The Study of Freemasonry as a New Academic Discipline



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MASONIC PAPERS by Dr ANDREW PRESCOTT THE STUDY OF FREEMASONRY AS A NEW ACADEMIC DISCIPLINE
First published in Vrijmetserarij in Nederland, ed. A. Kroon (Leiden: OVN, 2003).

‘Why have Kings and Princes, the Nobility, Judges and Statesmen, Soldiers and Sailors, Clergy and Doctors, and men in every walk of life sought to enter the Portals of Freemasonry?’

G. W. Daynes, The Birth and Growth of the Grand Lodge of England (London: Masonic Record, 1926), p. 185.

Stephen Yeo’s 1976 book, Religions and Voluntary Organisations in Crisis, is a study of the social life of the English town of Reading between 1890 and 1914.[i] Yeo describes a town whose social fabric was bound together by many voluntary organisations and activities, ‘from Congregational chapels to the Social Democratic Federation, from Hospital Sunday Parades to Literary and Scientific Societies’.[ii] This social ecology was rooted in the churches and in a paternalistic culture encouraged by large employers such as Reading’s famous biscuit manufacturers, Huntley and Palmer. Yeo paints a vivid picture of a vibrant associational culture which has now largely disappeared. Yet, Yeo admits, there was one major omission in his study. He describes how ‘A congregationalist minister in the 1960s, showing me the photographs of deacons, etc., on the wall of the vestry of his chapel, told me that I could not really understand late 19th-century chapel life without knowing about the masons. The Vicars of St. Mary’s and of St. Giles at different dates before 1914 were both high in the local masonic hierarchy.’[iii]Yeo went to the local masonic hall, but was not allowed to examine the records held there. The freemasons, one of the largest and most prestigious of Reading’s voluntary organisations, with in 1895 three separate lodges[iv], were consequently left out of Yeo’s book.

Since Yeo wrote, there has been a silent revolution in English freemasonry. Partly in response to attacks on freemasonry by writers such as Stephen Knight, masonic libraries and museums have been opened to the public. The magnificent Library and Museum of Freemasonry at Freemasons’ Hall in London offers daily public tours, and in the 2002 ‘Open House’ event attracted over 2,000 visitors in one day. Its library is freely available to scholars and lists of its historical correspondence and early returns of membership are being mounted on the internet.[v]The Province of Berkshire, which contains Reading, has one of the largest provincial libraries, with over 13,000 books, and the library is now open daily to the general public. Berkshire was one of the first English provinces to establish a web site.[vi] I am myself an incarnation of this new policy. In 2000, the University of Sheffield established, with funding from United Grand Lodge, the Province of Yorkshire West Riding and Lord Northampton, the Pro Grand Master, the first centre in a British university devoted to the scholarly study of freemasonry.[vii]Although I am not a mason, I was appointed as the first Director of this Centre.

Of course, the cautiousness of the English Grand Lodge from which Yeo suffered was not shared by all the European Grand Lodges. The Grand East of the Netherlands has for many years welcomed scholars wishing to use its remarkable library.[viii] Shortly after Yeo’s book was published, Professor Margaret Jacob made use of the library of the Grand East and her resulting book, Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans,[ix] has profoundly altered our perception of the cultural history of 18th-century Europe.[x] The willingness of the Grand East of the Netherlands to make its collections available to scholars has played a significant part in the upsurge in scholarly interest in freemasonry over the last twenty years. Trevor Stewart has recently compiled a bibliography of articles on European freemasonry which have appeared in academic periodicals since 1980. This contains 269 entries, and even this gives only a partial view of the full extent of research into freemasonry, since it excludes articles on America, Africa and Asia, as well as periodicals published by masonic bodies, theses and monographs.[xi]

Despite all this work, our picture of freemasonry remains fragmented. In many countries, particularly England, freemasonry is still considered an exotic subject outside the scholarly mainstream.[xii]It is often forgotten by scholars even when it should loom large. For example, Noble Frankland’s 1993 biography of the Duke of Connaught, who as Grand Master from 1901 to 1939 was one of the dominant figures in modern English freemasonry, makes no mention of the Duke’s masonic career.[xiii] The picture is of course different in Europe and America where there is a long-standing scholarly interest in freemasonry, but even here there is no overall consensus on the importance and significance of freemasonry. Trevor Stewart’s bibliography illustrates how freemasonry is relevant to an enormous range of subjects from garden history to theatre studies, but broader connecting themes are not immediately evident. Scholars frequently use masonic evidence simply to confirm and further illustrate established themes and ideas. Pierre Chevallier’s history of French freemasonry is one of the great achievements of masonic scholarship, but ultimately it simply reinforces traditional French republican historiography.[xiv] The limitations of current scholarly research into freemasonry are epitomised by William Weisberger’s recent study of the role of Prague and Viennese freemasonry in Enlightenment.[xv] While the essay carefully documents the activities of the Czech and Austrian lodges, the value of the study is limited by its stereotyped and hackneyed view of the Enlightenment.[xvi] Work such as that of Margaret Jacob, which uses masonic evidence as a springboard for the development of new perspectives which alter our view of an entire period, is extremely rare.

As the exploration of masonic archives by scholars continues, what kind of broader themes will emerge? If research into freemasonry claims to be a new and emerging academic discipline, what will be its distinguishing features? I can only briefly sketch some of the possibilities here, and I hope you will forgive me if I confine my remarks to Britain, since this has been the focus of my own research.

As we continue to explore the masonic archive, we will find a great deal of information bearing on old kinds of history, on royalty, politicians and governments, and this cannot be ignored. Many of the English Grand Masters since 1782 have been members of the royal family, but the significance of this for the British monarchy as an institution has never been fully investigated.[xvii]Freemasonry is one of the British institutions in which the aristocracy still holds sway, and the role of the aristocracy in British freemasonry provides a fruitful area of study for scholars interested in the decline and fall of the British aristocracy. Occasionally, freemasonry has been caught up in wider political events. For example, in 1929, shortly before the election of the second Labour government, a new masonic lodge, the New Welcome Lodge No. 5139, was formed at the behest of the then Prince of Wales.[xviii] This lodge was intended exclusively for Labour members of parliament and party officials, and reflected a concern that Labour Party activists had frequently been blackballed by masonic lodges. The New Welcome Lodge was intended to ensure that the new socialist government was not alienated from freemasonry. It was also hoped that the lodge would draw more working men into freemasonry, and that masonic values would reduce ‘unsettling influences’ on the shop floor.[xix]Although the New Welcome Lodge was initially very successful in recruiting Labour M.P.s (including Sir Robert Young, the Deputy Speaker, Arthur Greenwood, Foreign Secretary and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party, and Scott Lindsay, the Labour Party Secretary),[xx]the formation of the National Government changed the political situation, and from 1934 New Welcome Lodge was opened up to MPs of all parties and to staff working at the Palace of Westminster, becoming essentially a house facility of the Palace of Westminster.[xxi]

Undoubtedly the most fascinating information in the masonic archive are the details of well-known people who were freemasons. The legal and social reformer, Lord Brougham, was initiated as a freemason on an impulse while he was on holiday in the Hebrides.[xxii] Was this a passing episode in Brougham’s life, or did the values of freemasonry influence Brougham’s legal reforms? The same question can be asked of many other prominent figures in British history who were freemasons. In July 1885, the English masonic newspaper, The Freemason, listed members of the government and royal household who were freemasons.[xxiii] Among those named by The Freemason were Sir Charles Dilke, President of the Local Government Board from 1882 to 1885, who was the leader of the radical faction within the Liberal party and the most eminent advocate of republicanism. Despite his republican views, Dilke became a close friend of the Prince of Wales. How far was this friendship fostered by their common freemasonry? Likewise, Dilke was close to French republican leaders such as Gambetta, who were also masons. The list in The Freemason also included one of Dilke’s political opponents, Lord Randolph Churchill, father of Sir Winston Churchill. Lord Randolph was a populist Tory whose personality was one of the most puzzling in 19th-century politics. In the case of Lord Randolph, further investigation of his masonic career would be interesting for the extent to which it would assist in interpreting his difficult character.

Just as the masonic archive provides new information about people, so it also sheds new light on places. The masonic archive is particularly rich in information about local life and networks. The campaign for more democratic town government in the 1820s and 1830s has been overshadowed by the movement for parliamentary reform, but municipal reform was in some ways a more potent focus of local political activism. In the town of Monmouth on the Welsh borders a campaign against the control of the town by the Duke of Beaufort created fierce local controversy in the 1820s.[xxiv]The archives of the English Grand Lodge include correspondence which gives new information about this dispute.[xxv] The leader of the reform party, Trevor Philpotts, was the master of the local masonic lodge, the Royal Augustus Lodge. One of the members of the lodge was Joseph Price, a cantankerous member of the group opposed to reform. In 1821, Price was accused by Philpotts of abusing his position as a magistrate by granting a friend preferential treatment in prison. The masonic lodge passed a series of resolutions against Price, one of which referred to his alleged abuse of his judicial authority. Price protested to the Grand Master, the Duke of Sussex, that this procedure was unmasonic. The Duke suspended the lodge, much to the annoyance of Philpotts who was anxious that the lodge should participate in the forthcoming consecration of a lodge in nearby Newport. Following protests by Philpotts, the Duke lifted the suspension of the lodge. This news was greeted joyfully in the town and the church bells were rung in celebration. This prompted a further round of correspondence with the Grand Lodge, since Price complained that he only heard of the Grand Master’s decision in his case when the bells started ringing.

As this case illustrates, lodges were an important feature of local life. Parades and processions were until recently a major focus of public life in towns,[xxvi] and masonic parades were particularly significant, because they were associated with the ceremonies performed by freemasons for the dedication of public buildings and marked important stages in the development of the town.[xxvii] In Sheffield, for example, the opening of a canal providing the town’s first link to the sea in 1819 was celebrated by processions of lodges from Sheffield and the surrounding area, and extracts from masonic minute books describing these ceremonies were framed and proudly displayed in the offices of the canal company.[xxviii] Such processions provided both a public face for freemasonry and associated freemasonry with the town’s cultural identity. Moreover, they explicitly linked freemasons with the physical reshaping of urban public space. Such landmarks in the remodelling of Edinburgh between 1750 and 1820 as the completion of the new university buildings, the George IV Bridge and the docks at Leith were marked by huge masonic processions.[xxix]In London, the Prince Regent, who was Grand Master of the Premier Grand Lodge, was the driving force behind the redevelopment of large parts of the west end. When the Prince as Grand Master formally dedicated in enormous public ceremonies such major new buildings as the Covent Garden Theatre, on the site of the present Royal Opera House, this conjunction between freemasonry and public space achieved a very potent expression.[xxx]

While freemasonry had a close engagement with public space through its processional activity, lodge meetings by contrast took place in a private, closed space, guarded by the Tyler. In a recent article, Hugh Urban has used the insights of theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu to consider ways in which the closed space and secrecy of the lodge meeting facilitated the elaboration of concepts of social power and hierarchy in late 19th-century America.[xxxi] Changes in spatial relationships within the lodge meeting could reflect wider social changes. Mary Ann Clawson, for example, has shown how the use of stage settings with proscenium arches and elaborate drop curtains in Scottish Rite initiations from the late 19th century onwards can be related to the rise of leisure activities which stressed consumption by a passive audience.[xxxii] In England, the most concrete expression of this need for a closed space was the development of the masonic hall. Until the 1850s, most masonic meetings took place in rooms in taverns, a space which was on the borderland between private and public.[xxxiii] The campaign for purpose-built masonic halls was an expression of the fetish of respectability which was a characteristic of the Victorian middle classes. In towns such as Sheffield, the masonic halls formed part of the development of a new city centre with public squares and buildings.[xxxiv] The creation of such urban centres was a spatial expression of the power of the new middle-class urban élites, intended to provide, in the words of Simon Gunn, ‘a symbolic centre at the heart of an emptied public space as well as to affirm the collective power and presence of the provincial bourgeoisies’.[xxxv] The masonic halls in the midst of these civic centres, devoted to secret ceremonies performed by lodges whose membership was in principle open to all respectable men of the town but in practice carefully controlled, powerfully symbolised the nature of these new élites.

Space as an expression of power and hierarchy is a prominent theme in modern scholarship to which the study of freemasonry has much to contribute. Masonic halls and civic centres were masculine spaces, distinguished from the other major development of the late Victorian city, the department store, seen as a largely female space.[xxxvi] The analysis of Catherine Hall and Leonore Davidoff tracing the emergence in the 18th and 19th centuries of separate spheres for different sexes has influenced much recent work on social history, and provides another powerful interpretative framework for masonic history.[xxxvii] This is shown by the works of Robert Beachy, who has recently discussed how masonic apologetic writings of the late 18th century helped popularise stereotypes of differences between men and women,[xxxviii] and Mark Carnes, who has analysed how the rituals of fraternal societies shaped middle-class views of masculinity in 19th-century America.[xxxix]

19th-century masonic writings are a rich source of information about the social and moral outlook of the middle-class male.[xl] For example, masonic sermons and speeches are a useful but neglected source for the study of the mentality of the new provincial élites of the Victorian and Edwardian periods. An oration given by M. C. Peck, Provincial Grand Secretary of the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, at the dedication of a masonic hall in Hull in 1890 outlines the qualities expected of an upright male inhabitant of Hull at that time.[xli] He should believe in God, treat his neighbour fairly, and look after his own body and mind. He should avoid extravagance and intemperance, and bear misfortune with fortitude. ‘Masons should never be sharp men as the world calls them, ready to cheat and overreach their fellows. How commonly we hear those who should no better affect to praise a man for his acuteness and business abilities, but would they trust him with their own affairs? On the other hand the truly just and honest man is the noblest work of God, and none can merit higher praise than he!’ Despite their confident tone, there is not far beneath these words an anxiety which recalls Mark Carnes’s comment that late Victorian freemasonry provided respite from the growing economic and social pressures of the outside world: ‘even as the emerging middle classes were embracing capitalism and bourgeois sensibilities, they were simultaneously creating rituals whose message was largely antithetical to those relationships and values’.[xlii]

In England, the masculine solace provided by freemasonry was closely linked to memories of school and school life. Paul Rich has suggested that public schools and freemasonry were lynchpins of a ritualism which was a major cultural bond of the British Empire.[xliii] Freemasonry enabled the adult male to relive the bonding rituals of school or university. Lodges were founded specifically for members of particular schools or universities,[xliv] which sought, in the words of a circular proposing the formation of a lodge for old boys of a small London grammar school, to weld ‘in the closer ties of fraternal good will those friendships which so many of us formed during our School life’.[xlv]The symbiotic relationship between school life and modern freemasonry is encapsulated by an article on a school lodge in the Aldenham School Magazine cited by Paul Rich, which declares that ‘I wonder if you really knew what life at school was all about until you joined’.[xlvi] A recent history by Christopher Tyerman of Harrow School, where Sir Winston Churchill was educated, emphasises the central role of freemasonry in school life, noting that ‘Between 1885 and 1971 headmasters tended to be freemasons, as did many governors and often powerful groups of masters and housemasters’.[xlvii] The school chapel was festooned with masonic symbols; in 1937, the Headmaster gave the boys a half-day’s holiday at the request of the Grand Master.[xlviii] Tyerman also notes that freemasonry was important in affirming the group interest and professional solidarity of schoolmasters.[xlix] This was not only the case in public schools. Dina Copelman has studied the teachers of the elementary schools run by the London School Board, which was set up in 1870.[l]The majority of these teachers were women, many of them married.[li] Like their public school colleagues, the male school board teachers used freemasonry to affirm their professional and social status.[lii] In 1876, the Crichton Lodge was founded by a group of teachers and officials of the London School Board, including its President and Secretary, and established other lodges comprising chiefly teachers in South London.[liii] These means of displaying middle-class credentials were not available to women teachers, and their social and professional status was more tenuous.

