The Magus of Freemasonry

Spring 1685: Lichfield was all in a hubbub. Why? An election had been called and a meeting arranged at Captain Orme’s home of Hanch Hall, three miles north of Lichfield. Present were Captain Orme, the candidate Sir Francis Lawley of Canwell, and Lawley’s election agent, John Lamb. Temperatures ran high; intemperate things were said.

Hanch Hall today, some three miles north of Lichfield.

Lawley had wanted to be the sole candidate, but on February 28, Simon Marten, junior bailiff of Lichfield, made contact with Elias Ashmole in London. Marten invited him (and Sir Francis Lawley), in the name of the bailiffs and the majority of the twenty-one brethren of the City’s Corporation, to be their candidate. The letter to Ashmole further alluded to the latter’s merits as signal benefactor to the City. Lancelot Addison, dean of Lichfield, made the same point in his letter to Ashmole. The dean and chapter also urged Ashmole to become the City of Lichfield’s Member of Parliament.

In the capital, meanwhile, King Charles II had only recently been buried, and Ashmole was required to assist with plans for the coronation of James II. However, honored by the junior bailiff’s request, he accepted the candidature, noting in his diary: “I sent them word I would stand, whereupon they set about getting votes for me, and I found the citizens very affectionate and hearty.”

Not all of the citizens were so affectionate. At Hanch Hall, John Lamb protested vehemently against Ashmole’s inclusion. In the excessive language familiar to observers of elections, Lamb declared Ashmole to be nothing more than a “Pittifull Exciseman,” a gibe intended to make the citizens of Lichfield look to their pockets—the election smear that usually works.

Ashmole calmly responded to the serious accusation in a letter to his election agent, Robert Wright, “next the Swan in Lichfield”: “There is little reason why I should be called Pitifull Exciseman, for I am not one in the usuall sense; but am set over the whole Revenue of the Excise by the King, to Controll and Check the Accounts thereof, and see that the Officers imployed in that affaire, doe not deceive the King of what they receive from the People: Soe that my Office (if rightly considered) should rather gaine me the good esteeme of the People, then calumnious reproach.”

While Ashmole was busy preparing the Coronation, Lawley and Captain Orme spent great sums on “treating.” However, what neither side in the election knew was that the king himself had already favored another candidate, Richard Leveson. The king innocently informed an anxious Ashmole that had he himself known of His Majesty’s comptroller of excise’s candidacy, he would not have hindered him. The new king asked Ashmole to stand down.

This was a hard blow for a man with such great affection for his birthplace and who deeply desired to serve her people. Republicans and cynics might suggest this to be an ironic commentary on the one-sided loyalty existing between royalists and their monarch. Observers of the career of James II might note this incident as a first sign of the hopeless ineptitude that would lose him the crown in 1688.

In spite of Ashmole’s resignation, the majority of voters still clung to him. He informed the king of this development, only to be told that the business had now “gone too far.” He must stand down. Somewhat humiliated, Ashmole then had to confirm his resignation and request that his supporters switch their vote to the king’s favorite. Nevertheless, many still voted for Ashmole, believing with all the naïvety on which democracy thrives that their will would give them the candidate they desired.

High-handedly, the sheriff gave all the Ashmole votes to Leveson, who thus won the seat. On March 28, 1685, the Lichfield City Muniments Hall Book recorded that the bailiffs and mayor had agreed that Richard Leveson Esq. “beinge Recommended by many of the Noble persons of the Nation” was elected Member of Parliament for Lichfield. Ashmole generously paid all his agents’ expenses and gave them an extra ten pounds (a considerable sum) with which to enjoy themselves.

The bailiffs and justices wrote to Ashmole on April 29, 1685, to say that his interest had been “the strongest of all the competitors.”¹ This would hardly have mollified his feelings. The letter continued to say how they had now spent his ten pounds on a coronation party where they drank to Ashmole’s health—and, presumably, to that of King James II as well—from his “owne noble Bowl.” That “noble Bowl” (of which we shall hear more presently) had been a gift to the Corporation, sent by Ashmole nearly two decades previously. This letter must have brought a slightly bitter, if ironic, smile to Ashmole’s ruddy face.

Ashmole nevertheless replied to the bailiffs and justices with all due grace, indicating his sorrow at the outcome of the election. He knew that this had probably been his last opportunity to sit for the City and County of Lichfield.

Serving the City and County would have meant a very great deal to him: “You cannot but imagine I looke upon my selfe as a very unfortunate man, that finde the love of my country men (almost without parallel) so great, and yet cannot accept of their Votes.”² A bitter cup to drink.

Contrary to the jibe of John Lamb the election agent, Ashmole had, in the previous decades, done greater service for Lichfield than toting up the excise returns, but what has truth got to do with elections?

At Ashmole’s first meeting with King Charles II on June 16, 1660, he informed the king of the regrettable condition of the cathedral of Lichfield. He told of how the central spire had been toppled by cannon shell, how only the chapter house and vestry were now roofed, and how beneath these tiles, prayers were being said for the king. The king “much lamented” the sorry picture and encouraged Ashmole to accomplish all things necessary that he could to reverse the situation.³ The king would himself contribute timber to the project in the tradition of King Hiram of Tyre, who gave timber for Solomon’s temple.

