Ashmole's employee, Dr Robert Plot, wrote of ‘Free-masons’ in Staffordshire in his Natural History of that County13 :
To these add the Customs relating to the County, whereof they have one of admitting Men into the Society of Free-masons, that in the moorelands of this County seems to be of greater request, than anywhere else, though I find the Custom spread more or less over the Nation;
Why more numerous in the moorlands of Staffordshire than elsewhere? There are a number of significant factors which emerge from close acquaintance and study of the area - factors which were, in the main, well known to Ashmole the antiquarian.
In the Middle Ages the Staffordshire moorlands drew those monks who followed the teachings of the mystic and practical man of genius Bernard of Clairvaux : the Cistercians, the which order began in 1098 when St Robert, the Abbot of Molesmes founded a monastery for the reform of the Cluniacs' Rule of Benedict in the middle of the forest at Cîteaux in the diocese of Langres. In 1112, a young nobleman arrived at Cîteaux with some friends, all of them in search of God. This nobleman was the Bernard who was to become the soul and inspiration of the order of ‘white monks’, and the unofficial head of Christendom. In 1129 he provided the Knights Templar with their original Rule (based on Cistercian principles) - he was the nephew of one of the founders of the Templars, André de Montbard - and from 1147 organised the Second Crusade, in which the Templars distinguished themselves with legendary valour. By the time Bernard died in 1152, the Cistercian order held 343 monasteries, and before the end of the twelth century there were 530. One of these monasteries was founded by the crusader-knight, Bertram de Verdon in Staffordshire in 1176, at a place called Croxden near to his castle at Alton, ten miles south-east of Leek.
In about 1214, on returning from the Holy Land, the sixth earl of Chester, Ranulphus de Blondeville, founded the Cistercian Abbey of Dieulacres, just north of Leek with pasturing-rights across Biddulph Moor and elsewhere. In 1223, Henry de Audley founded the Cistercian Abbey of Hulton, five miles south-west of Leek. Adjacent to his lands, a few miles south-west of Hulton, stood (after 1168) a Templar preceptory, at Keele. The relationship between the Cistercians and the Templars was very close-knit. Between them, these three Cistercian monasteries dominated the life of the moorlands of Staffordshire throughout the Middle Ages until the Dissolution of the Monasteries, a century before Ashmole's marriage to Eleanor Mainwaring (1638). Needless to say, they were built and structurally sustained by lodges of masons, stone-cutters and freemasons : sculptors of that chalky stone, so good for fine carving, known as freestone14.
The rule of the white monks themselves was to keep to the cloister, to be silent, to own no property, to be obedient, to suffer no distraction or murmuring, to confess frequently, to perform the appointed duties and to be bound to one another in mutual love. The appointed duties involved caring for their clothes, their shoes, their kitchen; to rise at midnight and spend the early hours in chant and then to work until sundown when they were to retire to sleep. They did not eat flesh (except when ill), fish, eggs, butter, milk or cheese - except when given in charity. Alongside the monks lived the conversi : the masons, smiths, weavers, shoemakers, fullers, tanners and bakers : often the drudges of the establishments. Their domicile was scant (they usually lived at the western end of the building), and their food poor. According to Jean Gimpel15 the spirit of the Rule of Saint Benedict did not permit the monks to do heavy manual labour such as quarrying, stone-cutting or sculpting.
In 1119 the Cistercians produced a rule of ‘usages and customs’ with regard to the work of lay brothers, who had to take vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, but who never became priests. While the services of lay-masons were necessary to some of the initial construction and later repair of monasteries, builders, especially specialist sculptors, were often brought in from outside, as the numerous masons marks around many Cistercian monasteries demonstrate. Sculpting was the work of the freemason, a highly skilled man who had graduated from stone-cutting (itself an exact art) and who met his fellows in ‘lodges’, often constructed in wood on site, where simple economics and pride in their craft dictated that their ‘secrets’ be transferred only among themselves. It is very important to understand the scope of their craft. To imagine that these freemasons were simply highly skilled workmen (or ‘operatives’) with little or no intellectual and spiritual grasp of their work would be a great mistake. Among the company of freemasons we do in fact see the origin of the western ‘artist’ who attempts to emulate the divine Art which his own art has opened his eyes to, and who was naturally disposed to think of the maker of the universe as a ‘Great Architect’. As Jean Gimpel expressed the matter :
By becoming a sculptor, the stonecutter graduated to the intellectual world. He came into contact with theologians and learnt from them; he had the wonderful opportunity of looking through the abbey's precious manuscripts. He learnt to look, to observe and to think. His intellectual horizon broadened, which meant that his carvings benefitted both materially and spiritually. Thanks to the miniatures and manuscripts which he had seen and admired in other abbeys, the sculptor could humbly suggest slight variations to themes put forward by the Fathers. As the sculptor and the theologian were working towards the same end, the former could feel free, for within this association there was no compulsion.16
An era (such as the early 17th century), whose intellectuals and others were fascinated by symbols and esoterica, could hardly fail to wonder at what the country's freemasons had been doing for centuries, and who perhaps had begun to miss something of the ‘medieval’ world, a longing which we, juggled, as it were, differently in time, cannot properly see, or better, feel. By Ashmole's time, there was a widespread feeling among the educated that something vital in the ancient world had undoubtedly been lost (and needed to be recovered, viz : Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, 1627), as the monastic world, with all it involved, and the age of chivalry, had likewise been lost (Ashmole's most famous work in his day was a history of the Order of the Garter - a book which fascinated his contemporaries). The early seventeenth century saw new interest in the mythology of Atlantis, in alchemy, and in the Hermetic ‘pristine theology’ idea : that kernels of primary wisdom had been handed down from the earliest antiquity in Hermetic, initiated circles. Perhaps to become an ‘accepted’ mason in Ashmole's day was a way of keeping hold of some sense of rootedness, while the state was busy decapitating itself after a century of religious turmoil.
Freemasons had not vanished from the moorlands of Staffordshire at the time of Elias Ashmole. In spite of the devastating effects of the Dissolution of the Monasteries begun by Henry VIII in 1536, it may be that at the beginning of the following century, some freemason lodges were undergoing a mild revival.17 Many of the great houses of Staffordshire illustrated in Dr. Plot's Natural History of Staffordshire were constructed in that period - and Jacobean architecture delighted in intricate decoration and visual allegory (Inigo Jones is an obvious example of the standard attained and practised in the early seventeenth century). It should not be forgotten that the freemasons were extraordinarily secretive. Had not Ashmole recorded his 1646 initiation in his diary, and had not his employee Plot made reference to Free-masons in the Staffordshire moorlands, this research could never have begun.
Ashmole recorded in his diary18 that on 27 March 1638 :
I was married to Eleanor Manwaring eldest daughter to Mr Peter Mainwaring (and Jane his wife) of Smalewood in Com'Cest : gent: She proved a virtuous and good wife. The marriage was in St. Benets Church neere Paules wharfe by Mr : Adams Parson there.