Copelman’s study explores the borderland between the ‘two spheres’ and suggests that the process of social give and take between the sexes was complex. Perhaps the most interesting aspects of freemasonry and gender are those areas which confront the neat divisions of a ‘two spheres’ model. Late Victorian rhetoric of sexual difference portrayed women as shoppers and consumers, but the private spaces of the masonic lodge enabled men to indulge in conspicuous display. Freemasons purchased jewels of enormous value to wear in their lodges, and decorated their halls with furniture and fittings of great opulence.[liv] In masonic shops such as Kennings in London they had their own department stores.[lv] Similarly, philanthropy was an area in which different genders had distinct roles.[lvi] but masonic charitable activity could quietly cut across some of these distinctions. Above all, in the other direction, women’s freemasonry provided a significant social outlet for women. Janet Burke and Margaret Jacob have argued that the Adoption enabled women, through freemasonry, to engage with the emerging civil society in the 18th century.[lvii] James Smith Allen and Mark Carnes have recently documented extensive participation by women in fraternal organisations in the 19th century,[lviii] while Co-Masonry, through figures such Annie Besant and Charlotte Despard, played a significant role in the women’s suffrage movement,[lix] with women masons joining suffrage marches in their regalia.[lx]

In the past, there has been an overemphasis on the importance of economic activity as a component of social identity. The study of gender has been one way in which scholars have demonstrated the complexity of social identity; another has been race, a further area where research into freemasonry offers exciting possibilities. The best-known illustration of this is Prince Hall freemasonry, the form of freemasonry organised by blacks in America,[lxi] which has been seen by scholars such as William Muraskin and Loretta Williams as significant in defining and nurturing a black middle class in America,[lxii] although Williams in particular emphasises the contradiction between the universalist ideology of freemasonry and the separate segregated character of Prince Hall masonry.[lxiii] There are many other areas in which freemasonry offers insights into ethnicity which are less well explored. Freemasonry was a major cultural component of the British Empire. The English Pro Grand Master Lord Carnarvon declared in the 1880s that ‘Where the flag goes, there goes freemasonry to consolidate the Empire’.[lxiv] The mixed race lodge offered a social venue in which coloniser and colonised mixed in the British Empire. Rudyard Kipling declared of his lodge in Lahore that ‘there aint such things as infidels’ among the ‘Brethren black an’ brown’.[lxv] The importance of this area of research has been brilliantly demonstrated by a study by Augustus Casely-Hayford and Richard Rathbone of freemasonry in colonial Ghana.[lxvi] This shows how ‘freemasonry was amongst the bags and baggage of both formal and informal empire’.[lxvii]It facilitated trading contacts and provided a means of signalling ‘achievement, hard work, worthiness and in some cases high birth’.[lxviii] It provided an important thread in the racial and national politics of the colony, with many members of the National Congress of West Africa being freemasons. Closely related to race is the role of freemasonry in the formation of national identity. For example, in Britain freemasonry was a powerful expression of the Hanoverian settlement,[lxix]while by contrast in France it was in the 1870s one of the forces behind the development of modern French republicanism.[lxx]

The interaction between freemasonry, race, nationality and class is powerfully illustrated by a classic study by Abner Cohen of freemasonry in Sierra Leone, which is a model of how scholarly research into freemasonry should be performed.[lxxi] Cohen found that in 1971 there were seventeen masonic lodges in Freetown, with about two thousand members, the bulk of whom were African. Most of these black masons were Creoles, descendants of the slaves emancipated between the 1780s and 1850s, a literate, highly-educated and occupationally-differentiated group, who were at first befriended but then disparaged by the British administrators. Cohen found that one in three Creoles were masons. Cohen related the Creole involvement in freemasonry to attacks on Creole power during the period from 1947. He concluded that ‘Largely without any conscious policy or design, Freemasonic rituals and organisation helped articulate an informal organisation, which helped the Creoles to protect their position in the face of political threat’.[lxxii]

Cohen’s study raises one final important theme, that of social networks. As scholars have increasingly explored the pluralistic nature of social identity, the importance of the analysis of social networks has become evident. Factors such as the extent to which everybody knows everyone else (‘reachability’), the different ways in which people are linked (‘multiplexity’) and the obligations placed by networks on their members (‘intensity’) are essential in understanding local societies, and freemasonry and other fraternal groups have a major effect on these dynamics.[lxxiii] The masonic archive is rich in material for investigating social networks, not only in such obvious sources as membership lists but also in petitions and correspondence, where in discussing the need for a lodge its social connections may be described. For example, a letter from a lodge formed by working men in Stratford in East London, protesting against a decision of the English Grand Lodge that it was a spurious masonic body, contains the following unusually explicit statement of the advantages of freemasonry for the Victorian artisan: ‘Stratford and its neighbourhood contains a population of some thousands of skilled mechanics, artisans and engineers, many of whom from their superior attainment or from the exigencies of trade are called upon to pursue their avocation in the various states of continental Europe or in our own colonial possessions and to whom therefore the advantages arising from Masonic Fraternity are of great consequence.’[lxxiv]

The exciting potential of an approach which examines the interaction between freemasonry and other social networks, such as professional contacts and membership of other fraternal organisations, has been recently demonstrated by two outstanding articles concerned with two very different professions. Simon McVeigh’s study of freemasonry and musical life in 18th-century London has shown how freemasonry assisted in securing patronage and work for musicians and also supported professional alliances, sometimes in surprising ways.[lxxv] Roger Burt’s study of Cornish freemasonry in the 19th century reaches some intriguing conclusions about the social composition of masonic lodges in south-west England.[lxxvi] He found that ‘the lodges were dominated by the mostly young (most initiates were aged under 30) middle-class and “petit bourgeois” groups of mercantile and manufacturing interests, professionals and small business operatives.’[lxxvii]The Cornish membership records reflect the increasing mobility of this social group, and freemasonry may have helped build international contacts facilitating profitable employment abroad.

Research into freemasonry explores the interconnections between such major themes of modern scholarship as public space, gender, race and social networks. These themes essentially all revolve around one major issue, the construction of social identity, and the study of freemasonry, because it concerns an identity which is both public and concealed at the same time, provides a unique perspective on this issue. Methodologically, the study of freemasonry presents many challenges, but the point that should be noted here is its inherently interdisciplinary character. The nature of the masonic archive means that the researcher into freemasonry must use many different types of media: texts ranging from membership lists to rituals, jewels, banners, engravings, music and artefacts of many different kinds.[lxxviii]The interpretation of such materials requires a blend of scholarly skills. Mark Carnes noted how his researches required ‘excursions into the fields of religious history and theology, child rearing and developmental psychology, women’s history and gender studies, and structural and cultural anthropology’.[lxxix] While scholars frequently aspire towards interdisciplinarity, they rarely achieve it. The study of freemasonry may perhaps provide a model for interdisciplinary studies.

The themes I have discussed are at the forefront of research in the humanities and social sciences, but their roots lie in old thought, reflecting both the social changes of the 1960s, and particularly the response to the French événements of 1968,[lxxx] and the challenge posed to Marxist models by the collapse of the Soviet Union. While the study of freemasonry can contribute a great deal to these intellectual concerns, even more exciting is the question of how it helped fashion completely new intellectual agendas. Will the events of 11 September 2001 have as big an impact on the intellectual world order as those of May 1968? It is too early to say, but there are hints that, whatever the upshot, reactions to freemasonry will be of new significance. The way in which the destruction of the World Trade Centre gave rise paradoxically to a new form of anti-semitism has been well documented.[lxxxi] There has been little discussion of the new anti-masonry. Within days of the attacks in New York, website postings attributed the attacks to the illuminati, drew parallels between the Twin Towers and the masonic columns Jachin and Boaz, and used spurious numerology to suggest masonic involvement in the attacks.[lxxxii] This is deplorable, but perhaps not surprising. More significant for the long-term is the way in which attacks on masonry form part of the extreme Muslim denunciation of western values. There has been a long history of Arab groups circulating the discredited libels of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In recent years, however, some Muslims, drawing on western anti-masonic literature, have linked freemasonry with the figure of Dajjal, the anti-christ.[lxxxiii] These ideas were first developed in 1987 by the Egyptian writer, Sa’id Ayyub.[lxxxiv] In Britain, a key figure in elaborating and popularising these ideas has been David Musa Pidcock, a Sheffield machinery consultant who became a Muslim in 1975 and is the leader of the Islamic Party of Britain.[lxxxv] The idea that freemasons worship dajjal has become widespread in Muslim communities in England and elsewhere. In recent months, Islamic websites have carried enthusiastic reviews of an audio-tape called Shadows, produced by a London company, Hallaqah Media, which argues that freemasons created the new world order and are the servants of dajjal.[lxxxvi] If we are at the beginning of a struggle to protect and restate the secular values of the Enlightenment,[lxxxvii] it is inevitable that the study of freemasonry, so much bound up with the creation of those values, will become of new relevance.

Prof.dr. Andrew Prescott studied history at the University of London and was appointed as a curator in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Library in 1979. He is on a three year secondment from the British Library to the University of Sheffield, where he is Director of the new Centre for Research into Freemasonry, the first such centre to be established in a British university.

This description of the spur-of-the-moment decision of Lord Brougham, the English legal and social reformer, to be initiated in the Stornoway Lodge in the Western Isles of Scotland in 1799 encapsulates many of the issues of masonic biography. Was Brougham’s initiation a passing incident, a merry holiday event, or did he engage more fundamentally with the values of freemasonry? If the latter, in what way? This extract is taken from the English masonic journal, The Freemasons’ Quarterly Review, 2 (1835), p. 24:

‘It is not, perhaps, generally known that the late Lord Chancellor of England is a Brother of the Craft. He was originally initiated in the small town of Stornaway in Scotland, and afterwards became a member of the Canongate Kilwinning Lodge, Edinburgh, of which many other men of celebrity were members. The circumstances of his initiation were these.

Being upon a pleasure-voyage along the north coast of Scotland in company with several other roving and congenial spirits, the party put in to the hypoborean port of Stornaway, where they landed, and, as was their wont, disembarked along with them their choice store of the jolly god. It happened one evening during their convivial enjoyments, that there was a meeting of a lodge at the place, and one of the party, who was a mason, being informed of the circumstance, immediately proposed that Henry Brougham and another of the party should go and get made without delay. No sooner said than done, and away they sallied to the lodge of Stornoway, where the future lord chancellor was duly entered, passed, and raised a Master Mason of the ancient fraternity of the Craft. As may be imagined on such an occasion -; “In such a place as that, at such an hour,” great, glorious and generous was “The feast of reason and the flow of soul;” and many a bona fide bumper of Glenlivet was quaffed to many a masonic and convivial toast.

Such were the circumstances of the initiation of the present Lord Brougham and Vaux, which are vouched for upon the authority of the respectable brother, now living, who was then secretary of the lodge.’

Petitions for the formation of new lodges and accompanying correspondence frequently shed light on the social motivation of freemasons. One such series of letters concerns the formation of the New Welcome Lodge No. 5139 in 1929. This lodge was formed at the suggestion of the then Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward VIII, specifically for Labour Party MPs and officials. The following extract is from a memorandum by Sir Percy Rockliff, a trade union and friendly society official, who took a leading part in establishing the lodge. It expresses a secondary aim of the new lodge, namely to provide a ‘New Welcome’ to working class men who, it was felt, had not been able to afford to become freemasons. The initial intention that the lodge should be exclusively for Labour Party members and the involvement of the Prince of Wales in establishing the lodge are not explicitly mentioned in the correspondence, but were only recorded by Rockliff some years later. At this stage it was intended that the lodge should be called ‘the Lodge of Citizenship’. The name ‘New Welcome’ was adopted later at the suggestion of the Prince of Wales. The document is among the Petitions in the Library and Museum of Freemasonry, Freemasons’ Hall, London.

‘The idea underlying the formation of the proposed lodge is to bring home to the industrial section of the community the principles and tenets of the craft.

It is doubtless true that, in rural areas, social barriers are to some extent broken down in certain lodges which exist in those areas. But, as regards the great centres of population, the same position can hardly be said to obtain.

It is recognised that a lodge of the character proposed, if centred in London, would be to some extent localised as regards the area from which it could draw recruits without involving its members in substantial travelling expenses. It has, however, been shown by the Epworth Lodge, for example, that offshoots into the provinces of a successful lodge, having a definite purpose, are both possible and popular; and this is anticipated as regards the Lodge of Citizenship.

The type of recruits to masonry which it would be the aim of the new lodge to attract are persons who, by permeating the ranks of the industrial classes, would become missioners for and exemplars of the advantages which masonry confers, not only upon its members, but upon those with whom its members come into daily contact – “So that when a man is said to be a mason the world may know, etc.”

It is believed that such recruits will be obtainable without importunity, given the opportunity now sought to be presented to them.

Moreover, it is strongly felt by the promoters, that masonry would exercise a steadying influence (“as citizens of the world”) upon those who are brought within its fold, and help to render nugatory any unsettling influences which might be at work in factories and elsewhere.

The men who compose the main membership of the army and navy lodges belong to the industrial classes, and they have taken an oath of fealty.

It is hoped to imbue their civilian colleagues with the same spirit of fealty through the medium of the Lodge of Citizenship.’

In the 18th and 19th centuries, masonic lodges were an important part of life in small towns like Monmouth on the Welsh borders. During the 1820s, Monmouth was riven by ferocious factional disputes over reform of the town government. This controversy affected the local lodge, the Royal Augustus Lodge No. 656, and at one point the lodge was suspended by the Grand Master, the Duke of Sussex. When the suspension of the lodge was lifted, the news was greeted by the ringing of the church bells, as the following letter, dated 1 July 1821, by the Master of the lodge, Trevor Philpotts, to the Grand Secretaries White and Harper in London, describes. The letter is preserved among the returns for the lodge in the Library and Museum of Freemasonry, Freemasons’ Hall, London.

‘I beg to acknowledge the receipt of your favor of the 29th ult. removing the suspension from the Royal Augustus Lodge, for which I, the officers and brethren return our best and grateful thanks. A circumstance occurred in the town yesterday in consequence of this event, which it may not be improper to mention, as it may possibly be represented by some to the prejudice of the lodge. On receiving your official letter I sent to inform the officers of the lodge of the circumstance, as they and many of the brethren were waiting in much suspense, to know whether they could attend as a Lodge the approaching ceremony of dedicating the Newport Lodge. The information spread over the town immediately, and in the course of the evening some persons wholly unconnected with the lodge and masonry, ordered the ringers to ring the church bells. Immediately on learning what was intended I sent the Tyler to forbid any ringing or any other demonstration of public feeling whatever, which it was in my power to prevent, and he accordingly did so, and stated it was the particular wish and request of the whole lodge that no ringing should take place on account of the lodge. The reply was that they had nothing to do with the lodge, but were ordered to ring by some of the principal inhabitants of the town, and would go on. I then went some of the principal inhabitants of the lodge and begged they would interfere to prevent it, and they did so by my particular request.

Independent of the admonition conveyed in your letter to avoid any proceeding which might not be in unison with the pledge given by the lodge I had a particular objection to any public expression of feeling on such a subject and occasion; which I several times distinctly mentioned at the time. I only mention this trivial matter to guard against any attempt which may hereafter be made to the disparagement of the lodge as necessary.’

The following document is from the archives of the Sheffield Canal Company in the Public Record Office, London, RAIL 867/4. It comprises extracts from the minutes of the two oldest Sheffield masonic lodges, the Britannia Lodge No. 139 and the Royal Brunswick Lodge No. 296. They describe the ceremonies which accompanied the opening of the canal in 1819, which provided this inland industrial city’s first link to the sea. These extracts have been mounted and were apparently framed for display, presumably in the board room of the canal company.

