In Britain in the Middle Ages Operative Freemasonry was the name for the art of architecture; this art consisted of a fixed body of knowledge which each apprentice had to learn, and much of it he had to learn by heart; once he had learned it his own Freemasonry was the same as that of every other Freemason. During the long period in which there were no permanent Lodges, or Grand Lodges, or Books of Constitutions, or written laws, it was their possession of this one body of knowledge which gave unity of purpose to thousands of men who lived and worked here and there and had no general or national organization.
Freemasonry was self-constitutive. If a Master Mason was in need of an Apprentice, and if a qualified youth was available, he and a small number of other Master Masons could constitute themselves a Lodge for the purpose, enter him, give him his oath, and sign his indenture - to do this they had no need to ask consent from any Masonic body. The same Master Masons, if called to work together, could constitute themselves as a Lodge, select their own officers, and meet as a Lodge as long as the work lasted. If Master Masons here and there in a country, or city, or other convenient area, whether in any Lodge at the time or not, found it necessary to confer among themselves on Craft matters they could meet in an assembly; it was self-constituted. When in the Fourteenth Century the Freemasons in a few centers began to organize permanent Lodges under written charters those Lodges also were self-constituted. Nothing in the Craft was more Masonic, or more truly a landmark, than this inherent right to constitute assemblies or bodies when there was need to - even the Masonic Companies in the large cities, which lasted for so many centuries and were so different from Lodges, and functioned in one way or another as a part of the municipal government, were self-constitutive.
Acting on this time-immemorial right, and believing that the Craft would benefit by having a permanent General Assembly, a small number of representatives from a number of the oldest London Lodges (we have the names of four of them) met in 1716 A. D., in the Apple Tree Tavern and there agreed among themselves (though acting for their Lodges) "to cement under a Grand Master as the center of Union and Harmony." On St. John the Baptist's Day in 1717 A. D., the same representatives met at the Goose and Gridiron Ale-house (one of the four Lodges met in its room) and "constituted themselves a Grand Lodge pro Tempore in Due Form," and "resolved to hold the Annual Assembly and Feast, and to choose a Grand Master from among themselves, till they should have the Honour of a Noble Brother at their Head." Mr. Anthony Sayer, Gentleman, was elected Grand Master; Jacob Lambdall, a carpenter, and Captain Joseph Elliot were elected Grand Wardens. This desire to have a "Noble Brother" at their head was not an act of snobbery but followed a general rule in the nation which called for each society or large organization to have a sponsor from the ruling class who could act as spokesman in high places - the King himself consented to sponsor a society of scientists, for which reason it called itself the Royal Society; and a hundred years later Freemasonry itself was to have a royal sponsor when Queen Victoria named herself to that honor.
The history of the constituting ("erection") of the first, or Mother Grand Lodge as given in the 1738 A. D. (second) Edition of the Book of Constitutions is brief and of a bare simplicity, but from the wealth of knowledge about it which we have from other sources, as well as from history consequent to its founding, we know that the constituting of it opened up a new era in Freemasonry - the founding of the Operative Craft in the beginning, the constituting of a system of permanent Lodges with the Old Charges in the Fourteenth Century, and the erection of the Mother Grand Lodge, these are the epochal events according to which our Craft dates the calendars of its history. The facts about the Mother Grand Lodge as we know them prove a number of things:
1. There were Lodges at work before 1717 A. D. Some of them were composed of Operative Freemasons, some were composed partly of Operatives and partly of Speculative Freemasons, and some were wholly composed of Speculative members.
2. There had been General Assemblies (with Feasts) before 1717 A. D.; the new Grand Lodge became a Permanent assembly, with continuous functions. Why a permanent Assembly? Partly because it had become too inconvenient to call special assemblies, partly because the Lodges had come to need a "center of union" continually.
3. The constituting of a permanent Grand Lodge for the first time was not an innovation. The older Masons and Lodges resented a few new measures taken after the Grand Lodge had been at work for five or ten years but they did not oppose a Grand Lodge in the first place, because they saw in it only a new way of doing something which had been done in other ways for centuries.
