 *Regularity No. 91 British No. 8 *Shakespear No. 99 Tuscan No. 10 Pilgrim No. 238 *Emulation No. 21 Prince of Wales's No. 259 The Lodges marked* regularly nominated Stewards before the others, Royal now Royal Alpha Lodge, No. 16, London Lodge, No. 108 and Jacob's Ladder Lodge which ceased working in 1800, each provided Stewards for a consecutive period of years in pre‑Union days. Other lodges can justifiably claim to have provided a Steward occasionally but without success.
The Pilgrim (German : Pilger) No. 238 was founded in London in 1779 as a lodge working in the German language. It received its Red Apron in 1813 and retained its right of nomination until the 8th February 1834 when the Secretary wrote to the Grand Master as follows: Union. Three 'M.W. Grand Master, the most kind and gracious manner in which your Royal Highness was pleased to bestow upon the Pilgrim Lodge the distinguished privilege of returning one of the Grand Stewards has ever been prized by its Members as a most valued Jewel and they trust the selection they have periodically made has been such as to evince their gratitude and to afford satisfaction to your Royal Highness.
The change of circumstances, however, as far as the numbers are concerned, resulting from the few resident Germans in London during a period of peace, rendered it impossible for the Lodge to avail themselves longer of this much valued privilege, and they are therefore under the painful necessity of returning it into the hands of the M.W. Grand Master. In doing so they venture to hope that your Royal Highness will do justice to their motives and believe that the Pilgrim Lodge will ever retain a grateful sense of the kindness and condescension which your Royal Highness has always shown to their Body.
I have the honour to subscribe myself, 74 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES Your Royal Highness most obedient Servant, by order of the W. Master of the Pilgrim Lodge, John Schmidt, Secretary The return to the right to nominate was received with great regret and the privilege placed at the dispoal of Jerusalem Lodge, No. 197.
It has already been stated that the failure of a Lodge to provide an effective nomination, could result in the loss of the privilege and this in fact happened in 1852 in the case of the Old King's Arms Lodge which failed to nominate a Grand Steward for this year. The right to nominate was transferred to Old Union Lodge, No. 46, thus restoring the strength of the Board of Grand Stewards to the number of 18 as laid down in the Book of Constitutions then in force.
The circumstances relating to the failure to nominate are recorded in the history of the Lodge and in short are that a new Lodge Secretary of a few months standing overlooked passing the name of the Brother chosen by ballot in open lodge, to the Grand Secretary. No‑one can question the correctness of the subsequent action but many must have been suprised at the severity of the attitude of the Grand Master and that the apparent oversight had not been queried.
It is quite possible that the decision to `work to rule' in this case arose out of an incident involving a member of this Lodge some 40 years or so earlier when a Brother acting as Secretary to the Board of Grand Stewards refused to pass on the Minute Book to the succeeding Board, as a result of which one year's Minutes have been lost. An unsigned note of his `contumacious conduct' probably in the hand of the Grand Secretary Bro. W. H. White appears in the Minute Book.
This may appear to some to be a highly improbable suggestion but the fact remains that the Grand Secretary whose authority was flouted in so flagrant a manner happened still to be in office in 1852! The White family, five of whom were members of Emulation were prominent in masonry from the late 18th Century until late in the 19th. William White (17471821) was initiated into Royal Somerset House Lodge, No. IV, served as Grand Steward in 1774 and was Secretary to the Board. He became Joint Grand Secretary in 1781 in which year he was W.M. of the Grand Stewards' Lodge, Grand Secretary in 1784 and again Joint Grand Secretary with his son in 1809. He joined the Lodges of Antiquity, No. 2 and Emulation, No. 21.
William Henry White (1777‑1866) served as Grand Steward for Emulation in 1805 and was Secretary to the Board, and again as Grand Steward for Somerset House in 1809. He was appointed Joint Grand Secretary with his Father in 1809, and was Grand Secretary from 1813 to 1856.
Of course the Lodge made strenuous efforts to have the decision revoked and at least one attempt was made in later years. In the event, the privilege was restored in 1904 largely it would seem owing to the eloquence of Brother E. A. Ebblewhite of Shakespear Lodge, No. 99, President of the 1903 Board, and support of Brother John Smithers, the W.M. of Grand Stewards' Lodge. The occasion was a discussion on four notices of motion to modify the Rules to permit an increase in the number of Grand Stewards from 18 to 30, a motion which was withdrawn. A further motion to increase the number of Stewards from 18 to 19 was passed and at the next Festival the privilege was restored to the Old King's Arms Lodge, No. 28.
GRAND STEWARDS 1728‑1978 75 This very early lodge, formerly the Rose in Mary‑le‑Bone shares with Tuscan No. 14, formerly the Lyon in Brewer Street, the distinction of having on its roll of members Brother Caesar (Cesar) Collys whose name heads the list of Stewards who volunteered to form the first Board in 1728.
NO NUTS‑NO SODA WATER! It is not without interest to consider the conduct of the Feast and the legislation enacted by successive Boards to meet the administrative situations encountered. Among the constantly recurring problems which caused anxiety and gave rise to elaborate precautions were the following: (a) Quality of wine served in relation to that tasted and ordered. It was evident that the stipulation that these should be of the best quality was found to be inadequate and for a number of years the wines were checked by a Deputation from the Board of Stewards `and brought up in Black Bottles into a Room adjoining the Hall and there decanted under the superintendence of the Wine Steward'. In 1832 however, a Minute reads `The Board declined a taste of sample of the Wines, the President informing Mr. Cuff (Landlord of F.M. Tavern) that the Board should rely upon his Honour to furnish such as would be creditable to himself and satisfactory to the meeting'.
(b) Quantity of Wine actually consumed against that charged for. An elaborate system of wine tickets was an established custom by 1775, these being held by the Stewards, the rule being that tickets be provided to be delivered for the wines at the Grand Feast by the members of the Board but that no Ticket be given on any account till the Wine brought up and delivered by the Waiters'. Occasionally other brethren were recruited to assist the Stewards but this too had its shortcomings. Thus, after the Festival of April 1812, the Secretary reported that 'Bro. Dow to whom the charge of the Wine Store was assigned at the Grand Festival had, through inadvertency or from inattention to the Regulations prescribed to him by the Board, been led into error in his account of Wine consumed on that day and that consequently improper charges were introduced in the Tavern Bill on this as well as on other Accounts, contrary to the engagement entered into by the Secretary on behalf of the Board with Messrs. Thorn and Cuff [Landlords] ‑ that he had remonstrated against and conjointly with the President and Treasurer had resisted the payment of such charges and in performance of this duty had been subject to much abuse and scurrilous language from Thomas Hoggray one of the Servants of the Tavern and for which he had demanded an apology and proper concession to be made, that instead he had received a letter purporting to be an acquiescence in his wishes but which contained so much additional insult as considerably to aggravate the original offence ‑ he thereupon demanded the interference of Messrs. Thorn and Cuff and received in answer from Mr. Cuff `that he regretted the obstinacy of his Servant in refusing to offer a becoming Apology and that he could do no more unless Mr. Percy required him in writing to dismiss the Offender from his Service', that from such supineness or indifference on the part of Mr. Cuff nothing 76 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES was effected until Mr. Thorn's return to Town who being made acquainted with the disgraceful occurrence manifested a very different feeling and adopted that firm decision and becoming line of conduct which ultimately succeeded in bringing the Servant to a proper sense of his Duty and that he now had the authority to state, if the Board considered an ample Apology would be sufficient atonement, the same would be submitted to in such terms as should be dictated. The Members present having given their opinion upon the subject, Mr. Cuff was called in and the President in strong terms animadverted on the insult and indifference with which the Secretary as their Representative had been treated, and declared that nothing but the most unqualified submission would be satisfactory to the Board which Mr. Cuff assuring the Meeting would be complied with. Thomas Hoggray [Clerk to Messrs. Thorn and Cuff] was introduced who humbly begging pardon for his Offence was dismissed with a suitable reprimand and admonition'.
