THE TRUE HISTORY OF SCOTTISH ESOTERIC MASONRY Part II

"JESUIT CONSPIRACY"

As Eveline Cruickshanks describes in her book "The Glorious Revolution" (2000) Charles’s secretary of state Williamson was sent to the Tower because of his effort to employ Irish regiments released from French service. Charles believed that the Duke of Buckingham and Shaftesbury, now allied with the opposition Whigs in Parliament, instigated the actions of Tonge and Oates.

James Butler, who was privy to Buckingham's intrigues, added to the political complications with his charges of Franco-Scottish-Jewish sedition in Hudibras III, which was reprinted in 1679.

Because Francophilia makes marriage unfashionable (a dig at promiscuous courtiers and the profusion of royal bastards), Hudibras and the Scots now serve the cause of Papist agents: "your Presbyterian wits/Jump punctual with the Jesuits.” (Hubridas, p. 210, 214)

While Hooke and the Rosicrucianized virtuosos work with Napier's Bones, they implicitly support the Scots and Catholics. (p.250)

While they study Kircher's works, they not only support the Jesuits but the Jews:


"But Jesuites have deeper Reaches In all their Politick Far-fetches: And from their Coptick Priest, Kirkerus, Found out this Mystick way to jear us.

They thought, all Governments were best,
By Hieroglyphick Rumps, exprest.

The Learned Rabbins of the Jews
Write, there's a Bone, which they call Luez,
I’ th' Rump of man, of such a Vertue,
No force in Nature can do hurt to:
And therefore, at the last Great Day,
All th' other Members shall, they say,
Spring out of this, as from a Seed,
All sorts of Vegetals proceed:
From whence, the Learned Sons of Art,
Os Sacrum, Justly stile that part. (p.280-81)

The Cabalistic theory of the mystical bone Luz was explained in the Kabbalah Denudata, which was currently being discussed by vanious Fellows of the Royal Society. In a letter of 6 June 1679 John Locke, FRS, who had earlier studied under the Rosicrucian Sthael, noted that Robert Boyle informed him of the publication of the Zohar, newly translated into Latin by "un tres habil homme avec des notes qui expliquent Fancien Cabala des Juifs." (64)

Locke was interested in Helmontian theories of medicine, and he subsequently learned of F.M. Van Helmont's contribution to the Kabbalah Denudata, which he then acquired. Rosenroth later sent to Locke interesting Cabalistic commentaries on the philosopher's essays. In his letter to Boyle, Locke also revealed that Isaac Abendana "s'est brouille" with the authorities at Cambridge and thus took his Alishna project to Oxford. Rosenroth later complained of the harsh treatment he received from many clerics in Germany because of his publication of Kabbalah Denudata, and Helmont found the climate in England becoming increasingly intolerant.

With the country reeling from the sensational revelations of the phony "Popish Plot," the Whigs rummaged through Tonge's chaotic papers for more evidence of the Catholic conspiracy. For decades Tonge had collected occultist prophecies which he applied to imagined Jesuitical intrigues and which he now resolved to publish. Writing furiously in late 1679, Tonge prepared ”The Northern Star: The British Monarchy”, dedicated to Charles II and published early in 1680. Drawing on Abbot Joachim, Paracelsus, Agripa, Reuchlin, Postel, Nostradarnus, Napier, Sendivogius, and Maxwell, Tonge assured Charles II of his prophetic role as the northern king who would settle God's Temple in the North Country. In Chapter IV, entitled "The Confession of the Rosie-Cross," he linked Charles with the mythic God-Son C.R. who founded the R.C. society.

He further assured him of scientific support, for the secretary of the Royal Society (Oldenburg) had received similar prophecies in 1668. Ocular proof was currently provided by the German visionary Martin Eyler, who was in London with his agate shew-stone in which spiritual figures revealed political prophecies.

According to Ezerel Tonge, the only obstacle to Charles's role as Rosicrucian savior of international Protestantism was the nefarious plot of the Jesuits, who had learned from the "Assassins of Phoenecia" how to train adepts for their campaign. Because Tonge's bizarre linkage of Jesuits and Assassins would re-emerge in anti-Masonic propaganda in the eighteenth century, it is worth a brief look at his fevered argument.

In "Jesuits Assassins: or the Popish Plot Further Declared" (1680), he made oblique Masonic-sounding comments. The sect of Assassins lived in the mountains near Tyre, where their Master was, not hereditary but elected." (p.4-6) Called the "Old Man of the Mountain," this prophet was a great builder, who designed wonderful palaces adorned with pictures.

By intoxicating his disciples with a certain drink (hashish), he gave them a glimpse of paradise which inspired them to swear obedience to the Master, loyalty to their brothers, and death to their enemies. Having studied the Assassins, the Jesuits then adopted their methods in order to destroy Protestantism.

Rather than giving their agents hashish, the Jesuits used charms and exorcisms, performed in "Chambers of Meditation and other Recesses of Darkness": they "conjured up gradually to that prodigious fury, as to think that in bloody assassinations of Kings and Princes, and merciless blowing up of Kingdoms, they do acceptable service to God, and merit everlasting Life." Through their magical meditation techniques, the Jesuit agents become angelized and divinized to prepare for their deadly work.

Quoting the Spanish Jesuit Vaninus, Tonge interpreted his description of a brother who was sent to London, where he labored forty-nine days "in cutting stones," as an allusion to the Gun Powder Plot to blow up "the Walls under the Parliament House." Such false stone-cutters then arranged the murder of Charles I and the Great Fire of London.