Ashmole spoke to his friend William Dugdale about what would need to be done. Within two days of meeting the king, Ashmole noted that “Mr Dugdale moved Dr Sheldon [Gilbert Sheldon, 1598–1677, bishop of London] to become an Instrument for the repaire of Lichfield Cathedral, and proposed that the Prebends &c. that were to be admitted shoulde parte with one half of the profits of their living towards the repaire of the Fabricke, which would be no great burden to them, considering their livings are all improved to a treble value at least, and by this example the Gentry might be invited to join with them in some considerable contribution.”⁴

Thanks to the urging of Ashmole, Dugdale, and Sheldon, John Hacket (1592–1670) was consecrated bishop of Lichfield in 1661. Hacket was a royalist hero, and the kind of man who would—and did—put his hand in his own pocket to oversee the restoration of the cathedral. His architect was William Wilson from Sutton Coldfield, of whom more will be said in due course.

Dr. Hacket was a natural choice for the bishopric. Under the Protectorate, he had been rector of St. Andrews Holborn, London. While serving there, his observation of traditional Anglican liturgy had been opposed by Puritans. According to Harwood’s introduction to Sampson Erdeswick’s Survey of Staffordshire of 1598, in order to enforce the Puritans’ prohibition, a soldier entered the church and put a pistol to Hacket’s head, ordering him to cease. Hacket continued, indifferent to the threat of death, saying, in a calm and grave voice, “Soldier, I am doing my duty; do you do yours.” The soldier, abashed, fled the field.⁵ Hacket was the right man for Lichfield.

Fourteen years earlier, when Ashmole had arrived in Lichfield from the siege of Worcester in 1646, he had to stand by as parliamentarians ransacked and vandalized the cathedral. Nevertheless, he managed to enter the shattered precincts and save precious music books of the cathedral library from the flames. (These works have since proved invaluable for our knowledge of sixteenth-century English church music.) Once library space was available, Ashmole returned the books along with others he had bought to the cathedral. On May 3, 1662, he wrote to Mr. Zachary Turnepenny, subchanter of the cathedral:

I have now sent down by Mr : Rixam your Lichf : Courier the Sett of Church Services and Anthems for the use of your Quire, with two Bookes of ruled paper wherein to Prick the Organ parte for both : in all 12 : Bookes [seven of them preserved today in the cathedral library] and well bound having the Episcopall Armes of your See imprest on the foreside, and my owne upon the other [Ashmole paid sixteen pounds for these books]. This is my first free-will Offring, which with a cheerfull and willing mind I dedicate to the Service of your Temple, and may as Pious a use be made of them in sounding forth the praises of the Almighty, as the donation hath sincerity of heart from your reall friend and humble servant E : A : Middle Temple 3 : May 1662⁶

Ashmole’s reference to the “Service of your Temple” might suggest a conception of the cathedral touched by his Free Masonry. Perhaps he recalled the words spoken at his initiation back in the dark days of 1646:

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.

From the vantage point of Ashmole’s inner life, it would be hard to avoid the conclusion that the restoration of the cathedral was understood to be an unmistakable analogy both for the alchemical renewal of the spirit that underpinned his life and, possibly, for the practical application of Temple symbolism.

Ashmole was certainly interested in the Temple of Jerusalem. There are among his papers extracts in his own hand taken from John Lightfoot’s The Temple: Especially as it stood in the dayes of our Saviour. With measurements of the second Temple of Jerusalem (London, 1650). Dr. John Lightfoot, learned divine and one of the editors of the Polyglot Bible, was born in Stoke, Staffordshire, in 1602.

In 1663, Gilbert Sheldon became archbishop of Canterbury. He would initiate the rebuilding of St. Paul’s Cathedral after the Great Fire (1666) and as chancellor of the University of Oxford would at his own expense employ Christopher Wren to build the extraordinary Sheldonian Theatre, Oxford, in 1665.

In the same year as his friend Sheldon’s consecration as archbishop, Ashmole contributed twenty pounds and again ten pounds toward the restoration of the cathedral. Praised for this act in a Latin poem by Thomas Smith, the cathedral sacrist, Ashmole did not confine his benefactions to the Cathedral Close.

On January 19, 1660, before the Restoration, Ashmole received a letter addressed to his chambers in the Middle Temple from the churchwardens of St. Michael’s, Greenhill, Lichfield, thanking him for “freely giv[ing] £5 towards the building of St. Michael’s Church in Lichfield.”⁷ Ashmole never gave anything less than five pounds a year for the city’s poor. The City and Corporation also received a share of Ashmole’s love for Lichfield.

On the evening of Thursday, January 17, 1666, the Lichfield Corporation held its Epiphany Feast at the George Inn, Bird Street. A party of about thirty gentlemen, including two bailiffs, the sheriff, members of the Corporation and the Grand Jury, the steward of the City, and the Earl of Southampton, gathered to witness the handing over of a gift.

“I bestowed on the Bailiffs of Lichfield a large chased silver bowl and cover, cost me £23 8/6d,”⁸ Ashmole recorded. Was this presentation, made by Zachary Turnepenny, the cathedral sacrist, a way of somehow “paying his dues” to his uncle and grandfather, both bailiffs, a loving nod and smile in the direction of his humble origins?

