BY drawing together many early allusions and references this section will attempt to tell the story of the formative days of the Royal Arch up to 1766, the year that saw the founding of the first Grand Chapter and so became a milestone in the history of the Order.
Deferring any account of the traditional history to Sections ii and is and coming down to the late Middle Ages, we find that there are in manuscript and print many allusions and references which may be interpreted as relating to the main idea or dominant motif of the Royal Arch. Perhaps the earliest was an endorsement (now lost) on one of the Old Charges, one known as the Grand Lodge No. 1 MS., bearing the date December 25, 1583. The handwriting does not suggest the sixteenth century, but the endorsement, for what it is worth, is here given: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” (St John, i, 1.) In another of the Old Charges ‑ the Dumfries No. 4 MS., of the year 1710 ‑ are two references to the “Royal secret,” the actual phrase being: “No lodge or corum of masons shall give the Royal secret to any suddenly but upon great deliberation.” It has been suggested that the significance of the word “Royal” is the same as that in the Royal Arch. (In the Graham MS. Of 1726 or earlier a secret is described as “holy.”)
Some Allusions and References of the 1720’s
The Constitutions of 1723 mention an “Annual Grand Assembly wherein … the Royal Art” may be “duly cultivated, and the Cement of the Brotherhood preserv’d; so that the whole Body resembles a well built Arch.” While it might be easy to give the word “Arch” a special significance, frankly it is not thought that the phrase alludes to the Royal Arch, but is rather a figure of speech suggesting that the Masonic Order forms one strong, solid structure.
The term “Royal Art” occurs twenty‑three times in the Constitutions, the initial letters being printed in capitals or the words themselves in italics. But there seems no reason to invest this usage with particular significance, and it is easy to be misled by the similarity in sound between “Royal Art” and “Royal Arch.” It is important to remember that Anderson’s words are concerned with architecture, an art supported and encouraged by kings, hence a Royal Art. When the term is used to‑day it connotes a mystical conception of freemasonry ‑ an art by which is built the “spiritual house,” the invisible temple. (By the way, Jonathan Swift said in 1728 that “mathematics resemble a well built arch; logic, a castle; and romances, castles in the air,” but here again, although Swift was possibly a freemason, it is unwise to read special significance into his words.) The Constitutions of 1723 give, in Regulation II, the Master of a lodge:
“The Right and Authority of congregating the Members of his Lodge into a Chapter at pleasure, upon any Emergency or Occurrence.”
Further, Regulation X says:
The Majority of every particular Lodge, when congregated, shall have the privilege of giving Instructions to their Master and Wardens, before the assembling of the Grand Chapter, or Lodge, at the three Quarterly Communications hereafter mentioned, and of the Annual Grand Lodge too; because their Master and Wardens are their Representatives, and are supposed to speak their mind.
But is the term “Grand Chapter” in this quotation anything more than a rather fine term for an assembly, congregation, or convocation, particularly bearing in mind that the word Chapter’ had been in general use for hundreds of years? The monks in medieval days met in an assembly, a chapter, presided over by the head of their house. We admit the possibility that a few lodges might have found the word Chapter’ attractive because of its religious associations ‑ for example, only a few years later the minutes of Old King’s Arms Lodge, No. 18, referred in 1733 to “the last chapter” of this lodge, and other instances might be given, but we are far from supposing that this usage implies any knowledge of the Royal Arch. We first learn definitely of Royal Arch chapters in the 1750’s: Much has been made of the following reference in a manuscript catechism of 1723 ‑ quite an early date:
If a Master Mason you would be,
Observe you well the Rule of Three.
And three years later appeared an advertisement mentioning “the necessity there is for a Master to well understand the Rule of Three.” The possibility that “the Rule of Three” refers to a well‑known feature of the Royal Arch ritual has, of course, been raised, but the phrase had more than one Craft implication.
More to the point is a passage in The Whole Institutions of Free‑Masons Opened (Dublin, 1725):
Yet for all this I want the primitive Word, I answer it was God in six Terminations, to wit I am, and Johova is the answer to it,… or else Excellent and Excellent, Excellency is the Answer to it, . . . for proof read the first of the first of St John.
