THE rise and development of the Royal Arch, and indeed its ultimate position in the whole Masonic Order, were immeasurably affected by the bitter quarrel between the premier Grand Lodge, founded in 1717, and another Grand Lodge the Antients’ ‑ thought to have been in course of formation from c. 1739, and taking its place in 1751‑53 as a Grand Lodge with all powers to warrant private lodges. Only as much of the story need be given here as will explain the circumstances in which the Antients’ came into being and the attitudes of the two opposed bodies to the Royal Arch. Actually, during the years of the formation of the Antients’ Grand Lodge the Royal Arch had been quietly progressing towards general adoption. The quarrel lasted for sixty years or so, and the present position of the English Royal Arch relative to the Craft is a reflection of that quarrel.
The Masonic historian Gould looked upon the formation of the ‘Antients’ Grand Lodge as a schism, the work of seceders from the original plan of freemasonry, but his great work was written in the 1880s, before research had revealed that, while there must have been many discontented masons who left the Moderns’ lodges to throw in their lot with the opponent, it was not seceders who built the rival body, but, chiefly, Irish and Scottish masons residing in England, who naturally welcomed the help of any of the English malcontents.
The premier Grand Lodge had contributed to or even brought about many of its own troubles by its lack of zeal and discretion and its ignorance of the art of government, faults accelerated by its assumption of superiority to its sister Grand Lodges of Ireland and Scotland. It signally failed to meet the challenge offered by the appearance of certain irregular prints, particularly, as already stated, that of Samuel Prichard, whose Masonry Dissected, published in 1730, was reprinted scores of times in English-speaking countries. It is not unfair to say that the publication of this and similar works caused the 閃oderns’ Grand Lodge such great concern and nervousness that, afraid to give itself time properly to consider the matter, it rushed into a great mistake from which it long suffered, for somewhen in the 1730 period (the exact date is in doubt) it instructed the private lodges, as we have already said, to transpose the forms of recognition in the First and Second Degrees, with the intention of placing a shibboleth in the way of any clandestine mason attempting to enter its lodges. (In at least one Continental system that stemmed from English masonry about that time the means of recognition remain still transposed, although in England the matter was remedied immediately before the Union, 1813.) The transposition was regarded with horror by a great many masons, who charged the Grand Lodge with having grievously and wholly improperly interfered with a landmark.
This alteration came to be by no means the only difference between the working of the Moderns’ lodges and that of the independent lodges and still later, lodges of the Antients’ persuasion. With the passage of time the Moderns’ Premier Grand Lodge was charged, not in all instances fairly, with omitting prayers; de‑Christianizing the ritual; ignoring saints’ days; failing to prepare Candidates in the traditional manner; abbreviating or abandoning the lectures (catechisms); abandoning the Ancient Charges; causing the ceremonies, particularly Initiation, to be more austere; allowing the esoteric Installation of the Master to fall into disuse; arranging their lodges in a different manner; etc., etc. Undoubtedly the greatest of these ‘etceteras’ was the refusal to recognize and acknowledge officially the antiquity of the Royal Arch, a ceremonial regarded by the Antients’ as having come down to them from time immemorial. A few of these accusations may have been well founded, but many were not, and even those that were true did not apply to all Moderns’ lodges and at all times between, say, 1740 and 1813. We know, of course, that Dr Anderson’s Constitutions of 1723 did in effect de‑Christianize the ritual; there is no doubt that the Moderns’ had not, in all cases, retained the affection for saints’ days; it is likely that they tended to shorten the catechisms and to omit recitals of the Ancient Charges; but whether, for instance, they ‘omitted’ the use of the sword in the Initiation ceremony or ‘abandoned’ the esoteric Installation of the Master‑these are open to serious question. Indeed, the accusations are almost certainly false. It was not the Moderns’ who ignored a time‑immemorial practice and discontinued the use of the sword; it must have been the unattached lodges, and following them the Antients,’ who, in adopting the use of the sword, simply borrowed an idea from the French. It is thought to be impossible that the Moderns’ or anybody else, at the founding of the first Grand Lodge, knew of an esoteric Installation of the Master; consequently the accusation that they had ‘abandoned’ it had no foundation. It must have been the unattached lodges and, in due course, the Antients’ who adopted that ceremony, confident, we can well admit, that it was a part of the original Masonic tradition.
