The Mother Grand Lodge Unknown

Transcription

1 The Mother Grand Lodge Unknown It has often been remarked how casually, if not accidentally, so many great movements seem to start. They seem to spring up of themselves, at the bidding of impulses of which men are only vaguely aware, and the full measure and meaning of which they do not know. As in the Alps a shout or the report of a gun may start an avalanche of ice, because of the poise of forces, so in history a little act often releases a vast pent-up power. A perfect example is the "Revival" of Masonry in 1717, which not only gave a new date to our annals, but a new form and force to the Craft, sending it to the ends of the earth on its benign mission. So true is it that we may almost say that modern Masonry, in its origin and organization, is as much a mystery as ancient Masonry with its symbols and rites, and the mystery may never be solved. Out of a period of dim half-light and much obscurity the new Masonry arose, and knowing what it is, we have a keen curiosity to know how it came to be what it is. How many questions we are eager to ask, answers to which are not bound, or likely to be found, unless unguessed records should leap to light. Anyway, our brethren of those formative days practiced the Masonic virtues of silence and circumspection to an extraordinary degree, telling us very little of what we should like to know so much. How many Lodges of Masons existed in London at that time is a matter of conjecture, but there must have been a number. What tie, if any, united them for common action and fellowship we do not know. Some were purely Operative Lodges, others seem to have been purely Speculative there were such lodges, such as the one in which Ashmole was initiated as early as 1646 while others, as we shall see, were mixed; made up of men part of whom were Accepted Masons and part actual working Masons. The Craft, as all agree, was in a state of neglect, if not disintegration. It enjoyed a period of prosperity in the re-building of London after the great fire in 1666, but as we read in the only record we have, "the few lodges at London finding themselves neglected by Sir Christopher Wren, thought it fit to cement under a Grand Master as the centre of union and harmony." Wren was the great architect of the day, the builder of St. Paul's Cathedral. Whether he was actually a Page 1 of 9

2 lodge member or not is uncertain, but such was the reason given for the forming of a Grand Lodge. Gould, our great historian, in describing "the Assembly of 1717," out of which the first Grand Lodge grew, remarks that "unfortunately, the minutes of Grand Lodge only commence on June 24th, 1723" six years after the event! For the story of those first six years we are dependent upon an account not written, or at least not published, until the second edition of the Constitutions of 1738 twenty-one years after, the event to which it refers! Surely, no other movement of equal importance ever left so scanty a record made so long after the fact. Why no minutes were kept or if kept at all, were lost we do not know. Still less do we know why the first Grand Lodge was formed without a Constitution. The General Regulations did not appear until 1721, and the Constitutions in The impression is unmistakable that it was only an experiment, in response to a growing need of a "center of Union and Harmony," and that those who took part in it did not dream that they were launching a movement destined to cover the earth with a great fraternal fellowship. Four lodges united to form the Mother Grand Lodge, those that met: 1. At the Goose and Gridiron Ale-house in St. Paul's Church Yard; 2. At the Crown Ale-house in Parker's line, near Drury line; 3. At the Apple-Tree Tavern in Charles-street, Covent-Garden; 4. At the Rummer and Grape Tavern in Channel-Row, Westminster. In those days, as in our own day in London, lodges met in taverns and ale-houses the hotels of the time. Their meetings were festive, and often convivial, in the manner and custom of the day. A rare old book called Multa Paucis asserts that six lodges, not four, were represented, but there is no record of the fact, though members of other lodges were no doubt present as guests. Indeed, we have a hint to that effect in the meager record, as follows: "They (the four Lodges) and some other old Brothers met at the said Apple-Tree, and having put into the chair the oldest Master Mason (now the Master of a Lodge) they constituted themselves a Grand Lodge pro Tempore in Due Form, and forthwith revived the Quarterly Communication of the Officers of Lodges (called the Grand Lodge), resolved to hold the Annual Assembly and Feast, and then chuse a Grand Master from among themselves, till they should have the honour of a Noble Brother at their Head." Such is the record of the preliminary meeting what would we not give for a full account of its discussion and proceedings! Diligent search has been made among the records, diaries and papers of the time, but few facts have been added to this record. Even the date of the meeting is omitted, but it must have been in the spring or early summer of 1717, as the meeting at which the Grand lodge was actually organized took place shortly afterward, in June of that year, and was held in the Goose and Gridiron Ale-house in St. Paul's Churchyard, near the west end of the Cathedral. Page 2 of 9

