- PDF Free Download

Size: px

Start display at page:

Download ""

Nicholas Simon
5 years ago
Views:

VOLUME 19 ISSUE 1: MARCH 2016 Editorial Staff Care 27B Lynmouth Avenue, Karori, Wellington 6012 See also the District Grand Lodge website: freemasons.org.

If you are on Facebook: Go to Wellington Lodge s Facebook page where you will find our next meeting listed among the events (Double Initiation on 16 March) with a box marked Going.

1 VOLUME 19 ISSUE 1: MARCH 2016 Editorial Staff Care 27B Lynmouth Avenue, Karori, Wellington 6012 See also the District Grand Lodge website: freemasons.org.nz NEW SYSTEM FOR MEAL BOOKINGS With the New Year, we are introducing a more effective system of booking your refectory meal. There are now two ways to do this. If you are on Facebook: Go to Wellington Lodge s Facebook page where you will find our next meeting listed among the events (Double Initiation on 16 March) with a box marked Going. If you are going to the meeting and staying to refectory, click on that box and a meal will automatically be booked for you. If you are not staying to refectory, do not click the box. If you are not on Facebook: Just send an to Steve Haultain (steve.haultain@gmail.com) asking to have a meal booked for you. Consider going on Facebook. It s the easier option of the two. JOLLY HOLLY It was hard to believe that it had been all of 12 months since our last Christmas meeting, but there it was - back again. Traditionally, the business session at a Christmas meeting is short, but I doubt that any previous Christmas meeting would have seen, as this one did, two candidates passing ballot for initiation plus a third proposed as a joining member. And, in addition to that, our District Grand Master, Rt. Wor. Bro. Brian Westhead, was elected an Honorary Member of the Lodge. The traditional business of the season was not neglected. W. Bro. Tony Cross IPM received his bound volume of summonses and Newsview from his year of office, at the han.ds of the Master. The Lodge voted a Christmas donation of $500 to the Life Flight Trust, which finances a helicopter ambulance service, to which was added a $50 donation sent by W. Bro Phil Byford for application to a charity of the Master s choice. The distribution of Christmas gifts to Lodge widows was reported to be underway. With a number of ballots to be carried out, the Lodge was not closed until The Senior Warden being detained elsewhere, the long closing address, traditionally given at the Christmas meeting, was delivered by the Master. DOWN ONE FLIGHT. and into the Grand Dining Room for refectory. With well over 40 present it was quite cosy. The formal opening toasts zipped through speedily, with Grand Lodge and District Grand Lodge officers remaining seated and grinning at the appropriate points. Our W. Master toasted Aorangi with goodwill and their Master, W. Bro. Rodney Hetherington (who had arrived halfway through the business meeting, having been delayed) made up for it by responding with what could only be called a shaggy chicken joke, which brought out a communal delighted groan worthy of earlier days. At this point, there was a short commercial (for Christmas) break while the Mellowcrafts, under the direction of W. Bro. Richard Prothero (W. Bro. David Trott being engaged professionally elsewhere) led the assembled Brethren in their annual rehearsal for next year s Christmas refectory, in a group of Christmas carols plus the Lodge Christmas song (solo gig by Bro. Steve Haultain) 1

brotherly bond, an upright stance in life, good moral compass and a harmony between us all that he thought would be hard to find so prolifically with any other group so largely diversified.