Ashmole’s commitment to Lichfield was not a matter of the past. He carried his interest in Lichfield with him all his life. Furthermore, he had property interests—apart from the family house—in and about the city. On November 9, 1667, for example, he took a lease of the Moggs in Lichfield “from the Bailifs, and then d[ul]y paid 20l: in part of 40, Fine.”⁹

The chased silver bowl and cover presented as a gift to the bailiffs of Lichfield by Elias Ashmole in 1666. (Photographs taken with the kind permission of the staff of St. Mary’s Heritage Centre, Lichfield.)

This may have been a way of contributing to the income of Lichfield’s Conduit Lands Trust, which leased various properties (including part of the Moggs, or marshy places, around Stowe and Minster Pools) to raise money for provision of water to the citizens of Lichfield and to support the poor.

At the discretion of the trustees of the Conduit Lands Trust, Lichfield underwent some major structural improvements after the Restoration, particularly as regards the probable addition of three conduits in the city; money had to be raised to pay for the work.

In 1666, for example, new conduit work and repairs had reached the stage where a permanent plumber was required. According to Trust records, “William Hollis … Common Plummer for the Common Conduits of the City” was the first to hold the job.¹⁰ He was to be paid six pounds annually. It is possible that part of his income derived from Ashmole’s generosity. The “Courier Mr Rixam” mentioned by Ashmole as the one who carried the cathedral service books from London to Lichfield may have been the William Wrixam (or a relative of the same) who was named warden of the Conduit Lands Trust in 1676.

On September 29, 1674, Ashmole paid thirteen shillings, four pence rent for waste ground on Bacon Street. On August 1 of the same year, Ashmole had “lent Mr Edw : Hopkins 400l : upon a Mortgage of his Lands in Little Pipe neere Lichfeild.”¹¹

Ashmole’s continuing contribution to Lichfield life was recognized in the extraordinary letter of thanks sent to him in gratitude for that stunning bowl inscribed “The Gift of Elias Ashmole Esq., Windsor Herald at Arms, 1666,” now on display at St. Mary’s Heritage Centre, Lichfield.

The letter from the bailiffs John Burnes and Henry Baker on January 26, 1666, is highly revealing both of the way they saw Ashmole and of the way they thought he saw the cathedral—and, doubtless, himself. The letter presents us with the glittering picture of Ashmole, a trusted servant of the king, an astrologer and profound scholar, being hailed by a group of Staffordshire bourgeois as nothing less than a Magus:

For the truly honoured Elias Ashmole Esq., at his chamber in the Middle Temple, over Serjeant Maynard’s Chamber. In his absence, to be left with the Butler or Porter of the Middle Temple, London …

… It is the gift of an Elias, a herald, not only proclaiming, but actually contributing good things to our city; and that by the hand of a Zacharias [Zachary Turnepenny], a faithful messenger, who with the gift did emphatically communicate the sense and good affection of the giver … as if some propitious stars arising in the East had, (at this time) gone before our Magus [Ashmole], steering its course to this our city of Lichfield, (the Sarepta of our Elias) and stood over the new-erected pyramids of our cathedral, (where as yet a star appears) darting its benign influence on this poor and loyal city, inviting the Magi from afar, to offer some tribute to it : a city that hath nothing to glory in but its ancient and modern Loyalty to God and Caesar … like one of those true Magi that offered to Christ in his poorest condition, you have largely offered to the repaire of his Church our ruined Cathedral. But you have likewise Annually and liberally offered, relieved, and refreshed Christ in his members, the poor of our City.¹²

The constant references to Ashmole as a magus and the description of the restored spires as “pyramids” suggest strong Hermetic (Egyptian) implications and in-references. His reputation in such matters was now public knowledge—and was approved of, at least by these loyal bailiffs.

In 1673, the bailiffs and Corporation entertained Ashmole and his wife at “a dinner and a great Banquet” to honor their benefactor.¹³ Four years later, the Ashmophile bailiffs had another opportunity to demonstrate their appreciation of “our Magus.” On November 4, 1677, Ashmole recorded how “Mr Rawlins Towne Clarke of Lichf : said Richard Dyott MP had died” and that Rawlins and his friends would therefore like Ashmole to be returned member for the City and County of Lichfield.¹⁴

“I answered,” he noted, that “I had noe inclination to accept of that Honour, and therefore desired him to give my thanks to all that were so well affected to me.”¹⁵ Support for him was so great, however, that on New Year’s Day 1678, after much hesitation, Ashmole changed his mind and declared his willingness to be “Burgess” of Lichfield: “I am still very willing to stand and serve my County, if my well-wishers there be not too much weakened by this my unwilling delay.”¹⁶

What were Ashmole’s politics? An intriguing question, for which we have little evidence to assist us in finding an answer, save his loyalty to the king and deep love of tried and trusted tradition. He had no bees in his bonnet about religion, and he was friendly with men who thought differently from himself.