3 The old Ale-house had a long story, being one of the most famous in the city, whereof we may read in London Inns and Taverns, by Leopold Wagner. Before the Great Fire it had been called the Mitre, the first "Musick House" in London, and the meeting-place of the Company of Musicians, its sign being a Swan and a Lyre. Its master had gathered many trophies of travel, which he displayed, and which are said to have formed the nucleus of the Britain Museum. After the fire it was rebuilt on the same site, but the new sign was so badly made that the wits of the town called it the Goose and Gridiron, and the name clung to it. The record goes on: "Accordingly, on St John Baptist's Day, in the 3rd year of King George 1, A.D. 1717, the Assembly and Feast of the Free and Accepted Masons was held at the foresaid Goose and Gridiron Alehouse. "Before dinner, the oldest Master Mason (now the Master of a Lodge), in the Chair, proposed a list of proper candidates; and the Brethren by a majority of Hands elected Mr. Anthony Sayer, Gentleman, Grand Master of Masons (Mr. Jacob Lamball, Carpenter; Capt. Joseph Elliot, Grand Wardens), who being forthwith invested with the Badges, of Office and Power by said oldest Master, and installed, was duly congratulated by the Assembly, who paid him the Homage. "Sayer, Grand Master, commanded the Masters and Wardens of Lodges to meet the Grand Officers every Quarter in Communication, at the place that he should appoint in the Summons sent by the Tyler." So reads the only record that has come down to us of the founding of the Mother Grand Lodge. Who were present, besides the three officers named, has so far eluded all research; their faces have faded, their names are lost but imagine the scene! The big room extended the width of the house, thirty feet one way and nearly twenty the other. In the center was an oak table, around which the delegates from the various lodges sat on chairs, smoking their pipes. The seat of Anthony Sayer was before the fireplace, with its polished brass fire-irons, with chestnutroasters and bed-warmers hanging on either side of it. It was an hour of feast and fun and fellowship, as they sat down to dinner together, as English lodges do today. Each man had a rummer of foaming ale before him on the table, and as he drained it betimes it was refilled by a handsome maid, Hannah, whose name has survived long after others were lost. Only a few memories live of that event which divided the story of Masonry into before and after: the famous sign in front of the house, so ugly that a Swan and a Lyre were mistaken for a Goose and a Gridiron; the skittleground on the roof; the small watercourse, a rivulet of Fleet Brook, for which a way had to be made through the chimney; the pillar that propped up the chimney, and Hannah, the maid. How strange that the Masons of England allowed the old Ale-house to be taken down in 1893 it ought to have been kept as a shrine of fellowship and fun. But so little interest was taken in its fate that the historic sign was sold to a citizen of Dulwick, who put it in his greenhouse. Later Page 3 of 9

4 on, however, the old relic was recovered, and it now has a place of honour in the Guildhall Museum, along with other tokens of a London that is no more. Alas, so little do men see, and so lightly do they value, what is passing before their eyes. What of the men who formed the Mother Grand Lodge? They did not could not realize what they had done so casually and in a spirit of frolic, much less foreknow its meaning and future. They merely wanted to make a "centre of union and harmony," as they called it, between the lodges of the city. There was no thought of imposing the authority of Grand Lodge upon the country in general, still less upon the world, as is clear from the Constitutions of 1723, which are said to be "for the use of Lodges in London." Yet, so great was the necessity for a Grand Lodge, that, once started, the impulse spread to Ireland, Scotland, and the ends of the earth. Link was added to link until it put "a girdle around the earth." As a great man of the Craft has said so picturesquely, it is possible, and it is true, to say that Masonry was born in a Tavern, but it belongs to Almighty God; and so gentle was its spirit, so friendly and tolerant and wise withal, that it began to make the life of the Tavern like a vestibule for the life of the church. <<-->> Of "the few Lodges at London," as the record puts it, who constituted themselves a Grand Lodge in 1717, only four are named. If other lodges were invited, it maybe surmised that they either had not been notified of the purpose of the meeting, or if so, that they declined to associate themselves with the undertaking. Or perhaps no one knew what was afoot when the meeting was held, and the idea of a Grand Lodge was born of the spirit of the hour. The phrase "time immemorial," used to denote the age of the four lodges taking part, is all a blur, telling us no authentic story of their history. On the Engraved List of Lodges of 1729, the Goose and Gridiron Lodge No.1, known after as the Lodge of Antiquity, is said to have dated from Of the others we have no early knowledge at all, except the part they took in founding the first Grand Lodge. Even the Lodge of Antiquity pursued an uneventful career until Preston became its Master in 1774, when it was involved in a dispute with Grand Lodge. The lodge, which met at the Crown Ale-House, Parker's Lane No.2, of the original four played no part in Masonic history, and died of inanition twenty years later; stricken off the roll in No Mason of any note seems to have belonged to it. The Apple-Tree Tavern Lodge No.3 gave the Grand Lodge its first Grand Master, Anthony Sayer, who apparently appointed two members of his own Lodge as Grand Wardens so at least we may conjecture. The lodge moved to the Queen's Head, Knaves Acre, about 1723, and, if we may believe Anderson, it was loath to come under the new Constitution adopted in that year. These two lodges seem to have been Operative Lodges, or largely so, composed of working Masons and Brethren of the artisan class. Clearly, then, the new Grand Lodge was made up, predominately, of Operative Masons, and not, as has so often been implied, the design of men Page 4 of 9