Here we have a clear reference to words and ideas with which the Royal Arch mason is familiar. The word “Excellent” has been in use in Royal Arch ritual and custom for more than two centuries, and we shall later meet pointed examples of the word occurring in the 1740’s and in the following decades. We find the words “the excellency of excellencies” occurring in another irregular print only one year later. A newspaper skit entitled “Antediluvian Masonry” (date about 1726), intended to throw ridicule upon freemasonry, mentions “moveable letters” and sends our thoughts forward to the Imperial George Lodge, which in a minute of 1805 recalls that a “set of movable letters was bought.” An irregular print of 1725 mentions “a Compound Word” consisting of three (unintelligible) syllables, while a pamphlet of the year 1724, possibly written by Jonathan Swift, itself a skit on an alleged exposure of masonry that had recently appeared, says that freemasons attach great importance to “three pairs of Hebrew letters … by which they mean that they are united as one in Interest, Secrecy and Affection.” From other irregular prints of the 1720s come these questions and answers:
Q. Whence is an Arch derived?
A. From architecture.
Q. Whence comes the pattern of an arch?
A. From the rainbow.
Probably the allusion in the second question is to a phrase in Genesis in which the rainbow is given as the token of God’s covenant with man (there are other significant Biblical texts), and, jumping a few decades, it may be mentioned that a cavern and a rainbow are among the symbols illustrating a French rite of the 1760 period.
In the Graham MS. (1726 or earlier) already mentioned is a number of references to the “trible voice,” and two of them, especially, may be quoted:
“Bezalliell … knew by inspiration that the secret titles and primitive pallies of the God head was preservativ and … agreed conditionally they were not to discover it without another to themselves to make a trible voice.”
“… now after [Bezalliell’s] death the inhabitance there about did think that the secrets of masonry had been totally Lost because they were no more heard of for none knew the secrets thereof. Save these two princes and they were so sworn at their entering not to discover it without another to make a trible voice.”
The above quotations might well imply association with the Royal Arch motif, and cannot be lightly brushed aside. Neither can a reference in a lecture on December 27, 1726, delivered to the Grand Lodge of ALL England, at York, in the presence of the Grand Master, Charles Bathhurst. This reference was to Josiah and repairs to the Temple, including the rebuilding of the Temple by “Zerubbabel and Herod.”
The More Definite References of the 1730s
Stress has sometimes been laid on the fact that the earliest seal in use by the Premier Grand Lodge in the 1730‑33 period bore in Greek the words taken from St John i, 1: “In the beginning,” etc. The seal itself has not survived, but its impress is seen upon the deputations to constitute various lodges in 1732 and 1733. In weighing this evidence we must bear in mind that the Premier Grand Lodge was hostile to the Royal Arch until the early nineteenth century, and it is therefore almost unbelievable that, assuming for one moment the Royal Arch to have been at work in the 1730 period, Grand Lodge would have chosen a motto known to be representative of a degree whose status it steadily refused to recognize. No, the adoption of the motto is most unlikely to be evidence of the existence of the Royal Arch at that date, but it certainly does suggest that the Craft degrees then included a mention of “the Word,” a mention that in a brief score or so of years was to be considerably amplified.
Scotch’ or Scots’ Masonry
There is a strong case for assuming that at the time when the Hiramic Degree had only recently found its way into Masonic working, and but few lodges were capable of conferring it, some of the Fellow Crafts who aspired to be Master Masons went to Masters’ Lodges. These came into existence in the 1730’s, and are believed to have devoted themselves to working the Hiramic Degree, although they might also, perhaps in later years, have been working degrees that were not of a truly Craft nature. Nothing is known for certain, but it is a point of particular interest that the earliest recorded Masters’ Lodge (No. 115, meeting at the Devil Tavern, Temple Bar, London) is described in the Engraved List (at that time the only approved list of lodges) as “a Scotch Masons Lodge.” This description is thought to mean not that its members were Scots, but rather that the ritual or ceremony worked was known as “Scotch masonry,” which may possibly (not probably) have been originated in France by Jacobites, political refugees from Scotland. According to the historian Gould (who appears to have known something of the ritual), Scotch masonry had as its motif the discovery in a vault by Scottish Crusaders of the long‑lost and Ineffable Word. So if the lodge at the Devil Tavern was actually working a degree of French origin, then obviously a strong likelihood exists that some primitive form of the Royal Arch rite was actually being worked as early as 1733. The many rituals known, says Gould, exhibit much diversity, but running through them all is the main idea of the discovery of a long‑lost word, while in the search leading to that discovery the Crusaders had to work with the sword in the one hand and the trowel in the other. That the discovery is made in the Middle Ages by Crusaders and not in pre‑Christian days by the Jews returned from exile need not unduly concern us, for we must be prepared for considerable differences between any prototype Royal Arch ceremonies and those which were later developed.
