WHY DOES ALBERTA MASONRY HAVE TWO RITES?

October 1, 1988

by Bro. J.H. Laycraft PGR

Recently I attended a sister lodge, which practices the Ancient York Rite, on the occasion of the initiation of a young friend into the Craft. After congratulating the new Mason I said: "Now you must visit my lodge. It is a Canadian Rite Lodge and you will see that the lessons of Masonry are presented much differently there."

And so the young Mason learned to his surprise that there are two markedly different rites of Freemasonry in Alberta and that there are, in fact, many variations of those rites in North America in jurisdictions recognized by his own Grand Lodge. "How," he asked, "did these differences come about"

(1) The answer to his question takes us through a fascinating period of Masonry. We must journey back in history nearly 250 years to the time of a great division between Masons, the quarrel between the "Ancients" and the "Moderns."

We must then trace the spread of Freemasonry from the old world to the new and thence across the United States into Canada and across the western plains to Alberta. The first step in our journey is to review the great quarrel in English Freemasonry. For sixty-two years, from 1751 until 1813, England had two rival Grand Lodges living in bitter enmity.

Each regarded the other as clandestine. Bernard E. Jones, in his superb text, "Freemasons' Guide and Compendium" (2) describes this period of history as being "disfigured by a long and violent quarrel."(3) Masonry was in turmoil for more than half a century. Indeed, from our present perspective, one wonders that it survived.

Particularly in North America, the battle between the "Ancients" and the "Moderns" continues, even today, to influence the Craft. It is certainly responsible for most of the differences between the rituals of various North American jurisdictions. Even we Albertans, with a Masonic history extending barely beyond a century, may trace our difference in ritual to this old dispute.

First we require some definitions. References throughout Masonry to the "Moderns" refer to the Premier Grand Lodge of England, the first Grand Lodge in the world. The members of the rival Grand Lodge, whose brief but dramatic life I shall recount in this paper, referred to themselves as "Ancients" because they believed they practiced a more ancient, and therefore a purer, form of Freemasonry.

So we will not confuse these two bodies, we may remember that in terms of the time of origin, the "Ancients" was the newer group and the "Moderns" the original group. The Grand Lodge of the "Ancients" existed, at least in committee form, from 1739 but came into formal being in 1751. The terms "Ancients" and "Moderns" were probably first used as epithets, says Bernard Jones, but the names stuck and were soon adopted as their own by the combatants.

We must be careful to note, however, that the names were often misleading in describing the Masonic rituals actually practiced. Bernard Jones perceives two main causes for the division which occurred. He refuses to use the term "schism," though Mackey uses the term "the great schism," to describe it. One cause, he says was the apathy and neglect of the Craft by The Premier Grand Lodge and its inability to rule the member lodges.

The other cause was the divergence in ritual and ceremonial practice which existed in the early part of the eighteenth century, a difference in part due to the poor communications of the period, and in part to an absence of leadership. It is a warning to Masons of all ages that apathy and failure of leadership exact their own inevitable penalties.

By 1739 Freemasons were in low repute in England. Grand Masters were often appointed because of social rank rather than merit. One appointed in 1739, for example, was but 22 years of age. Another was said to have attended only three meetings in a five year term of office. In the eleven years between 1742 and 1753, the Premier Grand Lodge struck 45 lodges from its rolls because they had ceased to meet.

The depth to which the Craft had fallen is illustrated by the sign which is recorded as being posted on the door of London tavern: "Masons made here for 2s. 6d.(5) As leadership failed, and Masons were "made" in neighborhood taverns simply on payment of a fee, lodges tended to become a power unto themselves. Irregular lodges were formed, and irregular "masons" clamored for admission at every lodge door.

About 1730, Grand Lodge decided on a remarkable step as a shibboleth to enable lodges to detect the irregular "mason" seeking admission. It transposed the modes of recognition in the First and Second degrees, apparently hoping that the interlopers would not have heard of the change and so would be easily exposed. Many Masons, however, regarded this simplistic device as a grievous and wholly improper interference with a Landmark of Masonry.

Undeterred by criticism, Grand Lodge persisted in this and other changes to the ritual, the full extent of which is beyond the scope of this paper. But the greatest devastation to the Craft was not change in ritual; rather, it was the failure of The Premier Grand Lodge to offer leadership and firm direction to its member lodges. In 1751, the turmoil and dissension in the Craft became open revolt.

