The study of freemasonry as a new academic discipline

"Why have Kings and Princes, the Nobility, Judges and Statesmen, Soldiers and Sailors, Clergy and Doctors, and men in every walk of life sought to enter the Portals of Freemasonry?"

G. W. Daynes, The Birth and Growth of the Grand Lodge of England (London: Masonic Record, 1926), p. 185.

Introduction

Stephen Yeo's 1976 book, Religions and Voluntary Organisations in Crisis, is a study of the social life of the English town of Reading between 1890 and 1914.[2] Yeo describes a town whose social fabric was bound together by many voluntary organizations and activities, «from Congregational chapels to the Social Democratic Federation, from Hospital Sunday Parades to Literary and Scientific Societies».[3] This social ecology was rooted in the churches and in a paternalistic culture encouraged by large employers such as Reading's famous biscuit manufacturers, Huntley and Palmer. Yeo paints a vivid picture of a vibrant associational culture which has now largely disappeared. Yet, Yeo admits, there was one major omission in his study. He describes how «A congregationalist minister in the 1960s, showing me the photographs of deacons, etc., on the wall of the vestry of his chapel, told me that I could not really understand late 19th-century chapel life without knowing about the masons. The Vicars of St. Mary's and of St. Giles at different dates before 1914 were both high in the local masonic hierarchy.»[4] Yeo went to the local masonic hall, but was not allowed to examine the records held there. The freemasons, one of the largest and most prestigious of Reading's voluntary organizations, with in 1895 three separate lodges[5], were consequently left out of Yeo's book.
Since Yeo wrote, there has been a silent revolution in English freemasonry. Partly in response to attacks on freemasonry by writers such as Stephen Knight, masonic libraries and museums have been opened to the public. The magnificent Library and Museum of Freemasonry at Freemasons' Hall in London offers daily public tours, and in the 2002 «Open House» event attracted over 2,000 visitors in one day. Its library is freely available to scholars and lists of its historical correspondence and early returns of membership are being mounted on the internet.[6] The Province of Berkshire, which contains Reading, has one of the largest provincial libraries, with over 13,000 books, and the library is now open daily to the general public. Berkshire was one of the first English provinces to establish a web site.[7] I am myself an incarnation of this new policy. In 2000, the University of Sheffield established, with funding from United Grand Lodge, the Province of Yorkshire West Riding and Lord Northampton, the Pro Grand Master, the first centre in a British university devoted to the scholarly study of freemasonry.[8] Although I am not a mason, I was appointed as the first Director of this Centre.
Of course, the cautiousness of the English Grand Lodge from which Yeo suffered was not shared by all the European Grand Lodges. The Grand East of the Netherlands has for many years welcomed scholars wishing to use its remarkable library.[9] Shortly after Yeo's book was published, Professor Margaret Jacob made use of the library of the Grand East and her resulting book, Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans,[10] has profoundly altered our perception of the cultural history of 18th-century Europe.[11] The willingness of the Grand East of the Netherlands to make its collections available to scholars has played a significant part in the upsurge in scholarly interest in freemasonry over the last twenty years. Trevor Stewart has recently compiled a bibliography of articles on European freemasonry which have appeared in academic periodicals since 1980. This contains 269 entries, and even this gives only a partial view of the full extent of research into freemasonry, since it excludes articles on America, Africa and Asia, as well as periodicals published by masonic bodies, theses and monographs.[12]
Despite all this work, our picture of freemasonry remains fragmented. In many countries, particularly England, freemasonry is still considered an exotic subject outside the scholarly mainstream.[13] It is often forgotten by scholars even when it should loom large. For example, Noble Frankland's 1993 biography of the Duke of Connaught, who as Grand Master from 1901 to 1939 was one of the dominant figures in modern English freemasonry, makes no mention of the Duke's masonic career.[14] The picture is of course different in Europe and America where there is a long-standing scholarly interest in freemasonry, but even here there is no overall consensus on the importance and significance of freemasonry. Trevor Stewart's bibliography illustrates how freemasonry is relevant to an enormous range of subjects from garden history to theatre studies, but broader connecting themes are not immediately evident. Scholars frequently use masonic evidence simply to confirm and further illustrate established themes and ideas. Pierre Chevallier's history of French freemasonry is one of the great achievements of masonic scholarship, but ultimately it simply reinforces traditional French republican historiography.[15] The limitations of current scholarly research into freemasonry are epitomised by William Weisberger's recent study of the role of Prague and Viennese freemasonry in Enlightenment.[16] While the essay carefully documents the activities of the Czech and Austrian lodges, the value of the study is limited by its stereotyped and hackneyed view of the Enlightenment.[17] Work such as that of Margaret Jacob, which uses masonic evidence as a springboard for the development of new perspectives which alter our view of an entire period, is extremely rare.
As the exploration of masonic archives by scholars continues, what kind of broader themes will emerge? If research into freemasonry claims to be a new and emerging academic discipline, what will be its distinguishing features? I can only briefly sketch some of the possibilities here, and I hope you will forgive me if I confine my remarks to Britain, since this has been the focus of my own research.