The Scots Master claimed to be “superior to the Master Mason; to be possessed of the true history, secret and design of Freemasonry; and to hold various privileges … he wore distinctive clothing, remained covered in a Master’s Lodge, and in any lodge, even as a visitor, ranked before the W.M.” He claimed that at any time or place he could personally impart, either with or without a ceremony, the secrets of the three Craft degrees, and if, as a member of a lodge, his conduct came into question, only fellow Scots masons could adjudicate upon it. This is more or less the case which Gould presents, but it is not fully acceptable. So much depends upon the dare when the Scots mason was making his exaggerated claims, and it is by no means clear that when Gould was speaking of the Crusaders’ ceremonies he had in mind any that were worked as early as 1733, the year in which the first Scots Masters’ Lodge is known to have been meeting in London. Frankly we do not really know that the Scots lodge was at that time working the Crusaders’ ritual, and we suspect that Gould is talking of degrees that were worked at a rather later date.
It has often been advanced that the early 全cots’ degrees contained matter which to‑day is found not only in the R.A., but in the Mark Degree. There seems little doubt that in the 1740’s the Scots Degree (or degrees) was a ‘fourth’ ceremony, one dealing with the rebuilding of the Temple of Zerubbabel and bringing into prominence the occasion when builders worked with sword in one hand and trowel in the other. But then, by that time, the R.A. itself was known to be working in England, and it cannot be said with certainty whether the Royal Arch had learned from the Scots degrees (which is the way the evidence points) or vice versa. The possibility that English freemasonry was subjected to Jacobite influence in the period following 1717 has often been raised. The broad suggestion is that Jacobites resident in France brought into existence the degrees known in England as ‘Scots masonry’ and in France as Macon Ecossois,’ Maitre Ecossois,’ Maconnerie Ecossois,’ and so on and that the English Jacobites introduced this Scots masonry into England as providing convenient, safe, and secret opportunities for their fellows and adherents. This does not strongly appeal to us, although the probability that Scots masonry was an importation from France may have to be conceded. It is not known that any rituals connected with the Royal Arch have ever contained any certain mark of Jacobite origin.
The Fifth Order
Coming now more particularly to the year 1734, we find a somewhat facetious reference to the “Fifth Order” occurring in a letter on Masonic matters, signed ” Verus Commodus,” and believed to be referring to Dr Desaguliers, third Grand Master. The letter says he “makes a most Illustrious Figure … and he makes wonderful brags of being of the Fifth Order.” This has been thought to allude to the Royal Arch, but no one can be sure that it does.
At the New Year, 1735, Mick Broughton, not himself a freemason and at the time a member of a house party including Dr Desaguliers and other masons staying with the Duke of Montagu at Ditton, Surrey, wrote the second Duke of Richmond a letter in which he states that:
Hollis and Desaguliers have been super‑excellent in their different ways…. On Sunday Night at a Lodge in the Library St John, Albemarle and Russell [were] made chapters: and Bob [Webber] Admitted Apprentice.
To the natural inference that three individuals were made Royal Arch masons the use of the word “super‑excellent” lends particular force. While the letter is obviously written in facetious terms, certain words in it could have had special meaning for the recipient, an active mason, who had been Grand Master ten years earlier, and, by way of comment on the fact that the meeting took place on a Sunday, let it be remembered that this was a favourite day for the holding of Masters’ Lodges and, much later, of Royal Arch lodges and chapters.
Chevalier Ramsay
A statement attributed to Andrew Michael Ramsay, a Scot born in Ayr, who had passed many years in France, where he had acquired the courtesy title of Chevalier, has helped to make history. Ramsay, a Roman Catholic, was a freemason, and is alleged to have made a speech containing certain significant words at a Paris convocation of the Grand Lodge of France on March 21, 1737. There is some doubt as to whether he ever delivered the speech, but none that he wrote it and that it was printed, probably in the same year and certainly in 1739 and later. The following literal translation of the part of the speech that particularly matters to the present reader was prepared, we believe, by Miscellanea Latomorum:
“We have amongst us three classes of confreres, the Novices or Apprentices; the Companions or Professed; the Masters or the Perfected. We explain to the first the moral virtues; to the second the heroic virtues; and to the last the Christian virtues; in such sort that our Institution encloses all the Philosophy of the Sentiments and all the Theology of the heart.“
This union was after the example of the Israelites, when they raised the second Temple. During this time they handled the trowel and the mortar with one hand, whilst they carried in the other the sword and buckler.