While it seems that the couple had met in London (where Ashmole was soliciting in Chancery), Eleanor seems to have spent most of her short married life at her father's house at Smallwood. Ashmole visited regularly and got to know the area and her (extensive) family, in which he took a keen interest.19 From the point of view of social status, Ashmole's marriage was a ‘step-up’ in the world. While his grandfather Thomas Ashmole (d.11 Jan. 1620) had been senior bailiff of the City & County of Lichfield, Elias's father had had to make ends meet by working as a saddler. Ashmole's new father-in-law, though relatively poor compared to other gentry families in Cheshire, did struggle to live off his small estate and was part of what had been, since the Norman Conquest, and still was, one of the most significant and wealthy families of Cheshire (with a significant branch at Whitmore, three miles south of Keele in Staffordshire). His wealthiest relatives owned the estate of Peover Superior, amongst other lands in Cheshire, and lived only eight miles to the north of Smallwood.
In 1641 plague broke out in the town of Congleton near Astbury, two miles from Smallwood. From the home of William Laplove, the plague, which had engulfed most of his family, spread about Astbury, the parish records showing that almost 300 people of that village died in this terrible year. Ashmole recorded in his diary that between the fifth and sixth of December 164120 :
My deare wife fell sodainely sick about evening and died (to my owne great Griefe and the griefe of all her freinds) the next night about 9 o'clock.
On the 8 December 1641 :
She was buried in Astbury church in Cheshire neere the entrance of the south Isle of that Church. viz. the West end of that isle : Manwarings of Smalewood buried in west end of north isle.21
In fact, Ashmole, who was in London while all this was going on, did not hear of his wife's death until he got to Lichfield on 16 December. By the time he reached Smallwood, she had already been interred. On a freezing cold January morning (16 Jan. 1642 - twelve days after Charles I went to the Commons to arrest Pym, Hampden, Hazelrigg, Strode and Holles), Ashmole finally felt able to visit his wife's grave. Although he would marry twice more, Ashmole's memory of Eleanor never dimmed, but was kept alive in his heart through regular visits to his in-laws of whom he was fond22. When he made the decision to be initiated a Free Mason in 1646, he travelled to the lodge up the Warrington road (which the Smallwood lane meets at the western end of the hamlet) with Colonel Henry Mainwaring, Eleanor's cousin, who lived four miles away at Karincham23 where his father had been born, the fifth son of Henry Mainwaring. Not much more than a year after Ashmole stepped out of the porch of S. Mary's Astbury on that cold and bitter morning, Sir William Brereton's Roundheads - who were beseiging Biddulph Hall (which was holding out for the King24)-would stable their horses in Astbury church, smash all of the medieval stained-glass, and carry the organ and pre-Reformation furniture to a field and burn the lot. Tumultuous events were on the horizon of Ashmole's life, as they were for the country at large. When things went badly for the Royalist cause (after Naesby in 1645), Ashmole would return again to the Staffordshire-Cheshire border to regain his footing; he had roots there.
As Ashmole stepped down from Astbury cemetery to the village square, he would have passed two unusual medieval tombs - canopied tombs outside a church are not a common sight. There lay the bodies of the knight Richard de Venables de Newbold (circa 1342) and of William de Venables, rector of Astbury in the late thirteenth century. An earlier William de Venables, along with Roger de Mein-warin25 (Mainwaring) witnessed Ranulphus earl of Chester's instruction to his barons regarding the founding of Dieulacres abbey (1214). In fact, Ashmole was a distant relative of the Venables family, as was his first wife, Eleanor Mainwaring. Eleanor's forebear, Margery Mainwaring, was the daughter of Hugh Venables, baron of Kinderton and, according to Thomas Mainwaring (1656)26, it was Margery who erected the unusual chapel at the church of S. Lawrence, Upper Peover, over her husband Randle Mainwaring's tomb; Sir Randle (known as Handekyn the Good) died in 1456. Around his helmet is inscribed the motto of the order “Jesu the Nazarene”, an order which I have been unable to trace.
The church of Upper Peover is a treasure-house of Mainwaring remains27, such as the magnificently carved effigies of Randle and Margery's eldest son, Sir John Mainwaring, and his wife Joan. These, like the effigy of Sir William Mainwaring (dated 1399) at Acton church were carved by freemasons out of alabaster. There were alabaster quarries in Derbyshire (Chelleston), in east Staffordshire and near Tutbury, thirteen miles south-east of Ashbourne. Also within S. Lawrence's there are fine alabaster monumental slabs to John Mainwaring, knight (d.1515) and his wife Katherine, who died in 1529. The Mainwarings seem to have enjoyed a longstanding relationship with fine sculptors - freemasons - from the Middle Ages right into the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This relationship extended to building.
In 1225, Earl Ranulphus of Chester (founder of Dieulacres), fellow knight of crusading Mainwarings, began building Beeston Castle, possibly designed by Ranulphus himself. The Earl had been in Egypt for two years, hearing at first hand of the crusader castles of Palestine and Syria with their sophisticated defences. Beeston has been compared to Sahyoun in Syria. It was innovative. Unfinished at his death in 1232, the castle was taken over by Henry III whose son Edward I strengthened the castle in major works in 1303/4, known from accounts kept by the king's officials (vol. 59 Lancs. & Cheshire Records Society. 1910). The cost of the masons' work, including metalwork, amounted to £38. In charge of the masons working at the castle was Master Warin. The name is suggestive. The Mainwarings were descended from a Norman family who derived their name from the River Guarenne or Varenne and the small town of that name near Arques in Normandy. The name was anglicised to Warenne or Warren and often Warin. The name Mein-warin appears frequently in the records of medieval Cheshire. Mein refers to the house of the Warin family, that is to say Upper Peover.
Six miles north of Upper Peover (on land given by the Conqueror to the Venables family) is that church's mother church of Rostherne, some six miles south-east of Warrington (where Ashmole was initiated in October 1646). In 1578 an arbitration award was made to Thomas Legh against Sir Randle Mainwaring who had claimed possession of the Legh chapel in Rostherne church. According to Raymond Richards28 : “The Legh Chapel at Rostherne stood ruinous in the sixteenth century for want of glass, [and] Sir Randle Mainwaring repaired it at his own expense,” assuming possession for himself and his family “only to be turned out by Thomas Legh”. The passion for building continued. In 1585 the stately home of Peover was completed and still stands, unspoilt, in the midst of Peover Park, overlooking the church of S. Lawrence.29
In 1647, Philip Mainwaring, knight for the Parliamentarian cause, died, and his wife Ellen built the north chapel of Upper Peover to house a magnificently preserved effigy of her husband in armour, and later herself (she died in 1656). Ellen greatly assisted Cromwell with money and influence (local legend has it that Cromwell's troops were frequently billeted in Upper Peover church) but this did not stop the Protestant vandals of the Protectorate period from cutting off her praying hands which, raised upwards on her effigy, were taken as signs of Romish religion by the ignorant. In 1644, while Ashmole was in Oxford trying to get Parliament to pressure the governor of Lichfield into surrendering excise monies, Philip Mainwaring received a letter from Charles I (based that September at Chester), addressed to “Our trusty and well beloved Philip Maynwaringe”, expressing concern that Mainwaring was “ill affected to us and our sayd service” and that if he should “answer the contrary”, travel across the country would be “at your utmost peril”. Philip stayed with Parliament, as did all the fighting-age Mainwarings of whom we have knowledge. There is no record of Ashmole's regarding the Mainwaring's disloyalty to the person of Charles I with censure. Perhaps there was something in him which he felt to be above such partisan concerns. In the lodge to which he would be fraternally bound he encountered a Roman Catholic, an Anglican, a Parliamentarian and himself : a Royalist. A man who could stomach the desecration of a church where his wife lay buried, by associates of his friends was clearly very broad-minded or unusually capable of being in two minds - but then, for Elias (whose motto was Ex Uno Omnia ) - the Hermetic philosophy united all phenomena, no matter how heart-breaking. Certainly his political position in this instance was enigmatic; Ashmole was an enigma - most of all, probably, to himself.