In a letter of April 15, 1675, his friend William Lilly signed off, “no Tory—but your old friend William.”¹⁷ Lilly, of course, had been a supporter of Parliament during the civil wars. The use of the word “Tory” is fascinating and is, according to Josten, “a remarkably early occurrence of the word in a connotation which could not be other than political. William Lilly appears to imply that Ashmole favored the opinions of the court party and perhaps the interests of the Duke of York [the king’s brother in favor of Catholic toleration].” This may in fact be the first ever use of the word “Tory” in a political context, and it is most amusing to find it in relation to Elias Ashmole. Indeed, the phenomenon should give us pause for thought.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary (1926), “Tory” is a nickname first used by Exclusioners in 1679–80 for those who opposed the exclusion from the throne of the Roman Catholic Duke of York. If Ashmole might have been “the first Jacobite” (!) the world had no chance of finding out for sure. On January 4, 1678, the bailiffs of Lichfield called a Common Hall and gave their votes to Sir Henry Litleton, believing Ashmole was not committed to stand. His aforementioned letter asserting his willingness to stand arrived later and caused fresh debate. However, the matter was settled in Litleton’s favor in February.

Neither Lichfield nor Ashmole could leave the other alone for long. Even after his sad resignation in favor of the king’s candidate, Richard Leveson, in 1685 (which might make one wonder how attached Ashmole really was to the court party after the death of Charles II), he could always rely on being called upon when Lichfield lacked funds for renovation.

Three years later, James II fled the country in the “Glorious Revolution” that ousted him in favor of William and Mary. While King James dropped his lions’ seal into the Thames, Dean Lancelot Addison begged Ashmole to pay for the completion of the cathedral’s ten-bell peal (October 15, 1688).

“Whatever interest this City and Church have in your Birth and Education,” wrote Addison, “hath already redounded, insomuch honour thereby, and in your continual bounty, to both … nor in truth have we any other Argument, but your Charity and our necessity.”¹⁸

Ashmole played such an important and nowadays unrecognized role in the renovation and restoration of Lichfield (especially her cathedral) after the disaster of the civil wars that it is worth looking in more depth at just exactly what that renovation involved.

That is to say, if we were to take our own time’s shiny, colorful guidebooks as a guide, we might well infer that the renovation of the cathedral was simply an ecclesiastical matter, overseen by good Bishop Hacket in a glorious declaration of faith. The Church itself apparently knew its duty and did all it could to set things in order and strive forward in willing readiness for that deeply solemn service held on Christmas Eve 1669, when Bishop Hacket at long last reconsecrated the cathedral as Lichfield’s children dreamed of Boxing Day.

My own recent researches into the matter reveal a somewhat different picture from this triumphalist if nonetheless inspiring image. The aim is to locate where the true inspiration came from.

Ten years after the reconsecration of the cathedral, vital work was still going on. William Gorton’s rough bills for mason work and for drawing stone in 1677–78 give us some idea of where Ashmole’s and others’ benefactions were going.

[there follows William Gorton’s Mark—two interlocking V’s, like a “W’]

Details of restoration work on the pinnacles above the west front of I ichfield Cathedral.

Bills, receipts, letters, and the contract for the altarpiece of the cathedral, 1677–1680, tell a sorry story of unwillingness on behalf of the dean and chapter to pay properly for work undertaken by the finest carvers and joiners in the land.

A (draft) letter “To the Reverend the Dean of Lichfield [Dr Smallwood] Tho : Kinward Hen : Philips”:

Price paid for his work on Chapell Royal—93l “as was approved under Sr. Chris : Wrens hand in ye office of his works, and your altar is full as great as that : only the 2 sydes of your Church is not carved which is about 1/3d your work less than that. I dare submitt those whole to you when it is done, but sure I am that 50l is the least I can afford it fore, … so craving your Speedy anser, knowing our materials already—Your most humble servants. Robert Streeter London the 13 October 1677.²⁰

Letters passed to and fro on the subject of the money owed. Finally, on November 14, the dean and chapter paid fifty pounds. In July 1678 there arrived in Lichfield another bill, “for painting and gilding the great Altar of Lichfield,” also from Robert Streeter.

An allowance to be made for the time that my son and servant spent going up and down to Lichfield

This bill, along with others, was not paid. Still waiting for the money to feed his family, Robert Streeter died, leaving his son Robert Jr. to pick up the pieces. He wrote a letter of complaint to the dean and chapter, informing them of his father’s death and the debts unpaid, along with outstanding travel expenses. The dean had little comfort to offer, giving his opinion that Robert’s father would have settled for a hundred pounds in full “had he survived.”²²

I do affirm that my father was so far from doubting of being well paid counting to the said and Modest Amount He rendered to you that he was not without hope that you would consider with extraordinary care … on his part so far as to … in some further reward as was done for his work at the [Sheldonian] Theatre of Oxford when he had a [indecipherable] made him of 100£ more than his modest demand.

We have asked Surveyor Generall Sr Christopher Wren to examine the Bookes of the offices and under his hand what payment was mad[e] … and you make the better judgement of what I offer to you. That for the painting and guilding of the whole Altarpiece with the 2 sides (which in length are … rounds to £157-13-0 …

… humbly submitted to your Charity and goodness toward a disturbed widow … ²³

While his father had had better treatment from Ashmole’s friends Gilbert Sheldon and Christopher Wren, Streeter was still trying to wring the money out of the stingy dean and chapter in June 1679. However, while no record survives of a payment to him and his widowed mother, the younger Streeter was again working for the dean and chapter in September of that year, along with his brother Charles and Nathaniel Pollard, both painters. A bill survives:

Twenty years later, important work was still going on at the cathedral. Eleven years after Dean Lancelot Addison begged Ashmole for money for the ten-bell peal, the same Dean Addison and his Canon Residentiary John Willes drew up Articles of Agreement with Henry Vernon, freemason.