The question of Wine Tickets was taken very seriously.
Yet another Board varied the procedure by stipulating that `each Steward do have attached to him a Waiter with a basket and that whenever Wine is wanted a Steward shall accompany the Waiter to the bar of the Wine Room and see that the same is received and brought into the Hall and deposited on the table for which Wine the Steward will give Tickets ... That proper persons be engaged to attend the Wine Room to decant and deliver out the Wine and receive the Tickets: such persons to be paid 10s. 6d. each and 3s. Od. for Dinner ... That each Steward do see to the empty decanters and on no account to suffer any Waiter to remove them.' A regulation adopted by many of the Boards restricted the wine served to that selected in advance and declared that `no Steward be allowed to give 2 or more Wine Tickets (or 1 Ticket with any sum of money) for the purpose of obtaining any other Wines under a penalty of a fine (to the Board) of ú10'. (c) Extras. At most functions these arose and our early brethren became well aware of the methods available to the management to increase the bills. Periodically the minutes of Boards displays bouts of indignation and in 1806 we read `Recommended to the next Board of Grand Stewards that they be particular in their agreement with the Landlords of the Tavern to include everything in the price mentioned and that no extras be introduced in the Bill such as Bread, Beer, Broken Glasses, Carpenter, etc., etc., etc.' This recommendation was duly expressed in the form that `the Prices quoted for the Dinner are to be inclusive of Bread, Beer, Broken Glass and every other kind of charge . . .'.
(d) Ladies. It is not possible to determine exactly when entertainment and refreshment were provided for a limited number of wives and sweethearts but the practice appears to have started prior to the year 1775 and to have continued without break until 1939, except for the period 1915‑18 when activities generally were curtailed. The number of tickets available for ladies varied from time to time but was about 80‑100. It was the custom for each Steward to be permitted to invite an agreed number of ladies (varying from two to five) and to allow some tickets for the use of the Grand Master's party. The GRAND STEWARDS 1728‑1978 77 ladies had at their disposal the Gallery and Glee Room for which singers were provided. The Gallery door was properly `tyled' by a Steward who was instructed to allow Ladies to pass upon presentation of a ticket `signed by a Steward naming the Lady to be admitted' and shall admit none without. Boards of Grand Stewards governed their proceedings largely by precedent, the Resolutions which were considered by the successive Boards being varied as experience might demand. Thus in 1798, no gentleman was to be admitted to the company of the Ladies unless introduced by a Steward but by 1846 an instruction from the Grand Master to the Stewards in respect of the Ladies stated that `2 Grand Stewards and no greater number be appointed to attend to their accommodation, and on no account shall any other member of the Board, except the President (should his presence be called for) be permitted to go to the Ladies Room until after the Grand Master or other presiding Officer shall have quitted the Banquet Hall'.
(e) Music. There are many references to music at the Feast of which the Minute for 1811 is typical. 'Bro. Samuel Wesley [Grand Organist 1813‑17] be engaged to perform upon the organ in the Glee Room and that each Member of the Board be entitled to 4 invitation tickets, the President 6.' On this occasion `12 Professional Gents' were engaged `for their Vocal Performance at the Grand Festival'. It was also resolved that the `usual Military Band consisting of 12 Masons be engaged from the Guards, conducted by Mr. Horne of the Coldstream Regiment." In 1817 The Board was informed that the Duke of Kent's Band was disembodied, which lamentable situation was met by an under‑the‑counter deal with the late Band Major! Musicians were as temperamental then as they sometimes are to‑day and Boards have been known to run into difficulties when they tried to break up groups of singers by excluding some to whom they had objection. There also appears to have been a tendency to run up the fees. In the 1830s there were frequent and lengthy exchanges of letters between the Secretary to the Board of Grand Stewards and Sir George Smart, Grand Organist 1818‑1843. The letters, framed in the most courteous terms were firm and to the point, reinforced on both sides with the implication that the contents had been approved by His Royal Highness the Duke of Sussex, Grand Master 18131843. It was finally agreed that whilst the Board fixed the fee, the conduct of the music and the musicians was the prerogative of the Grand Organist! The 1863 Board was on firmer ground when they took exception to the action of the Grand Organist of the day who produced at the Festival a singer clad as a mason and who was discovered to be a Cowan.
Music was discontinued in 1939 and has not been provided subsequently. (n Exuberance. The toasting and other customs of the Festive Board are outside the scope of this Lecture but there is no doubt whatever that the Grand Feast of the 18th and early 19th Centuries was an occasion for great rejoicing and it has to be said that occasionally the proceedings tended to get out of hand. As long ago as the year 1815 the Boards of Stewards included in their Resolutions `that neither soda water nor nuts be allowed in the Hall' but no
78 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES
reason for the decision is given. This Resolution was repeated year after year. At the Grand Festival in 1846 when owing to illness only 16 Stewards were on duty, irregularities and disorder occurred and following an investigation, the Board of General Purposes reported that the arrangements of the Board of Grand Stewards were totally inefficient for the occasion. The Board of Grand Stewards' Minutes make reference to `A numerous party of Brethren' from a group of Lodges which must remain nameless and at this distance in time it does appear to be a little unreasonable to blame 16 (or for that matter 18) Stewards at a gathering of nearly 400 plus the Ladies.
As a result however the Grand Master, the Earl of Zetland issued a series of guidelines for future Boards which although reiterating the spirit of the Resolutions of successive Boards do not appear to be directed against those who caused the disturbance. It may well be that the Minutes are incomplete and that nuts and soda water were unfortunately available! NOT WITHOUT CHARITY‑ However romantic and exciting the earlier years of the Craft may have been, there is at least one daunting aspect, namely the peril of loss of income from whatever cause arising. The early Minutes of Grand Lodge are noteworthy both for the constant exhortation by Dr. Desaguliers and others to the Lodges to support the Grand Charity, as well as for the frequent calls upon the limited funds available for the relief of indigent Brethren.
Anthony Sayer our first Grand Master in 1717, Thomas Morrice or Morris Junior Grand Warden in 1718‑19, William Reid, Secretary to Grand Lodge 172733, and North Stainer, (Grand) Steward in 1724 were all in later life petitioners for assistance, the two last appealing from Debtors Prisons. Truly does the Tyler's Toast acquire a positive significance against such a background of misfortune.
Ever mindful of the needs of the Brethren, the Doctor in April 1730 acquainted Grand Lodge that `the Directors of the Infirmary at Westminster, out of their regard to Masonry (several of them being Masons) had offered to take care of any poor Brother who may happen to be disabled by broken Limb, etc., from following his Employment....' `Whereupon it was proposed that five Guineas be paid Annually to the said Infirmary.... [agreed]'.
