MICHAEL BAIGENT AND RICHARD LEIGH
Introduction
In Britain, dur ing the last few years, Freemasonry has become both a favourite topic of conver sation and a cherished issue of debate. Indeed, Mason- baiting bids f air to become something of a full- f ledged blood spor t here, rather like priest- baiting in Ireland. With scarcely disguised exuberance and a virtually audible ‘ Tally- ho!’ , the newspapers swoop on each new ‘ Masonic scandal’ , each new allegation of ‘ Masonic corruption’ . Church synods ponder the compatibility of Freemasonry with Christianity. In order to goad political opponents, local councils propose motions that would compel Freemasons to declare themselves. At parties, Freemasonry crops up with a frequency exceeded, probably, only by Britain’ s intelligence services and the CIA. Television, too, has made its contr ibution, conducting at least one late- night symposium on the subject and actually managing to poke its cameras into the beast’ s ultimate lair , Grand Lodge. On f ailing to f ind a dragon, the commentators seemed to feel less relief than an aggrieved sulkiness at having somehow been cheated. In the mean time, of cour se, people have remained f ascinated. One need only pronounce the word ‘ Freemasonry’ in a pub, restaurant, hotel lobby or other public place to see heads twitch, f aces swivel attentively, ears finetune themselves to eavesdrop. Each new ‘ exposé’ is devoured with an eagerness, even a glee, usually reserved f or royal gossip, or f or the salacious.
This book is not an expose. It does not address itself to the role or the activities, real or imagined, of Freemasonry in contemporary society; it does not attempt to investigate allegations of conspiracy or corruption. Neither , of course, is it an apology for Freemasonry. We are not Freemasons our selves, and we have no vested interest in exculpating the institution f rom the charges levelled against it. Our or ientation has been wholly historical. We have endeavoured to track down the antecedents of Freemasonry, to establish its true or igins, to chart its evolution and development, to assess its influence on British and American culture during its own formative year s, culminating with the late eighteenth century. We have also tried to address the question of why Freemasonry, nowadays so instinctively regarded with suspicion, with derision, with irony and condescension, should ever have come to enjoy the currency it did – and, for that matter , still does, despite its detractors.
In the process, however , we have inevitably been obliged to confront he kind of questions that loom in the public mind today, and are so of ten posed by the media. Is Freemasonry corrupt? Is it – even more sinisterly – a vast international conspiracy dedicated to some obscure and (if secrecy is a barometer of villainy) nefarious end? Is it a conduit f or ‘ perks’ , favour s, influence and power - broking in the hear t of such institutions as the City and the police? Most impor tant of all, perhaps, is it truly inimical to Christianity? Such questions are not directly per tinent to the pages that f ollow, but they are of under standable general concern. It will not be in appropriate, theref ore, if we offer here the answers to them that emerged in the cour se of our enquiries.
One has attained a measure of wisdom when, instead of exclaiming ‘ Et tu, Brute!’ , one nods ruefully and says, ‘ Yes, it figures.’ Given human nature, it would be surpr ising if there were not at least some degree of corruption in public and pr ivate institutions, and if some of this corruption did not involve Freemasonry. We would argue, however , that such corruption says less about Freemasonry itself than about the ways in which Freemasonry, like any other such structure, can be abused.
Greed, self - aggrandisement, favouritism and other such ills have been endemic to human society since the emergence of civilisation. They have availed themselves of , and operated through, every available channel – blood kinship, a shared past, bonds f ormed in school or in the armed f orces, mutual interest, simple f r iendship, as well, of course, as race, religion and political af f iliation. Freemasonry is accused, for example, of making special dispensations f or its own. In the Christianised West, until very recently, a man could expect from his fellows precisely the same special dispensation simply by virtue of his member ship in the ‘ freemasonry’ of Christianity – by virtue, in other words, of not being a Hindu, a Muslim, a Buddhist or a Jew. Freemasonry is only one of many channels whereby corruption and favouritism can flourish; but if Freemasonry did not exist, corruption and f avour itism would f lour ish all the same. Cor ruption and f avour itism can be found in schools, in regiments, in corporations, in governmental bodies, in political par ties, in sects and churches, in innumerable other organisations. None of these is in itself intr insically reprehensible. No one would think of condemning an entire political par ty, or an entire church, because cer tain of its member s were corrupt – or more sympathetically disposed towards other member s than towards outsider s. No one would condemn the f amily as an institution because it tends to f oster nepotism.
