PREHISTORIC MASONRY

CHAPTER XXX

FREEMASONRY AND THE HOUSE OF STUART

THE theory that connects the royal house of the, Stuarts with Freemasonry, as an Institution to be cultivated, not on account of its own intrinsic merit, but that it might serve as a political engine to be wielded for the restoration of an exiled family to a throne which the follies and even the crimes of its members had forfeited, is so repugnant to all that has been supposed to be congruous with the true spirit and character of Freemasonry, that one would hardly believe that such a theory was ever seriously entertained, were it not for many too conclusive proofs of the fact.

The history of the family of Stuart, from the accession of James I. to the throne of England to the death of the last of his descendants, the young Pretender, is a narrative of follies and sometimes of crimes. The reign of James was distinguished only by arts which could gain for him no higher title with posterity than that of a royal pedant. His son and successor Charles I. was beheaded by an indignant people whose constitutional rights and ideals he had sought to betray. His son Charles II., after a long exile was finally restored to the throne, only to pass a life of indolence and licentiousness.

On his death he was succeeded by his brother James II., a prince distinguished only for his bigotry. Zealously attached to the Roman Catholic religion, he sought to restore its power and influence among his subjects, who were for the most part Protestants. To save the Established Church and the religion of the nation, his estranged subjects called to the throne the Protestant Prince of Orange, and James, abdicating the crown, fled to France, where he was hospitably received with his followers by Louis XIV., who could, however, say nothing better of him than that he had given three crowns for a mass. From 1688, the date of his abdication and flight, until the year 1745 the exiled family were engaged in repeated but unavailing attempts to recover the throne.

It is not unreasonable to suppose that in these attempts the partisans of the house of Stuart were not unwilling to accept the influence of the Masonic Institution, as one of the most powerful instruments whereby to effect their purpose.It is true that in this, the Institution would have been diverted from its true design, but the object of the Jacobites, as they were called, or the adherents of King James was not to elevate the character of Freemasonry but only to advance the cause of the Pretender

It must however be understood that this theory which connects the Stuarts with Masonry does not suppose that the third or Master's degree was invented by them or their adherents, but only that there were certain modifications in the application of its Legend. Thus, the Temple was interpreted as alluding to the monarchy, the death of its Builder to the execution of Charles I., or to the destruction of the succession by the compulsory abdication of James II., and the dogma of the resurrection to the restoration of the Stuart family to the throne of England.Thus, one of the earliest instances of this political interpretation of the Master's legend was that made after the expulsion of James II. from the throne and his retirement to France.

The mother of James was Henrietta Maria, queen of Charles 1. The Jacobites called her " the Widow," and the exiled James became "the Widow's son," receiving thus the title applied in the Masonic Legend to Hiram Abif, whose death they said symbolized the loss of the throne and the expulsion of the Stuarts from England?They carried this idea to such an extent as to invent a name, substitute word for the Master's degree, in the place of the old one, which was known to the English Masons at the time of the Revival in 1717.

This new word was not, as the significant words of Masonry usually are, of Hebrew origin, but was derived from the Gaelic. And this seems to have been done in compliment to the Highlanders, most of whom were loyal adherents of the Stuart cause.The word Macbenac is derived from the Gaelic Mac, a son, and benach, blessed, and literally means the " blessed son ; " and this word was applied by the Jacobites to James, who was thus not only a "widow's son" but "blessed" one, too. Masonry was here made subservient to loyalty.They also, to mark their political antipathy to the enemies of the Stuart family, gave to the most prominent leaders of the republican cause, the names in which old Masonry had been appropriated to the assassins of the third degree.

In the Stuart Masonry we find these assassins designated by names, generally unintelligible, but, when they can be explained, evidently referring to some well-known opponent of the Stuart dynasty. Thus, Romvel is manifestly an imperfect anagram of Cromwell, and Jubelum Guibbs doubtless was intended as an infamous embalmment of the name of the Rev. Adam Gib, an antiburgher clergyman, who, when the Pretender was in Edinburgh in 1745, hurled anathemas, for five successive Sundays against him.But it was in the fabrication of the high degrees that the partisans of the Stuarts made the most use of Freemasonry as a political instrument.The invention of these high degrees is to be attributed in the first place to the Chevalier Ramsay.