A vellum Roll of Subscribers to the Infirmary, later Westminster Hospital, from 1719‑1733 has survived and contains the names of a number of the masons of the time comprising several Grand Masters, including Dr. Desaguliers, and Stewards: Edward Lambert, Henry Prude, Capt. Sam Tuffnell, Dr. Meyer Schomberg, Dr. Wm. Graeme and others.
It was an age in which public conscience was being awakened and two very different persons, George Frideric Handel the Composer and Brother Wm. Hogarth the Artist supported the Foundling Hospital Scheme of Captain Coram, circa 1739, with great enthusiasm.
Yet another Charity served by a long line of masons and a number of Grand Stewards is the French Protestant Hospital known traditionally as `La Providence'.
GRAND STEWARDS 1728‑1978 79
Established in London by Huguenot refugees before 1706 and incorporated by Royal Charter in 1718, this foundation is even older than the Premier Grand Lodge.
The Directors of `La Providence', a number of whom were Past Grand Stewards founded the Huguenot Lodge No. 2140 in 1885, a year chosen to mark the bicentenary of the tragic events of 1685. Claude Champion de Crespigny, a Grand Steward in 1732, who was a member of the Lodge at the Bear and Harrow (now St. George's and Corner Stone, No. 5) and a Director of this Hospital, spent a lifetime in the service of the South Sea Company. His nephew Philip was a Grand Steward in 1781 for Somerset House Lodge.
Still later another Grand Steward, Chevalier Bartholomew Ruspini who served in 1772 for St. Alban's Lodge, No. 29, was instrumental in founding the first of the four individual Masonic Charities, the Royal Masonic Institution for Girls, on March 25th, 1788.
SOME FACTS‑ SOME SPECULATION
Several references have been made to the Huguenot fraternity and the Edict de Nantes and some explanation may be of interest.
The development of the Protestant movement having as its object the reform of the Christian Church as it then existed, is a feature of the life of Mediaeval Europe. Over many contentious years the Reformed Church under various names became well established in England, Germany, Holland and Switzerland but in France, however, there was a long drawn out opposition to more liberal views and the struggles of the 16th Century culminated in the massacre of Protestants on the eve of St. Bartholomew, 24th August 1572 when upwards of 12,000 died in Paris alone and nearly 100,000 in all France. Queen Elizabeth I sent strong protests to the French King and made substantial provision for the reception of the refugees from France to whom the term Huguenot had been applied. In due course the newcomers of this first exodus were largely absorbed.
The Protestant party in France exerted their influence on the king and in 1573 obtained a charter of religious freedom which had become known as the Edict of Nantes. An uneasy peace with periodic bouts of oppression ensued until October 1685 when under pressure from the Church and Council, a not unwilling king formally revoked the Edict and terror ensued. It is estimated that at this time the population of France was about 15 millions of whom some ten per cent were Protestant. 300,000 are thought to have escaped ‑ many to England and southern Ireland. In London the influx is considered to have been more than 50,000 over a period from 1681 (some foresaw the danger ahead) to about 1693.
Now we must turn to the London of the 17th century, in relation to which any comments on population statistics are derived from the area covered by the Bills of Mortality. By this expression is meant an inexact zone of roughly 10 miles radius of London Stone, Cannon Street, with some notable exclusions such as the villages of Chelsea, Kensington, St. Mary‑le‑bone and St. Pancras, although the term as later applied by Grand Lodge would doubtless have included the entire zone. At the heart of the area are the Cities of London and Westminster which
GRAND STEWARDS 1728‑1978 81
by the early 18th century were conjoined although they were, as they still are, separately administered. The population of the whole area in 1660 was roughly 300,000 and during the years of the Plague (1664‑66) between 69,000 and over 100,000 of the inhabitants died. The first figure is that of the official return but it has always been known that the system collapsed and that the true number was much higher, the second figure being an 18th century estimate. After the Plague came the Fire of 1666 which destroyed 436 acres (eighty‑three per cent of the City and part of the built‑up districts outside the walls). These two events not only checked the growth of the urban area but drastically reduced the number of inh,ibitants.
London was therefore peculiarly well‑suited to receive an influx of refugees who were not only co‑religionists but were for the most part a corpus of people of independent outlook, steadfast in principle and composed of a mixture of hardworking artisans, craftsmen and members of the learned professions. At about this time new areas of central London, then largely fields and market gardens, were being developed and the Berners estate of Soho is an example. Soho quickly became a centre for the Huguenot community just as today it maintains a heterogeneous foreign population. The parishes of Spitalfields, Clerkenwell and Wandsworth also became heavily populated by the newcomers who, in some areas, accounted for more than one in every six or seven of the population. At one time there were in the London district some forty‑nine chapels erected or converted from other buildings for their use and the pattern was reflected in other cities such as Canterbury, Rochester, Southampton and Norwich, to name but a few.
This was the London in which the permier Grand Lodge was established in 1717, by which time the progeny of the refugees were of mature age. As a body they must have gloried in their new found freedom in our liberal society and to those who came into contact with them the tenets of masonry must have appealed strongly.
Many of the early freemasons bear the names of families recorded officially in the long lists of denizations and naturalizations extending up to the year 1701 and a considerable number served as Festival Stewards, the numbers tending to increase towards the middle of the 18th century. Thus during a period of five years from 1738 the lists of Stewards include such names as Barret, Beaumont, Bernard, Carne, Caton, Combrune, De Charmes, De Vaux, Du Mouchel, Faber, Foy, Hemet, Le Bas, Le Maistre, Ruck and Vol, amounting to rather more than one in four of the sixty Stewards who served for this period.
There is as well a strong possibility, as yet unproven, that Edward Lambert, several times mentioned as a Steward, was a member of a well known Huguenot family of that name. It is, of course, open to argument that some of these names were in use in both England and France at this time and the validity of this contention can only be resolved by continuing research. The names are scattered over a number of the recorded lodges of the period but the members of three lodges were almost entirely of French descent, these being Solomon's Temple, Prince Eugen's Head and the French Lodge in Long Acre.
Inasmuch as the mason's among the native population were apparently quiescent in the early years of the 18th century, is it possible that the developing interest
82 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES
of the newcomers in freemasonry was a major factor in producing a reaction which led to the formation of the first Grand Lodge? This year marks the 250th anniversary of the appointment of the first regular Board of Grand Stewards. Initially born of necessity, the Stewards have been honoured to serve the Craft for a Quarter of a millenium and long may they continue to do so. Their service is typical of that given to Masonry in many ways by the brethren generally.
Freemasonry provides the opportunity ‑ it is for us to embrace it.
. . . Who must otherwise have remained at a perpetual distance.'