In any moral consideration of the matter , it is necessary to exercise an under standing of elementary psychology, and a modicum of common sense. Institutions are only as vir tuous, or as culpable, as the individuals who compose them. If an institution can be considered corrupt in any intr insicsense at all, it can be considered so only if it profits from the corruption of its member s. This might apply to, say, a military dictator ship, to cer tain totalitar ian or single- par ty states, but it is hardly applicable to Freemasonry. No one has ever suggested that Freemasonry ever gained anything through the transgressions of its brethren. On the contrary, the transgressions of individual Freemasons are entirely selfIsh and self - serving. Freemasonry as a whole suf f er s f rom such transgressions, as does Christianity from the transgressions of its adherents. In the question of corruption, then, Freemasonry is not in itself a culpr it, but, on the contrary, another victim of unscrupulous men who are prepared to exploit it, along with anything else, for their own ends.
A more valid question is the compatibility, or lack thereof , between Freemasonry and Chr istianity. By its very nature, this question, at least, implies an attempt to conf ront what Freemasonry actually is, rather than the ways in which it can be exploited or abused. Ultimately, however , this question, too, is spurious. As is well known, Freemasonry does not purport to be a religion, only to address itself to certain principles or ‘ truths’ , which might in some sense be construed as ‘ religious’ – or perhaps ‘ spiritual’ . It may offer a species of methodology, but it does not pretend to of f er a theology. This distinction will become clearer in the pages that follow. For the moment, it will be sufficient to make two points in connection with the cur rent antipathy towards Freemasonry on the part of the Anglican Church. Amidst the Church’ s present preoccupation with Freemasonry in her ranks, these points are generally over looked. Both are crucial.
In the f ir st place, Freemasonry and the Anglican Church have cohabited congenially since the beginning of the seventeenth century. Indeed, they have done more than cohabited. They have worked in tandem. Some of the most impor tant Anglican ecclesiastics of the last four centur ies have issued f rom the lodge; some of the most eloquent and influential Freemasons have issued f rom the ministry. At no time, prior to the last ten or fifteen year s, has the Church ever inveighed against Freemasonry, ever perceived any incompatibility between Freemasonry and its own theological pr inciples. Freemasonry has not changed. The Church would argue that it has not changed either , at least in its fundamental tenets. Why, then, if there has never been any conflict in the past, should there be conflict now? The answer to that question, we would suggest, lies less with Freemasonry than with the attitudes and mentalities of cer tain contemporary churchmen.
The second point worth considering is, if anything, even more decisive. The official head of the Anglican Church is the British monarch. Since James II was deposed in 1688, the monarch’ s theological status or ‘ credentials’ have never been subject to question. And yet, since the beginning of the seventeenth century, the British monarchy has also been closely involved in Freemasonry. At least six kings, as well as numerous princes of the blood and pr ince consorts, have been Freemasons. Would this be possible if there were indeed some theological incompatibility between Freemasonry and the Church? To argue such incompatibility is tantamount, in effect, to impugning the religious integr ity of the monarchy.
Ultimately, we would maintain, the cur rent controversy surrounding Freemasonry is a storm in a teacup, a number of non- issues or spurious issues inf lated f ar beyond the status they actually deserve. It is tempting to be flip and suggest that people have nothing better to do than manufacture such tenuous grounds for controversy. Unfortunately, they do have better things to do. Certainly the Anglican Church, with incipient schism in its ranks and a disastrously shrinking congregation, could deploy its energy and resources more constructively than in orchestrating crusades against a supposed enemy, which, in fact, is not an enemy at all. And while it is per f ectly appropr iate, even desirable, f or the media to f er ret out cor ruption, we would all be better served if the cor rupt individuals themselves were called to account, rather than the institution of which they happen to be members.
At the same time, it must be acknowledged that Freemasonry itself has done little to improve its own image in the public eye. Indeed, by its obsessive secrecy and its stubborn def ensiveness, it has only reinforced the conviction that it has something to hide. How little it does in fact have to hide will become apparent in the course of this book. If anything, it has more to be proud of than it does to conceal.
Prelude
Ten years ago, in the spr ing of 1978, while researching the Knights Templar for a projected television documentary, we became intrigued by the Order ’ s history in Scotland. The surviving documentation was meagre, but Scotland possessed an even greater wealth of legend and tradition about the Templar s than did most other places. There were also some very real myster ies – unexplained enigmas which, in the absence of reliable records, orthodox historians had scarcely attempted to account f or . If we could penetrate these mysterIes, if we could find even a kernel of truth behind the legends and traditions, the implications would be enormous, not only f or the history of the Templar s, but extending f ar beyond as well.