Lodge of Emergency February 22 1819 for the opening and going by procession from the canal, having obtained a dispensation.

The Lodge was opened in the first degree at 11 o’clock and proceeded to join the procession at the basin at 12 o’clock. The vessels having entered the basin, the procession then marched in good order round the town, and divided before the “Tontine” at 4 o’clock. The lodge then dined at Bro. Hardwickes at 2/6d for dinner and malt liquor etc., and closed in harmony.

J. Smith, M.; G. Mosley S.W.; G. Holden, J.W. J. Fox, S.D.; T. Fox, J.D.; Cawood, Sec;. M. Hunter, T.; String, P.M.; Booth; Grundy; Hufton; Hinchcliffe; Jackson; Pickford; Wardley; Cooke; Ryals; Norman; Ashmere; Waring; Worstenholm; White; Best; Greenwood; Hawke; Jenkinson; Matthews; Rodgers; Whitley; J. Hall; Redfearn; Mather; Heald; White; Hardwicke.

On this day the canal communicating from Tinsley to Sheffield was opened by a procession of masons of both lodges and the committee and subscribers to the canal and the other societies held in Sheffield.

After the procession thirty seven of the brothers dined together at Brother Will. Willeys and spent the day together in harmony and brotherly love cultivating that friendship which ought at all times to characterise masons.

The procession moved from the canal basin about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and proceeded through Barn Street, Castle Street, Angel Street, High Street, Far Gate, Barker Pool, Division Street, Carver Street, Sheffield Moor, Pinstone Lane, Norfolk Street, Market Street, Bull Stake to opposite the Tontine Inn, where the masons opened and the Tylers brought through the whole of the clubs who took their respective roads to where they were held and the Brunswick Lodge to Brother Thomas Hardwickes where it is held, the Britannia Lodge accompanied by the band of the Sheffield Local Militia proceeded to Brother Willeys, where they closed the Lodge and deposited the jewels and treasures thereof in their proper situations. Previous to going to the basin the lodge was opened and arranged in the lodge room at Brother Willeys in the Wicker.

Thus ended the opening of the first line of canal ever brought to Sheffield; may it long continue to flourish and its promoters and subscribers long enjoy the fruits of their capital and industry.

The committee consisting of the following persons joined the procession namely, Hugh Parker Esq., Woodthorpe, their Chairman, Bery Taylor esq., Brightside, William Smith, Francis Smith, Edward Nanson, jnr., John Sorby, esq., and many others and on this memorable day ten vessels entered the basin among which was a steam packet.

Dinners were served for a large body of the subscribers and gentlemen around at the Tontine Inn, the Angel, the George, the King’s Head, and many other houses and it was a day of general rejoicing for seldom if ever were there such a large concourse of people assembled together.

In great cities such as London and Edinburgh, masonic ceremonies for the laying of foundation stones could be very imposing, as can be seen from the following description in William Preston’s Illustrations of Masonry (1812 ed.) pp. 392-8, of the Prince Regent laying the foundation stone of the Covent Garden Theatre, on the site of the present Royal Opera House.

‘On the 31st of December 1809, the foundation-stone of Covent Garden Theatre was laid by his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, as Grand Master-mason of England and Scotland. The foundation-stone was situated at the north-east angle of the ground, in weight nearly three tons, and containing sixty cubic feet. Previous to the ceremony, it hung, suspended by cordage, over a basement-stone. Near to it was placed a marquee for the Prince. Two extensive covered galleries were erected, one to receive the body of freemasons who assisted at the ceremony; the other was appropriated to the spectators. Surrounding scaffolds were covered with many hundreds of workmen, who were engaged in the building. A detachment of the first regiment of guards was posted, as a guard of honour, at the Prince’s entrance, with a band of music, and four other military bands were stationed on elevated platforms, near the company, to enliven the scene.

At twelve o’clock the Grand Lodge was opened at Freemasons Hall, in Great Queen Street, Charles Marsh esq. in the chair, attended by the Masters and Wardens of the regular lodges; and at half-past twelve they walked in procession to Bow Street, the junior lodges first. The representative of the Grand Master walked last, being preceded by the Chevalier Ruspini, bearing the Grand Sword, and by the Master of the Lodge of Antiquity, No. 1. bearing the Book of Constitutions.

On their arrival at the theatre, they were welcomed to the places assigned them, by the band playing the old tune of “A Free and an Accepted Mason”. The Grand Officers proceeded to the marquee, and were arranged in order. The Master, Wardens, and nine members of the Steward’s Lodge, and nearly four hundred Masters and Wardens of lodges attended, habited in the insignia of the Order. The several bands played, alternately, airs till one o’clock, the hour fixed for the appearance of the Prince; when his Royal Highness in his coach, accompanied by the Duke of Sussex, attended by General Hulse and Colonels McMahon and Bloomfield, arrived under an escort of horse guards. His Royal Highness was received, on his entrance at the Bow Street door, by the Earl of Moira, Acting Grand Master, the detachments of guards saluting, with grounded colours, and beating the grenadiers march. Mr. Harris and Mr. Kemble, after paying their respects to his Royal Highness, ushered him to the marquee, where his arrival was announced by loud plaudits, the royal standard hoisted, and the discharge of a royal salute of artillery. His Royal Highness, who was dressed in blue, with a scarlet collar, wearing the insignia of his office as Grand Master, a pair of gold compasses set with brilliants and other jewellery, and a white apron bordered with purple, and fringed with gold, appeared in high health and spirits. Proceeding, uncovered, with his suit, through a railed platform spread with superfine broad green cloth bound with scarlet and yellow, forty dismounted life-guardsmen, who were masons, without arms, lining the sides of the railing, the company all rose as his Royal Highness passed the platform to the marquee, and gave him three cheers, when the united bands immediately struck up “God save the King.” His Royal Highness, as he passed, smilingly bowed to the ladies with the most fascinating affability.

The Grand Officers had previously placed the masonic instruments on a table in the marquee. A plan of the building, with its sections and elevations, was now presented to his Royal Highness, by Robert Smirke, sen. esq. the architect; and a gilt silver trowel by Mr. Copeland, the builder of the edifice. Having paused a short time in conversation with the proprietors, and with the Grand Masonic Officers in the marquee, his Royal Highness proceeded to the ceremonial. On a signal given, the corner-stone was raised about four feet; the hod-men, in white aprons, instantly conveyed the necessary quantity of fine cementing mortar, which was neatly spread on the base-stone by the workmen of the building, similarly dressed. His Royal Highness now advanced, uncovered, to the north-east corner of the stone; when John Bayford esq., as Grand Treasurer, deposited, in a space cut for it in the basement-stone, a brass box, containing the British gold, silver, and copper coins of the present reign. On a part of the stone was, “Long live George Prince of Wales,” and “To the King,” with a medallion of the Prince. There were also deposited two large medals, one of bronze, bearing a head of his Royal Highness on one side, and on the other, the following inscription:

GEORGIUS PRINCEPS WALLIARUM THEATRI REGIIS INSTAURANDI AUSPICIIS IN HORTIS BENEDICTINOS LONDINI. FUNDAMENTA SUA MANU LOCAVIT MDCCCVIII.

Under the Auspices of His Most Sacred Majesty GEORGE III King of the United Kingdoms of Great Britain and Ireland, The Foundation Stone of the Theatre of Covent Garden, Was laid by his Royal Highness GEORGE PRINCE OF WALES. MDCCCVIII. On the reverse is engraven: ROBERT SMIRKE, Architect.

His Royal Highness now, as Grand Master, finished the adjustment of the mortar with his trowel; when the upper stone was lowered in the sling to its destined position; all the bands playing “Rule Britannia,” a discharge of artillery being fired, and the people with the most animating cheers applauding the spectacle. The junior and senior Grand Wardens, and the acting Grand Master, the Earl of Moira, now severally presented his royal highness with the Plumb, the Level, and the Square; and the Prince, having applied them to the stone, pronounced the work correct, and gave the stone three strokes with his mallet.

Three elegant silver clips were then presented, successively, to his Royal Highness, containing corn, wine, and oil, which he scattered and poured over the stone, all the bands playing “God save the King.” His Royal Highness then restored the plan of the building into the hands of the architect, approving that specimen of his genius, and desiring him to complete the structure conformably thereto. Then graciously turning to Mr. Harris and Mr. Kemble, he wished prosperity to the building and the objects connected with it, and success and happiness to its proprietors and managers.

The ceremony being finished, the band played “Rule Britannia;” and the Prince, the Duke of Sussex, and the Earl of Moira, were escorted back to the Prince’s carriage by the managers and the Grand Officers under a second royal salute of twenty-one guns.

Thus passed a ceremonial, which by the excellent pre-arrangement of its managers, and the gracious yet dignified manner in which the illustrious chief actor performed his part, exhibited an interesting spectacle, that excited general admiration and applause. All who had the honour to approach the Prince speak in raptures of his polite and captivating manners on the occasion. Although the neighbouring houses were covered to the roof-tops, and many thousands of people were assembled in the street, it is with great satisfaction we state that not a single accident happened to interrupt the splendid termination of the ceremony.

The Masters and Wardens of the masonic lodges then returned in procession to their hall in Great Queen Street; when the Grand Lodge was closed, after making a formal minute of the proceedings, and receiving, through the medium of the Grand Treasurer, the thanks of the Prince for the favour of their attendance.

The Brethren, after the lodge was closed, sat down to a splendid dinner at Freemasons’ Tavern; when mirth and conviviality closed the meeting.

The proprietors of Covent Garden Theatre soon afterwards received a letter from Colonel McMahon, dated from Carlton House, in which he stated, that he had it in command from his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, to express his high approbation of the very great order and regularity with which the whole arrangement of the ceremonial had been formed and conducted.’

The movement for provincial lodges to build their own halls and to cease meeting in taverns was one of the most important trends in English freemasonry in the second half of the 19th century. These halls often formed an integral part of the development of a civic centre in many provincial towns, particularly in the North and Midlands. When the Spanish emigré physician Mariano Martin de Bartolomé arrived in Sheffield in 1839, he was scandalised to find the local masonic lodges meeting in a public house. He only agreed to join a masonic lodge providing it met elsewhere. The lodges eventually moved to the Sheffield Music Hall in Surrey Street, then afterwards purchased the former Savings Bank nearby, which was converted for masonic use. In 1877, the old Savings Bank was replaced by purpose-built premises. While the exterior was austere, the interior was furnished in a very opulent style. Surrey Street was to form one of the axes of the new city centre of Sheffield, and is close to the city hall, the public library and other civic buildings. In 1967, the Sheffield masonic lodges moved to new premises in the suburbs of the city, which offered more convenient car parking - itself a significant statement about the changing social structures of the city. The following description of the opening of the new hall in Surrey Street is taken from The Freemason, 28 July 1877, p. 311:

‘The new hall fronts to Eyre-Street and Surrey-street (standing on the site of the Old Hall) it is built entirely of dressed stone, partly of that of the old building. It is in the classical style of architecture, of a neat and substantial character, the decorations being quiet, yet including the conventional square and compasses &c.; the tout ensemble, though suggestive of durability, is pleasing. The building contains a lodge room and a banqueting room, and there is a spacious cellar. The banqueting room, which is on the ground floor, is 51 feet long by 26 feet wide by 15 feet high, it is lighted by double windows of plate glass, the inner ones being ornamented with Masonic emblems embossed thereon. A serving window gives direct communication with the kitchens, which are extensive and fitted up with all modern requirements. The furniture of the banqueting room can be readily lowered into the cellar, which extends the full size of the building.

The lodge room, which is over the banqueting room, is 51 feet long by 26 feet wide by 24 feet high, having an arched room springing from a cornice running round the room, ornamented with moulded ribs and panels, and carved bosses. The walls are relieved with columns, which have foliated capitals springing from ornamented carbels, from which the ribs in the roof form one continuous line. The whole of the fittings are of polished pine, slightly stained and varnished, which produce a very pleasing effect. The east end is occupied by a dias of three steps, along the north and south sides runs a raised platform, so that a double row of chairs can be placed, enabling the brethren occupying the back seats to see and hear with comfort. At the west end is an organ, built expressly by the firm of Messrs Brindley and Foster, of Sheffield...

The appearance of the lodge room when illuminated is brilliant, and when the promised decorations have been completed there is little doubt about its being one of the most beautiful Masonic temples in the provinces. We are glad to hear that the main part of the work of an ornate nature has been reserved for the interior. Both rooms are lighted by very chaste gaseliers, and are warmed by hot water on the most improved principles; the ventilation is on Tobin’s system. In addition to these two large rooms there are, on the ground floor, a club room, commodious kitchens, lavatory &c.; on the first floor, one small lodge room and a convenient cloak room; a wide passage with a broad flight of stairs lead to the lodge room; on the second floor are several rooms, affording accommodation to a resident Tyler. The acoustic properties of all the rooms, we are happy to say, are perfect. The entrance to the hall is made through the adjoining premises, which we have already described; the arrangements are such that, at any future time, these can be pulled down and more spacious premises erected in the same style as the new hall; when this is done there will be not only spacious offices & c. necessary for the lodges, but plenty of accommodation for a club. The whole of the properties are freehold, and are owned by the Sheffield Masonic Hall Company, Limited, the shares of which are held solely by the lodges or brethren:- virtually, therefore, they are their own tenants- a move in the right direction (though it is only fair to say that it is many years since a Sheffield lodge met in a public-house), and we trust the day is not far distant when every brother will realise the fallacy of the poet’s limes, where he goes on to say that he

Tempora mutantor; today every lodge may, or should, meet under its own roof, or, at least, in a room set apart for the purpose, yet in no way connected with a public house. Practice being ever preferred to precept we feel bound to point to Sheffield as an example we would urge upon others to follow. To the true Craftsman there is nothing, in our way of thinking, so undignified as the association of a lodge with a public house...’

The following extract is from a sermon by the Rev. J. M. Hannah, Freemasonry: Its Purpose, Practice and Profit (Liverpool: W. J. Cochrane 1907), which was preached before the Royal Victoria Lodge No. 1013 at a special service in Holy Trinity church, Wavertree, on 6 June 1907, in aid of the chapter house of the new Liverpool Cathedral, the building of which was financed by the West Lancashire Province. It illustrates how masonic sermons and speeches are a rich source of information about the ideology of gender relations in provincial towns.

‘Freemasonry is concerned with building, not with banqueting as one so often hears. If any one of the gentler sex here present has received such an impression from a mason, be he husband or friend, be assured he is no ideal mason. It is true we have a feast, a love feast: it is one of the essential parts of our meetings. We unite around the supper-table in the bond of brotherly love, and I am betraying no secret when I tell you that at a fixed hour we stand and dispatch a telepathic communication throughout the world; we extend our girdle of friendship round the globe, and unite in a solemn cry to the “Eternal Father strong to save”. Our feast is a solemn symbol meant - like everything else in Freemasonry – “represent some great principle and to body it forth” May the blush of shame never cease to rise upon the face of those who give the wrong impression of our love-feast. I am glad to testify in public that I have received nothing but good from Freemasonry, and nothing but good from the men of my Lodge. The true Mason is always a gentleman, always dignified in his demeanour, always looking behind the visible symbol to the great principle involved.’