Articles of Agreement made and agreed by our beloved John Willes Dr. in Divinity one of the Canons Residentiary of the Cathedral Church of Lichfield … Lancelot Addison Dean of Lichfield” and “Henry Vernon of the City and County of Lichfield freemason” 4 May 1699. “to finish by 1st day of September… . Making Globes … Steeples … £66/10s over and above £5 already paid him.—in instalments £300—£36/10- … that the said Henry Vernon shall towards the carrying on … the work of the said Steeples have all ye rough unhewn stone lying in the churchyard of the said cathedrall Church, belonging to the said Dean and Chapter, first for his use therein, that also the Iron, Lead, Globe … and all of ye … the old materialls of the said Steeples … or taken down and which did belong thereto.

W. Walmisley Public Notary—Henry Vernon [very rough signature] John Willes.²⁵

One can see from all of this that money for the dean and chapter was in very short supply. Old and used materials were being recycled and debts were avoided where possible. Dean Addison did not overstate his position when he referred in his begging letter to Elias Ashmole of the dean and chapter’s “necessity.”

It may be recalled that when Charles II first encouraged Ashmole to render service to the cathedral’s restoration at the time of the monarch’s own restoration, he spoke to William Dugdale. Dugdale and Ashmole established the principle that the cathedral’s prebendaries should pay a portion of their income toward the repair of the cathedral fabric. It may not come as a complete surprise that this recommendation was blankly ignored by a number of the prebendaries.

Less than two years after Hacket’s reconsecration ceremony, the dean and chapter were forced to petition the Court of Exchequer for the submission of John Manwaring, Alexander Featherstone, and several other prebendaries with regard to their refusal to pay fees due to the Fabric Fund. The case was complicated by the fact that the dean and chapter asserted the precedent that such a requirement existed before the civil wars, but that the documentation appertaining thereto had been lost at the hands of parliamentarian vandals.

However, it appeared in the course of investigations in 1671 that relevant documents were being witheld deliberately by the prebendaries themselves!

Prebends … have severally and responsibly paid and ought to pay unto the said dean and chapter for the time being the yearly rent or sum of 20 shillings or some such like sum for and towards the repairs fabrics or other uses of the said Cathedrall church and the prebendary of the prebend of high Offly [near Lapley, to the east of Lichfield] not having his [?] residence as aforesaid hath paid and ought to pay … yearly sums of forty shillings which said severall and respective payments have for many hundreds of years … before the yeare one thousand six hundred and 40 boons paid by the several and respective prebendaries …

… the payment thereof until the late troublesome times when the lands and Revinues of the said Church were sequestered and exposed to sale and all the deeds writings evidences booke notes and Records of and belonging to ye Orators … and Interests of the said Church were taken away lost and imbezilled … being part of the 26 prebends that is to say John Manwaring Doctor of Divinitie now is and for the space of 4 yeares ended at Michaelmas last past hath been prebendary of the prebend of Weeford within or belonging to the said Cathedrall Church and Samuel Gardner Doctor of Divinitie now is for the space of nyne yeares ended at Michaelmas last past hath been prebendary of the prebend of high Offly within or belonging to the said Cathedrall Church. And John Boylston Doctor of Divinitie now is and for the space of ten yeares ended at Michaelmas last past hath been prebendary of the prebend of Sandacres [?] … and John Cornelius, prebendary of Hansacre. And Hugh Humfryes Clarke … prebend of Skipton Deveraux Sparrow Clarke … prebend of Gay Minor Thomas Indman Clerke … prebend of Whittington and Alexander Featherstone, Clerke … prebend of Colwich. Samuel Bold, Clerke … prebend of Curdborough.²⁶

The prebendaries’ defense was that without the deeds and books taken in the troublesome times, the orators could not make sufficient title to “the said severall yearly sums of 20 shilings and 40 shillings.” There was no testimony from the Vicars Resident before 1640, as all from before that time were now dead. The dean and chapter took the legal path of Equity, especially as the dean and chapter knew that the prebendaries:

[h]aving in their hands some deeds writings or other evidences notes or Memorandums touching or concerning their said several prebends which doe manifest the original ground reason cause or uses of our … for the said annual payments of the said sums of money and do refuse to search … or discover the same … the said confederates do now … and give out in speeches that these are not now such annual sums of money as aforesaid nor any other whatsoever due or payable from the same confederates as any of them unto ye Orators to or for the uses and purposes aforesaid or to or for any other use or purpose whatsoever and therefore the said confederates do refuse to pay the said several and respective sums of money as aforesaid.

Which in Justice and Equity they ought to do although the said confederates very well know and have heard that the same is justly by them due and payable to ye Orators as aforesaid—all the other prebends with or belonging to the said Cathedrall Church have paid and do pay unto ye Orators the like sums … and that the said Cathedrall Church at Lichfield is very much decayed and out of repair.²⁷

The message was simple. “We know you’ve got the documentary evidence; it belongs to the cathedral. The reason you won’t surrender it is that it proves you owe the money. Pay up!”

