The Magus of Freemasonry

One week after Worcester’s surrender, Ashmole entered the devastation that was now Lichfield, her cathedral ruined, its central spire demolished by parliamentarian cannon. Going to his mother’s house in Women’s Cheaping, Ashmole was met by the dejected vicar of St. Mary’s, opposite Ashmole’s birthplace, who informed him that his mother was dead. Ann Ashmole had died on Friday, July 9, one of over 800 victims of the plague that had ravaged the city during the cruel siege.

Yet again, Ashmole was too late to comfort his dearest in the fatal hour of need. He was twenty-nine years old, and in despair.

Ashmole had not been long in Smallwood when feelings of guilt emerged through the medium of dreams. He dreamed that his mother came to his room to tell of her deep disappointment in him. She told her only son of how she had walked from Lichfield to Brereton (about six miles to the northwest). There she waited, in vain. Giving up hope of seeing him, she returned to Lichfield to die without his comfort. Ash-mole was distressed; the hole in his life grew greater still.

Perhaps because he was driven to fill that hole as hastily as possible, an encounter with a distant relative, the twenty-four-year-old Elinor Minshull, quickly developed into a romantic obsession. Elinor was the second daughter of Captain Peter Minshull of Erdeswick Hall, Minshull Vernon, Cheshire. The Cheshire Minshulls were relatives of the Mainwarings, and as such he referred to her as his “cousin.”

On August 15, 1646, Ashmole recorded another dream: “About an hour before sunrising that Elinor Minshull came into my office and seemed very big with child and had a hat on which I imagined she put on that strangers should think her a married wife because she had a great belly and yet this was at a time when she should be married to me, and notwithstanding I could not but love her and thought to marry her though she was got with child by another.”¹

Ashmole wanted to be taken seriously as a suitor of eligible Cheshire ladies, but was stricken by his lack of adequate funds: a not untypical scholar’s dilemma, especially now that his brief military career had collapsed in defeat. On October 9 he recorded another dream involving Elinor: “Morning, that Elinor Minshull came and told me she was married to Humphrey Carter and showed me 3: to 4: pieces of gold that he had sent her and implied that if I had given her gold, or that I had been rich, I might have had her.”²

Ashmole’s pride was taking a battering from all sides. Perhaps, he wondered, the most acceptable course would be to take ship and quit his homeland. On August 22 he cast an astrological “figure” to answer the “horary question”: “4.30’ after noon whether it will be best for

[me (denoted by the sign for mercury)] to go beyond sea or stay in England.”³

Just over a week later, he told his cousin Mullins that he would give his house to some of his uncle John’s youngest sons “if I went beyond [the] sea.”⁴ Where exactly he proposed to go beyond the sea is not recorded, though crossing the Channel seems too little a distance to warrant the phrase. Perhaps he was thinking of the West Indies or New England. His mind, it seems, was already at sea.

At 6:30 on the afternoon of September 6 he asked the horary question whether he should marry “Jane Tak[…]k.”⁵ The lady with the unusual surname has not been identified. On the same day, similar indecisiveness and confusion appear to have led him to the ministrations of a fortune-teller.

[T]hat I shall set forth my journey toward London upon a Monday/ because I am in danger of waters/ and not to travel either upon the Wednesday nor Friday following not to make complaint or claim to my house as yet [his uncle in Lichfield seems to have taken possession in Elias’s absence]/ that I love women and to be careful of my choice that I left my wellwishers in Worcester, and have resolved to speak to Mrs: Minshull/ but not to have any more to say to her/ I shal first see her again on a Sunday in London and be married upon a Monday within 12 months/ ’tis best to go in crimson apparel.⁶

Three days later, “Between 4 and 5: after noon I took leave of my cousin Elinor Minshull and told her that she then part[ed] with the truest friend that she ever had or should have and at 8 a clock and 8 30’ after noon I took a second leave.”⁷

On September 12, Ashmole’s amorous attentions found yet another object. It is not recorded whether he was wearing crimson apparel at the time. “About 4 after noon I first saw the Lady Fitton at Gosworth.”⁸ This lady was Felicia, daughter of Ralph Sneyd of Keele, second wife and widow of Sir Edward Fitton, Second Baronet, of Gawsworth Hall, Cheshire. (Gawsworth Hall still stands on the Congleton-to-Macclesfield Road.) Lady Fitton’s forebear Mary Fitton was the supposed “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets; such a one might have been eminently suitable for Ashmole’s peculiar interests.