This extract again illustrates the importance as historical sources of the correspondence and supporting documentation accompanying petitions for new lodges, preserved in the Library and Museum of Freemasonry at Freemasons’ Hall in London. This memorial concerns a petition for the establishment of Crichton Lodge No. 1641, dated 13 June 1876, which was associated with the new London School Board. Signatories to the petition included the Superintendent of the London School Board, who became the first Master of the lodge, the clerk to the School Board, and four schoolmasters. The Surrey Masonic Hall referred to in the petition was a recently opened hall intended to provide a focus for freemasonry in the newly developed suburbs of South London.

The brethren presenting this petition beg most respectfully to represent to the Most Worshipful Grand Master.

1. That they are associated either professionally or sympathetically with the work of Education, and that they have been led to meet at Camberwell for consultations and as members of committees and otherwise. Finding so many masons amongst themselves and worthy men desirous of becoming masons, united with them in common educational efforts, they have determined to ask for a warrant to meet at the Surrey Masonic Hall.

2. The Surrey Masonic Hall has recently been built and opened by brethren desirous of promoting freemasonry. The hall is conveniently situated near a railway station by means of which members can easily reach their homes after lodge to all parts of the metropolis and suburbs, and even to considerable distances on the Great Trunk line, with which the local station is connected by traffic arrangements.

3. The lodges already meeting at the Surrey Masonic Hall are not local to Camberwell, but contain members from all parts of London, and some of the lodges already number a sufficient proportion of brethren.

4. The petitioners do not propose to retire from their present lodges but they are very desirous of avoiding the necessity of meeting at a tavern, and they are therefore desirous of meeting at a masonic hall.

5. The petition has received the recommendation of the officers of the Surrey Masonic Hall lodge No. 1529, but from causes over which the petitioners have no control it has been found physically impossible to obtain the signature of one of the officers. The officers of the MacDonald Lodge No. 1216 (the lodge meeting nearest the hall) have assented to the favourable consideration of this petition.’

Co-Masonry is a form of freemasonry which admits both men and women. It was established by Maria Deraismes and George Martin in France at the end of the 19th century. The most energetic early promoter of Co-Masonry in England was the trade unionist, feminist and theosophist Annie Besant. The following article from The Co-Mason 3 (January 1911), p. 4, was written by Ursula Bright, a close associate of Besant and a campaigner for women’s rights.

‘Co-Masonry is the latest development of two great ideas - the religious and the political - I had almost said the feminist - for the emancipation of women includes all politics. Our S[upreme] C[ouncil] in Paris makes the complete equality of women and men, in every department of human life, its chief object.

In religion Co-Masonry realises that the Brotherhood is to be the distinguishing mark of the spiritual movement of the future.

It is true that male masonry proclaims the brotherhood of half the race, but even here we find that the maimed, the halt and the blind, as well as the whole sisterhood of humanity, is shut out.

Those amongst us most entitled to brotherly consideration and sympathy are deliberately excluded. Male masonry is the expression of power, wealth, social influence and exclusiveness. Co-Masonry is the expression of service, tolerance, freedom of speech on all subjects. Masons working under the Grand Lodges of England and Scotland may not discuss, in their temples, the two subjects of deepest interest to mankind, namely religion and politics. We expect the members of our organisation to be able to speak on any subject, fit for public discussion, even when holding the most antagonistic views, with courtesy, tolerance and good feeling and with an entire absence of hostility. Co-Masonry is spreading its branches everywhere, not only in Europe, but in India and America, and appeals are now made to us from our colonies - Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, for help to establish Co-Masonic lodges. They are beginning to realise the deep religious meaning of the ceremonial.

The motto of our S[upreme] C[ouncil] in Paris is “A La Gloire De l’Humanité”. What is the glory of humanity but the development of that perfection of the ideal of the unity of interest, which will make war, and all forms of cruelty, tyranny and injustice impossible in the future? The establishment of the true brotherhood and sisterhood in mankind.’

In 1775, the Afro-American leader Prince Hall and fourteen other blacks were initiated into freemasonry by a regimental lodge under the Irish constitution. In 1784, the English Grand Lodge gave a warrant to African Lodge No. 459 to meet in Boston. From 1797, the African Lodge started to act autonomously, eventually declaring itself independent of any Grand Lodge and, and this providing the basis for the emergence of Prince Hall masonry as an Afro-American branch of freemasonry. In 1955, Prince Hall masonry had over 300,000 members, and was a major institution of the black middle class in America. The following extract is from William Henry Grimshaw, The Official History of Freemasonry Among the Colored People in North America (New York: Broadway Publishing, 1908), pp. 258-260. It describes the reaction of the White Grand Lodge of North Carolina to the establishment of a lodge in the state by the Grand Master of Prince Hall freemasonry. Incapable of conceiving of a black grand lodge, the white masons of North Carolina assumed the new lodge had been formed by the white Grand Lodge of New York.

‘In 1865, Paul Drayton, National Grand Master [of Prince Hall freemasonry], assisted in establishing in the city of Newberne, King Solomon Lodge, No. 1, F. A. A. M. The white Grand Lodge of North Carolina proceeded to arraign the white Grand Lodge of New York for violating its masonic jurisdiction, in the following manner:

“If the facts be true, the Grand Lodge of New York has sent an agent into the Southern States with full power to organize lodges throughout the southern portion of the country, that said Grand Lodge has no such right.

We fear that our northern brethren are in gross error as to their masonic mission to the south. Why should the mission be to the south? Why not to the negroes of the north? We fear that they are unconsciously imbued with the spirit of fanaticism; that they have unwholesome dreams that they are better than we. And we do allow ourselves to resist the conviction that we are not more devoted to the best interests of the negroes of the south than they can possibly be. They were born in our families; we have nursed them in sickness, laboured with them in the field and in the shop.

We have rejoiced with them when we had much, and suffered with them when we had little; we have protected them because they were weak, and advised them because they were ignorant.

We have made them better than Africans and nearly equal to our northern people, themselves being the judges. And, but for fanaticism, doubtless many of them would have been worthy of masonic privileges. Our earnest desire now is still further to improve their condition. We would educate them, improve their habits and manners, and make them industrious and prudent.”

Our white brethren of North Carolina really thought that Paul Drayton was a white mason, for he certainly looked like one, and hailing from New York, and the authority of a Grand Master of Masons, to do work among the negroes of the south. They had never heard of a negro Grand Lodge of masons in the world, hence the above arraignment.

The above paragraphs are remarkable as coming from a Southern source. They do not, in the abstract, question the propriety of making masons of negroes. Our ancient landmarks are, that he that be made a mason must be able in all degrees; that is, freeborn, worthy and well qualified. It is not necessary that the candidate should be a white man. We teach that in every clime and among every people where masonry has existed, and to every human being our benevolence extends. But propriety, conformity to government, and reasonable to religion and to manners and customs, have distinguished our order. Our communications are often breast to breast, mouth to ear. Fellowship in the sense of the most perfect equality, intimate relationship, and close communion, is the chief characteristic of our intercourse.

We are not disposed to criticise the above paragraph, written by my white brethren with much nicety, but that they do not question the propriety of making masons of negroes, comes with singular significance from a section of the country that, for more than half a century, has been consistent in its denunciations of the recognitions by northern Grand Lodges of colored men who had been made masons even in foreign countries and by lawful authority. Tempora mutantur, et nos mutantur in illis.

The Almighty never made a slave. Slavery is a condition into which the child enters after birth - the strong taking advantage of the weak. It follows then that his restoration to freedom restores him to all his natural rights.’

With organised sports and gothic architecture, freemasonry was one of the cultural forces which held together the British Empire. Masonic lodges provided an important meeting place for the expatriate British, and mixed race lodges were one of the main venues in which the colonisers mixed with the colonised. The atmosphere of British imperial freemasonry is vividly captured by a small collection of adventure stories published by H. W. B. Moreno in 1907, Freemasonry Revealed! Being a Series of Short Stories of Anglo-Indian Life Concerning Masons and Masonry. The stories are in a popular Boy’s Own Paper ripping yarn style, but all centre around masonic life in India. Moreno is described on the title page as Past Master, Lodge Thomas Jones No. 2441 (EC), Past Principal Z, Royal Arch Chapter Progress No. 3054 (EC), Past District Grand Sword Bearer, District Grand Lodge of Bengal, Past District Grand Organist, District Grand Chapter of Bengal. Moreno was himself Indian. The following is the opening of his story Masonry Defiled. A Tragic Story About Two Masons, A Maiden and A Serpent (pp. 53-56):

‘The Planter community at Darjeeling had organised an informal soirée at the Club, to commemorate, in some special manner, the installation of one of the popular Planters of the neighbouring, tea-growing district, as Worshipful Master of Lodge “Mount Everest”. The usual installation banquet had taken place; but as a token of appreciation, a social gathering was inaugurated, at which, the Planters, always genial hosts, were at home to their numerous friends that evening.

Several small tables lay scattered about the spacious club hall, at which sat groups of well-dressed gentlemen, some lolling back in their chairs; whilst the hum of conversation and the occasional bursts of laughter that arose, amidst the clinking of glasses and the clattering of crockery together with the wafting clouds of tobacco smoke, betokened that a merry evening was being spent. Presently, Tom Grumley - Captain Grumley as he was better known - an old Planter of the district, stepped in.

“Hello, Cap’n! Here we are again”, shouted some of the younger members as a welcome.

“Come along, Cap’n, right this way, easy, right down by this chair”, cried one of them, “now what’s your poison”.

“Brandy and Soda”, soberly replied the Captain, “and, if you don’t mind, a good, strong ‘Moulmein’?”

“Right you are”, replied another, handing the captain his cigar-case, “here are some ‘Moulmeins’, have your pick”.

The Captain selected his cigar, lit it up, poured out his peg, drank half of it down in one gulp and ejaculated: “What’s up? You fellows seem a bit quiet this evening”.

“What’s up!” cried one, “why, waiting for you to give us one of your old yarns”.

“Well”, started the Captain, dashing lightly the ash of his cigar on to the little tray which lay beside him, “I cannot forget the time, - it’s now fourteen years - when I gave up the army and with it, masonry; but on such occasions, old memories will revive, when I was a soldier and staunch mason...

Many years ago, in the early ‘70s, away in Merrie England, I joined the South Lancashires, the Royal XXXth as they were always known. Fred Knowles, who lived in the same hamlet where I came from, caught as well the fire of military glory, that was pervading England at that time, and we both joined the battalion together, taking our commissions as junior subalterns...We had not been long in the regiment, when it was drafted out to India, and we were sent right away to Delhi.

In those days we had none of the home-comforts you fellows get now; none of your brick-built houses, with a punkah going over your head, night and day; none of your dainty English dishes, with choice wines in between - no, no, by Jove, we had to live in open bungalows, with the hot east wind to fan us to sleep, with beef and fowl in all varieties to swallow down and the wild open country around us to gaze at.

Fred and I took a place to ourselves, sharing expenses and leading idle, easy lives, with an occasional drill or two, when the heat permitted us to get about. Then they formed a military lodge, ‘Lodge Union’, it was styled and we joined it, working together as true and loyal masons and occupying all our leisure moments in studying the mysteries of the craft.

Things went on smoothly for a while, when an order came for the battalion to move on to Meerut...

At Meerut we found ourselves near by the Irish Fusiliers, a fine set of fellows, none of them under six feet in height, and every one of them down-right good-hearted souls. Colonel Carstairs was in charge of them and a nice old man was he, with a head as bald as a billiard ball and with a large pair of brown-dyed moustaches, but a kind and generous man withal. He assumed the Mastership of our regimental lodge at Meerut and an excellent Master he made, for his very appearance commanded respect. And he had an only daughter - by Gad, the loveliest girl in the land...”‘

The various masonic periodicals which appeared with increasing profusion are a rich source of information about masonic culture and ideology in the 19th century. The following extracts from The Indian Freemason’s Friend, 3 (1863), pp. 155-60, illustrate how freemasonry acted as a force for Anglicisation in India.

‘The foundation-stone of The Presbyterian Church at Allahabad being about to be laid, a copy of the Indian Freemason’s Friend (old series), containing an account of the laying of the foundation-stone of St Andrew’s Kirk, Calcutta, has been sent to the Chaplain. The foundation-stone of St Andrew’s Kirk was laid by the Provincial Grand Master of Bengal, Sir Archibald Seton - Lord Moira being at that time Grand Master of India...

On the 1st April, the Provincial Grand Master paid a visit to the Lodge Anchor and Hope, at Howrah, and received the compliment of being elected an Honorary Member. The lodge now meets in what is called the Ice House (in which there is no ice), and occupies rooms more spacious than those of the Freemasons’ Hall in Cossitollah...

For the first time, to the best of our knowledge, a Parsee has become Master of a lodge in the Province of Bengal. W. Bro. Nanabhoy Burjorjee, the present master of Lodge Star of Burmah, No. 897, Rangoon, was employed under our late Provincial Junior Grand Warden, R. W. Bro. Peter Anderson, in 1856 and 1857; and he then felt an anxious desire to become a mason. In June 1858, he was initiated in the Rangoon Lodge; in December of the same year, previously to proceeding to Bombay, he was passed to the Second Degree in Calcutta, in Lodge Industry and Perseverance, No. 126; and in June 1859, he was raised to the Third Degree at Rangoon. He was shortly after appointed Secretary of lodge Star of Burmah by W. Bro. Dr. Dickinson; and in the following year, he also officiated for the Treasurer, W. Bro. Jordan, who had proceeded to Ava. In 1861 and 1862 he filled the offices of Senior Deacon and Junior Warden; and in the middle of the latter year he was promoted to the western chair, - the Senior Warden, Bro. Bulloch, having left India for England. On the 8th December 1862, he was raised by the suffrages of the brethren to the eastern chair; and on the 5th January, he was installed by a Board of Past Masters, consisting of Bros. Newmarch, Dickinson and McPhail.’

Many French refugees who fled to London after Napoleon III’s coup in 1851 were masons, but found the cost of English freemasonry prohibitive and its meetings unsatisfactory, so they joined instead an illicit lodge known as the Grand Loge des Philadelphes. The Philadelphes established lodges for working-class Englishmen at Stratford and Woolwich in the London area, both well-known centres of radical activity. The English Grand Lodge received a complaint about the Stratford lodge, known as Equality Lodge, and circulated its members warning them not to associate with any lodges connected with the Philadelphes. This prompted the following protest from Equality Lodge to the English Grand Lodge, dated 4 December 1859, which is remarkable not only for its denunciation of English freemasonry but also for its explanation of why working men might want to become masons. The original letter is preserved on the Rite of Memphis subject file in the Library and Museum of Freemasonry, Freemasons’ Hall, London.

‘As it appears from a circular issued by the “Board of General Purposes” addressed to the masonic body in England, that great misconception exists in the minds of the members of that board as to the real objects and character of the brethren comprising the Equality Lodge at Stratford we are instructed by the WM and Council of the Lodge to forward to you for the information of the Board such facts as may be useful to make known at the Quarterly Communication. In the first place, Stratford and its neighbourhood contains a population of some thousands of skilled mechanics, artisans and engineers, many of whom from their superior attainment or from the exigencies of trade are called upon to pursue their avocation in the various states of continental Europe or in our own colonial possessions and to whom therefore the advantages arising from masonic fraternity are of great consequence. A desire therefore has long existed for the erection of a masonic temple in this district and one or two abortive attempts have been made for this purpose by brethren in connection with your Grand Lodge, the failure arising chiefly from the large sums necessary for initiations and raisings. The matter would probably have rested here, had it not happened some eighteen months since that several parties now brethren of this lodge were brought into communication with a number of foreign brothers meeting in London and holding a warrant from the “Grand Empire of Memphis”. After several conferences and much consideration our present Temple was opened and consecrated on the last festival of St John and its labours have been conducted from that period with a success beyond previous anticipation. The works are opened, carried on and closed, with all the formula, decorum and as we trust the true spirit of masonry, which as we have been taught is like christianity, universal in its application, in its language and its aims, and recognises no distinction of creed or country.