4. To constitute the new Grand Lodge the representatives of the old Lodges employed the old methods for constituting a Lodge, therefore there was in the means employed no innovation and nothing radical; the Grand Lodge was to be a Lodge, and it would differ from other Lodges only in having Lodges for its members instead of individual Masons. The Book of Constitutions itself, first published in 1723 A. D., was in both theory and fact nothing but the Old Charges revised to suit the needs of a Grand Lodge.
5. The new Grand Lodge made no attempt to change, modify, or alter the Work used in the Lodges. By the principle of its own constitution as well as by common consent it left to each member Lodge its own old local sovereignty. Each Lodge retained unimpaired its own Landmarks, its own Officers, conferred its own Degrees, examined and made its own Candidates, and continued to be supreme within its own local jurisdiction. (A minute analysis of the records and Minute Books of six Lodges which had existed before 1717 A. D., and which afterwards became member Lodges in it, did not show that any one of them altered its own Work after going on the Grand Lodge List.) This fact holds true even to this day, more than two centuries after 1717 A. D., although the increased number of Lodges and Grand Lodges make it more difficult to see; a Lodge is still sovereign in its own local jurisdiction, the Grand Lodge is sovereign over only such matters and questions as rise among the Lodges.
6. The first Grand Lodge claimed jurisdiction only over Lodges on its own List, and in the beginning these Lodges were to be confined to London and Westminster-any number of other Grand Lodges could have been constituted at the time without conflicting with it; it was not until years later that it began to put on its List Lodges outside of London, and it was not until 1813 A. D., that a Grand Lodge had the whole of England for its jurisdiction; even then its jurisdiction did not extend over Scotland or Ireland, and also it delegated a certain amount of its authority to a number of Provincial Grand Lodges of its own.
7. The founding of the first Grand Lodge proved in the long run not to have been the founding of a simple Grand Body in London, but the initiating and the permanent establishing of the Grand Lodge System; that system has itself become so essential to Freemasonry, and has molded so much of Freemasonry about itself, that it is a Landmark, and it would be now unthinkable to tear it up by the roots because to do so would destroy the Fraternity.
8. These facts, and others like them, are interesting, and each of them is of a high importance; but no one of them, and it could almost be said that not the whole of them together, rank in importance with that fact which, as Masonic history was to prove, made the establishment of the Grand Lodge System epoch-making in the complete and literal sense of that adjective; this is the fact that with the Grand Lodge System the Fraternity became wholly, once and for all, a Speculative Fraternity. There had been Speculative Lodges before 1717 A. D.; there had always been a large Speculative element in Operative Freemasonry, even the oldest, but either the complete control, or a partial control, of the Fraternity had been in the hands of the Operatives until it passed, with the coming of the Grand Lodge System, wholly into the hands of Speculatives.
9. When the Grand Lodge of 1717 A. D., is called The Mother Grand Lodge it does not mean that it constituted other Grand Lodges or that it "mothered" them after they were constituted. The Grand Lodges in Scotland, Ireland, at York, and the Ancient Grand Lodge constituted in London in 1751 A. D., were self-constituted - they neither asked nor received authorization from the first Grand Lodge; and that still continues to be the rule, because where there are three or four regular Lodges anywhere in the world which work in the same area or territory they can constitute a Grand Lodge by themselves, and for themselves, and if it is regularly constituted it will receive recognition from other Grand Lodges. There is no special significance in the fact that the first Grand Lodge was erected in London instead of in some other city; it could have been constituted in 1700 A. D., or in 1730 A. D., as well as in 1717 A. D.; the old Lodges which formed it were not unique but practiced the same Masonry as old Lodges anywhere in England, or in Scotland or in Ireland, nevertheless there will always be attached to it the glory which belongs to men who do something for the first time; and it was fortunate for the Fraternity, when at last it had its first permanent General Assembly that its headquarters should be in London, the nation's capital, where it stood close to the center of the British Empire, and from which the new Grand Lodge System could make its way more easily and more rapidly than from any other source.