Gawsworth Hall, Cheshire.

An idea seems to have been growing in his mind—hardly an original one in this period of fortunes hurriedly gained and quickly lost. If he had not the means to marry, then by marriage he might find the means. Ashmole made a horoscope for the “annual revolution” of his nativity. The planets’ position in the eighth house, “the house of women’s substance,” showed that “I shall labour for a fortune with a wife and get it … without pains and easily.”⁹ This fateful assurance would come at a price.

Perhaps jumping the gun somewhat, Ashmole consulted the stars on September 26, 1646, as to “whether I should marry Lady Fitton”—after which time, Lady Fitton drops out of Ashmole’s amorous cast and the scene of his life’s play changes abruptly.¹⁰

Oct: 16. 4.30. p.m. I was made a Free Mason at Warrington in Lancashire with Coll: Henry Mainwaring of Karincham in Cheshire.

Mr: Rich Penket Warden, Mr: James Collier, Mr: Rich. Sankey, Henry Littler, John Ellam, Rich: Ellam & Hugh Brewer.¹¹

Of all Ashmole’s extensive esoteric interests, his decision to become a “Free Mason” has perhaps aroused the greatest controversy. His brief memorial note has long been considered to be the first record of initiation into “speculative Freemasonry,” its date of 1646 strangely in advance of the generally accepted date for the establishment of “speculative Freemasonry” as an organization. A “Grand Lodge” is first mentioned in Reverend James Anderson’s Constitutions of Freemasonry, 1723, referring to the year A.D. 1716.

Ashmole’s record of his initiation (Bodleian Library, Ashmole collection).

The adjective speculative has been used since the nineteenth century to distinguish symbolic and ritual Freemasonry from the “operative” trade of masons and freemasons (builders, architects, sculptors). However, recent researches into the origins of Freemasonry have suggested that at least in the seventeenth century, no appropriate contemporary distinction may be supposed between “symbolic, ritual” freemasonry and the so-called “operative” craft. What, then, had Elias Ashmole joined in his darkest hour?

All of the English seventeenth-century evidence points toward Ashmole’s having passed through an “Acception” ceremony, following which ritual or rituals he became a “Fellow” of the Craft. The Acception was run from within the world of the Freemasons’ companies that had emerged out of the medieval guild system. Accepted Free Masons appear to have constituted a kind of upper echelon or club in the freemasons’ world.

Accepted brothers were encouraged to operate according to close ties of mutual loyalty, concentrating on the universal and symbolic meanings of architecture, especially the historical, spiritual, and religious content of masonic traditions, which were very great and, in a religious world, greatly significant.

Looking at the evidence for Accepted Free Masonry cannot help but give us important clues as to Ashmole’s inner world, for so much of the tradition ties in closely to his general outlook, both antiquarian and spiritual. There is also evidence that Ashmole himself intended to write a history of Freemasonry.

According to C. H. Josten, the best short account of Ashmole’s life was that by John Cambell, LLD (1708–85). Dr. Campbell’s biographical article on Ashmole states that Ashmole collected material for a history of Freemasonry, the notes for which existed among Ashmole’s papers in 1687. Campbell’s account reads as follows:

As to the ancient history of Freemasons, about whom you are desirous of knowing what may be known with certainty, I shall only tell you, that if our worthy brother E.Ashmole Esq; had executed his intended design, our fraternity had been as much obliged to him as the brethren of the most noble Order of the Garter. I would not have you surprised at this expression, or think it at all too assuming… . What from Mr E.A’s collection I could gather, was, that the report of our Society’s taking rise from a Bull granted by the Pope in the reign of Henry III, to some Italian architects, to travel all over Europe to erect chapels was ill-founded. [The “Comacene theory” of Masonic origins: The architects were supposed to have come from around Lake Como, survivors of the fall into barbarism.] Such a Bull there was, and those architects were Masons; but this Bull, in the opinion of the learned Mr. A was confirmative only, and did not by any means create our fraternity, or even establish them in this kingdom.