He was connected in the most intimate relation with the exiled family, having been selected by the titular James III., or, as he was commonly known in England, the Old Pretender, as the tutor of his two sons, Charles Edward and Henry, the former of whom afterward became the Young Pretender, and the latter Cardinal York.Ardently attached, to this relationship, by his nationality as a Scotsman, and by his religion as a Roman Catholic, to the Stuarts and their cause, he met with ready acquiescence the advances of those who had already begun to give a political aspect to the Masonic System, and also were seeking to enlist it in the Pretender's cause.

Ramsay therefore aided in the modification of the old degrees or the fabrication of new ones, so that these views might be incorporated in a peculiar system; and hence in many of the high degrees invented either by Ramsay or by others of the same school, we will find these traces of a political application to the family of Stuart, which were better understood at that time than they are now.

Thus, one of the high degrees -received the name of " Grand Scottish Mason of James VI." Of this degree Tessier says that it is the principal degree of the ancient Master's system, and was revived and esteemed by James VI., King of Scotland and of Great Britain, and that it is still preserved in Scotland more than in any other kingdom. (1)

All of this is of course a mere fiction, but it shows that there has been a sort of official acknowledgment of the interference with Masonry by the Stuarts, who did not hesitate to give the name of the first founder of their house on the English throne to one of the degrees.Another proof is found in the word Jekson, which is a significant word in one of the high Scottish or Ramsay degrees. It is thus spelled in the Calhiers or manuscript French rituals.

There can be no doubt that it is a corruption of Jacquesson, a mongrel word compounded of the French Jacques and the English son, and denotes the son of James, that is, of James II. This son was the Old Pretender, or the Chevalier St. George, who after the death of his father assumed the empty title of James Ill., and whose son, the Young Pretender, was one of the pupils of the Chevalier Ramsay.These, with many other similar instances, are very palpable proofs that the adherents of the Stuarts sought to infuse a political element into the spirit of Masonry, so as to make it a facile instrument for the elevation of the exiled family and the restoration of their head to the throne of England.Of the truth of this fact, it is supposed that much support is to be found in the narrative of the various efforts for restoration made by the Stuarts.
(1) "Manuel Generale de Maconnerie," p. 148

When James II. made his flight from England he repaired to France, where he was hospitably received by Louis XIV. He took up his residence while in Paris at the Jesuitical College of Clermont. There, it is said, he first sought, with the assistance of the Jesuits, to establish a system of Masonry which should be employed by his partisans in their schemes for his restoration to the throne, After an unsuccessful invasion of Ireland he returned to France and repaired to St. Germain-en-Laye, a city about ten miles northwest of Paris, where he lived until the time of his death in 1701. It is one of the Stuart myths that at the Chateau of St. Germain some of the high degrees were fabricated by the adherents of James II., assisted by the Jesuits.The story is told by Robison, a professed enemy of Freemasonry, but who gives with correctness th general form of the Stuart Legend as it was taught in the last century.

Robison says: " The revolution had taken place, and King James, with many of his most zealous adherents, had taken refuge in France. But they took Freemasonry with them to the Continent, where it was immediately received by the French, and cultivated with great zeal in a manner suited to the taste and habits of that highly polished people. The Lodges in France naturally became the rendezvous of the adherents of the exiled king, and the means of carrying on a correspondence with their friends in England." (1)Robison says that at this time the Jesuits took an active part in Freemasonry, and united with the English Lodges, with the view of creating an influence in favor of the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in England.

But the supposed connection of the Jesuits with Freemasonry pertains to an independent proposition. to be hereafter considered.Robison further says that " it was in the Lodge held at St. Germain that the degree of Chevalier Macon Ecossais was added to the three symbolical degrees of English Masonry. The Constitution, as imported, appeared too coarse for the refined taste of the French, and they must make Masonry more like the occupation of a gentleman. Therefore the English degrees of Apprentice, Fellowcraft, and Master were called symbolical, and the whole contrivance was considered either as typical of something more elegant or as a preparation for it.