5 who simply made use of the remnants of Operative Masonry the better to exploit some hidden cult. Still, it may be argued that, even if Operative Masons were in the majority, the real leadership of the movement came from Accepted Masons, and that is quite true. But anyone who knows the ingrained conservatism of Masons of every sort, will be slow to admit that any designing group could have imposed anything not inherently Masonic upon such an assembly. The premier lodge of the period, which seems to have initiated and led the formation and policy of the new Grand Lodge, was No.4, meeting at the Rummer and Grape Tavern in Channel Row, Westminster. It was almost entirely a Speculative Lodge, made up of Accepted Masons, and almost all the leading men of the Craft in that formative time were members of it. The other lodges had perhaps twenty members each, while No.4 had a roll of seventy, among them men of high social rank, including members of nobility. Had it not been for such a lodge, the only one of is kind and quality in London, the chances are many that no Grand Lodge would have been formed, and the story of our Craft, if it had any story at all, would have been very different. Besides Dr. Anderson, to whom, Gould says, we may safely attribute the authorship of the Constitutions as well as much else, some of it rather fantastic and Dr. Desaguliers, to whom tradition ascribes the refashioning of much of the ritual, the second and third Grand Masters were men of that lodge. It also furnished a Grand Secretary, William Cowper. The lodge continued to hold first place in numbers, social rank, and influence until 1735, when a decline set in, both in attendance and contributions, and in 1747 it was decreed that the lodge "be erased from the Book of Lodges." Four years later the lodge was restored, but it never regained its former power, and twenty years later appeared to be once more on the edge of extinction, from which it was rescued by being merged with the Somerset House Lodge founded in Dunckerley. The Goose and Gridiron Lodge, No.1, is the only one of the original four lodges now in existence. After various changes in name it is now the Lodge of Antiquity, No.2, having lost its proud position of first on the list when the lodges were renumbered by the casting of lots, at the time of the union of the two rival Grand Lodges, in It seems to have been a mixed lodge, part Operative and part Speculative, and this fact, no doubt, made for continuity and stability in its long history and service. Not much is known of the first Grand Master, Anthony Sayer, whose life seems to have been uneventful, if not unimportant, save for the "accident," if we may call it such, of his election to his high office. About the only record of him save the story of his ill fortune in later life is to be found in the Anderson version of the organization of the Grand Lodge in the 1738 edition of the Constitutions. Nothing is known of his previous history, except that he is described as a "gentleman," in the old English meaning of the word, and that he was a member of the lodge meeting at the Apple-Tree Tavern. He was a Warden of his Lodge in 1723; apparently he had never been its Master, or if so, there is no record of it. Page 5 of 9