250 YEARS OF MASONRY IN INDIA
A Study in Resolved Discords THE PRESTONIAN LECTURE FOR 1979 G. E. WALKER, OBE (This paper was written by the late W Bro G. E. Walker to be the Prestonian Lecture for 1979 and to mark the 250th Anniversary in that year of the first establishment of a lodge in India. He had completed it in draft shortly before his death which occurred with tragic suddenness on 9 December 1977. The Trustees of the Prestonian Fund decided that this paper should still be designated the Prestonian Lecture for 1979 and, vice the late W Bro Walker, they invited W Bro G. J. C. Hambling, PDistSGW (Bombay) to deliver it. He, in the sad circumstances, was pleased to accept this task of proxy Lecturer.) On February 6th 1729, the Grand Lodge of England authorised the constitution of the first Lodge in India. In 1961, when the Grand Lodge of India was formed, there were 186 Lodges in India owing allegiance to the United Grand Lodge of England (plus another 17 in what had by then become Pakistan; there were 79 Lodges belonging to the Irish and Scottish Constitutions; and another 80 or so had had their day and ceased to be.) With such growth on record, the historian is not likely to be gravelled for lack of matter; but within a limit of three‑quarters of an hour's talk ‑ 6,000 words or thereabouts ‑ what he certainly can't do is to produce a complete history. So I must begin by declaring an interest. I was initiated in Madras in 1937, in the Archibald Campbell Lodge, No 4998, a Lodge founded `to promote better fraternal relationship between Indians and Europeans who have had the advantage of residing in each others' native land'. There were then 39 members, 29 Indians and 10 Europeans.
It is to the circumstances of my Masonic birth and infant nurture that I owe an abiding interest in the growth of Masonry in India from an exclusively Western, Christian organisation into an inter‑racial, theist body, of which even 50 years ago the first Lord Cornwallis, then Deputy Grand Master, could write (joyously mixing nationalities and religions): We have seen as many as five Volumes of the Sacred Law in use at one and the same time, and Brethren of the following among other races, taken at random ‑ Europeans, Parsis, Chinese, Burmese, Hindus, Americans, Ceylonese, Punjabis, Mohammedans, Sikhs,
83 84 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES
Armenians, Greeks, Bengalis, Jews, Aracanese, and Madrassis ‑ participating in the Ceremonies. The Brotherhood of Man, under such circumstances, becomes a living reality.
So let us look back 250 years to 1729.
In England: George II, and Walpole restored to power by the Queen's persuasion; in India: the free‑for‑all that followed the death of Aurangzeb in 1707. The English, French, Dutch and Portuguese Companies were trading and squabbling with the best of them; but they were only lessees of their holdings: none of them then laid claim to empire.
What manner of men were our English Masonic forebears? One must always beware of applying twentieth century moral judgments to eighteenth century behaviour; but one needs to understand something of the differences in circumstance and temperament.
Bro Heron Lepper (the poor common soldier, AQC vol 38) has described the period as `a brutal age that had crude ideas about tolerance and humane dealing and general decency of conduct''; and indeed our Founding Fathers were a strange combination of culture and coarseness, rugged individualism and sycophancy, good taste and ostentation; and they were chauvinist and bigoted, truculent and outspoken.
And if this was the Englishman on his home ground, we can well understand how his natural tetchiness would be aggravated in India by the heat, the humidity, the velvet coats and high neckcloths, and the quenching of his inevitable thirst by his daily tipple of arrack‑punch and a bottle (or more) of Madeira.
When I read of the suspensions, the exclusions, the secessions, the blackballing, accusations of murder, of forgery, 42 members suspended for libelling a Past Master (though admittedly 32 of them apologised and were reinstated) ‑ then I confess to making a wry mouth when I hear that this association has been formed and perfected with so much unanimity and concord; it ought to have been; but in fact the discords which our forebears made were not resolved for nearly 200 years.
MASONRY COMES TO INDIA
We are lucky enough to have full details oú the constituting of that first Indian Lodge preserved in the minutes of Grand Lodge: first, the petition, presented on December 28th, 1728; then, at the end of the minutes of that meeting, the text of the `deputation' from the Grand Master, `to Impower and authorize our Wellbeloved Brother George Pomfret.. . . that he do, in our place and stead, Constitute a regular Lodge, in due fform, at Fort William in Bengall in the East Indies....' This was signed and sealed `the 6th day of ffebruary 172' and in the Yeac of Masonry 5732' (which shows that Grand Lodge used Ussher's Chronology in dating the Masonic era‑as the Grand Lodge of Scotland still do). It is the earliest document of its kind of which any record exists.
The Lodge at `Fort William' ‑ that is, Calcutta ‑ appears in the Engraved List of 1730 as No. 72; it was called, perhaps after its place of meeting, The East India Company's Arms (of which the crest was a golden lion rampant gardant, supporting between the forepaws a regal crown, proper ‑ irreverently known in the Company's Marine Services as `the monkey and the coconut').
250 YEARS OF MASONRY IN INDIA 85
The Lodge lasted less than thirty years: it was erased in 1756. Perhaps the most interesting thing about it is the application for a warrant from Grand Lodge ‑ then only twelve years old and in its early years aspiring only to regulate the Craft in the cities of London and Westminster. Overseas Lodges in those days tended to come into being by a kind of parthenogenesis: a few Masons met, called themselves a Lodge, made other Masons, and created more Lodges, without applying to anyone for permission.
This is why Provincial Grand Masters began to be appointed in about 1726, `when the extraordinary Increase of the Craftsmen, and their travelling into distant Parts and convening themselves in Lodges, required an immediate Head, to whom they might apply where it was not possible to wait the decision or Opinion of the Grand Lodge'. The appointment was always a prerogative of the Grand Master, and the Provincial Grand Master originally ranked as a Deputy Grand Master; by 1767 he had become `a Grand Master in his particular District', who was `also empowered to appoint a Deputy, Wardens, Treasurer, Secretary and Sword Bearer who are entitled to wear the Cloathing of Grand Officers while they officiate as such within that particular District; but at no other time or place'. In 1784 a Chaplain was added to the list, ranking between the Secretary and the Sword Bearer.
Here, it would seem, is the beginning of the Provincial Grand Lodge as we know it today‑though the Article seems rather to constitute a local Grand Lodge than a subordinate Provincial Grand Lodge. Be that as it may, nothing like a modern Provincial or District Grand Lodge sprang into being; the original Provincial Grand Masters were more like the Grand Inspectors of today. (Incidentally, the distinction between `Provincial' and `District' wasn't made until 1866; until then, the District was the area over which the Provincial Grand Master exercised authority).
THE FIRST PROVINCIAL GRAND MASTERS
In 1729, Captain Ralph Farwinter (his name is variously spelt) was appointed `Provincial Grand Master for East India in Bengal'‑ and also James Dawson as `Provincial Grand Master for East India'. No one seems to know why two appointments were made; perhaps because of geographical woolly‑mindedness in London; after all, it was only about a dozen years since the publication of Clarendon's glowing reference to `the Island of Bombay with the towns and castles therein, which are within a very little distance from Brazil'.' Bengal was fortunate in doing things in their proper order: a Provincial Grand Master first, followed by the constitution of private Lodges by him. Lodges were formed in other districts: in Madras in 1752 and 1765, and in Bombay in 1758; but although they appeared in the Roll of Grand Lodge, we don't know how they came into being. Certainly there were no Provincial Grand Masters there to constitute them: Bombay's first, James Tod, was appointed in 1764 (though there is no record of his ever doing anything, and it was 97 years before another appointment was made); and Madras had its first Provincial Grand Master (Captain Edmund Pascal) in 1767. The Punjab didn't have its own Provincial 86 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES Grand Master till 1869, and Northern India not until 1951 (as a result of the partition of the sub‑continent into India and Pakistan).
