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\\\THE TEMPLE AND THE LODGE
MICHAEL BAIGENT AND RICHARD LEIGH
THREE
The Origins of Freemasonry
13
The Masonic Jacobite Cause
While Grand Lodge was thriving, pro- Jacobite lodges in England were driven increasingly underground. Some certainly persisted, particularly in the nor th- east, around Newcastle and the Radclyffe family estates at Derwentwater ; but the prevailing climate afforded them little latitude for expansion or development. The same obtained for Scotland, where much evidence pertaining to Freemasonry between 1689 and 1745 was lost, deliberately or otherwise, in the tumult of events. Ireland, however , was a different matter .
As early as 1688, Freemasonry was well- known in Ireland. In that year , a Dublin orator , seeking to capture the attention of his audience, did so by referring to a man ‘ being Freemasonized the new way’ – implying, of course, that there was also an ‘ old way’ . In the same year , there was a minor scandal when a notorious individual named Ridley, known as an anti- Catholic spy and informer , was found dead with what was referred to as a ‘ Mason’ s Mark’ upon his body – though there is no indication of what this ‘ Mark’ was, how it was affixed or imprinted, or whether it had anything at all to do with his death.
Documentation on the early history of Grand Lodge of Ireland is patchy, all minute books prior to 1780 having been lost, and all records prior to 1760. Whatever information can be obtained derives from external sources, such as newspaper reports and letters. The evidence available indicates that Irish Grand Lodge was formed around 1723 or 1724, six or seven years after its English rival. The first Grand Master was the Duke of Montague, who, in 1721, had presided over Grand Lodge of England. Montague was a godson of George I and staunchly pro- Hanoverian. Not surprisingly, given the depth and pervasiveness of Stuart allegiances in Ireland, he got up numerous noses, and Irish Grand Lodge was plagued by internal squabbles. Between 1725 and 1731, there is a total lacuna in its history, and later commentators have concluded it must have been hopelessly split between Hanoverian suppor ter s and Jacobites.
In March 1731, there appears to have been some consolidation under the Grand Mastership of the Earl of Ross. A month later , Ross was succeeded by James, Lord Kingston. He, too, in 1728, had presided over the Grand Lodge of England but af ter 1730, when English Grand Lodge ratified certain unspecified changes, ‘ confined his zeal to Irish Freemasonry’ .
Kingston was to personify the orientation of Irish Grand Lodge. He had a Jacobite past and came from a Jacobite family. His father had been a courtier to James II and had followed the deposed king into exile, returning to Ireland in 1693 to be first pardoned, later ar rested and charged with recruiting military personnel for the Stuart cause. In 1722, Kingston himself had incurred similar accusations.
Irish Grand Lodge was thus to remain a repository for aspects of Freemasonry which the Grand Lodge of England repudiated or disowned. And it was to the Freemasonry of Irish Grand Lodge that the numerous British regiments passing through Ireland or stationed there in garrison were to be exposed. When the network of regimental field lodges began to proliferate through the British Army, most of them, at least initially, were warranted by Irish Grand Lodge. This was to be immensely important, but its effects were not to become apparent for another quarter of a century.
In the mean time, the original mainstream of Freemasonry had moved with the exiled Stuarts to the Continent. It was in France, in the period immediately prior to 1745, that the most consequential developments were to occur . And it was in France that Jacobite Freemasonry was to become integrated – or perhaps re- integrated – with the old Templar heritage.
The Earliest Lodges
Freemasonry seems to have come to France with contingents of the defeated Jacobite army between 1688 and 1691. According to one eighteenth- century account, the first lodge in France dates from 25 March 1688, and was established by an infantry regiment, the Royal Irish, which had been formed by Charles II in 1661, had accompanied him to England on his restoration and had then gone into exile again with James II. Subsequently, in the eighteenth century, this unit came to be known as the ‘ Regiment d’ Infantrie Walsh’ after its commanding officer . The Waishes were a prominent family of exiled Irish shipowners. One member of the family, Captain James Walsh, provided the ship which car r ied James II to safety in France. Later , Walsh and his kinsmen founded a major shipbuilding concern at St Mâlo, which specialised in furnishing the French navy with warships. At the same time, they remained fervently loyal to the Jacobite cause. Two generations later , Walsh’s grandson, Anthony Vincent Walsh, together with Dominic O’ Heguer ty, another influential merchant and shipowner , was to provide the vessels on which Charles Edward Stuart launched his invasion of England. In recognition of this service, Anthony Walsh was created an earl by the exiled Stuarts and his title was officially recognised by the French government.
In France, the Irish military men responsible for the transplantation of Freemasonry moved, naturally enough, in the same circles as pro- Stuart refugees from Scotland – such as David Grahame, the brother of John Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, alleged to have been found after Killiecrankie with a Templar cross. If Freemasonry had previously, for a time, lost contact with the skein of Templar tradition, that contact was re- established in France during the first quarter of the eighteenth century. And France was to provide fertile soil for both Freemasonry and the Templar mystique.
In many respects, it had been a Frenchman, René Descartes, who, early in the seventeenth century, first embodied what was to become the prevailing mentality of the eighteenth. In France, however , the combined pressures of Church and state had proved inimical, and the impetus of Cartesian thought had passed to England, where it manifested itself through men such as Locke, Boyle, Hume and Newton, as well as through such institutions as the Royal Society and Freemasonry itself . It was therefore to England that progressive-minded French thinkers, such as Montesquieu and Voltaire, looked for new ideas. They and their countrymen were to prove particularly receptive to Freemasonry.
But if Freemasonry first came to France in 1688, some thirty- five years were to elapse before the first authoritatively documented native French lodge was established. This was formed in 1725 according to most sources, in 1726 according to one other which may be more reliable. Its primary founder was Charles Radclyffe, Earl of Derwentwater , whose elder brother , James, had been executed for his part in the 1715 rebellion. Radclyffe’ s co- founders included Sir James Hector MacLean, chief of the MacLean clan; Dominic O’ Heguerty, the wealthy expatr iate merchant and shipowner who, along with Anthony Walsh, provided vessels for Charles Edward Stuart’s expedition in 1745; and an obscure man, said to be a restaurateur , whose name appears on surviving documents as ‘ Hure’ or ‘ Hurc’ . One writer has persuasively argued that this may be a corruption of ‘ Hurry’ . Sir John Hurry had been beheaded at Edinburgh in 1650 f or his loyalty to the Stuarts. His family had remained militantly Jacobite and were ennobled by Charles II; and it may well have been one of his exiled children or grandchildren who, together with Radclyffe, MacLean and O’ Heguer ty, established the first French lodge.
By 1729, French lodges were already proliferating within the framework of specifically Jacobite Freemasonry. Not to be outdone by the ‘ competition’ , the Grand Lodge of England began, in that year , to establish its own affiliated lodges in France. For a time, the two separate systems of Freemasonry pur sued parallel and rival courses of development. Although it never managed to impose a monopoly, the Jacobite system gradually gained the ascendancy. Out of it there eventually evolved, in 1773, the most important Freemasonic body in France, the Grand Orient.
One of the most prominent Jacobite lodges in France was the Lodge de Bussy. The street in which this lodge was situated, the rue de Bussy (now the rue de Buci), ran directly into the square in front of St Germain des Prés. The other street running into the square was the rue de Boucheries, where the lodge founded by Radclyffe was located. The two lodges, in other words, were within yards of one another , and the neighbourhood was effectively a Jacobite enclave. The French Jacobites were soon to cast their nets further afield. In September 1735, for example, the Lodge de Bussy initiated Lord Chewton, son of the Earl of Waldegrave, British Ambassador to France (himself a member of the ‘ Horn’ Lodge since 1723) and the Comte de St Florentin, Secretary of State to Louis XV. Among those present were Desagulier s, Montesquieu and Radclyffe’s cousin, the Duke of Richmond. Later in the same year , the Duke of Richmond established a lodge of his own at his château of Aubigny- sur - Nère.
Although Radclyffe had co- founded the first recorded lodge in France, he was not Grand Master . According to the oldest surviving documents, the first Grand Master , appointed in 1728, was none other than the former Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England, the Duke of Wharton. Becoming ever more militant in his Jacobite sympathies, Wharton, after being supplanted in Grand Lodge, had gone to Vienna, hoping to persuade the Austrian Habsburgs to mount an invasion of England on behalf of the Stuarts. His subsequent peregrinations took him to Rome and then to Madrid, where he founded the first lodge in Spain. While in Paris, he appears to have stayed for a time with the Walsh f amily. On his return to Spain, he was succeeded as Grand Master of French Freemasonry by Sir James Hector MacLean, Radclyffe’ s colleague. In 1736, MacLean in turn was succeeded by Radclyffe, the e minence grise , who emerged from the wings to assume his position centre- stage.
Radclyffe was one of two major personalities in the dissemination of Freemasonry throughout France. The other was an eclectic, peripatetic individual named Andrew Michael Ramsay. Ramsay was born in Scotland some time during the 1680s. As a young man, he joined a quasi- ‘ Rosicrucian’ society called the ‘ Philadelphians’ , and studied with a close friend of Isaac Newton. He was later to be associated with other friends of Newton, including John Desagulier s. He was also a particularly close friend of David Hume, and they exercised a reciprocal influence on each other .
By 1710, Ramsay was in Cambrai, studying with the man he regarded as his mentor , the liberal mystical Catholic philosopher François Fénelon. On Fénelon’ s death in 1715, Ramsay came to Paris. Here, he became an intimate of the French regent, Philippe d’ Or léans, who inducted him into the neo- chivalr ic Order of St Lazarus;
from then on, Ramsay was to be known as ‘ Chevalier ’ . When precisely he made Radclyffe’s acquaintance is not known, but by 1720 he was affiliated with the Jacobite cause and served, for a time, as tutor to the young Charles Edward Stuart.
In 1729, despite his Jacobite connections, Ramsay returned to England. Here, an apparent lack of qualif ications notwithstanding, he was promptly admitted to the Royal Society. He also became a member of another prestigious organisation, the f ashionable ‘ Gentlemen’s Club of Spalding’ , which included the Duke of Montague, the Earl of Abercorn, the Earl of Dalkeith, Desaguliers, Pope, Newton and François de Lorraine. By 1730, he was back in France and increasingly active on behalf of Freemasonry, and increasingly associated with Charles Radclyffe.
On 26 December 1736 – the date on which Radclyffe assumed the Grand Master ship of French Freemasonry – Ramsay gave a speech which was to become one of the major landmarks in Freemasonic history, and a source of endless controver sy ever since. This speech, which was presented again in a slightly modified version for the general public on 20 March 1737, became known as Ramsay’s ‘ Oration’ . There was an ulter ior political motive behind it. France at the time was ruled by Louis XV, then aged twenty- seven. The real governing power in the country, however , as Richelieu had been a century before, was the king’s chief advisor , Cardinal André Hercule de Fleury. Fleury, tired of war , was anxious to establish a lasting peace with England. In consequence, he was hostile to the hotbed of anti- Hanoverian conspiracy which Jacobite Freemasonry in France had come to be. The Stuarts, for their part, hoped to dissuade Fleury from his desired detente and to keep France, the traditional supporter of the Scottish royal house, firmly allied to their dream of regaining the English throne. Ramsay’s ‘ Oration’ was intended, at least in part, to allay Fleury’s antipathy towards Freemasonry and to win him over , with the eventual aim of establishing Freemasonry in France under royal patronage. He hoped to initiate Louis XV. With the French king thus involved, Freemasonry would constitute a united Franco- Scottish front, and another invasion of England could be contemplated, another attempt made to restore the Stuarts to the English throne. These objectives prompted Ramsay to reveal more than anyone had previously done of the attitudes and or ientation of early eighteenth- century Jacobite Freemasonry – and, at the same time, to divulge more than anyone previously had of its alleged history.
In a statement plundered almost verbatim from Fénelon, Ramsay declared: ‘ The world is nothing but a huge republic of which every nation is a family and every individual a child.’ This statement did not make much impression on Fleury, a Catholic nationalist monarchist cardinal who did not like Fénelon anyway. But it was to prove enormously influential among later political thinkers, not only in France, not only elsewhere in Europe, but in the American colonies as well. Ramsay went on: ‘ The interests of the Fraternity shall become those of the whole human race.’ And he condemned Grand Lodge, as well as other non- Jacobite forms of Freemasonry, as ‘ heretical, apostate and republican’ .
Ramsay stressed that the origins of Freemasonry lay in the mystery schools and sects of the ancient world:
The word Freemason must therefore not be taken in a literal, gross, and material sense, as if our founder s had been simple workers in stone, or merely curious geniuses who wished to perfect the arts. They were not only skilful architects, desirous of consecrating their talents and goods to the construction of material temples; but also religious and warrior princes who designed to enlighten, edify, and protect the living Temples of the Most High.
But though they may have derived from the mystery schools of antiquity, they were, Ramsay asserted, fervently Christian. In Catholic France at the time, it would, of course, have been imprudent to specify the Templars by name. But Ramsay emphasised that Freemasonry had its beginnings in the Holy Land, among ‘ the Crusaders’ :
At the time of the Crusades in Palestine many princes, lords, and citizens associated themselves, and vowed to restore the Temple of the Christians in the Holy Land, and to employ themselves in bringing back their architecture to its first institution. They agreed upon several ancient signs and symbolic words drawn from the well of religion in order to recognise themselves amongst the heathen and Saracens. These signs and words were only communicated to those who promised solemnly and even sometimes at the f oot of the altar , never to reveal them. This sacred promise was therefore not an execrable oath, as it has been called, but a respectable bond to unite Christians of all nationalities in one confraternity. Some time afterwards our Order formed an intimate union with the Knights of St John of Jerusalem. From that time our Lodges took the name of Lodges of St John.
Needless to say, the Knights of St John, such as they were in the early eighteenth century, never acknowledged any affiliation of this kind. Had they survived as an accredited public institution, the Templars, just possibly, might have done. Ramsay, for his part, charting the purpor ted history of Freemasonry, quickly moved from the Holy Land back to Scotland and the Celtic kingdom immediately prior to Bruce:
At the time of the last Crusades many Lodges were already erected in Germany, Italy, Spain, France. James, Lord Steward of Scotland, was Grand Master of a Lodge established at Kilwinning, in the West of Scotland, MCCLXXXVI, shortly after the death of Alexander III, King of Scotland, and one year before John Baliol mounted the throne. This lord received as Freemasons into his Lodge the Earls of Gloucester and Ulster , the one English, the other Irish.
And finally, in an unmistakable reference to the Scots Guard, Ramsay declared that Freemasonry ‘ preserved its splendour among those Scotsmen to whom the kings of France confided during many centuries the safeguard of their royal persons’ .
The implications and significance of Ramsay’s ‘ Oration’ will be considered shortly. For the moment, it is sufficient to note that the attempt to win Cardinal Fleury’s sympathy and support backfired. Two years bef ore, in 1735, the police had acted against Freemasonry in Holland. In 1736, they had done so in Sweden. Now, within a few days of Ramsay’s second ‘ Oration’ , Fleury ordered the French police to follow suit. An immediate investigation of Freemasonry was ordered. Four months later , on 1 August 1737, the police report was completed. Freemasonry was declared to be innocent of ‘ indecency’ , but potentially dangerous ‘ by virtue of the indifference of the Order towards religions’ . On 2 August, Freemasonry was interdicted in France and the Grand Secretary arrested.