A woman we knew had recently moved with her husband to live in Aberdeen. On a visit back to London, they recounted to us a story they had heard From another man, who had worked f or a time in an hotel in a small tourist community, former ly a Victor ian water ing spot, on the western shore of Loch Awe in the Highlands of Argyll. Loch Awe is a large inland lake some twenty- f ive miles from Oban. The lake itself is twenty- eight miles long and var ies in width for the most part from half a mile to a mile. It is dotted with just under two dozen islands of various sizes, some natural, others man-made and f ormer ly connected to the shore by causeways of now submerged stones and timber . Like Loch Ness, Loch Awe is supposed to contain a monster , the ‘ Beathach Mór ’ , described as a large serpent- like creature with a horse’ s head and twelve legs sheathed in scales.
On one of the islands, according to the story our inf ormant had heard, there were a number of Templar graves – more than would make sense in the context of accepted history, for the Templar s were not known to have been active around Argyll or the Western Highlands. On the same island, moreover , there were, supposedly, the ruins of a Templar preceptory, which did not figure in any of our lists of Templar holdings. As we received it, at third hand, the name of the island sounded something like ‘ Innis Shield’ , but we could not be sure of that, still less of the spelling.
These fragments of information, even though unconf irmed and Frustratingly vague, were tantalising. Like many researcher s before us, we were f amiliar with nebulous accounts of bands of Templars surviving the official per secution and dissolution of their Order between 1307 and 1314. We were f amiliar with stor ies that one such enclave of knights, fleeing their tormentor s on the Continent and in England, had found a refuge in Scotland and, at least f or a time, had perpetuated something of their or iginal institutions. But we were also aware that most such traditions had or iginated with the Freemasons of the eighteenth century, who sought to establish for themselves a pedigree extending directly back to the Templars of four centuries before. In consequence, we were extremely sceptical. We knew that no accepted evidence f or any Templar survival in Scotland existed, and that even modern Freemasonry tended, in general, to dismiss all claims to the contrary as sheer invention and wishful thinking.
And yet the tale of the island in the lake continued to haunt us. We had planned a research tr ip to Scotland f or that summer anyway, albeit far to the east. Should we not perhaps make a leisurely westward detour , if only to disprove the story we had heard and exorcise it once and f or all f rom our minds? Accordingly, we decided to extend our tr ip by a few days and return via Argyll.
As we descended on Loch Awe f rom the nor th, we immediately saw, at the head of it, masked by ser r ied f ir s, the large f if teenth- century Campbell castle of Kilchurn. We proceeded down the eastern side of the lake. Af ter some f if teen miles, an island appeared to our right, perhaps fifty yards f rom the shore. On it stood the ruins of the thir teenth- century castle of Innis Chonnell, which was occupied, around 1308, by Rober t the Bruce’ s close f r iend, ally and brother - in- law, Sir Neil Campbell, and which f or the next century and a half had been Clan Campbell’ s pr imary seat. Then, when a new castle was built at Inverary, at the upper reaches of Loch Fyne, Innis Chonnell was turned into a pr ison f or the enemies of the Campbells – or , as they had by then become, the Ear ls of Argyll.
A mile south of Innis Chonnell there was a smaller island, just visible From the road through the trees and shrubs f r inging the shore. When we stopped, we could see the remains on it of a structure of some sort, and stones which appeared to be graves. On the opposite side of the road was the hamlet of Por tinnisher r ich. The island itself , according to the maps we consulted, was variously called Innis Sear raiche or Innis Searamhach. We promptly polevaulted to the conclusion that this was the ‘ Innis Shield’ we had been seeking.
The island lay some forty yards f rom the shore, along which there were a number of boats, most of them obviously functional and in regular use. Hoping to rent one and row out to the island, we enquired at the general store in Por tinnisher r ich. There, however , we encountered a cur ious evasiveness. Although the area was postcard- scenic, and must have relied to at least some degree on the tour ist trade, we were not made to feel in any way welcome. Why, we were asked guardedly, did we want to rent a boat? To explore the island, we replied. No boat was available f or rental, we were told; people did not rent boats. Could we hire someone, boat and all, to row us out to the island? No, we were told without any explanation or elaboration, that was not possible either .