It is now clear that while freemasons were undoubtedly to be found in the moorlands of Staffordshire, as Dr Plot correctly asserted, and while Ashmole might have been accepted among their number, it was the connection with the mainly Cheshire-based30 Mainwaring family which provided set and setting for Ashmole's initiation.
On 16 October 1646, Elias Ashmole accompanied his cousin by marriage, Col. Henry Mainwaring on the road north to Warrington, and to Free Masonry.
The short answer to this question is that we don't know. However, we can partially fill the void thanks to Norman Rogers' investigations, published in 1952 in the Transactions of Quatuor Coronati Lodge (vol. 65). Rogers investigated the names of those who appeared in Ashmole's short reference to his initiation in 1646, and it is clear from Rogers' work that the Warrington lodge, whether occasional or not, was largely made up of landed gentlemen from the borders of north Cheshire and south Lancashire : mostly Royalists and a significant number from families with traditions of faithfulness to the ‘old religion’, ie : Catholicism. It is clear that the contact for Ashmole came through the Mainwaring family and that family's connections with gentry (and probably craftsmen) to the north of the old County Palatine of Chester. Why Warrington?
If, as seems most likely, Ashmole's reference to “Mr. Rich Penket Worden” means that Richard Penket was Warden of the lodge (he is mentioned first), then the Penket family-name may give us a clue. In 1407, a Friar Thomas Penketh (d.1487 : one of the Penkeths who held lands from the lords of Warrington, the Boteler (Butler) family) lived at the Priory of S. Augustine, Warrington (suppressed under Henry VIII). We see here a suggestive connection between gentleman-landowners and the monastic system which we have seen among the Mainwarings and in Staffordshire. (Many relics of the Warrington monastery can be seen in the Warrington Museum). Shakespeare mentions a Friar Penketh, Provincial of his Order, who supported Richard of York against Edward V (Richard III, Act III, Sc.5). The Penkeths also patronised the church of Farnworth, to the west of Warrington, and it is now clear that it was the ecclesiastical world which provided the chief medium of contact between gentlemen and operative freemasons. For example, MS Ashmole, 1, 125, f.11v-12v contains the copy of an indenture made between the Lord Steward, Lord Chamberlayn, and Sir Thomas Lovell (on behalf of King Charles II) and the Knights of the Garter, and the “fre-masons” John Hylmer and William Vertue, specifying work for the Choir of Windsor Chapel : roof-vaulting and ornamenting with “archebocens, crestys, corses and the Kinges bestes.” This kind of work did not come cheaply, and Rogers seems to this author to be quite wrong in thinking that the Richard Ellom of Lymm, co. Chester (close to Warrington, and quite possibly the Richard Ellam present at the Warrington Lodge of 1646) whose will (7 September 1667) describes him plainly as a “freemason”, is unlikely to have been an ‘operative’ due to the fact that his will reveals he had lands to dispose of in a gentlemanly fashion. Rogers seems to be locked into rather Victorian attitudes to ‘trade’, as well as being surprised that Catholicism played such a part in most of the families mentioned at Ashmole's initiation. Who but the adherents of the old religion would have the greatest concern with old family chapels &c. and their ornamentation? Puritans, and Protestants generally, devalued (at best) the physical representations of God's houses. Rogers makes the point that Ashmole was one exception to the generally Catholic background of the lodge, being “attached” to the Church of England, without realising fully that it was the (for many, welcome) re-catholicisation of the Anglican church ritual under Archbishop Laud which did so much to spark the Civil War in the first place. For men such as Ashmole, the Church of England was not a Protestant Church, but the old (if reformed) church under the King.
Rogers, in a now established tradition of masonic scholarship, confuses the issue by being at pains to demonstrate that the Warrington lodge was “speculative”. The use of this word is demonstrably out of context in the seventeenth century. Warrington was a lodge of principally Accepted Free Masons, almost certainly working an operative (ie : traditional) ritual : an old interest of old landed families with private interests in the ‘old religion’. It may have been only a part of a larger body, separated for the purpose of initiating gentlemen, or, as stated before, a micro-association formed by accepted Free Masons for their own purposes.
As regards the particular Richard Penket whom Ashmole encountered, Warrington and Farnworth parish records mention a large number of persons of that name for the period, and we cannot be sure which of them was involved in the initiation of Ashmole and Colonel Henry Mainwaring. While Rogers gives copious information about the other brethren present at the 1646 lodge, it is sufficient for our purposes to note that the Littlers were of a gentle Cheshire family, that the Sankeys of Great and Little Sankey held lands - like the Penkeths - from the Boteler (Butler) family, that one of the Ellams, Richard, may have been an operative freemason, that Hugh Brewer may have been the man of Lancashire yeoman stock who distinguished himself as a Sergeant-Major in Lord Derby's Royalist regiment of horse (the burial of a Hugh Brewer is recorded in Warrington parish church records on 29 May 1658) and that Mr. James Collier may have been the James Collier of Newton, gentleman, reported in a certificate taken by Randle Holme (Deputye to the Office of Armes) who, on 3 June 1640 - at the age of 32 - married the Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Edward Stanley of Bickerstaffe, Lancashire, whose grandfather was Sir Randle Mainwaring of Peover - a relative of Colonel Henry Mainwaring, and distantly thereby, of Elias Ashmole himself. (Record Society of Lancs. & Ches., Lancashire Funeral Certificates, Vol vi, p.207). Whether or not this was the man, it seems likely that the James Collier of the Warrington Lodge did come from Newton and was a Royalist.
So, having encountered Messrs. Brewer, Littler, Ellam, Collier, Penket and Sankey, what did Ashmole and Mainwaring undergo in pursuit of initiation? The balance of current scholarly opinion is of the view that only two degrees were worked in the seventeenth century : entered apprentice (‘interprintice’) and ‘fellow crafte’. There was, as far as we know, no third degree (nor any reference to the Hiramic legend), and one appears to have been called a ‘master’ on fulfilling that particular role in the lodge. In short, an accepted fellow craft was effectively a master (there being no further degree). When recording a lodge-summons to Mason's Hall in London, (an operative establishment, note), Ashmole described himself as the ‘Senior Fellow’ in attendance on Sir William Wilson's (and others') initiation. It may be that ‘master mason’ was a term more used of a fine sculptor or architect after he had undergone a seven-year apprenticeship and become a fellow craft. In Ashmole's 1682 diary entry, Mr. Thomas Wise is described as Master of the Masons Company “this present year”, again suggesting that the term ‘Master’ may generally have been used of those who had undergone operative apprenticeships, and that it was used to describe an office of the operative craft. Gentlemen would naturally wish to attain the lodge's highest position of honour, without the practical apprenticeship - and this honour would be encapsulated in the term ‘fellow craft’ or, simply, ‘Fellow’, suitable for a fellowship. Gentlemen would, presumably, already have undergone a gentleman's education - unlikely in the case of practical apprentices. Their education was in the hands of fellow crafts or masters. However, it is still worth considering that Wilson was initiated when already a practising sculptor and architect. Why had he not been initiated before? Had accepted masons created some kind of development of the operative system, or was it that Wilson had been trained as a mason outside of restricted ‘freemason’ circles with their particular rites of passage? The surprising answer to this question will emerge in the section on the London Masons Company later in this chapter.