Through his earlier work on church construction and his collaboration with Moray, Hooke, Harley, and various master masons, Tonge was familiar with operative masonry. Oates too had observed the masons at work in Tangier. However, it is unclear whether their paranoid polemics were consciously aimed at royalist Freemasonry. Nevertheless, the scare engendered by their revelations placed not only Masons but Rosicrucians and Cabalists in a hazardous position. That Buckingham, whom the king believed to be the inventor of the Popish Plot, allegedly served as an "indolent" Grand Master in 1679 gave an ironic twist to Tonge's revelations." (65) Probably pressured by an angry Charles II, Buckingham "demitted" from the office. He was replaced by his rival, the ever loyal Arlington, who however "was too deeply engaged in affairs of State to mind the Lodges."

Nevertheless, Arlington continued to represent the tolerant traditions of Stuart Freemasonry, for he was sympathetic to Catholics and Jews, as well as being a great admirer of Spanish and French architecture--subjects which filled Tonge with iconoclastic disgust. Evelyn considered Arlington a learned and pious man, who devoted his architectural skills to God's service. Two years earlier, Evelyn praised Arlington for rebuilding the church at Euston, making it "for elegance and cheerfulnes ... one of the prettiest country churches in England," and he was moved by Arlington's motives in the project:

My Lord told me his heart smote him that, after he had bestowed so much on his magnificent palace there, he should see God's House in the ruin it lay in. He has also re-built the parsonage- house, all of stone, very neat and ample. (66)

Though Anderson claimed that during Arlington's Grand Mastership, "the Fraternity was considerable still, and many Gentlemen requested to be admitted," there is no surviving evidence of developments in "speculative" Freemasonry in England over the next two decades. Stevenson observes that "English gentlemen non-operatives were not organised into lodges with set memberships of a Scottish or modern kind, but met in fluid occasional lodges" connected with building sites. (67)

However, when Charles sent his embattled brother James to Scotland in November 1679, the duke's intermittent presence over the next thirty months encouraged a revival of royalist Masonry in the north. In this political context lay the roots of the later dcvelopment of Jacobite Freemasonry, when Scottish and Irish Masons loyal to James VII and 11 took their "ancient" traditions into exile with their banished king.

Ouston argues that the king sent the Duke of York to Scotland to keep him out of the way of an English Commons inflamed by the Popish Plot and to enable him to develop an alternative political power base. (68)

During his previous "exile" to the Continent from May to August 1679, James appreciated the generous support of Kincardine, whom he in turn consoled when the earl had problems with Lauderdale. (69)

Kincardine now served as an Extraordinary Lord of Session, and he was instrumental in bringing factions together to welcome James to Edinburgh. From London Lauderdale helped to organize the loyal reception, and the heir apparent was greeted warmly by the aristocratic and professional classes. The latter had become fearful of civil war after the murder of Archbishop Sharp by radical Presbyterians in May, followed by an armed rising of Coverranters in June. Despite James's Catholicism, the ruling establishment viewed him as a beneficent presence, compared to the sadirons opponents of royal government. There was also popular enthusiasm for the first Stuart prince to establish a royal court in Edinburgh since 1603.

James cultivated an image of himself as the heir of his grandfather's Solomonic tradition, for James VI was still a revered figure in Scotland. Though he encouraged the architectural work of William Bruce, Robert Mylne, and James Smith (a Catholic-educated designer), Masonic historians have long assumed that he was the first Stuart king in three reigns who did not become a Freemason. However, that claim was made by Anderson who, though a native Scot, was a staunch supporter of the Protestant revolution which overthrew James 11 in 1688. According to the eighteenth-century Clermont Rite, Sir William Bruce served as chief of the secret Templar-Masonic order from 1679 until 1686, at the time when he was closely associated with James. (70)

Moreover, until the death of Kincardine in July 1680, James was the intimate friend of that loyal and idealistic Mason. As we shall see, James would receive important Masonic support in Scotland when he succeeded to the throne in 1685. Moreover, in 1777 his grandson, "Bonnie Prince Charlie," would reveal to an initiatic of a German Templar lodge that "the secret Grand Mastership of the Masons was hereditary in the house of Stuart." (71)

James was probably introduced to military masonry during the Interregnum, when he frequently worked with Scottish and Irish engineers serving with him in the French army. 172 During his residence in Edinburgh, he took a keen interest in architectural projects, which were often minutely supervised from Whitehall by Lauderdale. In fact, Cruickshanks argues that James "led an artistic renaissance with the rebuilding of Holyrood Palace." (72)

Many private as well as public buildings now included heraldic devices and deliberate reminders of Scotland's historic independence and links with a Wider European scientific and artistic world. (73)Determined to extend Charles's intellectual and virtuoso culture to Scotland, James made Edinburgh an extension of the Stuart court. During his cultural campaign, he received strong support from Sir George Mackenzie, Lord Advocate, who was an old friend of Lauderdale and Moray and who shared the latter's devotion to bonded friendship, stoic philosophy, and scientific heraldry. (74)

Like Moray, Mackenzie hoped that the New Philosophy could overcome religious fanaticism, and he published "Religio Stoici: the Virtuoso or Stoick with a Friendy, Address to the Fanatics of all Sects and Sorts." (1663).