In a series of police raids, numerous documents and membership lists were confiscated. Fleury and his advisors must surely have been shocked by the extraordinary number of high- ranking nobles and churchmen who proved already to be Freemasons. The chaplain of the Garde du Corps, the King’s Bodyguard, for example, turned out to be a member of the Jacobite Grand Lodge Bussi- Aumont, as the old Lodge de Bussy had come to be called. So, too, was the Guard’ s quartermaster . Indeed, virtually all members of the lodge were officers, officials or intimates of the court.
Rome was already alarmed, and there can be little doubt that Fleury applied pressure to his ecclesiastical colleagues and superiors. Even before the investigation in France was completed, Pope Clement XII acted. On 24 Apr il 1738, a Papal Bull, ‘ In eminenti apostolatus specula’ , forbade all Catholics to become Freemasons under threat of excommunication. Two years later , in the Papal States, membership in a lodge was punishable by death.
According to one authority on the subject, the first effect of Clement’s Bull may have been to force Radclyffe’s removal as Grand Master of French Freemasonry.
Within a year , he was replaced by a French aristocrat, the Duc d’ Antin. The duke in turn was succeeded in 1743 by the Comte de Clermont, a prince of the blood. It is thus clear that the Papal Bull had a fairly minimal effect in dissuading French Catholics from becoming Freemasons. On the contrary, after the promulgation of the Bull some of the most illustr ious names in France became involved. Even the king seems to have been on the point of joining a lodge. The Pope, it would appear , accomplished nothing, save to topple the Jacobites from their former position of supremacy in French Freemasonic affair s. From the time of the Papal Bull on, the Jacobites were to play a progressively less influential role in French Freemasonry, and ceased completely to affect its evolution and development. Eventually, as we have noted, Grand Orient was to emerge as the chief repository of Freemasonry in France.
In certain quarters, the Church’s attitude must have seemed – and must still seem – puzzling. Most of the Jacobite leaders, after all, had either been born Catholic or become converts. Why, then, should the Pope have acted against them – par ticular ly when doing so meant Freemasonry falling increasingly under the anti- Catholic influence of the English Grand Lodge? With hindsight, the answer to that question is much clearer than it probably was to many people – Catholics, Freemasons or both – at the time. The point is that Rome feared, not entirely without justification, that Freemasonry, as an international institution, stood a reasonable chance of offering a philosophical, theological and moral alternative to the Church.
Prior to the Lutheran Reformation, the Church had provided, with whatever qualified success, a species of international forum. Potentates and princes, though their nations might war with each other , were still nominally Catholic and acted under the Church’s umbrella; their people might sin, but they sinned according to the context and definition established by Rome. As long as the Church’s umbrella remained in place, it ensured that channels of communication remained open between belligerents and that, in theory at least, Rome could act as arbiter . With the Reformation, of course, the Church was no longer able to function in that capacity, having lost her authority among the Protestant states of northern Europe. But she still enjoyed considerable currency in Italy, in southern Germany, in France, in Spain, in Austria and the domains of the Holy Roman Empire.
Freemasonry threatened to offer the kind of international forum that Rome had provided prior to the Reformation: to furnish an arena for dialogue, a network of communications, a blueprint for European unity that transcended the Church’s sphere of influence and rendered the Church irrelevant. Freemasonry threatened to become, in effect, something like the League of Nations or United Nations of its day. It is worth repeating Ramsay’s statement in his ‘ Oration’ : ‘ The world is nothing but a huge republic of which every nation is a family and every individual a child.
Freemasonry may not have been any more successful in fostering unity than the Church had been, but it could hardly have been less so. A few years after Clement’s Bull, for example, Austria and Prussia were at war . Both Frederick the Great, King of Prussia, and François, Emperor of Austria, were Freemasons. By virtue of this common bond, the lodge offered an opportunity for dialogue, and at least a prospect of peace. It was in an effort – futile, in the event, and even, it might be argued, counter - productive – to preclude such developments that Rome acted against Freemasonry. The Jacobites, and Jacobite Freemasonry on the Continent, were incidental casualties of much broader considerations. And their fall from prominence was probably, in the end, more costly to Rome than leaving their status intact would have been.
As we have seen, the Papal Bull, intended to exclude Catholics from Freemasonry, proved signally ineffectual. Indeed, it was precisely in the Roman sphere of influence that Freemasonry, during the next half century, was to spread most vigorously and to assume some of its wilder , more exotic and extravagant permutations. It was patronised more enthusiastically by Catholic potentates – François of Austria, for example – than by anyone else. And it was to prove most influential precisely within such bastions of Roman authority as Italy and Spain. By casting Freemasonry as a villain, Rome in effect turned it into a refuge and rallying point for her own adversaries.
In England, Grand Lodge became progressively more divorced from both religion and politics. It fostered a spirit of moderation, tolerance and flexibility, and often worked hand in hand with the Anglican Church, many of whose clergy were themselves Freemasons and found no conflict of allegiance. In Catholic Europe, on the other hand, Freemasonry became a repository for militantly anti- clerical, antiestablishment, eventually revolutionary sentiment and activity. True, many lodges remained bulwarks of conservatism, even reaction. But many more played a vital part in radical movements. In France, for example, prominent Freemasons such as the Marquis de Lafayette, Philippe Egalité, Danton and Sieyès, acting in accordance with Freemasonic ideals, were prime movers in the events of 1789 and everything that followed. In Bavaria, in Spain, in Austria, Freemasonry was to provide a focus of resistance to authoritarian regimes, and it functioned prominently in the movements culminating with the revolutions of 1848. The whole of the campaign leading to the unification of Italy – from the revolutionaries of the late eighteenth century, through Mazzini, to Garibaldi – could be described as essentially Freemasonic. And from the ranks of nineteenth- century European Freemasonry there emerged a figure who was to cast the’ sinister shadow of terrorism not only over his own age, but over ours as well – a man named Mikhail Bakunin.
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THE TEMPLE & LODGE PART 12
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\\\THE TEMPLE AND THE LODGE
MICHAEL BAIGENT AND RICHARD LEIGH
THREE
The Origins of Freemasonry
12
The Development of Grand
Lodge
It is difficult to say precisely how much Freemasonry, as it evolved in Scotland, owed to the old Templar heritage and Templar traditions. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, whatever link there may have been between them was long lost, and no new link had yet been forged. Freemasonry had not yet publicly attempted to claim a Templar pedigree for itself . And while Claverhouse and his brother are extremely likely to have been Freemasons, no documentation survives to confirm that they were. If a Templar cross was indeed passed from Claverhouse to his brother and thence to the Abbé Calmet, this may attest some species of Templar survival, but it constitutes no direct connection with Freemasonry. When the Templar mystique surfaced again, it was to do so primarily, as we shall see, in France. Freemasonry, in the mean time, had come to play a much more central role in English affairs.
Under William and Mary, Protestantism regained its supremacy in England. By an act of Parliament which obtains to the present day, all Catholics were precluded from the throne, as was anyone married to a Catholic. Thus a repetition of the circumstances which had precipitated the 1688 revolution was effectively forestalled.
In 1702, eight years after his wife, William of Orange died. He was succeeded by Queen Anne, his sister - in- law and James II’s younger daughter . She, in turn, was succeeded in 1714 by George I, grandson of Elizabeth Stuart and Friedrich, Count Palatine of the Rhine. When George died in 1727, the throne passed to his son, George II, who reigned until 1760. For sixty years f ollowing William’s accession in 1688, the exiled Stuarts clung tenaciously to their dream of regaining the kingdom they had lost. The deposed James II died in 1701, to be succeeded by his son, James III, the so- called ‘ Old Pretender ’ . He in turn was succeeded as claimant by his son, the ‘ Young Pretender ’ , Charles Edward, ‘ Bonnie Prince Charlie’ . Under these three monarchs- in- exile, Jacobite circles on the Continent were to remain hotbeds of conspiracy and political intr igue. Nor were they inef f ectual. In 1708, a projected Stuart invasion of Scotland was mounted, supported by French troops and transported by French ships. England, with most of her troops committed to the War of the Spanish Succession, was ill- equipped to counter this threat, and the invasion would very likely have proved successful but for a combination of bad luck, Jacobite dithering and French apathy. In the event, the whole project foundered, but seven years later , in 1715, Scotland rose in a full- scale revolt under the Earl of Mar — who, as we have seen, was alleged to have succeeded Claverhouse as Grand Master of the latterday Templars. Also joining in the rebellion was Lord George Seton, Earl of Winton, whose title was for feited as a result and the earldom allowed to lapse, while he himself was condemned to death. In 1716, however , he escaped from the Tower of London and joined the exiled Stuart pretenders in France. He remained active in Jacobite affairs for the rest of his life, and in 1736 he became Master of an important Jacobite Masonic lodge in Rome. The revolt was put down, but only at considerable cost, and the exiled Stuarts were to remain a threat for another thirty years. Only after the invasion and full- scale military operations of 1745—6 was this threat at last to recede.
The 1688 revolution had introduced a number of modern, muchneeded reforms, including, and not least, a Bill of Rights. At the same time, however , British society had been grievously split. Nor was it simply a matter of those who supported the Stuarts fleeing the country en masse and leaving it entirely to their rivals. On the contrary, Stuart interests continued to be well represented in English affairs. Not all Stuart adherents were prepared to sanction force. Not all were prepared to defy Parliament. Many, despite their loyalties, were to prove conscientious civil servants under William and Mary, under Anne, under the Hanoverians. Such was the case, for example, with Sir Isaac Newton. But if William and Mary, and Anne, were reasonably popular monarchs, the Hanoverians were not; and there were many in England who publicly, unabashedly, without actually slipping into official treason, inveighed against the detested German sovereigns and agitated for a return of the Stuarts, whom they regarded as the country’s r ightful dynasty.
It was among these Stuart sympathisers that the modern- day Tory Party originated and came of age. The early eighteenth- century Tories had ar isen in the late 1670s out of the old, pre- Civil War cavalier class. Most were High Church Anglican or Anglo- Catholic. Most were landowners and sought to concentrate power in the hands of landed gentry. Virtually all of them esteemed the crown above Parliament and insisted on the Stuar ts’ hereditary r ight to the throne.
Their opponents, nicknamed Whigs, had also risen to prominence during the 1670s. The Whigs consisted mostly of the newly consolidated mercantile and professional classes, and were active in commerce, in industry, in finance and banking, in the army. They encouraged religious diversity and included many dissenters and free- thinkers. They extolled the power of Parliament over that of the crown. And, as Swift says, they ‘ preferred . . . the monied interest before the landed’ . 2 Subscribing, implicitly or explicitly, to the ‘ Puritan work ethic’ , they represented the triumphantly emergent middle class, whose leadership, first in the Commercial, then in the Industrial Revolution, was to determine the course of British history and establish money as supreme arbiter . They had no particular affection for the Hanoverians, but were prepared to tolerate the German rulers as a price of their own burgeoning success.
The fissures in British society were to be reflected in Freemasonry itself . According to extant records, Freemasonry, after the 1688 revolution, continued ostensibly as bef ore. Lodges continued not just to meet, but also to proliferate. It is likely that many older lodges, or the senior members of newer lodges, were pro- Stuart or Tory, but there is no evidence to suggest that Freemasonry, at this point, actually served as a vehicle for Jacobite espionage, conspiracy or propaganda. So far as possible, most lodges in England seem to have remained — or tried to remain — studiously aloof from politics. And inevitably, as more and more Whigs rose to prominence and assumed important positions in the country’s social and commercial affairs, they found their way into the lodge system, putting their own pro- Hanoverian stamp on to Freemasonry.
As we have seen, however , Freemasonry, from its very inception, had been inextricably linked with the Stuarts. Freemasons, during the seventeenth century, were not only required to ‘ be true to the Kinge’ , but also, and actively, to root out and inform against conspirators — thus becoming, in effect, part of the Stuarts’ administrative apparatus and machinery. Such allegiances ran deep. It is not surprising, therefore, that the main thrust of Freemasonry should have remained attached to the Stuart line, should have followed that line into exile and, from abroad, worked to further its interests in England. During the first third or so of the eighteenth century, Freemasonic lodges might be either Whig or Tory, Hanoverian or Jacobite; but it was the Tories in England and the Jacobites abroad who possessed more of the institution’s history and heritage. They constituted the mainstream, while other developments were but tributaries.
In England, prominent Freemasons like the Duke of Wharton were also professed Jacobites. Abroad, most of the Jacobite leaders – General James Keith, for example, the Earl of Winton (Alexander Seton), and the Earls of Derwentwater (first James, then his younger brother Charles, Radclyffe) — were not only Freemasons, but also instrumental in the dissemination of Freemasonry throughout Europe. After the suppression of the 1745 rebellion, a number of illustrious Freemasons were to be sentenced to death for their service to the Jacobite cause — Derwentwater , who had formerly been Grand Master of French Freemasonry, and the Earls of Kilmarnock and Cromarty, who had been Grand Masters of Scottish Freemasonry. Only the latter escaped execution at the Tower .
According to one histor ian:
There is no question but that the Jacobites had a crucial influence on the development of Freemasonry — to such an extent, indeed, that later witnesses went so far as to describe Freemasonry as a gigantic Jacobite conspiracy.
We would argue that the Jacobites did not just have ‘ a crucial influence on the development of Freemasonry’ . We would argue that they were, at least initially, its chief custodians and propagators. And when Grand Lodge — subsequently to become the primary repository of English Freemasonry — was created in 1717, it was created in large part as a Whig or Hanoverian attempt to break what had hither to been a virtual Jacobite monopoly.
The Centralisation of English Freemasonry
Grand Lodge of England was created on 24 June 1717 — St John’ s Day, the day formerly held sacred by the Templars. There were, initially, four London lodges which, in a manifest thrust towards centralisation, chose to amalgamate into one organisation and elect a Grand Lodge as a governing body. They quickly drew more lodges into their fold, and by 1723 the original four lodges had increased in number to fifty- two.
The usual explanation for the coalescence of Grand Lodge is astonishingly bland — or disingenuous. According to one writer , it ‘ came into being for the frankly social purpose of providing an occasion at which the members of a few London lodges could meet’ . One is also told that the period was one of general enthusiasm for clubs and societies, and that the dissemination and proliferation of English Freemasonry was a consequence of this enthusiasm. And yet there is no comparable movement towards centralisation among the various dining and drinking clubs of the time, or the burgeoning antiquarian, bibliographical and scientific societies. It is specifically in Freemasonry that the emphasis is not just on proliferation, but, even more crucially, on centralisation. Thus, for example, of the fifty- two lodges comprising Grand Lodge in 1723, at least twenty- six appear to have pre - date d Grand Lodge’ s foundation in 1717. Their entry into the historical record, in other words, results not from their proliferation, but from their preparedness to centralise.
According to J. R. Clarke, a Freemasonic historian writing in 1967, ‘ I think that in 1717 there was a much more serious reason f or the cooperation: it was made necessary by the political state of the country.’ Clarke goes on to stress the effusive demonstrations of pro- Hanoverian allegiance at the inaugural meeting of Grand Lodge — the drinking of loyal toasts to King George, the singing of loyal songs. And he rightly concludes that such an exaggerated display of patriotic fervour must be seen as an attempt to prove that Freemasons were not Jacobites — a display which would hardly have been necessary were there not some reason to suspect that they were.