Undoubtedly Ramsay’s is the most likely early allusion yet brought to light, but on it has been built rather too much. Dr Oliver, whose unreliability as a Masonic historian has already been commented on, definitely asserts that Ramsay, about 1740, came from Paris to London and brought with him the rituals of some so‑called high grades, among them being the Royal Arch; that his visit was “for the purpose of introducing his new degrees into English masonry; and his schemes being rejected by the Constitutional Grand Lodge, nothing appears more likely than that he would throw himself into the hands of the Schismatics.”
The Masonic student of to‑day rejects Dr Oliver’s statement, as well as his use of the word Schismatics.’ Altogether too little is known about Ramsay to father upon him the introduction of the R.A. into England. W. J. Hughan points out that “so much has been said about Ramsay and his manufacture of Masonic degrees’ that it would be quite refreshing to have proofs of his having actually arranged or permitted one particular ceremony additional to those worked prior to his initiation,” and William Watson has well said that ” Ramsay was not a factor in the origin [of the R.A. Degree] and Oliver’s statements are misleading, unreliable, . . . practically worthless.”
Associated with the name of Ramsay (but probably quite wrongly) is the Rite Ancien de Bouillon, attributed to Godfrey de Bouillon, which had a Royal Arch‑cum‑Templar complexion and may or may not have been worked in London about 1740, but was possibly known in France at a much later date. It is said to have had six grades‑Apprentice, Compagnon (Fellowcraft), Master, Scotch Master, Novice, and Chevalier du Temple (Templar). Some little inquiry into it has not proved very rewarding.
While it does seem likely that Ramsay had experience of a degree corresponding to the Royal Arch, the only evidence of any kind supporting the likelihood of his having introduced a degree is the fact that he wrote his oration, possibly delivered it, and that the oration itself contains a phrase that appears in almost the same form in to‑day’s ritual.
John Coustos and his Sworn Evidence
We have said that Chevalier Ramsay was both freemason and Roman Catholic. In his day many Continental and other masons were Catholics. Pope Clement’s first Bull against freemasonry was issued in 1738, and needed to be backed up by later Bulls, as there was a disinclination on the part of many Catholics to observe the Pope’s prohibition. The hostility of the Governments in Catholic countries to freemasonry, even in modern times, is well known. In 1954, for instance, a Spanish tribunal imposed prison sentences on five men accused of practising freemasonry. (By the way, Spain was the first Continental country to have a Masonic lodge constituted in it by or on behalf of the Grand Lodge of England‑that of the Duke of Wharton, which he founded in his own apartments in Madrid in 1728 and which, as originally constituted, had a life of forty years.) Portugal, a neighbouring country, had its Masonic lodges. Just before 1738 there were two lodges, both in Lisbon, one of them Catholic, the other Protestant. A Dominican, Charles O’Kelly, Professor of Theology at the (Roman Catholic) College of Corpo‑Santo, was called upon in 1738 to reveal to the Inquisition what he knew of the Catholic lodge of which he was a member, and he made the strong point that all membersthey included three Dominican monks‑were excellent Catholics.
Later, in October 1742, John Coustos, a Protestant member and Master of a mainly Catholic Lisbon Lodge, was denounced by an informer of the Inquisition as being the chief of the “sect” called “Free Masons” that had four years before been condemned by the Pope. Coustos had learned his masonry in London. He was a Swiss by birth but naturalized an Englishman, by trade a master diamond‑cutter, by religion a Protestant, and at the time residing in Lisbon; he had been initiated apparently in a London lodge before 1732.
In the hands of the Inquisition, Coustos gave evidence under solemn oath on a number of occasions, and on April 25, 1744, was tortured on the rack in Lisbon for more “than a quarter of an hour,” being afterwards sentenced to serve four years in the galleys. On the intervention of the British Minister at Lisbon he was liberated in October 1744, and reached England on December 15 of the same year. Hitherto we have had, in a book which he wrote and published in England in 1746, a not quite reliable account of his tribulations (he can be forgiven much, poor fellow!), but, fortunately for Masonic history, the original documents from the Archives of the Inquisition have been discovered, have been translated by a member of the Lisbon Branch of the Historical Association and reproduced by John R. Dashwood in A.Q.C. (vol. lxvi, pp. 107‑123). These documents show that Coustos made a “confession” on two days of March 1743, and in this he gave a fascinating account of the Craft masonry known to him, a tiny portion of this account being here reproduced1:
. . . when the destruction took place of the famous Temple of Solomon there was found below the First Stone a tablet of bronze upon which was engraved [a familiar Biblical word meaning] God,’ giving thereby to understand that that Fabric and Temple was instituted and erected in the name of the said God to whom it was dedicated, that same Lord the beginning and the end of such a magnificent work, and as in the Gospel of St John there are found the same words and doctrine they, for this reason, cause the Oath to be taken at that place.