2 brotherly bond, an upright stance in life, good moral compass and a harmony between us all that he thought would be hard to find so prolifically with any other group so largely diversified. Then came the moment everyone was waiting for (?) the announcement of the winner of the Winder Trowel for 2015 (see citation below). The Mellowcrafts in full cry. Building upon the surprise element of this performance, the task of proposing the toast to the Past Masters also fell this year to Bro. Steve Haultain. He pointed out that we are lucky to be blessed with a large number of newer initiate floor members working their way through their degrees, increasing the ratio of floor m)embers to Past Masters (and lowering the average age in doing so). He recognised the new floor members are ambitious to complete their degrees to attain to the ladder in the Lodge and, when they do, to equal the Past Masters in the quality and excellence of their work. In reply, W. Bro. Richard Prothero reflected upon the remarkable momentum in the Wellington Lodge. This started with the formation of a Ginger Group as a centre for uninhibited buzz sessions where the young blood were encouraged to come up with ideas to rejuvenate a rather tired old Lodge., under the stabilising eye of W. Bro. John Hume. The result is history! There has been a unprecedented raft of new recruits and we now have a sophisticated professional website (in the making Ed.) He had even been asked to like our new Facebook page and the Past Masters have been dragged kicking and screaming into the 21 st century (not quite - some of us went whooping and cheering Ed.) W. Bro Nick Griffin followed up with the toast to the floor members, also commenting on the influx of new talent to this segment of the membership. In the course of his reply, Bro. Wade Craze stated that one of the great things about the new floor members is that they vary in age, skillset and personality, and that ties in perfectly with one of the things he loves about Masonry the fact that we have such massive diversity in our members yet, through Masonry, there is so much we have in common, a strong W. Bro. Alford proposed the toast to absent brethren, after which it was merely a matter of the traditional extended Tyler s Toast and the Christmas refectory was over for another year. THE GRAND MASTERS: CATCH-UP Some six months ago, we stepped aside from our chronological survey of the Grand Masters to concentrate on the general situation of the Craft in England between the early 1750s and the late 1760s the time when the Premier Grand Lodge which became known as the Moderns was challenged by the emergence and rise,,, and rise and rise of an upstart Grand Lodge, known in its time as the Ancients under its highly efficient Grand Secretary, Laurence Dermott. Now it is time for a catch up on the Grand Masters themselves. I left off in 1762 when the term of office of Sholto Charles Douglas, 15 th Earl of Morton as Grand Master of the Moderns came to an end. He was succeeded by Washington Shirley, 5 th Earl Ferrers. Washington was the second son of the Hon. Laurence Shirley, himself the fourth son of Robert Shirley, 1 st Earl Ferrers. As there was apparently little chance that he would ever inherit the title, in 1738 he joined the Royal Navy and,rose steadily through the ranks to become Post- Captain by Then, through a series of circumstances, his elder brother, also named Laurence, became 4 th. Earl Ferrers. When that brother was convicted in 1760 of murdering his land-steward and was hanged at Tyburn, the title fell to Washington as 5 th Earl Ferrers. The family estates would have been forfeit to the Crown as the property of an executed felon, but George III permitted them to pass to Washington who was, after all, a loyal serving naval officer. He was also a respected amateur 2

Meanwhile, what had been happening over at the rival Ancients Grand Lodge? Their first titled Grand Master, the Irish Earl of Blessington, served four years from 1756 to 1760.

3 astronomer and in 1761 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society on the strength of his work on the observations of the transit of Venus. brother. It is now the premier Earldom in the peerage of Great Britain and since 2012 has been held by the 14 th Earl, Robert William Saswalo Shirley. Meanwhile, what had been happening over at the rival Ancients Grand Lodge? Their first titled Grand Master, the Irish Earl of Blessington, served four years from 1756 to He was not particularly punctilious in carrying out his duties, but their indefatigable Grand Secretary, Laurence Dermott, ensured that everything necessary was done. Blessington retired from the position in 1760 and was replaced by Thomas Erskine, 6 th Earl of Kellie, a Scots nobleman. Admiral Washington Shirley 5 th Earl Ferrers The following year, Washington was elected Grand Master of the Moderns Grand Lodge. At the time of his election, he was Master of the Old Horn Lodge No.2 (later to become the Somerset House Lodge). That Lodge contained a number of respected members who were concerned at the decline in effectiveness of the Moderns Grand Lodge and were determined to reverse it. Earl Ferrers was one of their number and it appears that his enthusiasm in that cause may have led to his withdrawal from the Grand Mastership (after two years in office) in The story goes that Ferrers supported a move to have the Moderns Grand Lodge seek incorporation under Charter but, when Grand Lodge members opposed the proposal, he quietly declined renomination as Grand Master. From then on, he seems to have concentrated on his naval career, being promoted Rear-Admiral in 1775 and Vice-Admiral a year later. When he died in 1778, the title passed to his younger Thomas Erskine 6 th Earl of Kellie Erskine was a talented violinist and composer who had studied composition in Mannheim under Johann Stamitz. On his return to Scotland he quickly became a leading figure in local musical circles, where he became familiarly known as Fiddling Tam. He must have served the first three years of his Grand Mastership of the Ancients in absentia for it was not until 1763 that James Boswell ( the biographer of Samuel Johnson) took him down to London, where several of his compositions achieved popularity and he stayed four years. He simultaneously served as the twenty-fourth Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Scotland from 1763 to