Historians today tend to think of the Scottish rebellion of 1715 and the foundation of Grand Lodge in 1717 as two distinct events, separated by a full two years. In fact, however , the 1715 rebellion was not finally and completely suppressed until the execution of Lords Kenmuir and James Derwentwater in February 1716, and the plans for the amalgamation which formed Grand Lodge were made well before the event — during the previous summer or autumn of 1716. The Scottish rebellion and the foundation of Grand Lodge were not therefore separated by two years, but by a mere six to eight months. And there would appear , quite patently, to have been a causal connection between the two. It is as if the pro- Hanoverian establishment, envious of the network which Freemasonry provided for its Jacobite rivals, deliberately sought to foster a parallel network of its own — as if it sought to compete, very much in the enterprising free-market spirit of early Georgian England. Nor was Grand Lodge above co- opting material from its rivals in order to augment its appeal.
This is apparent in the vexed, complicated and controversial issue of Freemasonic ‘ degrees’ , or what might be called stages of initiation. Freemasonry today is divided into three ‘ Craft’ degrees and a number of ‘ optional’ ‘ higher degrees’ . The three ‘ Craft’ degrees — Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason — come under the jurisdiction of United Grand Lodge of England. The ‘ higher degrees’ do not. They come under the jurisdiction of other Freemasonic bodies, such as the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite Supreme Council or the Grand Chapter of the Royal Arch. Most English Freemasons today will work through the three degrees offered by Grand Lodge, then continue on to their choice among the various ‘ higher degrees’ — rather in the way that a student, graduating with a BA in English Literature from one university, might move to another university to work for a BA in French or German Literature. In the early to mid- eighteenth century, however , this was not permitted. For an English Freemason of the time, who did not want his loyalty to the crown impugned, only the degrees offered by Grand Lodge were available. The ‘ higher degrees’ , being an almost exclusively Jacobite preserve, were not; and the Freemasonic authorities offering such ‘ higher degrees’ were considered suspect at best, treasonous at worst. Argument still rages about the matter , but it is widely acknowledged today that what are now called ‘ higher degrees’ not only originated in Jacobite Freemasonry, but, in fact, had been there all along. In other words, they do not appear to have been later inventions, but to have been incorporated in a ‘ Store of Legend, Tradition and Symbolism of wide extent’ of which Grand Lodge, in 1717, selected only a portion. And, according to one Freemasonic histor ian:
. . . what our Jacobite Brethren did was to take still other portions of the same Store, adapting them in a manner which to them seemed perfectly justifiable to the service of that Cause which for them was Sacred . . . The Cause . . . has passed away, but, freed from all political associations, many of the Degrees remain.
In other words, the ‘ higher degrees’ seem to have involved aspects of Freemasonic r tual, tradition and history which were simply not known or available to Grand Lodge — or which would have been too politically volatile for Grand Lodge to accommodate, and which had therefore to be repudiated. After 1745, however , when the Stuarts had finally and definitively ceased to be a threat and the Hanoverian grip on the throne was secure, Grand Lodge, albeit grudgingly, began to recognise the ‘ higher degrees’ . And indeed, certain aspects of the ‘ higher degrees’ , purged now of any potentially controversial elements, were eventually appropriated and incorporated into extensions of Grand Lodge’ s own system. Out of this, which entailed a merger with a parallel and rival alternative Grand Lodge, there finally arose, in 1813, United Grand Lodge.
Most English Freemasonic history today has been written by scholars working under the auspices of United Grand Lodge. They present Jacobite Freemasonry and the proliferation of ‘ higher degrees’ as schismatic and heretical — deviations from the mainstream of which they themselves are representative. In fact, however , this would appear to be precisely the opposite of what actually occurred, with Jacobite Freemasonry apparently forming the original mainstream and Grand Lodge the deviation — which, by dint of historical circumstance and vicissitude, eventually became the mainstream itself . One is reminded of the origins of Christianity and the process whereby Pauline thought, originally a schism or heretical deviation from Jesus’s own teachings, supplanted those teachings and became the new or thodoxy — while Nazarean thought, the original repository of the teachings, was labelled a form of heresy.
Like Pauline thought, Grand Lodge seems to have begun as a deviation of the mainstream. Like Pauline thought, it displaced the mainstream and became the mainstream itself . But like Pauline thought, it did not always have things easy, and it continued to be suspect in the eyes of the secular authority it sought to appease. As a Masonic historian observes: ‘ to be a member of the Fraternity of Freemasons at that period was to invite the suspicion that one was also a Jacobite . . .’
The Influence of English Freemasonry
The Duke of Wharton, Grand Lodge’s Grand Master in 1722, did little to encourage either public or official confidence. Not only was he a vociferous Jacobite. Three years before, he had co- founded the f amous (or notorious) Hell Fire Club, which originally met in the Greyhound Tavern near St James. In this undertaking, he was joined by another figure soon to be prominent in Freemasonry, George Lee, Earl of Lichfield, whose father had died fighting for the Stuarts at the Boyne and whose mother , Charlotte Fitzroy, was an illegitimate daughter of Charles II. Lee himself was thus of Stuart blood and a cousin of two other illegitimate grandchildren of Charles II, James and Charles Radclyffe, successively Ear ls of Derwentwater . Not surprisingly, he, too, played an active role in Jacobite affair s. In 1716, his machinations had effected the escape of Charles Radclyffe and thirteen others from Newgate Prison, where they had been incarcerated for their part in the 1715 rebellion. James Radclyffe had already been executed.
Predictably enough, the authorities cracked down. In 1721, an edict was issued against ‘ certain scandlous clubs or societies’ . Quietly, though only temporarily, the Hell Fire Club was closed down. Aware of the suspicion it attracted, Grand Lodge f elt obliged to assure, or reassure, the government that it was ‘ safe’ . In 1722:
. . . a select Body of the Society of Free Masons waited on . . . the Lord Viscount Townsend [brother - in- law of Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister ] . . . to signify to his Lordship, that being obliged by their Constitutions, to hold a General Meeting now at Midsummer , according to annual Custom, they hoped the Administration would take no Umbrage at that Convocation, as they were all zealously affected to His Majesty’s Person and Government. His Lordship received this Intimation in a very affable Manner , telling them he believed they need not be apprehensive of any Molestation from the Government, so long as they went on doing nothing more dangerous than the ancient secrets of the society; which must be of a very harmless Nature, because, as much as Mankind love Mischief , no Body ever betray’d them.
And yet it was at this 1722 convocation – amidst charges of irregularity that Wharton managed to get himself elected Grand Master . Subsequently, he was accused of attempting to ‘ capture Freemasonry for the Jacobites’ . The f ollowing year , he was succeeded by the proHanoverian Earl of Dalkeith and left abruptly, ‘ without any ceremony’ . If there were ever any minutes for the period of his or his predecessors’ Grand Masterships, they disappeared. Officially, Grand Lodge’s minutes begin on 25 November 1723, under Dalkeith’s Grand Mastership. In September 1722, an ambitious if rather half - baked Jacobite plot was exposed – to foment a rising in London, capture the Tower and hold it until the rebels could be joined by an invasion force from France. Among the conspirators implicated in this plot was Dr John Arbuthnot, a prominent Freemason and former Royal Physician to Queen Anne. Arbuthnot’s closest friends included a number of other distinguished Freemasons, among them Pope and Swift – who, though not involved in the plan, suffered some degree of stigma by association. The September plot undid much of the credibility Grand Lodge had endeavoured to establish for itself earlier in the year and dictated the need for fresh assurances.
In 1723, as if to allay once and for all any suspicion of subversive political activity, there appeared the famous Constitutions of James Anderson. Anderson, a minister of the Scots Church in St James and chaplain to the staunchly pro- Hanoverian Earl of Buchan, was a member of the immensely influential Horn Lodge, which included such pillar s of the establishment as the Duke of Queensborough, the Duke of Richmond, Lord Paisley and, by 1725, Newton’ s associate, Joh Desaguliers. Such credentials and connections effectively placed Anderson above suspicion. In 1712, moreover , he had printed some virulent anti- Catholic sermons, extolling Queen Anne and invoking God:
. . . that he may disappoint the vain hopes of our common Adver saries by continuing the Protestant reformed Religion amongst us, and securing further the Protestant Succession to the Crown in the Line and House of Hanover . . .
Later , in 1732, Anderson was to publish another pro- Hanoverian work, Royal Genealogies. Among its subscribers were the Earl of Dalkeith, the Earl of Abercorn, Colonel (later General) Sir John Ligonier , Colonel John Pitt, Dr John Arbuthnot, John Desaguliers and Sir Robert Walpole.
Anderson’s Constitutions became, in effect, the Bible for English Freemasonry. It enunciates what were to become some of the now familiar and basic tenets of Grand Lodge. The first article, in its sheer vagueness, remains to this day a point of debate, interpretation and contention. In the past, Freemasons had been obliged to declare their allegiance to God and the Church of England, but, Anderson wr ites, ‘ tis now thought more expedient only to oblige them to that Religion to which all men agree, leaving their par ticular opinions to themselves . . .’ The second article states explicitly: ‘ A Mason . . . is never to be concerned in Plots and Conspiracies against the Peace and Welfare of the Nation.’ According to the sixth article, no arguments pertaining to religion or politics are to be countenanced in the lodge.
The Constitutions did not entirely allay all suspicion. As late as 1737, a long letter appeared in two London journals, warning that Freemasonry was dangerous to English society because it was secretly serving the Stuart cause. Portentous allusions were made to certain ‘ special’ lodges which were privy to crucial information and withheld it from ordinary Freemasons. These lodges – which ‘ admit . . . even Jacobites, Nonjurors, and Papists’ – were said to be recruiting on behalf of Stuart interests. The anonymous author admitted that many Freemasons were loyal supporters of the Crown, but then asked: ‘ how can We be sure that those Persons who are known to be well- affected are let into all their mysteries?
By then, however , such paranoia had become the exception rather than the rule. With Ander son’ s Constitutions, Grand Lodge became respectable, an increasingly unimpugnable social and cultural adjunct of the Hanoveian regime which was to extend, eventually, up to the throne. In Scotland, in Ireland and on the Continent, other forms of Freemasonry, as we shall see, continued active. In England, however , Grand Lodge established something approaching a monopoly; and its political orthodoxy was never subsequently to be seriously in doubt. Indeed, so integrated had Grand Lodge become in English society that its nomenclature had already begun to permeate the language and remains with us to this day. Phrases such as ‘ standing four square’ , ‘ on the level’ , ‘ taking a man’ s measure’ , subjecting a person to ‘ the third degree’ and many others certainly derive from Freemasonry.
By the 1730s, Grand Lodge had begun to take a burgeoning interest in North America and to ‘ warrant’ lodges there—that is, to sponsor lodges as affiliates of itself . In 1732, for example, General James Oglethorpe founded the colony of Georgia and became, two years later , Master of Georgia’s first Freemasonic lodge. Oglethorpe’s own political allegiances were ambiguous. Most of his family were active Jacobites. Three of his sisters were particularly militant on behalf of the Stuart cause, as was his elder brother , exiled for seditious activity. In the 1745 rebellion, Oglethorpe himself commanded British troops in the field, and displayed such apathy in his operations that he was court-mar tialled. Although he was acquitted, there seems little doubt that he shared his family’s sympathies. Never theless, his venture in Georgia met with approval from both the Hanover ian regime and Grand Lodge. Not only did Grand Lodge warrant the lodge he had founded. It also ‘ strenuously recommended’ that its English membership take up ‘ a generous collection’ on behalf of their Georgia off shoot and affiliate.
Thus, by the third decade of the eighteenth century, English Freemasonry, under the auspices of Grand Lodge, had become a bastion of the social and cultural establishment, including, among its more illustrious brethren, Desagulier s, Pope, Swift, Hogarth and Boswell, as well as Charles de Lorraine, future husband of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. As we have seen, it had begun as a deviation from the mainstream, and then – so far at least as England was concerned – become the mainstream itself . In some respects, the Freemasonry of Grand Lodge may have been ‘ less complete’ than that of the Jacobites, less privy to ancient secrets, less heir to original traditions. And yet despite all this, or perhaps precisely because of it, the Freemasonry of Grand Lodge performed a social and cultural function that its rivals did not.
Grand Lodge suffused the whole of English society and inculcated its values into the very fabric of English thought. Insisting on a universal brotherhood which transcended national frontiers, English Freemasonry was to exert a profound influence on the great reformers of the eighteenth century – on David Hume, for example, on Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu and Rousseau in France, on their disciples in what was to become the United States. It is to Grand Lodge, and to the general philosophical climate fostered by it, that much of what is best in English history of the age can be ascribed. Under the aegis of Grand Lodge, the entire caste system in England became less rigid, more flexible, than anywhere else on the Continent. ‘ Upward mobility’ , to use the jargon of sociologists, became increasingly possible. Structures against religious and political prejudice served to encourage not just tolerance, but also the kind of egalitarian spir it that so impressed visitors from abroad: Voltaire, for example, later a Freemason himself , was so enthused by English society that he extolled it as the model to which all European civilisation should aspire. Anti- Semitism became more discredited in England than anywhere else in Europe, with Jews not only becoming Freemasons, but also gaining an access hither to denied them to social, political and public life. The burgeoning middle class was given room and latitude to manoeuvre and expand in a way that it could not elsewhere, and hence to catapult Britain to the forefront of commercial and industrial progress. Charitable works, including the often stressed solicitude for widows and orphans, disseminated a new ideal of civicresponsibility and paved the way for many subsequent welfare programmes. One might even argue that the solidarity of the lodge, together with its invocation of the medieval guilds, anticipated many of the features of later trade unionism. And finally, the process whereby masters and grand masters were elected implanted in English thinking a healthy distinction, soon to bear fruit in America, between the man and the office.
In all these respects, English Freemasonry constituted a kind of adhesive, holding together the fabric of eighteenth- century society. Among other things, it helped to provide a more temperate climate than obtained on the Continent, where grievances were eventually to culminate first in the French Revolution, then in the upheavals of 1832 and 1848. As we shall see, this climate was to extend to the British colonies in North America and to play a crucial role in the foundation of the United States. Thus, the form of Freemasonry promulgated by Grand Lodge was to supplant its own or igins. In doing so, it was to emerge as one of the most genuinely important and influential phenomena of the century – and one whose significance has all too of ten been overlooked by orthodox historians.
\\\THE TEMPLE AND THE LODGE
MICHAEL BAIGENT AND RICHARD LEIGH
THREE
The Origins of Freemasonry
12
The Development of Grand
Lodge
It is difficult to say precisely how much Freemasonry, as it evolved in Scotland, owed to the old Templar heritage and Templar traditions. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, whatever link there may have been between them was long lost, and no new link had yet been forged. Freemasonry had not yet publicly attempted to claim a Templar pedigree for itself . And while Claverhouse and his brother are extremely likely to have been Freemasons, no documentation survives to confirm that they were. If a Templar cross was indeed passed from Claverhouse to his brother and thence to the Abbé Calmet, this may attest some species of Templar survival, but it constitutes no direct connection with Freemasonry. When the Templar mystique surfaced again, it was to do so primarily, as we shall see, in France. Freemasonry, in the mean time, had come to play a much more central role in English affairs.