Frustrated, and all the more convinced that Innis Searaiche must contain something of relevance, we wandered on foot along the shore.
From across the intervening strip of water , the island beckoned tauntingly, almost within stone- throwing distance, yet inaccessible. We discussed the possibility of swimming out to it, and were debating the likely coldness of the water when, just nor th of the hamlet, we encountered an elder ly couple with a tent erected beside a caravan. After an exchange of casual cour tesies, they invited us to share a cup of tea with them. They, too, it transpired, came from London. For the last f if teen year s or so, however , they had been coming to this spot every summer , setting up their caravan and fIshing along Loch Awe.
Inside their caravan, we had to squeeze past the end of a table on to a long bench. To one side, there was a smaller table, or flat surface of some kind, used probably f or preparing food. On this, an old book lay open at a page with what appeared to be an engraving of a Masonic tomb – we noted cer tain Masonic symbols and a skull- and- crossbones. Subsequently, we realised that what we had seen might have been a Masonic ‘ tracing board’ of the kind used in the eighteenth century. In any case, we enquired, quite casually, about the prevalence of Freemasonry in the area – whereupon the book was quickly but discreetly closed and our query was delected with a shrug.
We asked our hosts if they could tell us anything about the island. Not much, they replied. Yes, there were ruins of some sor t out there. And yes, there were some graves, though not many. And not that old. In fact, the couple told us, most of the graves were f air ly recent. But the island, they said, did seem to enjoy some sort of special significance. They did not venture to suggest what it might be. Bodies, they reported, were sometimes brought there f or bur ial f rom considerable distances – sometimes even f lown across the Atlantic f rom the United States.
Quite clear ly this had nothing to do with thir teenth – or four teenthcentury Templar s. Never theless, it was intr iguing. It might, of cour se, Involve nothing more than a tradition of local f amilies, whose descendants, in accordance with some established r itual or custom, were bur ied in native soil. On the other hand, there might, just possibly, be something more to the matter , something per taining perhaps to Freemasonry, which our hosts were patently loath to discuss. They had a boat of their own, which they used f or f ishing. We asked if we could hire it, or if they would row us out to the island. At first, they were a little reluctant, repeating their asser tion that we would find nothing of interest, but at last, perhaps inf ected by our curiosity, the man offered to row us out while his wif e prepared another pot of tea.
The island proved disappointing. It was extremely small, no more than thirty yards across. It did contain the ruins of a diminutive chapel, but these consisted of nothing more than some sections of wall jutting a few feet up from the soil. There was no way of ascer taining whether thebdelapidated mossy remains were indeed once a Templar chapel. They were cer tainly too small to have been a preceptory.
As for the graves, most of them were, as we’ d been told, of comparatively recent date. The ear liest dated from 1732, the latest f rom the 1960s. Cer tain f amily names occur red – Jameson, McAllum, Sinclair . On one stone, of Fir st Wor ld War vintage, there was a Masonic square and compasses. The island obviously had something to do with local f amilies, some of whom, probably incidentally, were involved in Freemasonry. But there was nothing that could be construed as Templar , certainly nothing to support the account we had heard of a Templar graveyard. If there was any mystery about the place at all, it appeared to be both local and minor .
Thwar ted and f rustrated, we decided to find a bed- and- breakfast for the night, collect our thoughts and, if possible, work out how the information we’ d received could have been so f lagrantly askew. We proceeded down the eastern shore of Loch Awe, towards the road that led to Loch Fyne and thence to Glasgow. By this time, dusk was approaching. We stopped at a village named Kilmar tin past the southern end of the loch and asked where we might f ind a place to stay. We were directed to a large conver ted house a f ew miles beyond the town, near some ancient Celtic cairns. Having checked in there, we returned to Kilmar tin f or a dr ink at the pub.
Although larger than Por tinnisher r ich, Kilmar tin was still little more than a hamlet, with a petrol station, a pub, a recommendable restaurant and some two dozen houses all concentrated on one side of the road. On the other side was a large par ish church with a tower . The whole structure had either been built, or extensively rezstored, dur ing the last century. We did not expect to discover anything of consequence at Kilmartin. It was only idle cur iosity that led us to enter the churchyard. But there, not on an island in a lake, but in the grounds of a parish church, were rank after strictly regimented rank of badly weathered flatstones. There were upwards of eighty of them. Some had sunk so deeply into the ground that the grass was already growing over them. Other s were still intact and clearly defined among the more modern raised tombs and family bur ial plots. Many of the stones, particularly those of later date and better condition, were adorned with elaborate carvings – decorative motif s, family or clan devices, a welter of Masonic symbols. Other s had been worn completely smooth. But what interested us were those that bore no decoration save a single simple and austere straight sword.