John Coustos declared this and many other things under oath on March 26, 1743, and it will be particularly noted that the legend or ritual revealed by him, including St John’s reference to the Lord,’ must have been that of one or two lodges under the premier Grand Lodge during the 1730s. As the authenticity of the quoted passage does not admit of any doubt, it is beyond question that in the 1730s a Craft ritual ‑ that is, the ritual of one or more London lodges, not necessarily of all, by any means ‑ contained elements which now are unknown to the Craft, but which, in an elaborated form, are present in today’s R.A. ritual.
The Coustos documents (which, we must insist, to be read are to be believed) afford evidence that some of the bare elements of the R.A. legend were probably known to a few English lodges at an early date, within their three degrees, and this is a fact that must necessarily affect hitherto accepted views on the early history of the R.A.
It should be noted that Coustos considered himself competent to conduct the Lisbon lodge as Master, and he may well have been the actual Master of a London lodge before he left England. By the year 1732 he was a member of Lodge No. 75, at the Rainbow Coffee House, York Buildings, London (now the Britannic Lodge, No. 33), and a founder, in the year mentioned, of Lodge No. 98, at Prince Eugene’s Coffee House, St Alban’s Street, London (constituted 1732 and known as the Union French Lodge in 1739; ceased to exist, 1753).
The Coustos reference to something hidden below a stone has an echo in an Irish folk‑song, An Seann‑Bhean (“The Poor Old Woman”), which includes these two lines:
“Or is it true that the promises were written which Moses gave to the Jews, And which King David placed timidly under the stone?“
In another version “King David” is replaced by An Da Ri (“The Two Kings”). J. Heron Lepper suggests that we have here a piece of folklore – a use of the motif of the buried book. There must be many such or similar references in the world’s literature. One further example is contained in a third‑century papyrus, The Sayings of Jesus, a non‑canonical Gospel found on the site of an ancient Egyptian city, Oxyrhynchus:
Lift up the stone and there shalt thou find me;
cleve the wood and I am there.
Minutes and Printed References of the 1760s
The first printed reference to the term 然oyal Arch’ is forthcoming in the year 1743. It is in a newspaper, Faulkner’s Dublin Journal, for January 10 ‑14, 1743 ‑ 44, and occurs in an account of a Masonic procession at Youghall, County Cork, Ireland, on St John’s Day in Winter (December 27), when the Master of Lodge No. 21 was preceded by “The Royall Arch carried by two Excellent Masons.” We wish we could be certain that this “Arch” was not a mere piece of added ornament‑arches are not uncommon in public processions ‑ but certainly the inclusion of the term “Excellent Masons” does incline us to the inference that the procession was indeed one of R.A. Masons.
On the heels of the first printed mention comes a second and most important reference to the R.A. as a degree. In 1744 was published a book by Fifield Dassigny (D’Assigny), M.D., Dublin, entitled A Serious and Impartial Enquiry into the Cause of the present Decay of Free‑Masonry in the Kingdom of Ireland. Until 1867 this book was known only through a quotation in Ahiman Rezon, but in that year one of the few surviving copies was discovered by the well‑known Masonic student W. J. Hughan, who caused it to be reprinted in facsimile in 1893; there are copies also in the G.L. and W. Yorks. Masonic Libraries. Dassigny says in a roundabout way that, a few years earlier, a Brother of probity and wisdom had been made a R.A. mason in London. Here is part of the paragraph including the significant words:
. . . a certain propagator of a false system some few years ago in this city [Dublin] who imposed upon several very worthy men under a pretence of being Master of the Royal Arch, which he asserted he had brought with him from the city of York; and that the beauties of the Craft did principally consist in the knowledge of this valuable piece of Masonry. However he carried on his scheme for several months and many of the learned and wise were his followers, till at length his fallacious art was discovered by a Brother of probity and wisdom, who had some small space before attained that excellent part of Masonry in London and plainly proved that his doctrine was false.