Symbolic association with the idea of Free Masonry seems to have been what counted to gentlemen who entered the ‘mystery’ (skill) of the ancient craft - an association doubtless welcome to practical masons, since these gentlemen were generally in a position to commission work. The monasteries had gone, and most churches and chapels existed under private gentry patronage. House-building and ornamentation constituted another source of freemasons' income. Gentlemen could enjoy the grafting of traditional symbolism and geometrical craft into the very bosom of their habitations : another way, perhaps, of continuing the traditional religious attitudes (which frequently included classical, traditional or ‘pagan’ themes of one kind or another) of perhaps happier pre-Reformation days. It should be borne in mind that Protestant religious practices and attitudes were imposed on the English people by act of Parliament and the aggression of iconoclasts, where that is, there was no local enthusiasm for Protestantism. (Now that the state no longer enforces religious uniformity, many people in England have returned to ways and thoughts to which the zealous Puritan would have responded with faggots and fire). Gentlemen, then as now, valued privacy and necessary secrecy. The operative freemasons had, unwittingly perhaps, created the ideal gentlemens' club-format : a place (and the ‘lodge’ was almost an imaginary place) to get away from current religious and political strife and where one could be immersed in more ancient ideals and tried certainties : on the square.
Taking all this into account, it is likely that Ashmole and Mainwaring's initiation contained some kind of both entered-apprentice and - swiftly - fellow craft ritual. This is evinced in surviving records of seventeenth century Scottish Acceptations, and it may well have been the case for Ashmole and Mainwaring.
We do not know for certain precisely what words passed by at Warrington in October 1646, but we may get an idea - perhaps an exact idea - from the earliest known English freemasonic catechism : Sloane Ms. 3329 (British Library), which has been dated to c.1700 or a little earlier, only fifty years or so after Ashmole's initiation. This manuscript (almost certainly referring to operative practices) was bound up by Sir Hans Sloane (1660-1753) in a large volume described as “Loose papers of mine concerning curiosities”. Like Ashmole, Sloane was a Fellow of the Royal Society and, being thirty-two when Ashmole died, he had ample opportunity to encounter the grand old man of British antiquarianism.
In his “Narrative of the Freemasons Word and signes” Sloane gives details of various means by which freemasons recognised one another. The grips for fellow crafts and masters are not those employed today (it is significant that the grips for fellows and masters are different). Sloane says that the former grip was made by thrusting the thumbnail “close upon the third joint of each others' first finger.” Could it be that the third degree came about in the early eighteenth century partly because accepted “fellows” required a distinct ritual way of being called a “master mason” - lodges now made solely, even exclusively, of Accepted Free-masons, bent on a wholly symbolic and allegorical interpretation of the craft? Practices seem to have varied; Sloane gives two forms of the master's grip, his information being, apparently, second-hand, so to speak. Sloane does mention the placing of the feet in a manner identical and familiar to Freemasons today. He then gives an example of “their private discourse” which is worth including in full, as it seems not unlikely that something very like it was experienced by Ashmole and Mainwaring on October 16, 1646. (I have put the words in modern spelling and added punctuation -the which is almost entirely absent from the original - not having been designed to be written down, but memorised).
Question : Are you a mason?
Answer : Yes, I am a freemason.
Q: How shall I know that?
A: By perfect signs and tokens, and the first points of my Entrance.
Q: Which is the first sign or token? Show me the first and I will show you the second.
A: The first is heal and Conceal or Conceal and keep secret by no less pain than cutting my tongue from my throat.
Q: Where were you made a Mason?
A: In a just or perfect or just and Lawful Lodge.
Q: What is a just and perfect or just and Lawful Lodge?
A: A just and perfect Lodge is two Interprintices, two fellow crafts and two Masters, more or fewer, the more the merrier, the fewer the Better Cheer, but if need require, five will serve, that is, two Interprintices, two fellow Crafts and one Master, on the highest hill or Lowest Valley of the world, without the crow of a Cock or the Bark of a Dog.
Q: From whom do you derive your principals?
A: From a greater than you.
Q: Who is that on earth that is greater than a freemason?
A: He it was carried to ye highest pinacle of the Temple of Jerusalem. [note the Christian reference].
Q: Whither is your lodge, shut or open?
A: It is shut.
Q: Where Lies the Keys of the Lodge door?
A: They Ley [sic.] in a bound Case or under a three-cornered pavement, about a foot and a half from the Lodge door.
Q: What is the Keys of your Lodge Door made of?
A: It is not made of Wood, Stone, Iron or steel or any sort of metal, but the tongue of a good report behind a Brother's back, as well as before his face.
Q: How many Jewels belong to your Lodge?
A: There are three. The Square pavement, the blazing Star and the Danty tassley [a corruption of “perpend ashlar” according to Knoop, Jones and Hamer's Early Masonic Catechisms. Manchester University Press 1963].
Q: How long is the Cable rope of your Lodge?
A: As long as from the Lop of the Liver to the root of the tongue.
Q: How many Lights are in your Lodge?
A: Three. The sun, the master and the Square.
Q: How high is your Lodge?
A: Without foots, yards or inches it reaches to heaven.
Q: How Stood your Lodge?
A: East and west, as all holy Temples Stand.
Q: Which is the master's place in the Lodge?
A: The east place is the master's place in the Lodge, and the Jewel resteth on him first, and he setteth men to work. What the masters have in the foornoon [sic], the wardens reap in the Afternoon.
In some places they discourse as followeth (Viz)
Q: Where was the first word given?
A: At the Tower of Babylon.
Q: Where did they first call their Lodge?
A: At the holy Chapel of St. John.
Q: How stood your Lodge?
A: As the said holy Chapel and all other holy Temples stand. (Viz.) east and west.
Q: How many lights are in your Lodge?
A: Two. One to see to go in, and another to see to work.
Q: What were you sworn by?
A: By god and the Square.
Q: Whither above the Clothes or under the Clothes?
A: Under the Clothes.
Q: Under what Arm?
A: Under the right Arm.
Sloane's notes also include reference to the “master's word”, which we may suppose might have been given to fellow crafts such as Ashmole and Mainwaring, since that degree was the highest degree - though it is noteworthy also that the word “degree” does not occur in Ashmole's diary entries, nor in the Sloane Ms.
Another [salutation] they have called the master's word, and is Mahabyn, which is always divided into two words and Standing close With their breasts to each other, the inside of Each other's right Ankle Joints the master's grip by their right hands and the top of their Left hand fingers thurst [sic] close on ye small of each other's Backbone, and in that posture they Stand till they whisper in each other's ears ye one Maha- the other replies Byn.