From 1717 A. D. until about 1735 A. D., the new Grand Lodge went on slowly and cautiously completing itself in which, with extraordinary good fortune, it had the use of such leaders as Desaguliers, Anderson, and Payne; it warranted Lodges abroad, and set up Provincial Grand Lodges in America, its relations with the short-lived Grand Lodge at York were amicable and it was in close co-operation with the Grand Lodges in Scotland and Ireland; there was no cloud in the sky. And then, about 1735 A. D., and as historiographers say, it began to enter a new cultural "climate," though its own members had no more knowledge than other men that certain small events and new social changes here and there were not the small changes to which every country is accustomed, but were in reality the beginnings of what by 1775 A. D., was to become a world-revolutionary change, not in England only but everywhere. During that world-revolutionary change Freemasonry itself was to become, though by a slower process, no longer a British or even a European Fraternity but a world-wide Fraternity. This fundamental shift occurred in the Grand Lodge during a somewhat strange and puzzling chapter in its history which it itself called "Modern." That chapter lasted for about forty years (with emphasis on the "about"), and when Masonic historians and other writers refer to "Modern Masonry" or to "The Modern Grand Lodge" it is to that chapter that they are referring-it has to be, because before about 1735 A. D., the Grand Lodge was not yet "Modern," and after about 1775 A. D., it had ceased to be "Modern" (except in the sense that "Modern" continued to be used as a convenient label). It is impossible to compress a detailed history of that period into one or two pages, but it can be characterized:
1. In 1723 A. D., the Grand Lodge had opportunity to "choose a Noble Brother" for its head when the Duke of Montague consented to become Grand Master; he was followed by the Duke of Wharton; and from then on the Grand East was occupied by a man of very high title. As things then were in British society this set up a chain of consequences which the Grand Lodge itself was helpless to avoid, for the prerogatives of rank were inviolable. A "Noble" Grand Master would naturally look about for social equals to fill other Grand Lodge Offices; he selected them to be Provincial Grand Masters; and in due course local Lodges began to seek their own Officers in the aristocracy. According to the laws and rules of rank a man of high rank could never set aside the authorities, privileges, and prerogatives of his own rank wherever he was, therefore if a Duke sat in the Grand East he sat there primarily as a Duke, and only secondarily (and almost only in a token capacity) as Grand Master. This imported the whole system of British aristocracy into the Fraternity, and in so doing opened up an unbridged chasm between Masons of the "upper classes" and Masons of the "lower classes." This was an innovation, because from the earliest days the equality of Masons, and the right of any Mason to hold an Office, had been a Landmark.
2. In a time when there were no daily newspapers, telephones, movies, etc., the feelings of the London public found an outlet in the theater, in gossip in coffee houses, in pamphlets and broadsides, in lampoons and cartoons and popular songs, and since it was a period of general vulgarity those feelings were more likely than not to be sarcastic or satirical; once the new Grand Lodge had come to the attention of "the town" it became a target for mock processions, lampoons, satires, ridicule, and ironic skits in the theater. In the midst of this and thanks to the mania for pamphleteering, a number of pamphlets and broadsides were published which purported to "expose" the "secrets" of the Craft. To protect itself against these irritations the Grand Lodge resorted to expedients that were more drastic than wise; it forbade public processions, censored Masonic speeches and publications, made alterations in the Modes of Recognition, permitted an emasculation of the Ritual, and permitted the ceremonies of Installation of Lodge Officers to lapse.
3. Many Lodges - more than a hundred first and last-resented the innovations in the Modes of Recognition not because the particular form of those Modes was in itself of large importance, but because the act of laying hands on the Ritual involved reversal of a principle as old as the Craft. The Ritual was sacrosanct; a Master Mason could not alter it, a Lodge could not, a Grand Lodge could not, and each Grand Lodge Officer had taken an oath not to violate the Landmarks in the Ritual; therefore when the Grand Lodge so acted as to set itself above the Ritual it was guilty of an innovation, and Lodges rebelled against the innovation.