The degrees afterward superadded to this leave us in doubt which of these views the French entertained of our Masonry. But, at all events, this rank of Scotch Knight was called the first degree of the Macon Parfait. There is a device belonging to this Lodge which deserves notice. A lion wounded by an arrow, and escaped from the stake to which he had been bound, with the broken rope still about his neck, is represented lying at the mouth of a cave, and occupied with mathematical instruments, which are lying near him. A broken crown lies at the foot of the stake. There can be little doubt but that this emblem alludes to the dethronement, the captivity, the escape, and the asylum of James II, and his hopes of re-establishment by the help of the loyal Brethren.
(1) "Proofs of a Conspiracy," p. 27 (2) This emblem is worn as the gorget of the Scotch Knight. It is not very certain, however, when this degree was added, whether immediately after King James's abdication or about the time of the attempt to set his son on the British throne. (1)
This extract from Robison presents a very fair specimen of the way in which Masonic history was universally written in the last century and is still written by a few in the present.Although it cannot be denied that at a subsequent period the primitive degrees were modified and changed ill their application of the death of Hiram Abif to that of Charles I., or the dethronement of James II, and that higher degrees were created with still more definite allusion to the destinies of the family of Stuart, yet it is very evident that no such measures could have been taken during the lifetime of James II.The two periods referred to by Robison, the time of the abdication of James II, which was in 1688, and the attempt of James III, as he was called, to regain the throne, which was in 1715, as being, one or the other, the date of the fabrication of the degree of Scottish Knight or Master, are both irreconcilable with the facts of history.

The symbolical degrees of Fellow Craft and Master had not been invented before 1717, or rather a few years later, and it is absurd to speak of higher degrees cumulated upon lower ones which did not at that time exist.James II. died in 1701. At that day we have no record of any sort of Speculative Masonry except that of the one degree which was common to Masons of all ranks. The titular King James Ill., his son, succeeded to the claims and pretensions of his father, of course, in that year, but made no attempt to enforce them until 1715, at which time he invaded England with a fleet and army supplied by Louis XIV. But in 17I5, Masonry was in the same condition that it had been in 1701.

There was no Master's degree to supply a Legend capable of alteration for a political purpose, and the high degrees were altogether unknown. The Grand Lodge of England, the mother of all Continental as well as English Masonry, was not established, or as Anderson improperly calls it, " revived," until 1717. The Institution was not introduced into France until 1725, and there could, therefore, have been no political Masonry practiced in a country where the pure Masonry of which it must have been a corruption did not exist. Scottish or Stuart Masonry was a superstructure built upon the foundation of the symbolic Masonry of the three degrees. If in 1715 there was, as we know, no such foundation, it follows, of course, that there could have been no superstructure. (1) "Proofs of a Conspiracy," p. 28

The theory, therefore, that Stuart Masonry, or the fabrication of degrees and the change of the primitive rituals to establish a system to be engaged in the support and the advancement of the falling cause of the Stuarts, was commenced during the lifetime of James II., and that the royal chateau of St. Germain-en-Laye was the manufactory in which, between the years 1689 and 1701, these degrees and rituals were fabricated, is a mere fable not only improbable but absolutely impossible in all its details.

Rebold, however, gives another form to the Legend and traces the rise of Stuart Masonry to a much earlier period. In his History of the Three Grand Lodges he says that during the troubles which distracted Great Britain about the middle of the 17th century and after the decapitation of Charles I in 1649, the Masons of England, and especially those of Scotland, labored secretly for the re- establishment of the monarchy which had been overthrown by Cromwell. For the accomplishment of this purpose they invented two higher degrees and gave to Freemasonry an entirely political character.

The dissensions to which the country was a prey had already produced a separation of the Operative and the Accepted Masons-that is to say, of the builders by profession and those honorary members who were not Masons. These latter were men of power and high position, and it was through their influence that Charles II., having been received as a Mason during his exile, was enabled to recover the throne in 1660. This prince gratefully gave to Masonry the title of the " Royal Art," because it was Freemasonry that had principally contributed to the restoration of royalty. (1) Ragon, in his Masonic Orthodoxy, (2) is still more explicit and presents some new details. He says that Ashmole and other Brethren of the Rose Croix, seeing that the Speculative Masons were surpassing in numbers the Operative, had renounced the simple initiation of the latter and established new degrees founded on the Mysteries of Egypt and Greece.