6 Sayer served as Grand Master for one year, and in June, 1718, was followed by George Payne; he was made Grand Senior Warden in Later he fell upon evil days Never, it would seem, having been a man of much influence or position in the world and more than once was aided by the Craft over which he was the first to preside. He became Tyler of Old King's Arms Lodge, No.28, and it is reported in the records that he was assisted "out of the box of this society." He was also aided by Grand Lodge, in spite of some kind of irregular conduct of which he was accused in 1730, the nature of which is not known, for which he was called to account by Grand Lodge. The finding amounted to a verdict of "not guilty," but don't repeat the offence;" and Sayer did not again approach Grand Lodge for aid until 1741, when he received help. After that one finds no allusion to him in the records of Grand Lodge, or anywhere else, until his death the following year, 1742, which was announced in the London papers both in the "Champion" and in the "Evening Post. From these accounts we learn that his funeral was attended "by a great number of gentlemen of that honorable society of the best quality," and that he was buried in St. Paul's Church, Covent Garden where his widow was buried a few months later in the same year. The vague impression of Sayer that is left us, almost too vague to be perceptible, is that of an amiable but rather ineffective man rescued from utter oblivion by the one brief honor of his life. Hardly more than a name, no biography of his has been written, and no materials for one exists if indeed so obscure and colorless man deserved to be celebrated at all. Shortly after his death, probably in 1744, a portrait of Sayer was painted by Joseph Highmore, which was engraved by John Faber, a Dutch artist, both men of the Craft, as an appendix to a Masonic History, in which Highmore was interested. Bromley, in his Catalogue, issued in 1793, assigns the year 1750 as the date when the picture was published, with the legend, "Anthony Sayer, Gent, Grand Master of Masons." Of this engraving many copies have come down to us, which are highly prized as giving us the only image and likeness of the first ruler of our gentle Craft. So much for the first Grand Master, of whom we know so little, not even the place or date of his birth. It is plain that the real work of the Grand Lodge, in those critical and creative years, was done by other and stronger men. They wrought well, but, excepting Anderson, and less certainly Desaguliers, we know very little of what part each took in the work. Nor does it greatly matter, as it is the building and not the builders that is the goal of our labors, and it is an eloquent fact that Masonry, even in its modern form, which took shape in the First grand Lodge, is a cooperative enterprise, in which no names out-top their fellows. Let us be grateful that it is so, remembering the wisdom of Goethe, one of the greatest men in the annals of our Craft, who, as he grew older, took comfort in the beautiful feeling that entered his mind that only mankind together is the true man, and that the individual can only be happy when he has the courage to feel himself in the whole, and lose himself in it. Page 6 of 9

7 <<-->> There is a reason for everything, even for superstition, if we seek far enough to find it. There was a reason, both in the spirit of the age and the state of the Craft, for the "revival" of Masonry in It was a fad of the day to form all sorts of queer clubs and secret societies, some of them with odd, fantastic names. Our Craft was caught by that craze, but Masonry lived, while the rest were left in limbo. Why should it have been so? The Cathedrals had long been finished and the work of the Craft seemed done. The place of the Master Mason had been taken by the architect who, like Sir Christopher Wren and Inigo Jones was no longer a child of the Lodge, but a man trained in books and by travel. By all the rules, Masonry should have died, or else reverted to some kind of guild or trade union. But, it did not. Instead, men who were not working Masons had long been joining the Lodges, in quest of truth they had not found elsewhere. Put otherwise, why did Masonry alone of all trades live after its work was done, preserving not only its identity and its old emblems and usages, but transforming them into teachers of morality and charity? Of course, in the end only that lives which is in accord with the need of man and the nature of things; but we may go further and say that Masonry lived because it had never been simply an order of architects, but a moral and spiritual fellowship the keeper of great symbols and a teacher of truths that never die. Having reviewed the meager record, let us examine the facts in more detail. The new Masonry was not merely a "revival;" it was a revolution. The Craft had fallen to a low estate, following the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire. The new Grand Lodge was intended to give it "a centre of union and harmony," a community of action, such as it had not had for years; but it did much more. It gave the Craft not only an old form with a new meaning, but a new spirit, a new force, a new direction, and sent it forward to a new destiny such as no one had ever dreamed of. More than one writer has told us that the leaders of the Masonry of that day were fuzzy-minded men who did not know what they were doing; but the results show that they were wise men. Never more so than when they were careful to say that what they were doing was "according to ancient usage," a phrase which still has magical power among us, because Masons love things old, tried and lovely. They were doing things never done before "according to ancient usage" from "time immemorial," and that was surely a rare feat! They made the past glide into the future without loss, using an ancient form to clothe a new spirit and purpose. The brethren who met in the Apple-Tree Tavern "constituted themselves a Grand Lodge pro tempore in Due Form and forthwith revived the Quarterly Communication of Officers of Lodges, called the Grand Lodge." The quarterly meeting was never before called a Grand Lodge, so far as we are aware, but it became one none the less. Under the guise of reviving an old usage they created a new form of organization new, certainly, in its power. No wonder there was a great Schism later on, made, as we now know, by Lodges not represented at the Page 7 of 9