Dr. Campbell suggested inquirers look into the stories of St. Alban and King Edwyn, in whose time masons were supposed to have been active. Campbell furthermore asserted that Mr. Ashmole was more understanding of, and better acquainted with, these stories of masonic origins than those who would ascribe a late date to Freemasonry. Campbell bases his view on the existence of some of Ashmole’s manuscripts wherein were to be found “very valuable collections relating to the history of the Free Masons.” This text is footnoted, “What is hinted above, is taken from a book of letters, communicated to the author of this life, by Dr. Knipe of Christ-church.”¹²

One of the letters, dated June 9, 1687, is from a “Dr. W” to Sir D. N. (possibly Sir Dudley North, 1641–91), and contains a long passage relating to the early history of freemasonry. Marginal note no. 4 reads “History of Masonry, p.3” while two further notes accompanying later passages of the text of Dr. W’s letter to Sir D. N. refer to pages 19 and 29 of the same “History of Masonry.”

It follows that there must have been in existence in 1687 a manuscript or printed document of no fewer than twenty-nine pages, and Josten concludes that this was “a lost manuscript volume containing Ashmole’s collections on the subject, which may formerly have been among the Ashmolean manuscripts at Oxford.” It is to be greatly regretted—not for the last time—that such a text, if it ever existed, is now lost: destroyed, mislaid, or stolen.

So, it seems likely that Ashmole believed he had entered into an ancient fraternity. What else do we know of this fraternity apart from the fact that he perceived its lineage to be of antiquarian interest?

After Ashmole established his famous museum in Oxford, he approved the appointment of Dr. Robert Plot as its first curator. Plot was to be the author of The Natural History of Staffordshire, published in 1686. In chapter eight, he gives an account of “Free-masons” in the moorlands of Staffordshire:

Title page of Dr. Robert Plot’s Natural History of Staffordshire (1686). Note the caduceus, square, and dividers, placed to the figure’s right.

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 all over the Nation; for here I find persons of the most eminent quality, that did not disdain to be of this Fellowship. Nor indeed need they, were it of that Antiquity and honor, that is pretended in a large parchment volum they have amongst them, containing the History and Rules of the craft of masonry. Which is there deduced not only from sacred Writ, but profane story, particularly that it was brought into England by Saint Amphibal, and first communicated to S.Alban, who set down the Charges of masonry, and was made paymaster and governor of the Kings works, and gave them charges and manners as St. Amphibal had taught him. Which were after confirmed by King Athelstan, whose youngest son Edwyn loved well masonry, took upon him the charges and learned the manners, and obtained for them of his father a free-charter. Whereupon he caused them to assemble at York, and to bring all the old books of their craft, and out of them ordained such charges and manners, as they then thought fit: which charges in the said Schrole or parchment volum, are in part declared: and thus was the craft of masonry grounded and confirmed in England. It is also there declared that these charges and manners were after perused and approved by King Hen.6. and his council, both as to Masters and Fellows of this right Worshipfull craft.

Into which Society when they are admitted, they call a meeting (or Lodge as they term it in some places) which must consist at lest of 5 or 6 of the ancients of the Order, whom the candidates present with gloves, and so likewise to their wives, and entertain with a Collation according to the custom of the place: This ended, they proceed to the admission of them, which chiefly consists in the communication of certain secret signes, whereby they are known to one another all over the Nation, by which means they have maintenance whither ever they travel : for if any man appear though altogether unknown that can shewe any of these signes to a Fellow of that Society, whom they otherwise call an accepted mason, he is obliged presently to come to him, from what company or place soever he be in, nay tho’ from the top of a steeple, (what hazard or inconvenience soever he run) to know his pleasure, and assist him; viz. if he want work he is bound to find him some; or if he cannot do that, to give him mony, or otherwise support him till work can be had; which is one of their articles; and it is another, that they advise the Masters they work for, according to the best of their skill, acquainting them with the goodness or badness of their materials; and if they be in any way out in the contrivance of their buildings modestly to rectify them in it; that masonry be not dishonoured: and many such like that are commonly known: but some others they have (to which they are sworn after their fashion) that none know but themselves, which I have reason to suspect are much worse than these, perhaps as bad as the History of the craft it self; than which there is nothing I ever met with, more false or incoherent.¹³

Plot’s references to Free-masons operating in the Staffordshire moorlands makes much sense when one considers that the entire area had until the Reformation been dominated by three Cistercian monasteries built and maintained by freemasons: Croxden, Dieulacres, and Abbey Hulton. Furthermore, we know that freemasons (the trade) were indeed active in the Staffordshire moorlands during Ashmole’s lifetime.