Historical and Social Data in Masonic Archives

As we continue to explore the masonic archive, we will find a great deal of information bearing on old kinds of history, on royalty, politicians and governments, and this cannot be ignored. Many of the English Grand Masters since 1782 have been members of the royal family, but the significance of this for the British monarchy as an institution has never been fully investigated.[18] Freemasonry is one of the British institutions in which the aristocracy still holds sway, and the role of the aristocracy in British freemasonry provides a fruitful area of study for scholars interested in the decline and fall of the British aristocracy. Occasionally, freemasonry has been caught up in wider political events. For example, in 1929, shortly before the election of the second Labour government, a new masonic lodge, the New Welcome Lodge No. 5139, was formed at the behest of the then Prince of Wales.[19] This lodge was intended exclusively for Labour members of parliament and party officials, and reflected a concern that Labour Party activists had frequently been blackballed by masonic lodges. The New Welcome Lodge was intended to ensure that the new socialist government was not alienated from freemasonry. It was also hoped that the lodge would draw more working men into freemasonry, and that masonic values would reduce «unsettling influences» on the shop floor.[20] Although the New Welcome Lodge was initially very successful in recruiting Labour M.P.s (including Sir Robert Young, the Deputy Speaker, Arthur Greenwood, Foreign Secretary and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, and Scott Lindsay, the Labour Party Secretary),[21] the formation of the National Government changed the political situation, and from 1934 New Welcome Lodge was opened up to MPs of all parties and to staff working at the Palace of Westminster, becoming essentially a house facility of the Palace of Westminster.[22]
Undoubtedly the most fascinating information in the masonic archive are the details of well-known people who were freemasons. The legal and social reformer, Lord Brougham, was initiated as a freemason on an impulse while he was on holiday in the Hebrides.[23] Was this a passing episode in Brougham's life, or did the values of freemasonry influence Brougham's legal reforms? The same question can be asked of many other prominent figures in British history who were freemasons. In July 1885, the English masonic newspaper, The Freemason, listed members of the government and royal household who were freemasons.[24] Among those named by The Freemason were Sir Charles Dilke, President of the Local Government Board from 1882 to 1885, who was the leader of the radical faction within the Liberal party and the most eminent advocate of republicanism. Despite his republican views, Dilke became a close friend of the Prince of Wales. How far was this friendship fostered by their common freemasonry? Likewise, Dilke was close to French republican leaders such as Gambetta, who were also masons. The list in The Freemason also included one of Dilke's political opponents, Lord Randolph Churchill, father of Sir Winston Churchill. Lord Randolph was a populist Tory whose personality was one of the most puzzling in 19th-century politics. In the case of Lord Randolph, further investigation of his masonic career would be interesting for the extent to which it would assist in interpreting his difficult character.
Just as the masonic archive provides new information about people, so it also sheds new light on places. The masonic archive is particularly rich in information about local life and networks. The campaign for more democratic town government in the 1820s and 1830s has been overshadowed by the movement for parliamentary reform, but municipal reform was in some ways a more potent focus of local political activism. In the town of Monmouth on the Welsh borders a campaign against the control of the town by the Duke of Beaufort created fierce local controversy in the 1820s.[25] The archives of the English Grand Lodge include correspondence which gives new information about this dispute.[26] The leader of the reform party, Trevor Philpotts, was the master of the local masonic lodge, the Royal Augustus Lodge. One of the members of the lodge was Joseph Price, a cantankerous member of the group opposed to reform. In 1821, Price was accused by Philpotts of abusing his position as a magistrate by granting a friend preferential treatment in prison. The masonic lodge passed a series of resolutions against Price, one of which referred to his alleged abuse of his judicial authority. Price protested to the Grand Master, the Duke of Sussex, that this procedure was unmasonic. The Duke suspended the lodge, much to the annoyance of Philpotts who was anxious that the lodge should participate in the forthcoming consecration of a lodge in nearby Newport. Following protests by Philpotts, the Duke lifted the suspension of the lodge. This news was greeted joyfully in the town and the church bells were rung in celebration. This prompted a further round of correspondence with the Grand Lodge, since Price complained that he only heard of the Grand Master's decision in his case when the bells started ringing.

Public and Private Space

As this case illustrates, lodges were an important feature of local life. Parades and processions were until recently a major focus of public life in towns,[27] and masonic parades were particularly significant, because they were associated with the ceremonies performed by freemasons for the dedication of public buildings and marked important stages in the development of the town.[28] In Sheffield, for example, the opening of a canal providing the town's first link to the sea in 1819 was celebrated by processions of lodges from Sheffield and the surrounding area, and extracts from masonic minute books describing these ceremonies were framed and proudly displayed in the offices of the canal company.[29] Such processions provided both a public face for freemasonry and associated freemasonry with the town's cultural identity. Moreover, they explicitly linked freemasons with the physical reshaping of urban public space. Such landmarks in the remodelling of Edinburgh between 1750 and 1820 as the completion of the new university buildings, the George IV Bridge and the docks at Leith were marked by huge masonic processions.[30] In London, the Prince Regent, who was Grand Master of the Premier Grand Lodge, was the driving force behind the redevelopment of large parts of the west end. When the Prince as Grand Master formally dedicated in enormous public ceremonies such major new buildings as the Covent Garden Theatre, on the site of the present Royal Opera House, this conjunction between freemasonry and public space achieved a very potent expression.[31]
While freemasonry had a close engagement with public space through its processional activity, lodge meetings by contrast took place in a private, closed space, guarded by the Tyler. In a recent article, Hugh Urban has used the insights of theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu to consider ways in which the closed space and secrecy of the lodge meeting facilitated the elaboration of concepts of social power and hierarchy in late 19th-century America.[32] Changes in spatial relationships within the lodge meeting could reflect wider social changes. Mary Ann Clawson, for example, has shown how the use of stage settings with proscenium arches and elaborate drop curtains in Scottish Rite initiations from the late 19th century onwards can be related to the rise of leisure activities which stressed consumption by a passive audience.[33] In England, the most concrete expression of this need for a closed space was the development of the masonic hall. Until the 1850s, most masonic meetings took place in rooms in taverns, a space which was on the borderland between private and public.[34] The campaign for purpose-built masonic halls was an expression of the fetish of respectability which was a characteristic of the Victorian middle classes. In towns such as Sheffield, the masonic halls formed part of the development of a new city centre with public squares and buildings.[35] The creation of such urban centres was a spatial expression of the power of the new middle-class urban élites, intended to provide, in the words of Simon Gunn, «a symbolic centre at the heart of an emptied public space as well as to affirm the collective power and presence of the provincial bourgeoisies».[36] The masonic halls in the midst of these civic centres, devoted to secret ceremonies performed by lodges whose membership was in principle open to all respectable men of the town but in practice carefully controlled, powerfully symbolised the nature of these new élites.

