TWO LETTERS WRITTEN BY RAMSAY IN 1737

 

We shall see now, with the help of a letter written a few weeks after the Grand Lodge meeting was cancelled – which is the last contemporary document of Ramsay as a Mason - , what was on his mind when he wrote the paragraph last quoted above.

This essential new piece of evidence came to light in 1963. when François Weil published a hitherto unknown letter written by Ramsay to the Marquis of Caumont [1] in Avignon, April 16, 1737, which includes many words and sentences closely resembling, and sometimes identical with, the printed version of the Discours. Their differences show what Ramsay chose not to express publicly.

Two and a half centuries before Professor David Stevenson, Ramsay stated that Freemasonry had come down from Scotland to England :

 

John, Lord Stewart or Grand Master of the House of the King of Scotland, brought our science from the Holy Land in 1286 and established a lodge at Kilwinn in Scotland in which he received as freemaçons the Earls of Gloucester and Ulster. Since that time, the old Kingdom and intimate ally of France was the depository of our secrets, the Center of the order and the conservator of our laws. From Scotland, our society spread in England, under the great Prince Edward, son of Henry III.

 

And directly following the previous words, Ramsay expressed his true inner political and masonic leanings :

 

The baneful religious discords which set Europe afire [2] and tore it apart in the sixteenth century caused our order to degenerate from the greatness and nobility of its origin. In order to satisfy the parricidal usurper Elizabeth who looked upon our lodges as so many nests of Catholicism which must be suppressed,[3] the Protestants altered, disguised and degraded many of our hieroglyphs, stamped our brotherly meals as Bacchanals, and polluted our sacred assemblies. Mylord Earl of Detwentwater, martyr of Royalty and of Catholicism, attempted to bring everything here back to its origin and to restore everything upon its ancient footing. The ambassadors of the Netherlands and of George Duke of Hannover [4] took offence, and blaspheming against what they ignored, assuming that the catholic, royalist and Jacobite freemasons resembled the heretical, apostate and republican freemasons, they blamed us first, and then sung our praises by screaming everywhere that we intended to undertake a ninth Crusade in order to re-establish the true monarch of Great Britain. Our assemblies at the head of which Louis XV intended to declare himself have been suspended for a while. That storm will only help to separate the wheat from the chaff but finally virtue and truth will triumph under the reign of the most loveable of all Kings [...].

 

Another document, also discovered by Françoise Weil, adds a further interesting touch. In a letter from August 2, 1737,[5] Ramsay wrote to the well-known Jacobite Carte :

 

you have no doubt heard of the rumours our French Free Masons made. I was the orator and had great views, if the Card. [6] had not wrote to me to forbear. I sent my discourse made at the acception at different times of eight dukes and peers and two hundred officers of the first rank and highest nobility to his grace the duke of Ormond. George Kelly is to translate it and send it to M. Bettenham to be printed. You’l[l] see there my general views for learning but my particular views for the good of our country, I’ll tell you when at meeting. If the Card. had deferred one month longer, I was to have gone to the ‘merite’ to harangue the king of France as head of the confraternity and to have initiated His Majesty into our sacred mysterys.[7]

 

DID RAMSAY DELIVER ‘A’ DISCOURS IN MARCH 1737 ?

 

As far as documents bear testimony, the answer to that question is negative. I showed why five years ago : [8]

q       According to Luynes’ Mémoires, under date March 18, 1737, Cardinal Fleury had on the previous day instructed the Lieutenant Général de Police Hérault that ‘no further meetings of Freemasons were to be held’.

q       Being away in the country, Ramsay was not aware of Hérault’s instructions when he wrote in a first (undated) letter to Cardinal Fleury : « Comme je dois lire mon discours demain dans une assemblée Generale de l’ordre, & le donner lundy matin aux examinateurs de la Chancellerie... ».[9]

q       As soon as Ramsay returned to Paris and heard the news, he quickly wrote a second letter dated March 22 (Friday), telling the Cardinal he had « just learned that masonic assemblies displease His Excellency ».

q       What about the General Assembly said to be held the next day in Ramsay’s first letter [10] ? The key to the riddle lies in the Minute-Book of the Coustos’ lodge.[11] On March 23 (Saturday), the lodge held an extraordinary meeting ‘to discuss proposals to be submitted to-morrow, 24^th of the present month, to the Grand Lodge’. Coustos’ lodge met again the next day, March 24, and during that meeting a letter of the Grand Master [Derwentwater] was read, in which he moved (likely in consequence of Hérault’s instructions of the previous week)

to postpone the meeting of Grand Lodge because of certain circumstances (conjonctures) which shall not be stated (déduites). Enough to say that the free-masons are threatened not to have the freedom to hold meetings any more.

Accordingly, it appears more than likely that the text Ramsay sent to Cardinal Fleury was not delivered at all in 1737, since the Grand Lodge meeting was postponed on March 24 and, as far as we know, no further one was held that year.

In any case, we ignore which version of his Discours Ramsay sent to the Cardinal.[12] A version of the Discours may have been delivered in 1740 by the French Grand Master in Grand Lodge, as stated two years later by La Tierce (see Bibliography), but no further extant document corroborates his assertion.