8 Apple-Tree Tavern, and who denied the right of a few men to constitute themselves a Grand Lodge. What was the "Due Form" with which the new Grand Lodge was constituted? A postscript to the record tells us that "when the Grand Master is present it is a lodge in Ample Form; otherwise, only in Due Form." But what Ritual, if any, was used on that important occasion? Nobody knows; our Brethren have practiced the virtue of secrecy too successfully for us to penetrate the veil. Some sort of ceremony must have been employed, but we do not know what it was, unless it was that found in the "Narrative of the Freemasons Words and Signes" contained in the Sloan MS. The Grand Lodge itself being a new invention, no doubt it set about revising and elaborating such Ritual as existed, which developed into the Ritual as we now have it. Under the guise of a "revival" still further innovations were made when the four lodges met to elect a Grand Master and celebrate the Feast of St. John in the Goose and Gridiron Ale- House. The office of Grand Master was new, both in its creation and in its amazing power a power almost absolute, including the "sole" right of appointing both his Wardens. There must have been murmurs against it, because Anderson found it necessary to say a little later that it was found "as necessary as formerly, according to an ancient custom." Whereas he was in fact attempting to justify a new fact by appeal to an old fiction, since no such office existed in former times. Old usages were in evidence, to be sure, as the observance of St. John's Day, the manner of voting by show of hands, the badges of office, the Tyled Lodge, to name no others. But if the new Grand Master wore an old Badge of office, he himself was a new figure in Masonry, invested with a new and vast power. His Badge was a large white apron, though hardly so large as the one we see in the Hogarth picture. The collar was of much the same shape as that at present in use, only shorter. When the color was changed to blue, and why, is uncertain, but probably not until 1813, when we begin to see both Apron and Collar edged with blue. By 1727 the officers of all lodges were wearing "the jewels of Masonry hanging to a White Apron." Four years later we find the Grand Master wearing gold jewels pendant to blue ribbons about the neck. As regards innovations, it is pointed out by Gould that the new Grand Lodge introduced three striking changes in English Masonry, besides those already named. First, it prohibited the working of "the Master's Part" now, probably the Master's Degree in private Lodges, as if it intended to keep the most sacred and secret part of the Ritual within its own control. Not unnaturally this provoked rebellion on the part of many, and was done away with in November However, it was a wise thing, because, as Stuckeley said in his diary, under the date of January 1721, "Masonry took a run, and ran itself out of breath through the folly of its members." It seems that Masons were being made not only by Lodges, but by private groups. The second innovation named by Gould was less important, but worthy of mention. The new Grand Lodge arbitrarily imposed upon the English Craft the use of two compound words new in Page 8 of 9

9 its vocabulary Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craft. These words were known elsewhere in the Craft, but they were new in England. More serious, by far, was the article on "God and Religion" in the First Constitutions, by which Christianity was no longer to be the only religion recognized by Masonry. As Gould remarks, "the drawing of a sponge over the ancient Charge, 'To be True To God and Holy Church,' was doubtless looked upon by many Masons of those days in very much the same manner as we now regard the absence of any religious formulary whatever in the so-called Masonry of the Grand Orient of France." The full import of this article was not realized at first; but it was one factor leading to the Great Schism which divided the Craft for fifty years. Indeed, the "epoch of transition," as it has been named, from the old Masonry to the new, covered a long period, say from 1717 to 1738, when the second book of constitutions was issued, and the first Papal Bull was hurled at the Craft. It was a period of ups and downs, all kinds of tangles, new and vexing problems, when the Craft was attacked and defended by turns, with many alleged "exposures" as well, as we know not only from the record of the Craft, but from items in the papers of the time. The old diarist was right when he said that "Masonry took a run," and it did not stop until it reached the ends of the earth. Lodges multiplied, charity flourished, and the gentle influence of the Fraternity spread afar. In spite of the schism within and opposition without, the Craft grew almost too rapidly, and measures had to be taken to restrain it, least it go too fast, making members without making Masons. Those "Fuzzy-minded old men," as they have been called, knew what they were about, and while they made more than one sad mistake of policy, they helped forward the Brotherhood of Man. Even the Great Schism helped, rather than hindered, the onward march of Masonry. STB - February 1929 Page 9 of 9