I hope the above examples from the very slender quantity of surviving documents from the restoration process serve to emphasize the dire need of the Church for men such as Ashmole and his friends. Contrary to popular belief, the Church could not—and on occasion would not—provide wholly for itself.

It is touching, then, to note that the visitor to Lichfield Cathedral today will find many carvings of whole figures on the cathedral’s exterior, most of them the work of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century operative freemasons. Of these the vast majority depict English kings, biblical figures, saints or Fathers, and officers of the Church. The only figures that do not fit into these categories are as follows: Godfroi de Bouillon, who took Jerusalem for Christ in 1099; Elias Ashmole, holding his museum; Christopher Wren, carrying dividers and clutching St. Paul’s; Izaak Walton, holding a book; and King Charles II, wearing the “Lesser George” that Walton helped redeem for the king by secret means in 1651. Except for the mighty Crusader, the representatives of the laity all accomplished their works during the maturity of Elias Ashmole. The sculpture of Ashmole is the only one depicting him in the world.

The oldest of these sculptures is by far the largest. Standing some eight feet high, the statue of Charles II used to rest on a plinth inscribed RESTAURATOR, itself poised high above the west end of the cathedral. Perhaps biting the hand that fed it, the dean and chapter removed the statue to make way for a statue of Christ in the nineteenth century. One would care to know why: The statue of Christ was predictable; that of Charles, unique.

Sculptures on the exterior of the Lady Chapel, Lichfield Cathedral, depicting (left to right) Elias Ashmole (holding his museum), Izaak Walton, and Sir Christopher Wren (holding St. Paul’s and a pair of dividers).

Statue of King Charles II, Restaurator, carved by Sir William Wilson for the west front of Lichfield Cathedral. The king is wearing the Lesser George (Garter jewel) worn by his father at his martyrdom in 1649 and rescued by Izaak Walton in 1651.

The Restaurator now stands alone, governing no one and nothing, by the south door of Lichfield Cathedral. A small inscription from the 1990s says that Charles provided timber for the restoration of the cathedral. What it does not tell the visitor is that this great sculpture was the work of Sir William Wilson, architect and Accepted Free Mason.

Whatever else the statue of King Charles II may be thought to represent, it certainly serves as a remarkable objective correlative to the timely coming together of a set of persons and principles of great historic significance. These principles must seem practically invisible, and certainly hostile, to today’s Tupperware-deep “political correctness,” a new name for an old disease.

When the Church of England was spiritually revived in the midnineteenth century, the Oxford Movement that galvanized the revival looked back to the restored Caroline Church as a marker of church and state in a dynamic, even harmonious spiritual relationship. They believed that King Charles I had been “martyred”: that is, he had borne witness to this cause and been prepared to suffer death for it, if need be. The monarch needed the Church and the Church, the monarch.

Left to freewheeling, “free-thinking” Republicans and assorted radical interest lobbies, the Church had, under Cromwell’s rule, been laid waste. The people did not, by and large, like the new regime either—not that Cromwell cared much for the people. He had a personal “hot line” to God’s will. So the people, were they not so wicked, should have understood why they lost Christmas, Maypoles, theaters, sport, some sexual innocence. They also lost favorite buildings, traditional loyalties, historic continuity, and the vital spirit of mystery that gives a people infinite depth.

A modern res publica is quick to give the folks back their jollies (in the name of personal liberty, or votes), but cannot for the life of it supply the mystique, having intrinsically denied “infinite depth” to anything. Most “modernizers” are either atheists by conviction, agnostics by the lack of it, or purveyors of their own versions of religious idealism that they choose to call “Christian” or the name of some other religious tradition. From these traditions they cherry-pick the bits that suit their purposes and those “deepest convictions” that are deep only to superficial minds.

Lichfield’s fate was, to the thinking part of the royalist cause, a patent object lesson of the Cromwellian disaster; its restoration was therefore vital. It has seemed to this author that the spiritual, intellectual, and psychological mortar that bound the deeper needs of this country into a coherent program of restoration found much of its substance in a spiritual conception of Free Masonry.

The statue of Charles II is like a mason’s mark made flesh, so to speak: a union of a divine monarchic principle, the Church as the repository of the nation’s highest spiritual inheritance, and the lay spiritual traditions of freemasons’ labor and inspirational Accepted Free Masonry. This invisible union lasted surprisingly well and can be shown to have served the country through the gravest of crises.

The detaching of the king and the Free Masons’ work from the main body of the cathedral may then appear to be a parable of a greater rift in English society. A tree may think itself strong by virtue of its pretty flowers, until a strong wind whisks it away with a chuckle.

Men of Ashmole’s caliber know how deep the roots of lasting human endeavor must be. Those roots must grow in both directions, he asserts in Fasciculus Chemicus (and all his works): to the highest—to heaven—and to earth and nature, bound and wed within the operator, or artifex. This image he understood in the esoteric principle of the “alchemical wedding,” which Blake later described cheekily (following the language of Jacob Böhme) as “the Marriage of Heaven and Hell.” Mathematics is glimpsed first in the material, then stretches forth to the immaterial, which principle in ourselves enables us to see the mathematical laws in the material in the first place. The alchemical serpent swallows its own tail: Know thyself.