Five lodges formed themselves into a body which, they declared, was designed "to revive the Craft upon true Masonic principles." They named the new entity "The Most Ancient and Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons." Twenty years later it had become "The Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of the old Institution."

To add to the confusion, some writers have also referred to it as "the Athol Grand Lodge" because during a period of its existence, the Dukes of Athol, father and son, served as Grand Masters. But in common parlance, And to posterity, it became known as "The Grand Lodge of the Ancients."

(6) The new Grand Lodge proved attractive to many Masons of the time. Much of the success of the Ancients, and indeed many Masonic traditions existing to this day, may be ascribed to a remarkable and complex man of energy, Lawrence Dermott. He was a journeyman painter born in Ireland in 1720.

He was initiated into Freemasonry in Dublin in 1740 and served as Master of a lodge there in 1746. He came to England in 1748 and is thought to have seen the Masonry of the Moderns by joining a modern lodge. In 1752, he joined Ancient Lodge No. 10 and within four days, at the age of 32, had become Grand Secretary of the order, an office he held until 1771.

Dermott immediately commenced the preparation of a set of by-laws and instructions for lodges which was published in 1756. The book had the extra-ordinary title "Ahiman Rezon" which, the author said, was derived from the Hebrew language and meant "Faithful Brother Secretary." Later scholars observed that his knowledge of Hebrew was less than perfect.

Whatever its deficiencies, the book met some hidden need for it was a huge success. Several editions were published over the next half century, and the book circulated widely through the Craft. Its influence was immense in fostering the Masonic doctrines and rituals of the Ancients. Later Masonic writers had difficulty knowing how to characterize this remarkable man. Mackey, for example, seems in doubt whether he was villain or Saint.

At one point, Mackey says: "as a polemic he was sarcastic, bitter, uncompromising, and not altogether sincere or veracious." Having dealt with Dermott's supposed truthfulness, or lack of it, he proceeded at another point in his writings to deliver a further masterpiece of insult:

"Dermott was the only star in its (the Ancients') firmament but his brilliance shone all the more brightly by contrast with the obscurity of his associates." Yet Mackey could also say of Dermott that he had given his institution "the permanent impress of a powerful and constructive personality" and that "in philosophical appreciation of the character of the Masonic Institution he was in advance of the spirit of his age."

(7) For sixty years the strife continued between the embattled factions. The situation was made more complex by the lack of enforcement of ritualistic standards by either of the contestants. Many lodges of the Moderns adopted some Ancient ceremonies, and many lodges of the Ancients retained some rituals from their Modern origins.

Some ceremonies which were innovations of the period survive to this day. The ceremony for the installation of the Master of the lodge is an example. The fortunes of battle ebbed and flowed. One or the other of the adversaries would make a move which the other would regard as devious or as an outright act of war.

Move would be met by counter-move. At one point the Moderns attempted to get themselves incorporated by act of Parliament hoping that this would put finish to the Ancients. Their rivals were more than equal to this stroke and were successful in blocking passage.

Writings of the day speak of the "triumphant jeers" of the Ancients when finally Parliament refused the act.(8) Each of the bodies was alert to recruit members from the other. They would then re-initiate the apostate or, as it was termed, would "remake him as a Mason."

Since the Ancients came into existence as a reaction to poor leadership, one would have expected their rivals to disappear. History records as a relentless law of nature that, when their leadership fails, human institutions perish. At his crucial hour in Masonic history, however, the Craft brought forward another of those great leaders who so often bless mankind in times of peril.

This tune the leader appeared among the Moderns. He was the ninth Lord Blayney, a professional soldier who had been initiated into the Craft in a military lodge. He was a man of intellect, a man of decision and energy-truly a gift to the Craft.

Among his many qualities of leadership was a gift of reconciliation. From his background in military lodges, he was familiar with the Ancient rituals, and he commenced to restore some of them to the Moderns. As a Grand Master he is said to have constituted 74 lodges of whom 19 still meet.(10) Another great leader of eighteenth century Freemasonry also came from the Moderns.

He was Thomas Dunckerley, whose personal history is one of the fascinating stories of his age. He was the "natural" son of George II who, however, died without having learned of his existence. Dunckerley was born in 1724. He entered the Royal Navy at ten years of age and served for thirty years at many English and foreign stations.

George III, after accession to the throne, recognized Dunckerley's claim to royal parentage. He granted him a pension and the right to use the royal coat of arms, though with the "bar sinistern across it. Dunckerley left the navy in 1764 and commenced a new career, the study of law. He was called to the bar in 1774 but, apparently, never practiced as a barrister.