(1) "Histoire de Trois Grandes Loges," p. 32
(2) Ragon, "Orthodoxie Maconnique," p. 29

The Fellow Craft degree was fabricated in 1648, and that of Master a short time afterward. But the decapitation of King Charles I, and the part taken by Ashmole in favor of the Stuarts produced great modifications in this third and last degree, which had become of a Biblical character. The same epoch gave birth to the degrees of Secret Master, Perfect Master, and Irish Master, of which Charles I was the hero, under the name of Hiram. These degrees, he says, were, however, not then openly practiced, although they afterward became the ornament of Ecossaism.But the non-operative or " Accepted " members of the organization secretly gave to the Institution, especially in Scotland, a political tendency. The chiefs or protectors of the Craft in Scotland worked, in the dark, for the re-establishment of the throne.

They made use of the seclusion of the Masonic Lodges as places where they might hold their meetings and concert their plans in safety. As the execution of Charles I. was to be avenged, his partisans fabricated a Templar degree, in which the violent death of James de Molay called for vengeance. Ashmole, who partook of that political sentiment, then modified the degree of Master and the Egyptian doctrine of which it was composed, and made it conform to the two preceding degrees framing a Biblical allegory, incomplete and in- consistent, so that the initials of the sacred words of these three degrees should compose those of the name and title of the Grand Master of the Templars.Northouck, (1) who should have known better, gives countenance to these supercheries of history by asserting that Charles II. was made a Mason during his exile, although he carefully omits to tell us when, where, how, or by whom the initiation was effected; but seeks, with a flippancy that ought to provoke a smile, to prove that Charles II. took a great interest in Masonry and architecture, by citing the preamble to the charter of the Royal Society, an association whose object was solely the cultivation of the philosophical and mathematical sciences, especially astronomy and chemistry, and whose members took no interest in the art of building.
(1) "Constitutions," p. 141

Dr. Oliver, whose unfortunate failing was to accept without careful examination all the statements of preceding writers, howeverabsurd they might be, repeats substantially these apochryphal tales about early Stuart Masonry. He says that, about the close of the 17th century, the followers of James II. who accompanied the unfortunate monarch in his exile carried Freemasonry to France and laid the foundation of that system of innovation which subsequently threw the Order into confusion, by the establishment of a new degree, which they called the Chevalier Naron Ecossais, and worked the details in the Lodge at St. Germain. Hence, he adds, other degrees were invented in the Continental Lodges which became the rendezvous of the partisans of James, and by these means they held communication with their friends in England. (1)But as the high degrees were not fabricated until more than a third of the 18th century had passed, and as James died in 1701, we are struck with the confusion that prevails in this statement as to dates and persons.

It is very painful and embarrassing to the scholar who is really in search of truth to meet with such caricatures of history, in which the boldest and broadest assumptions are offered in the place of facts, the most absurd fables are presented as narratives of actual occurrences, chronology is put at defiance, anachronisms are coolly perpetrated, the events of the 18th century are transferred to the 17th, the third degree is said to have been modified in its ritual during the Commonwealth, when we know that no third degree was in existence until after 1717; and we are told that high degrees were invented at the same time, although history records the fact that the first of them was not fabricated until about the year 1728. Such writers, if they really believed what they had written, must have adopted the axiom of the credulous Tertullian, who said, Credo quia impossible est- " I believe because it is impossible." Better would it be to remember the saying of Polybius, that if we eliminate truth from history nothing will remain but an idea too.

We must, then, reject as altogether untenable the theory that there was any connection between the Stuart family and Freemasonry during the time of James II., for the simple reason that at that period there was no system of Speculative Masonry existing which could have been perverted by the partisans of that family into a political instrument for its advancement. If there was any connection at all, it must be looked for as developed at a subsequent period.
(1) "Historical Landmarks, " II., p. 28

The views of Findel on this subject, as given in his History of Freemasonry, are worthy of attention, because they are divested of that mystical element so conspicuous and so embarrassing in all the statements which have been heretofore cited. His language is as follows:"Ever since the banishment of the Stuarts from England in 1688, secret alliances had been kept up between Rome and Scotland ; for to the former place the Pretender James Stuart had retired in 1719 and his son Charles Edward born there in 1720; and these communications became the more intimate the higher the hopes of the Pretender rose. The Jesuits played a very important part in these conferences.