The above can be very simply put by saying that somewhere about 1740, some one in Dublin, pretending to be Master of the Royal Arch, was proved to be an impostor by a Brother who had been made a member of the degree in London. Dr Dassigny’s book refers to R.A. masons assembling at York in 1744 as “he was informed”; says that some of the fraternity did not like “such a secret ceremony being kept from those who had taken the usual degrees”; refers to members who had “passed the chair” and were “excellent masons”; and states that the R.A. was “an organised body of men who have passed the Chair and given undeniable proofs of their skill.” Some students have sought to cast reflections upon Dassigny’s reputation, and have suggested that his words should be handled with caution and reserve, but nothing is known against him. Dermott, the greatest figure in the 羨ntients’ Grand Lodge, refers to him as “our Worshipful Brother, Dr Fifield D’Assigny”; among the four hundred subscribers to his book were many important people; and there seems no reason to doubt that he was speaking the truth and knew what he was talking about. He evidently was sure that the Royal Arch Degree existed. Indeed, J. Heron Lepper, who, in coming to a conclusion on the antiquity of the R.A., based himself very largely upon Dassigny’s statements, held that Dassigny had had experience of it at first hand. Certainly there is a general consensus of opinion that his statement is sound evidence of an early R.A. Degree in working order, even at a date a few years earlier than 1744.
The 1740s afford reasonable evidence that an R.A. ceremony was worked in Stirling, Scotland. There are two dates, 1743 and 1745, and it is claimed that in the earlier year the minute here given shows that two men were admitted R.A. masons:
STIRLING, July 30th, 1743.
Which day the Lodge of Stirling Kilwinning being met in the Brother Hutchison’s house, and being petitioned by Mungo Nicol, shoemaker and brother James McEwan, Student of Divinity at Stirling, and being found qualified, they were admitted Royal Arch Masons of this Lodge, have paid their dues to the Treasurer, John Callendar, R.W.M.
In 1745 occurs another minute (given below), which unfortunately is almost a repetition of the earlier one. A sworn declaration that the R.A. had been worked in Stirling in 1743, based upon the original record then existing, was deposited in 1818 with the Grand Scribe E. of the Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Scotland in Edinburgh, but the first minute‑book of Stirling Rock R.A. Chapter, No. a, is not available. The minutes of Lodge Ancient, No. 30, state that no such minute as that above attested is to be found in the minute‑book for 1743 and that John Callendar, signing as Right Worshipful Master, was not Master of the Lodge until 1745; so it may be that 1743 is an error for 1745 or, alternatively, that John Callendar, although not Master of the Lodge, may have presided in a Royal Arch lodge attached to the Craft lodge in the earlier year.
The minute of 1745 is as follows:
STERLING JuIY 30, 1745.
The Which day the Lodge of Sterling Kilwinning having meet in Brother Hickson’s hous And being Petitioned by Mr. Mungo Nicholl Shoe Maker & Mr. James McEuen Student of Devenitie at Sterling & they being found qualified were accordingly Admitted as prenticess & payed the accustomed dues accordingly to the trer: – Jo. Callendar M.
Obviously, if the minute of 1743 is beyond question, it could be truthfully affirmed that the R.A. was being worked at Stirling in 1743, but W. J. Hughan did not think that Stirling’s claim was either substantiated or confirmed, and other students have expressed themselves in similar manner; on the other hand, George S. Draffen, formerly Grand Librarian of the G.L. of Scotland, says that, having examined the old records of six of the twelve senior chapters on the Scottish Roll (Nos. 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 12 in the Province of Angus and Mearns), he has found the dates to conform exactly to those assigned by the Seniority Committee of the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Scotland, and he is therefore of the opinion that the date of 1743 assigned to Stirling was supported by written evidence in 1817.
Progress in the 1750s and 1760s
The remaining pages of this section will indicate some of the progress made in the 1750s and the 1760s up to a point in the second of those decades marking the foundation of the first Grand Chapter in the world, that erected by Lord Blayney, Grand Master of the Moderns,’ by means of his celebrated Charter of Compact.
The earliest date on which we have definite and undisputed knowledge of the Royal Arch in England is March 4, 1752. The earliest existing minutes (other than in Scotland) recording what was then known as the raising of a Brother to the Royal Arch are of the period between 1752 and 1758. In Ireland the first exaltee was in 1752; in America (not yet the U.S.A.) in 1753; in Scotland in 1756 (but if the Stirling record is accepted, then in 1743 or 1745); in England in 1758; and in London in 1767. These four countries will be taken in the order above given.