By the time of Pascal's appointment, English Masonry was split between the Modern or Premier Grand Lodge and the Antient or Atholl. This isn't the place to deal with that bygone quarrel, beyond saying that the Grand Lodges of Ireland and Scotland leaned towards the Atholl Masons; that Ireland, Scotland and Atholl all specialised in warranting ambulatory or military Lodges, which helped greatly in the spread of Masonry, in India and elsewhere; and that the Atholl and Premier rituals differed radically, especially over the Royal Arch.
The first impact of Atholl Masonry in India was in Madras, where, in the very year after Pascal's appointment, an Atholl Lodge was established at Fort St. George by officers of the army, and soon became the principal Lodge of the Coast of Coromandel; it acted as a Provincial Grand Lodge', granting warrants for new Lodges; it built a Masonic Hall and established a Charity Fund.
Bengal, meanwhile, stayed with the Premier Grand Lodge; two of its Lodges are still on the Register: Star in the East, No 67 (1740), and Industry and Perseverenace, No 109 (1761).
EARLY PIQUES AND QUARRELS
But in the 1780s the Premier Masons in both Bengal and Madras got themselves into deep trouble: owing, in both cases, to the human cantankerousness which I have already spoken of.
We can give an account of the Madras troubles in the words of its own Provincial Grand Master (by that time, Brigadier‑General Matthew Horne), who wrote, in 1784, of 'the unfortunate Divisions that arose and continued some years in the Settlement, occasioned by the Removal of Lord Pigot from the Government of Madras; and many of our Members becoming warm Adherents of different Parties, their animosity against each other ran so high, that they could not meet as Brethren; and not choosing to exclude either Party, our Lodge ceased'.
Bengal's problems stemmed from a practice which dated back to the beginning of things and went on until the 1890s, by which the overseas Provincial Grand Lodges formally recommended someone whom they would like to have as Provincial Grand Master, for the Grand Master's approval. If there were two or more proposals, there was a vote‑and the procedure was misleadingly called an election.
From 1781 to 1785 the Provincial Grand Lodge of Bengal was in abeyance, owing to war in the Carnatic░ and elsewhere. In 1785 one George Williamson, a Past Provincial Senior Grand Warden, was given a 'deputation' to convene a meeting, to recommend a Brother for appointment as Provincial Grand Master and to act himself until a regular appointment was made.
Then the trouble really began. At the so‑called 'election', Williamson got four votes, and one Edward Fenwick got six, and was declared elected. Plainly, until the Grand Master confirmed Fenwick, Williamson was the acting Provincial Grand Master; but Fenwick refused to wait, usurped the Provincial Grand Mastership, writing in that capacity to Grand Lodge, and having himself formally installed; while Williamson in return made off with the seal and the books and 250 YEARS OF MASONRY IN INDIA 87 papers (his position was somewhat weakened by his being on the run from his creditors).
Grand Lodge took a poor view; Fenwick's installation showed `too much precipitation'; the brethren had `no powers of election', so they had better think again, and in the meantime Williamson was to continue in office.
Their letter provoked an outburst of fury which can only be described as outright mutiny, and a monstrous (in both senses) letter was written to Grand Lodge, of which the gems are in paragraphs 26 and 27, which say quite flatly that the Masons of Bengal never assented' to the appointment of a Provincial Grand Master being the prerogative of the Grand Master; that they had a `natural and inherent' right to elect their own Provincial Grand Master, and while they would always communicate their choice to Grand Lodge, this was `all the submission' that could be `reasonably required' of them.
The reply to this impertinence is Grand Lodge at its best. It is addressed to Fenwick himself, and says in effect, that as most of the brethren seem to want you as Provincial Grand Master, they'd better have you; then (and how the Grand Secretary must have chuckled as he wrote it!) he hopes that the brethren `will yet be of opinion that it is only for the brethren to recommend and the Grand Master to appoint his Representative; and you, Right Worshipful Sir, now standing in that honourable Situation, will I doubt not be mindful of the Rights of the Most Worshipful Grand Master.' So the poacher was appointed gamekeeper. But Nemesis awaited him. Within two years he too was on the run from his creditors, and had to resign his office. And on the day he resigned, the Hon Charles Stewart was `elected' in his stead ‑ and installed. Bengal just would not be told.
UNION IN MADRAS Madras, at this stage, was more statesmanlike. In 1785 the Atholl Lodge at Fort St. George wrote to their Grand Lodge of their `deepest concern that Freemasonry should be unhappily divided into two different sects' and wishing that `an union of the Craft could be effected', for `the evils that attend the disunion of the Craft are many, and in Provinces remote from the mother‑country, they are experienced in a degree of which the Brethren in England can have no conception'.
The Atholl Grand Lodge made no reply to this sensible suggestion; and in 1786 their Lodge in Madras got together with Brigadier‑General Horne, who had been re‑appointed Provincial Grand Master of the opposite faction, and drew up an Act of Union of eleven Articles, under which the Atholl Lodge `surrender up their Powers and Dignities of a Provincial Grand Lodge' and accept a warrant from the Premier Grand Lodge; `the United Society' is to instruct all members `in the essential points that have Distinguished the two Societies'; Lodges warranted by the Atholl Lodges come into `the United Provincial Grand Lodge' in their present seniority; individual Atholl Masons come into the Union; buildings, books and `paraphernalia' are handed over, and `the Cash of both Lodges' becomes a new General Fund ‑ in short, a dignified and honourable treaty, giving Madras a 27 year start over the United Grand Lodge of England. The old Atholl Lodge, under 88 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES its new warrant, is still on the Register as the Lodge of Perfect Unanimity, No 150.
FURTHER DISSENSION It seems a pity that, after such a display of statesmanship, the new Lodge should have treated Provincial Grand Lodge as a closed shops: it was 63 years ‑ in 1849 ‑ before Provincial Grand Lodge was extended to members of what were actually called `the Inferior Lodges'. Bengal, I'm afraid, did the same kind of thing, the only difference being that their closed shop consisted of two Lodges, Star in the East and Industry and Perseverance; and the rank‑and‑file Lodges were not `Inferior' but `Subordinate'. But whatever the name, these lesser Lodges were not allowed to be present at the opening and closing of Provincial Grand Lodge: they were summoned to give an account of their stewardship and then ordered to withdraw. And they didn't even install and invest their own Master and Wardens: the Province did that. In Bengal, which never did things by halves, four resentful `Subordinate' Lodges seceded to the Atholl Grand Lodge between 1797 and 1801. This didn't matter in the long run, as in 1813 England followed the excellent example set by Madras, and formed the United Grand Lodge of England.
But this wasn't the end of the administrative problems of Indian Masonry. In 1813, that great and good man, the Earl of Moira (later Marquess of Hastings) arrived in India with a patent as Grand Master `in and over the whole of India and the Islands in the Indian seas'; and it seems that because there was a Grand Master in India, correspondence with Grand Lodge in England from Bengal `fell into abeyance', and from Madras, `from 1801 to 1820 no returns were sent to England'; then in Bengal, by 1820, we have the Province demanding the Grand Lodge dues and returns from the `subordinate' Lodges ‑ and failing to forward them.