Under William and Mary, Protestantism regained its supremacy in England. By an act of Parliament which obtains to the present day, all Catholics were precluded from the throne, as was anyone married to a Catholic. Thus a repetition of the circumstances which had precipitated the 1688 revolution was effectively forestalled.
In 1702, eight years after his wife, William of Orange died. He was succeeded by Queen Anne, his sister - in- law and James II’s younger daughter . She, in turn, was succeeded in 1714 by George I, grandson of Elizabeth Stuart and Friedrich, Count Palatine of the Rhine. When George died in 1727, the throne passed to his son, George II, who reigned until 1760. For sixty years f ollowing William’s accession in 1688, the exiled Stuarts clung tenaciously to their dream of regaining the kingdom they had lost. The deposed James II died in 1701, to be succeeded by his son, James III, the so- called ‘ Old Pretender ’ . He in turn was succeeded as claimant by his son, the ‘ Young Pretender ’ , Charles Edward, ‘ Bonnie Prince Charlie’ . Under these three monarchs- in- exile, Jacobite circles on the Continent were to remain hotbeds of conspiracy and political intr igue. Nor were they inef f ectual. In 1708, a projected Stuart invasion of Scotland was mounted, supported by French troops and transported by French ships. England, with most of her troops committed to the War of the Spanish Succession, was ill- equipped to counter this threat, and the invasion would very likely have proved successful but for a combination of bad luck, Jacobite dithering and French apathy. In the event, the whole project foundered, but seven years later , in 1715, Scotland rose in a full- scale revolt under the Earl of Mar — who, as we have seen, was alleged to have succeeded Claverhouse as Grand Master of the latterday Templars. Also joining in the rebellion was Lord George Seton, Earl of Winton, whose title was for feited as a result and the earldom allowed to lapse, while he himself was condemned to death. In 1716, however , he escaped from the Tower of London and joined the exiled Stuart pretenders in France. He remained active in Jacobite affairs for the rest of his life, and in 1736 he became Master of an important Jacobite Masonic lodge in Rome. The revolt was put down, but only at considerable cost, and the exiled Stuarts were to remain a threat for another thirty years. Only after the invasion and full- scale military operations of 1745—6 was this threat at last to recede.
The 1688 revolution had introduced a number of modern, muchneeded reforms, including, and not least, a Bill of Rights. At the same time, however , British society had been grievously split. Nor was it simply a matter of those who supported the Stuarts fleeing the country en masse and leaving it entirely to their rivals. On the contrary, Stuart interests continued to be well represented in English affairs. Not all Stuart adherents were prepared to sanction force. Not all were prepared to defy Parliament. Many, despite their loyalties, were to prove conscientious civil servants under William and Mary, under Anne, under the Hanoverians. Such was the case, for example, with Sir Isaac Newton. But if William and Mary, and Anne, were reasonably popular monarchs, the Hanoverians were not; and there were many in England who publicly, unabashedly, without actually slipping into official treason, inveighed against the detested German sovereigns and agitated for a return of the Stuarts, whom they regarded as the country’s r ightful dynasty.
It was among these Stuart sympathisers that the modern- day Tory Party originated and came of age. The early eighteenth- century Tories had ar isen in the late 1670s out of the old, pre- Civil War cavalier class. Most were High Church Anglican or Anglo- Catholic. Most were landowners and sought to concentrate power in the hands of landed gentry. Virtually all of them esteemed the crown above Parliament and insisted on the Stuar ts’ hereditary r ight to the throne.
Their opponents, nicknamed Whigs, had also risen to prominence during the 1670s. The Whigs consisted mostly of the newly consolidated mercantile and professional classes, and were active in commerce, in industry, in finance and banking, in the army. They encouraged religious diversity and included many dissenters and free- thinkers. They extolled the power of Parliament over that of the crown. And, as Swift says, they ‘ preferred . . . the monied interest before the landed’ . 2 Subscribing, implicitly or explicitly, to the ‘ Puritan work ethic’ , they represented the triumphantly emergent middle class, whose leadership, first in the Commercial, then in the Industrial Revolution, was to determine the course of British history and establish money as supreme arbiter . They had no particular affection for the Hanoverians, but were prepared to tolerate the German rulers as a price of their own burgeoning success.
The fissures in British society were to be reflected in Freemasonry itself . According to extant records, Freemasonry, after the 1688 revolution, continued ostensibly as bef ore. Lodges continued not just to meet, but also to proliferate. It is likely that many older lodges, or the senior members of newer lodges, were pro- Stuart or Tory, but there is no evidence to suggest that Freemasonry, at this point, actually served as a vehicle for Jacobite espionage, conspiracy or propaganda. So far as possible, most lodges in England seem to have remained — or tried to remain — studiously aloof from politics. And inevitably, as more and more Whigs rose to prominence and assumed important positions in the country’s social and commercial affairs, they found their way into the lodge system, putting their own pro- Hanoverian stamp on to Freemasonry.
As we have seen, however , Freemasonry, from its very inception, had been inextricably linked with the Stuarts. Freemasons, during the seventeenth century, were not only required to ‘ be true to the Kinge’ , but also, and actively, to root out and inform against conspirators — thus becoming, in effect, part of the Stuarts’ administrative apparatus and machinery. Such allegiances ran deep. It is not surprising, therefore, that the main thrust of Freemasonry should have remained attached to the Stuart line, should have followed that line into exile and, from abroad, worked to further its interests in England. During the first third or so of the eighteenth century, Freemasonic lodges might be either Whig or Tory, Hanoverian or Jacobite; but it was the Tories in England and the Jacobites abroad who possessed more of the institution’s history and heritage. They constituted the mainstream, while other developments were but tributaries.
In England, prominent Freemasons like the Duke of Wharton were also professed Jacobites. Abroad, most of the Jacobite leaders – General James Keith, for example, the Earl of Winton (Alexander Seton), and the Earls of Derwentwater (first James, then his younger brother Charles, Radclyffe) — were not only Freemasons, but also instrumental in the dissemination of Freemasonry throughout Europe. After the suppression of the 1745 rebellion, a number of illustrious Freemasons were to be sentenced to death for their service to the Jacobite cause — Derwentwater , who had formerly been Grand Master of French Freemasonry, and the Earls of Kilmarnock and Cromarty, who had been Grand Masters of Scottish Freemasonry. Only the latter escaped execution at the Tower .
According to one histor ian:
There is no question but that the Jacobites had a crucial influence on the development of Freemasonry — to such an extent, indeed, that later witnesses went so far as to describe Freemasonry as a gigantic Jacobite conspiracy.
We would argue that the Jacobites did not just have ‘ a crucial influence on the development of Freemasonry’ . We would argue that they were, at least initially, its chief custodians and propagators. And when Grand Lodge — subsequently to become the primary repository of English Freemasonry — was created in 1717, it was created in large part as a Whig or Hanoverian attempt to break what had hither to been a virtual Jacobite monopoly.
The Centralisation of English Freemasonry
Grand Lodge of England was created on 24 June 1717 — St John’ s Day, the day formerly held sacred by the Templars. There were, initially, four London lodges which, in a manifest thrust towards centralisation, chose to amalgamate into one organisation and elect a Grand Lodge as a governing body. They quickly drew more lodges into their fold, and by 1723 the original four lodges had increased in number to fifty- two.
The usual explanation for the coalescence of Grand Lodge is astonishingly bland — or disingenuous. According to one writer , it ‘ came into being for the frankly social purpose of providing an occasion at which the members of a few London lodges could meet’ . One is also told that the period was one of general enthusiasm for clubs and societies, and that the dissemination and proliferation of English Freemasonry was a consequence of this enthusiasm. And yet there is no comparable movement towards centralisation among the various dining and drinking clubs of the time, or the burgeoning antiquarian, bibliographical and scientific societies. It is specifically in Freemasonry that the emphasis is not just on proliferation, but, even more crucially, on centralisation. Thus, for example, of the fifty- two lodges comprising Grand Lodge in 1723, at least twenty- six appear to have pre - date d Grand Lodge’ s foundation in 1717. Their entry into the historical record, in other words, results not from their proliferation, but from their preparedness to centralise.
According to J. R. Clarke, a Freemasonic historian writing in 1967, ‘ I think that in 1717 there was a much more serious reason f or the cooperation: it was made necessary by the political state of the country.’ Clarke goes on to stress the effusive demonstrations of pro- Hanoverian allegiance at the inaugural meeting of Grand Lodge — the drinking of loyal toasts to King George, the singing of loyal songs. And he rightly concludes that such an exaggerated display of patriotic fervour must be seen as an attempt to prove that Freemasons were not Jacobites — a display which would hardly have been necessary were there not some reason to suspect that they were.
Historians today tend to think of the Scottish rebellion of 1715 and the foundation of Grand Lodge in 1717 as two distinct events, separated by a full two years. In fact, however , the 1715 rebellion was not finally and completely suppressed until the execution of Lords Kenmuir and James Derwentwater in February 1716, and the plans for the amalgamation which formed Grand Lodge were made well before the event — during the previous summer or autumn of 1716. The Scottish rebellion and the foundation of Grand Lodge were not therefore separated by two years, but by a mere six to eight months. And there would appear , quite patently, to have been a causal connection between the two. It is as if the pro- Hanoverian establishment, envious of the network which Freemasonry provided for its Jacobite rivals, deliberately sought to foster a parallel network of its own — as if it sought to compete, very much in the enterprising free-market spirit of early Georgian England. Nor was Grand Lodge above co- opting material from its rivals in order to augment its appeal.
This is apparent in the vexed, complicated and controversial issue of Freemasonic ‘ degrees’ , or what might be called stages of initiation. Freemasonry today is divided into three ‘ Craft’ degrees and a number of ‘ optional’ ‘ higher degrees’ . The three ‘ Craft’ degrees — Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft and Master Mason — come under the jurisdiction of United Grand Lodge of England. The ‘ higher degrees’ do not. They come under the jurisdiction of other Freemasonic bodies, such as the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite Supreme Council or the Grand Chapter of the Royal Arch. Most English Freemasons today will work through the three degrees offered by Grand Lodge, then continue on to their choice among the various ‘ higher degrees’ — rather in the way that a student, graduating with a BA in English Literature from one university, might move to another university to work for a BA in French or German Literature. In the early to mid- eighteenth century, however , this was not permitted. For an English Freemason of the time, who did not want his loyalty to the crown impugned, only the degrees offered by Grand Lodge were available. The ‘ higher degrees’ , being an almost exclusively Jacobite preserve, were not; and the Freemasonic authorities offering such ‘ higher degrees’ were considered suspect at best, treasonous at worst. Argument still rages about the matter , but it is widely acknowledged today that what are now called ‘ higher degrees’ not only originated in Jacobite Freemasonry, but, in fact, had been there all along. In other words, they do not appear to have been later inventions, but to have been incorporated in a ‘ Store of Legend, Tradition and Symbolism of wide extent’ of which Grand Lodge, in 1717, selected only a portion. And, according to one Freemasonic histor ian:
. . . what our Jacobite Brethren did was to take still other portions of the same Store, adapting them in a manner which to them seemed perfectly justifiable to the service of that Cause which for them was Sacred . . . The Cause . . . has passed away, but, freed from all political associations, many of the Degrees remain.
In other words, the ‘ higher degrees’ seem to have involved aspects of Freemasonic r tual, tradition and history which were simply not known or available to Grand Lodge — or which would have been too politically volatile for Grand Lodge to accommodate, and which had therefore to be repudiated. After 1745, however , when the Stuarts had finally and definitively ceased to be a threat and the Hanoverian grip on the throne was secure, Grand Lodge, albeit grudgingly, began to recognise the ‘ higher degrees’ . And indeed, certain aspects of the ‘ higher degrees’ , purged now of any potentially controversial elements, were eventually appropriated and incorporated into extensions of Grand Lodge’ s own system. Out of this, which entailed a merger with a parallel and rival alternative Grand Lodge, there finally arose, in 1813, United Grand Lodge.
Most English Freemasonic history today has been written by scholars working under the auspices of United Grand Lodge. They present Jacobite Freemasonry and the proliferation of ‘ higher degrees’ as schismatic and heretical — deviations from the mainstream of which they themselves are representative. In fact, however , this would appear to be precisely the opposite of what actually occurred, with Jacobite Freemasonry apparently forming the original mainstream and Grand Lodge the deviation — which, by dint of historical circumstance and vicissitude, eventually became the mainstream itself . One is reminded of the origins of Christianity and the process whereby Pauline thought, originally a schism or heretical deviation from Jesus’s own teachings, supplanted those teachings and became the new or thodoxy — while Nazarean thought, the original repository of the teachings, was labelled a form of heresy.
Like Pauline thought, Grand Lodge seems to have begun as a deviation of the mainstream. Like Pauline thought, it displaced the mainstream and became the mainstream itself . But like Pauline thought, it did not always have things easy, and it continued to be suspect in the eyes of the secular authority it sought to appease. As a Masonic historian observes: ‘ to be a member of the Fraternity of Freemasons at that period was to invite the suspicion that one was also a Jacobite . . .’
The Influence of English Freemasonry
The Duke of Wharton, Grand Lodge’s Grand Master in 1722, did little to encourage either public or official confidence. Not only was he a vociferous Jacobite. Three years before, he had co- founded the f amous (or notorious) Hell Fire Club, which originally met in the Greyhound Tavern near St James. In this undertaking, he was joined by another figure soon to be prominent in Freemasonry, George Lee, Earl of Lichfield, whose father had died fighting for the Stuarts at the Boyne and whose mother , Charlotte Fitzroy, was an illegitimate daughter of Charles II. Lee himself was thus of Stuart blood and a cousin of two other illegitimate grandchildren of Charles II, James and Charles Radclyffe, successively Ear ls of Derwentwater . Not surprisingly, he, too, played an active role in Jacobite affair s. In 1716, his machinations had effected the escape of Charles Radclyffe and thirteen others from Newgate Prison, where they had been incarcerated for their part in the 1715 rebellion. James Radclyffe had already been executed.
Predictably enough, the authorities cracked down. In 1721, an edict was issued against ‘ certain scandlous clubs or societies’ . Quietly, though only temporarily, the Hell Fire Club was closed down. Aware of the suspicion it attracted, Grand Lodge f elt obliged to assure, or reassure, the government that it was ‘ safe’ . In 1722:
. . . a select Body of the Society of Free Masons waited on . . . the Lord Viscount Townsend [brother - in- law of Robert Walpole, the Prime Minister ] . . . to signify to his Lordship, that being obliged by their Constitutions, to hold a General Meeting now at Midsummer , according to annual Custom, they hoped the Administration would take no Umbrage at that Convocation, as they were all zealously affected to His Majesty’s Person and Government. His Lordship received this Intimation in a very affable Manner , telling them he believed they need not be apprehensive of any Molestation from the Government, so long as they went on doing nothing more dangerous than the ancient secrets of the society; which must be of a very harmless Nature, because, as much as Mankind love Mischief , no Body ever betray’d them.