Biddulph Parish registers (Stafford Record Office) contain many names of people connected with quarrying and masonry. For one unique year, Biddulph’s Rector gives us the occupations of those named. Thus we learn that “in 1600. Baptismata. Mar. 6 Joanna, fa. Rumbaldi DURBAR, freemason.” Rumbald Durbar was interred in Biddulph Church on April 23, 1610. Biddulph in the Staffordshire moorlands is only three miles southeast from Smallwood across the Staffordshire-Cheshire border, the home of Ashmole’s father-in-law.

But what was a “freemason”? The first appearance of the expression “freestone mason” (later shortened to freemason) occurs in London in 1212: Sculptores lapidum liberorum, referring to a sculptor of freestone.¹⁴ Freestone is a kind of stone suitable for carving by virtue of its grain and relative softness. On mastering the craft of freestone masonry, these masters were also the architects (as we understand the word today) of Britain and Ireland.

Biddulph Parish register for the year 1610, referring to “Rumbaldus Durbar, freemasone.” (Stafford Record Office)

Dr. Plot’s account chimes in well with what Dr. Campbell wrote on the views of Ashmole concerning St. Alban and King Edwyn. Indeed, one might have reason for thinking the historical account came from the same source—that is, Ashmole himself. The historical information that Plot dismisses (some references are plainly fanciful and legendary) coincides with a document that has come down to us from the Sloane Collection. By a curious coincidence, the manuscript copy dubbed the “Constitutions of Masonry” formerly in the possession of Sir Hans Sloane 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[.]¹⁵

These are almost certainly the exact words that Elias Ashmole and Colonel Henry Mainwaring heard at their initiation into Accepted Free Masonry. The story of Freemasonry contained therein was central to the oldest documents of freemasons’ companies. These documents were called the Old Charges and were used to justify the masons’ special status as being linked to the creative purposes of the Almighty and His Son, the “foundation stone” of a Church earthly and heavenly.

Plot refers to Free-masons being called “a Fellow of that Society, whom they otherwise call an accepted mason.” He does not tell us what precisely he means by an “accepted” mason. There is some mystery here.

The most significant early reference to an “Accepcon”(Acception) occurs in the Renter Warden’s Accounts of the London company of ffreemasons, 1638, now held in the Guildhall Library, London. Records for 1638 describe a meeting that took place sometime between Marchand midsummer 1638, the year, incidentally, in which Elias Ashmole married Eleanor Mainwaring.

Five freemasons, already members of the company, paid ten shillings for the privilege of being “accepted”—or perhaps as a contribution to a post-ceremonial feast. We have no idea how long this ceremony had been practiced, as records for the London Freemasons Company before 1619 do not exist.

Readers may note the name of Nicholas Stone. 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 the City of London,” sometime Master of the London Company of Freemasons, sculptor of one of the finest sepulchral monuments known to seventeenth-century history (the effigy of John Donne, St. 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 and theoretical studies.

Sculpture of John Donne, St. Paul’s Cathedral, by Nicholas Stone the elder. (Photo: Matthew Scanlan)

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. In that year he and his colleagues were prepared to pay the large sum of ten shillings for the privilege.

Incidentally, Stone’s son, Nicholas Stone the younger (a royalist), was the author of the Enchiridion of Fortification (1645). This is a most suggestive title when one realizes that in the year prior to publication, Elias Ashmole was put in charge of Oxford’s eastern defenses and a year later made a Free Mason.

The name Stone was not unknown to the Mainwaring family. Two years after the initiation of Colonel Henry Mainwaring and Elias Ash-mole, Ellen (née Minshull), the widow of Sir Philip Mainwaring, erected a mortuary chapel at the church at Upper Peover. The life-size marble effigies of herself and her husband were the work of either freemason Nicholas Stone the younger or one of his brothers, John or Henry.¹⁶

Dr. Plot’s statement in his Natural History of Staffordshire that the admission of accepted Free-masons “chiefly consists in the communication of certain secret signes, whereby they are known to one another all over the Nation, by which means they have maintenance whither ever they travel” is attested by seventeenth-century documentary records.