Sharing James's interest in chivalric revival, Mackenzie now prepared a treatise on "The Science of Heraldry" (1680), which paid tribute to the "auld alliance" with France and defined many themes that would later emerge in the knightly degrees of Ecossais Freemasonry. Dedicating the work "to my country-men," Mackenzie lamented that .."We only of all nations have never published anything, to let the world know what marks of honour our predecessors had gained." (75)

He became fascinated by heraldry while studying in France, and he subsequently explored a vast literature on the subject. Drawing on Aldrovandus and Favyn, he cited a Biblical "Jacobite" origin for heraldry: "some think that the giving of arms arose from the example of Jacob blessing his children, in which he gave them marks of distinction." He then traced the contributions made by Godfrey of Bouillon and other crusaders at Jerusalem, as well as the French king who made the Scottish archers his personal bodyguard ("an honour they retain to this day"). Now encouraged by James, Mackenzie's friends revived the Royal Company of Archers, which had traditional links with the Garde Ecossais and which stressed fraternal loyalty, militaristic royalism, and patriotic achievement.

Provoked by Ashmole's claims for the Garter, Mackenzie argued the priority of the Order of the Thistle, which was created in 787 A.D. to honor the alliance between the French king Charlemagne and the Scottish king Achalus, who defeated the English king Athelstan. Robert the Bruce subsequently revived the Thistle and contributed new arms for the citizens of Aberdeen to honor their Victory over the English. After the Reformation the order was suppressed as "a Dreg of Popery," but many Scottish nobles kept its symbols alive in their heraldic arms, architectural decorations, and emblematic coins. (76)

Despite Mackenzie's nationalist fervor, he was careful to praise the current union of Scotland and England under their Stuart king. Determined to build a secure power base in Scotland, James was impressed by Mackenzie's claims, and he would later revive the Thistle as a royalist chivalric order.

In January 1679 Mackenzic was admitted freeman of a craftsman's corporation (which Gould reports in a Masonic context), and he had many Masonic associates. (77) His arguments about heraldry, the Thistle, and the Garter would later influence the development of chivalric high degrees in Scots-Irish and Ecossais Masonry.

Another strong supporter of James's virtuoso campaign was Sir Robert Sibbald, royal geographer, who had earlier been a protege of Moray. Like Gilbert Burnet earlier, Sibbald had visited the Jews' synagogue in Amsterdam and Catholic chapels in Paris, experiences that "disposed me to affect charity for all good men of any persuasion." (78)

Sibbald collected rare works on Cabalism, Lullism, Hermeticism, and Rosicrucianism, and his library became a valuable resource for students of "speculative Freemasonry." (79)

For the Catholic James, the support of the Episcopal Sibbald for toleration was invaluable during his stay in Scotland. In fact, the two men virtually revived Moray's earlier successful policy of religious and political moderation.

James introduced his English physician Sir Charles Scarborough to Sibbald, and the three men developed a plan to construct a Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh in 1681.

Scarborough had been the protege and successor of' Dr. William Harvey, the old friend of Robert Fludd, and he participated in their Hermetic and Cabalistic studies. While in Scotland, he solicited the support of James Drummond, Fourth Earl of Perth for the medical college, and the earl would later play a leading role in Jacobite Freemasonry.

Like Sibbald, Scarborough amassed a great occultist library, which included works by Rabbi Abraham, Trithemius, Postel, Dee, Bruno, Scaliger, Fludd, Kircher, Van Helmont.

John Falconer, a Scottish expert in cryptography, who was entrusted with James’s private cipher. Falconer argued that cryptography derived from Hebrew roots. Analyzing the methods of Trithemius, Baptista Porta, Bacon, Wilkins, and Kircher, he made important breakthroughs in code-making, which would later be used in Jacobite and French military intelligence. Like Robert Hooke, who argued that John Dee's angelic conversations contained an ingenious diplomatic code, Falconer argued that Trithermus's mystical expressions were "all cryptography."

Because Falconer knew many of the royalist Masons in Scotland, his instructions on "Saemaelogia" and "Dactylogy" (secret communication by signs, gestures, and fingers), as well as "Arthrologia" (discovering by "the joynts or remarkable parts of a Man's Body") may have influenced the complex and often indecipherable codes and body-language used by later Jacobite Masons.

John Falconer. Rules for Explaining and Deciphering All Manner of Secret Writing” London: Dan Brown, 1692), 6, 101-12-160 73. Falconer later deciphered the Duke of' Argyll's correspondence, which led to the exposure of his plot against James’s succession.

ENGLISH ENDINGS

In 1679 when Alexander Dickson, professor of Hebrew at Edinburgh University, was removed for refusing to sign the oath of allegiance, James approved the appointment of Alexander Amedeus, a Florentine Jew, to the post. (80)

The royal brother's actions did not go unnoticed south of the border, where radical opponents linked toleration for Jews to Rosicrucian intrigue and Francophilia. In 1680 an English translation of ne Count of Cabalis appeared in London, claiming to be published by "the Cabalistical Society of the Sages, at the Sign of the Rosicrucian." The author worried that many of his friends "do seriously study" these "Mysteries of Cabalism," and therefore he must refute them "by the strength of solid arguments." (81)

The latter consisted of railing against the Frenchified nature of the eroticized spirituality of "the Cabalistic sciences." The Cabalist, both Jewish and Christian, is "a great hater of women; yet much addicted to Venery, in a philosophical way"; thus, "only a Frenchman would give credit to Cabalistic whimsies."

In the northern kingdom, James may have learned of Quaker interest in the Cabalistic system of Van Helmont, who was widely believed to be a 'Judaized" Rosicrucian. The duke was a close friend of William Penn, the Quaker leader and a supporter of the Stuarts' toleration policy. Van Helmont had won over Penn's Scottish friend George Keith to his Cabalistic beliefs, and Keith in turn recruited Helmont to Quakerism. Keith was convinced of similarities between the Quaker doctrine of inner light and the Christian-Cabalistic notion of the "Christ within." (82)

He and Helmont further believed that a synthesis of Cabala and Christianity could provide a "a nucleus for Thomas Bruce, Memoirs of Thomas, Farl, of Aiksbug. Roxburghe Club.