4. The Grand Lodge permitted the use of the Ceremonies of Installation to be abandoned. Here again the Ceremonies themselves were not of crucial importance, but the principle involved was; for the point of those Ceremonies was that an authority was inherent in Lodge Offices, and that no Grand Master or Grand Lodge could over-ride that inherent authority. When it dropped these Ceremonies the Grand Lodge did in fact over-ride it; the real meaning in dropping the Ceremonies was, in effect, to reduce the Mastership to a position of no original authority, which meant that in the long run Lodges could not be self-constituted or self-governing and that Lodges everywhere would be governed from the headquarters of Grand Lodge-a Grand Master would rule and govern Lodges as well as Grand Lodge. (To be an installed officer means that the officer is an incumbent only, and that the office itself determines what he is to do; a non-installed officer can decide for himself what he will do, or permit others to decide for him.)
5. The "emasculation of the Ritual" by which was meant a cutting down of its content to a minimum, with a consequent lowering of its dignity, was itself an evil; but the evil of which it was only a symptom was of a greater fatefulness. As more and more "gentlemen" came into the Lodges, as Masonic offices more and more were filled with members of the aristocracy, the Lodges, many of them, ceased to be Lodges and became social clubs, and "Masonic Purposes" no longer were to make Masons but to have nights of conviviality. The full Ritual took up too much time; it got in the road of the conviviality; the emasculation therefore resulted in turning Lodges of Freemasonry into social clubs.
The whole process, characterized by these five explanations, was a gradual one; neither the Grand Lodge itself nor any of its Lodges had any intention of undermining the foundations of the Fraternity by malice aforethought, and their intentions, such as they had, were in their own eyes completely innocent, and any well-informed historian is willing to write off the unfortunate consequences of their "Modernizing" the Craft (it was their own word) to the fact that the Speculative Fraternity (as Speculative) was still in its youth, and many of its members did not yet understand the Landmarks, or know anything of Masonic history, and were not familiar with the ancient rules, regulations, customs, and laws.
During the period in which these conditions obtained in it the Grand Lodge which had begun in 1717 A. D., was called "the Modern Grand Lodge," and it was called by that name because it chose it for itself to emphasize its having "modernized" the ancient Fraternity; but when after a period of some forty years (a little over one generation) it began to see how the consequences necessarily implied in its "modernization" were working out, and it learned at a somewhat bitter cost what the consequences were (the Grand Lodges of Ireland and of Scotland had withdrawn recognition from it), the Grand Lodge itself desisted from a course which it had found to be filled with innovation, and returned by its own actions to the Ancient Landmarks. After doing so Masons continued to call it the Modern Grand Lodge but only to distinquish it from the other Grand Lodge of England; in reality it had ceased to be "Modern."
It is therefore not historically correct
to apply the name "Modern" to the Mother Grand Lodge
which worked uninterruptedly from 1717 A. D., to the Union of
1813 A. D. because the word characterizes only one chapter in
a long history, and while that which it characterizes was a mistake
on the part of the Grand Lodge it was not a fatal error, and in
due time it was rectified, and its leaders in the latter half
of the Eighteenth Century were to see clearly as leaders in other
Grand jurisdictions that it was not the destiny of the Ancient
Craft to be transmogrified into a system of British Clubs. Its
honor and the tale of its achievements stand out above that of
any other Grand Lodge in the world. It was the first. It built
its own foundations so securely and erected upon them its own
super-structure so skillfully that succeeding Grand Lodges had
only to use over again the blueprints which it had drawn, and
to publish over again the Book of Constitutions which it had written.
Under it the Standard Monitor was first prepared and published.
It was the Mother of Lodges beyond the seas, the model for Grand
Lodges in lands of which Payne and Anderson had never heard. It
planted Freemasonry in the Americas, where it was to have a century
later a growth which out-topped the Craft's previous history.
It established the Grand Lodge System. It found a way by the wisdom
of its early statesmanship to turn the whole Fraternity around
on its pivot from Operative to Speculative without undoing the
long work of the past. At one point or another, to some degree
or other, each and every regular Lodge in the world can trace
something of its origin back to the Goose and Gridiron Ale-house
on that day in 1717 A. D., when some thirty or so Brethren decided
to erect "a Grand Lodge pro Tempore in Due Form."
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