The traditions of the freemasons, given additional symbolic emphasis in Accepted Free Masonry, served to assert the truth that whatever man conceives from the infinite ocean of imagination, its outer representation must work; it must stand, must last. That is to say, the work must be in harmonic concordance with cosmic, natural law that is a universal principle for all things; man is a participant. The work must be true.

For a person to grasp the deeper truth underlying both the theological commonplaces of conventional religious education and the wide practical traditions of geometry and construction, he must be “reborn.” The Master must die to his old self and be raised in conscious awareness to an ego-defying sodality with high-minded individuals dedicated to perfection, the greater Good, the revelation, and practical service of the greater Architect.

That “Architect” may be understood as the “lost word” of Free Masonry: the implicate principle of mind, or logos, in the universe, detectable as a “divine signature” in any part of the creation, however small. Each part contains the whole, Hermeticists believed, and the whole is in each part. A world is in a grain of sand.

History demonstrates that those ignorant of these simple rules of life are agents of or dupes in the destruction of all that is good. Good intentions are frequently the mask of devastating ignorance and stupidity, like the fool who in digging a well sticks his spade through his own power supply and electrocutes himself. “Whomsoever shall fall upon that stone shall be crushed; but on whomsoever it shall fall, he shall be winnowed” (Luke 20:17–18).

So when one looks at the simple word restaurator applied to the majesty of King Charles II, one can with a little effort see a greater principle of restoration and spiritual resurrection that is as valid today as it was three and a half centuries ago. Ashmole’s life was in its highest phase in the service of that principle; this is what makes him great. He truly was the Mercuriophilus Anglicus, and like all great mercurial characters, he had the power to attract dynamic people to his purposes.

In Sir William Dugdale’s Antiquities of Warwickshire we learn that in the church of Holy Trinity, Sutton Coldfield, was once the following inscription:

Near this Place lieth the Body of Sr WILLIAM WILSON Knight, interred here by his own desire. He was born at Leicester; but after his Marriage with his well beloved Lady JANE, Relict of HENRY PUDSY Esq; he lived many years in this Parish, where he also died the 3d Day of June 1710 in the 70th year of his age, and generally beloved, and very much & no less deservedly lamented : being a Person of great Ingenuity, singular Integrity, unaffected Piety, and very fruitful in good Works, the only issue he left behind him.

In March 1682, William Wilson (1641–1710) was knighted for his services to architecture. He worked on the restoration of Lichfield Cathedral, and on the rebuilding of Nottingham Castle, where King Charles I first flew the royal standard of resistance to Parliament.

A few days after having been knighted by King Charles II, Sir William Wilson joined a group of five other men, most of whom were closely involved with the freemasons’ governing body, to become an accepted Free Mason. In attendance as the “senior Fellow” present was Elias Ashmole, presumably summonsed by the Master. Ashmole left the sole record of this occasion.

Ashmole’s record of the Acception of Sir William Wilson and others at Mason’s Hall, London, in March 1682. (Bodleian Library, Ashmole MS. collection)

About 5pm I received a summons, to appear at a Lodge to be held the next day at Masons 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 Tho: Wise Mr: of the Masons Company this present year. Mr: Thomas Shorthose, Mr: Thomas Shadbolt, Waindsford Esqr 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.²⁹

Mason’s Hall used to stand in Masons Avenue, Basinghall Street, in the City of London. The hall had been 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 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.

Some readers may be aware that there has been a long-standing debate over the origins of Freemasonry. The English order that thrives today—the oldest organized body—tends to date its creation from 1717 when, it is commonly held, the use of the expression “Grand Lodge” was first associated with a midsummer activity organized by four London lodges. After that date, Freemasonry as a body distinct from the trade of freemasonry begins to emerge. That is to say, by 1730 the order could technically function as an order even if the trade of masonry and architecture hypothetically vanished.

The site of Mason’s Hall, Masons Avenue, off Basinghall Street, City of London.

The arms of the London Mason’s Company (seventeenth century), formerly the Freemasons Company. (Photo: Matthew Scanlan)

However, the two accounts that Ashmole made, together with other evidence, make it clear that there was a body within the freemasons’ governing trade body that practiced Accepted Free Masonry. The survival of Accepted Free Masonry did not require severance from the trade.

Fellowship in this body did not require an operative apprenticeship, but we may sensibly suppose its ceremonies and symbols to be at one with the trade at its highest level. While it might appear at first sight that Ashmole’s 1646 account of his initiation had no necessary connection with the trade, most initiates in the 1682 acceptation were members of the trade body. Ashmole’s extraordinarily revealing record, including the “acception” (acceptation) of Sir William Wilson, proves that Accepted Free Masonry was an infra-trade practice.

Let us look at the men with whom Ashmole enjoyed fellowship—and a fine dinner—on that late afternoon in the City in the spring of 1682.

William Wilson was, according to Josten (who researched the Fellowship), originally a freemason from Sutton Coldfield; he was not a member of the Mason’s Company of the City of London.

William Woodman, on the other hand, took the Freedom of the London Mason’s Company on July 21, 1678 (“probably aged 21”).³⁰ He was to be master of the Mason’s Company in 1708 and is mentioned in Grand Lodge lists in 1723 and 1725.