Regarding the reinstatement of the Stuarts and the extension of the power of the Roman Church as identical, they sought at that time to make the Society of Free- masons subservient to their ends. But to make use of the Fraternity, to restore the exiled family to the throne, could not have been contemplated, as Freemasonry could hardly be said to exist in Scotland then. Perhaps in I 724, when Ramsay was a year in Rome, or in 1728, when the Pretender in Parma kept up an intercourse with the restless Duke of Wharton, a Past Grand Master, this idea was first entertained, and then when it was apparent how difficult it would be to corrupt the loyalty and fealty of Freemasonry in the Grand Lodge of Scotland, founded in 1736, this scheme was set on foot of assembling the faithful adherents of the banished royal family in the High Degrees!

The soil that was best adapted for this innovation was France, where the low ebb to which Masonry had sunk had paved the way for all kinds of new-fangled notions, and where the Lodges were composed of Scotch conspirators and accomplices of the Jesuits. When the path had thus been smoothed by the agency of these secret propagandists, Ramsay, at that time Grand Orator (an office unknown in England), by his speech completed the preliminaries necessary for the introduction of the High Degrees ; their further development was left to the instrumentality of others, whose influence produced a result somewhat different from that originally intended." (1)
(1) "Geschichte der Freimaurerei" - Translation of Lyon, p. 209

After the death of James II. his son, commonly called the Chevalier St. George, does not appear to have actively prosecuted his claims to the throne beyond the attempted invasion of England in 1715. He afterward retired to Rome, where the remainder of his life was passed in the quiet observation of religious duties. Nor is there any satisfactory evidence that the was in any way connected with Freemasonry.In the meantime, his sons, who had been born at Rome, were intrusted to the instructions of the Chevalier Michael Andrew Ramsay, who was appointed their tutor.

Ramsay was a man of learning and genius-a Scotsman, a Jacobite, and a Roman Catholic- but he was also an ardent Freemason.As a Jacobite he was prepared to bend all his powers to accomplish the restoration of the Stuarts to what he believed to be their lawful rights.As a Freemason he saw in that Institution a means, if properly directed, of affecting that purpose. Intimately acquainted with the old Legends of Masonry, he resolved so to modify them as to transfer their Biblical to political allusions. With this design he commenced the fabrication of a series of High Degrees, under whose symbolism he concealed a wholly political object.

These High Degrees had also a Scottish character, which is to be attributed partly to the nationality of Ramsay and partly to a desire to effect a political influence among the Masons of Scotland, in which country the first attempts for the restoration of the Stuarts were to be made. Hence we have to this day in Masonry such terms as "Ecossaim," " Scottish Knights of St. Andrew," " Scottish Master," "Scottish Architect," and the " Scottish Rite," the use of which words is calculated to produce upon readers not thoroughly versed in Masonic history the impression that the High Degrees of Freemasonry originated in Scotland-an impression which it was the object of Ramsay to make.There is another word for which the language of Masonry has been indebted to Ramsay.

This is Heredom, indifferently spelled in the old rituals, Herodem, Heroden and Heredon. Now the etymology of this word is very obscure and various attempts have been made to trace it to some sensible signification.One writer (1) thinks that the word is derived from the Greek (1) London Freemasons' Magazine hieros, - "holy," - and domos, "house," and that it means the holy house, that is the Temple, is ingenious and it has been adopted by some recent authorities.Ragon, (1) however, offers a different etymology. He thinks that it is a corrupted form of the mediaeval Latin haredum, which signifies a heritage, and that it refers to the Chateau of St. Germain, the residence for a long time of the exiled Stuarts and the only heritage which was left to them. If we accept this etymology I should rather be inclined to think that the heritage referred to the throne of Great Britain, which they claimed as their lawful possession, and of which, in the opinion of their partisans, they had been unrighteously despoiled.

This derivation is equally as ingenious and just as plausible as the former one, and if adopted will add another link to the chain of evidence which tends to prove that the high degrees were originally fabricated by Ramsay to advance the cause of the Stuart dynasty.Whatever may be the derivation of the word the rituals leave us in no doubt as to what was its pretended meaning.

In one of these rituals, that of the Grand Architect, we meet with the following questions and answers: Q.Where was your first Lodge held?
A. Between three mountains, inaccessible to the profane, where cock never crew, lion roared, nor woman chattered; in a profound valley.
Q.What are these three mountains named?
A.Mount Moriah, in the bosom of the land of Gabaon, Mount Sinai, and the Mountain of Heredon.
Q.What is this Mountain of Heredon ?
A. A mountain situated between the West and the North of Scotland, at the end of the sun's course, where the first Lodge of Masonry was held; in that terrestrial part which has given name to Scottish Masonry.
Q. What do you mean by a profound valley?
A. I mean the tranquillity of our Lodges.