The mason word and every thing therein contained you shall keep secret. You shall never put it in writing directly or Indirectly. You shall keep all that we or your attenders shall bid you keep secret from Man, Woman or Child, Stock or Stone, and never reveal it but to a brother or in a Lodge of Freemasons, and truly observe the Charges in ye Constitution. All this you promise and swear faithfully to keep and observe without any manner of Equivocation or mental Reservation, directly or Indirectly, so help you god and by the Contents of this book. So he kisses the book &c.
One feature of Ashmole's acception as a ‘Free Mason’ the which we can be almost certain was experienced by him on 16 October 1646 was the recitation of the ‘Old Charges’. This is the name given to the traditional histories of the Craft, of which a number have survived dating from the late 14th century through to the 17th century. They were intended to ‘charge’ or ‘load’ the initiate with due gravity, rich colour and acute consciousness of what joining the society of fellow freemasons bound him to. The initiate was to be very much obliged.
Dr Robert Plot, the first curator of Ashmole's epoch-marking Museum in Oxford, had obviously seen a copy of the Charges while producing his Natural History of Staffordshire (1686). Judged from the strictly historical point of view, we may not defer from Plot's assessment that the story contained in the Craft history was grossly “false and incoherent”.
While it is true that the Old Charges' account of masonry does indeed juxtapose vast tracts of history, rather in the manner of a gay pantomime or quick-fire masque, (a Greek who witnesses the building of Solomon's Temple, for example, proceeds to impart the craft to ‘Charles Martill’ in France), one nonetheless suspects that Plot may have just missed the point of the plot's original authors, whoever they may have been. It should be noted that the precise wording and content of the Charges varies in different versions, but they are all unmistakable in spirit, emphasis and essential function. They represent a quite peculiar and not a little fascinating form of vernacular literature.
The Old Charges, with great imaginative charm and pleasant innocence delineate the mythos of masonry in terms of legend. Legend itself is the precise subject matter of the myth. Masonry is the inscription of history: the emphasis is always on what survives. The stones testify, and in doing so transcend the follies of man and the vicissitudes of time. Whoever rules, masonry remains the same dynamic force. Wise counsel dictates friendship with masons. There are those who build and those who destroy; a man is known by his friends.
Legendary achievements of great men past; the initiate was to ‘see’ in the recitation a kind of cartoon of the history of civilisation – even the little scrolls which have come down to us look like reels of film, ‘quickies’! The initiate would learn that masonry had first-class, nay unsurpassed bona fides. Born in the antediluvian civilisation of the middle east : Egypt, Phoenicia, Babylonia; the knowledge survives the Great Flood, thanks to legendary, larger-than-life guardian figures – and none more potent in mythic and legendary significance than Thrice Greatest Hermes, the ‘father of philosophy’, ‘psychopomp’ (Jung) of Alchemy and Patron General of Architecture and natural magic - science surviving to inform the Greeks, the Romans, and even to provide Jewry with her natural and supernatural Temple to crown her seven pillars of Wisdom.
Wheresoever civilisation grew in stone, the golden gift of the masons was present, like a tincture, a catalyst, a magic word and philosopher's stone: an eternal sign in time. It continues through the Dark Ages as the pursuit of wise rulers, giving incomparable form to castle, abbey and palace. Lofty ideals traced out, the Craft had high expectations of the initiate.
Ashmole would have been gratified in his curiosity. As the man who would soon appear to English readers as the Mercuriophilus Anglicus – English Mercury Lover - ever attentive lover passionate for the embrace of the Hermetic cosmic vision, suitor to mysteries and the buried yet breathing past, adept of alchemy, astrology and natural magic – Ashmole would have been delighted to hear of the rôle of Hermes as patron-guardian of architecture, with the Almighty himself seen as “heavenly archemaster” of the Craft (as John Dee put it).
And more, we can be fairly sure of the precise wording which met Ashmole's ears on that late autumn afternoon in 1646. For by a curious co-incidence, the manuscript copy of the ‘Constitutions of Masonry’ formerly in the possession of Sir Hans Sloane (Sloane Ms. 3848, British Library), ends with the following autograph : “ffinis p.me Eduardu : Sankey decimo sexto die Octobris, Anno domini 1646” – the very day on which Ashmole and his late wife's cousin Colonel Henry Mainwaring were made Free Masons. Warrington church registers record the baptism of “Edward son to Richard Sankeay [sic], gent., 3 ffebruarie, 1621/2” It seems highly likely that this was the son of the Richard Sankey recorded by Elias Ashmole as having been present at his initiation. We may be permitted to imagine Edward Sankey writing out the Charges – perhaps from memory – as part of his father's preparation for the ceremony. Edward Sankey wrote as follows:
Good brethren & ffellows, our purpose is to tell you, how and in what manner; this Craft of Masonrie was begun; and afterwards founded by worthy Kings and Princes; & many other worshipful men; and also to ym that are heare; wee will declare to ym the Charge yt doth belonge to every true Mason to keep ffor good sooth if you take heede thereunto it is well worthie to bee kept; or a worthie Craft and curious science, ffor there bee seaven liberall sciences;
before Noes flood was a man called Lameth as it is written in ye 4 chapt of Gene, and this Lameth had 2 wives; ye one was called Adar; ye other Sella: and by Adar hee begott 2 sonnes The one was called Jabell ye other Juball; And by ye other wife hee had a sonne & a Daughter; and these foure children found ye beginninge of all Crafts in ye world; This Jabell was ye elder sonne; and found ye Craft of Geometry;
and these children did knowe that god would take vengeance for sinne eather by fire or water; Wherefore ye writ ye Sciences wch weare found in 2 pillars of stone; yt ye might be found after the flood; The one stone was called Marble that cannot burne wth fire; The other was called Letera that cannot drowne with water; Our intent is to tell you truly how & in what manner these stones weare found; where these Crafts were written in Greek; Hermenes that was sonne to Cus, & Cus was sonne to Shem wch was ye sonne of Noath: The same Hermenes was afterwards Hermes; the ffather of wise men, and hee found out ye 2 pillars of stone where ye Sciences weare written, & taught him forth.
when Abraham and Sara his wife went into Egypt; there weare taught the seaven sciences unto ye Egyptians; And hee had a worthy Schollar called Euchlid and hee Learned right well and was Maister of all ye 7 Sciences;
And there was a King of an other Region yt men called Hyram and hee loved well Kinge Solomon; and gave him timber for his worke; And hee had a sonne that was named Aynon & he was Mr of Geometry; and hee was chiefe Mr of all his Masons; and Mr of all his graved works; and of all other Masons that belonged to ye Temple; & this Witnesseth the Bible in libro 2 Solo capite 5.