4 (from London!). On his return to Scotland in 1767 he was a major influence in the Edinburgh Music Society and, as an able violinist, directed several series of concerts. His private life, however, left much to be desired. Of a rakish, dissolute disposition, he founded an all-male drinking club where he frequently overindulged. It is reported that the playwright Samuel Foote once publicly advised him to put his red nose into his greenhouse to ripen his cucumbers. Over the years, his health suffered. In October 1781, while returning from taking the cure at Spa in Belgium, he was struck with a paralytic shock (a stroke?) which turned to a putrid fever and he died in Brussels at the age of 51. The title passed to a younger brother and thence to a third cousin. The current 16 th Earl of Kellie was in his schooldays a Page of Honour to Queen Elizabeth II and, in 2000, was granted a life peerage, in addition to his other titles, to enable him to continue sitting in the House of Lords after the Lords Reform Act of 1999 came into operation Erskine s music was neglected after his death, but a recent reassessment of what has survived has revealed him to have been an important influence in the development of 18 th -century British music. A selection of his works was issued on CD some 10 years ago under the title Fiddler Tam. It was round about this time, the mid-1760s, that there emerged from the shadows a figure who was to become the third of the great influences in 18 th century Freemasonry. Next Issue: Thomas Dunckerley to the Rescue of the Moderns THE WINDER TROWEL CITATION This year, the award of the Winder Trowel, for the most irrelevant speech made in refectory during the previous twelve months, was a closerun contest, between two claimants. The first was W. Bro. Ian Dingwall, who unfortunately is not with us this evening and shortly to depart for the UK, who, at last year s Christmas meeting, spent all but the last few seconds of his Toast to the Visitors regaling us with a poetic version, in somewhat unsteady metre, of the proceedings at the November meeting. The second offering was at the Installation in June when W. Bro. Andrew Griffin, in his restored capacity as Junior Warden, in his Toast to the Visitors, included a sequence on the vagaries of English grammar, also in verse but which, as it scanned much better than the Dingwall offering, I suspect was not his own work. It is quite unclear, on either occasion, what the visitors had done to deserve this sort of treatment. The Award Committee of three secret squirrels duly met and, by a split vote of two to one, brought down its decision. The American artist Andy Warhol is credited with saying that in the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes. In the case of the Winder Trowel, this is absolutely true because, immediately after the Tyler s Toast, the Trowel has to go back in the Lodge cupboard until next year. So, W. Bro. Andrew, enjoy your short period of world-fame while you can, but remember that, compared to the triumph of being awarded the Winder Trowel, the rank of Deputy District Director of Ceremonies is but a trifle. In closing, I should also report that, after reaching its decision, the Award Committee declared W. Bro., Dingwall s effort to be Highly Commended and passed a unanimous vote of commiseration with all those refectories in the UK where he may be called upon to speak in future. UP AND RUNNING That s what the Lodge website now is up and running. It still needs a little tweaking, but our Webmaster, Bro. Steve Haultain is on the job. If you haven t yet had a look at it, take a moment to do so now. You will find the website address 4

5 at the bottom of each page of this issue of Newsview. We think you will be impressed and so should any non-mason who comes across it. This is where you can help. If someone who is not a freemason expresses any interest in or curiosity about the Craft or the Lodge, point them in the direction of our website. It will answer most questions, give them something to think about plus a contact, should they wish to take things further. With one Fellowcraft, four Entered Apprentices and two more to be initiated in March, we are now on an up-curve. We have workings already scheduled through to the middle of the year, but an up-curve can quickly become a down-curve if it is not followed up (pun intended). Around August-September we should be in a position to take in more initiates, interleaving them with second and third degrees, but we need to start interesting suitable candidates now, for it can take several months to get them from initial interest to proposal, ballot and initiation. The new website can be a major weapon in arousing that initial interest. We now have the technology let s get it working for us! Over to you!! SEE THE FIRST ITEM IN THIS NEWSVIEW FOR THE NEW BOOKING PROCEDURE Wed 20 April Double Second Degree: Bros. C. Macfarlane and J. Robinson Wed 18 May Double Second Degree: Bros. R. Hall and L. Stafford Wed 15 June Installation of Incoming Master Wed 20 August Watch this space! =========== IN MEMORIAM We record with regret the death, late in January, of Mark Moss, who was a member of this Lodge from 1998 to A letter of condolence has been sent to his family. Wed 16 March 2016 COMING UP Emergency Meeting (Double Initiation) DON T FORGET TO BOOK YOUR MEAL FOR THE MARCH MEETING DO IT NOW 5

6 6

Master Mason. The Apron of a Master Mason

Master Mason. The Apron of a Master Mason THE MASTER MASON Congratulations upon being raised to the 3 nd Degree. You are now a Master Mason The Apron of a Master Mason Although the 3 rd degree ceremony essentially follows the structure of the