These swords varied in size and sometimes, even if only slightly, in design. According to the practice of the time, the dead man’ s sword would be laid on the stone. Its outline would be incised and then chiselled. The carving would thus ref lect precisely the dimensions, shape and style of the original weapon. It was this stark anonymous sword that marked the earliest of the stones, those most badly worn, weathered and eroded. On the later stones, names and dates were added to the sword, then decorative motif s, f amily and clan devices, Masonic symbols. There were even some women’ s graves. It seemed we had f ound the Templar graveyard we were seeking.
The sheer existence of the ranked graves in Kilmar tin must surely have elicited questions f rom visitor s other than our selves. Who were the fighting men bur ied there? Why were there so many of them in such an out- of - the- way place? What explanations were offered by local authorities and antiquarians? The plaque at the church shed only meagre light on the matter . All it said was that the earliest of the slabs dated from around 1300, the latest from the ear ly eighteenth century.
‘ Most’ , the plaque concluded, ‘ are the work of a group of sculptors working around Loch Awe in the late 14th – 15th Centuries.’ What group of sculptors? If they were known to have constituted a ‘ group’ in any formal or organised sense, as clearly seemed to be the case, surely something more must be known about them. And was it not rather unusual for sculptors to congregate in ‘ groups’ , unless f or some specific purpose or under some specific aegis – that of a royal or aristocratic court, for example, or of a religious order? In any case, if the plaque was vague about who had carved the stones, it was worse than vague about who had been buried under them. It said nothing.
Whatever the impressions conveyed by books, f ilms and romanticised history, swords were a rare and expensive commodity in the early four teenth century. Every fighting man did not, as a matter of course, own one. Many were too poor and had to use axes or spears. Nor , for that matter , was there much of an arms industry in Scotland at the time and particularly in this part of Scotland. Most of the blades then in use in the country had to be imported, which made them all the more costly. Given these facts, the graves at Kilmar tin could not have been those of ‘ ordinary rank- and- file’ soldiery, the four teenth- century equivalent of ‘ cannon- f odder ’ . On the contrary, the men commemorated by the stones had to be of some social consequence – well- to- do individuals, af f luent gentry, if not full- fledged knights.
But was it plausible that men of wealth and social status would be buried anonymously? Far more than today, prominent individuals of the four teenth century plumed themselves on their family, their ancestry, their lineage, their pedigree; and this was par ticular ly true in Scotland, where clan affiliations and relationships enjoyed especial significance and where identity and blood descent were given a sometimes obsessive emphasis. Such things were insistently stressed in life, and duly memorialised in death.
Finally, why were the ear liest of the graves at Kilmar tin – the anonymous graves, marked only by the straight sword – so lacking in all Christian symbolism, lacking even in anything as basic as a cross? In an age when the Church’ s hegemony over Western Europe was virtually unchallenged, only tombs with ef f igies on them were left unadorned by Christian iconography; and such tombs were invar iably placed in chapels or churches. The tombs at Kilmar tin, however , were situated outdoor s, were devoid of ef f igies, yet still lacked religious adornment. Was the hilt of the sword itself intended to denote the cross? Or were the graves those of men perceived, in one sense or another , not to have been properly Christian?
From 1296 on, Sir Neil Campbell – Bruce’ s friend, ally and eventual brother - in- law – had been ‘ Bailie’ of Kilmar tin and Loch Awe, and since Kilmar tin itself had been one of his seats, it would have been reasonable to suppose that the ear liest of the graves there were those of Sir Neil’ s men. But that would not serve to explain their anonymity, nor the absence of Chr istian symbolism. Unless, of course, the men who served under Sir Neil were not native to the area, not conventionally Christian and had some reason to keep their identities concealed, even in death.