And yet it was at this 1722 convocation – amidst charges of irregularity that Wharton managed to get himself elected Grand Master . Subsequently, he was accused of attempting to ‘ capture Freemasonry for the Jacobites’ . The f ollowing year , he was succeeded by the proHanoverian Earl of Dalkeith and left abruptly, ‘ without any ceremony’ . If there were ever any minutes for the period of his or his predecessors’ Grand Masterships, they disappeared. Officially, Grand Lodge’s minutes begin on 25 November 1723, under Dalkeith’s Grand Mastership. In September 1722, an ambitious if rather half - baked Jacobite plot was exposed – to foment a rising in London, capture the Tower and hold it until the rebels could be joined by an invasion force from France. Among the conspirators implicated in this plot was Dr John Arbuthnot, a prominent Freemason and former Royal Physician to Queen Anne. Arbuthnot’s closest friends included a number of other distinguished Freemasons, among them Pope and Swift – who, though not involved in the plan, suffered some degree of stigma by association. The September plot undid much of the credibility Grand Lodge had endeavoured to establish for itself earlier in the year and dictated the need for fresh assurances.
In 1723, as if to allay once and for all any suspicion of subversive political activity, there appeared the famous Constitutions of James Anderson. Anderson, a minister of the Scots Church in St James and chaplain to the staunchly pro- Hanoverian Earl of Buchan, was a member of the immensely influential Horn Lodge, which included such pillar s of the establishment as the Duke of Queensborough, the Duke of Richmond, Lord Paisley and, by 1725, Newton’ s associate, Joh Desaguliers. Such credentials and connections effectively placed Anderson above suspicion. In 1712, moreover , he had printed some virulent anti- Catholic sermons, extolling Queen Anne and invoking God:
. . . that he may disappoint the vain hopes of our common Adver saries by continuing the Protestant reformed Religion amongst us, and securing further the Protestant Succession to the Crown in the Line and House of Hanover . . .
Later , in 1732, Anderson was to publish another pro- Hanoverian work, Royal Genealogies. Among its subscribers were the Earl of Dalkeith, the Earl of Abercorn, Colonel (later General) Sir John Ligonier , Colonel John Pitt, Dr John Arbuthnot, John Desaguliers and Sir Robert Walpole.
Anderson’s Constitutions became, in effect, the Bible for English Freemasonry. It enunciates what were to become some of the now familiar and basic tenets of Grand Lodge. The first article, in its sheer vagueness, remains to this day a point of debate, interpretation and contention. In the past, Freemasons had been obliged to declare their allegiance to God and the Church of England, but, Anderson wr ites, ‘ tis now thought more expedient only to oblige them to that Religion to which all men agree, leaving their par ticular opinions to themselves . . .’ The second article states explicitly: ‘ A Mason . . . is never to be concerned in Plots and Conspiracies against the Peace and Welfare of the Nation.’ According to the sixth article, no arguments pertaining to religion or politics are to be countenanced in the lodge.
The Constitutions did not entirely allay all suspicion. As late as 1737, a long letter appeared in two London journals, warning that Freemasonry was dangerous to English society because it was secretly serving the Stuart cause. Portentous allusions were made to certain ‘ special’ lodges which were privy to crucial information and withheld it from ordinary Freemasons. These lodges – which ‘ admit . . . even Jacobites, Nonjurors, and Papists’ – were said to be recruiting on behalf of Stuart interests. The anonymous author admitted that many Freemasons were loyal supporters of the Crown, but then asked: ‘ how can We be sure that those Persons who are known to be well- affected are let into all their mysteries?
By then, however , such paranoia had become the exception rather than the rule. With Ander son’ s Constitutions, Grand Lodge became respectable, an increasingly unimpugnable social and cultural adjunct of the Hanoveian regime which was to extend, eventually, up to the throne. In Scotland, in Ireland and on the Continent, other forms of Freemasonry, as we shall see, continued active. In England, however , Grand Lodge established something approaching a monopoly; and its political orthodoxy was never subsequently to be seriously in doubt. Indeed, so integrated had Grand Lodge become in English society that its nomenclature had already begun to permeate the language and remains with us to this day. Phrases such as ‘ standing four square’ , ‘ on the level’ , ‘ taking a man’ s measure’ , subjecting a person to ‘ the third degree’ and many others certainly derive from Freemasonry.
By the 1730s, Grand Lodge had begun to take a burgeoning interest in North America and to ‘ warrant’ lodges there—that is, to sponsor lodges as affiliates of itself . In 1732, for example, General James Oglethorpe founded the colony of Georgia and became, two years later , Master of Georgia’s first Freemasonic lodge. Oglethorpe’s own political allegiances were ambiguous. Most of his family were active Jacobites. Three of his sisters were particularly militant on behalf of the Stuart cause, as was his elder brother , exiled for seditious activity. In the 1745 rebellion, Oglethorpe himself commanded British troops in the field, and displayed such apathy in his operations that he was court-mar tialled. Although he was acquitted, there seems little doubt that he shared his family’s sympathies. Never theless, his venture in Georgia met with approval from both the Hanover ian regime and Grand Lodge. Not only did Grand Lodge warrant the lodge he had founded. It also ‘ strenuously recommended’ that its English membership take up ‘ a generous collection’ on behalf of their Georgia off shoot and affiliate.
Thus, by the third decade of the eighteenth century, English Freemasonry, under the auspices of Grand Lodge, had become a bastion of the social and cultural establishment, including, among its more illustrious brethren, Desagulier s, Pope, Swift, Hogarth and Boswell, as well as Charles de Lorraine, future husband of the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. As we have seen, it had begun as a deviation from the mainstream, and then – so far at least as England was concerned – become the mainstream itself . In some respects, the Freemasonry of Grand Lodge may have been ‘ less complete’ than that of the Jacobites, less privy to ancient secrets, less heir to original traditions. And yet despite all this, or perhaps precisely because of it, the Freemasonry of Grand Lodge performed a social and cultural function that its rivals did not.
Grand Lodge suffused the whole of English society and inculcated its values into the very fabric of English thought. Insisting on a universal brotherhood which transcended national frontiers, English Freemasonry was to exert a profound influence on the great reformers of the eighteenth century – on David Hume, for example, on Voltaire, Diderot, Montesquieu and Rousseau in France, on their disciples in what was to become the United States. It is to Grand Lodge, and to the general philosophical climate fostered by it, that much of what is best in English history of the age can be ascribed. Under the aegis of Grand Lodge, the entire caste system in England became less rigid, more flexible, than anywhere else on the Continent. ‘ Upward mobility’ , to use the jargon of sociologists, became increasingly possible. Structures against religious and political prejudice served to encourage not just tolerance, but also the kind of egalitarian spir it that so impressed visitors from abroad: Voltaire, for example, later a Freemason himself , was so enthused by English society that he extolled it as the model to which all European civilisation should aspire. Anti- Semitism became more discredited in England than anywhere else in Europe, with Jews not only becoming Freemasons, but also gaining an access hither to denied them to social, political and public life. The burgeoning middle class was given room and latitude to manoeuvre and expand in a way that it could not elsewhere, and hence to catapult Britain to the forefront of commercial and industrial progress. Charitable works, including the often stressed solicitude for widows and orphans, disseminated a new ideal of civicresponsibility and paved the way for many subsequent welfare programmes. One might even argue that the solidarity of the lodge, together with its invocation of the medieval guilds, anticipated many of the features of later trade unionism. And finally, the process whereby masters and grand masters were elected implanted in English thinking a healthy distinction, soon to bear fruit in America, between the man and the office.
In all these respects, English Freemasonry constituted a kind of adhesive, holding together the fabric of eighteenth- century society. Among other things, it helped to provide a more temperate climate than obtained on the Continent, where grievances were eventually to culminate first in the French Revolution, then in the upheavals of 1832 and 1848. As we shall see, this climate was to extend to the British colonies in North America and to play a crucial role in the foundation of the United States. Thus, the form of Freemasonry promulgated by Grand Lodge was to supplant its own or igins. In doing so, it was to emerge as one of the most genuinely important and influential phenomena of the century – and one whose significance has all too of ten been overlooked by orthodox historians.
Sabtu, 26 November 2016
THE TEMPLE & THE LODGE PART 7
THE TEMPLE AND THE LODGE
MICHAEL BAIGENT AND RICHARD LEIGH
TWO
Scotland and a Hidden Tradition
6
The Templar Legacy in Scotland
One of the fallacies of conventional scholarship is to insist on a rigorous and artificial distinction between ‘ history’ and ‘ myth’ . According to such a distinction, ‘ history’ is regarded as documented fact alone — data which can be subjected to an almost scientif ic scrutiny, which will stand up to assorted tests and prove thereby that something ‘ actually happened’ . ‛History’ , in this sense, consists of names, dates, battles, treaties, political movements, conferences, revolutions, social changes and other such ‘ objectively discernible’ phenomena. ‘ Myth’ , on the other hand, is dismissed as ir relevant or incidental to ‘ history’ . ‘ Myth’ is consigned to the realm of fantasy, to poetry and fiction. ‘ Myth’ is deemed to be the spurious embellishment or falsification of f act, a distortion of ‘ history’ , and something therefore to be ruthlessly excised. ‛History’ and ‘ myth’ must, it is believed, be prised apart bef ore the truth of the past can be revealed.
And yet, for the people who originally created what later ages might call ‘ myth’ , there was no such distinction. In his own age, and for centur ies after , Homer ’ s Odyssey, devoted to the probably fictitious adventures of one man, was deemed no less historically authoritative than the Iliad, devoted to a presumed ‘ actual’ occurrence, the Siege of Troy. Events in the Old Testament — the parting of the Red Sea, for instance, or God conferring on Moses the Tables of the Law — are held by many people today to be ‘ mythic’ ; but there are also many people, even today, who believe the same events actually to have occurred. In Celtic tradition, the sagas pertaining to, say, Cuchulain and the ‘ knights’ of the Red Branch were believed for centuries to be historically accurate; and even today, there is no way of knowing whether they are indeed so, whether they are greater or lesser embellishments of historical events, or whether they are wholly fictitious. To cite a more recent example, the ‘ Wild West’ of the nineteenth- century United States, as portrayed first by ‘ dime novels’ , then by Hollywood, is now generally recognised to be ‘ mythical’ . And yet Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Wild Bil Hickok, Doc Holliday and the Earp brother s did exist. The legendary gunfight at the OK Corral did actually take place, if not quite in the form usually supposed. Until very recently, the ‘ myths’ woven around such figures and such episodes were virtually inseparable from ‘ history’ . Thus, in the era of Prohibition, men such as Eliot Ness on the one hand, John Dillinger and ‘ Legs’ Diamond on the other , f ancied themselves to be reenacting an historically accurate Western drama of stalwart lawmen and romantic outlaws. And, in the process, they created a new ‘ history’ around which new ‛myths’ were to be woven.
According to the extent that they inflame the imagination and remain alive in a people’ s imaginative life, historical events and personages grade imperceptibly into myth. In cases such as King Arthur or Robin Hood, the myth has effectively subsumed whatever historical ‘ actuality’ there may once have been. In the case of Jeanne d’ Arc, historical ‘ actuality’ , though not eclipsed completely, has receded into the background, while the foreground is dominated by exaggeration, embellishment and pure invention. In more recent instances — Che Guevara, for example, John Kennedy or Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon or Elvis Presley — histor ical ‘ actuality’ can be discerned among the elements of myth, but cannot ultimately be separated from them; and it is precisely the elements of myth that make us interested in the historical ‘ actuality’ .
It can be argued — and has been argued — that all written or recorded history is essentially a form of myth. Any historical account is oriented towards the needs, attitudes and values of the time in which it is composed, not the time to which it refers. Any historical account is necessar ily selective, including certain elements, omitting other s. Any historical account, if only by virtue of its selectivity, emphasises certain f actors and neglects others. To this extent, it is biased; and to the extent that it is biased, it inevitably falsifies ‘ what actually happened’ . If modern media cannot agree on the interpretation of events that occurred only yesterday, the past is subject to far greater latitude of interpretation.
For such reasons as these, post- war novelists — f rom Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel Garcia Márquez in Latin America to Graham Swift, Peter Ackroyd and Desmond Hogan in England and Ireland — have insisted on a reassessment of what we mean by ‘ history’ . For such novelists, history consists not only of external and provable ‘ data’ , but also of the mental context, in which such data are embedded — and within which, in the hands of subsequent generations, they are interpreted. For such novelists, the only true ‘ history’ is the psychic life of a people, a culture, a civilisation — and this includes not only external data, but also the imaginative exaggerations, embellishments and interpretations of myth. Ivo Andrić, the Yugoslavian novelist who won the Nobel Prize in 1961, insists on the histor ian’ s need to recognise the under lying ‘ truth of lies’ . The ‘ lies’ of a people or a culture, Andrić maintains — the hyperbole, the exaggeration and embellishment, even the outright falsification and invention — are not purely gratuitous. On the contrary, they bear witness to underlying needs, underlying wants, underlying lacks, underlying dreams and over - compensations; and to that extent they are, in their very falsity, not just true, but also revealing and informative statements containing clues vital to under standing. And to the extent that they serve to crystallise a collective identity or self - definition, they create a new truth — or create something which becomes true.
A simple and all too dismally relevant example should suffice to illustrate the kind of process Andrić describes — the process whereby ‘ truth’ and ‘ lies’ , ‘ history’ and ‘ myth’ become entwined so as to create a new historical actuality. In 1688, the Protestant citizens of Londonderry, more out of panic than genuine necessity, shut and barred the city’ s gates against a contingent of Catholic troops dispatched by James II to garrison the place. This rebellious act produced a predictable reaction on the part of the king; and without either side really having wanted it or intended it, Londonderry f ound itself besieged. In the sweep of European history, the Siege of Londonderry was a squalid little affair , trivial by comparison with the military operations which, within a decade or so, would be conducted on the Continent. It was also inconsequential, resolving nothing, determining nothing. It was dictated by no military necessity, created no new military necessities, and was not, in any strict military sense, decisive. But on a less tangible level, it was indeed decisive. It shaped and created attitudes, values, orientations. And those attitudes, values, or ientations subsequently translated themselves into events.
In reaction not to what ‘ actually happened’ at Londonderry, but to what was believed to have happened, Protestant and Catholic moulds of thought in Ireland congealed. It was in strict accordance with these moulds of thought that the two communities proceeded to act. These actions were to determine the course of Irish affairs for the next century. And when, in 1798, Catholic Ireland rose in revolt, the conduct and course of that revolt were conditioned not by the events of the siege a hundred year s before, but by the myths that surrounded those events. Myth thus generated new history. And history — in this case, the 1798 rebellion — generated new myths of its own. These new myths, in their turn, precipitated fresh developments in so- called history, which, also in their turn, fostered f resh myths. The culmination of the process is Nor thern Ireland today, where the real clash is not so much a clash of religions as a clash of conflicting myths, of conflicting interpretations of history.
The Battle of Blenheim (1704, a mere fifteen year s af ter the Siege of Londonderry) was a genuinely major battle. It was also decisive. It altered the balance of power in Europe and radically transformed the course of European history. But Blenheim, today, lives in people’ s minds primarily as a stately home in Oxfordshire which also happened to be Churchill’ s birthplace. The Siege of Londonderry, on the other hand, and the 1798 rebellion, and all the other half -mythic and half – historical milestones of Irish history, have been bundled wholesale into the present, where they are regularly celebrated, commemorated, reenacted, ritualised — and where, in consequence, they are still able to shape attitudes and values, determine tribal identity and polarise communities. Such is the power of myth. And such is the inseparability of myth from what we call history.