From this catechism we learn that in inventing the word Heredon to designate a fabulous mountain, situated in some unknown part of Scotland, Ramsay meant to select that kingdom as the birthplace of those Masonic degrees by whose instrumentality he expected to raise a powerful support in the accomplishment of the designs of the Jacobite party. The selection of this country was a tribute to his own national prejudices and to those of his countrymen. (1) "Orthodoxie Maconnique," p. 91


Again: by the "profound valley," which denoted " the tranquillity of the Lodges," Ramsay meant to inculcate the doctrine that in the seclusion of these Masonic reunions, where none were to be permitted to enter except "the well-tried, true, and trusty," the plans of the conspirators to overthrow the Hanoverian usurpation and to effect the restoration of the Stuarts could be best conducted. Fortunately for the purity of the non-political character of the Masonic Institution, this doctrine was not generally accepted by the Masons of Scotland.But there is something else concerning this word Heredon, in its connection with Stuart Freemasonry, that is worth attention.There is an Order of Freemasonry, at this day existing, almost exclusively in Scotland. It is caged the Royal Order of Scotland, and consists of two degrees, entitled " Heredon of Kilwinning," and " Rosy Cross."

The first is said, in the traditions of the Order, to have originated in the reign of David I., in the 12th century, and the second to have been instituted by Robert Bruce, who revived the former and incorporated the two into one Order, of which the King of Scotland was forever to be the head. This tradition is, however, attacked by Bro. Lyon, in his History of the Lodge of Edinburgh. He denies that the Lodge at Kilwinning ever at any period practiced or acknowledged any other than the Craft degrees, or that there exists any tradition, local or national, worthy of the name, or any authentic document yet discovered that can in the remotest degree be held to identify Robert Bruce with the holding of Masonic courts or the institution of a secret society at Kilwinning" The paternity of the Royal Order," he says, " is now pretty generally attributed to a Jacobite Knight named Andrew Ramsay, a devoted follower of the Pretender, and famous as the fabricator of certain rites, inaugurated in France about 1735-40, and through the propagator of which it must hoped the fallen fortunes of the Stuarts would be retrieved."' (1"History of the Lodge of Edinburgh," p. 307)

On September 24, 1745, soon after the commencement of his invasion of Britain, Charles Edward, the son of the Old Pretender, or Chevalier St. George, styled by his adherents James III., is said to have been admitted into the Order of Knights Templars, and to have been elected its Grand Master, a position which he held until his death. Such is the tradition, but here again we are met by the authentic statements of Bro. Lyon that Templarism was not introduced into Scotland until the year 1798. (1) It was then impossible that Charles Edward could have been made a Templar at Edinburgh in 1745.It is, however, probable that he was invested with official supremacy over the high degrees which had been fabricated by Ramsay in the interest of his family, and it is not unlikely, as has been affirmed, that, resting his claim on the ritual provision that the Kings of Scotland were the hereditary Grand Masters of the Royal Order, he had assumed that title. Of this we have something like an authentic proof, something which it is refreshing to get hold of as art oasis of history in this arid desert of doubts and conjectures and assumptions.In the year 1747, more than twelve months after his return from his disastrous invasion of Scotland and England Charles Edward issued a charter for the formation at the town of Arras in France of what is called in the instrument "a Sovereign Primordial Chapter of Rose Croix under the distinctive title of Scottish Jacobite."

In 1853, the Count de Hamel, Prefect of the Department in which Arrasis situated, discovered an authentic copy of the charter in the Departmental archives..In this document, the Young Pretender gives his Masonic titles in the following words:"We, Charles Edward, King of England, France, Scotland, and Ireland, and as such Substitute Grand Master of the Chapter of H., known by the title of Knight of the Eagle and Pelican, and since our sorrows and misfortunes by that of Rose Croix," etc.The initial letter " H." undoubtedly designates the Scottish Chapter of Heredon.