We feel honoured therefore by our association with those intellectual and honourable men to whom we owe our existence as a body, we sympathise with their misfortunes, and regret the causes from their native land. Are you surprised therefore that we repudiate the epithet of spurious when applied to us? We hold the spurious to be him who forgetful of the solemn obligations he has undertaken, turns his back upon a brother, or by his conduct brings disgrace upon a time honoured Institution. It is untrue that either political or religious matters find any place in our work or our discussions. We may not be orthodox; we may have transgressed against the rules of an establishment, and the doors of the Temples of that establishment may be closed against us; We regret it! but we shall not retaliate; our works are open to the inspection of every true brother and the records of our labours to that of every qualified officer. We have to apologise for troubling you but we have felt it due to ourselves as Englishmen to defend ourselves from unjust imputations, as had we neglected to do so, we should have forfeited our dignity of character as masons.

As is well-known, the events of 11 September 2001 were, appallingly, made the occasion for a new anti-semitism, when it was alleged (on no factual basis whatever) that the Israeli secret service had prior knowledge of the attacks on the World Trade Centre and that Israelis working there were warned of the danger. Since at least the time of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, anti-semitism has gone hand in hand with anti-masonry, so it is not surprising that allegations that 11 September was a Zionist plot have been accompanied by suggestions that the attacks were inspired by a masonic world order. The following two abstracts are representative of the many sites on the world wide web which work out these crazed and grotesque theories at absurd length.

The first anti-masonic text is by the American Evangelist Texe Marrs, a former United States Air Force officer and Professor of Aerospace Systems, who has taken a particular interest in new age philosophies.

‘In the authoritative book, Art and Architecture of Freemasonry, the author [James Steven Curl] says that the two columns, or pillars (Jachin and Boaz), “play a significant role” in masonic ritual and “are the medium by which the secret knowledge” is transmitted. This picture is of the two masonic pillars in the Würzburg, Germany Cathedral. Note the serpentine spirals on each pillar

We were told by our government and the media that there was an intelligence breakdown and failure.

“Mistakes” were simply made, said our President, by the FBI, CIA, INS, and other agencies.

“Mistakes?” Costing over 5,000 lives! Baloney! If there were mistakes, who has paid for them? Has even one CIA or FBI agent been punished? Has even one lost his or her job?

I have carefully and meticulously analyzed what really happened on September 11th -and in the months and years leading up to that fateful and tragic date. I am convinced that the top levels of the CIA and FBI knew in advance what was to happen.

This was no mere intelligence letdown or oversight. This bloody horror was a premeditated attack on the very foundation of the United States, an occultic event of monumental prophetic significance. Still more important, the ritualistic nightmare and suffering of September 11th must be accurately viewed by true Christians as the beginning of the cataclysmic, prophesied war against the saints, a severe deterioration of Constitutional protections once offered the American citizenry but now destined to rapidly evaporate and vanish.

What happened on September 11, 2001, was nothing less than an elaborate, carefully crafted and dynamically staged satanic ritual. I believe the tumbling down of the twin towers of the World Trade Center was a blood sacrifice. It was, in fact, a scripted holocaust, which the highest echelon of the theocratic Illuminati euphemistically labeled the “Unleashing of the King of Terrors.”

In the Unleashing of the King of Terrors a satanically energized variation of the third degree ritual of Freemasonry was staged - the Master Mason degree - in which the candidate (playing the role of Hiram Abiff, the antichrist) lying in a coffin, is raised by the strong grip of the Lion’s Paw. In the ritual, it is noted that the two pillars (towers), Jochin [sic.] and Boaz, have fallen and are in need of restoration.

What transpired on September 11th was a black magic ceremony intended to bring about the restoration of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem and the raising of its twin pillars which had fallen (“Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen” - two are fallen -see Revelation 18:2).

The fall of Babylon and its twin towers, says Bible prophecy, occurs in a single hour: “She shall be utterly burned with fire… that great city Babylon, that mighty city! For in one hour is thy judgment come.”

But there is more to come, for this grotesque Satanic ritual must conclude with the coming of the beast - the son of the Devil - he who was “raised” by the creature from hell on September 11, 2001. This is the long-awaited dawning of the astrological age of Saturn, the sixth planet, the New Age, with its earthly “Messiah” and its unholy New World Order.

What I am declaring here demands evidence and substantiation. And it must line up with end-time prophecies given us by our Lord and His prophets in His Holy Word. In an exclusive report I have prepared especially for friends of Power of Prophecy, I do, indeed, present this proof and biblical foundation. In the 60 minute audiotape, entitled Unleashing the King of Terrors, I fully examine the occult underpinnings of the September 11th carnage and reveal its deeply hidden esoteric and prophetic meaning.

I realize that by publishing this astonishing material I am placing myself in great jeopardy. Believe me, I have carefully weighed the cost, but the truth must be told. I am relying on the prayers of the saints to protect me. If God wills, no harm will come to me because of these exposures. But regardless, I owe it to you and to our Lord to lay everything on the line. Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus!’

The second extract, from an anonymous website, illustrates the use of spurious numerology to support this theory. The numerological techniques of the author of the second extract are succinctly explained elsewhere on the site: ‘Flight 11, 93, 175, 77 - If these numbers are broken down, 11 actually remains the same in numerology, 93 becomes 12, 175 becomes 13 and 77 becomes 14. 11, 12, 13, 14 Broken down again and you have 2 - 3 = 4 - 5. Add them all up and break them all down!’

‘In Freemasonry 33 is the highest degree there is. Remember on another page I taught you one must be careful in pointing the finger at an instigator? Well, I’ll point the finger right now. Certain members of the U.S. Government and the U.S. Military knew the event was going to happen because they are the ones who planned it. They worked together with Osama bin Laden to bring this event to pass.

Flight 11 was a Boeing 767-200. It hit the North Tower at 8:45 AM EST. The length of the aircraft is 159 feet and 2 inches. 1 + 5 + 9 - 2 (planes?) = 13. The number 13 is used extensively within Freemasonry. The 33rd degree Masonic Temple is located just 13 blocks north of the White House. There are many other instances of the number thirteen within Masonry. The Pagan mind is obsessed with numbers and symbols.

Flight 175 was also a Boeing 767-200. This aircraft hit the South Tower. 1 + 7 + 5 = 13. The Twin Towers were hit with planes carrying the occult signatures of “11” and “13”, the two most important numbers in the entire occult world. The number “11” symbolizes all that is evil and imperfect [The Old World Order] and the number “13” signifies rebellion against God’s constituted authority!

It is interesting that the North Tower was hit first. In Masonic doctrine, North, is designated as the area where darkness, superstition, and ignorance dwells. Albert Pike describes this belief: ‘To all Masons, the North has immemorially been the place of darkness; of the great lights of the Lodge, none is in the North.’ [Morals and Dogma, p. 592]

The Elite Mason worships toward the East, because they are pagan Sun worshippers, hence the Eastern Star. Most other Masons do not even realize this. In their Lodges, the North is empty as a symbol of their belief about that direction. Why do Masons believe this way about the North? The Bible states that God sits on His throne in the north [Isaiah 14:13]. By striking the North Tower first, the Illuminist Masons guiding this world into the New World Order may have been symbolically striking at God and His system, the Old World Order!

If you tie these two understandings together, you should realize why the first aircraft designated “11” hit the North Tower first. North is the direction of God’s throne.

We know who is behind the terrible tragedy simply by the occult Illuminist signature. Osama bin Laden was only carrying out part of the plan which originated from the Illuminati. If American, British, and Israeli Intelligence really wanted a man out of the way, they would get him no matter how rich or powerful or protected he might be. Osama bin Laden is alive today only because the Illuminati wants him to be alive.’

In 1987, the Egyptian writer Sa’id Ayyub published a book arguing that there was a link between freemasonry and dajjal, the Muslim equivalent of Anti-Christ. These theories were elaborated and popularised among the Islamic community by the English convert to Islam, David Misa Pidcock. Since the events of 11 September 2001, the idea that freemasons worship the devil has become widespread among British muslims. The following are representative samples of the large number of web postings which document this new Islamic anti-masonry.

‘I would like to inform you all of some information I have come across and feel that I must share it with all and hope and pray that we all learn a lesson from this. INSHAALLAH.

You will have heard much about DAJJAL - THE ANTI-CHRIST the Anti-Christ from the Christian and Jewish authorities. But what did The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) say about DAJJAL (The greatest Fitnah (Evil, test)) that will ever befall mankind.

When shall DAJJAL appear? Most of the signs prevalent before the coming of DAJJAL can now be observed. One thing though is for certain, if you are fortunate enough not to witness the Anti-Christ, then your children certainly shall. Before the Anti-Christ shall appear we have been told there shall be a SYSTEM, a DAJJAL- system, that is up and running, that shall await his arrival. This DAJJAL-system, will be the most evil and most corrupt satanic, kaafir force in history.

This system shall promote mass immorality (Homosexuality, Adultery, Fornication), Atheism, Devil-worship, use of USURY, Intoxication, (Alcohol & Drug abuse), Crime, Injustice, Oppression, Fitnah of the Pen (Pornography magazines etc.), cause wars, Famine, Massacres, Rape and suffering on an immeasurable scale.

The DAJJAL-system is of course as we know is FREEMASONRY Every single position in the United Nations, The EEC and every position in the British Parliament is held by people who are Freemasons. Freemasonry has something in the region of 700,000 members in England and Wales, yet the British public hardly know anything about them. Freemasons secretly worship a Devil-God, known as JAHBULON, If you do not believe me (see pages 230-240 of the International best selling book on Freemasonry “The Brotherhood”, by Stephen Knight & “Satanic Voices”, by David M Pidcock).

The Jews, the Christians, the Atheists and Secularist, the Munafiqeen, the whole of Kuffaar shall fall under the banner of the Anti-Christ, against Islam. It may also surprise you to know that all Christian Organizations are Masonic Institutions. About 60% of the Archbishops are Freemasons and secretly practice Devil-worship (see above mentioned books). If you want to know if a church is being used as a Masonic-Temple, then look on the stained glass windows for a Masonic symbol such as ‘a snake and a dagger, or a star of David ‘. If the church is in the shape of a Greek Temple, then it is definitely used for Masonic purposes. In Liverpool, the Roman Catholic cathedral has many Pyramids, Masonic symbols. There may be much fear about DAJJAL, but the final victory has been promised to the Muslims. Whereby every single Jew/Freemason shall be put to death. The whole Earth shall be cleansed of Kuffaar once and for all.

Imraan Bin Hussain (RA) relates that I heard Prophet (SAWS) saying : “That since the birth of Adam (AS) till the advent of Qiyamah (Judgement day), there is no Fitnah (Evil, test) much greater than that of DAJJAL” (MUSLIM).

DAJJAL will emerge from a place between Syria and Iraq, and his emergence will become known when he is in Isfahaan at a place called Judea (Yahudea). He will be of Jewish origin. He will have caused his Jewish parents much distress and pain. The Jews will accept him as “The Messiah” and become his main followers. He will also have a great number of women followers as well. The entire secular world (Jews/Freemasons, Atheist, Christians, Hindus Etc.) shall unite under the banner of the Anti-Christ against Islam. Islam will be the only force standing between him and the total world domination.

Huzaifah (RA) says, “Dajjal will be blind in one eye”. This blind eye will be swollen like a grape: There will be a thick finger-like object in his eye. The letters “KAF”, “FE”, “RE” will be written on his forehead (meaning - Unbeliever). Every Muslim will be able to read these letters whether he is literate or illiterate. He will travel at great speeds by means of a gigantic animal-like a mule… (MUSLIM & AHMAD).

Ubaidah Bin Saamit (RA) says, Prophet Muhammad (SAWS) said “ I have explained DAJJAL to you, but I fear that you might not have understood. DAJJAL will be short, and his legs will be crooked. The hair on his head will be extremely twisted... If you have any doubt regarding DAJJAL, remember that your Sustainer (ALLAH), is not one eyed. (Because DAJJAL will eventually claim to be God himself. His followers shall accept him as such). He will be able to split a person into two and then bring him back life again... (AHMAD).

Narrated Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman: “Subay’ ibn Khalid said: I came to Kufah at the time when Tustar was conquered. I took some mules from it. When I entered the mosque (of Kufah), I found there some people of moderate stature, and among them was a man whom you could recognize when you saw him that he was from the people of Hijaz. I asked: Who is he? The people frowned at me and said: Do you not recognize him? This is Hudhayfah ibn al-Yaman, the companion of the Apostle of Allaah (peace_be_upon_him). Then Hudhayfah said: People used to ask the Apostle of Allaah (peace_be_upon_him) about good, and I used to ask him about evil. Then the people stared hard at him. He said: I know the reason why you dislike it. I then asked: Apostle of Allaah, will there be evil as there was before, after this good which Allaah has bestowed on us? He replied: Yes. I asked: Wherein does the protection from it lie? He replied: In the sword. I asked: Apostle of Allaah, what will then happen? He replied: If Allaah has on Earth a caliph who flays your back and takes your property, obey him, otherwise die holding onto the stump of a tree. I asked: What will come next? He replied: Then the Antichrist (Dajjal) will come forth accompanied by a river and fire. He who falls into his fire will certainly receive his reward, and have his load taken off him, but he who falls into his river will have his load retained and his reward taken off him. I then asked: What will come next? He said: The Last Hour will come. (Translation of Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 35, Trials and Fierce Battles (Kitab Al-Fitan Wa Al-Malahim), Number 4232)”

Narrated Mu’adh ibn Jabal: “The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: The greatest war, the conquest of Constantinople and the coming forth of the Dajjal (Antichrist) will take place within a period of seven months. (Translation of Sunan Abu- Dawud, Book 37, Battles (Kitab Al-Malahim), Number 4282)”

Narrated Abu Hurayrah: “The Prophet (peace_be_upon_him) said: There is no prophet between me and him, that is, Jesus (peace_be_upon_him). He will descent (to the earth). When you see him, recognise him: a man of medium height, reddish fair, wearing two light yellow garments, looking as if drops were falling down from his head though it will not be wet. He will fight the people for the cause of Islaam. He will break the cross, kill swine, and abolish jizyah. Allaah will perish all religions except Islaam. He will destroy the Antichrist (Dajjal) and will live on the earth for forty years and then he will die. The Muslims will pray over him. (Translation of Sunan Abu-Dawud, Book 37, Battles (Kitab Al-Malahim), Number 4310)”

Huzaifah (RA) also says, He will have with him WATER (Heaven) and FIRE (HELL). In reality his hell shall be heaven and his heaven shall be hell... (MUSLIM). In another Ahaadeeth of Our Prophet (SAWS) has said, that DAJJAL shall not know himself the difference between the two. If you are forced to choose between the two, then choose his fire (Hell), for in reality, it will be cool water, and his water (Heaven), shall be Hell.

Imraan Bin Hussain (RA) says the Prophet (SAWS) said; “Those who hear about DAJJAL should stay far from him. By Allah! A person will approach him thinking him to be a believer, but on seeing his amazing feats, will become his follower”. (ABU DAWOOD).

Note : DAJJAL will have the power to cause Famine, Earth quakes and destruction on a mass scale. Many Muslims will join the ranks of DAJJAL on being afraid of his power. Only those with very strong faith will be able to resist. Remember that once you have joined the Anti-Christ, your soul will be doomed forever in the fire of hell. O Brothers / Sisters please come to the religion of Islam and prepare yourself for the big day. I hope this is of use to you and may Allah guide and protect us, so that we my spread the word of Allah in abundance. Ameen’

‘Historically the control and manipulation of political opinion has been the Freemason’s main weapon in gaining control of countries and states. Once in control of the rulers and politicians of a country, laws and political structures could be changed in accordance with their agenda. However, since restricting the body does not necessarily mean restricting the mind, the freemasons recognised that their plan for a global government hinges completely on subduing the masses to their agenda. And thus, eliminating opposition to their cause. And the greatest threat to their plan posing more danger than any army or law is the threat of a free thinking mind. In order to eliminate this threat and to achieve their objective the freemason had set about the boldest plan ever devised…the complete control of every aspect of human life…Your life!