A religious movement uniting Catholics, Protestants, Pagans, and Jews. Encouraged by James's sympathy for Quakers, Penn's movement attracted many new followers in Scotland. Given this eclectic and tolerant environment, it is not surprising that lodge records in Aberdeen, written circa 1679-80, indicate the presence of Quakers, as well as "landowners, merchants and craftsmen," among the Freemasons. (83)

One royalist Mason who supported the Quakers was the Earl of Perth, who was Penn's partner in the settlement of East New Jersey in 1681. (84)

In the portraits of two members of the Aberdeen lodge there appear in the background the pillars of Jachim and Boaz, suggesting their Masonic initiation into Solomon's Temple. (85)

James's revival of his grandfather's Solomonic policies was effective and popular in Scotland, and his support of religious toleration was widely believed to be sincere. When he returned to London in March 1682, he left behind in Edinburgh a reservoir of good will and patriotic support, especially among the royalist Masons who would later defend his threatened throne.

In 1680 Christopher Wren was persuaded to accept the presidency of the Royal Society in what was an urgently needed salvage operation. At the same time, he continued his role as Surveyor of the King's Works, while he and Hooke carried on the massive task of rebuilding more than fifty churches in London. However, the Whigs' campaign to exclude James from the succession polarized England, while increasingly radical attacks were made on the royalist institutions which supported Stuart claims. Wren was dismayed when parliament withdrew its support and cut off the funds for many of his projects. (86)

Fighting back against the Exclusionists, the poet laureate Dryden published Absalom and Achitophel (1681) to counter critics who threatened to destroy hereditary monarchy. Portraying Buckingham as "Zimri," Dryden mocked the inconstancy and opportunism of the duke and his Whig opposition party. Zimri's enthusiasms shifted from

Despite James's political and architectural success in Scotland, Charles II found his policies under increasing attack by his religious opponents in England. The radicals' iconoclastic fury soon ramified to Tangier, where the fate of the greatest engineering project of the century was now in the hands of the parliamentary Whigs. What alarmed them most were reports of the successful progress of the fortification and military enterprises. In 1669 the king had sent the First Earl of Middleton, Moray's former colleague, to govern Tangier, where he drew on his experience as liaison with the Dutch Jews to continue the policy of toleration. (87) Because the stone for constructing the Mole and fortifications had to be quarried from outside the existing lines, it was crucial that he maintain good relations with the Jewish and Moslem inhabitants. Given his Scottish background and duties in Tangier, it seems likely that Middleton was a Mason; his grandson, the Third Earl, would later participate in the Jacobite lodge in Paris. (88)

Despite the heavy drinking that earlier led to his dismissal from Scottish office, Middleton was an effective governor until his death in 1674. (89)

His successor, the Irish governor Inchiquin, continued to rely on Simon Pariente, their trusted Jewish interpreter, and positive reports on Hebrew beliefs and customs were sent to London. Lancelot Addison, who spent several years in Tangier, drew on his conversations with local Jews to write The Present State of the Jews, Particularly Relating to Rose in Barbag (1675), a respectful and straightforward account. Addison dedicated the work to Joseph Williamson, secretary of state, who recommended it to his friend Hooke, who subsequently read and discussed it. In 1675, during a food shortage, Inchiquin utilized crypto-Sabbatians willing to break Jewish ritual law to import salted pork for the British garrison. (90)

Their heretical actions provoked the Beth Din of Tetuan to excommunicate the European Jews of Tangier, but Inchiquin insisted that the herein be lifted. When Morrocan authorities expelled all Jews as "suspected nationals" in 1677, he helped win their readmission as valuable traders in 1680.

During the 1670's, increasing numbers of masons and soldiers were shipped out from Scotland and Ireland, and they soon won popular fame for their courageous stands against Moorish attacks. However, in 1679 when the Whigs tried to force Charles II to accept the "Exclusion Bill," they linked his willingness to deny the succession to his Catholic brother with their willingness to provide funds for Tangier. Lurid charges of Papist conspiracy among the colony's governors, troops, and masons were flung during parliamentary debates. (91)

But Charles would not sacrifice his brother to save Tangier; instead, lie prorogued Parliament in March 1681 and governed without it until the end of his reign.

Despite Parliament's hostility, there was support for the colony ill the Royal Society, which had long followed the masonic work. Henry Sheeres, FRS, was chief engineer of construction, and he sent optimistic reports to the Fellows. In 1682 the Moroccan ambassador Hamet travelled to London to urge the king to preserve the colony, and he was welcomed by Evelyn, Ashmole, and interested virtuosos to the society, where he was elected a Fellow. (92)

Pressure also came from the Knights of Malta, who counted on the colonists' assistance in their struggle to liberate Christian slaves from their Moorish captors. In June 1683 the Grand Master of Malta arrived in London, where he pleaded the colony's cause and was entertained with Evelyn and Dryden.

Though Charles had proclaimed that Tangier was "the brightest jewel of his Crown," he succumbed to Parliament in 1683 and announced his decision to level the fortifications, destroy the Mole, ruin the harbour, and recall the garrison and colonists to England. It was a sad day in masonic history when the commission met in Tangier to plan the destruction of' the great Mole which, as Riley notes, was an engineering feat "comparable with the construction of the Channel tunnel today. (93) The Swedish architects Tessin and Beckman, as well as Sheeres, reluctantly agreed to undo their labor of two decades. (94)It would take two thousand men working round the-clock for three months to finally destroy the massive stone-works. When the evacuated "Tangerines" arrived in England in April 1684, they were welcomed by the royalists as returning heroes.