Thomas Dunckerley was a man of great personal charm. His contemporaries speak with awe of his charisma, of his superb powers of persuasion, of his intellect, and of the love he displayed for people of all ranks. Be became a Mason in 1754, and for the rest of his life had a profound influence on Masonry.

He even has a place in Canadian history and in Canadian Masonry. He served with the naval force which supported General Wolfe at Quebec in 1759, and in 1760 is recorded as having installed Colonel Simon Fraser as Provincial Grand Master of Canada at Quebec.

As Grand Secretary, and as Provincial Grand master of Hampshire, he played a great part in reforming the ritual of the Moderns and in moving the Craft toward a single ritual acceptable to all." By 1794, the process of reconciliation between the Ancients and the Moderns was well under way.

Discussions carried on until 1809, when a Lodge of Promulgation was formed and given the task of identifying and defining the Ancient Landmarks. This lodge gradually became a committee of negotiation. Bernard Jones gives it credit for restoring most of the Ancient rituals to the Moderns and for doing a thorough revision of the three degrees.

Finally the process of compromise reached its fruition. In 1813, the Grand Master of each body resigned. The Duke of Sussex became the Grand Master of the Moderns; his brother, the Duke of Kent, became Grand Master of the Ancients.

With two royal brothers presiding, articles of union were completed in November 1813 and signed at Freemasons' Hall on St. John's Day, December 27, 1813. Each Grand Lodge was opened in form in an ante-room of the Great Hall. Then the two processions entered and brothers of each faction, so long separated and in dispute, sat in alternate seats.

Union was proclaimed and the United Grand Lodge came into being. (12) It is an accident of history that the effects of this old quarrel have been greater and more permanent in North America than in England. The process of reconciliation in England led to unified Craft and to a single ritual.

But Masonry was coming to the new world at the very time when the Craft was divided by strife in the old. As the Ancients and the Moderns disputed, the ritual was in a time of change and ferment; even within each group, ritual varied widely from lodge to lodge.

This variation in ritual between lodges was to prove of vital importance to Masonry in North America. In ritualistic matters, we teach what we know. A Mason from one English lodge, founding an American lodge, naturally used the ritual with which he was familiar.

Another English Mason from a different English lodge with a different ritual, founding Masonry in a neighboring American colony, would establish that different ritual. In this fashion, rituals which existed in England for only a brief period of time, and in a limited geographical area before disappearing in the process of reconciliation, often survive today in one or the other of the American states.

A mistake often made in historical analysis is to focus on the particular event being investigated without reference to the other events of the age. While we examine the effects of this old quarrel between Masons, however, we must remember that it took place during a tumultuous period in world history. Throughout the six decades, the world echoed to marching feet and the roar of guns. 

Thomas Dunckerley installed a Grand Master at Quebec in 1760; we must remember that he was there because he was a member of the armed force which had expelled the French from Canada only a few months earlier. Masonic union was complete on December 27, 1813.

In Canada that was also the year when York was burned by American troops and the year of the battles of Chateauguay and Crysler's Farm, when the future nationhood of Canada hung in the balance. In Europe, Napoleon had entered the last campaign before his exile to Elba; it was not quite 18 months until Waterloo.

One effect of the turbulent history of the age was to sever, for a long period, the relationship between English and American Freemasonry. In England, reconciliation produced the unification of the ritual. In the new United States, this unification did not take place; the continued nourishment of American Freemasonry by its English parent was not possible in the face of revolution and war.

Thus in the United States, the ritual tended to crystallize in the form which had existed in each jurisdiction when masonry was founded there. Meanwhile English and Canadian Freemasonry retained their unity. The unified ritual arising from the reconciliation in England came into Canada with relatively little change as the "Canadian Rite."

Indeed, to some extent, that ritual spread into the United States. It is a separate, fascinating story to trace the influence of Canadian Masonry on the Craft in northern New York and in northern New England. However, the presence in Canada of the unified rite set the stage for a further ritualistic clash when masonry spread into western Canada.

While two basic forms of ritual survive in the United States, Masonic travelers there will observe considerable variation within these forms from place to place. Roscoe Pound, the eminent American lawyer, teacher, philosopher and Masonic scholar, traced what he called "the paths of Freemasonry" from England to the United States and then from state to state as Freemasonry marched across the land.

He observed that the schism, existing at the formative period of North American Freemasonry, produced two rituals fused to varying degrees in different jurisdictions.