But, however, the differences came, there they were and there they stayed, to distinguish so many of the Moderns’ lodges from so many of the Antients.’ Both sides made great capital out of them, and we find the second edition of Laurence Dermott’s Ahiman Rezon (the Antients’ Constitutions) attacking the Moderns’ ritual and underlining the changes which the ‘innovators’ were accused of having made. But as we reflect upon the matter we ask who were the innovators? More and more we realize that, although innovators the Moderns’ undoubtedly were in one serious and unfortunate respect, in nearly all others it was the Antients’ who permitted and encouraged the positive variations that in the second half of the eighteenth century distinguished the two bodies.
It should be remembered that there was not in the eighteenth century anything that could be regarded as a cast‑iron ritual, even remotely so. All through that century the rituals were being made, borrowed from, and added to; were being developed in different localities and in different ways; and the many variations were, in due time, to give a real headache to the bodies charged with the preparation of agreed rituals following on the Union of the Craft and later that of the Royal Arch. So when we try to estimate the differences between the rituals of the Antients’ and the Moderns’ we shall do well to remind ourselves that there was no one ritual precisely followed by everybody; there was no brand‑new ritual adopted in the 1730 period by the Moderns’ and imposed by them on their lodges. There was one continuous process of development and modification under both of the two Grand Lodges through much of the century, although possibly not always perceptible to those immediately concerned in it.
Douglas Knoop, a trained historian, believed that the Craft lodges had no formal openings or closings in the 1730 period; that later there was, in many lodges, no opening in the Second and Third Degrees and no closing in any degree; and that ceremonial methods of opening and closing grew up gradually among both Antients’ and Moderns,’ and obviously could not be identical in all lodges in all places. This must apply also to many of the features that distinguished the two bodies, the differences being more marked in some places than in others. A process of assimilation between the two bodies was always at work, and it is to be expected that this chiefly took the form of tempering the early austerity of the Moderns’ ceremonies. It is believed that towards the end of the century the differences in some localities between the two systems were only slight. Evidence in the matter is conflicting, but we have the instance of Robert Millikin, of Cork, who visited a Moderns’ lodge in Bristol about 1793 and, beyond a few phrases in opening the lodge, discovered no difference from his own Antient’ ritual. However, between the extreme lodges of each body there must still have been some considerable differences, which must have caused the Lodge of Reconciliation plenty of trouble following the Union.
By the end of the century the assimilation that had been fostered in lodges of the Traditioner type (see p. 50) had made a considerable effect in some localities, and it is now certain that for years prior to 1813 many devoted masons on both sides were quietly working to bring about union. In the minds of such men the Royal Arch must have occupied a big place. A spirit of toleration and understanding had been steadily growing up between the two bodies, but there were still many masons of the type of the Deputy Grand Secretary of Ireland, who, in a letter written in 1790 to an Irish lodge, said that “A Modern Mason cannot or ought not to be admitted into a lodge of Antient Masons without passing the courses over again as if the same had never been performed ‑ their mode and ours being so different.” “Without passing the courses over again”! One of the customs commonly practised during the quarrel was that of ‘remaking,’ said to have been originated by the Moderns,’ who insisted that certain Irish masons should be ‘remade’ before they could be admitted to their lodges as Brethren. Both sides practised it over a long period, so causing many anomalies and ridiculous instances, as related in the author’s earlier volume.
The Union‑not immediately it came, but in the course of a few years ‑brought to an end the quarrel between the two sections of the Craft and had an immediate and marked effect upon the fortunes of the Royal Arch.
The Antients’ Grand Lodge
The Antients’ Grand Lodge was functioning as such from about 1751, although officially it still called itself in February 1752 “The Grand Committee of the Most Antient and Honourable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons,” and the term “Grand Lodge” appears in its minutes for the first time in 1753. By the time of the Craft Union (1813) its name had become “The Most Antient and Honourable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons according to the Old Institutions.” Care must be taken not to confuse this with a much later Grand Lodge, centred in Wigan, “of Free and Accepted Masons of ALL England according to the Old Institutions,” formed in 1823 by four lodges that had been erased by the United Grand Lodge. The first Antients’ Grand Master was Robert Turner; the second the Hon. Edward Vaughan; and the third, from 1756 to 1759, the first Earl of Blesington, writing to whom in December 1756, to thank him for consenting to become Grand Master, Laurence Dermott spoke of “the great honour your Lordship has done the Fraternity in condescending to fill SOLOMON’S CHAIR”! Two Grand Masters of Ireland and three of Scotland were among the ‘Antients’ Grand Masters. The third Duke of Atholl served from 1771 to 1774, and on his death was succeeded by his son; altogether the Atholls served as Grand Masters for over thirty years, both of them being at some time Grand Master of Scotland, so it is easily understandable why the Antients’ Grand Lodge in its last forty years was generally known as the Atholl Grand Lodge.
