Unlocking the Masonic Code: The Secrets of the Solomon Key. Ian Gittins
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it turned, with Martin Luther sparking the Protestant Reformation in Germany in 1517 and King Henry VIII breaking all British ties with Rome in 1534. The Church was suddenly in no position to order more cathedrals to be built.
Even if they had done so, they might not have been Gothic ones. The third and final blow to Freemasonry’s standing was that the Gothic style, so dominant since the 1100s, was being supplanted by a return to the simpler classicist values of Roman architecture. Suddenly Masons were running short of work. They would never again recover their position as the most elevated and valued manual workers in the land.
From Operative to Speculative
The Masons’ financial fortunes might have declined during the Renaissance period but the Craft still maintained an enviable social status. The covert fraternity was admired both for its architectural and geometric knowledge and its lofty aims of self-improvement, and as the sixteenth century neared its close there was a tendency for Masonic lodges to admit non-stonemasons—who tended mainly to be sympathetic aristocrats—as honorary members.
This trend began in Scotland, where Freemasonry had long been firmly established: indeed, the world’s oldest surviving Masonic lodge, Kilwinning Lodge No 0, was formed there in 1140. At the end of the 1500s it was even rumoured that King James VI of Scotland had become an honorary Mason. Clearly, membership was no longer restricted to architects and stonecutters.
This was the crucial period in history when Freemasonry underwent a sea change from an elevated series of trade union guilds to a philosophical and moral fraternity open—in theory, at least—to all who wanted to join. This process was largely put on hold in the first part of the seventeenth century, as the English Civil Wars rent the country asunder, but as the Age of Reason dawned in the 1640s and 1650s, Freemasonry truly came into its own.
No longer willing to accept religious doctrine and dogma unquestioningly, people were now investing far more importance in scientific and cerebral analysis of the mysteries of everyday
The Schaw Statutes
In 1598, William Schaw, the Master of Works for Scottish ruler (and suspected Mason) King James VI, passed two statutes seeking clearly to define the nature of Freemasonry. The decrees stated the responsibilities and duties of lodge members and set out the punishments for unsatisfactory work and employing non-initiated Masons. They also required all lodges to keep minutes of every meeting, and obliged them to submit their members to tests of their knowledge of Masonic history and law.
life. These progressive thinkers were greatly impressed with Freemasonry’s stringent moral code and search for self-betterment: to use Masonry’s language, the way that members sought to turn themselves into beings as sturdy, worthy and inspiring as a cathedral.
The traditional operative Freemasons who worked daily with stone and gauge were thus joined in the lodges by a new wave of speculative Masons who had never wielded a chisel in their life. Some traditionalist members opposed the move, afraid that these newcomers would see no reason to keep their zealously guarded trade secrets. A few lodges even burned all written records. Yet before long such accepted or admitted Masons were accepted within the fraternity by all but the most reactionary stonecutters.
Freemasonry thus proudly took its place in the vanguard of progressive thought, alongside institutions such as the recently-formed Royal Society of London, a scientific thinking-shop: many illustrious figures such as Sir Christopher Wren and Elias Ashmole joined both organizations. Yet even amongst the hard intellectual rigour of the age, it is easy to believe such elevated men of reason must have enjoyed a private, boyish frisson at the arcane rituals and elaborate secrecy required to become a speculative Mason.
Dan Brown could be forgiven for latching eagerly onto the speculative Freemasons of the mid-seventeenth century as a plot device. Here, after all, was a covert conglomeration of the age’s greatest and most renowned free thinkers, operating within a ritualistic secret society—who knows what perfidious plots they could have been hatching?
However, such speculation appears largely misplaced. There is no evidence that the Freemasons’ lodges of this era were bent upon anything more than speculative contemplation of a fast-changing world, combined with a rigorous moral code. Members at this time still professed allegiance to God rather than a nebulous Supreme Being: their sole ‘crime’ in reactionary eyes was also to embrace the new-fangled Renaissance cult of rationalism.
Operative Masons’ fortunes also received a spectacular boost in the middle of the century. The Great Fire of London of 1666 razed 40,000 dwellings to the ground and close to 100 churches in the capital. As architects and builders flocked to London, the number of Masons’ lodges in the city rocketed accordingly. Yet this proved a short-lived gain, and by the start of the eighteenth century there were a mere six Masonic lodges in London. Other lodges were scattered across the country in an ad hoc, disjointed manner, and even within these fraternal chapters, observation of Masonic rituals and symbolism was declining. Freemasonry clearly needed to organize or it would die.
The Grand Lodges
By the early eighteenth century, Freemasonry had become so informal that most lodges met only sporadically, at a public house convenient for its members. The four most significant lodges in London regularly convened at four separate alehouses: the Goose & Gridiron, next to the recently-completed St Paul’s Cathedral; the Crown, in Parkers Lane near to Drury Lane; the Apple Tree tavern, in Charles Street on the fringes of Covent Garden’s fruit market; and the Rummer & Grapes, close by the Palace of Westminster. None of these hostelries survive today.
In February 1717, senior figures from these four lodges gathered at the Apple Tree tavern for crisis talks. Sensing that Freemasonry was at a crossroads, these elders decided to put in place a coherent structure that would unify the entire movement. They also resolved to reintroduce
Deference Within Masonry?
Despite Masonry’s claims to eschewing social snobbery and prejudice, it is notable that no working stonemason has ever been voted Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England. From 1717-21 only, the position was held by gentlemen, or speculative, Masons. Thereafter, the Grand Lodge has invariably voted aristocracy or, in recent years, royalty into its top post. The first Royal Family member to be Grand Master was King George III’s brother, the Duke of Cumberland, in 1782. The current incumbent, HRH the Duke of Kent, was appointed in 1967.
respect for the rituals and traditions that had made the fraternity unique and revered. So it was that, on 24 June 1717, London’s senior Masons gathered at the Goose & Gridiron in the courtyard of St Paul’s Cathedral, whose construction had been overseen by one of their number, Sir Christopher Wren, to form the Grand Lodge of England. As their first ever Grand Master they elected a speculative or admitted Mason, Anthony Sayer from the lodge at the Crown.
The founding of the Grand Lodge of England succeeded in giving Masonry the greater cohesion it required, but paradoxically it also caused rifts within the fraternity. Long-established lodges in Scotland and the north of England did not respond favourably to the Grand Lodge’s unilateral declaration that it alone could recognize, or charter, new lodges, and that it was henceforth in regulatory charge of all existing lodges.
In 1725, northern lodges formed a rival Grand Lodge of All England at York—a body that lasted until 1790. Scotland, ever resentful of English rule, had no truck with London and formed its own completely independent Grand Lodge of St John of Scotland in 1736. Ireland, however, fell into line with the English Grand Lodge and formed its own Grand Lodge of Ireland under a charter from London.
Antients and Moderns
In 1751 a Master Mason named Laurence Dermott, an Irishman living in London, formed a rival to the Grand Lodge of England called the Antient Grand Lodge. This group objected to the perceived progressive tendencies of the Grand Lodge of England,