(13) One of "the paths of Freemasonry" traced by Roscoe Pound was the journey of a particular fusion of Ancient and Modern rituals from England to Massachusetts, then to Ohio, from there to Wisconsin, and then to Minnesota. We, in turn, may follow the continuing journey of this rite from Minnesota northward into Manitoba and on to Alberta.

We know this particular fusion of Ancient and Modern rituals as "The Ancient York Rite." The first Masonic lodge in the Red River Settlement was North Star Lodge which was granted a Charter in 1864 by the Grand Lodge of Minnesota. That lodge existed until 1870 when its charter was revoked, though there is presently on the register of the Grand Lodge of Manitoba another lodge with the same name.

Though the first lodge founded in what is now Manitoba failed to survive, Masonry continued to enter the Red River Settlement from Minnesota. It also came from Ontario. Both the Grand Lodge of Minnesota and the Grand Lodge of Canada in Ontario chartered lodges there before the Province of Manitoba was created.

As Manitoba joined the new Dominion of Canada in 1870, one of its first creations was the Grand Lodge of Manitoba which assumed jurisdiction over all Masonic lodges in its geographical area. The new Grand Lodge then found that it had inherited two different rites of Freemasonry.

Almost at once, the battles between the Ancients and Moderns, of a century earlier, seemed to be renewed as the two rituals confronted each other. The story may be found in the fine book by William Douglas: Freemasonry in Manitoba, 1864-1925.

(15)In 1878 a motion was presented to Grand Lodge to compel all lodges in the jurisdiction to practice "the rite derived from the Grand Lodge of Canada in Ontario." After great acrimony, and adjournment of the debate over two further Communications of Grand Lodge, the Manitobans also showed their gift for compromise and reconciliation by permitting lodges to use either of the two rites.

From Manitoba, Freemasonry continued its march across the new nation to what is now Alberta. The Grand Lodge of Manitoba chartered lodges in the Alberta District of the Northwest Territories. From our Mother Grand Lodge we thus inherited their two rites as well as their tradition that either rite could be used.

The journey of the two rituals was complete on the formation in 1905 of the Grand Lodge of Alberta. Alberta Masons should also be conscious of their roots in Irish Freemasonry. The five lodges which founded the Grand Lodge of the Ancients on July 17, 1751 were all lodges of Irish Masons then living in London, and, of course, Lawrence Dermott had been initiated in Ireland.

(16) One can be certain, therefore, that when the Ancients "restored" old ritualistic practice, Irish Freemasonry would have been one of their sources. Perhaps the young Mason, whose query led to this paper, will one day trace the influences on Alberta's Ancient York Rite of its Irish Ancestry.

Notes 1. In Alberta, 98 lodges practice the Canadian Rite; 59 lodges practice the Ancient York Rite. 2. Bernard E. Jones, Freemasons' Guide and Compendiums (London: Harrap & Co., 1956). 3. Ibid., p. 193. 4. Ibid., p. 193. 5. Ibid., pp. 193-195. 6. Ibid,. See generally Chapter 12. C.N. Batham, The Grand Lodge of England According to the Old Institutions, The Prestonian Lecture for 1981, 94 A.C.Q. 141. 7. Jones (supra) pp. 198-200. Batham (supra) pp. 144-146. Herbert F. Inman, Masonic Problems and Queries (London: A. Lewis(Masonic Publishers) Ltd., 1964). Albert Gallatin Mackey, History of Freemasonry, 1180 Revised Edition by Robert Clegg. (New York: Masonic History Co., 1921). Albert Gallatin Mackey, An Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, (New York: Masonic History Co., 1921). 8. Jones (supra) p.203. 9. Jones (supra) pp. 204-205. 10. Jones (supra) pp. 208-210. 11. Mackey: An Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, pp. 223-224. Jones (supra) p.210. Inman (supra) pp. 69-70. 12. Jones (supra) Chapter 14. 13. Roscoe Pound "The Causes of Divergence in Ritual" reproduced in Masonic Addresses and Writings of Roscoe Pound (New York: McCoy Publishing and Masonic Supply Co., 1953). H.L. Haywood, More About Masonry (Chicago: The Masonic History Co., 1948). 14. Pound (supra) p. 208. 15. William Douglas, Freemasonry in Manitoba, 1864-1925 (Winnipeg: The Grand Lodge of Manitoba, 1925). 16. Batham (supra) p. 208.