Gender Issues, Masculinity and Emancipation

Space as an expression of power and hierarchy is a prominent theme in modern scholarship to which the study of freemasonry has much to contribute. Masonic halls and civic centres were masculine spaces, distinguished from the other major development of the late Victorian city, the department store, seen as a largely female space.[37] The analysis of Catherine Hall and Leonore Davidoff tracing the emergence in the 18th and 19th centuries of separate spheres for different sexes has influenced much recent work on social history, and provides another powerful interpretative framework for masonic history.[38] This is shown by the works of Robert Beachy, who has recently discussed how masonic apologetic writings of the late 18th century helped popularise stereotypes of differences between men and women,[39] and Mark Carnes, who has analysed how the rituals of fraternal societies shaped middle-class views of masculinity in 19th-century America.[40]
19th-century masonic writings are a rich source of information about the social and moral outlook of the middle-class male.[41] For example, masonic sermons and speeches are a useful but neglected source for the study of the mentality of the new provincial élites of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. An oration given by M. C. Peck, Provincial Grand Secretary of the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, at the dedication of a masonic hall in Hull in 1890 outlines the qualities expected of an upright male inhabitant of Hull at that time.[42] He should believe in God, treat his neighbour fairly, and look after his own body and mind. He should avoid extravagance and intemperance, and bear misfortune with fortitude. «Masons should never be sharp men as the world calls them, ready to cheat and overreach their fellows. How commonly we hear those who should no better affect to praise a man for his acuteness and business abilities, but would they trust him with their own affairs? On the other hand the truly just and honest man is the noblest work of God, and none can merit higher praise than he!» Despite their confident tone, there is not far beneath these words an anxiety which recalls Mark Carnes's comment that late Victorian freemasonry provided respite from the growing economic and social pressures of the outside world: «even as the emerging middle classes were embracing capitalism and bourgeois sensibilities, they were simultaneously creating rituals whose message was largely antithetical to those relationships and values».[43]
In England, the masculine solace provided by freemasonry was closely linked to memories of school and school life. Paul Rich has suggested that public schools and freemasonry were lynchpins of a ritualism which was a major cultural bond of the British Empire.[44] Freemasonry enabled the adult male to relive the bonding rituals of school or university. Lodges were founded specifically for members of particular schools or universities,[45] which sought, in the words of a circular proposing the formation of a lodge for old boys of a small London grammar school, to weld «in the closer ties of fraternal good will those friendships which so many of us formed during our School life».[46] The symbiotic relationship between school life and modern freemasonry is encapsulated by an article on a school lodge in the Aldenham School Magazine cited by Paul Rich, which declares that «I wonder if you really knew what life at school was all about until you joined».[47] A recent history by Christopher Tyerman of Harrow School, where Sir Winston Churchill was educated, emphasises the central role of freemasonry in school life, noting that «Between 1885 and 1971 headmasters tended to be freemasons, as did many governors and often powerful groups of masters and housemasters».[48] The school chapel was festooned with masonic symbols; in 1937, the Headmaster gave the boys a half-day's holiday at the request of the Grand Master.[49] Tyerman also notes that freemasonry was important in affirming the group interest and professional solidarity of schoolmasters.[50] This was not only the case in public schools. Dina Copelman has studied the teachers of the elementary schools run by the London School Board, which was set up in 1870.[51] The majority of these teachers were women, many of them married.[52] Like their public school colleagues, the male school board teachers used freemasonry to affirm their professional and social status.[53] In 1876, the Crichton Lodge was founded by a group of teachers and officials of the London School Board, including its President and Secretary, and established other lodges comprising chiefly teachers in South London.[54] These means of displaying middle-class credentials were not available to women teachers, and their social and professional status was more tenuous.
Copelman's study explores the borderland between the «two spheres» and suggests that the process of social give and take between the sexes was complex. Perhaps the most interesting aspects of freemasonry and gender are those areas which confront the neat divisions of a «two spheres» model. Late Victorian rhetoric of sexual difference portrayed women as shoppers and consumers, but the private spaces of the masonic lodge enabled men to indulge in conspicuous display. Freemasons purchased jewels of enormous value to wear in their lodges, and decorated their halls with furniture and fittings of great opulence.[55] In masonic shops such as Kennings in London they had their own department stores.[56] Similarly, philanthropy was an area in which different genders had distinct roles.[57] but masonic charitable activity could quietly cut across some of these distinctions. Above all, in the other direction, women's freemasonry provided a significant social outlet for women. Janet Burke and Margaret Jacob have argued that the Adoption enabled women, through freemasonry, to engage with the emerging civil society in the 18th century.[58] James Smith Allen and Mark Carnes have recently documented extensive participation by women in fraternal organisations in the 19th century,[59] while Co-Masonry, through figures such Annie Besant and Charlotte Despard, played a significant role in the women's suffrage movement,[60] with women masons joining suffrage marches in their regalia.[61]

Race, Empire and Nationality

In the past, there has been an overemphasis on the importance of economic activity as a component of social identity. The study of gender has been one way in which scholars have demonstrated the complexity of social identity; another has been race, a further area where research into freemasonry offers exciting possibilities. The best-known illustration of this is Prince Hall freemasonry, the form of freemasonry organised by blacks in America,[62] which has been seen by scholars such as William Muraskin and Loretta Williams as significant in defining and nurturing a black middle class in America,[63] although Williams in particular emphasises the contradiction between the universalist ideology of freemasonry and the separate segregated character of Prince Hall masonry.[64] There are many other areas in which freemasonry offers insights into ethnicity which are less well explored. Freemasonry was a major cultural component of the British Empire. The English Pro Grand Master Lord Carnarvon declared in the 1880s that «Where the flag goes, there goes freemasonry to consolidate the Empire».[65] The mixed race lodge offered a social venue in which coloniser and colonised mixed in the British Empire. Rudyard Kipling declared of his lodge in Lahore that «there aint such things as infidels» among the «Brethren black an' brown'».[66] The importance of this area of research has been brilliantly demonstrated by a study by Augustus Casely-Hayford and Richard Rathbone of freemasonry in colonial Ghana.[67] This shows how «freemasonry was amongst the bags and baggage of both formal and informal empire».[68] It facilitated trading contacts and provided a means of signalling «achievement, hard work, worthiness and in some cases high birth».[69] It provided an important thread in the racial and national politics of the colony, with many members of the National Congress of West Africa being freemasons. Closely related to race is the role of freemasonry in the formation of national identity. For example, in Britain freemasonry was a powerful expression of the Hanoverian settlement,[70] while by contrast in France it was in the 1870s one of the forces behind the development of modern French republicanism.[71]