Of this body, by its ritual regulation, his father as King of Scotland, would have been the hereditary Grand Master, and he, therefore, only assumes the subordinate one of Substitute.(1) "History of the Lodge of Edinburgh," p. 287This charter, of the authenticity of which, as well as the transaction which it records, there appears to be no doubt, settles the question that it was of the Royal Order of Scotland and not of the Knights Templars that Charles Edward was made Grand Master, or himself assumed the Grand Mastership, during his visit in 1745 to Edinburgh.

As that Order and the other High Degrees were fabricated by the Chevalier Ramsay to promote the interests of his cause, his acceptance or assumption of the rank and functions of a presiding officer was a recognition of the plan to use Masonry as a political instrument, and is, in fact, the first and fundamental point in the history of the hypothesis of Stuart Masonry. We here for the first time get tangible evidence that there was an attempt to connect the institution of Freemasonry with the fortunes and political enterprises of the Stuarts.

The title given to this primordial charter at Arras is further evidence that its design was really political; for the words Ecosse Jacobite, or Scottish Jacobite, were at that period universally accepted as a party name to designate a partisan of the Stuart pretensions to the throne of England.The charter also shows that the organization of this chapter was intended only as the beginning of a plan to enlist other Masons in the same political design, for the members of the chapter were authorized " not only to make knights, but even to create a chapter in whatever town they mightthink proper," which they actually did in a few instances, among them one at Paris in 1780, which in 1801 ,was united to the Grand Orient of France.A year after the establishment of the Chapter at Arras, the Rite of the Veille Bru, or the Faithful Scottish Masons, was created at Toulouse in grateful remembrance of the reception given by the Masons of that place to Sir Samuel Lockhart, the aide-de-camp of the Pretender. Ragon says thatthe favorites who accompanied the prince to France were accustomed to sell to certain speculators charters for mother Lodges, patents for Chapters,etc. These titles were their property and they did not fail to use them as a means of livelihood.

It has been long held as a recognized fact in Masonic history, that the first Lodge established in France by a warrant from the Grand Lodge of England was held in the year 1725. There is no doubt that a Lodge of Freemasons met in that year at the house of one Hure, and that it was presided over by the titular Earl of Derwentwater. But the researches of Bro. Hughan have incontestably proved that this was what we would now call a clandestine body, and that the first French Lodge legally established by the Grand Lodge of England was in 1732. Besides the fact that there is no record in that Grand Lodge of England of any Lodge in France at the early date of 1725, it is most improbable that a warrant would have been granted to so conspicuous a Jacobite as Derwentwater. Political reasons of the utmost gravity at that time would have forbidden any such action.
Charles Radcliffe, with his brother the Earl of Derwentwater, had been avenged in England for the part taken by them in the rebellion of 1715 to place James III. on the throne. They were both condemned to death and the earl was executed, but Radcliffe made his escape to France, where he assumed the title which, as he claimed, had devolved upon him by the death of his brother's son. In the subsequent rebellion of 1745, having attempted to join the Young Pretender, the vessel in which he sailed was captured by an English cruiser, and being carried to London, he was decapitated in December, 1746.

The titular Earl of Derwentwater was therefore a zealous Jacobite, an attainted rebel who had been sentenced to death for his treason, a fugitive from the law, and a pensioner of the Old Pretend. er or Chevalier St. George, who, by the order of Louis XIV., had been proclaimed King of England under the title of James III.It is absurd, therefore, to suppose that the Grand Lodge of England would have granted to him and to his Jacobite associates a warrant for the establishment of a Lodge. Its statutes had declared in very unmistakable words that a rebel against the State was not to be countenanced in his rebellion. But no greater countenance could have been given than to make him the Master of a new Lodge.Such, however, has until very recently been universally accepted as apart of the authentic history of Masonry in France. In the words of a modern feuilletonist, " the story was too ridiculous to be believed, and so everybody believed it."

But it is an undeniable fact that in 1725 an English Lodge was really opened and held in the house of an English confectionier named Hure. It was however without regular or legal authority and was probably organized, although we have no recorded evidence to that effect, through the advice and instructions of Ramsay-and was a Jacobite Lodge consisting solely of the adherents and partisans of the Old Pretender.