 

DID RAMSAY INVENT ANY DEGREE AT ALL ?

 

For the past two hundred years, many commentators charged Ramsay with inventing additional degrees (including the Royal Arch) as well as a ‘Ramsay’s rite’ which, they say, he tried – without success – to introduce in London in 1728.

The latter absurdity originated in a manuscript History of Freemasonry written by Fessler in 1802.[13] According to Fessler, to the existing three English Craft degrees Ramsay added that of Knight of St Andrews of the Thistle, which already existed since the time James II. was in France, and grafted thereupon the three degrees worked in the Chapter of Clermont. Ramsay presented his reform to both the English and the French Grand Masters.

Thory, familiar with Fesslers History,[14] embellished the above in his Acta Latomorum and wrote without blushing :

In that year [1728], the Scottish Knight Baronet Ramsay laid in London the foundations of a new Masonry which, according to him, originated in the Crusades and whose invention he ascribed to Godfrey of Bouillon. He asserted that the St Andrews Lodge in Edinburgh was the head of the true Order of the Freemasons who were the scions of the knights of the Crusades. He conferred three degrees : the Ecossais, the Novice and the Knight of the Temple. Ramsay preaches a reform based on his discovery ; this doctrine is rejected.[15]

Many credulous historians recopied Thory. Gould, who was familiar with Schiffmann’s study on Ramsay, realized the claim was absurd.[16]

 

However it was still alive and growing in the middle of the 20^th century. While preparing his biography of Ramsay, Henderson « had the privilege of consulting Dudley Wright [17] » on masonic matters and became the following answer :

There were nine degrees in Ramsay’s system. The first four comprehended Symbolic Masonry and formed the first Chapter. The second Chapter was composed of four further degrees and constituted what was called the Masonry of the Crusades. The third Chapter consisted of those who had been admitted to the ninth or highest degree, known as the Secrets of Scientific masonry. The three Chapters or Lodges were united into a Consistory... [18]

 

A WILD GUESS BY WAY OF A CONCLUSION

 

It seems to me that Ramsay’s life, what he did and chose not to do, what he thought and chose not to write, can be summarized in a few words : he was a true Jacobite, poor [19] and, most of all, dependent on the good will of various groups of persons – French aristocrats, Stuart exiles, Freemasons of different origins - whose opinions were different. And he needed them all.

 

Since we know nothing of Ramsay’s masonic activities between 1730 (his initiation in London) and December 1736 - the notes taken by Geusau in 1741 during his conversations with Ramsay, as reported by Büsching, might have proven a help ; however they include many inaccuracies and it is hardly possible to use them as a reliable source [20] -, guesses are our last resort in order to try and understand Ramsay’s behaviour.

 

Although made a Mason in London, Ramsay is not recorded among those present when the Duke of Richmond held a Lodge in Paris at his mother’s house in September 1734 nor when he held another one together with Desaguliers a year later, whereas Montesquieu attended on both occasions. Was Ramsay not invited ? Did he choose not to go ? Was he, at that time, already reading his Discours made at the acception at different times of eight dukes and peers and two hundred officers of the first rank and highest nobility ? We have no way to know.

 

What we know is that the printed version is extremely different from the manuscript one. So different indeed that I presume it might have been written as a consequence of the election of Derwentwater as Grand Master in France and likely under his influence.

 

If – but this is a very big if – if Ramsay was an early or even a founding member of the Louis d’Argent [21] at the time it was warranted by the premier Grand Lodge in Paris, that is, two years after Ramsay was made a Mason in Richmond’s lodge in London, it might explain why he did not keep the Gospel of St John as the book recovered in the foundations of Solomon’s Temple in his Discours. The book upon which Masons took the oath in England was the Bible. In French lodges, at least since 1736-1737, it was St. John’s Gospel. [22]

 

If – again ‘if’ – he decided to come closer to the Grand Master’s Lodge after Derwentwater was elected, it might explain some if not most of the changes between the two versions.

 

It is well to remember that the 1^st article of the French Charges – in the 1735-1736 version – said : But though in past centuries, masons were charged to be of the religion of the land where they lived, yet it is thought lately more expedient only to oblige them to that religion in which all Christians agree, leaving their particular opinions to themselves [...], whereas under Derwentwater it became worded thus : in past centuries, masons were charged to profess the Roman Catholic religion, yet, lately, they are not asked about their particular opinions on the subject, inasmuch as however they are Christians [...].

 

Would it be too far-fetched to read Ramsay as the author of a true story behind which recent events were told as legends of the past ? Should we dare translate At the time of the last Crusades with : A few years after the 1715’, take James, Lord Steward of Scotland made the Earls of Gloucester and Ulster Masons in his Lodge, the one English, the other Irish as meaning : Hector McLean made James Earl of Derwentwater and O’Heguerty (who were English and Irish) Masons in his Lodge ? [23]

 

Could it explain why Ramsay wrote : the Protestants altered, disguised and degraded many of our hieroglyphs,... and polluted our sacred assemblies. Mylord Earl of Detwentwater, martyr of Royalty and of Catholicism, attempted to bring everything here back to its origin and to restore everything upon its ancient footing ?

 

And wouldn’t Ramsay’s Discours make sense then ?