On the retirement of the Antients’ first Grand Secretary in 1752 there was elected in his place Laurence Dermott, age thirty‑two, “a man of remarkable quality and tremendous energy,” to whose “forces of character and administrative ability” must be attributed much of the’ Antients’ success. He became the greatest personality in the Antients’ Grand Lodge and one whose importance in the history of the English Royal Arch can never be questioned. He was born in Ireland in 1720, initiated in 1740 in Lodge No. 26, Dublin, of which he became Master and Secretary, and came to England about 1747 ‑ 48. It is highly probable that at some time prior to this he had been a member of a Moderns’ lodge, and he is thought to have become a Royal Arch mason in his Irish lodge in 1746. By trade he was a journeyman painter, and never grew ashamed of his “mecanic” origin, but he was to reply in a few words of Latin, a few years later, to the Grand Master, who had nominated the text for a sermon to be preached at St Clement’s Church, London! He received a whole succession of compliments and honours during his Masonic career, but with the ever‑increasing dignity of office he never lost his head, and his bookplate names him “Lau. Dermott, G.S., Painter, London,” although by now he was using the heraldic arms of the MacDermotts, chiefs of Moylurg, County Roscommon. In 1772 in his Grand Lodge minutes he becomes “Lau. Dermott, Esq.,” but in that same year, in an official letter addressed to him from the Deputy Grand Secretary, Ireland, he is called “Lau. Dermott, Wine Merchant, London.”
In 1756 Dermott issued the first edition of the Antients’ Constitutions, largely based upon Anderson’s Constitutions Of 1723, and gave them the extraordinary title of Ahiman Rezon, which he may have built up from two words in the Geneva or “Breeches” Bible of 1560, which gives “Ahiman” as “a prepared Brother, one of the sons of Anak,” and “Rezon” as a “secretary” or “Prince.” It has been suggested that the name means “Brother Secretary,” “The Brother’s Secret Monitor,” etc., but nobody really knows the meaning or whether the two Hebrew words in conjunction have any. Many editions of Ahiman Rezon were published in England, Ireland, and America. The English edition of 1764 includes “a prayer repeated in the Royal Arch Lodge at Jerusalem,” and states the compiler’s belief that the Royal Arch was “the root, heart and marrow of Masonry.”
Dermott was an invalid for many years, and there are references to the subject in the Antients’ Grand Lodge minutes: in an entry of June 6, 1770, occurs the statement that he “was so ill with the gout that he was oblidg’d to be carried out of his bed (when incapable to wear shoes, stockings or even Britches) to do his duty at the Steward’s Lodge,” and rather more than seven years later, when he was resigning as Deputy Grand Master, he pleaded “his age, infirmities and twenty six years service,” although actually he was to give many more years of service to the work that he loved. It was resolved on that occasion that a gold medal be struck and presented to Dermott, who had resigned as Secretary in 1771 and been appointed Deputy Grand Master. It was Dermott who was principally responsible for dubbing his opponents the Moderns,’ although, from to‑day’s point of view, which side was the Moderns’ and which the Antients’ quite eludes the present writer, whose mood is echoed in John Byrom’s Jacobite verse (late eighteenth century)
God bless the King, I mean the faith’s defender;
God bless ‑ no harm in blessing ‑ the pretender;
Who that pretender is, and who is King,
God bless us all,‑ that’s quite another thing!
The Royal Arch mason will be especially interested in the frontispiece to Dermott’s second edition (1764) of Ahiman Rqon reproduced in this volume as Plate III. In this are depicted two sets of armorial bearings, in one of which, described as “The Arms of ye most Antient & Honourable Fraternity, of Free and Accepted Masons,” we find the Lion, Ox, Man, and Eagle, with the Ark as crest, and the Cherubim as supporters. The lion represented strength; the ox patience and assiduity; the man intelligence and understanding; and the eagle promptness and celerity – four emblems implying, we may reasonably conclude, that to the Antients’ the Royal Arch was an integral part of the Masonic Order.