This is the most explicit instance that we have of the connection of the Stuarts with Freemasonry. It was an effort made by the adherents of that house to enlist the Order as an instrument to restore its fallen fortunes. The principal members of the Lodge were Derwentwater, Maskelyne, and Heguertly or Heguety. Of Derwentwater I have already spoken ; the second was evidently a Scotsman, but the name of the third has been so corrupted in its French orthography that we are unable to trace it to its source. It has been supposed that the real name was Haggerty; if so, he was probably an Irishman. But they were all Jacobites.

The Rite of Strict Observance, which at one time in the last century took so strong a hold upon the Masons of Germany, and whose fundamental doctrine was that of Ramsay-that Freemasonry was only a continuation of the Templar system-is said to have been originally erected in the interests of the Stuarts, and the Brotherhood was expected to contribute liberally to the enterprises in favor of the Pretender.

Upon a review of all that has been written on this very intricate subject-the theories oftentimes altogether hypothetical, assumptions in plane of facts, conjectures altogether problematical, and the grain of history in this vast amount of traditional and mythical trash so small-we may, I think, be considered safe in drawing a few conclusions.

In the first place it is not to be doubted that at one time the political efforts of the adherents of the dethroned and exiled family of the Stuarts did exercise a very considerable effect on the outward form and the internal spirit of Masonry, as it prevailed on the continent of Europe.

In the symbolic degrees of ancient Craft Masonry, the influence was but slightly felt. It extended only to a political interpretation of the Legend of the Master's degree, in which sometimes the decapitation of Charles I., and sometimes the forced abdication and exile of James II., was substituted for the fate of Hiram, and to a change in the substitute word so as to give an application of the phrase the " Widow's son " to the child of Henrietta Maria, the consort of Charles I. The effect of these change, except that of the word which still continues in some Rites, has long since disappeared, but their memory still remains as a relict of the incidents of Stuart Masonry.

But the principal influence of this policy was shown in the fabrication of what are called the " High Degrees," the " Hautes Grades" of the French. Until the year 1728 these accumulations to the body of Masonry were unknown. The Chevalier Ramsay, the tutor of the Pretender in his childhood, and subsequently his most earnest friend and ardent supporter, was the first to fabricate these degrees, although other inventors were not tardy in following in his footsteps.

These degrees, at first created solely to institute a form of Masonry which should be worked for the purpose of restoring the Pretender to the throne of his ancestors, have most of them become obsolete, and their names alone are preserved in the catalogues of collectors; but their effect is to this day seen in such of them as still remain and are practiced in existing Rites, which have been derived indirectly from the system invented in the Chapter of Clermont or the Chateau of St. Germain. The particular design has paned away but the general features still remain, by which we are enabled to recognize the relicts of Stuart Masonry. As to the time when this system first began to be developed there can be but little doubt.

We must reject the notion that James II had any connection with it. However unfitted he may have been by his peculiar temperament from entering into any such bold conspiracy, the question is set at rest by the simple fact that up to the time of his death there was no Masonic organization upon which he or his partisans could have usedHis son the Chevalier St. George was almost in the same category. He is described in history as a prince-pious, pacific and without talents, incapable of being made the prominent actor in such a drama, and besides, Speculative Masonry had not assumed the proportions necessary to make it available as a part of a conspiracy until long after he had retired from active life to the practice of religious and recluse habits in Rome.
But his son Charles Edward, the Young Pretender as he was called, was of an ardent temperament; an active genius, a fair amount of talent, and a spirit of enterprise which well fitted him to accept the place assigned him by Ramsay. Freemasonry had then begun to excite public attention, and was already an institution that was rapidly gaining popularity.

Ramsay saw in it what he deemed a fitting lever to be used in theelevation of his patron to the throne, and Prince Charles Edward with eagerness met his propositions and united with him in the futile effort.
To the Chevalier Ramsay we must attribute the invention of Stuart

Masonry, the foundations of which he began to lay early in the 18th century, perhaps with the tacit approval of the Old Pretender. About 1725, when the first Lodge was organized in Paris, under some illegitimate authority, he made the first public exposition of his system in the Scottish High Degrees which he at that time brought to light. And finally the workings of the system were fully developed when the Young Pretender began his unsuccessful career in search of a throne, which once lost was never to be recovered.This conspiracy of Ramsay to connect Freemasonry with the fortunes of the Stuarts was the first attempt to introduce politics into the institution. To the credit of its character as a school of speculative philosophy, the attempt proved a signal failure.