The earliest known English freemasonic catechism, Sloane Ms. 3329 (British Library), has been dated to c. 1700 or a little earlier, only fifty years or so after Ashmole’s initiation.¹⁷ 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 member 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 recognized 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.”

Practices seem to have varied; Sloane gives two forms of the master’s grip, his information apparently being secondhand, 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” that is worth relating in full, as it seems likely that something very similar to it was experienced by Ashmole and Mainwaring on (possibly) passing to fellow craft on October 16, 1646. (I have put the words in modern spelling and added punctuation—which is almost entirely absent from the original—not having been designed to be written down, but rather memorized.)

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 by cutting my tongue from my throat.

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.

A: He it was carried to ye highest pinnacle of the Temple of Jerusalem [note the Christian reference].

A: They Ley [sic] in a bound Case or under a three-cornered pavement, about a foot and a half from the Lodge door.

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.

A: There are three. The Square pavement, the blazing Star and the Danty tassley [a corruption of “perpend ashlar”].¹⁸

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.

A: As the said holy Chapel and all other holy Temples stand. (Viz.) east and west.

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. It is noteworthy also that the word degree does not occur in Ashmole’s diary entries, nor in the Sloane Mss.

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 thrust 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 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.

The key word Mahabyn has been compared to the Arabic—and particularly Sufic—greeting muhabba—that is, “love.” This might make sense of a record from John Sleigh’s A History of the ancient Parish of Leek.¹⁹ Sleigh refers to a tradition that a crusader-knight who was lord of Biddulph returned from the Holy Land in the twelfth century to Biddulph Moor with “paynim” (Saracens) who established themselves there and were the ancestors of the dark-skinned “Biddulph Moor men” who have survived to this day. According to Sleigh, one tradition maintained the Saracen was a mason; contemporary carvings extant in the church of St. Chad in Stafford have been observed to show striking and enigmatic Oriental influences.

Carvings in the church of St. Chad, Stafford, twelfth century.

Saracen knowledge undoubtedly informed the knights of this period who built castles and chapels in Staffordshire and Cheshire. The Crusades were of course a period of great interchange of knowledge between East and West, much of which was practical, esoteric, geometrical, mathematical, scientific, and architectural. The Earl of Chester (c. 1200) was much involved with building, and his favored knights no doubt had access to new processes, or at least to those who could operate them. That some ancient practices from the Middle Ages had been passed down to Ashmole’s time is in no way unreasonable, and the key word related above may be one such remnant of a great age of Oriental influence on the West.

For a man such as Ashmole with a deep longing to be acquainted with the records and practices of the past, a man driven by earnest instincts for preservation, a man whose personal concept of salvation seems to be synonymous with recovery of what was lost: for such a one, fraternity with the Free Masons must have contained great personal resonance.

To all that, add the references in the Old Charges to the ancient, pristine knowledge having been handed down to masons past by the work of Hermes, “the father of wise men,” patron of the astro-psychical and alchemical cosmos so dear to Ashmole, and one can begin to grasp the significance of the Craft for him.

Ruins of Beeston Castle, Cheshire, built by order of the crusading knight Ranulphus de Blundeville, Earl of Chester, early thirteenth century. The architecture of Beeston has been compared to the crusader castle at Sahyoun, Syria.

Ashmole was not alone in seeking a link between his own shattered times and the pre-Reformation world. The entire Renaissance had been built on the Platonic idea that education was remembrance—what the soul had enjoyed when it danced among the Ideas, before projection into earth. Progress lay in the recovery of what was lost, not in the embrace of novelty.

Those who suffered in the process of Parliament claiming and exercising prerogatives formerly held in trust by the king would also find, in the spiritual and practical traditions of Free Masonry, some reassurance and steadying perspective. They might also find signal inspiration for science, or, as Ashmole and his generation called it, “natural magick.”

Does the membership of Ashmole’s lodge at Warrington tell us anything about what attracted some men to “acception” within the Society of Free-masons?

First, the little lodge at or near Warrington on the Lancashire-Cheshire border was not a coven of esotericists, at least as far as we can tell! Nor was it a discussion group for the latest philosophical “discoveries.” What we see is a cross section of the upper middle to higher end of Cheshire and Lancashire society.