During the course of our research, we had explored most of the ruins of Templar preceptor ies still surviving in England, and many of those in France, Spain and the Middle East. We were familiar , almost to the point of satiation, with the varieties of Templar sculpture, Templar devices, Templar embellishment – and, in the f ew instances where they could still be f ound, Templar graves. Those graves displayed the same character istics as the graves in Kilmar tin. They were invar iably simple, austere, devoid of decoration. Frequently, though not always, they were marked by the simple straight sword. They were always anonymous. Indeed, it was the very anonymity of Templar graves that distinguished them from the elaborate inscr iptions, decorations, monuments and sarcophagi of other nobles. The Templar s were, af ter all, a monastic order , a society of war r ior monks, soldier mystics. Even if only in theory, they had supposedly renounced, as individuals at least, the trappings and pretensions of the material wor ld. When one entered the Temple, one effectively relinquished one’ s identity, becoming subsumed by the Order . The stark unadorned image of the straight sword was supposed to bear testimony to the ascetic, self - abnegating piety which obtained within the Order ’ s ranks.
Historians – especially Masonic histor ians – had long sought either to prove or disprove, def initively, the alleged survival of the Templars in Scotland af ter the Order had been officially suppressed elsewhere. But these histor ians had looked f or (and in) documentation, not ‘ on the ground’ . Not surprisingly, they had f ound no conclusive evidence one way or the other , because most of the relevant documentation had been lost, destroyed, suppressed, falsified or deliberately discredited. On the other hand, historians of Argyll, who were aware of the graves at Kilmar tin, had had no reason to think of the Templars, since the Templar s were not known to have been active, or even present, in the region. So far as their European bases were concerned, the Templars were strongest in France, Spain, Germany, Italy and England. Such holdings as they officially possessed in Scotland were, at least according to readily accessible records, far to the east, in the vicinity of Edinburgh and Aberdeen. There would have been no grounds for supposing an enclave of the Order to have existed in Argyll unless one were specifically looking for it. Thus, it appeared to us, the graves at Kilmar tin had preserved their secret from historical researchers of both camps – chroniclers of the Templars and of Freemasonry on the one hand and, on the other , chronicler s of the immediate region, who had no reason even to think of Templars.
Needless to say, we were excited by our discovery. And we f elt it to be all the more significant because it seemed to pertain not only to the Templar s. There appeared to be a coherent pattern linking the ear liest graves at Kilmar tin (those we supposed were Templar ) and the later ones, adorned with f amily blazons, clan devices and Masonic symbolism. The ear lier graves seemed to grade gradually into the later ones – or , rather , the later ones seemed, by a process of assimilation and accretion, to have e volve d out of the earlier . The motif s were essentially the same, only becoming more elaborately embellished with the years; the later decorations did not simply replace the straight sword, but were added to it. The graves at Kilmar tin seemed to of f er their own mute but eloquent testimony to an ongoing development – to bear witness to a story spanning four centuries, from the beginning of the four teenth to the beginning of the eighteenth. In the pub that evening, we attempted to decipher the chronicle in the stones.
Could we really have stumbled upon an enclave of refugee Templars who, on the dissolution of their Order , had found a haven in what was then the wilderness of Argyll? Might they have taken in yet more refugees f rom abroad? Argyll, though difficult to reach by land in the early f ourteenth century, was readily accessible by sea, and the Templar s possessed a substantial f leet which was never found by their persecutor s in Europe. Had the green, forest- shagged hills and glens around us once housed an entire community of white-mantled knights, like a ‘ lost tribe’ or ‘ lost city’ in an adventure story; and had the Order here perpetuated itself , its r ituals and observances? But if it were to perpetuate itself beyond a single generation, the knights would have had to secularise – or , at least, would have had to abrogate their vow of chastity, and marry. Was this perhaps part of the process to which the stones bore witness – the gradual intermarriage of refugee Templars and members of the clan system? And out of that alliance between the Templars and the clans of Argyll, might there have or iginated one of the skeins that were to lead to later Freemasonry? In the stones of Kilmar tin, might we not perhaps be conf ronted by a concrete answer to one of the most perplexing questions in European history – the origins and development of Freemasonry itself ?
We did not include any of what we had discovered in our film, which had, by that time, already been par tially scripted. Its or ientation, moreover , was pr imar ily towards the Templar s in the Holy Land and France. And if our f indings in Scotland proved valid, they would, we felt, war rant a film of their own. For the moment, however , all we had was a plausible theory, with, in the absence of immediately accessible documentation, no way of confirming it.
In the mean time, other projects, other commitments, had begun to intervene, and our discover ies in Scotland were shunted ever further into the background. We did not lose sight of them, however . They continued to haunt us, and to exercise a hold on our imaginations. Dur ing the ensuing nine year s, we proceeded, if only in a desultory manner , to gather additional information.