The interaction between freemasonry, race, nationality and class is powerfully illustrated by a classic study by Abner Cohen of freemasonry in Sierra Leone, which is a model of how scholarly research into freemasonry should be performed.[72] Cohen found that in 1971 there were seventeen masonic lodges in Freetown, with about two thousand members, the bulk of whom were African. Most of these black masons were Creoles, descendants of the slaves emancipated between the 1780s and 1850s, a literate, highly-educated and occupationally-differentiated group, who were at first befriended but then disparaged by the British administrators. Cohen found that one in three Creoles were masons. Cohen related the Creole involvement in freemasonry to attacks on Creole power during the period from 1947. He concluded that «Largely without any conscious policy or design, Freemasonic rituals and organisation helped articulate an informal organisation, which helped the Creoles to protect their position in the face of political threat».[73]

Social Networks

Cohen's study raises one final important theme, that of social networks. As scholars have increasingly explored the pluralistic nature of social identity, the importance of the analysis of social networks has become evident. Factors such as the extent to which everybody knows everyone else («reachability»), the different ways in which people are linked («multiplexity») and the obligations placed by networks on their members («intensity») are essential in understanding local societies, and freemasonry and other fraternal groups have a major effect on these dynamics.[74] The masonic archive is rich in material for investigating social networks, not only in such obvious sources as membership lists but also in petitions and correspondence, where in discussing the need for a lodge its social connections may be described. For example, a letter from a lodge formed by working men in Stratford in East London, protesting against a decision of the English Grand Lodge that it was a spurious masonic body, contains the following unusually explicit statement of the advantages of freemasonry for the Victorian artisan: «Stratford and its neighbourhood contains a population of some thousands of skilled mechanics, artisans and engineers, many of whom from their superior attainment or from the exigencies of trade are called upon to pursue their avocation in the various states of continental Europe or in our own colonial possessions and to whom therefore the advantages arising from Masonic Fraternity are of great consequence.»[75] The exciting potential of an approach which examines the interaction between freemasonry and other social networks, such as professional contacts and membership of other fraternal organisations, has been recently demonstrated by two outstanding articles concerned with two very different professions. Simon McVeigh's study of freemasonry and musical life in 18th-century London has shown how freemasonry assisted in securing patronage and work for musicians and also supported professional alliances, sometimes in surprising ways.[76] Roger Burt's study of Cornish freemasonry in the 19th century reaches some intriguing conclusions about the social composition of masonic lodges in south-west England.[77] He found that «the lodges were dominated by the mostly young (most initiates were aged under 30) middle-class and 'petit bourgeois' groups of mercantile and manufacturing interests, professionals and small business operatives.»[78] The Cornish membership records reflect the increasing mobility of this social group, and freemasonry may have helped build international contacts facilitating profitable employment abroad.

Conclusions

Research into freemasonry explores the interconnections between such major themes of modern scholarship as public space, gender, race and social networks. These themes essentially all revolve around one major issue, the construction of social identity, and the study of freemasonry, because it concerns an identity which is both public and concealed at the same time, provides a unique perspective on this issue. Methodologically, the study of freemasonry presents many challenges, but the point that should be noted here is its inherently interdisciplinary character. The nature of the masonic archive means that the researcher into freemasonry must use many different types of media: texts ranging from membership lists to rituals, jewels, banners, engravings, music and artefacts of many different kinds.[79] The interpretation of such materials requires a blend of scholarly skills. Mark Carnes noted how his researches required «excursions into the fields of religious history and theology, child rearing and developmental psychology, women's history and gender studies, and structural and cultural anthropology».[80] While scholars frequently aspire towards interdisciplinarity, they rarely achieve it. The study of freemasonry may perhaps provide a model for interdisciplinary studies.
The themes I have discussed are at the forefront of research in the humanities and social sciences, but their roots lie in old thought, reflecting both the social changes of the 1960s, and particularly the response to the French événements of 1968,[81] and the challenge posed to Marxist models by the collapse of the Soviet Union. While the study of freemasonry can contribute a great deal to these intellectual concerns, even more exciting is the question of how it helped fashion completely new intellectual agendas. Will the events of 11 September 2001 have as big an impact on the intellectual world order as those of May 1968? It is too early to say, but there are hints that, whatever the upshot, reactions to freemasonry will be of new significance. The way in which the destruction of the World Trade Centre gave rise paradoxically to a new form of anti-semitism has been well documented.[82] There has been little discussion of the new anti-masonry. Within days of the attacks in New York, website postings attributed the attacks to the illuminati, drew parallels between the Twin Towers and the masonic columns Jachin and Boaz, and used spurious numerology to suggest masonic involvement in the attacks.[83] This is deplorable, but perhaps not surprising. More significant for the long-term is the way in which attacks on masonry form part of the extreme Muslim denunciation of western values. There has been a long history of Arab groups circulating the discredited libels of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In recent years, however, some Muslims, drawing on western anti-masonic literature, have linked freemasonry with the figure of Dajjal, the anti-christ.[84] These ideas were first developed in 1987 by the Egyptian writer, Sa'id Ayyub.[85] In Britain, a key figure in elaborating and popularising these ideas has been David Musa Pidcock, a Sheffield machinery consultant who became a Muslim in 1975 and is the leader of the Islamic Party of Britain.[86] The idea that freemasons worship dajjal has become widespread in Muslim communities in England and elsewhere. In recent months, Islamic websites have carried enthusiastic reviews of an audio-tape called Shadows, produced by a London company, Hallaqah Media, which argues that freemasons created the new world order and are the servants of dajjal.[87] If we are at the beginning of a struggle to protect and restate the secular values of the Enlightenment,[88] it is inevitable that the study of freemasonry, so much bound up with the creation of those values, will become of new relevance.