The question of' placing the returning troops greatly agitated Parliament, who feared that they formed a ready army to defend the Stuart cause. A Royal Warrant suggested the stationing of Lord Dumbarton's Scots regiment-which included veterans of the Garde Ecossaise at the strategic port of Portsmouth. Perhaps with an eye to that Franco-Scottish tradition, the king proposed to make the Scotch-Irish Grenadiers his personal bodygard. The Whigs protested these measures, and the troops were eventually dispersed throughout the country, where they were considered "eyesores." Colonel John Fitzgerald, who earlier served as Lieutenant Governor of Tangier, had labored to abolish "that national distinction between English, Irish, and Scotch" and to maintain the "remarkable" policy of toleration. (95)

Blocked from promotion by anti-Irish M.P.s, Fitzgerald was falsely accused of complicity in the Popish Plot. He and his Tangerine regiment would loyally serve the Stuarts through revolution and exile.

For many royalists, the destruction of Tangier was a betrayal of the great architectural and masonic traditions of the Stuart dynasty. An anti-Whig ballad, "Tangiers Lamentation on the Demolishing and Blowing up of the Town, Castle, and Citadel," lambasted the politicians whose political factionalism, xenophobic provincialism, and technological ignorance led to the destruction of architectural work worthy of Solomon, Hiram, and the ancient Jewish masons.

The seeds of future Masonic rivalries were planted on 6 February 1685 when Charles II, a "Mason King," died after a four-day illness. On his deathbed, he secretly converted to Catholicism and received the last rites of the Roman church." (96)

As far as the public knew, Charles had died as a tolerant Anglican, who hoped that Englishmen would now accept his brother, a tolerant Catholic, as King James II. However, the radical exclusionists now stepped up their campaign against the legitimacy of his brother's succession. In order to remind Britons of the earlier storms of civil war which disrupted the natural order and to bolster the claims of James, Thomas Otway composed "Windsor Castle" in March 1685.

In his poetic "monument" to the late king, Otway strolled through Windsor Castle, seeing in its massive stone architecture a revelation of the mind and heritage of Charles II. (97) He further praised the "wonders of Fraternal love," as exemplified by James's behavior at Charles's deathbed. That scene reminded him of the chivalric ideals of the Knights of' the Garter, so brilliantly expressed in the intricate stone carvings of the Gothic chapel at Windsor. As James II's cause came under fire from "The meeting of a numerous Senate," who provoked "bold Tumults and Disorders" throughout England, Otway's poem provided potent royalist propaganda.

With Britain headed into another revolution and possible civil war, the question of what "toleration" really meant took on urgent significance. Did it consist of liberty of conscience and universal brotherhood or protection of Protestantism and suppression of Catholicism? The contradictory answers would shatter the Stuarts' attempt to build a Temple of Concord. While one man's tolerance was defined as another's tyranny, the struggle would ramify into the emerging "modernist" development of Freemasonry.
THE EUROPEAN DIASPORA OF SCOTTISH-ESOTERIC MASONRY

The fate of Stuart Freemasonry during the early Williamite regime is difficult to piece together, because of destruction of documents and increasing secrecy maintained by Jacobite resisters and exiles. Anderson noted that "many of the Fraternity's records" from Charles II's reign were lost during James II's reign and "at the Revolution." (98)

William Bruce continued to secretly work for James's cause, and he was indirectly instrumental in the Jacobite outreach to Sweden-where many Scots fled after William's victories. Despite government surveillance, Bruce and his Jacobite-Masonic allies sought contacts with sympathizers in northern England, such as the steel-manufacturer Ambrose Crowley, who maintained important trade with Sweden and Scotland. Around 1688 -90 Crowley established a masonic lodge at Sunderland, close to Newcastle, which served the operative masons involved in constructing the large stone buildings for the steel works. (99)

The lodge probably also served as a means of bonding his religiously and ethnically diverse workforce. As a Quaker, Crowley was grateful to James II for his policy of' religious toleration and for the royal protection given to the steel-maker's foreign workmen, who included Catholics and Lutherans. (100)

Several Quakers had joined lodges in Scotland during James's residence in the north and, following their leader William Penn, they retained their sympathy for the Jacobite cause. Like Crowley's employees, they agreed with James that "liberty of conscience" would benefit industry and trade.

Crowley provides an early preview of Jacobite-Masonic links between Edinburgh, Newcastle, and Gothenburg that would endure for the next seven decades. By 1691 Sir James Montgomerie, radical Covenanter turned Jacobite plotter, gained Swedish support for James II's cause, and two years later the Swedish ambassador in London would hide Jacobite agents." (101)

The Swedish king Carl XI allowed a Scottish-affiliated lodge to continue meeting in Gothenburg. His son Carl XII would become a staunch supporter of James II's son, the "Old Pretender," and allegedly a protector of Ecossais Freemasonry in Sweden. (102)

The Tessin family would provide important support for Jacobite exiles and Masons in Sweden and on the Continent. By 1788 the Swedish king Gustaf III would inherit the Grand Mastership of the Masonic Knights Templar directly from James II's grandson, the "Young Pretender," Charles Edward Stuart. (103)

In the meantime in England, William III was preoccupied with European war plans and paid little attention to architecture in his new kingdom. After a hiatus in 1689, Wren managed to resume his position as Surveyor of Works, and he attempted to complete his rebuilding projects. However, as Summerson notes, during the next decade--"this vacant interval"---few churches were built in England. (104)