And soe it befell that a curious workman; who was named Nimus Graecus & had beene at ye makeinge of Solomons Temple; and came into ffrance; and there taught ye Craft of Masonrie; to ye man of ffrance that was named Charles Martill;
And all this while England was voyde both of any charge or Masonrie; until ye time of St. Albans; And in his time ye King of England that was a Pagan; and hee walled ye Towne wch is now called St. Albans;
until ye time of King Athelstone; yt was a worthy King of England; and hee brought ye Land into rest and peace againe; and hee builded many great workes & Castles & Abbies; and many other Buildings; and hee loved masons well; and hee had a sonne yt was named Hadrian:
And hee held himself assembly at Yorke and there hee made Masons, and gave ym Charges and taught them Mannrs of Masons; and commanded that rule to bee holden ever after: And to them took ye Charter & Commission to keepe;
And from time to time Masonrie until this day hath beene kept in yt forme & order, as well as might gov'ne ye same; And furthermore at dyvrs assemblies hath beene put to and aded certaine Charges; more by ye best advices; of Mastrs and fellowes; Heare followeth the worthie and godly oath of Masons; Every man that is a Masonn take Heede right well; to this charge; if you finde yo'self guilty of any of these; yt you amend you; againe especially you yt are to bee charged take good heed that you may keepe this Charge; for it is a great perill for a man to foresweare himselfe on a book;
And should the reader find this is all terribly old fashioned, consider for a moment the opening to Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space Odyssey (1968). Does the epic not commence with the discovery of a transformative pillar of curious substance – a key to all science awaiting discovery – only this time excavated upon the moon by astronauts, the dark pillar's contents charging these latterday argonauts to mount a quest, a quest that penultimately leads the last survivor “beyond infinity” itself?
“How high is your lodge?” asks the masonic catechism quoted earlier. “It reaches to heaven” comes the reply. It reaches to heaven. Something had happened to the conception of the medieval wooden lean-to, draughty shelter for masons in the shadow of the cathedral-in-the-making. The humble freemason's lodge has acquired some of the universal qualities inherent in the cathedral itself. Even more, the 17th century lodge has in some sense come to represent the dynamic of the infinite cosmos, however simple the locus of the brotherly gathering. The mind of the accepted freemason is to expand with the dimensions of the universe; the sacred book contains the spiritual laws of the universe. He is to dwell in the mind of the Great Architect to learn His Laws and apply them according to His will.
The Edinburgh Register House Ms catechism of 1696 asks of the initiate, “Where is the key?” The answer: “In the bone box”, that is to say, inside the skull: the mind. It's all in the mind. The cosmic lodge comes alive in the imagination, activated by symbols and signs, as a chessboard may represent all the conflicts of a state, but this is the cosmic chessboard interiorised, then projected.
The freemason is drawn into a basic mnemonic system in which his mind partakes mysteriously of the ‘lost word’ that is, the logos. The familiar English translation of the Greek as ‘word’ is misleading. The dynamic logos (very close in conception to the alchemical mercurius) is the “second God” or “son of God” of the pagan and Christian Hermetists, the active, intelligent mind who is both responsible for and implicit in creation: the source of intelligence and creative power. This logos, or stone, comes from heaven and is to be found throughout the world, though invisible to the fool who ‘trips’ on it. (See Luke XX, 17-18) In the beginning was the logos, and He is incarnate in chapter one of John's Gospel and typified in Christian and masonic tradition as “the stone the builders rejected”. The logos is the “precious cornerstone” of the prophetic tradition, rejected due to human spiritual blindness. The logos is that stone which has now and will become “the head of the corner” of the new Temple, built when the ‘lost children of Israel’ return to Zion, that is, God's House: in the bone box and beyond it. “The higher you fly, the deeper you go” (John Lennon). I did not ‘read all this in’; freemasons did. Take, for example, a mason's grave in the west of England, dated 4 May 1639, inscribed as follows:
Christ was thy Corner-stone, Christians the rest, Hammer the word, Good life thy line all blest, And yet art gone, t'was honour not thy crime, With stone hearts to worke much in little time, Thy Master saws't and tooke thee off from them, To the bright stone of New Jerusalem, Thy worke and labour men may esteem a base one, Heaven counts it blest, here lies a blest free-Mason.
(Devon & Exeter Gazeteer, 8 Oct. 1909, p.7, brought to my attention, as with that following, by Matthew Scanlan)
Again, we have the plaque raised to the memory of John Stone, now at S. Giles, Sidbury:
An epitaph upon ye Life and Death of JOHN STONE, FREEMASON, who, Departed Ys Life ye first of January, 1617, & Lyeth heer under buried.
On our great Corner Stone this Stone relied, For blessing to his building loving most, To build God's Temples, in which workes he dyed, And lived the Temple, of the Holy Ghost, In whose lov'd life is proved and Honest Fame, God can of Stones raise seede to Abraham.
To call the Almighty Himself a ‘Freemason’ was neither an unknown nor empty epithet. Witness Cawdrey's Treasure of Similes (London, 1609, p.342): “As the Freemason heweth the hard stones… even so God, the Heavenly Free-Mason, buildeth a Christian Church.”
Few have fully grasped the gnostic import and transformative power of these symbolic ideas and ideal symbols. The accepted freemason is to be a microcosm wherein the mystery of cosmic redemption is to be enacted and realised. “Who is that on earth that is greater than a freemason?” asks the Sloane Ms. catechism, sternly. “He it was carried to ye highest pinnacle of the Temple of Jerusalem”, that is, Jesus, the slain Master, tempted of Satan but raised and triumphant.
These and related ideas permeate what has become known as ‘speculative’ freemasonry, generally regarded as something independent of the so-called ‘operative’ craft – as if the tool could be meaningfully detached from the mind that made it. Christianity was born of free theology forged in the spirit. An analagous case may be made for freemasonry.
Professor David Stevenson's The Origins of freemasonry: Scotland's century makes a good case for the Hermetic inspiration behind some of William Schaw's reforms of Scottish masonry in the 1590s (Schaw's Statutes). He also highlights the probable hoped-for inclusion of some aspect of the Art of Memory in a Scots mason's utility kit. Frances Yates has shown how this Art was related to neo-Neoplatonic symbology by Hermetists such as Giordano Bruno (1548-1600). Bruno spread the mnemonic magic about Europe during the 1580s, believing it to be linked to a liberating gnosis of Egyptian provenance.
It is now clear that the love of Renaissance men of learning for polyvalent symbolism, riddles, metaphors, paradoxes and hidden keys was not alien to the life of the architect and sculptor – the apostle of the substantial Renaissance.
Masons, associated with so many medieval lay confraternities across Europe had been ‘speculating’ (geometry, mathematics, plus symbolic theology) for centuries. Indeed, the term could simply mean mathematics, viz: The City and Country Purchaser and Builder's Dictionary: or the Compleat Builder's Guide (TN Philomath, London 1703) in which the author, Richard Neve, writes in his fifth section on the ‘Freemason's Work’: “Some ingenious Workmen understand the Speculative Part of Architecture or Building: but of these knowing sort of Artificers there are few because few workmen look any further than the Mechanical, Practick or Working part of Architecture; not regarding the Mathematical or Speculative part of Building,…”
In fact, the earliest known use of the appellate ‘speculative’ to distinguish Grand Lodge from the world of practical architecture, occurs as late as 12 July 1757. It appears in a letter from Dr Manningham, Deputy Grand Master of the Premier Grand Lodge in London, writing to a Brother Sauer at the Hague.