True to form, Bengal mutinied. One Lodge returned its warrant; two others demanded that a committee be set up to report on relations with Grand Lodge; the Deputy Provincial Grand Master refused to allow the motion to be put, on the grounds that it was `derogatory to the authority of the Provincial Grand Lodge and the respect due thereto by the subordinate Lodges'. On this, `the movers of the original resolution renewed the discussion with vehemence' ‑ and the Deputy and both the Provincial Grand Wardens resigned their Chairs on the spot'. Then six Calcutta Lodges formed themselves into a `Lodge of Delegates' to prepare a memorial of protest to Grand Lodge ‑ indeed, the only Lodges in Calcutta that didn't join were Star in the East and Industry and Perseverance, which furnished all the officers of Provincial Grand Lodge anyway.
And to make matters worse, the administrative side of Grand Lodge itself broke down; Madras reports that `from 1822 to 1836 ... no communications were received from headquarters'; Bengal, that Grand Lodge `withheld certificates and left applications for warrants unattended to'. And there was serious talk in India of seceding from the English Grand Lodge and setting up an independent Grand Lodge for themselves ‑ a suggestion which was still meeting with approval in the Indian Masonic press in the 1850s'.
250 YEARS OF MASONRY IN INDIA 89 PROGRESS
Fortunately, better times were ahead, not only in the two old Provinces of Bengal and Madras, but in Bombay as well; and in each case the better times were due to the emergence of a genuine Ruler in the Craft.
In Bengal, Dr John Grant became Provincial Grand Master in 1840, and restored some of the dignity and high importance of Masonry in his Province for close on ten years. His one blind spot, which I shall come back to shortly, was not as evident to his contemporaries as it is today.
Madras had a kind of false dawn. The handsome, 30 year‑old Lord Elphinstone became Governor in 1837 and Provincial Grand Master in 1840. (The gossip of the London Clubs was that Lord Melbourne had shoo'd him off to Madras because he and the 18 year‑old Queen Victoria were growing far too interested in each other). His appointment caused an immediate upsurge of interest in Freemasonry, but not perhaps for Masonic reasons: rather as a means of catching the Governor's eye. The interest did not survive Lord Elphinstone's return to England in 1842; and with the retirement of his Deputy shortly afterwards, the Province was left with only the Provincial Senior Grand Warden in charge. It wasn't until 1848 that John Binny Key was appointed Deputy and put new life into Masonry in South India. Lord Elphinstone remained provincial Grand Master in absentia until 1852; he never returned to Madras: Binny Key was the moving spirit.
But the most notable of the three Rulers in the Craft who emerged at this time was James Burnes, a medical officer in the East India Company's service, who had arrived in Bombay in 1821. He was an outstanding man in many ways: a Fellow of the Royal Society, and the last Knight of the Guelphic Order of Hanover to be made by King William IV'. (`His great‑grandfather ... was elder brother to William Burns, the father of Scotland's immortal poet; and his grandfather was the relation to whom the unfortunate bard on his deathbed appealed for pecuniary relief'.)" The Chevalier Burnes (as he was always called) had been initiated in Lodge St. Peter, Montrose, under the Scottish Constitution; he was Master of the (English) Lodge of Perseverance in Bombay, as well as Provincial Grand Master of Scottish Freemasonry: Gould writes that he was one `whom nature had bountifully endowed with all the qualities requisite for Masonic administration'.
It was the Chevalier Burnes, more than anyone else in India, who was responsible for bringing Indians into Freemasonry: the greatest revolution in the Craft since the formation of the first Grand Lodge.
THE EARLIEST INDIAN MASONS
All the Masonic history books tell us that the first Indian Mason was Omdat‑ulOmrah, the Nabob of the Carnatic, initiated in 1775. Some of them add the Grand Lodge sent him `a Masonic apron, elegantly decorated, and a Book of Constitutions bound in a most superb manner'; the cost was ú37.17.6 ‑ reckoning the bullion, the gold leaf and the workmanship (and the VAT), ú500 would hardly cover it today. What the books don't say is that Omdat‑ul‑Omrah is a classic instance of the folly of making someone a Mason solely on the grounds of his social conse‑ 90 THE PRESTONIAN LECTURES quence: the early minutes of Perfect Unanimity contain many references to the Nabob's unmasonic conduct ‑ one of the more gently despairing of them says: Experience has shown that the solemn obligations of a Mason, and the admonitions of the Lodge, have weighed little with His Highness, in the payment of a just debt to the orphans of a faithful Brother and Servant.
We shall never know whether this first error of judgment delayed the development of Masonry universal; but in the next fifty‑nine years I can find the making of only one Indian Mason ‑ in 1812. I can hardly believe that, in the middle of so great an ocean of time, there was just one tiny island of an evening when one single Indian was made; but I have searched all the records in Grand Lodge, of all the Lodges that are known to have existed in India between 1775 and 1834, and only the one name emerges. There were other Lodges, of course, of which no records remain; and even the surviving returns of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries are not always as reliable as they might be; so it is possible that time or circumstance may restore some names which now are missing. For the present, we must make do with the one. Happily, we know quite a bit about the circumstances.
The initiate's name was Meer Bundeh Ali Khan, and he was made in the Marine Lodge, now No 232 and meeting at Portishead, but in 1812 an Atholl Lodge meeting in Calcutta; and fortunately the United Grand Lodge has inherited the Atholl Grand Lodge's copy of the minutes of the occasion ‑ a fascinating social document: Monday, 23rd March 1812 Lodge of Emergency ‑ at 8 P.M. Opened the Lodge on the I st Degree Officers protempore proceeded to Initiate Meer Bundeh Ali Khan, And He received the 1st Degree of MasonryBrs McCoy and Smith Secty would not be present saying that they were obligated not to be present at the Initiation of a Turk Jew or Infidel, And they considered all Mahomedans, Turks. Brs Hardie & Wilkins withdrew because they considered him as professing no Religion from his eating at Table with Europeans But their Objections being ridiculous in the extreme and proceeding from extreme ignorance they were permitted to withdraw, but while the Lodge was Engaged in what was serious and Solemn these Brethren were most unworthily and unmasonically employing themselves in ridiculing the Mahomedan Religion, and so near the Lodge room that they were made to leave the place ‑ A Most impressive & Solemn charge setting forth the principles of Free Masonry and the Duties of a Good Mason was delivered on the Occasion By the Worshipful Master in the Chair (Bro Tucker) After which The W. M. & all the Brethren present most cordially congratulated Br. Meer Bundeh Ali, on becoming one of our Brethren ‑ and He in return most Sincerely thanked in such terms as language can scarcely express‑At 10 P.M. Closed the Lodge.
Perhaps Marine was ahead of its time in initiating an Indian, as six months later we find the Master, Wardens and Secretary writing to the Atholl Grand Lodge (September I st 1812): It is with sorrow that we have to state that three or four Ignorant Bros have from their Malice and Ignorance, and not being able to appreciate the Meaning of what a Mason ought to be, have been of great Injury to the Lodge, by their having opposed the Making of Br. Meer Bundeh Ali Khan a man Universally respected, for the confirmation of which,
250 YEARS OF MASONRY IN INDIA 91
We beg to refer you to the Marquis Wellesley, and we are further sorry to say that these Brethren have had the address, to head away Several Bigoted, though otherwise very Worthy Members who were absent, to their opinion, and we have been informed that these Members have written to England to the Grand Lodge on the Subject, and we have great reason to think that they have put many Signatures to their letter that have never been Authorised....