French and Continental historians argue that Wren maintained his private Jacobite sympathies, while he worked discretely and cautiously under the new regime." (105) Jeffery suggests that the lack of written documents about Wren's work during these years was deliberate:


... his tracks are usually well-hidden. His early brushes with authority had taught him to be wary of committing himself to paper and of exposing his ideas to public criticism and debate ... he may just have carried on, unwilling to record decisions on paper." (106)

Wren still maintained contact with Freemasons in Scotland, and the Hamiltons often consulted him and Bruce about the progress of their grandiose palace. (107)

After the Williamite repressions of December 1691, the exiled Scots were joined by thousands of Irish refugees, who fled to France, Italy, and Spain. These "Wild Geese" included nobles and soldiers who carried their "Masonic traditions into the armies of friendly Catholic sovereigns, who still maintained chivalric orders of military and religious knights." (108)

The Irish Masonic historian Lepper observes that the army "was a great disseminator of the true light," for "our militant forefathers" found that "the secrets of a mason were very useful pieces of equipment to carry with them to a campaign." (109)

He further argues that "masonic degrees were in full vogue long prior to the creation of the [modern English] Grand Lodge in 1717" and that "the lodges of St. John maintained their association with the operative lodges." He implies that the Jacobite lodges developed degrees beyond the basic operative ones.

The many French, German, Italian, Swedish, and Russian publications, issued from the eighteenth through twentieth centuries, which reveal oral traditions about the export of Jacobite Masonry to the Continent will be discussed in my projected books on eighteenth century, high-degree Freemasonry. However, it is worth mentioning now the version of that history learned by a Scottish Mason, Professor John Robison, in the 1770's, when he participated in lodges established by Jacobite exiles and their supporters in France, Belgium, Germany, and Russia. Robison lamented "the heap of rubbish with which Anderson disgraced his Constitutions of Free Masony," which had unfortunately become "the basis of masonic history.

Recounting the different historical instruction he received in Ecossais lodges, John Robison asserted:


"We also know that Charles II was made a Mason, and frequented the Lodges ... His brother and successor James II was of a more serious and manly cast of mind, and had little pleasure in the frivolous ceremonies of Masonry. He did not frequent the Lodges.”

Rather than repeating Anderson's claim that James was not a "Brother Mason," Robison implied that he did not attend often or enjoy lodge meetings. Moreover, Robison added that the lodges had become the rendezvous of "accepted" Masons who had no association with actual building projects--which suggests that James "did not frequent" English lodges. In Scotland and Ireland, the lodges continued to be closely associated with practical architecture. After the Williamite revolution, James and "his most zealous adherents" took refuge in France:


“They took Free Masonry with them to the continent, where it was immediately received by the French, and was cultivated with great zeal in a manner suited to the taste and habits of that highly cultivated people. The Lodges in France naturally became the rendezvous of the adherents to their banished King, and the means of a carrying on a correspondence with their friends in England." (p.27)

From France the exiles scattered across Europe and established clandestine Masonic networks. Robison notes that "All the Brethren on the Continent agree in saying, that Freemasonry was imported from Great Britain about the beginning of this century [ca. 1690-1700] and this in the form of a mystical society." (p.541)

Robison then described a special chivalric degree created by the Jacobitcs:

It was in the Lodges held at St. Germain's that the degree of Chevalier Alafon Ecossais was added to the three SYMBOLICAL degrees of English Masonry . . . this rank of Scotch Knight was called the first degree of the Maton Parfait. There is a device belonging to this Lodge which deserves notice. A lion, wounded by an arrow, and escaped from the stake to which he had been bound, with the broken rope still about his neck, is represented lying at the mouth of a cave, and occupied with mathematical instruments which are lying near him. A broken crown lies at the foot of the stake. There can be little doubt but that this emblem alludes to the dethronement, the captivity, the escape and asylum of James II and his hopes of re-establishment by the help of the loyal Brethren. This emblem is worn as the gorget of the Scotch Knight. It is not very certain, however, when this degree was added, whether immediately after King James's Abdication, or about the time of the attempt to set his son on the British Throne. But it is certain, that in 1716, this and still higher degrees of Masonry were much in vogue in the court of France." (p.28)

These claims of chivalric developments within Jacobite Masonry continue to provoke arguments among historians, because of the dearth of contemporary documentation until the 1720's. However, an oblique reinforcement comes from Swift, who drew upon his experiences in Dublin in 1688 and Ulster in 1695 to later describe the chivalric (as well as Cabalistic, Lullist, and Rosicrucian) associations of Scots-Irish Freemasonry. Swift's comical summary of "Celtic" traditions in "a Lodge of Free-Masons at 0 ---- h in U ---- r" (Omagh in Ulster) throws a retrospective light on developments in the fraternity in the 1690's.(110)

In 1689 Swift fled the political turmoil in Dublin and moved to England, where he became amanuensis to the retired diplomat Sir William Temple at Moor Park. Temple shared Swift's sceptical curiosity about Rosicrucianism, which he had encountered in its radical form in Ireland during the 1650's. (111)

He also dealt with operative masons there, who drew on Scots-Irish traditions. After the Restoration, Temple was employed on delicate secret missions by Charles II and Lord Arlington, both Masons, and he was kept abreast of Scottish affairs while serving at The Hague. In 1668 Arlington sent Temple a paper written by Moray and praised the Scot's expertise in chemistry. (112)

Two years later Temple met Moray, who sought his assistance for the export to Holland of Kincardine's building stone, an enterprise which involved William Bruce and William Davidson. (113)

Thus, when Temple discussed with Swift the secret diplomacy of Charles II, he may have revealed the role of Freemasonry in Stuart politics.