We consulted the work of Marion Campbell, probably the region’ s most prominent local historian, and established a personal correspondence with her . She advised us to be wary of any premature conclusions, but she was intrigued by our theory. If there were no records of the Templar s holding land in Argyll, she said, this was more likely to indicate an absence of records than an absence of Templar s. And she found it indeed possible that the arrival of Templar s in the region might explain the sudden appearance of the anonymous straight sword amid the more traditional, more familiar Celtic embellishments and motif s. 1
We also consulted such additional published work as existed on the stones at Kilmar tin, f rom the researches of nineteenth- century antiquarians to a more recent opus, published in 1977 under the auspices of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland. 2 To our disappointment, most such material concentrated primarily on the later , more elaborately embellished stones. The earlier stones, marked by the single anonymous straight sword, were largely ignored, if only because nothing was known about them and no one had anything much to say. Never theless, certain important facts did emerge. We learned from Marion Campbell, for example, that the stones in the churchyard at Kilmar tin had not originally been situated there. Some had been inside the church – or , rather , inside a much earlier church. Other s had been scattered throughout the sur rounding countryside and only later relocated. We also learned that Kilmar tin was not the only such graveyard in the region. In fact, there were no fewer than sixteen. But Kilmar tin did seem to have the greatest concentration of older stones, marked by the anonymous straight sword.
Only three firm conclusions could be drawn. The first was that the background of the carvings, and especially the older carvings, remained a mystery. The second, on which virtually everyone agreed, was that these ear lier carvings dated f rom the beginning of the four teenth century – the time of Robert the Bruce in Scotland and the suppression of the Knights Templar elsewhere in Europe. The third conclusion was that the graves with the anonymous straight sword represented a new style, a new development, in the region, which had appeared suddenly and inexplicably, although Templar holdings elsewhere had been using the design prior to its sudden appearance in Argyll. We had already seen it, in a context pre- dating the ear liest stones at Kilmar tin, as close to home as Temple Garway, in Heref ordshire, which was indisputably Templar .3
In Incised Effigial Slabs in Latin Christendom (1976), the late F. A. Greenhill published the results of a lifetime spent tabulating medieval graves all over Europe, f rom the Baltic to the Mediterranean, f rom Riga to Cyprus. Among the 4460 graves he lists and descr ibes, he f ound some without inscriptions, but they were extremely rare. Military gravestones were even rarer . In England, f or example, he had f ound only four , not counting che one at Garway, of which he was unaware. In Ireland, he had found only one. In all of Scotland e xce pt Argyll, he had again found only one. In Argyll, he had found sixty anonymous military gravestones. It was thus clear that the concentration of stones at Kilmar tin and adjacent sites was genuinely unique. Almost equally unique was the extraordinary concentration of Masonic graves.
Another important source of evidence f or us was the Israeli Archaeological Survey Association, which had excavated the old Templar castle of Athlit in the Holy Land. 4 Athlit had been built in 1218 and finally abandoned, along with all the other remnants of the crusader s’ Kingdom of Jerusalem, in 1291. When the castle was excavated, it proved to contain a graveyard with upwards of a hundred stones. Most, of cour se, had been very badly weathered, and shallow incisions, such as the straight swords we had found in Scotland, had not survived. But a f ew more deeply chiselled designs had, and these were particularly interesting. One was on the stone of a Templar maritime commander – perhaps an admiral – and consisted of a large anchor . One, though very severely worn, still showed a mason’ s square and plumb stone. One – believed to be that of the ‘ Master of the Templar Masons’ – bore a cross with decorations, a mason’ s square and maul. With only two exceptions, these are the earliest known incidence of gravestones bear ing Masonic devices. One of the exceptions is Reims and dates from 1263. The other , of comparable age, is also in France at the f ormer Templar preceptory of Bure- les- Templier s in the Cote d’ Or . Here, then, was per suasive evidence to suppor t the ‘ chronicle in stone’ we had tr ied to decipher at Kilmar tin – a chronicle which, if we had deciphered it correctly, attested to an important early connection between the Templar s and what was later to evolve into Freemasonry.
In our enthusiasm at our discovery, we had forgotten our original purpose in coming to Argyll – the account of a Templar graveyard on an island in Loch Awe. We had assumed the account had become garbled, and actually ref er red to Kilmar tin. What we did not know at the time was that we had visited the wrong island.
In the autumn of 1987, we returned to Argyll and Loch Awe. By this time, we had learned that the island which prompted our previous visit was not Innis Sear raiche, but Inishail, some miles to the nor th. (In f act, we had passed it the f ir st time without even noticing it.)