The Antients,’ as we have already indicated, had a most profound respect, amounting to warm affection, for the Royal Arch, the “root, heart and marrow” of their masonry. We are clearly led to assume that they were the first to practise it, but this assumption, as we have already said, does not rest on definite evidence. They liked it as individuals, but they liked it, too, officially as an asset in the quarrel between themselves and the Moderns’; it gave them the advantage of offering a fourth degree, and, indeed, their Grand Lodge became known as “the Grand Lodge of Four Degrees,” a fact which was undoubtedly well in the mind of the Moderns’ Grand Master, Lord Blayney, and his advisers when he erected in 1766 the Charter of Compact, constituting the first of all Grand Chapters. That the Royal Arch was often a considerable attraction to the Modern’ mason is an easy inference, and we have such evidence as the instance of a Moderns’ lodge in Bristol transferring its allegiance in 1768 because the Premier Grand Lodge had forbidden it to continue to practise the Royal Arch.
Many authors have boldly stated that the ‘Antients’ designed or adopted the Royal Arch as a mark of hostility to the Moderns’ or as a means of gaining an advantage over its opponents. Quite a mild version of the accusation is the statement that the Royal Arch was “the second part of the old Master’s grade, which Dermott made use of to mark a supposed difference between the Antients’ and the Moderns.”‘ What is the statement worth? Dermott was exalted in Dublin, at a time (say, 1746) when the degree was already in existence and making progress in England.
As an Irish Royal Arch mason he is likely to have been introduced to the narrative of the repair of the Temple, whereas the English narrative was the rebuilding. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that if Dermott had been responsible for the introduction or adoption of the Royal Arch in England the English tradition throughout two hundred years would have been in accordance with the Irish system. All the evidence is against accepting any suggestion that the Antients’ devised the Royal Arch; they found it conveniently to their hand, warmly embraced it, and later recognized it as an asset in waging their quarrel with their opponents.
It is often commonly stated that under the Antients’ Grand Lodge every private lodge was empowered by its charter to confer the Royal Arch Degree. Only in a sense is this true. The Royal Arch was not specified in the lodge charter, but was regarded as such a completely integral part of the Masonic scheme as not to need mention. It was just taken for granted. And to that statement must be added a further one: under their ordinary charters or warrants, the Antients,’ the Irish and many of the Scottish lodges, and some few of the Moderns’ lodges believed they had the right to confer any and every Masonic degree they pleased!
What is claimed to be the oldest Antients’ warrant in existence, quite typical in its references to Installation and St John’s Day, is of the date 1758, and was issued to Kent Lodge, then No. 9 (now No. 15), founded in 1752 at Spitalfields, London. It empowers the founders “to form and hold a Lodge of Free and Accepted (York) Masons… and in such Lodge, admit, Enter, and make according to the Honourable Custom of the Royal Craft … to nominate, Chuse and Instal their Successors, etc., etc., etc., such Instalations to be on every St John’s Day, during the Continuance of the Lodge for ever.” But the laws and regulations of the Antients’ Grand Lodge made good any possible omission from its charters, for in them the Royal Arch was designated the “fourth degree.” Towards the end of the century it was laid down “that Members of Grand Lodge, and all warranted Lodges, so far as they have the ability and numbers, have an undoubted right to exercise all the degrees of the Antient Craft.”
The first official reference to the Royal Arch Degree is in the Antients’ minutes of 1752. The Grand Committee had met at the Griffon Tavern, Holborn, London, on March 4 of that year, with John Gaunt, Master of Lodge No. 5, in the chair and Dermott acting for the first time as Grand Secretary. It is the second meeting recorded in the minute‑book. The one and only minute of the meeting voices a formal complaint brought by five Brethren against Thomas Phealon and John Macky (Mackey) that they had:
“initiated many persons for the mean consideration of a leg of Mutton for dinner or supper, to the disgrace of the Ancient Craft, that it was difficult to discover who assisted them if any, as they seldom met twice in the same Alehouse. That Macky was an Empiric in phisic; and both impostors in Masonry. That upon examining some brothers whom they pretend to have made Royal‑Archmen, the parties had not the least Idea of that secret. That Doctor Macky (for so he was called) pretended to teach a Masonical Art by which any man could (in a moment) render himself Invisible. That the Grand Secrety had examined Macky, at the house of Mr. James Duffy, Tobacconist, in East Smithfield who was not a Mason and that Macky appear’d incapable of making an Apprentice with any degree of proprety. Nor had Macky the least Idea or knowledge of Royal Arch Masonry. But instead he had told the people whom he deceived, a long story about 12 white Marble stones & & and that the Rain Bow was the Royal Arch, with many other absurdities equally foreign and Ridiculous‑The Grand Committee Unanimously Agreed and Ordered that neither Thomas Phealon nor John Mackey be admitted into any Antient Lodge during their natural lives.”