The Warrington lodge was largely made up of landed gentlemen from Cheshire and that county’s border with south Lancashire: royalists and parliamentarians both, with a significant number from families with traditions of faithfulness to the “old religion,” Catholicism. It is reasonable to conclude that for Ashmole, the contact came through the Mainwaring family and its connections with gentry (and probably craftsmen) to the north of the old County Palatine of Chester. But 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. Friar Thomas Penketh (d. 1487: one of the Penkeths who held lands from the lords of Warrington, the Boteler [Butler] family) was Head Hermit at the Priory of St. Augustine, Warrington. The Penketh coat of arms used to adorn a window in the Warrington Friary and a window in Warrington parish church. The Penkeths also patronized the church at Farnworth, to the west of Warrington.

We see here a suggestive connection between gentleman-landowners and the monastic and parochial system. This was also the case with respect to the Mainwarings in Cheshire and Staffordshire. The adherents of the old religion would have the greatest concern with old family chapels and their ornamentation—never mind the pre-Reformation monastic world to which fifteenth-century members of the Mainwaring family were bound by deeds of confraternity.²⁰ Puritans and Protestants generally devalued (at best) the physical representations of God’s houses.

The Penkeths lived at Penketh Hall, Penketh (a hamlet of Great Sankey), in the time of James I, as they had done since at least the early 1200s, but after 400 years, Richard Penketh sold Penketh Hall to Thomas Ashton, in 1624. The sale appears to have marked the demise of the family’s fortunes. It is perfectly possible that this Richard Penketh (or perhaps his son) was the same Richard Penketh who was warden of the lodge Ashmole describes as having gathered at Warrington.

Ashmole refers to a Henry Littler as having been present at his being made a Free Mason. The Littlers were a family of Cheshire gentry.

The Sankeys held mesne manors under the lords of Bewsey at Great and Little Sankey and were of sufficient consequence to have had their arms emblazoned in the windows of the Warrington church. The old family seat was the Hall at Sankey Parva or Little Sankey. Once a hamlet of Warrington, it may be that the lodge joined by Ashmole and Colonel Henry Mainwaring on that late October afternoon came alive at that place.

Penketh Hall today. The hall was rebuilt in 1757.

View from Penketh Hall of surviving farmland.

We have mentioned the Edward Sankey who wrote out the Masons’ Charges in October 1646. Born in early 1621, he was possibly the son of Richard Sankey. It is also possible that this was the Edward Sankey described by William Beamont in his The Chapelry of Sankey.²¹ Beamont called Sankey “the last of his ancient house of whom we hear, a man well born and well educated, and who had lately been abroad and seen something of military affairs.”

Having joined Sir William Brereton’s regiment of horse in 1642, this Edward Sankey received a commission to command a company. He was one of the party that, on New Year’s Day 1643, searched the house of Mr. Davenport of Bramhall. He also joined in the attack upon Withen-shaw, the house of Mr. Tatton.

Edward Sankey even appears in a contemporary lampoon verse—a verse that, intriguingly, includes a Mainwaring at arms. This could equally have been Edward Mainwaring of Whitmore, Thomas Mainwaring of Peover, or Colonel Henry Mainwaring of Karincham:

The remains of parkland, formerly part of Sankey Hall, leading down to Sankey Brook.

One can only speculate as to what might have kept Edward Sankey from joining his supposed father at a lodge that might well have been convened at the family home. Since Edward Sankey almost certainly wrote out the copy of the Old Charges used at Ashmole’s initiation, it is practically certain that the scribe was an accepted Free Mason. On the other hand, Edward Sankey may have indeed been present and Ashmole simply omitted his name for some reason of his own.

Ashmole recorded that one Hugh Brewer attended the initiation. 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 records on May 29, 1658).

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). This Collier, on June 3, 1640—at the age of thirty-two—married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Edward Stanley of Bickerstaffe, Lancashire, whose grandfather was Sir Randle Mainwaring of Peover—a relative of Colonel Henry Mainwaring, and thereby a distant relative of Elias Ashmole himself.²² 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.

The case of John Ellam’s brother, Richard, is particularly interesting. It shows how the Warrington lodge did not operate independently of the operative world of freemasons but was controlled by its customs and regulations.

Seventeenth-century Cheshire wills records reveal a Richard Ellom of Lymm, with a brother called John. Richard Ellom’s will (September 7, 1667) describes him plainly as a “freemason,” and shows that he had property to dispose of in a gentlemanly fashion. Freemasonry could be reasonably lucrative, as one might expect of such a vital craft. If this was the same Richard Ellam referred to by Ashmole, it seems likely that his singular presence at a lodge of accepted gentlemen fulfilled a stipulation of contemporary trade practice.