For the man who most inspired Elias Ashmole, namely John Dee, as well as for many other men of learning in the 16th and 17th centuries, mathematics was simply a branch of what was called ‘natural [or non-demonic] magic’. This conception derived from the Sabians of Harran and Baghdad, as described in the first part of this book, and was restated by Renaissance genii of the calibre of Pico della Mirandola.
Serious knowledge, then as now, simply holds the ignorant spell-bound, that is, bound by a spell. (‘Spelling’ means getting the words right.) Such ignorance persists to this day. In some parts of India, masonic lodges are called by locals, ‘magic houses’ (Jadu Ghar), while in Britain anti-masonic propaganda still asserts some mysterious relationship between the Craft and witchcraft, in spite of every contrary assertion. Sound education, for masons and non-masons alike, is of course the cure for such fears. Electricity holds little mystery to the man who has made his own wireless.
Elias Ashmole was not the first ‘speculative mason’, nor was the Warrington microcosm the first speculative lodge. Ashmole's record concerning 1646 has come to represent the first known record of a lodge of Free Masons apparently unrelated to the ‘operative’ craft. But was it really unrelated to the sculptors and architects?
As we have seen, it is highly likely that the Richard Ellam mentioned in Ashmole's record was a freemason as full-time occupation. (The will of Richard Ellom of Lymm, Cheshire, 7 September 1667, describes him as a ‘freemason’, which can only mean the Art and Craft. The will mentions brothers John and Peter, to whom Richard left his messuage and tenement in Lymm. Ashmole refers to Richard Ellam's brother, John.) A copy of the Old Charges from the 1660s among the Harleian Mss. (Ms. 1942, British Library) requires a lodge to consist of one warden, five brothers and a minimum of one other “of the Trade of ffreemasonry”. Warrington would have had the blessing of all freemasons, whether ‘accepted’ or not – and we must get used to thinking of accepted masons rather than ‘speculatives’. Being ‘speculative’ as opposed to ‘operative’ constitutes the basis for the claims of the United Grand Lodge of England to govern Free and Accepted Masonry in England and Wales, ie: that it is the first wholly speculative masonic institution.
Architecture, since the heyday of the Renaissance, was not only a freemason's business; it was a gentleman's accomplishment. Furthermore, the Craft needed patrons: informed patrons who appreciated the true value of the freemason – people, one suspects, who looked with horror at the Tudors' pillage of the ancient religious houses of England and Wales. People, perhaps, like Penketh, Ashmole and Mainwaring. Or – before we get too romantic – people who had done well out of the Dissolution of the monasteries and had new houses to renovate and construct, from the stones of the old.
This line of enquiry would probably remain purely conjectural were it not for Elias Ashmole's second surviving record of masonic involvement, dated 10 March 1682. This record makes all the difference to the way in which we must see the first record of masonic activity in Ashmole's life. It also helps us to understand exactly what is meant by the term ‘accepted’ Free Mason, an epithet unique to English freemasonry in the period. It is noticably lacking in 17th century Scottish practice, even though the quantity of 17th century Scottish evidence greatly exceeds English masonic evidence for the same period, as David Stevenson is at pains to emphasise in his study.
Ashmole gives us a living snapshot of an afternoon in the heart of the busy City of London in the 1680s, a place pullulating with well-paid masons, eighteen years after the Great Fire created an architectural vacuum.
March 10. 1682 : About 5pm I received a summons, to appear at a Lodge to be held the next day at Mason's Hall London. Accordingly I went, and About Noone were admitted into the Fellowship of Free Masons, Sir William Wilson Knight, Capt. Rich: Borthwick, Mr Will: Woodman, Mr Wm Grey, Mr Samuell Taylour & Mr William Wise. I was the Senior Fellow among them (it being 35 years since I was admitted). There were present beside my selfe the Fellowes after named. Mr Thos. Wise Mr. [Master] of the Masons Company this present year. Mr Thomas Shorthose, Mr Thomas Shadbolt, Waindsford Esq. Mr Nich: Young. Mr: John Shorthose, Mr William Hamon, Mr John Thompson, & Mr. Will: Stanton.
We all dyned at the Halfe Moone Taverne in Cheapside, at a Noble Dinner prepared at the charge of the New-accepted Masons.
The Masons Hall referred to stood in Mason's Avenue, Basinghall Street, the headquarters of the London Company of Masons (formerly the Company of Freemasons) since 1463. The Company was awarded its arms in 1472, its main feature being the outstretched compasses and three castles so familiar to students of the Craft. By the time of the Stuarts, the London Company of “ffreemasons” consisted of a master, two wardens, a court of assistants (the ruling body), a livery, and a body of freemen or yeomen. Before we look more closely at this hoary Company, the name Sir William Wilson, mentioned by Ashmole, should be noted.
Wilson (1641-1710), architect and stone-mason, had been knighted a few days before. A native of Sutton Coldfield, eight miles from Lichfield, he had carved a still-extant statue of Charles II. It used to stand at the very top of the western façade of Lichfield cathedral, looking over all who entered therein and clearly linking the reconstruction of the cathedral to the patronage and care of the restored monarch, guardian of the privileges and tradition of the Church of England. (Charles is boldly described as Restaurator at the foot of the statue). The statue may still be seen by the south door of the cathedral, its provenance a mystery to visitors and locals alike. Who would have thought that this eroded larger-than-life-size monument, sculpted by an architect of Nottingham Castle, might yet represent Ashmole's union of Monarchy, Church and Free Masonry in a single lump of durable sandstone?
Some years ago, when I first came to consider the case of Sir William Wilson's becoming an accepted mason, I could not see how a practising stonemason-architect could have been initiated into a freemasonic fellowship, long after becoming a fully functioning, professional master freemason. More research was required. Fortunately, the requisite clues have been uncovered.
In his article Nicholas Stone and the Mystery of the Acception, (Freemasonry Today, Spring 2000), masonic historian Matthew Scanlan has written of how another and even more illustrious professional freemason-architect apparently became an Accepted Fellow in 1638, while at the time holding the position of King Charles I's master mason. This was Nicholas Stone the elder (1586-1647), whose father's memorial plaque we had cause to quote from earlier.
Given the paucity of evidence, Scanlan is to be congratulated for penetrating the mystery and recognising its historical significance. When one grasps this significance, it renders one incredulous as to how it could have taken so long to put ‘two and two together’. Then again, the path had been obscured by masonic historians (who have enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the subject) with peculiar vested interests in separating as far as possible the lineage of ‘speculative’ (Grand Lodge) from ‘operative’ (respectable working-class) masons. The reasons for this can only have been academic, social and political, deriving perhaps from the extraordinary period of confusion and obfuscation following the establishment of Grand Lodge in 1717 during the long sunset of the Jacobite challenge to the House of Hanover. Furthermore, there was an attested desire among Grand Lodge apologists to transform their masonic inheritance into a proto-enlightenment moral club system, while squeezing its mystical theological basis into what Blake and Coleridge – to name but two – considered the dull, reasonable tick-tock philosophy of ‘natural religion’.