And the weapons they are using against you are in your very home, entertaining and your children and gradually indoctrinating you without you even realising.

In today’s society people are spending more and more time engaged with modern media: television, cinema, computer games, the Internet. Popular fiction and popular music are integral part of their lives. Yet this provide of vast expanse on information which you are taking either consciously or subconsciously into your mind - information on society ranging from ideals or morals and the difference between right and wrong, to the way societies and economies should be structured, is passed before you every single day. These media play a significant role in providing the basis for determining an individual’s view of the world and everything that exists. Thus, any one group in complete control of this information placed on this media will in effect have the power to indoctrinate practically the entire populace of the world to their way of thinking. And it is this fact the freemasons are exploiting. The masons are using the entertainment industry in particular to condition people to their way of thinking, either openly or subliminally. The methods they use vary but the goal is the same, to impose their beliefs, their ideology and their objectives on you in such a way that you begin to think of them as your own. Evidence of their presence within popular entertainment is widespread. Masonic involvement in the industry is not a new thing. A great composer, Wolfgang Amadeos Mozart, a freemason himself, composed a symphony, which was an open display of freemasonry. The symphony is based on a story taken from ancient Egyptian mythology of Isis and Osiris. The pagans’ rites of ancient Egyptian mythology form through the caballa one of the fundamental aspects of freemasonry. It is from these same pagan origins of Egypt that the symbol of the “one eye” stems. Evidence of the freemasonic presence is also commonly found in the popular music of more recent time - Michael Jackson, held today as the king of pop is regarded as the greatest entertainer of all times. He is responsible for providing the best-selling album in the world, may not be known to be linked with the freemasons. However, the cover of his album ‘Dangerous’ has some interesting features. On it, the freemasonic symbol of the one eye can be found, then also a picture of a watery lay, behind which lay burning flames. It seems as though anyone entering into the water would really be entering into the fire. The cover also has on it a picture of a bald- headed man, well known to the occult as Aleister Crowley.

Aleister Crowley himself was a freemason who became a Satanist and wrote the book “The New Law of Man” which stated in it that it would one day replace the Koran as the law of man.

Links between freemasonry and the occult do end there. The products of the masonically controlled music are riddled with subliminal satanic messages. Backtracking is the means of placing recorded messages into soundtracks in such a way that only become intelligible when the track is replayed backwards. When it is played forward however the listener would be totally unaware that a message is being played.

Although the listener may be unaware, the subconscious mind can pick up and understand the messages and in the long term, this can be stored in the subconscious mind and may actually affect a person’s behaviour or judgement. In many ways, backtracking is like a form of hypnotism or brainwashing and has the power to be very destructive. The first example of backtracking is from the famous female artist Madonna; it features on one of her famous albums and is taken from the song “like a prayer”. Played forward, the song sounds like this: [sound file] however, as you will hear, it is not to God the prayer is directed at, but Satan. When played backwards, the words “ho hero Satan” are clearly audible. The Freemasonic “one eye” has also been featured on the video for one of Madonna songs, where Madonna actually appears with the one eye coming out of her forehead. Madonna also appears on a video for one of her songs where she is standing on some writing. Closer examination will reveal that this writing is actually Arabic, the language of the Koran.

Another example of backtracking is taken from the group “the eagles” and the song is called “Hotel California” [sound file]. The words “yes Satan” can be clearly heard when the song is played backwards. As well as containing this message, the song itself is a story in its own right, the California of the song is not a hotel but is actually a street called California, it is on this very street that the headquarters of a church were founded. But it was not the type of church that one may think.

Instead it is a church that some have called the church of Satan. It was headed and founded by Anthony de Levi, the author of the Satanic Bible. It appears that teachings of this church may have become the integral belief of many famous personalities in the entertainment industry, from rock groups to more mainstream artists. Some have gone as far as promoting the church and its belief. One alleged member of the church is a singer of the “Rolling Stones”, who wrote the song “Sympathy for the Devil”. It seems that what originally started as a Christian organisation later turned into a heretic religion, even to the Christians, and now has satanic elements mixed in. The entire entertainment world is rife with evidence of the freemason’s presence. Openly or subliminally, their agenda and beliefs and ideals are propagated.

This is especially evident within the film industry, on the big screen and the small screen, from big budget Hollywood films to simple cartoons. The masons have not left anything to chance in promoting their message of a global government.

Matt growning [sic.], the creator of one of the most popular cartoon series in television history, “the Simpson’s” [sic.], is a self-confessed anarchist. Matt growning himself has openly declared that he wanted to get his own political ideas across within his work. But he wanted to do this in such a way that people would find it easy to accept his ideas. And the means he chose to this was a cartoon called “the Simpson’s”. So, what exactly is the Simpson’s teaching us and our children? There are many lessons being programmed into us. These include:

However what is especially worrying is the Masonic undertones of one episode in particular. The episode in which the father, figure of the family, Homer Simpson, becomes obsessed with a group called the stonecutters or should it be called the freemasons? Upon joining the group his fellow-members find a birthmark on him, the mark that makes the rest of the group declare him to be the chosen one: [sound file]. But with his new found honour and dignity, he, homer Simpson fools himself into thinking that he is god: [sound file].

Some may dismiss it as nothing more than a children’s cartoon, a bit of harmless fun. But the influence it has on audience makes it a very effective means of propaganda. Indoctrinating a people without them even realising. They are propagating their political ideas to the audience in a covered manner. Ideas spread through the domestic television can reach a far wider audience than movies and cinema, and it is through this media that a new concept is being introduced: The concept of one global leader.’

Items marked with an *asterisk do not contain specific references to freemasonry, but give a helpful introduction to some of the ideas contained in this essay.

- John Acaster, ‘Does Freemasonry Have a Soul?’, paper for the Cornerstone Society, November 2001: available online at www.workingtools.org/Insight/Articles/Articles.html.

- John Acaster, ‘The Hidden Sinews of Freemasonry’, paper for the Cornerstone Society, June 2002: available online at www.workingtools.org/Insight/Articles/Articles.html.

- Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire, La République Universelle des Francs-Maçons: De Newton à Metternich, Rennes: Ouest-France 1999.

- John Belton and Kent Henderson, ‘Freemasons - an Endangered Species?’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 113 (2000), pp. 114-50.

- José Antonio Ferrer Benimeli, Bibliografia de la Masoneria (2nd ed., Madrid: Fundacion Universitaria Española 1978.

- José Antonio Ferrer Benimeli, Masonería Española Contemporánea, Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno 1980.

- José Antonio Ferrer Benimeli, El Contubernio Judeo-Masónico-Comunista Del Satanismo al escándalo de la P-2, Madrid: Ediciones ISTMO 1982.

- José Antonio Ferrer Benimeli, Masonería y Periodismo en la España Contemporanea, Zaragoza: Universidad de Zaragoza 1993.

- Anthony D. Buckley and Mary Catherine Kenney, Negotiating Identity: Rhetoric, Metaphor, and Social Drama in Northern Ireland, Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press 1995.

- Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina 1996.

- Steven C. Bullock, ‘Initiating the Enlightenment: Recent Scholarship on English Freemasonry’, Eighteenth-Century Life 20 (1996) 1, pp. 80-92.

- Janet M. Burke, ‘Freemasonry, Friendship and Noblewomen: The Role of the Secret Society in Bringing Enlightenment Thought to Pre-Revolutionary Women Elites’, History of European Ideas 10 (1989) 3, pp. 283-94.

- Janet M. Burke and Margaret C. Jacob, ‘French Freemasonry, Women and Feminist Scholarship’, Journal of Modern History 68 (September 1996), pp. 513-49.

- Roger Burt, ‘Freemasonry and Socio-Economic Networking during the Victorian Period’, Archives 27 (2002), pp. 31-8.

- Mark Carnes, ‘Middle-Class Men and the Solace of Fraternal Ritual’, in: Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1990, pp. 37-66.

- Mark Carnes, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America, New Haven: Yale University Press 1989.

- Augustus Casely-Hayford and Richard Rathbone, ‘Politics, Families and Freemasonry in the Colonial Gold Coast’, in: J. F. Ade Ajayi and J. D. Y. Peel, Peoples and Empires in African History: Essays in Memory of Michael Crowder, London: Longman 1992, pp. 143-60.

- Centre for Research into Freemasonry, University of Sheffield. Contains a variety of papers and other resources for the study of freemasonry: www.shef.ac.uk/~crf

- Centre for Research into Freemasonry and Centre for Gender Studies in Europe, University of Sheffield. Abstracts of conference, ‘Lodges, Chapters and Orders: Fraternal Organisations and the Shaping of Gender Roles in Europe’, July 2002. Available on-line at: www.shef.ac.uk/~crf/news/besantconf/besconf1.htm

- Pierre Chevallier, Histoire de la franc-maçonnerie française, Paris: Fayard 1974-5.

- Peter Clark, British Clubs and Societies 1580-1800: the Origins of an Associational World, Oxford: Clarendon Press 2000.

- Mary Ann Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender and Fraternalism, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989.

- André Combes, Histoire de la franc-maçonnerie au xix^e siècle, Paris: Editions du Rocher, 1998.

- Rebecca Coombes, ‘Genealogical Records at the Library and Museum of Freemasonry: a Survey of Resources’, Family History Monthly 73 (October 2001), pp. 22-5.

- A. A. Cooper, ‘Freemasonry in Malawi’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 103 (1990), pp. 230-3

* Andy Croll, Civilizing the Urban: Popular Culture and Public Space in Merthyr, c. 1870-1914, Cardiff, University of Wales Press 2000.

- Neville Barker Cryer, Masonic Halls of England [The South; The Midlands; the North], Shepperton: Lewis Masonic 1989.

- Neville Barker Cryer, Masonic Halls of North Wales, Shepperton: Lewis Masonic 1990.

- Neville Barker Cryer, Masonic Halls of South Wales, Shepperton: Lewis Masonic 1990.

- James Steven Curl, The Art and Architecture of Freemasonry: an Introductory Study, London: B. T. Batsford 1991.

- James Steven Curl, ‘Masonic Halls’, Country Life, 21 August 1986, pp. 581-3.

- J. R. Dashwood, ‘Notes on Freemasonry in Ceylon’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 59 (1946), pp. 129-187.

- Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850, London: Hutchinson 1987.

* Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia, Berkeley: University of California Press 1986.

* Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough (eds.), The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, Berkeley: University of California Press 1996.

- M. de Pace, Introducing Freemasonry: A Practical Guide to Masonic Practice in England and Wales, London: Lewis Masonic 1983.

- George S. Draffen, Scotish Masonic Records 1736-1950, Coupar: Grand Lodge of Scotland, 1950)

Lynn Dumenil, Freemasonry and American Culture, 1880-1939, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1984.

- C. W. F. Dyer, ‘All Souls Lodge and the King George III Statue at Weymouth’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 93 (1980), pp. 188-92.

- M. J. Crossley Evans, ‘The University of Bristol and Freemasonry 1876-1976 with particular reference to Lodge No. 1404’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 110 (1997), pp. 163-76.

- A. S. Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge 1717-1967, Oxford: United Grand Lodge of England 1967.

Quentin Gelder, ‘School Freemasonry: “A Very English Affair”‘, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 110 (1997), pp. 116-44.

- R. A. Gilbert, ‘Anti-Masonry - Past, Present and Future’, Transactions of the Manchester Association for Masonic Research 86 (1986), pp. 66-82.

- R. A. Gilbert, ‘The Role of Bibliography in Masonic Research’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 103 (1990), pp. 124-49.

- R. A. Gilbert, ‘To See Ourselves As Others See Us’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 107 (1994), pp. 1-7.

- R. A. Gilbert, ‘Women and Freemasonry’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum (forthcoming.

- Avner Halpern, The Democratisation of France 1840-1901: Sociabilité, Freemasonry and Radicalism.

- John Hamill, The History of English Freemasonry, Addlestone: Lewis Masonic Books 1994.

- John Hamill, ‘Contemporary Anti-Freemasonry in England’, Transactions of the Manchester Association for Masonic Research 86 (1986), pp. 20-25.

- John Hamill, ‘The Sins of Our Masonic Fathers...’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 101 (1988), pp. 133-59.

- John Hamill, ‘The Masonic Collections at the Lady Lever Art Gallery’, Journal of the History of Collections 4 (1992), pp. 285-295.

- John Hamill and R. A. Gilbert, World Freemasonry: an Illustrated History, London: Aquarian Press 1991.

- Jessica Leigh Harland-Jacobs, ‘“Hands Across the Sea”: The Masonic Network, British Imperialism and the North Atlantic World’, Geographical Review 89 (1999), pp. 237-53.

* Mark Harrison, Crowds and History: Mass Phenomena in English Towns 1790-1835, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988.

- Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, ‘“Brothers or Strangers”: Jews and Freemasons in Nineteenth-Century Germany’, German History 18 (2000), pp. 143-61.

- Stefan-Ludwig Hoffmann, ‘Civility, Male Friendship and Masonic Sociability in Nineteenth-Century Germany’, Gender and History 13 (2001), pp. 224-48.

- Margaret C. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans, London: George Allen and Unwin 1981.

- Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991.

- Margaret C. Jacob, ‘Freemasonry, Women and the Paradox of the Enlightenment’, in: Eleanor C. Riemer (ed.), Women and the Enlightenment, Women and History 9, New York: Haworth Press 1984, pp. 69-93.

- Margaret C. Jacob, ‘Private Beliefs in Public Temples: The Religiosity of the Eighteenth Century’, Social Research 59 (1992), pp. 59-84.

- Margaret C. Jacob, ‘Money, Equality, Fraternity: Freemasonry and the Social Order in Eighteenth Century Europe’, in: Thomas L. Haskell and Richard F. Teichgraeber III (eds.), The Culture of the Market: Historical Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993, pp. 102-35.

- Margaret C. Jacob, ‘The Mental Landscape of the Public Sphere: A European Perspective’, Eighteenth Century Studies 28 (1994-5), pp. 95-114.

- Margaret C. Jacob, Janet M. Burke, Robert Beachy and Steven C. Bullock, ‘Forum: Exits from the Enlightenment’, Eighteenth Century Studies 33 (2000), pp. 251-74.

- Neil Jarman, Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland, Oxford: Berg Publishers 1997.

- Bernard E. Jones, Freemasons’ Guide and Compendium, London: George G. Harrap 1956.

- Bernard E. Jones, Freemasons’ Book of the Royal Arch, London: George G. Harrap 1957.

Mervyn Jones, ‘Freemasonry’ in Norman Mckenzie (ed.), Secret Societies, New York: Crescent 1967, pp. 152-77.

- Jacob Katz, Jews and Freemasons in Europe, 1723-1939, Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press.

- Robinton Khambatta, ‘The District Grand Lodge of the Punjab’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 103 (1990), pp. 53-77.

* Alan Kidd and David Nicholls (eds.), Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: Middle-Class Identity in Britain 1800-1940, Manchester: Manchester University Press 1999.

- Douglas Knoop and G. P. Jones, An Introduction to Freemasonry, Manchester: Manchester University Press 1937.

- Evert Kwaadgrass, ‘George Kloss and His Masonic Library’ Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 111 (1998), pp. 25-43.

- John Lane, Masonic Records 1717-1894, London: Freemasons’ Hall 1895 (2^nd. ed.).