In "Prose" vol. V, p. 328-29 we see J. Swift writing:


"The Branch of the Lodge of Solomon's Temple, afterwards call'd the Lodge of St John of Jerusalem ... is ... the Antientest and Purest now on Earth. The famous old Scottish Lodge of Kilwinning of which all the Kings of Scotland have been from Time to Time Grand Masters without Interruption down from the days of Fergus, who Reign'd there more than 2000 Years ago, long before the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem or the Knights of Maltha, to which two Lodges I must nevertheless allow the Honour of having adorn'd the Anticin Jewish and Pagan Masonry with many Religious and Christian Rules.

Fergus being eldest Son to the chief King of Ireland, was carefully instructed in all the Arts and Sciences, especially the natural Magick, and the Caballistical Philosophy (afterwards called the Rosecrution) by the pagan Druids of i'vlona, the only true Cabalists then Extant in the Western World ...

Fergus before his Descent upon the Picts in Scotland rais'd that famous Structure, call'd to this Day Carrick-Fergus, the most misterious Piece of Architecture now on Earth, (not excepting the Pyramids of the Egyptian Masons, and their Hieroglyphicks or Free Masons signs) ... he built it as a Lodge for a College of Free Masons in those days call'd Druids."

An exiled Scot and convert to "universalist" Catholicism, Ramsay wrote Swift to thank him for supporting The Travels of Cyrus (17 2 7), Ramsay's allegorical novel, which was suffused with Jacobite and Masonic themes. (114)

A decade later, Ramsay revealed to the Ecossais lodge in Paris a Jacobite version of Masonic history that echoed and colaborated many of Swift's revelations in A Letter from the Crand Mistress.

Swift stressed the Jewish roots of Masonry, noting that it was originally called Cabala, and he revealed the initiates' preoccupation with Cabalistic gematria and notarikon. (115)

For their Masonic relationship, see M.K. Schuchard, "Ramsay, Swift, and the Jacobite-Masonic Version of the Stuart Restoration," in Esoterisme, Gnosis et Imaginaire Symbolique (2001), 491-50.

Ramsay similarly stressed the Jewish origins and Cabalistic descent, noting that "The secret Science can be preserved pure only amongst God's people," the Jews, because the Masons' traditions... are founded on the annals of the most ancient race in the, world, the only one, still in existence with the same name as of old and not intermingled with other nations although so widely dispersed and also the only one that has preserved its ancient books, whereas those of almost all other races are lost." (116)

While Swift referred to the preservation of Jewish secrets in lodges of "the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem or the Knights of Maltha," Ramsay described the concealment of Solomon's hieroglyphic writing ("the original Code of our Order") in the foundations of the Second Temple and its subsequent discovery by the crusading knights who liberated Jerusalem.

According to Swift and Ramsay, when the crusaders returned to Europe, they infused the Solomonic secrets of Cabalism and Temple building into their lodges. More explicitly than Swift, Ramsay named "James, Lord Steward of Scotland" as "Grand Master of a Lodge established at Kilwinning" in 1286, when he also initiated the English Earl of Gloucester and the Irish Earl of Ulster. Obliquely identifying early Masonry with the Templars, Ramsay noted that "an intimate union" was formed with the Knights of St. John of jerusalerd (the Hospitallers'). Unlike Swift, he did not mention the Knights of Malta, who subsequently absorbed Templar and Hospitaller traditions and who underwent a short-lived revival in Ireland during James II's residence there in 1690. Since the merging of the chivalric orders into Masonry, the brothers continued to imitate their Jewish forefathers: "The union was made after the manner of the Israelites when they built the Second Temple, whilst some handled the trowel and the compasses, others defended them with sword and buckler."

Though little documentation survives concerning Freemasonry at the turn of the seventeenth century, the seeds were already planted for the almost startling growth of the fraternity in the eighteenth century. After the accession of the Elector of Hanover to the British throne in 1714, the suppression of the Jacobite rebellion of 1715, and the exposure of the Jacobite- Swedish plot of 1716, a rival system of "modern" Hanoverian Freemasonry was established in 1717, and it struggled in bitter competition with the "ancient" Stuart system until 1813.

Outside of Britain, the "ancients" recruited many more followers and became associated with nationalist movements in Eastern Europe and North and South America. For these liberationists, the Scottish traditions of resistance to foreign domination and mystical elevation of ordinary men to brotherhood with kings seemed fraught with contemporary relevance.

Throughout the eighteenth century, the "ancient" Stuart traditions were maintained in clandestine Jacobite lodges in Britain and in the lodges of the Stuart diaspora. The Jewish associations were carried on by Francis Francia (the 'Jacobite Jew"), Dr. Samuel Jacob Falk (the "Baal Shem of London"), Martines de Pasqually (the "Elu Cohen"); the Swedish-Stuart loyalties were preserved by Carl XIL Carl Gustaf Tessin, Carl Gyllenborg, Emanuel Swedenborg, and Gustaf III. 

FOOTNOTES

64 Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E.S. dc Beer (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976), 11, 30: 11, 399-404.

65 J. Anderson, Constitutions (1738), 105.

66 J. Evelyn, Diag, IV. 114.

67 D. Stevcnson, Orpns, 226 230.

68 H. Ouston, "York in Edinburgh," 133.

69 Paul Monod, Jacobitism and the English People, 1688 1788 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989). 303.