What we have done has met with the good wishes and Sanction of Lodge No I Bengall and a Number of the better Informed Brethren of Lodge No 317 as well as many other very worthy Brethren who have done us the Honor of Visiting us, coming from all quarters of the globe....
There is a certain unconscious humour in this, as 317 was the number of Lodge Humility with Fortitude (now No 229); and in 1838 it was Humility with Fortitude which refused to admit as visitors the next two Indians initiated by Marine ‑ two Muslim Brethren ‑ `alleging that the Grand Lodge does not recognise their admission'. Marine wrote to Grand Lodge `requesting information on the point'; and we have the first of a series of letters from Grand Lodge on the theme that `the Grand Lo: of England and the Craft at large acting under its authority admit of no distinction on the score of Religion or Creed'. (Emboldened by this, Marine initiated another Muslim, an Arab merchant from Muscat, in 1839).
In the meantime, two ‑ possibly three ‑ other Indian Masons had been made. Mahomed Ibrahim Purkar, initiated by the Lodge of Hope in Ahmednagar in 1834, and Mahomed Ismael Khan, Ambassador from Oudh, initiated in 1836 in the Lodge of Friendship, No 6, and immediately invested, by the Duke of Sussex himself, as a Past Senior Grand Warden. There is also a story that Ghazi‑ud‑Din Haydar, the so‑called King of Oudh, had been initiated by Lord Moira, but there is no record of this at Grand Lodge.
CROSS‑CURRENTS
There were, of course, many cross‑currents at work. First, there was the determination of the Duke of Sussex, as Grand Master, to make Masonry a genuinely universal brotherhood, `let a man's religions or mode of worship be what it may'. Second, there was the obstinate rearguard action of those who wanted to maintain the Christian ethic of the Craft," which led, after the Duke's death, to the growth of the Christian side‑degrees. Then there was the class‑consciousness of the English, specially in the Presidency towns which were the seats of Government, and where Masonry tended to become dangerously stratified ‑ as witness the `Inferior' and `Subordinate' Lodges, and Gould's account of the 13 non‑commissioned officers in Bombay who were `too poor to establish a Lodge of their own and too modest to seek admittance in what they considered an aristocratic Lodge'. (They were invited to the `aristocratic Lodge' as guests, but were offered `refreshments downstairs' ‑ and very properly walked out). '3 This preoccupation with social gradations (it was an English disease, not so much a Scottish one) was fortified in India by the genuine belief that Genesis ix, 25, was Scriptural warrant for the superiority of Europeans over all dark‑skinned people.
And finally, Bengal had a Provincial By‑Law, No 55, which became notorious
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later on, in the 1860s, which prohibited the initiation of any Asiatic without the Provincial Grand Master's personal approval. Madras doesn't seem to have had such a by‑law, and doesn't seem to have discriminated expressly against Asiatics; but as early as 1804 it had been laid down that the names of all candidates must be submitted to the Provincial Grand Lodge before an `inferior' Lodge could confer any degree. This drew from the Secretary of Carnatic Military (Coromandel No 11) an admirable letter of protest: It has from time immemorial been considered the undoubted Privilege of every lodge to elect, pass and raise its own members. Men in similar situations of life naturally associate together, and from such intercourse become the best Judges of each other's habits, dispositions, and general tenor of conduct; possessing this information who can so well as themselves form an Idea whether a man is, or is not worthy of being passed or raised? The historian Malden says that this order was only one of many unconstitutional acts of the Provincial Grand Lodge of Madras, which `at the time seems to have violated almost every article of the Constitutions'.` Despite all the difficulties some European Masons would have admitted more Indians; but they were at the mercy of the ballot‑box and the Provincial Grand Lodges, and few proposals were successful. But there was increasing interest in the subject ‑ and increasing controversy, conducted to some extent in the public press.
FURTHER PROGRESS
In the end, the break‑through came in Bombay, and in the Scottish, not the English, Constitution. In 1843, a Parsee named Maneckji Cursetji, who had been initiated in a French Lodge, A La Gloire de 1'Univers, was proposed as a joining member of the (Scottish) Lodge of Perseverance," and was turned down. Thirty brethren, nineteen of them members of Perseverance itself, petitioned Burnes, as Provincial Grand Master, for a Lodge designed expressly `for the admission of natives into the Craft'; the petition was granted, and Lodge Rising Star of Western India was consecrated under the Scottish Constitution on 15th December, 1843, with Burnes himself as its first Master. Four Indians were proposed for initiation, a Parsee and three Mohammedans (the Parsee, Ardeshir Cursetji Wadia, was the first Indian F.R.S., the Chief Engineer of the Bombay Dockyard, and scion of the famous shipbuilding Wadia family, whose nine line‑of‑battle ships were the only vessels of their class ever to be built for the Royal Navy outside the British Isles).' SETBACK At the same time as Burnes in Bombay was moving towards the formation of Rising Star, Grant in Calcutta was asking for a ruling by the Duke of Sussex, on the admissibility of Hindus as Masons. The ruling, given in 1840s, is forthright: The initiation of Hindus ... is a question which has occupied H.R.H.'s attention for many years, and it has formed a part of his Masonic creed that provided a man believes in the existence of the Great Architect of the Universe and in futurity, and extends that belief likewise to a state of rewards and punishments hereafter, such a person is fully competent
250 YEARS OF MASONRY IN INDIA 93
to be received as a Brother. Previously, however, to swearing any man to secrecy it is necessary to ascertain what religion he professes in order to obligate him in the most formal and solemn manner possible; when once admitted into the Fraternity all questions of religion cease.
Having got the ruling, Bengal rejected it; Grant could not `contemplate such a possibility without horror', and gave it as his own opinion that Hindus and Mohammedans alike were not eligible for admission `on any grounds whatsoever'. Two years later he returned to the charge. His opening remarks are instructive: When a highly distinguished and respectable Hindu was proposed for initiation by members of one of our Calcutta Lodges, an insuperable difficulty presented itself in the question of how he was to be obligated. This was more especially the case as he was understood to live at variance with many of the rules of caste.
So the unfortunate Hindu, as we say in Yorkshire, can't do right for doing wrong: if he is a strict observer, he's a heathen; if he isn't, he's an apostate ‑ and his distinction and respectability go for nothing.
Later on in his allocution, Grant produces one phrase that seems to be a century before its time: speaking of Indians in general, he says: Shut up beyond our reach by a strict and impenetrable circle of exclusion, ... of their virtues and vices behind this iron curtain what can we know? His peroration is sorry reading: After a residence of 26 years in this country ... of all the natives whom I have ever known, two or three fingers would cover the names of those whom I could venture conscientiously to recommend for ... Masonry.
And yet `we are all sprung from the same stock, partakers of the same nature, and sharers in the same hope': could there have been so few in fact? HINDUS: THE SPECIAL PROBLEM But this question of Hindu initiates needs more consideration. The returns of private Lodges show that throughout these early years all Indian initiates belonged to the strictly monotheistic religions: Muslim, Parsee and Sikh. In 1849, one Bhagwandass Beeneeram, a Jain of the Dhondia sect, applied for initiation in Rising Star, claiming to be monotheistic; and the Master confirmed this and said that he knew the Dhondia Jains `to be so totally different from Hindus'.