Another of the very early references occurs later in this same year, a Grand Lodge minute of September 2, 1752, stating that, “The Lodge was Opened in Antient Form of Grand Lodge and every piece of Real freemasonry was traced and explained: except the Royal Arch, by the Grand Secretary.”
Seven years later, on March 2, 1759, we get a hint of the coming of regulations; a general meeting of Master Masons having been “convened to compare and regulate things,” it was ordered that “the Masters of the Royal Arch shall also be summoned to meet and regulate things relative to that most valuable branch of the craft.”
Some early evidence of the undoubtedly long and close association of the Antients’ with the Grand Lodge of Ireland is afforded by a Grand Lodge minute of June 2, 1762: “Ordered that a Constant Correspondence shall be kept with the Grand Lodge of Ireland.” The minute further recited that, the Irish Grand Lodge having agreed not to admit any Sojourner from England (as a member, petitioner, etc.) without a certificate of his good behaviour under the seal of the Antient’ Grand Lodge in London, it was now agreed that an Irish Sojourner should likewise produce a proper certificate before he could be admitted as a member or receive any part of the General Charity. This reciprocal arrangement was aimed at ensuring that only Brethren of Antient’ persuasion, whether English or Irish, should be admitted or helped, and it is fully in keeping with the seventh regulation in the edition of Ahiman Rezon published two years later (1764), given in the form of question and answer:
“7th. Whether it is possible to initiate or introduce a Modern Mason into a Royal Arch Lodge (the very essence of Masonry) without making him go through the Antient ceremonies? Answer. No!“
The close correspondence and association between the ‘Antients’ on the one hand and the Irish and Scots Grand Lodges on the other was not free from anomalies (very little in the relationship of the Antients’ with other Masonic bodies was). The Irish and Scots viewed the Antients’ with a friendly eye, but looked askance at the Moderns,’ and at this distance of time, when so much is hidden from us and so much of what we do see is possibly misunderstood, we may blame chiefly the affectation of superiority by the Premier body and its most unfortunate transposition of the signs of recognition, for in their official attitude to matters of ritual the Moderns’ agreed much more closely with the Irish and Scots than the Antients’ did, strange as this may seem.
It might well be asked: If the Antients’ became innovators ‑ at any rate, in the eyes of the ‘Moderns’ ‑ by adopting certain ceremonies which officially were not recognized or practised by the Moderns,’ must it be taken for granted that in matters of ceremonial and the working of degrees the Irish and the Scots followed the example set by the Antients’? Otherwise how could it come about that the Antients,’ the Irish, and the Scots were all three in accord ‑ an agreement that is so very obvious when reading at first hand the minutes of the Antients’ Grand Lodge? How came it that, of the four, the Moderns’ were the ‘one out’? It is true that the Irish and the Scots appear to have approved the Antients’ ceremonials, but ‑ a big but, too ‑ while the Irish worked the Third Degree and gave to certain added degrees what might seem to be their natural home, it was a long time before they would officially countenance the Royal Arch. This is proved by the first officially recorded notice taken by the Irish Grand Lodge of that ceremonial, to be found in a resolution of 1786: “that it is highly improper for a Master Masons’ Lodge … to enter upon their books any Transactions relative to the Royal Arch.” This might have meant merely that it was desirable for two sets of transactions to be kept in two separate books, but it does not read quite so sweetly as that, and in any case it indicated far more sympathy with the Moderns’ than with the Antients’ point of view. (Indeed, the Moderns’ had issued similar instructions eighteen years before, as mentioned in the next section.) Should the reader instance against this assumption that the Royal Arch had been worked in Ireland during much of the eighteenth century, then it must be made clear that such history is largely of unofficial happenings in certain lodges that felt themselves able to disregard the wishes of their Grand Lodge. And this applies with equal force to Scotland, in which country the lodges were slow and far from unanimous in adopting even the Third Degree and, further, were mostly bitterly opposed to the Installation ceremony. (Scots lodges adopted that ceremony as late as 1865, under an instruction from their Grand Lodge.) Not until 1816 did the Scots have a Grand Chapter, not till 1829 the Irish.
Before we can discuss further the attitude of the Antients’ we must take a fairly comprehensive view of the Moderns’ in their relationship to the Royal Arch.