[1] First published in Vrijmetserarij in Nederland, ed. A. Kroon (Leiden: OVN, 2003). Riprodotto da: https://www.freemasons-freemasonry.com/prescott03.html

[2] Stephen Yeo, Religion and Voluntary Societies in Crisis, London: Croom Helm 1976.

[3] Ibid., p. 1.

[4] Ibid., pp. 341, n. 46; 351, n. 94.

[5] Lodge of Union No. 414, Grey Friars" Lodge No. 1101, Kendrick Lodge No. 2043: John Lane, Masonic Records 1717-1894, London: Freemasons" Hall 1895 |(2nd ed.), pp. 267, 345, 425, which also lists five earlier lodges in Reading which had been erased: pp. 30, 87, 91, 111.

[6] www.a2a.pro.gov.uk; Rebecca Coombes, "Subject for Enquiry: Sources for Research and Historical Bibliography in the Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London", in: R. William Weisberger, Wallace McLeod and S. Brent Morris (eds.), Freemasonry on Both Sides of the Atlantic: Essays concerning the Craft in the British Isles, Europe, the United States and Mexico, New York: Columbia University Press 2002, pp. 755-80; Rebecca Coombes, "Genealogical Records at the Library and Museum of Freemasonry: a Survey of Resources", Family History Monthly 73 (October 2001), pp. 22-5.

[7] www.berkspgl.org.uk.

[8] www.shef.ac.uk/~crf.

[9] www.vrijmetserarij.nl; Evert Kwaadgrass, "George Kloss and His Masonic Library", Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 111 (1998), pp. 25-43.

[10] London: George Allen and Unwin 1981.

[11] Jacob's work has generally not been well received by English masonic scholars, but for a historian"s view of the fundamental importance of her work, see Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World, London: Penguin Books 2000, pp. 5-6, 30, 32.

[12] Trevor Stewart, "European Periodical Literature on Masonic Research: A Review of Two Decades of Achievement", in: Weisberger, McLeod and Morris, op. cit., pp. 805-936.

[13] John M. Roberts, "Freemasonry: the Possibilities of a Neglected Topic", English Historical Review 84 (1969), pp. 323-335; cf. the review by Roberts of Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons, in the Times Literary Supplement, 14 January 2000, pp. 3-4.

[14] Noble Frankland, Witness of a Century, the Life and Times of Prince Arthur Duke of Connaught, London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1993. For details of the Duke of Connaught's masonic career, see Sir George Aston and Evelyn Graham, His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn: A life and Intimate Study, London: George C. Harrap 1929, pp. 335-9; A. R. Hewitt, "Biographical Lists of Grand Masters", in: A. S. Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge 1717-1967, Oxford: United Grand Lodge of England, p. 277.

[15] Pierre Chevallier, Histoire de la franc-maçonnerie française, Paris: Fayard 1974-5. Compare Chevallier's interpretation of events under the Second Empire and Third Republic with the more challenging analysis offered by Phillip Nord, The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France, Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press 1999, pp. 15-30, which suggests that support by freemasonry for the Third Republic reflected not only the harsh treatment of freemasonry under the Second Empire, but also the influence of significant groups of "seekers of the absolute, legatees of utopian socialism, radical republicans".

[16] R. William Weisberger, "Prague and Viennese Freemasonry, the Enlightenment, and the Operations of the True Harmony Lodge of Vienna", in: Weisberger, McLeod and Morris, op. cit., pp. 375-420.

[17] For example, Weisberger arbitrarily categorises people as "enlighteners" and refers to enlightenment ideas as if they were an accepted and defined doctrinal canon, so that, on p. 375, it is stated that masonry served as a vehicle for the promotion of the enlightenment, and on p. 393, a journal is described as concerned with the propagation of masonic and enlightenment ideas, both assuming that the enlightenment was a very simplistic phenomenon. All recent research on the enlightenment has stressed its multi-faceted and complex character.

[18] cf Roberts, op. cit., p. 324: "There must surely be something of sociological interest in an institution whose English Grand Masters have since 1721 always been noblemen and have included seven princes of the blood...".

[19] New Welcome Lodge No. 5139, 50th Anniversary Meeting: "The Grand Secretary informed Bro. Rockliff that the then Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor) was somewhat concerned at the number of occasions on which ballots taken in lodges appeared to be used to exclude from masonry Labour MPs seeking membership therein. HRH had therefore suggested to the Grand Secretary that a lodge might be formed specially for the purpose of enabling Labour MPs and officials to become masons if they so desired".

[20] The petition and accompanying memoranda for formation of the lodge in the Library and Museum of Freemasonry, Freemasons" Hall, London, do not refer directly to the Labour party connection of the lodge, but stressed these broader connections: see Appendix, Document No. 2, below.

[21] Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London, returns of New Welcome Lodge No. 5139; cf. Ben Pimlott (ed.), The Political Diary of Hugh Dalton, London: Jonathan Cape and London School of Economics 1986, pp. 224, 265, 268-9.

[22] New Welcome Lodge No. 5139, 50th Anniversary Meeting states that in 1934 no Member of Parliament appeared for initiation. An emergency meeting of the Lodge was held and "there was agreement that all future initiates and joining members should have some connection with Parliament".

[23] See Appendix, Document No. 1, below.

[24] The Freemason, 4 July 1885, p. 329.

[25] Keith Kisack, Monmouth: The Making of a County Town, London: Phillimore, pp. 56-109.

[26] Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London, returns of the Royal Augustus Lodge No. 656, Monmouth; United Grand Lodge, Letter Book B, ff. 126, 134, 192; Historical Correspondence, 5/D/5-6. See Appendix, Document No. 3, below.