William Grey was “probably the youngest candidate,” a member of the Mason’s Company who became master of the company in 1703.³¹ Thomas Wilson (c.1618–85) was elected master of the Mason’s Company on January 1, 1682. Thomas Shorthose was renter warden of the Mason’s Company in 1656 and master in 1664. Thomas Shadbolt (or Shotboult) was master of the Mason’s Company in 1668.

Regarding “[blank] Waindsford Esq,” the man was probably Rowland Rainsford (described in the records of the Mason’s Company as “late apprentice to Robert Beadles”), who was “admitted a freeman” of the company on January 15, 1668. Nicholas Young was master of the Mason’s Company in 1682 and 1683. John Shorthose was warden of the Mason’s Company for the same period, along with William Stanton (1639–1705).

William Hamon was, according to Josten, “doubtless identical” with the William Hammond who was present at a meeting of the Mason’s Company on April 11, 1682.³²

John Thompson was a member of the Mason’s Company. One can only speculate as to whether this fellow Accepted Free Mason was the John Tompson whom Ashmole visited in September 1652 at Dove Bridge, Staffordshire, and who used a magical Call to ascertain the health of Ashmole’s friend Dr. Wharton. He may also have been the same John Thompson recorded by Ashmole as having been present at the evocation of a spirit by a “speculator” using a magick circle in Buckinghamshire in 1667.

In 1682, Ashmole is specific about the events that took place on March 11—the “new accepted” masons paid for the noble dinner at the Half-Moon Tavern. What was this acception that had apparently grown up within the London Company? Masonic historian Matthew Scanlan has expressed the view that 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.’ ”

Scanlan considers it likely that the acception dealt with the symbolic, allegorical, or so-called speculative side of architecture. However, if one had suggested to Ashmole himself that Free Masonry was “speculative,” he might well have thought you were referring to the activities of the “speculator” in Buckinghamshire who tried to evoke a spirit, a suggestion that would doubtless have given him pause for thought.³³

The adjective speculative generally referred to an occult activity, or one that involved mathematics or imaginative projection: that is, conjuring. We have all at some time or another “conjured up an image.” The earliest English masonic catechism, in answer to the question “How high is your Lodge?” gives the answer “It reaches to the heavens.” The lodge was an imaginative projection, “conjured up” by its members to embody a center of the universe.

There were to be other visitants to the center of the freemasons’ universe. Some of them were known personally to Elias Ashmole.

A note in the hand of Ashmole’s friend the antiquarian John Aubrey was found attached to a manuscript copy of his Natural History of Wiltshire (1685):

This day (May 18th Being Munday 1691 after Rogation Sunday) is a great Convention at St Paul’s Church of the Fraternity of the Adopted Masons where Sr. Christopher Wren is to be adopted as a Brother.

This convention is also reported in a manuscript of John Evelyn, another acquaintance of Elias Ashmole:

Sir Christopher Wren (architect of S.Paules) was at a convention (at S.Paules 18 May 1691), of Free-masone adopted a Brother of that Society; shore have ben kings of this sodality.³⁴

Wren, most famous as the architect of St. Paul’s Cathedral, had been president of the Royal Society (1680–82), and at his death in 1723, several newspapers referred to him as that “worthy Free Mason.”³⁵

Christopher Wren Jr. belonged to the Old St. Paul’s Lodge, serving as master in 1729. Since 1691 (the date in Aubrey’s account of Wren’s “adoption” at St. Paul’s church), that lodge had met at the Goose and Gridiron tavern in St. Paul’s churchyard. The first “Grand Lodge” (openly discussed in 1716 to organize a midsummer shindig) was formed, according to Anderson’s Constitutions of Freemasonry (1738), at the Goose and Gridiron.

In the same year as Wren’s “Adoption,” John Thompson was the master of the Mason’s Company. His workshop supplied work for Wren. Thompson, a Free and Accepted Mason, was, as we have seen, present at the acception of several brethren that took place with Elias Ashmole as Senior Fellow at Masons Hall, Basinghall Street, in March 1682.

High on the south side of St. Paul’s Cathedral sits a huge carving of a phoenix, symbolizing the rebirth of the cathedral after the Great Fire of 1666. The phoenix was of course an alchemical image. In Ashmole’s transcription of alchemist Norton’s Ordinal of Alchemy, 1477 (Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, 1652), it is recorded that a number of professions, including the Free Masons, “love this profound philosophy.” The phoenix carved on St. Paul’s was the work of Wren’s expert carver, Caius Gabriel Cibber. Cibber’s son was a Free and Accepted Mason. The latter’s father had inherited his workshop from ffreemason and king’s master mason Nicholas Stone, who had joined the Accepcion [sic] at Mason’s Hall in 1638.

Phoenix carved high on St. Paul’s Cathedral by Caius Gabriel Cibber. The inscription below reads Resurgam (I will rise again). (Photo: Matthew Scanlan)

It is now perfectly clear that a vivid world of Free and Accepted Masonry existed within the world of stone masonry craftsmanship before the establishment of the Grand Lodge. As Masonic historian Matthew Scanlan has written in his fascinating essay, “New Light on Sir Christopher Wren”: “Indeed, if we remember that the earliest known masonic ceremonies date from as early as Wren’s alleged initiation and that these rites centerd upon veiled notions of death and rebirth, then we are a step clearer to understanding the origins and meaning of the Craft.”³⁶

We are also a step nearer to understanding Elias Ashmole, the Magus of Lichfield.