When a number of London Free and Accepted Masons attempted to establish a system of lodges beyond the control of craftsmen freemasons between 1720 and 1730, a chief instrument in their purposes was the publication of the Rev. James Anderson’s Constitutions of Free and Accepted Masons (1723). As if to preempt Anderson’s work, Free Mason J. Roberts—about whom nothing else is known—published another set of Constitutions in 1722. Significantly, he repeated the Charge of Grand Lodge MS. No. 2 that a properly constituted lodge must contain at least five Accepted brethren and a minimum of one Brother who was an active master of the trade.

Grand Lodge MS. No. 2 is a copy of the Old Charges, held by the United Grand Lodge of England. It dates from the 1660s and is possibly a product of an Assembly of Masons believed by both Roberts and Anderson to have been held in 1663. Ashmole’s “mother lodge” at Warrington in 1646 conforms to the rule regarding a properly constituted lodge. It also shows that the leaders of the trade craft of freemasons encouraged the existence of lodges constituted primarily of gentlemen for purposes other than training apprentices; a symbolic and learned Free Masonry running side by side with the trade seems to have been intended. John Ellam was almost certainly the statutory working freemason.

Ashmole’s introduction to this system must surely have come from his kinship with the Mainwaring family. He did, after all, ride up the road that joins Smallwood to Warrington with Colonel Henry Mainwaring, his father-in-law, Peter Mainwaring’s nephew.

Colonel Mainwaring was the squire of Karincham (now called Kermincham and pronounced by locals as “Kermidgum”). Kermincham is close to Swettenham, where Mainwarings were interred for many years. Records from the Consistory Court in Chester reveal that Henry Mainwaring of Karincham, the colonel’s grandfather (and Ashmole’s father-in-law’s father), was involved in a dispute over burial places and seats at the church of St. Luke, Goostrey, two miles away. Henry Mainwaring was permitted to build an out aisle or aisles on the north side of the chancel. One wonders who undertook the masonry.

The Advowson of Goostrey, incidentally, had been held by Dieulacres, a great abbey of the Staffordshire moorlands founded by Ranulphus, earl of Chester, in 1214. Roger de Mein-warin (Mainwaring), along with William de Venables, witnessed the earl’s instruction to his barons regarding its founding. As we have seen, 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 it was Margery who erected the unusual chapel at the church of St. Lawrence, Upper Peover, over the tomb of her husband Randle Mainwaring, who died in 1456. There are, as we have seen, numerous other monuments in St. Lawrence’s that testify to a long-standing relationship with fine sculptors and architects—freemasons—from the Middle Ages right into Ashmole’s time.

Six miles north of Upper Peover (on land given by William the Conqueror to the Venables family) is that church’s mother church of Rostherne, some six miles southeast of Warrington. 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 Richards: “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.”²³ The passion for building continued. In 1585 the stately home of Peover was completed. It still stands, unspoiled, in the midst of Peover Park, overlooking the church of St. Lawrence.

Tomb of Margery and Randle Mainwaring, who died in 1456 at Upper Peover, Cheshire. Margery was the daughter of Hugh Venables, baron of Kinderton, an ancestor of Ashmole’s first wife.

One further fact regarding Ashmole’s initiation may be noted. Colonel Mainwaring had in 1643 taken a leading role in the defense of Nantwich against the royalists, with 2,000 men and a furiously constructed but well-designed trench-and-earthwork system. Mainwaring’s later commitment to the parliamentarian cause seems to have wavered considerably, as the plot thickened, but he was, like all the fighting-age Mainwarings of whom we have knowledge, associated with Parliament.²⁴

There is no record that Ashmole regarded Mainwaring’s disloyalty to the person of Charles I with censure. Perhaps there was something in him that he felt to be above such partisan concerns. In the lodge to which he would be fraternally bound he encountered a Catholic, an Anglican, a parliamentarian, and a royalist: himself. Following the afternoon of October 16, 1646, what did they all have in common?

As far as we can tell, Elias Ashmole stayed in fellowship with Accepted Free Masonry to the end of his life. There were indeed more important things than political conflicts. As Ashmole wrote, “The stars rule mankind.”