[27] See for example Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia, Berkeley: University of California Press 1986; Mark Harrison, Crowds and History: Mass Phenomena in English Towns 1790-1835, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988, pp. 140-67, 202-67; Neil Jarman, Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland, Oxford: Berg Publishers 1997; Pamela King, "Squads and Ha"s: Gender Roles and Civic Space in Lerwick"s Up Helly Aa", paper at the University of Sheffield conference "Lodges, Chapters and Orders: Fraternal Organisations and the Shaping of Gender Roles in Europe", 2002 (available on-line at: www.shef.ac.uk/~crf/news/besantconf/king.htm); Susan Smith, "Where to Draw the Line: A Geography of Popular Festivity" in Alisdair Rogers and Steven Verdovec (eds.), The Urban Context: Ethnicity, Social Networks and Situational Analysis, Oxford: Berg Publishers 1995, pp. 141-164; Meg Twycross, "The Triumph of Isabella, or the Archduchess and the Parrot", paper at the University of Sheffield conference "Lodges, Chapters and Orders: Fraternal Organisations and the Shaping of Gender Roles in Europe", 2002 (abstract available on-line at: www.shef.ac.uk/~crf/news/besantconf/twycross.htm); Robert Withington, English Pageantry: an Historical Outline, Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press 1918, 2, pp. 3-193.

[28] Trevor Stewart, ""Through the Streets They Tramp and Go!": an Examination of Scottish Masonic Processions" in M. D. J. Scanlan (ed.), The Social Impact of Freemasonry on the Modern Western World, The Canonbury Papers 1, London: Canonbury Masonic Research Centre 2002; Petri Mirala, ""A Large Mob, Calling Themselves Freemasons": Masonic Parades in Ulster", in: Peter Jupp and Eoin Magennis (eds.), Crowds in Ireland, c. 1720-1920, London: Macmillan 2000, pp. 117-39.

[29] See Appendix, Document No. 4, below. Other masonic parades in Sheffield included: the laying of the foundation stone of Sheffield Infirmary (1793) and the opening of the Infirmary (1797): J. R. Clarke, The History of Britannia Lodge, Sheffield: J. W. Northend 1961, pp. 17-18; the Proclamation of the Peace (1814): Clarke, op. cit., p. 18; the laying of the foundation stone of St George"s, Brookhouse Hill (1821): Clyde Binfield, David Hey et al., eds: The History of the City of Sheffield 1843-1993, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press 1993), 2, p. 372; the laying of the foundation stone of St Mary"s, Bramall Lane (1824): ibid., pp 372-3; the laying of the foundation stone of St Andrew"s Presbyterian church, Hanover Street (July 1855): Binfield, Hey et al., op. cit., 2, p. 413; the laying of the foundation stone of the alms house commemorating the Holmfirth Flood of 1852 (21 April 1856): J. G. Fardell, A Sermon preached at Holmfirth Church on Monday, April 21st, 1856..., Huddersfield: Joseph Brook 1856.

[30] Stewart, op. cit., pp. 101-102; The History of Free Masonry... with an Account of the Grand lodge of Scotland, Edinburgh: Alex. Lawrie 1800, pp. 168-183, 192-5, 200, 212-21, 236-41, 243-55, 256-62, 281-91. An illustration of the laying of the foundation stone of New College, Edinburgh, is in: John Hamill and R. A. Gilbert, World Freemasonry, London: Aquarian Press 1991, p. 135.

[31] William Preston, Illustrations of Masonry, London: G. Wilkie 1812, pp. 392-8: see Appendix, Document No. 5, below.

[32] Hugh B. Urban, "The Adornment of Silence: Secrecy and Symbolic Power in American Freemasonry", Journal of Religion and Society 3 (2001): available online at https://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2001/2001-2.html.

[33] Mary Ann Clawson, "Spectatorship and Masculinity in the Scottish Rite", in: C. Lance Brockman (ed.), Theatre of the Fraternity: Staging the Ritual Space of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Minneapolis: Frederick R. Weismann Art Museum 1996; "Fraternal Association and the Problem of Masculine Consumption", paper at the University of Sheffield conference "Lodges, Chapters and Orders: Fraternal Organisations and the Shaping of Gender Roles in Europe", 2002 (abstract available on-line at: www.shef.ac.uk/~crf/news/besantconf/clawson.htm)

[34] cf. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850, London: Hutchinson 1987, pp. 427-9. The drive for the building of masonic halls can be traced in The Freemasons" Magazine in the 1850s and 1860s. The details for individual lodges are documented in Lane, op. cit.

[35] Simon Gunn, "The Middle Class, Modernity and the Provincial City: Manchester c. 1840-80" in Alan Kidd and David Nicholls (eds.), Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: Middle-Class Identity in Britain 1800-1940, Manchester: Manchester University Press 1999, pp. 112-127; Andy Croll, Civilizing the Urban: Popular Culture and Public Space in Merthyr, c. 1870-1914, Cardiff, University of Wales Press 2000, pp. 36-61. On the Sheffield masonic hall, see Appendix, Document No. 6, below, and also Clarke, op. cit., pp. 36-7, 87-8; Binfield, Hey et al., op. cit., 2, p. 57. In Monmouth, for example, the local masonic lodge took over in 1841 a theatre in the centre of the town, which received a facade similar in style to that recently added to the town"s methodist church: Kissack, op. cit., p. 259.

[36] Ibid., p. 123.

[37] Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough (eds.), The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, Berkeley: University of California Press 1996; Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, "The Architecture of Public and Private Life: English Middle-Class Society in a Provincial Town 1780-1850", in: Derek Fraser and Anthony Sutcliffe (eds.), The Pursuit of Urban History, London: Edward Arnold 1983, pp. 326-45; Christopher P. Hosgood, "Mrs Pooter"s Purchase: Lower-Middle-Class Consumerism and the Sales 1870-1914", in: Alan Kidd and David Nicholls, op. cit., pp. 146-63.