- Daniel Ligou (ed.), Dictionnaire Universel de la Franc-Maçonnerie, Paris: Editions de Navarre, Editions du Prisme 1974.

- Daniel Ligou (ed.), Dictionnaire de la Franc-Maçonnerie, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 1987.

- Daniel Ligou (ed.), Histoire des francs-maçons en France (vol. 1: 1725-1815; vol. 2: 1815 to present), Toulouse: Editions Privat 2000.

- Dorothy Ann Lipson, Freemasonry in Federalist Connecticut, Princetown: Princeton University Press 1977.

- Simon McVeigh, ‘Freemasonry and Musical Life in London in the late Eighteenth Century’, in: David Wyn Jones (ed.), Music in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Aldershot: Ashgate 2000), pp. 72-100.

- Harry Mendoza, Serendipity: Musings on the Precedence of Numbers and Names used by Lodges and Chapters of the United Grand Lodge of England and the Supreme Grand Chapter of England..., Plymouth: Lewis Masonic and Quatuor Coronati Correspondence Circle 1995.

- A. J. B. Milborne, ‘Freemasonry in Bermuda’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 74 (1961), pp. 11-31.

- Petri Mirala, ‘“A Large Mob, Calling Themselves Freemasons”: Masonic Parades in Ulster’, in: Peter Jupp and Eoin Magennis (eds.), Crowds in Ireland, c. 1720-1920, London: Macmillan 2000, pp. 117-138.

* J. Clyde Mitchell, Social Networks in Urban Situations: Analyses of Personal Relationships in Central African Towns, Manchester: Institute of Social Research, University of Zambia 1969.

- John Morfitt, ‘Freemasonry in Wolverhampton’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 108 (1995), pp. 175-187

- R. J. Morris, ‘Clubs, Societies and Associations’, in: F. M. L. Thompson (ed.), The Cambridge Social History of Britain 1750-1950, 3, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990), pp. 395-445.

* R. J. Morris, ‘Voluntary Societies and British Urban Elites, 1780-1850: an analysis’, Historical Journal 26 (1983), pp. 95-118.

- S. Brent Morris, Cornerstones of Freedom: A Masonic Tradition, Washington: Supreme Council 33˚ S.J. 1993.

- S. Brent Morris, ‘Voting With Their Feet’, Transactions of the Texas Lodge of Research 33 (1998-9), pp. 91-7.

- William A. Muraskin, Middle-Class Blacks in a White Society: Prince Hall Freemasonry in America, Berkeley: University of California Press 1975.

- A. N. Newman, ‘Politics and Freemasonry in the Eighteenth Century’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 104 (1991), pp. 32-50.

- A. N. Newman, ‘Mark Masonry in Leicester’, Transactions of the Lodge of Research No. 2429 Leicester 103 (1994), pp. 55-65.

- A. N. Newman, ‘How the “Other Degrees” came to Leicester’, Transactions of the Lodge of Research No. 2429 Leicester 105 (1996), pp. 9-16.

- A. N. Newman, ‘William Kelly, Mason Extra-ordinary’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 110 (1997), pp. 75-90.

- A. N. Newman, ‘Freemasonry in Leicestershire in the 18th and 19th Centuries: Comparisons and Contrasts’, Transactions of the Lodge of Research No. 2429 Leicester 107 (1998), pp. 28-37.

- A. N. Newman, ‘The Significance of the Provinces for the Masonic Historian’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 112 (1999), pp. 1-9.

- Philip Nord, The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France, Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press 1995.

- David Misa Pidcock, Satanic Voices Ancient and Modern, Mustaqim: Islamic Art and Literature 1992.

- S. Pope, ‘The Development of Freemasonry in England and Wales’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 68 (1955), pp. 129-31.

- Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon and Shuster, 2000.

- P. J. Rich, ‘Public-school Freemasonry in the Empire: “Mafia of the Mediocre?”‘, in: J. A. Mangan (ed.), ‘Benefits Bestowed’? Education and British Imperialism, Manchester: Manchester University Press 1988, pp. 174-92.

- P. J. Rich, Elixir of Empire: The English Public Schools, Ritualism, Freemasonry, and Imperialism, London: Regency Press 1989.

- P. J. Rich, Chains of Empire: English Public Schools, Masonic Cabalism, Historical Causality, and Imperial Clubdom, London: Regency Press 1991.

- P. J. Rich, The Invasions of the Gulf: Radicalism, Ritualism and the Shaikhs, Cambridge: Allborough Press 1991.

- Marie Mulvey Roberts, ‘Pleasures Engendered by Gender: Homosociality and the Club’, in: [Roy Porter and Marie Mulvey Roberts (eds.)] Pleasure in the Eighteenth Century,, London: Macmillan 1996, pp. 48-77.

* Alisdair Rogers and Steven Vertovec (eds.), The Urban Context: Ethnicity, Social Networks and Situational Analysis, Oxford: Berg Publishers, 1995.

- M. D. J. Scanlan (ed.), The Social Impact of Freemasonry on the Modern Western World (The Canonbury Papers 1), London: Canonbury Masonic Research Centre 2002.

- F. W. Seal-Coon, ‘The Island of Jamaica and its Regional Masonic Influence’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 104 (1991), pp. 165-177.

- John Shaftesley, ‘Jews in English Regular Freemasonry 1717-1860’, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England 25 (1973-5), pp. 150-209.

- Frederick Smyth, A Reference Book for Freemasons, London: Quatuor Coronati Correspondence Circle 1998.

- Christopher Sykes, ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’, History Today 17 (1967), pp. 81-8.

- F. D. Stevenson Drane, ‘Freemasonry in Egypt’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 81 (1968), pp. 209-223

Edward A. Tiryakian (ed.), On the Margin of the Visible: Sociology, the Esoteric and the Occult, New York: John Wiley 1974.

- Douglas E .G. Vieler, ‘One Step Forward, One Step Back - A Discussion of the Unique Masonic Constitutional Situation in South Africa’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 111 (1998), pp. 221-8.

- G. E. Walker, ‘250 Years of Masonry in India’, in: The Collected Prestonian Lectures 1975-87, Shepperton: Lewis Masonic 1987, pp. 83-103.

- Michael W. Walker, ‘Freemasonry in Society - Today and Tomorrow. Some Personal Musings’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 110 (1997), pp. 106-115.

- R. William Weisberger, Wallace McLeod and S. Brent Morris (eds.), Freemasonry on Both Sides of the Atlantic: Essays concerning the Craft in the British Isles, Europe, the United States and Mexico, New York: Columbia University Press 2002.

- Loretta J. Williams, Black Freemasonry and Middle-Class Realities, Columbia, University of Missouri Press 1980.

- D. L. Wykes, ‘The Growth of Masonry in Nineteenth-Century Leicestershire’, Transactions of the Lodge of Research No. 2429 Leicester 105 (1996), pp. 17-25.

* Stephen Yeo, Religion and Voluntary Societies in Crisis, London: Croom Helm 1976.

[i] Stephen Yeo, Religion and Voluntary Societies in Crisis, London: Croom Helm 1976.

[ii] Ibid., p. 1.

[iii] Ibid., pp. 341, n. 46; 351, n. 94.

[iv] Lodge of Union No. 414, Grey Friars’ Lodge No. 1101, Kendrick Lodge No. 2043: John Lane, Masonic Records 1717-1894, London: Freemasons’ Hall 1895 |(2^nd ed.), pp. 267, 345, 425, which also lists five earlier lodges in Reading which had been erased: pp. 30, 87, 91, 111.

[v] www.a2a.pro.gov.uk; Rebecca Coombes, ‘Subject for Enquiry: Sources for Research and Historical Bibliography in the Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London’, in: R. William Weisberger, Wallace McLeod and S. Brent Morris (eds.), Freemasonry on Both Sides of the Atlantic: Essays concerning the Craft in the British Isles, Europe, the United States and Mexico, New York: Columbia University Press 2002, pp. 755-80; Rebecca Coombes, ‘Genealogical Records at the Library and Museum of Freemasonry: a Survey of Resources’, Family History Monthly 73 (October 2001), pp. 22-5.

[vi] www.berkspgl.org.uk.

[vii] www.shef.ac.uk/~crf.

[viii] www.vrijmetserarij.nl; Evert Kwaadgrass, ‘George Kloss and His Masonic Library’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 111 (1998), pp. 25-43.

[ix] London: George Allen and Unwin 1981.

[x] Jacob’s work has generally not been well received by English masonic scholars, but for a historian’s view of the fundamental importance of her work, see Roy Porter, Enlightenment: Britain and the Creation of the Modern World, London: Penguin Books 2000, pp. 5-6, 30, 32.

[xi] Trevor Stewart, ‘European Periodical Literature on Masonic Research: A Review of Two Decades of Achievement’, in: Weisberger, McLeod and Morris, op. cit., pp. 805-936.

[xii] John M. Roberts, ‘Freemasonry: the Possibilities of a Neglected Topic’, English Historical Review 84 (1969), pp. 323-335; cf. the review by Roberts of Jasper Ridley, The Freemasons, in the Times Literary Supplement, 14 January 2000, pp. 3-4.

[xiii] Noble Frankland, Witness of a Century, the Life and Times of Prince Arthur Duke of Connaught, London: Shepheard-Walwyn, 1993. For details of the Duke of Connaught’s masonic career, see Sir George Aston and Evelyn Graham, His Royal Highness the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn: A life and Intimate Study, London: George C. Harrap 1929, pp. 335-9; A. R. Hewitt, ‘Biographical Lists of Grand Masters’, in: A. S. Frere (ed.), Grand Lodge 1717-1967, Oxford: United Grand Lodge of England, p. 277.

[xiv] Pierre Chevallier, Histoire de la franc-maçonnerie française, Paris: Fayard 1974-5. Compare Chevallier’s interpretation of events under the Second Empire and Third Republic with the more challenging analysis offered by Phillip Nord, The Republican Moment: Struggles for Democracy in Nineteenth-Century France, Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press 1999, pp. 15-30, which suggests that support by freemasonry for the Third Republic reflected not only the harsh treatment of freemasonry under the Second Empire, but also the influence of significant groups of ‘seekers of the absolute, legatees of utopian socialism, radical republicans’.

[xv] R. William Weisberger, ‘Prague and Viennese Freemasonry, the Enlightenment, and the Operations of the True Harmony Lodge of Vienna’, in: Weisberger, McLeod and Morris, op. cit., pp. 375-420.

[xvi] For example, Weisberger arbitrarily categorises people as ‘enlighteners’ and refers to enlightenment ideas as if they were an accepted and defined doctrinal canon, so that, on p. 375, it is stated that masonry served as a vehicle for the promotion of the enlightenment, and on p. 393, a journal is described as concerned with the propagation of masonic and enlightenment ideas, both assuming that the enlightenment was a very simplistic phenomenon. All recent research on the enlightenment has stressed its multi-faceted and complex character.

[xvii] cf Roberts, op. cit., p. 324: ‘There must surely be something of sociological interest in an institution whose English Grand Masters have since 1721 always been noblemen and have included seven princes of the blood...’.

[xviii] New Welcome Lodge No. 5139, 50th Anniversary Meeting: ‘The Grand Secretary informed Bro. Rockliff that the then Prince of Wales (afterwards King Edward VIII, later Duke of Windsor) was somewhat concerned at the number of occasions on which ballots taken in lodges appeared to be used to exclude from masonry Labour MPs seeking membership therein. HRH had therefore suggested to the Grand Secretary that a lodge might be formed specially for the purpose of enabling Labour MPs and officials to become masons if they so desired’.

[xix] The petition and accompanying memoranda for formation of the lodge in the Library and Museum of Freemasonry, Freemasons’ Hall, London, do not refer directly to the Labour party connection of the lodge, but stressed these broader connections: see Appendix, Document No. 2, below.

[xx] Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London, returns of New Welcome Lodge No. 5139; cf. Ben Pimlott (ed.), The Political Diary of Hugh Dalton, London: Jonathan Cape and London School of Economics 1986, pp. 224, 265, 268-9.

[xxi] New Welcome Lodge No. 5139, 50th Anniversary Meeting states that in 1934 no Member of Parliament appeared for initiation. An emergency meeting of the Lodge was held and ‘there was agreement that all future initiates and joining members should have some connection with Parliament’.

[xxii] See Appendix, Document No. 1, below.

[xxiii] The Freemason, 4 July 1885, p. 329.

[xxiv] Keith Kisack, Monmouth: The Making of a County Town, London: Phillimore, pp. 56-109.

[xxv] Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London, returns of the Royal Augustus Lodge No. 656, Monmouth; United Grand Lodge, Letter Book B, ff. 126, 134, 192; Historical Correspondence, 5/D/5-6. See Appendix, Document No. 3, below.

[xxvi] See for example Susan G. Davis, Parades and Power: Street Theatre in Nineteenth-Century Philadelphia, Berkeley: University of California Press 1986; Mark Harrison, Crowds and History: Mass Phenomena in English Towns 1790-1835, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1988, pp. 140-67, 202-67; Neil Jarman, Material Conflicts: Parades and Visual Displays in Northern Ireland, Oxford: Berg Publishers 1997; Pamela King, ‘Squads and Ha’s: Gender Roles and Civic Space in Lerwick’s Up Helly Aa’, paper at the University of Sheffield conference ‘Lodges, Chapters and Orders: Fraternal Organisations and the Shaping of Gender Roles in Europe’, 2002 (available on-line at: www.shef.ac.uk/~crf/news/besantconf/king.htm); Susan Smith, ‘Where to Draw the Line: A Geography of Popular Festivity’ in Alisdair Rogers and Steven Verdovec (eds.), The Urban Context: Ethnicity, Social Networks and Situational Analysis, Oxford: Berg Publishers 1995, pp. 141-164; Meg Twycross, ‘The Triumph of Isabella, or the Archduchess and the Parrot’, paper at the University of Sheffield conference ‘Lodges, Chapters and Orders: Fraternal Organisations and the Shaping of Gender Roles in Europe’, 2002 (abstract available on-line at: www.shef.ac.uk/~crf/news/besantconf/twycross.htm); Robert Withington, English Pageantry: an Historical Outline, Cambridge, Ma.: Harvard University Press 1918, 2, pp. 3-193.

[xxvii] Trevor Stewart, ‘“Through the Streets They Tramp and Go!’: an Examination of Scottish Masonic Processions” in M. D. J. Scanlan (ed.), The Social Impact of Freemasonry on the Modern Western World, The Canonbury Papers 1, London: Canonbury Masonic Research Centre 2002; Petri Mirala, ‘“A Large Mob, Calling Themselves Freemasons”: Masonic Parades in Ulster’, in: Peter Jupp and Eoin Magennis (eds.), Crowds in Ireland, c. 1720-1920, London: Macmillan 2000, pp. 117-39.

[xxviii] See Appendix, Document No. 4, below. Other masonic parades in Sheffield included: the laying of the foundation stone of Sheffield Infirmary (1793) and the opening of the Infirmary (1797): J. R. Clarke, The History of Britannia Lodge, Sheffield: J. W. Northend 1961, pp. 17-18; the Proclamation of the Peace (1814): Clarke, op. cit., p. 18; the laying of the foundation stone of St George’s, Brookhouse Hill (1821): Clyde Binfield, David Hey et al., eds: The History of the City of Sheffield 1843-1993, Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press 1993), 2, p. 372; the laying of the foundation stone of St Mary’s, Bramall Lane (1824): ibid., pp 372-3; the laying of the foundation stone of St Andrew’s Presbyterian church, Hanover Street (July 1855): Binfield, Hey et al., op. cit., 2, p. 413; the laying of the foundation stone of the alms house commemorating the Holmfirth Flood of 1852 (21 April 1856): J. G. Fardell, A Sermon preached at Holmfirth Church on Monday, April 21st, 1856..., Huddersfield: Joseph Brook 1856.