History consists not only of f acts and events. It also consists of the relationships between facts and events and the interpretation, of ten imaginative, of such relationships. In any such act of interpretation, a mythic element necessarily comes into play. Myth is not thus distinct f rom history. On the contrary, it is an inseparable part of history.
Exploitation of the Templar Myth
From their very inception, the Templar s mantled themselves in myth, capitalised on myth, exploited myth. The sheer obscur ity and mystery surrounding their origins enabled them to surround themselves with an equally potent mystique. This mystique was accentuated by the loyal patronage not only of leading nobles, but also of romanciers such as Wolfram von Eschenbach and Church luminaries such as Saint Bernard. It was easy enough for the Templars, in the minds of their contemporaries, to become ‘ legends in their own lif etime’ , and they did nothing to discourage the process whereby they became so. On the contrary, they of ten actively encouraged it. Among biblical texts, they constantly invoked Joshua and Maccabees, promoting themselves as latterday avatars of the army that toppled the walls of Jericho, the army that nearly defeated Rome in the years just pr ior to the Christian era. They encouraged the popular image of themselves as being in some way associated with the Grail Romances, as ‘ guardians’ of that mysterious object or entity known as the Holy Grail.
Amidst the mystique sur rounding the Order of the Temple, a number of echoes and images thus became fused. Joshua’ s army, the Maccabees, the Grail knights merged with yet other historical and/or legendary antecedents — the peers of Charlemagne, the Arthurian Knights of the Round Table and, especially in the British Isles, the Red Branch of Ulster . Nor was martial prowess the only vir tue which the mystique sur rounding the Temple conf er red on them. The Templars appear in The Perlesvaus not just as military men, but also as high mystical initiates. This is indicative, for the Templar s were only too eager to rein orce the popular image of themselves as magi, as wizards or sorcerers, as necromancer s, as alchemists, as sages privy to lofty arcane secrets. And indeed, it was precisely this image that rebounded upon them and provided their enemies with the means of their destruction.
Yet even in the Order ’ s demise, the myth-making process remained active and inseparable from historical actuality. Did Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master , as he was being burned alive over a slow f ire, really pronounce a curse on the Pope and the French king, order ing both to join him bef ore God’ s seat within the year? Whether he did or not, both, within the year , died, in distinctly suspicious circumstances. It is easy enough today to ascribe their deaths to refugee knights or sympathiser s drawing on the Order ’ s expertise in poisons; but the medieval mind was only too happy to see some more occult power at work. The French monarchy began to regard itself as accursed, with Jacques de Molay’ s malediction hanging over it like a sword of Damocles. And that malediction was to remain associated with the French throne regardless of changes of dynasty. Thus, in 1793, when Louis XVI was guillotined, another historical event became entangled with myth and legend: a French Freemason is alleged to have leaped up on to the scaffold, dipped his hand in the king’ s blood, flicked it out over the crowd and cr ied, ‘ Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged!’
In their lifetime, then, the Templar s cloaked themselves in legend and myth. In their demise, they spawned new legends, new myths, which were then translated by other people into ‘ historical fact’ . As we shall see, one particularly potent such translation was to be Freemasonry. But there were other , ear lier manifestations of the phenomenon — manifestations on which Freemasonry itself was to draw and in which it was itself rooted. Indeed, scarcely had the Order of the Temple been destroyed than it arose again, phoenix- like, from the flames of its own pyre, to assume a new mythic guise.
Within a quarter of a century of the Temple’ s dissolution, a spate of neo- Templar order s began to appear — and would continue to do so for centuries afterwards. Thus, for example, in 1348, Edward III of England created the Order of the Garter , consisting of twenty- six knights divided into two groups of thir teen each. The Garter , of course, continues to the present day, and is the world’ s premier order of chivalry. In France in 1352, Jean II created an almost identical institution, the Order of the Star . It was rather more short- lived than the Garter , however , its entire member ship being annihilated in 1356 at the Battle of Poitiers. In 1430, Philip, Duke of Burgundy, created the Order of the Golden Fleece. In 1469, Louis XI of France created the Order of St Michael. Its membership was to include such individuals as Claude de Guise, Char les (Connétable) de Bourbon, François de Lor raine, Federico de Gonzaga and Louis de Nevers — as well as commander s and officers of an institution soon to f igure prominently in our story, the Scots Guard.
Such orders were, of course, much smaller in number than the Templars, and much less consequential. They never exer ted any notable histor ical inf luence. They had no land, no preceptories, no holdings of any kind and no revenue. They lacked autonomy, being attached to the person of one or another potentate or sovereign. Although composed initially of fighting men, they were not, strictly speaking, military. They provided no military training, for example; they were organised around no military hierarchy; they did not function as distinct military units or formations, either on or off the battlefield. Ultimately, they were affairs of prestige rather than of real power , vehicles for royal patronage, the domain of courtiers; and their military accoutrements and nomenclature soon became as metaphor ical as those of , say, the Salvation Army. But in their inception, in their rites and rituals, in the mystique they sought to arrogate f or themselves, they looked to the Temple as a model.
This particular legacy of the Temple was more heraldic than anything else, but there was another legacy which not only transformed the face of European Catholicism, but projected it across the sea — as far westwards as America, as far eastwards as Japan. In 1540, a former military man named Ignatius Loyola, mortified by the advances of Protestantism, resur rected the or iginal Templar ideal of the warrior monk, the soldier of Christ, and created his own such soldiery. Unlike the Templar s, however , Loyola’ s soldiery would crusade not with the sword (though perfectly prepared to let other s wield it on their behalf ), but with the word.
Thus was born what Loyola called the Company of Jesus — until the Pope, recoiling f rom the explicit military connotations of ‘ Company’ , insisted it be changed to ‘ Society’ . In their martial structure andorganisation, in their far flung network of ‛provinces’ , in their rigid discipline, the Jesuits were, by Loyola’ s own admission, modelled on the Templars. Indeed, they often acted as military advisors and ordnance exper ts, as well as high- level diplomats and ambassadors. Like the Templars, the Jesuits were nominally subject only to the Church; but like the Templars, they of ten became a law unto themselves. In 1773, in circumstances recalling the suppression of the Temple 461 years before, Pope Clement XIV, ‘ on secret grounds’ , suppressed the Jesuits. Subsequently, of course, in 1814, they were resurrected. But even today, the Jesuits are in many respects a self - contained institution, and not infrequently at odds with the Papacy to which they supposedly owe allegiance.
The chivalric orders and the Jesuits were, in different ways, heir s of the Temple who eventually forgot, or deliberately repudiated, their origin. In Scotland, however , a more direct and more tangible heritage of the Templar s was to survive, duly acknowledged as such and transmitted by the more concrete channels of soil and family bloodlines. In the first place, collusion, cover - up and wheeling and dealing ensured that the Order ’ s holdings in Scotland were kept intact, retained as a separate unity and administered, at least for a time, by ‘ defrocked’ Templar s themselves — and subsequently by some off shoot of them. Templar property in Scotland was not to be dismembered and parcelled out, as it was elsewhere. On the contrary, it was to be held in trust, as if awaiting restoration to its original owners.
Then, too, there was to emerge in Scotland a network of inter locked families who were to provide both a repository and a conduit. To the extent that an authentic Templar tradition survived in Scotland, it survived under the auspices of these families and that of the military formation they sponsored, the Scots Guard, perhaps the most genuinely neo- Templar institution of all. Through the Scots Guard, moreover , and through the families who staffed the Guard with their sons, a new energy was to be imported to Scotland from the Continent. This energy — expressed originally through a spectrum of ‘ esoter ic’ disciplines, as well as through stonemasonry and architecture — would fuse with the residue of Templar tradition and breathe fresh life into it. And thus, from the pyres of the old religious-military Order , modern Freemasonry was to be born.
The Templar Lands
In 1312, a month after the official papal dissolution of the Temple, all the lands, preceptories and other installations owned by the Order were granted to their former allies and rivals, the Knights Hospitaller of St John. In the Holy Land, the Hospitaller s had been quite as corrupt as the Templars, quite as prone to powerbroking, intrigue, factional strife and pursuit of their own interests at the expense of the crusader kingdom’ s welfare. Like the Templars and, by the mid- thirteenth century, the Teutonic Knights, the Hospitaller s were also involved in banking, in commerce, in a broad spectrum of other activities extending far beyond their original brief of warrior -monks. In Europe, however , and especially in their relations with the Papacy, the Hospitaller s kept their noses scrupulously clean. They remained proof against any ‛infection’ by heresy, any transgression that might have rendered them subject to persecution. Neither did they pose a threat to any European monarch.
Undoubtedly, the Hospitaller s were as arrogant and autocratic as the Templar s and the Teutonic Knights. But their hospital work, and their unswerving loyalty to Rome, more than counteracted such adverse impressions as they made. In consequence, they enjoyed a respectability in both papal and public minds that r ival order s did not. Indeed, in the years prior to 1307, there was even talk of ‘ purifying’ the Templar s by amalgamating them with the Hospitaller s into a single unif ied order . Between 1307 and 1314, while the Templar s’ trials were in progress, the Teutonic Knights incur red similar accusations and, fearing similar prosecution, moved their headquarters from Venice to Marienburg, in what is now Poland, far beyond the reach of both papal and secular authority. The Hospitallers remained felicitously placed to benefit from the misfortunes of both their rivals.
Never theless, the Hospitallers’ acquisition of Templar holdings was not as simple or straightforward as one might think. In some cases, for example, as many as thirty years passed before they actually obtained the property conferred upon them; and by then, of course, the property in question had generally been run down, ruined, made worthless and unviable without investment of considerable capital expenditure. On two occasions — in 1324 and again in 1334 — the Priors of St John resorted to the English Parliament to confirm their right to Templar lands. 1 Even so, it was not until 1340 that they obtained the title to the London Temple. On a number of occasions, too, the Hospitallers f ound themselves in conf lict with secular lords — men who, rather than see it pass into the hands of St John, sought to reclaim property conferred on the Temple by their forebear s a century or two before. In many instances, such secular magnates were, if not powerful enough to win the argument, at least able to prolong it through litigation.
Such was the situation in England. In Scotland, matters were even more confused, and often deliberately concealed as well. Perhaps the strongest indication of developments in Scotland lies not in what was said, but in what was left unsaid. Thus, six months after Bannockburn, Bruce issued a char ter to the Hospitallers confirming all their possessions in the kingdom. 2 No mention whatever was made of any Templar lands or holdings, even though such lands and holdings should have passed into Hospitaller hands two years before. The Hospitallers were simply confirmed in what they already possessed. Nor , interestingly enough, did the Hospitallers, or the crown, or the secular lords, attempt to lay claim to Templar property. In fact, with but one exception, there is no record of anyone obtaining Templar property, or even endeavour ing to obtain it. For the duration of Bruce’ s lifetime, such proper ty might never have existed, so complete was the silence surrounding it.
In 1338, nine years after Bruce’ s death, the Grand Master of the Hospitaller s requested a list of all Temple proper ties acquired by his Order everywhere in the world. Every regional or national Prior was instructed to submit an inventory of Templar holdings in his par ticular sphere of author ity. During the last century, a document, quoting the response of the English Prior , was found in the library of the Order of St John at Valetta. Af ter itemising a substantial number of Templar possessions acquired by the Hospitaller s in England, the manuscript says:
Of the land, buildings . . . churches and all other possessions which were Templar in Scotland the reply was nothing of any value . . . all were destroyed, burnt and reduced to nothing because of the enduring wars which had continued over many years. 3
As of 1338, then, the Hospitallers had still not laid hands on Templar properties in Scotland. On the other hand, ir regularities of some sort were clearly taking place. For if Templar properties did not figure in any transactions of the Hospitallers, the Scottish crown or secular nobles, some of them we re never theless sold — without being entered in any official records. Thus, for example, before 1329 an officer of the Order of St John, one Rodulph Lindsay, is repor ted to have disposed of the Templar lands of Temple Liston. 4 Yet the transaction is not mentioned in any of the Order ’ s documents or archives. On what authority, then, was Lindsay acting? For whom was he functioning as agent?
Lindsay’ s transaction is only one of a number which have blurred, f or later histor ians, the whole question of Templar lands in Scotland during the period in question. As a result, no clear picture of any sort can be obtained:
It is . . . unknown how the Templar s’ properties were handed over to the Hospitallers; it seems to have been a ragged piecemeal process, and there is evidence that well into the f our teenth century the Hospitallers were still having difficulty getting possession of former Templar properties.5
The same writer concludes: ‘ There is no period in the history of the military orders in Scotland more obscure than the four teenth century.’6
Notwithstanding the obscurities, a certain pattern does emerge: after 1338, the Hospitallers began to acquire Templar holdings in Scotland, albeit in a decidedly equivocal way; pr ior to 1338, however , no Templar property was passed on, yet with the exception noted above there is no record anywhere of anything else happening to it. What is more, the Templar lands, when the Hospitallers did eventually receive them, were kept separate. They were not parcelled out, integrated with the Hospitaller s’ other holdings and administered accordingly. On the contrary, they enjoyed a special status and were administered as a self contained unit in themselves. They were handled, in fact, not as if St John actually owned them, but were simply, in the capacity of agents or manager s, holding them in trust. As late as the end of the sixteenth century, no fewer than 519 sites in Scotland were listed by the Hospitallers as ‘ Terrae Templariae’ — part, that is, of the self – contained and separately administered Templar patrimony! 7
In fact, the disposition of Templar land in Scotland involved something quite extraordinary — something which has been almost entirely neglected by historians, and which enabled the Temple to sustain at least some degree of , as it were, posthumous existence. For more than two centuries in Scotland — f rom the beginning of the fourteenth to the middle of the sixteenth — the Templars, it appears, were actually me rg e d with the Hospitallers. Thus, during the period in question, there are frequent references to a single joint Order — the ‘ Order of the Knights of St John and the Temple’ .8
It is a bizar re situation, and it raises some tantalising questions. Did the Hospitallers anticipate some future resurrection of the Temple and under take, perhaps by some secret agreement, to hold Templar property in trust? Or could it be that the Order of St John in Scotland had taken into its ranks enough fugitive Templar s to administer their own lands?
Both answers are possible; they are not mutually exclusive. Whatever the truth of the matter , it is clear that Templar lands enjoyed a unique status which has not been officially defined in the historical record. And they continued to do so. In 1346, a Master of the Hospitallers, Alexander de Seton, presided over the regular legal session at the former Templar preceptory of Balantrodoch. By this time, the site had, finally, passed into the hands of the Hospitallers. Never theless, it was still being administered separately, possessing a status of its own as part of the Templar patr imony. Two of the charters witnessed by Alexander de Seton survive. 9 They indicate that despite the date, thirty- four years after the suppression of the Templars, ‘ Temple Courts’ were still being held.
‘ Temple Courts’ of the same kind, retaining the same name, were to continue sitting for a good two centuries. Once again, we are confronted with evidence that the Order of St John, though given authority over Templar proper ties in Scotland, was, f or reasons never explicitly stated, unable legally to assimilate them. Once again, we are confronted with the suggestion of an invisible Templar presence looming in the background, waiting f or an oppor tunity to reassert itself and legally reclaim its her itage. And all of Scotland — the monarchy, the wealthy landowner s, the Order of St John itself — seems to have colluded in the veiled design.