[38] Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes. The perceptive short discussion of freemasonry on pp. 425-8 of this book has been generally overlooked.

[39] Robert Beachy, "Masonic Apologetic Writings and the Construction of Gender in Enlightenment Europe", paper at the 2002 University of Sheffield conference "Lodges, Chapters and Orders: Fraternal Organisations and the Shaping of Gender Roles in Europe 1300-2000. Abstract available on-line at www.shef.ac.uk/~crf/news/besantconf/beachy.htm.

[40] Mark Carnes, "Middle-Class Men and the Solace of Fraternal Ritual" in Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1990, pp. 37-66; Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America, New Haven: Yale University Press 1989.

[41] See Appendix, Document No. 7, below.

[42] M. C. Peck, Three Orations Delivered in Connection with the Wilberforce Lodge No. 2134, Hull, Hull: 1890.

[43] Carnes, "Middle-Class Men and the Solace of Fraternal Ritual", p. 51.

[44] P. J. Rich, "Public-school Freemasonry in the Empire: "Mafia of the Mediocre?"", in: J. A. Mangan (ed.), "Benefits Bestowed"? Education and British Imperialism, Manchester: Manchester University Press 1988, pp. 174-92; Elixir of Empire: The English Public Schools, Ritualism, Freemasonry, and Imperialism, London: Regency Press 1989; Chains of Empire: English Public Schools, Masonic Cabalism, Historical Causality, and Imperial Clubdom, London: Regency Press 1991; The Invasions of the Gulf: Radicalism, Ritualism and the Shaikhs, Cambridge: Allborough Press 1991. Unfortunately, while these books hint at the richness and wide-ranging connections of this theme, they do not fully document it.

[45] J. G. Taylor, A Short History of the Old Sinjins Lodge (No. 3232), Chelsea: George White 1935, pp. 5-6; Quentin Gelder, "School Freemasonry: "A Very English Affair"", Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 110 (1997), pp. 116-44; Douglas Knoop, University Masonic Lodges, Sheffield: J. W. Northend 1945; M. J. Crossley Evans, "The University of Bristol and Freemasonry 1876-1976 with particular reference to Lodge No. 1404", Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 110 (1997), pp. 163-76.

[46] John F. Nichols, Notes on the History of the Old Sinjins Lodge No. 3232, Battersea: E. C. Freeman 1957, p. 5.

[47] P. J. Rich, "Public-school Freemasonry in the Empire" p. 177.

[48] Christopher Tyerman, A History of Harrow School 1324-1991, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000, pp. 362-4. In Tyerman"s view, the importance of freemasonry at Harrow reflected the school"s strongly Anglican and anti-catholic ethos: "Anglicanism was important to Harrow because it formed part of its settled world view. The anti-Catholicism was partly explained by this, as was the acceptance of freemasonry which was embedded in Harrow"s clerical as well as lay fabric. It would not have seemed odd for the freemason classicist J. W. Moir (master 1922-48) to urge Moore [the Headmaster] in 1947 to appoint an openly freemason clergyman to the staff. The decline in anti-Catholicism, although not paralleled by an equal decline in freemasonry, forms one of the sharpest transformations in Harrow"s religious identity [since 1970].": p. 462.

[49] Ibid., p. 363.

[50] Ibid., p. 386.

[51] Dina M. Copelman, London"s Women Teachers: Gender, Class and Feminism 1870-1930, London: Routledge 1996.

[52] In 1886, the teaching force of the London School Board comprised 2,076 men and 4,065 women: ibid., p. 50.

[53] Unfortunately this is not discussed by Copelman, and would be a good area for further investigation.

[54] Appendix, Document No. 8, below

[55] See e.g. Neville Barker Cryer"s various publications on the masonic halls of England and Wales and John M. Hamill, "The Masonic Collections at the Lady Lever Art Gallery", Journal of the History of Collections 4 (1992), pp. 285-295.

[56] American equivalents are discussed by Mary Ann Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender and Fraternalism, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989, pp. 213-4, who illustrates how lucrative these businesses could be. Firms manufacturing and selling regalia and other products did not restrict themselves to the masonic market but aimed at the whole range of fraternal organisations. For example, the firm of Toye, which eventually took over Kenning, also produced banners and badges for friendly societies and trade unions: Paul Martin, The Trade Union Badge: Material Culture in Action, Aldershot: Ashgate 2002, p. 131.

[57] Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes, pp. 429-36.

[58] Janet M. Burke, "Freemasonry, Friendship and Noblewomen: The Role of the Secret Society in Bringing Enlightenment Thought to Pre-Revolutionary Women Elites", History of European Ideas 10 (1989) 3, pp. 283-94; several publications by Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991, pp. 120-142; "Freemasonry, Women and the Paradox of the Enlightenment", in: Eleanor C. Riemer (ed.), Women and the Enlightenment, Women and History 9, New York: Haworth Press 1984, pp. 69-93; "Money, Equality, Fraternity: Freemasonry and the Social Order in Eighteenth Century Europe", in: Thomas L. Haskell and Richard F. Teichgraeber III (eds.), The Culture of the Market: Historical Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993, pp. 102-35; with Janet M. Burke, "French Freemasonry, Women and Feminist Scholarship", Journal of Modern History 68 (September 1996), pp. 513-49.

[59] Carnes, "Secret Ritual and Manhood", pp. 81-9; James Smith Allen, "Constructing Sisterhood: Gender in the French Masonic Movement, 1740-1940", paper at the University of Sheffield conference "Lodges, Chapters and Orders: Fraternal Organisations and the Shaping of Gender Roles in Europe", 2002. Abstract available on-line at: www.shef.ac.uk/~crf/news/besantconf/jimabstr.htm; cf. Nord, op. cit., pp. 27-8. cf. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon and Shuster 2000, pp. 389-90.