Ireland. Lodge No. 123 was warranted in 1741 at Coleraine, County Derry, by the Grand Lodge of Ireland, and must very soon have been working the R.A. A list or register of members contained in a minute book covering the years 1763‑83 shows that of twenty Brethren initiated between May 1741 and December 1759 sixteen were made R.A. masons, but there is no confirmation of this in the minutes themselves. John Holmes, included in the list, was exalted two weeks after his Initiation in May 1746, and reached the chair eight years later. Another, the Rev. Wm Bristow, was initiated in 1757, became Master of the Lodge in 1759, and was exalted immediately following his leaving the chair six months later. It is not known whether the other exaltees were actual Past Masters of this or any other lodge, but the inference in many of the cases is that they were not. Dated April 16, 1752, is the following Coleraine minute of historic importance, one that antedates by twenty months a minute of a lodge at Fredericksburg, Virginia (which, however, is still the oldest undisputed written record of the actual making of R.A. masons).
At this lodge, Brot Tho Blair propos’d Samson Moore a Master & Royal Arch Mason to be admitted a Member of our Lodge.
Only one other minute of the Coleraine Lodge mentions the R.A.:
1760. Jany. 14th ‑ Br Armstrong requests the favour of the Lodge to admitt him a Royal Arch Mason.
At Youghall, County Cork, there had been founded in 1734 a lodge which made no mention in its minutes until 1759 of the Royal Arch, and, curiously, for half a century after that year did not again allude to it. In that year, on July 30, 1759, occurs a minute of which the following is part:
Then proceeded to the passing of Spencer Scannaden and Samuell Gardner to the dignity of Royal Arch Masons, they being proper Officers of the Lodge, That is, Bro. Scannaden Senr Warden and Samuel Gardner Junr Deacon.
It is extremely likely that the Craft freemasonry practised in the Youghall lodge stemmed directly from the English system, the sea connexion between Bristol and many Irish ports being much closer early in the eighteenth century than the road connexion between Bristol and many inland English towns. The Royal Arch has a long and important history in Ireland, as will be seen in a later section.
America. What is still thought to be the earliest minute definitely recording a Royal Arch Exaltation is of “Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons” in Fredericksburg, Virginia, of the year 1753 (year of Masonry 5753), and to the eye of the present‑day mason must appear to be of a singular character:
December 22nd 1753 Which Night the Lodge being Assembled was present
Right Worshipful Simon Frazier G.M., of Royall
Do.John Neilson S. Wardn Arch
Robert Armistead Jur Wardn Lodge.
Transactions of the night
Daniel Campell Raised to the
Robert Halkerston Degree of Royall
Alexr Wodrow Arch Mason.
Royal Arch Lodge being Shutt, Entered Apprentices Lodge opened.
It is believed that Simon Frazier, given in the minute as “Grand Master,” was a visitor, and that he became a member in the following month. The Wardens assisting him and named in the minute were the Senior Warden and the Temporary Treasurer respectively of the lodge. It is to be noted that Daniel Campbell, the first of the exaltees, was actually the Master of the Craft Lodge; the second candidate, Dr Robert Halkerston, was the actual junior Warden; and the third was the Secretary. The Craft Lodge itself was not at that date, 1753, warranted by any recognized Grand Lodge, but it received a charter from the Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1758. (A statement once made that it was an Irish lodge is not substantiated.) The Lodge charter is, we believe, still preserved, and the Lodge was reported at the end of the nineteenth century as being “happily vigorous and active”; its place in history is well assured, for in it on November 4, 1753, was initiated George Washington, later to become the first President of the United States of America.
Scotland. Scotland deservedly claims a long history of the R.A., beginning with the Stirling records already dealt with. So far back as 1755 a lodge bearing the name of Royall Arch was chartered at Glasgow, apparently bearing the number 77, and was erased in 1816. Other Royal Arch lodges were at Edinburgh in 1765 and at Stirling in 1759.
One of the most important of the early Scottish dates concerns a minute of the Thistle Lodge, Dumfries (now No. 61), founded in 1754
4 March, 1757
The Briting Bieng met & opening the Lodg in deu.order Johen Patten was
past from aprent To the Care of Adoniram and John McKewn James
Marten was med Exlant & Super Exlant and Roiel Arch Men as witness.
[Three signatures]
This is the first undisputed Scottish minute recording raisings to the Royal Arch Degree. In a record of “the Royal Arch Masons and their Passing to that” at the end of the minute‑book the first name is dated November 7, 1756.
Lodge Kirkwall Kilwinning, No. 382, founded in 1736 by masons from the Lodge of Stirling and the Lodge of Dunfermline, is believed to have been working the Royal Arch in the 1754‑60 period. A minute of 1759 mentions “Royall Arch King Solomon’s Lodge, Number a, New York.” The Kirkwall Lodge owns a famous scroll, crudely depicting the emblems of various degrees, the Royal Arch prominently among them.