The Elusive Knight — David Seton
Early in the nineteenth century, a noted genealogical lawyer and antiquarian named James Maidment discovered a chartulary — a roll or bound volume of land deeds — f or ‘ Ter rae Templariae’ within the Order of St John between 1581 and 1596. In addition to the two known preceptor ies at Balantrodoch and Maryculter , this document listed three others — at Auldlisten, Denny and Thankerton. 10 It also listed more than 500 other Templar properties, from crofts and fields, flourmills and farms, to castles and four entire townships. Spurred by his discovery, Maidment under took further research. His final tabulation, transcribed in a manuscript now housed in the National Library of Scotland, lists and names specifically no f ewer than 579 Templar holdings! 11
What had happened to this land? How had it been disposed of , and why had records pertaining to it all but vanished from the historical chronicle? At least some answer s to these questions can be found in a family which was among the most important and influential in Scotland during Bruce’ s time. Their name was Seton.
As we have seen, Sir Christopher Seton was married to Bruce’ s sister . He was present at Bruce’ s murder of John Comyn and himself killed Comyn’s uncle when the latter attempted to intervene. He was also present at Bruce’ s coronation at Scone in 1306. Subsequently, at the Battle of Methven, he was captured and, on Edward I’ s order s, executed. A similar fate befell his brother , Sir John Seton. Both, in fact, died alongside Bruce’ s brother , Neil. In 1320, Christopher Seton’ s son, Alexander , along with representatives of such other eminent Scottish families as the Sinclair s, signed the Declaration of Arbroath.
For another four hundred years, the Setons were to remain prominent in Scottish affairs and Scottish nationalist activities. It is not therefore surprising, nor even particularly vain, that yet another Seton, George, in 1896, should under take a comprehensive chronicle of his forebears. In this monumental volume, A History of the Family of Seton, the author lists numerous of his ancestors bearing titles ranging from the inconsequential to the illustrious. He also lists numerous other Setons who do not figure in standard noble genealogies. Some of them are humble artisans and burghers. Among this entangled forest of family trees, there is one particularly enigmatic and relevant entry:
c.1560. When the Knights- Templar s were deprived of their patrimonial interest through the instrumentality of their Grand-Master Sir James Sandilands, they drew off in a body, with David Seton, Grand Prior of Scotland (nephew of Lord Seton?), at their head. This transaction is alluded to in a cur ious satir ical poem of that per iod, entitled:
Haly kirk and her theeves
Fye upon the traitor then, Quhas has brocht us to sic pass, Greedie als the knave Judas!
Fye upon the chur le quhat solde Halyer the for heavie golde; Bot the tempel f elt na loss, Quhan David Setoune bare the crosse.
David Seton died abroad in 1581 and is said to have been bur ied in the church of the Scotch Convent at Ratisbon [now Regensburg, near Nuremburg]. 12
It is a tantalising fragment, alluding explicitly to the Temple. It becomes even more tantalising by virtue of its date. Two and a half centuries after the Templars were officially suppressed, the poem suggests, they were still fully operational in Scotland, and undergoing a f resh cr isis. But who, precisely, was David Seton? And who, for that matter , was Sir James Sandilands?
The latter , at least, is easy enough to trace. James Sandilands, f ir st Baron Torphichen, was born around 1510, the second son of landed gentry in Midlothian. Sandilands’ s father was a friend of John Knox, who, af ter his return to Scotland from Geneva in 1555, resided on the f amily’ s estate at Calder . Despite his father ’ s association with a Protestant reformer , the young James Sandilands entered the Order of St John some time shortly before 1537. In 1540, he requested from James V a saf e conduct to travel to Malta and obtain there, from the Grand Master , official confirmation of his right to succeed to the Preceptorship of Torphichen on the death of its sitting incumbent, Walter Lindsay. Sandilands’ s r ight to succeed Lindsay was duly confirmed by the Grand Master of the Hospitaller s, Juan d’ Omedes, in 1541. Returning home from Malta, the ambitious young man stopped in Rome to have his newly promised sinecure ratified by the Pope.
Five years later , in 1546, Walter Lindsay died. In 1547, the Master in Malta officially recognised Sandilands as Prior of Torphichen. In the Scottish Parliament, he became known as Lord St John and sat on the Privy Council. By 1557, he was back in Malta, engaged in a prolonged and evidently rather silly dispute with a putative relative, also a member of the Order , over a question of certifiable nobility. To the discredit of both men, the argument culminated in a public brawl, and the putative relative was imprisoned. 13 In 1558, Sandilands returned to Scotland. Here, along with his f ather , he supported the Reformation and actively opposed the Queen Regent, Marrie de Guise — elder sister of François, Duc de Guise, and Charles, Cardinal de Lorraine — who, in 1538, had married James V.
It must have seemed puzzling at first how and why Sandilands could support Protestant reform against a staunchly Catholic ruler , while still remaining a member in good standing of a Catholic military order . He contrived, nevertheless, to accommodate these conflicting allegiances, and his ulterior motives were soon to become outrageously clear . In 1560, by act of the Scottish Parliament, the Pope’ s authority in the country was abolished, and the Order of St John’ s rights to the ‘ Precepterie of Torphephen [sic] Fratibus Hospitalis Hierosolimitani, Militibus Temple Solomonis’ were annulled. 14 As Prior of St John, Sandilands was thus obliged to turn over to the crown the properties he administered for the Order . He did not object. Instead, in 1564, he presented himself to the new monarch, Mary Queen of Scots, as:
. . . present possessor of the Lordship and Preceptories of Torphephen [sic] which was never subject to any Chapter or Convent whatsomever , except only the Knights of Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon. 15
On payment of a lump sum of 10,000 crowns plus an annual rent, Sandilands proceeded to negotiate f or himself a perpetual leasehold on the properties he had previously administered f or the Hospitallers. As part of the transaction, he also obtained the hereditary title of Baron Torphichen.
With an entrepreneurial spirit that any modern yuppie might envy, Sandilands thus effectively swindled the Hospitallers, illicitly disposing of their lands for his own advantage and profiting very handsomely from the deal. It is almost certainly to this affair , or to some aspect of it, that the poem quoted above refers — for the holdings Sandilands disposed of were not just Hospitaller holdings, but also par t of the Templar patrimony.
In 1567, Sandilands attended the coronation of James VI, subsequently James I of England. In 1579 he died. His heir was his great- nephew, born in 1574, also named James Sandilands, who became Second Baron Torphichen. But the young man soon found himself financially pressed, and proceeded to sell off the lands he had inherited. By 1604, they had passed into the hands of one Robert Williamson, who, eleven year s later , sold them to Thomas, Lord Binning, subsequently Earl of Haddington. They then passed through a number of hands until at last, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, those remaining were purchased by James Maidment.
If Sir James Sandilands is relatively easy to trace and document, David Seton is altogether more elusive. Not only is there much question about who precisely he was; there is even some question about whether he ever actually existed. 16 The only evidence of his existence is the fragment of the poem quoted above, which prompted George Seton to accord him a perplexed footnote in the 1896 family genealogy. And yet scholar s have taken the poem seriously enough to accept it as testimony to something which, it would appear , both history and human agencies have conspired to conceal.
As we have seen, the Seton f amily were among the most distinguished and influential in Scottish history, and were to continue as such for another three centur ies. What is not clear is where precisely the myster ious David Seton f its into their family tree. The genealogist of 1896 suggests, plausibly enough, that he was the grandson of George, Sixth Lord Seton, who succeeded to the title in 1513 and died in 1549. 17
Sandilands, as we have noted, was hostile to Marie de Guise and her marriage to James V. He opposed the dynastic alliance linking the Stuarts with the continental house of Lorraine and its cadet branch, the house of Guise. George Seton was in the opposite camp. In 1527, he had married a certain Elizabeth Hay and had two sons by her , the elder of whom succeeded to the title and became the Seventh Lord Seton, a close friend of Mary Queen of Scots. But in 1539, George Seton married f or a second time. His new br ide was Marie du Plessis, a member of the entourage who had come to Scotland with Marie de Guise; and Seton’ s wedding to her thus placed him in intimate association with the royal court. By Marie du Plessis, Seton had three more children, Robert, James and Mary. Mary Seton was to become a maid of honour to Mary Queen of Scots, and was to go down in ballad and legend as one of ‘ the three Marys’ who accompanied the queen to France for her marriage to the Dauphin, later François II, in 1558. Of Robert and James Seton, however , little is known, save that the latter died around 1562 and the former was still alive a year later . Both would have had time to sire children, and genealogists have concluded that David Seton must have been the son of one or other of them. He would thus have been the grandson of the Sixth Lord Seton and the nephew of the Seventh Lord.
If David Seton is so elusive, where did the family’ s chronicler , wr iting in 1896, obtain even the meagre information he did? At first we knew of only one earlier pr inted source, the nineteenth- century historian Whitwor th Porter , who had access to the Hospitaller s’ archives in Valetta. Writing in 1858, Porter vouchsafes only that David Seton is ‘ said to have been the last Prior of Scotland, and to have retired with the greater portion of his Scottish brethren, about 1572—73’ . 18 He adds that Seton died in 1591, ten year s later than the date given by the 1896 genealogist, and was bur ied in the church of the Scotch Benedictines at Ratisbone. Porter also cites the poem, ‛Haly Kirk and her Theeves’ — with a variant reading of the penultimate line. This line, in the 1896 version, ran: ‘ Bot the Tempel f elt na loss.’ Por ter quotes it as: ‘ But the Order [our italics] felt na losse.’ 19
It is obvious from this that, even as late as the nineteenth century, the issue was still a sensitive one. ‛Tempel’ is quite unequivocal. ‘ Order ’ , however , could as readily denote the Hospitallers as the Templars and, in the context, would seem to do so. Had the 1896 genealogist deliberately tampered with the text? If so, why? If any tampering did occur , it would seem more likely in the ear lier ver sion. Nothing would have been gained by changing ‘ Order ’ to ‛Tempel’ . But to change ‛Tempel’ to ‘ Order ’ would have exonerated the Knights of St John from the suspicion of harbouring Templars in their midst.
The issue would have remained uncer tain, had not an ear lier version of the poem turned up, printed in 1843, fifteen years before Whitworth Porter ’ s quotation of it. It draws not on the archives in Valetta, but on Scottish sources. We will have occasion to consider these sources later . For the moment, it is sufficient to note that this 1843 text of the poem — the earliest known — quotes the line precisely as the Seton genealogist was to quote it in 1896: ‘ But the Tempel felt na loss.
MICHAEL BAIGENT AND RICHARD LEIGH
TWO
Scotland and a Hidden Tradition
6
The Templar Legacy in Scotland
One of the fallacies of conventional scholarship is to insist on a rigorous and artificial distinction between ‘ history’ and ‘ myth’ . According to such a distinction, ‘ history’ is regarded as documented fact alone — data which can be subjected to an almost scientif ic scrutiny, which will stand up to assorted tests and prove thereby that something ‘ actually happened’ . ‛History’ , in this sense, consists of names, dates, battles, treaties, political movements, conferences, revolutions, social changes and other such ‘ objectively discernible’ phenomena. ‘ Myth’ , on the other hand, is dismissed as ir relevant or incidental to ‘ history’ . ‘ Myth’ is consigned to the realm of fantasy, to poetry and fiction. ‘ Myth’ is deemed to be the spurious embellishment or falsification of f act, a distortion of ‘ history’ , and something therefore to be ruthlessly excised. ‛History’ and ‘ myth’ must, it is believed, be prised apart bef ore the truth of the past can be revealed.
And yet, for the people who originally created what later ages might call ‘ myth’ , there was no such distinction. In his own age, and for centur ies after , Homer ’ s Odyssey, devoted to the probably fictitious adventures of one man, was deemed no less historically authoritative than the Iliad, devoted to a presumed ‘ actual’ occurrence, the Siege of Troy. Events in the Old Testament — the parting of the Red Sea, for instance, or God conferring on Moses the Tables of the Law — are held by many people today to be ‘ mythic’ ; but there are also many people, even today, who believe the same events actually to have occurred. In Celtic tradition, the sagas pertaining to, say, Cuchulain and the ‘ knights’ of the Red Branch were believed for centuries to be historically accurate; and even today, there is no way of knowing whether they are indeed so, whether they are greater or lesser embellishments of historical events, or whether they are wholly fictitious. To cite a more recent example, the ‘ Wild West’ of the nineteenth- century United States, as portrayed first by ‘ dime novels’ , then by Hollywood, is now generally recognised to be ‘ mythical’ . And yet Jesse James, Billy the Kid, Wild Bil Hickok, Doc Holliday and the Earp brother s did exist. The legendary gunfight at the OK Corral did actually take place, if not quite in the form usually supposed. Until very recently, the ‘ myths’ woven around such figures and such episodes were virtually inseparable from ‘ history’ . Thus, in the era of Prohibition, men such as Eliot Ness on the one hand, John Dillinger and ‘ Legs’ Diamond on the other , f ancied themselves to be reenacting an historically accurate Western drama of stalwart lawmen and romantic outlaws. And, in the process, they created a new ‘ history’ around which new ‛myths’ were to be woven.
According to the extent that they inflame the imagination and remain alive in a people’ s imaginative life, historical events and personages grade imperceptibly into myth. In cases such as King Arthur or Robin Hood, the myth has effectively subsumed whatever historical ‘ actuality’ there may once have been. In the case of Jeanne d’ Arc, historical ‘ actuality’ , though not eclipsed completely, has receded into the background, while the foreground is dominated by exaggeration, embellishment and pure invention. In more recent instances — Che Guevara, for example, John Kennedy or Marilyn Monroe, John Lennon or Elvis Presley — histor ical ‘ actuality’ can be discerned among the elements of myth, but cannot ultimately be separated from them; and it is precisely the elements of myth that make us interested in the historical ‘ actuality’ .
It can be argued — and has been argued — that all written or recorded history is essentially a form of myth. Any historical account is oriented towards the needs, attitudes and values of the time in which it is composed, not the time to which it refers. Any historical account is necessar ily selective, including certain elements, omitting other s. Any historical account, if only by virtue of its selectivity, emphasises certain f actors and neglects others. To this extent, it is biased; and to the extent that it is biased, it inevitably falsifies ‘ what actually happened’ . If modern media cannot agree on the interpretation of events that occurred only yesterday, the past is subject to far greater latitude of interpretation.
For such reasons as these, post- war novelists — f rom Carlos Fuentes and Gabriel Garcia Márquez in Latin America to Graham Swift, Peter Ackroyd and Desmond Hogan in England and Ireland — have insisted on a reassessment of what we mean by ‘ history’ . For such novelists, history consists not only of external and provable ‘ data’ , but also of the mental context, in which such data are embedded — and within which, in the hands of subsequent generations, they are interpreted. For such novelists, the only true ‘ history’ is the psychic life of a people, a culture, a civilisation — and this includes not only external data, but also the imaginative exaggerations, embellishments and interpretations of myth. Ivo Andrić, the Yugoslavian novelist who won the Nobel Prize in 1961, insists on the histor ian’ s need to recognise the under lying ‘ truth of lies’ . The ‘ lies’ of a people or a culture, Andrić maintains — the hyperbole, the exaggeration and embellishment, even the outright falsification and invention — are not purely gratuitous. On the contrary, they bear witness to underlying needs, underlying wants, underlying lacks, underlying dreams and over - compensations; and to that extent they are, in their very falsity, not just true, but also revealing and informative statements containing clues vital to under standing. And to the extent that they serve to crystallise a collective identity or self - definition, they create a new truth — or create something which becomes true.