70 F.M.G. Higham, King James the Second. (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1934), 44.

71 E. Cruickshanks, Glorious Revolution, 47.

72 M. Glendinning, Histog, 71-84.

73 Kincardine NIS-5050 f. 95; Stevenson, Origins.

74 Sir George Mackenzie, The Science of Heraldry (Edinburgh: printed by the heir of' Andrew Anderson, 1680), preface, 2.

75 Alexander Nisbet, A System of Heraldry, Speculative and Practical (Edinburgh: J. Mackuen, 1722),. 114; he utilized Mackenzie's manuscript collections on heraldry.

76 R. Gould, History, If, 60.

77 Robert Sibbald, 'The Rernains of Sir Robert Sibbald, Knight, ALD. (Edinburg 1833), 15 17, 30.

78 See Catalogus Bibliothecae Sibbaldiane ( Edinburgh, 1707), and Bibliotheca Sibbaldiana (Edinburgh, 1722).

79 W.S. Craig, History of the Royal College of Physicians, (1976) 61-62.

80 A. Levy, "Origins," 134-35. Amedeus may have converted to Christianity by this time.

81 The Count of Gabalis: trans. P. Ayres (London, 1680), Dedication, 1-2.

82 Allison Coudert, "A Quaker-Kabbalist Controversy: George Fox's Reaction to Francis Mercury van Helmont," JWCI, 39 (1976), 170-89.

83 D. Stevenson, First Freermasons, 136 39, 142.

84 James Drummond, Fourth Earl and First Duke of Perth," DVB. For his Masonic affiliation, see John Yarker, "Drummond-Earls of Perth," AQC, 14 1901" 138.

85 Stevenson, Origins, 147.

86 B. Little, Wren, 109.

87 George Hilton Jones, Charles Aliddleton: 'The Iife and Times of a Restoration Politician. (Chicago UP, 1967), 10 -17.

88 Edward Corp, Lord Burlington “The Man and His Politics "Lewiston: Edwin Nellen, 1998, 20.

89 The Diary of Samuel Pepys: 1662 by Samuel Pepys, Robert Latham, William Matthews.

90 T. Benady, "Role of Jews," 47.

91 J.C. Riley. "Catholicism and the Late Stuart Army: the Tangier Episode." Royal Stuart Papers XIIII Huntingdon: Royal Stuart Society (1993), 1 28.

92 J. Evelyn Diarry III, 75, 77, 84.

93 J. Riley, "Catholicism," 67.

94 Ensign Bernard Tessin, member of The Tangier Regiment in 1683, was probably Hans Ewald's son. Martin Beckman evidently, became a Freemason in Scotland: see Howard Tomlinson, "The Ordnance Office and the King's Forts (1610) 1711- 1716 (1973), 17.

95 J. Riley, "Catholicism," 11 12.

96 For a critical examination of the false accounts given of' Charles's conversion, see R. Hutton, Charles 11, 443 45.

97 T. Otway, Works, 11, 457-65.

98 J. Anderson, Constilutiom (1738). 105-06.

99 Leo Gooch, The Desperate Faction? The Jacobites of North-East England (Hull UP, 1995), 202n.14; also 39, 111.

100 M.W. Flinn, Alen ()f Iron: 'The Crowlg,s in the Eadv Iron Indusiq (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1962), 16, 39-40.

101 P.A. Hopkins, "Sir Jarnes Montgomeric of Skelmorlie," in E. Corp, Stuart Court, 51 56; Mark Goldie, "The Roots of True Whiggism," History of Political Thought, (1980), 228-29.

102 M.Schusshard "Swedenborg, Jacobitisin, and Freemasonry." in Erland Brock, ed., Swedenborg and His Influence (1988), 359 - 79.

103 Claude Nordmann, Gustave III.- un democrate couronne (Lille: Presses Universitaire, 1986), 214 M Frank 1\1cLynn, Charles Edward Stuart "1988; Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991 ~, 532- 36.5)

104 J. Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530 1830 (London: Pelican, 19351), 184.

105 G. Bord, Franc-Alafonnerie, 55-5 7 -, Margaret Jacob, Liring the Enlightenment: Freemasong and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe (Oxford: Oxford UP. 1991), 92.

106 Paul Jefferv, 'The Cio Churche,s of Christopher Wren ( 1996), 28-29.

107 Charles Trench, Gace's Card.- Irish Catholic Landlords, 1690 1800 (Dublin: Mercier, 1997), 34; S. Murphy, "Irish Jacobitism," 74 82.

108 John Heron Lepper, The Pifferences Between English and Irish Alasonic Rituals Treated Historicall, (Dublin: George Healy. 1920), 17, 23, 39.

109 John Robison, Proofs of a Conspiracy, (1798), 17. Though most historians rightfully scoff at Robison's charges of a Masonic conspiracy in the 1790's, they have not examined his accounts of his personal experiences in Ecossais lodges in the 1770's. The latter material is important for its insight into the Scottish-Jacobite traditions that were preserved in various European Masonic rites. These latter descriptions are corroborated by the Continental Masonic documents published in Charles Porset , Les Philadelphes el les Convent de Paris (1998).

110 J. Swift, Prase, V, 324.

111 William Temple, Five Miscellaneous Essays, ed. Samuel Holt (Ann Arbor: Michigan UP. 1963), 200-01; "Sir William Temple," DNB.

112 Arlington, letters, 450.

113 H. Paton. "Letters from ... Lauderdale," 173, 181, 190, 234-3,).

114 See The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift. ed. Harold Williams (1963), 111, 223, 331: Albert Cherel, In Advenurier Religieux an XVII e Siecle, A.M. Rainvil (1926)

115 J.Swift, Prose. V. 325 30.

116 C. Bathain, "Ramsay," 301-02.