A lodge at Banff has early minutes relating to the Royal Arch Degree. Hughan says that on January 7, 1765, it was agreed that “any member who wants to attain to the parts of Royal Arch and Super Excellent shall pay two shillings and sixpence to the Publick Fund for each part.” On January 7, 1766, Brother William Murray, who joined the lodge, is styled “Master and Royal Arch.” On January 1, 1778, seven Brethren paid two shillings and sixpence each “for that branch of Royal Arch,” and three of these were charged additional half‑crowns each “for that Branch of Super Excellent.”
England. Of the English definite records the oldest, either Antients’ or Moderns,’ are not earlier than the 1750s. At a meeting of the Grand Committee of the Antients’ on March 4, 1752, some Brethren made formal complaints that two individuals, Phealon and Mackey, “had initiated many persons for the mean consideration of a leg of mutton,” and had pretended “to have made Royal‑Archmen.” (This subject will be returned to in the next section.) The complaints were received at a meeting at which Laurence Dermott acted for the first time as Secretary. Later in the Antients’ minutes of this same year occurs another reference:
September 2nd, the Lodge was Opened in Antient form of Grand Lodge and every part of Real Freemasonry was traced and explained; except the Royal Arch.
These matters are more particularly dealt with in a later section.
We have Thomas Dunckerley’s own assertion that he was exalted in a Portsmouth lodge in 1754 (probably in his mother lodge). The Antients’ were, of course, at this time very busy with the Royal Arch, and we find in 1757 a minute of their Grand Lodge summoning “The Masters of the Royal Arch” to meet “in order to regulate things relative to that most valuable branch of the Craft.”
The first‑known English minute recording the raising of a Brother to the R.A. is, perhaps unexpectedly, of a Moderns‘ lodge at Bristol, in 1758, but it would be wrong to rush to the conclusion from this isolated evidence that the Moderns’ worked the Royal Arch earlier than the Antients.’ The Lodge, No. 220, was short‑lived. It was constituted in February 1757, at Lord Blakeney’s Head, Temple Street, Bristol, but by the time its minute‑book was begun had already moved to the Crown in Christmas Street. Although a Moderns’ lodge, it yet worked an Antient’ ritual, being of that class of lodges which J. Heron Lepper, in a noteworthy paper published in A.Q.C., vol. lvi, described as Traditioner lodges‑that is, lodges owning allegiance to the Premier Grand Lodge, but in their ceremonial following closely the Ancients’ working. A Lodge of Emergency was held on Sunday, August 13, 1758, by desire of Brother William Gordon, who, at a regular meeting held some days earlier, had been proposed “to be raised to the degree of a Royal Arch and accepted “; at this Sunday evening meeting he and another were ‘Raised’ to the R.A. Degree. By May G of the next year seven R.A. meetings had been held and thirteen Brethren so ‘Raised,’ all of whom were taking the step quite shortly after becoming Master Masons.
Of the many R.A. records in the 1760s the earliest, so far as is known, relating to an actual ‘raising’ of a Brother to the R.A. is particularly historic. On Sunday, February 7, 1762, a Royal Arch lodge was opened at the Punch Bowl Inn, in Stonegate in York, by members of the Punch Bowl Lodge, No. zsq, founded in the preceding year (and expiring in its seventh). Four members, all of them actors and members of the York Company of Comedians, opened the Royal Arch lodge, so providing an early instance of a separate organization especially formed for the working of the Royal Arch ceremonial. Under the ‘Ancients,’ and legally so, that ceremonial was worked in their Craft lodges, while under the ‘Moderns’ at that time the Royal Arch Degree was irregular and, if worked, quite unofficial. But this was not a ‘Moderns’ lodge I It was held under the authority of the Grand Lodge of ALL England, a Grand Lodge erected by an old City of York lodge in 1725 and holding sway actually in parts of Yorkshire, Cheshire, and Lancashire. The separate organization had a minute‑book entitled Minute Book Belonging to the Most Sublime Degree or Order of Royal Arch appertaining to the Grand Lodge of ALL England, held at the City of York, 1762. (This lodge or chapter became in the course of time a Grand Chapter.) The first minute recorded relates to the meeting of Sunday, February 7, 1762, already mentioned, and states that ” Brothers Burton, Palmes, Tasker and Dodgson petition’d to be raised to the Fourth Degree of Masonry, commonly call’d the Most Sublime or Royal Arch, were accepted and accordingly made.”