[xxix] Stewart, op. cit., pp. 101-102; The History of Free Masonry... with an Account of the Grand lodge of Scotland, Edinburgh: Alex. Lawrie 1800, pp. 168-183, 192-5, 200, 212-21, 236-41, 243-55, 256-62, 281-91. An illustration of the laying of the foundation stone of New College, Edinburgh, is in: John Hamill and R. A. Gilbert, World Freemasonry, London: Aquarian Press 1991, p. 135.

[xxx] William Preston, Illustrations of Masonry, London: G. Wilkie 1812, pp. 392-8: see Appendix, Document No. 5, below.

[xxxi] Hugh B. Urban, ‘The Adornment of Silence: Secrecy and Symbolic Power in American Freemasonry’, Journal of Religion and Society 3 (2001): available online at http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2001/2001-2.html.

[xxxii] Mary Ann Clawson, ‘Spectatorship and Masculinity in the Scottish Rite’, in: C. Lance Brockman (ed.), Theatre of the Fraternity: Staging the Ritual Space of the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry, Minneapolis: Frederick R. Weismann Art Museum 1996; ‘Fraternal Association and the Problem of Masculine Consumption’, paper at the University of Sheffield conference ‘Lodges, Chapters and Orders: Fraternal Organisations and the Shaping of Gender Roles in Europe’, 2002 (abstract available on-line at: www.shef.ac.uk/~crf/news/besantconf/clawson.htm)

[xxxiii] cf. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850, London: Hutchinson 1987, pp. 427-9. The drive for the building of masonic halls can be traced in The Freemasons’ Magazine in the 1850s and 1860s. The details for individual lodges are documented in Lane, op. cit.

[xxxiv] Simon Gunn, ‘The Middle Class, Modernity and the Provincial City: Manchester c. 1840-80’ in Alan Kidd and David Nicholls (eds.), Gender, Civic Culture and Consumerism: Middle-Class Identity in Britain 1800-1940, Manchester: Manchester University Press 1999, pp. 112-127; Andy Croll, Civilizing the Urban: Popular Culture and Public Space in Merthyr, c. 1870-1914, Cardiff, University of Wales Press 2000, pp. 36-61. On the Sheffield masonic hall, see Appendix, Document No. 6, below, and also Clarke, op. cit., pp. 36-7, 87-8; Binfield, Hey et al., op. cit., 2, p. 57. In Monmouth, for example, the local masonic lodge took over in 1841 a theatre in the centre of the town, which received a facade similar in style to that recently added to the town’s methodist church: Kissack, op. cit., p. 259.

[xxxv] Ibid., p. 123.

[xxxvi] Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough (eds.), The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective, Berkeley: University of California Press 1996; Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, ‘The Architecture of Public and Private Life: English Middle-Class Society in a Provincial Town 1780-1850’, in: Derek Fraser and Anthony Sutcliffe (eds.), The Pursuit of Urban History, London: Edward Arnold 1983, pp. 326-45; Christopher P. Hosgood, ‘Mrs Pooter’s Purchase: Lower-Middle-Class Consumerism and the Sales 1870-1914’, in: Alan Kidd and David Nicholls, op. cit., pp. 146-63.

[xxxvii] Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes. The perceptive short discussion of freemasonry on pp. 425-8 of this book has been generally overlooked.

[xxxviii] Robert Beachy, ‘Masonic Apologetic Writings and the Construction of Gender in Enlightenment Europe’, paper at the 2002 University of Sheffield conference ‘Lodges, Chapters and Orders: Fraternal Organisations and the Shaping of Gender Roles in Europe 1300-2000. Abstract available on-line at www.shef.ac.uk/~crf/news/besantconf/beachy.htm.

[xxxix] Mark Carnes, ‘Middle-Class Men and the Solace of Fraternal Ritual’ in Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1990, pp. 37-66; Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America, New Haven: Yale University Press 1989.

[xl] See Appendix, Document No. 7, below.

[xli] M. C. Peck, Three Orations Delivered in Connection with the Wilberforce Lodge No. 2134, Hull, Hull: 1890.

[xlii] Carnes, ‘Middle-Class Men and the Solace of Fraternal Ritual’, p. 51.

[xliii] P. J. Rich, ‘Public-school Freemasonry in the Empire: “Mafia of the Mediocre?”‘, in: J. A. Mangan (ed.), ‘Benefits Bestowed’? Education and British Imperialism, Manchester: Manchester University Press 1988, pp. 174-92; Elixir of Empire: The English Public Schools, Ritualism, Freemasonry, and Imperialism, London: Regency Press 1989; Chains of Empire: English Public Schools, Masonic Cabalism, Historical Causality, and Imperial Clubdom, London: Regency Press 1991; The Invasions of the Gulf: Radicalism, Ritualism and the Shaikhs, Cambridge: Allborough Press 1991. Unfortunately, while these books hint at the richness and wide-ranging connections of this theme, they do not fully document it.

[xliv] J. G. Taylor, A Short History of the Old Sinjins Lodge (No. 3232), Chelsea: George White 1935, pp. 5-6; Quentin Gelder, ‘School Freemasonry: “A Very English Affair”‘, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 110 (1997), pp. 116-44; Douglas Knoop, University Masonic Lodges, Sheffield: J. W. Northend 1945; M. J. Crossley Evans, ‘The University of Bristol and Freemasonry 1876-1976 with particular reference to Lodge No. 1404’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 110 (1997), pp. 163-76.

[xlv] John F. Nichols, Notes on the History of the Old Sinjins Lodge No. 3232, Battersea: E. C. Freeman 1957, p. 5.

[xlvi] P. J. Rich, ‘Public-school Freemasonry in the Empire’ p. 177.

[xlvii] Christopher Tyerman, A History of Harrow School 1324-1991, Oxford: Oxford University Press 2000, pp. 362-4. In Tyerman’s view, the importance of freemasonry at Harrow reflected the school’s strongly Anglican and anti-catholic ethos: ‘Anglicanism was important to Harrow because it formed part of its settled world view. The anti-Catholicism was partly explained by this, as was the acceptance of freemasonry which was embedded in Harrow’s clerical as well as lay fabric. It would not have seemed odd for the freemason classicist J. W. Moir (master 1922-48) to urge Moore [the Headmaster] in 1947 to appoint an openly freemason clergyman to the staff. The decline in anti-Catholicism, although not paralleled by an equal decline in freemasonry, forms one of the sharpest transformations in Harrow’s religious identity [since 1970].’: p. 462.

[xlviii] Ibid., p. 363.

[xlix] Ibid., p. 386.

[l] Dina M. Copelman, London’s Women Teachers: Gender, Class and Feminism 1870-1930, London: Routledge 1996.

[li] In 1886, the teaching force of the London School Board comprised 2,076 men and 4,065 women: ibid., p. 50.

[lii] Unfortunately this is not discussed by Copelman, and would be a good area for further investigation.

[liii] Appendix, Document No. 8, below

[liv] See e.g. Neville Barker Cryer’s various publications on the masonic halls of England and Wales and John M. Hamill, ‘The Masonic Collections at the Lady Lever Art Gallery’, Journal of the History of Collections 4 (1992), pp. 285-295.

[lv] American equivalents are discussed by Mary Ann Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood: Class, Gender and Fraternalism, Princeton: Princeton University Press 1989, pp. 213-4, who illustrates how lucrative these businesses could be. Firms manufacturing and selling regalia and other products did not restrict themselves to the masonic market but aimed at the whole range of fraternal organisations. For example, the firm of Toye, which eventually took over Kenning, also produced banners and badges for friendly societies and trade unions: Paul Martin, The Trade Union Badge: Material Culture in Action, Aldershot: Ashgate 2002, p. 131.

[lvi] Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes, pp. 429-36.

[lvii] Janet M. Burke, ‘Freemasonry, Friendship and Noblewomen: The Role of the Secret Society in Bringing Enlightenment Thought to Pre-Revolutionary Women Elites’, History of European Ideas 10 (1989) 3, pp. 283-94; several publications by Margaret C. Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-Century Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1991, pp. 120-142; ‘Freemasonry, Women and the Paradox of the Enlightenment’, in: Eleanor C. Riemer (ed.), Women and the Enlightenment, Women and History 9, New York: Haworth Press 1984, pp. 69-93; ‘Money, Equality, Fraternity: Freemasonry and the Social Order in Eighteenth Century Europe’, in: Thomas L. Haskell and Richard F. Teichgraeber III (eds.), The Culture of the Market: Historical Essays, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993, pp. 102-35; with Janet M. Burke, ‘French Freemasonry, Women and Feminist Scholarship’, Journal of Modern History 68 (September 1996), pp. 513-49.

[lviii] Carnes, ‘Secret Ritual and Manhood’, pp. 81-9; James Smith Allen, ‘Constructing Sisterhood: Gender in the French Masonic Movement, 1740-1940’, paper at the University of Sheffield conference ‘Lodges, Chapters and Orders: Fraternal Organisations and the Shaping of Gender Roles in Europe’, 2002. Abstract available on-line at: www.shef.ac.uk/~crf/news/besantconf/jimabstr.htm; cf. Nord, op. cit., pp. 27-8. cf. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, New York: Simon and Shuster 2000, pp. 389-90.

[lix] John Hamill and R. A. Gilbert, op. cit., pp. 185-6; Daniel Ligou (ed.), Histoire des franc-maçons en France de 1815 à nos jours, Toulouse: Editions Privat 2000, pp. 154-8; Nord, op. cit., pp. 27-28. Information about Charlotte Despard and masonic suffragette marches provided by Ann Pilcher-Dayton. See Appendix, Document No. 9, below.

[lx] Ex info Ann Pilcher Dayton.

[lxi] Hamill and Gilbert, op. cit., pp. 208-9. See Appendix, Document No. 10, below.

[lxii] William A. Muraskin, Middle-Class Blacks in a White Society: Prince Hall Freemasonry in America, Berkeley: University of California Press 1975; Loretta J. Williams, Black Freemasonry and Middle-Class Realities, Columbia, University of Missouri Press 1980; cf. Putnam, op. cit., pp. 339, 389-91.

[lxiii] Williams, op. cit., pp. 128-134.

[lxiv] A. A. Cooper, ‘Freemasonry in Malawi’, Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 103 (1990), p. 230

[lxv] David Gilmour, The Long Recessional: The Imperial life of Rudyard Kipling, London: John Murray, 2002), p. 69; cf. p. 17. See Appendix Documents Nos. 11-12, below.

[lxvi] Augustus Casely-Hayford and Richard Rathbone, ‘Politics, Families and Freemasonry in the Colonial Gold Coast’, in: J. F. Ade Ajayi and J. D. Y. Peel, People and Empires in African History: Essays in Memory of Michael Crowder, London: Longman 1992, pp. 143-60.

[lxvii] Ibid., p. 146.

[lxviii] Ibid., p. 156.

[lxix] David Stevenson, ‘James Anderson (1679-1739), Man and Mason’, in: Weisberger, McLeod and Morris, op. cit., pp. 199-242; John Money, ‘Freemasonry and the Fabric of Loyalism in Hanoverian England’, in: Eckhart Helmuth (ed.), The Transformation of Political Culture: England and Germany in the late Eighteenth Century, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1990, pp. 235-74.

[lxx] Avner Halpern, The Democratisation of France 1840-1901: Sociabilité, Freemasonry and Radicalism, London: Minerva Press 1999; Nord, op. cit., pp. 15-30.

[lxxi] Abner Cohen, ‘The Politics of Ritual Secrecy’, Man 6 (September 1971), pp. 427-48, reprinted in Edward A. Tiryakian, On the Margin of the Visible: Sociology, the Esoteric and the Occult, New York: John Wiley 1974, pp. 111-139.

[lxxii] Ibid., p. 129.

[lxxiii] Alisdair Rogers and Steven Verkovec, Introduction to op. cit., pp. 15-21.

[lxxiv] See Appendix, Document No. 13, below.

[lxxv] Simon McVeigh, ‘Freemasonry and Musical Life in London in the late Eighteenth Century’, in: David Wyn Jones (ed.), Music in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Aldershot: Ashgate 2000, pp. 72-100.

[lxxvi] Roger Burt, ‘Freemasonry and Socio-Economic Networking during the Victorian Period’, Archives 27 (2002), pp. 31-8.

[lxxvii] Ibid., p. 33.

[lxxviii] For an impression of a characteristic range of material see for example John M. Hamill, ‘ The Masonic Collections at the Lady Lever Art Gallery’, Journal of the History of Collections 4 (1992), pp. 285-295.

[lxxix] Secret Ritual and Manhood, p. ix.

[lxxx] cf. Peter Starr, Logics of Failed Revolt: French Theory After May ‘68, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1995.

[lxxxi] See for example: www.adl.org/Anti_semitism/speech.asp; www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/2002/0617/antisemitism/arab.html.

[lxxxii] See for example www.texemarrs.com/122001/unleashing_king_of_terrors.htm; www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/wtc/index02.htm; www.goroadachi.com/etemenanki/mysterybabylon.htm; www.cuttingedge.org/news/ n1538.cfm; www.passitkit.com/coincidence_or_conspiracy.htm; www.rense.com/general15/ whoweneedfear.htm; www.dccsa.com/greatjoy/Barry.htm. This material changes frequently and can easily disappear. It urgently requires scholarly listing and analysis. See further Appendix, Documents No. 14 A-B, below. On the whole, this new twist to anti-masonry is not yet discussed by web sites devoted to documenting and analysing attacks on masonry, such as the excellent site maintained by the Grand Lodge of British Columbia: http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/anti-masonry/

[lxxxiii] See for example http://antimasons.8m.com; www.allaahuakbar.net/free-masons/dajjal.htm; http://johnw.host.sk/articles/islam_pillars/dajjal.htm; www.trosch.org/bks/muslim_on_freemasonry.html; http://news.stcom.net/article.php?sid=1295; http://openyourmind.jeeran.com/dajjal.htm.

[lxxxiv] David Cook, ‘Muslim Fears of the Year 2000’, Middle East Quarterly 5 (June 1998): available online at: www.meforum.org/article/397.

[lxxxv] David Misa Pidcock, Satanic Voices Ancient and Modern, Mustaqim: Islamic Art and Literature 1992; www.islamicparty.com/people/david.htm. Pidcock’s book draws on the familiar anti-semitic and anti-masonic sources on western anti-masonry - his acknowledgements include a special note of gratitude to Nesta Webster and the bibliography includes Holocaust denial literature such as the 1979 pamphlet Six Million Reconsidered. What is distinctive about Pidcock’s book is the way in which these commonplace sources are grafted onto current issues of Islamic concern, such as the Salman Rushdie affair. Pidcock declares (p. 15) that ‘Many well researched books have been written by Western writers and journalists exposing the secrets of freemasonry, but to my knowledge none have attempted to seriously use material from Islamic sources in order to reach a better understanding of the subject’. On this basis, Pidcock can legitimately claim to have added a new (and disturbing) thread to the literature of anti-masonry.

[lxxxvi] www.islam-online.net/English/ArtCulture/2001/04/article1.shtml; http://isnet.itb.ac.id/KAMMI/Sept98/msg00030.html; www.halaqahmedia.com/pages/products/index.php. See further Appendix Documents No. 15 A-B, below.

[lxxxvii] cf. Pidcock, op. cit., p. 106, which notes the use of the term ‘Enlightenment’ by Tom Stoppard and Salman Rushdie, and (following Nesta Webster) links it back, by means of the Illuminati, to revolts against Islam by the Karmathites, Druse, Assassins, etc.