The truth was that even the Hindus' well‑wishers (and Rising Star was the last Lodge in the world to be against them) were puzzled by their apparent multiplicity of gods: could they be said to believe in The G.A.O.T.U.? And those who made some enquiry into Hindu beliefs, and found that Hinduism was rather a way of life than a revealed religion in the Christian or Muslim sense", were further puzzled by the problem of obligating them: what, then, was their equivalent of the Bible or the Koran? As for the anti‑Hindu element: violent, vociferous, vituperative ‑ they excelled themselves in a mixture of plain racialism and religious bigotry. Here is a rep‑
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resentative example of the 1850's, from a journal strangely called The Indian Freemanson's Friend: it is, alas! only one of many. Indians, it says, are men who are in a transition state, rising from a condition of barbarous idolatry to one of European civilization; who are but half educated, and whose characters are less than halfformed, according to the standard of Christian morality; men who are too well informed to hold to the superstitious religion in which they were born, and yet not sufficiently enlightened to rise superior to the demoralizing and degrading system of faith and practice in which they were trained in their earlier years; whose religion is a non‑entity as yet; who see no sacred virtue nor admit a binding claim upon their consciences, whether they appeal to the waters of the Ganges or Shasters, or the Koran or the New Testament, in support of any pledge they take.
One wonders how any Englishman, after a century of the kind of unchristian, unmasonic backbiting of which I have given the merest outline, can have had the blindness to write such stuff. To one who was brought up in a Lodge of many religions, the strangest thing is the Englishmans' intemperately expressed assumption that he had nothing to learn from the Hindus ‑ even if it was only what a modern writer has called the Hindus' `civilised respect for all religions'." One has to force oneself to remember that nineteenth century Christians were not bred to tolerance: Lord, I ascribe it to Thy grace, And not to chance, as others do, That I was born of Christian race, And not a Heathen or a Jew." Wrapped in what Kipling called `the triple‑ringed uninterest of the creed that lumps nine‑tenths of the world under the title oú "heathen"',zo they were unable to realise that there was another point of view than their own: and I'm afraid that if they had realised it, they would have dismissed it with contempt‑ as Macaulay in a notorious passage" dismissed Indian ideas of history and geography ‑ `kings thirty feet high, and ... seas of treacle' ‑ not realising how foolish his own fundamentalist belief that the world was created in six days would look 150 years later.
So to our brethren of the mid‑nineteenth century, Hinduism was simply polytheistic and idolatrous ‑ which is, after all, what those uncompromising monotheists the Muslims think of the Christian Trinity and the saints in stainedglass windows. And if the brethren had thought to inquire instead of ignorantly condemning, they would have found that to the Hindu his many gods are personifications of different aspects of the One God. `The Nameless and Formless is called by different names, and different forms are attributed to Him, but it is not forgotten that He is One'."
HINDUS ADMITTED
But the door to Hindu Masonry was flung wide ‑ one might almost say, kicked open ‑ in the 1860's by two events: first, the unstoppable determination of one Mr. P. C. Dutt of Calcutta to become a member of the Craft, and second, the 250 YEARS OF MASONRY IN INDIA 95 contumacious behaviour of Bros Jordan and O'Mealy of the Lodge of Harmony, No. 438, of Cawnpore.
Mr. Dutt was proposed for initiation in Lodge Courage with Humanity, No. 392, and the Master, in accordance with Provincial By‑Law No. 55, applied to the Provincial Grand Master (Hugh Sandeman) for permission. Sandeman referred to the matter in Provincial Grand Lodge in September 1863, when he ruled that Hindus were not eligible for admission into Masonry, and further that it was not desirable with reference to social considerations that they should be admitted, and as long as he held a veto under the By‑laws he would exercise the power rigidly.
The Master accepted the decision; but Dutt wrote to the Grand Master (then the second Earl of Zetland) asking for a ruling. He didn't get a reply for fifteen months, because in the meantime Sandeman and the Grand Master had been grievously at odds over Bro Jordan's case.
Jordan was Master of the Lodge of Harmony, and he wrote (again under ByLaw 55) for permission to initiate Prince Said‑ud‑Dowlah ‑ which was refused. Three Past Masters of the Lodge, including O'Mealy, then wrote to Jordan and told him to disregard the refusal and initiate the Prince, and they would stand by him; so Jordan did. Sandeman, as one might expect, set about asserting his authority; judging by his photograph, he was a dominating and formidable personality, powerfully built, with a mighty curling moustache and beard, and what John Aubrey, of the Brief Lives, would have called `great goggli eies, not of sweet aspect': a man not to be crossed unadvisedly.=3 Two of the Past Masters quickly made their submission and apologised, but O'Mealy (doubtless of a more determined and atrocious character than the rest) not only refused to recant but stubbornly maintained that he was right. Jordan seems to have lost his head at this point, placed the Lodge in abeyance and made off with its warrant and books, which he refused to deliver up when ordered by the Provincial Grand Master. Provincial Grand Lodge unanimously ordered him to be expelled from the Craft, and O'Mealy to be suspended for a year.
These punishments were duly reported to Grand Lodge by the Province, and Jordan and O'Mealy appealed to Grand Lodge against them ‑ direct, instead of through Provincial Grand Lodge as required by Provincial By‑Law 52.
When the Grand Secretary's reply to the Provincial Grand Master came, poor Sandeman must have felt that the heavens had fallen on him. First, By‑Law 55 ,cannot be upheld or enforced; it is directly opposed to the spirit of our Institution and to the very words of the Antient Charges'. Then (and at least as important, in my view) `It is the privilege of a Lodge, and one which cannot be interfered with, to decide who it will receive ‑ the required formalities ... being duly observed'. But worse: Bro O'Mealy was justified in his advice to Bro Jordan, and `in asserting and continuing to maintain his opinion on the subject'; and the Grand Master `directs that Bro O'Mealy be forthwith reinstated'. And worse still: if the matter were to come formally before Grand Lodge the expulsion of Bro Jordan would certainly be reversed, `seeing that the offence charged against him in the first instance was his refusing to obey an illegal By‑Law', so Sandeman had better get
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the District Grand Lodge to reverse its own decision, in order to forestall an appeal.
And (as if all this wasn't enough) the Grand Master says that many of the Bengal By‑Laws `are contrary to and inconsistent with the laws and constitutions of Grand Lodge'; and in another letter, he orders By‑Laws 52 (Appeals) and 55 (Asiatics) to be struck out.
Despite a private letter from the Grand Secretary to Sandeman urging Bengal not to appeal against these decisions, they insisted on doing so, and were inevitably turned down by Grand Lodge. The rejection of the appeal was announced in District Grand Lodge by the Deputy District Grand Master, with `a strong expression of regret' at `the indelicacy of the applause with which the reversal of a decision of this District Grand Lodge was received by members of the Grand Lodge of England'‑ defiant even in defeat.
One could feel more sympathy for Sandeman if it had not been for his fulsome speech at the initiation of the Maharajah Duleep Singh in Star in the East, i