William Blake parodies the god of the oh-so-rational natural religionist in his famous watercolour, The Ancient of Days (1793), even giving “Old Nobodaddy” some rather pointed compasses with which to bind and limit his universe. If this quasi-deity had been asked ‘how high is your lodge?’, he might have replied, “Oh, about 100 million miles, give or take a few feet.” The Lodge in the Head is, of course, like the imagination, infinite.
Contemporary English freemasonry, not surprisingly, does not appear comfortable with the muddying of its version of the historical water which a reconsideration of the word ‘speculative’ involves. Masonic historian John Hamill's standard account, The Craft (Crucible 1982), for example, regards the locus of Ashmole's second masonic diary reference as little more than incidental. According to Hamill, the lodge which accepted Wilson in the presence of “senior Fellow” Elias Ashmole was most likely “an occasional lodge”, his summons to that place doubtless due to the Masons Company connections of some of those present. It is as if a group of dairy farmers had dinner at the offices of the National Farmers Union, of which they were nearly all members, and then it was denied that there was any serious link between the NFU and dairy farming! In retrospect, the lack of interest displayed in such connections is to say the least, surprising.
Thankfully, Scanlan finds the connections worthy of scholarly attention, keenly aware how much contemporary masonic history of pre-1717 conditions has been composed with the latterday phenomenon of Grand Lodge in mind.
Scanlan examined the Renter Warden accounts for the London Company of ffreemasons, now held in the Guildhall Library, London. Records for 1638 describe a meeting that took place some time between March and midsummer 1638, the year, incidentally, in which Elias Ashmole married Eleanor Mainwaring.
Pd wch the accompt [accountant] layd out Wch was more than he received of them Wch were taken into the Accepcon Whereof xs [ten shillings] is to be paid by Mr. Nicholas Stone, Mr Edmund Kinsman Mr John Smith, Mr William Millis, Mr John Coles.
Nicholas Stone was no footnote to history. King's master mason, close working colleague of Inigo Jones, architect of the magnificent Banqueting House, Whitehall, “ffreemason and citizen of of the City of London”, sometime Master of the London Company of Freemasons, sculptor of one of the finest sepulchral monuments known to 17th century history, (the effigy of John Donne, S. Paul's), Stone was learned in classical mythology and theological symbolism, and encouraged his son to travel to Italy to further such and related practical studies. Nicholas Stone the younger (a Royalist) was the author of the Enchiridion of Fortification (1645) – a most suggestive title when one realises that in the year prior to publication, Elias Ashmole was put in charge of the City of Oxford's eastern defences and a year later, made a Free Mason .
And yet, for all this, Stone, along with the four other men referred to in the Renter Warden's accounts, while still a member of the London Company of Freemasons, had yet remained a stranger to the “Accepcon” until 1638, when he, along with his colleagues, were prepared to pay the large sum of 10 shillings for the privilege. At that price, it was unlikely to have been a long-service award ceremony!
Ashmole, in 1682, is specific about the events that took place on March 11th – the “new accepted” masons paid for the noble dinner at the Half-Moon Tavern. What was this Acception, which had apparently grown up within the London Company? Scanlan writes: “From the scant records, it appears to have involved some kind of a meeting, followed by a dinner paid for by those who had been ‘accepted’. Was it that the acception dealt with the symbolic and so-called ‘speculative’ side of architecture?” Scanlan saved his definitive ‘sting in the tail’ for the last paragraph of his article:
“It is perhaps curious to note that in 1718, when the Grand Master [of the Grand Lodge] George Payne requested brethren to bring to Grand Lodge “any old writings and Records concerning Masons, …to shew the usages of Antient Time”, that it was also recorded that “several very valuable manuscripts” were tragically lost. Interestingly, the Rev. James Anderson specifically records that one particular manuscript, “writ by Mr. Nicholas Stone the Warden of Inigo Jones, were too hastily burnt by some scrupulous Brothers, that those Papers might not fall into strange hands” (Anderson's Constitutions, 1738, p.111).
“Could it be that there was a ritualistic form of Accepted Free Masonry prior to 1717 that was unpalatable to those who wished to ‘revive’ the movement in the 1720s?”
Obviously, Scanlan thinks so. The implication, surely, is that an earlier movement was in some way ‘hi-jacked’, rather than having simply, or even complicatedly, evolved from antecedent conditions. However, thanks to the “scrupulous Brothers”, we may never know for sure. How convenient, a cynic might think, for a new kind of Freemasonry, severed from its paternity, to so inherit – or acquire – the title deeds.
Ashmole's references to his fellowship with the Free Masons are few indeed, and this has led some commentators rashly to imagine Ashmole's commitment to the craft was slight. They would do well to remember not only the prohibition on committing to writing masonic rituals, but also that Ashmole's diary - vitally interesting as it is - is a highly selective work, accomplished for personal reasons of which we are ignorant. We do know that he wished to write a history of the craft, and made notes for the same, the which have disappeared.
Free Masonry bound him in fellowship to men great and small in his time. A man of Ashmole's attested sociable and good character would be unlikely to disregard his obligations - and those obligations demanded secrecy. It is highly possible that the circles in which Ashmole moved included more than a few accepted masons (the example of Sir Robert Moray - another Hermetic enthusiast and accepted mason stands out), of whose fellowship we are ignorant simply because they kept their obligations in the matter. We must be grateful indeed for the few clues Ashmole did choose to leave to posterity.
Furthermore, Ashmole never stopped contributing to church restoration - especially in Lichfield - and were we to have the records of construction-work, our knowledge of seventeenth century freemasonry, in its united operative and accepted aspects would be that much the richer. (Acceptation directly suggests an invitation to the operative world. Symbol and allegory permeate the operative catechism given above - and it is operative; Sloane mentions the placing of tools in special ways on site to indicate a summons for help from other freemasons). There was no such thing as ‘speculative Freemasonry’ at the time Ashmole was initiated, though it seems reasonable to suppose that having been initiated, accepted (and educated) masons did ‘speculate’. However, the term ‘speculative Freemasonry’ has been used to make a spurious distinction between post-1717 ‘symbolic’ masonry and the old trade which ‘preceded’ it, in effect drawing a cautious (and unnecessary) veil over the movement's genuine past. Speculation on secret allegorical and symbolic riddles was a general characteristic of the Renaissance in both its continental and English phases. Classicism, the Greek Mysteries, old English and Scottish pagan (country) traditions and Hermetic philosophy all played a part in this. For in that melancholy twilight later seen as the dawn of rationalism, these traditions could all be viewed as interweaving parts of the ‘old religion’ : hearty, gargantuan, fair. It would be surprising if, after the removal of the Puritan-dominated Protectorate of Cromwell, Renaissance modes of thought did not attempt a re-emergence, but how far such a movement may have influenced Free Masonry - or to what degree Free Masonry was indeed a part of that movement - is unclear, especially as one must consider that the operative freemason was himself the very practical instrument of the Renaissance. While philosophers dreamed, freemasons cut. For all the benefits of modern research, there is still a mystery in the matter.
One thing is clear : Ashmole stayed with Free Masonry for the rest of his long life; it was bound up with his deepest roots and his essential - and mercurial - conception of himself and his life's great work. Three and a half centuries after initiation, that life stands today as an inspiring example to all those persons of good-will who would make a lasting temple out of the base elements of their earthly lives.