[60] John Hamill and R. A. Gilbert, op. cit., pp. 185-6; Daniel Ligou (ed.), Histoire des franc-maçons en France de 1815 à nos jours, Toulouse: Editions Privat 2000, pp. 154-8; Nord, op. cit., pp. 27-28. Information about Charlotte Despard and masonic suffragette marches provided by Ann Pilcher-Dayton. See Appendix, Document No. 9, below.

[61] Ex info Ann Pilcher Dayton.

[62] Hamill and Gilbert, op. cit., pp. 208-9. See Appendix, Document No. 10, below.

[63] William A. Muraskin, Middle-Class Blacks in a White Society: Prince Hall Freemasonry in America, Berkeley: University of California Press 1975; Loretta J. Williams, Black Freemasonry and Middle-Class Realities, Columbia, University of Missouri Press 1980; cf. Putnam, op. cit., pp. 339, 389-91.

[64] Williams, op. cit., pp. 128-134.

[65] A. A. Cooper, "Freemasonry in Malawi", Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 103 (1990), p. 230

[66] David Gilmour, The Long Recessional: The Imperial life of Rudyard Kipling, London: John Murray, 2002), p. 69; cf. p. 17. See Appendix Documents Nos. 11-12, below.

[67] Augustus Casely-Hayford and Richard Rathbone, "Politics, Families and Freemasonry in the Colonial Gold Coast", in: J. F. Ade Ajayi and J. D. Y. Peel, People and Empires in African History: Essays in Memory of Michael Crowder, London: Longman 1992, pp. 143-60.

[68] Ibid., p. 146.

[69] Ibid., p. 156.

[70] David Stevenson, "James Anderson (1679-1739), Man and Mason", in: Weisberger, McLeod and Morris, op. cit., pp. 199-242; John Money, "Freemasonry and the Fabric of Loyalism in Hanoverian England", in: Eckhart Helmuth (ed.), The Transformation of Political Culture: England and Germany in the late Eighteenth Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1990, pp. 235-74.

[71] Avner Halpern, The Democratisation of France 1840-1901: Sociabilité, Freemasonry and Radicalism, London: Minerva Press 1999; Nord, op. cit., pp. 15-30.

[72] Abner Cohen, "The Politics of Ritual Secrecy", Man 6 (September 1971), pp. 427-48, reprinted in Edward A. Tiryakian, On the Margin of the Visible: Sociology, the Esoteric and the Occult, New York: John Wiley 1974, pp. 111-139.

[73] Ibid., p. 129.

[74] Alisdair Rogers and Steven Verkovec, Introduction to op. cit., pp. 15-21.

[75] See Appendix, Document No. 13, below.

[76] Simon McVeigh, "Freemasonry and Musical Life in London in the late Eighteenth Century", in: David Wyn Jones (ed.), Music in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Aldershot: Ashgate 2000, pp. 72-100.

[77] Roger Burt, "Freemasonry and Socio-Economic Networking during the Victorian Period", Archives 27 (2002), pp. 31-8.

[78] Ibid., p. 33.

[79] For an impression of a characteristic range of material see for example John M. Hamill, " The Masonic Collections at the Lady Lever Art Gallery", Journal of the History of Collections 4 (1992), pp. 285-295.

[80] Secret Ritual and Manhood, p. ix.

[81] cf. Peter Starr, Logics of Failed Revolt: French Theory After May "68, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1995.

[82] See for example: www.adl.org/Anti_semitism/speech.asp; www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/2002/0617/antisemitism/arab.html.

[83] See for example www.texemarrs.com/122001/unleashing_king_of_terrors.htm; www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/wtc/index02.htm; www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/mysterybabylon.htm; www.cuttingedge.org/news/n1538.cfm;www.passitkit.com/coincidence_or_conspiracy.htm; www.rense.com/general15/ whoweneedfear.htm; www.dccsa.com/greatjoy/Barry.htm. This material changes frequently and can easily disappear. It urgently requires scholarly listing and analysis. See further Appendix, Documents No. 14 A-B, below. On the whole, this new twist to anti-masonry is not yet discussed by web sites devoted to documenting and analysing attacks on masonry, such as the excellent site maintained by the Grand Lodge of British Columbia: https://freemasonry.bcy.ca/anti-masonry/

[84] See for example https://antimasons.8m.com;www.allaahuakbar.net/free-masons/dajjal.htm; https://johnw.host.sk/articles/islam_pillars/dajjal.htm;www.trosch.org/bks/muslim_on_freemasonry.html; https://news.stcom.net/article.php?sid=1295; https://openyourmind.jeeran.com/dajjal.htm.

[85] David Cook, "Muslim Fears of the Year 2000", Middle East Quarterly 5 (June 1998): available online at: www.meforum.org/article/397.

[86] David Misa Pidcock, Satanic Voices Ancient and Modern, Mustaqim: Islamic Art and Literature 1992; www.islamicparty.com/people/david.htm. Pidcock"s book draws on the familiar anti-semitic and anti-masonic sources on western anti-masonry - his acknowledgements include a special note of gratitude to Nesta Webster and the bibliography includes Holocaust denial literature such as the 1979 pamphlet Six Million Reconsidered. What is distinctive about Pidcock"s book is the way in which these commonplace sources are grafted onto current issues of Islamic concern, such as the Salman Rushdie affair. Pidcock declares (p. 15) that "Many well researched books have been written by Western writers and journalists exposing the secrets of freemasonry, but to my knowledge none have attempted to seriously use material from Islamic sources in order to reach a better understanding of the subject". On this basis, Pidcock can legitimately claim to have added a new (and disturbing) thread to the literature of anti-masonry.

[87]www.islam-online.net/English/ArtCulture/2001/04/article1.shtml; https://isnet.itb.ac.id/KAMMI/Sept98/msg00030.html; www.halaqahmedia.com/pages/products/index.php. See further Appendix Documents No. 15 A-B, below.

[88] cf. Pidcock, op. cit., p. 106, which notes the use of the term "Enlightenment" by Tom Stoppard and Salman Rushdie, and (following Nesta Webster) links it back, by means of the Illuminati, to revolts against Islam by the Karmathites, Druse, Assassins, etc.