But if Inishail was the ‘ right’ island, it proved no more fruitful than the ‘ wrong’ island we had visited nine year s before – although we had no difficulty on this occasion in hiring a boat. We did find the ruins of a church dating from the relevant period, the early four teenth century, but the structure was clearly not Templar . The last regular service conducted in the place, we learned, had been in 1736, and by the end of the century it was already derelict. When we saw it, the inter ior was a matted tangle of grass, weeds and nettles which covered a number of hopelessly worn and cracked graveslabs lining the floor . Outside, there were more slabs, the older ones so sunken and overgrown as to be scarcely visible – although other s, of later date, were still upright. Among the most recent graves were those of the Eleventh Duke of Argyll, who had died in 1973, and Brigadier Reginald Fellowes, CBE, MC and Bar , Legion d’ Honneur , who had died in 1982. The man from whom we had hired our boat repor ted that he of ten crossed to Inishail and explored the island. He told us of a slab he had only just discovered, not yet recorded by the Royal Commission. Suspecting there might be other s, we probed with our pocketknives and indeed f ound some, but there was nothing to be gleaned f rom them. If the site is ever properly cleared, these slabs may yet have much of consequence to reveal. Our own amateur ish and probably sloppy reconnaissance, however , revealed no suggestion of anything Templar . This was disappointing; but at least we now knew the truth about the hither to elusive island.
Elsewhere around Loch Awe, we found nothing any more conclusive than what existed at Kilmar tin – vestiges which were very possibly Templar , which we could argue plausibly to be Templar , but which were not provably so. On a hill to the south- east of the loch, however , at the ruined thir teenth- century church of Kilneuair , we found something curious. In the grass were slabs similar to the later , ornately embellished slabs at Kilmar tin. On one of these, the design was surmounted by an unmistakable Templar cross. But the cross was not part of the original, meticulously chiselled adornment. It had been clumsily carved into the stone like graffiti at some later date, perhaps as late as the seventeenth or eighteenth century. This could hardly be taken as evidence of Templar s in the area. It did indicate, however , that someone thereabouts, at some subsequent time, had had some sort of interest in the Templars.
We proceeded south- west, past the imposing fortress of Castle Sween on the loch of the same name. In the early four teenth century, Loch Sween had been a strategically crucial por t on the sea- route running from Ulster through the Isles of Islay and Jura, and its castle, besieged and captured by Bruce around 1308 – 9, had been the major strongpoint of the region. The castle itself , reputedly the oldest stone castle on the Scottish mainland, was obviously a mar itime citadel, with its own harbour for galleys. Fallen stones, some of them dressed, indicated where a breakwater , an inner harbour and a jetty had been situated. If , at the time of the suppression of their Order , Templars from Europe had fled by sea to Scotland, this would have been perhaps their most likely disembarkation.
Beyond the castle lay the sea, with the Isle of Jura across the sound to the west, its hills cloaked in cloud. Here, on the coast, stood the small ruined thir teenth- century chapel of Kilmory, which had ministered to the once- thriving ma itime parish. Inside and around the chapel, there were some for ty graveslabs of the same per iod and kind we had learned to recognise from Kilmar tin. But there were two other items of greater signif icance, providing evidence which was perhaps less copious than we would have liked, but which was of sufficient calibre to confirm our theory.
Templar churches invar iably had a cross either carved above the entrance or standing freely outside. The cross, whether simple or embellished, was always of distinctive design – equal- armed, with the end of each arm wider than its base. Inside the chapel of Kilmory stood just such a cross, dating f rom bef ore the four teenth century. Had this cross been f ound anywhere else in Europe, no one would have had any hesitation in recognising it as Templar and ascr ibing the chapel to the Order . Fur thermore, inside the church lay a f our teenth- century graveslab incised with a sailing galley, an armed f igure and another Templar cross, this one worked into a Floreate design.
But there was more. On that same four teenth- century graveslab was something that reassured us that our decipherment of the ‘ chronicle in stone’ had not only been tenable, but was, in its general outline, accurate. Above the head of the armed figure with its Templar cross was carved a Masonic set- square.
It was now safe to say that there were Templar s on Loch Sween, and that Kilmory had almost cer tainly been a Templar chapel – not purposebuilt f or the Order , but, at any rate, taken over by them. Given this evidence, it was not just possible, but probable, that the graves at Kilmar tin and elsewhere in the region were indeed Templar .
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