A simple and all too dismally relevant example should suffice to illustrate the kind of process Andrić describes — the process whereby ‘ truth’ and ‘ lies’ , ‘ history’ and ‘ myth’ become entwined so as to create a new historical actuality. In 1688, the Protestant citizens of Londonderry, more out of panic than genuine necessity, shut and barred the city’ s gates against a contingent of Catholic troops dispatched by James II to garrison the place. This rebellious act produced a predictable reaction on the part of the king; and without either side really having wanted it or intended it, Londonderry f ound itself besieged. In the sweep of European history, the Siege of Londonderry was a squalid little affair , trivial by comparison with the military operations which, within a decade or so, would be conducted on the Continent. It was also inconsequential, resolving nothing, determining nothing. It was dictated by no military necessity, created no new military necessities, and was not, in any strict military sense, decisive. But on a less tangible level, it was indeed decisive. It shaped and created attitudes, values, orientations. And those attitudes, values, or ientations subsequently translated themselves into events.
In reaction not to what ‘ actually happened’ at Londonderry, but to what was believed to have happened, Protestant and Catholic moulds of thought in Ireland congealed. It was in strict accordance with these moulds of thought that the two communities proceeded to act. These actions were to determine the course of Irish affairs for the next century. And when, in 1798, Catholic Ireland rose in revolt, the conduct and course of that revolt were conditioned not by the events of the siege a hundred year s before, but by the myths that surrounded those events. Myth thus generated new history. And history — in this case, the 1798 rebellion — generated new myths of its own. These new myths, in their turn, precipitated fresh developments in so- called history, which, also in their turn, fostered f resh myths. The culmination of the process is Nor thern Ireland today, where the real clash is not so much a clash of religions as a clash of conflicting myths, of conflicting interpretations of history.
The Battle of Blenheim (1704, a mere fifteen year s af ter the Siege of Londonderry) was a genuinely major battle. It was also decisive. It altered the balance of power in Europe and radically transformed the course of European history. But Blenheim, today, lives in people’ s minds primarily as a stately home in Oxfordshire which also happened to be Churchill’ s birthplace. The Siege of Londonderry, on the other hand, and the 1798 rebellion, and all the other half -mythic and half – historical milestones of Irish history, have been bundled wholesale into the present, where they are regularly celebrated, commemorated, reenacted, ritualised — and where, in consequence, they are still able to shape attitudes and values, determine tribal identity and polarise communities. Such is the power of myth. And such is the inseparability of myth from what we call history.
History consists not only of f acts and events. It also consists of the relationships between facts and events and the interpretation, of ten imaginative, of such relationships. In any such act of interpretation, a mythic element necessarily comes into play. Myth is not thus distinct f rom history. On the contrary, it is an inseparable part of history.
Exploitation of the Templar Myth
From their very inception, the Templar s mantled themselves in myth, capitalised on myth, exploited myth. The sheer obscur ity and mystery surrounding their origins enabled them to surround themselves with an equally potent mystique. This mystique was accentuated by the loyal patronage not only of leading nobles, but also of romanciers such as Wolfram von Eschenbach and Church luminaries such as Saint Bernard. It was easy enough for the Templars, in the minds of their contemporaries, to become ‘ legends in their own lif etime’ , and they did nothing to discourage the process whereby they became so. On the contrary, they of ten actively encouraged it. Among biblical texts, they constantly invoked Joshua and Maccabees, promoting themselves as latterday avatars of the army that toppled the walls of Jericho, the army that nearly defeated Rome in the years just pr ior to the Christian era. They encouraged the popular image of themselves as being in some way associated with the Grail Romances, as ‘ guardians’ of that mysterious object or entity known as the Holy Grail.
Amidst the mystique sur rounding the Order of the Temple, a number of echoes and images thus became fused. Joshua’ s army, the Maccabees, the Grail knights merged with yet other historical and/or legendary antecedents — the peers of Charlemagne, the Arthurian Knights of the Round Table and, especially in the British Isles, the Red Branch of Ulster . Nor was martial prowess the only vir tue which the mystique sur rounding the Temple conf er red on them. The Templars appear in The Perlesvaus not just as military men, but also as high mystical initiates. This is indicative, for the Templar s were only too eager to rein orce the popular image of themselves as magi, as wizards or sorcerers, as necromancer s, as alchemists, as sages privy to lofty arcane secrets. And indeed, it was precisely this image that rebounded upon them and provided their enemies with the means of their destruction.
Yet even in the Order ’ s demise, the myth-making process remained active and inseparable from historical actuality. Did Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master , as he was being burned alive over a slow f ire, really pronounce a curse on the Pope and the French king, order ing both to join him bef ore God’ s seat within the year? Whether he did or not, both, within the year , died, in distinctly suspicious circumstances. It is easy enough today to ascribe their deaths to refugee knights or sympathiser s drawing on the Order ’ s expertise in poisons; but the medieval mind was only too happy to see some more occult power at work. The French monarchy began to regard itself as accursed, with Jacques de Molay’ s malediction hanging over it like a sword of Damocles. And that malediction was to remain associated with the French throne regardless of changes of dynasty. Thus, in 1793, when Louis XVI was guillotined, another historical event became entangled with myth and legend: a French Freemason is alleged to have leaped up on to the scaffold, dipped his hand in the king’ s blood, flicked it out over the crowd and cr ied, ‘ Jacques de Molay, thou art avenged!’
In their lifetime, then, the Templar s cloaked themselves in legend and myth. In their demise, they spawned new legends, new myths, which were then translated by other people into ‘ historical fact’ . As we shall see, one particularly potent such translation was to be Freemasonry. But there were other , ear lier manifestations of the phenomenon — manifestations on which Freemasonry itself was to draw and in which it was itself rooted. Indeed, scarcely had the Order of the Temple been destroyed than it arose again, phoenix- like, from the flames of its own pyre, to assume a new mythic guise.
Within a quarter of a century of the Temple’ s dissolution, a spate of neo- Templar order s began to appear — and would continue to do so for centuries afterwards. Thus, for example, in 1348, Edward III of England created the Order of the Garter , consisting of twenty- six knights divided into two groups of thir teen each. The Garter , of course, continues to the present day, and is the world’ s premier order of chivalry. In France in 1352, Jean II created an almost identical institution, the Order of the Star . It was rather more short- lived than the Garter , however , its entire member ship being annihilated in 1356 at the Battle of Poitiers. In 1430, Philip, Duke of Burgundy, created the Order of the Golden Fleece. In 1469, Louis XI of France created the Order of St Michael. Its membership was to include such individuals as Claude de Guise, Char les (Connétable) de Bourbon, François de Lor raine, Federico de Gonzaga and Louis de Nevers — as well as commander s and officers of an institution soon to f igure prominently in our story, the Scots Guard.
Such orders were, of course, much smaller in number than the Templars, and much less consequential. They never exer ted any notable histor ical inf luence. They had no land, no preceptories, no holdings of any kind and no revenue. They lacked autonomy, being attached to the person of one or another potentate or sovereign. Although composed initially of fighting men, they were not, strictly speaking, military. They provided no military training, for example; they were organised around no military hierarchy; they did not function as distinct military units or formations, either on or off the battlefield. Ultimately, they were affairs of prestige rather than of real power , vehicles for royal patronage, the domain of courtiers; and their military accoutrements and nomenclature soon became as metaphor ical as those of , say, the Salvation Army. But in their inception, in their rites and rituals, in the mystique they sought to arrogate f or themselves, they looked to the Temple as a model.
This particular legacy of the Temple was more heraldic than anything else, but there was another legacy which not only transformed the face of European Catholicism, but projected it across the sea — as far westwards as America, as far eastwards as Japan. In 1540, a former military man named Ignatius Loyola, mortified by the advances of Protestantism, resur rected the or iginal Templar ideal of the warrior monk, the soldier of Christ, and created his own such soldiery. Unlike the Templar s, however , Loyola’ s soldiery would crusade not with the sword (though perfectly prepared to let other s wield it on their behalf ), but with the word.
Thus was born what Loyola called the Company of Jesus — until the Pope, recoiling f rom the explicit military connotations of ‘ Company’ , insisted it be changed to ‘ Society’ . In their martial structure andorganisation, in their far flung network of ‛provinces’ , in their rigid discipline, the Jesuits were, by Loyola’ s own admission, modelled on the Templars. Indeed, they often acted as military advisors and ordnance exper ts, as well as high- level diplomats and ambassadors. Like the Templars, the Jesuits were nominally subject only to the Church; but like the Templars, they of ten became a law unto themselves. In 1773, in circumstances recalling the suppression of the Temple 461 years before, Pope Clement XIV, ‘ on secret grounds’ , suppressed the Jesuits. Subsequently, of course, in 1814, they were resurrected. But even today, the Jesuits are in many respects a self - contained institution, and not infrequently at odds with the Papacy to which they supposedly owe allegiance.
The chivalric orders and the Jesuits were, in different ways, heir s of the Temple who eventually forgot, or deliberately repudiated, their origin. In Scotland, however , a more direct and more tangible heritage of the Templar s was to survive, duly acknowledged as such and transmitted by the more concrete channels of soil and family bloodlines. In the first place, collusion, cover - up and wheeling and dealing ensured that the Order ’ s holdings in Scotland were kept intact, retained as a separate unity and administered, at least for a time, by ‘ defrocked’ Templar s themselves — and subsequently by some off shoot of them. Templar property in Scotland was not to be dismembered and parcelled out, as it was elsewhere. On the contrary, it was to be held in trust, as if awaiting restoration to its original owners.
Then, too, there was to emerge in Scotland a network of inter locked families who were to provide both a repository and a conduit. To the extent that an authentic Templar tradition survived in Scotland, it survived under the auspices of these families and that of the military formation they sponsored, the Scots Guard, perhaps the most genuinely neo- Templar institution of all. Through the Scots Guard, moreover , and through the families who staffed the Guard with their sons, a new energy was to be imported to Scotland from the Continent. This energy — expressed originally through a spectrum of ‘ esoter ic’ disciplines, as well as through stonemasonry and architecture — would fuse with the residue of Templar tradition and breathe fresh life into it. And thus, from the pyres of the old religious-military Order , modern Freemasonry was to be born.
The Templar Lands
In 1312, a month after the official papal dissolution of the Temple, all the lands, preceptories and other installations owned by the Order were granted to their former allies and rivals, the Knights Hospitaller of St John. In the Holy Land, the Hospitaller s had been quite as corrupt as the Templars, quite as prone to powerbroking, intrigue, factional strife and pursuit of their own interests at the expense of the crusader kingdom’ s welfare. Like the Templars and, by the mid- thirteenth century, the Teutonic Knights, the Hospitaller s were also involved in banking, in commerce, in a broad spectrum of other activities extending far beyond their original brief of warrior -monks. In Europe, however , and especially in their relations with the Papacy, the Hospitaller s kept their noses scrupulously clean. They remained proof against any ‛infection’ by heresy, any transgression that might have rendered them subject to persecution. Neither did they pose a threat to any European monarch.
Undoubtedly, the Hospitaller s were as arrogant and autocratic as the Templar s and the Teutonic Knights. But their hospital work, and their unswerving loyalty to Rome, more than counteracted such adverse impressions as they made. In consequence, they enjoyed a respectability in both papal and public minds that r ival order s did not. Indeed, in the years prior to 1307, there was even talk of ‘ purifying’ the Templar s by amalgamating them with the Hospitaller s into a single unif ied order . Between 1307 and 1314, while the Templar s’ trials were in progress, the Teutonic Knights incur red similar accusations and, fearing similar prosecution, moved their headquarters from Venice to Marienburg, in what is now Poland, far beyond the reach of both papal and secular authority. The Hospitallers remained felicitously placed to benefit from the misfortunes of both their rivals.
Never theless, the Hospitallers’ acquisition of Templar holdings was not as simple or straightforward as one might think. In some cases, for example, as many as thirty years passed before they actually obtained the property conferred upon them; and by then, of course, the property in question had generally been run down, ruined, made worthless and unviable without investment of considerable capital expenditure. On two occasions — in 1324 and again in 1334 — the Priors of St John resorted to the English Parliament to confirm their right to Templar lands. 1 Even so, it was not until 1340 that they obtained the title to the London Temple. On a number of occasions, too, the Hospitallers f ound themselves in conf lict with secular lords — men who, rather than see it pass into the hands of St John, sought to reclaim property conferred on the Temple by their forebear s a century or two before. In many instances, such secular magnates were, if not powerful enough to win the argument, at least able to prolong it through litigation.
Such was the situation in England. In Scotland, matters were even more confused, and often deliberately concealed as well. Perhaps the strongest indication of developments in Scotland lies not in what was said, but in what was left unsaid. Thus, six months after Bannockburn, Bruce issued a char ter to the Hospitallers confirming all their possessions in the kingdom. 2 No mention whatever was made of any Templar lands or holdings, even though such lands and holdings should have passed into Hospitaller hands two years before. The Hospitallers were simply confirmed in what they already possessed. Nor , interestingly enough, did the Hospitallers, or the crown, or the secular lords, attempt to lay claim to Templar property. In fact, with but one exception, there is no record of anyone obtaining Templar property, or even endeavour ing to obtain it. For the duration of Bruce’ s lifetime, such proper ty might never have existed, so complete was the silence surrounding it.
In 1338, nine years after Bruce’ s death, the Grand Master of the Hospitaller s requested a list of all Temple proper ties acquired by his Order everywhere in the world. Every regional or national Prior was instructed to submit an inventory of Templar holdings in his par ticular sphere of author ity. During the last century, a document, quoting the response of the English Prior , was found in the library of the Order of St John at Valetta. Af ter itemising a substantial number of Templar possessions acquired by the Hospitaller s in England, the manuscript says:
Of the land, buildings . . . churches and all other possessions which were Templar in Scotland the reply was nothing of any value . . . all were destroyed, burnt and reduced to nothing because of the enduring wars which had continued over many years. 3
As of 1338, then, the Hospitallers had still not laid hands on Templar properties in Scotland. On the other hand, ir regularities of some sort were clearly taking place. For if Templar properties did not figure in any transactions of the Hospitallers, the Scottish crown or secular nobles, some of them we re never theless sold — without being entered in any official records. Thus, for example, before 1329 an officer of the Order of St John, one Rodulph Lindsay, is repor ted to have disposed of the Templar lands of Temple Liston. 4 Yet the transaction is not mentioned in any of the Order ’ s documents or archives. On what authority, then, was Lindsay acting? For whom was he functioning as agent?
Lindsay’ s transaction is only one of a number which have blurred, f or later histor ians, the whole question of Templar lands in Scotland during the period in question. As a result, no clear picture of any sort can be obtained:
It is . . . unknown how the Templar s’ properties were handed over to the Hospitallers; it seems to have been a ragged piecemeal process, and there is evidence that well into the f our teenth century the Hospitallers were still having difficulty getting possession of former Templar properties.5
The same writer concludes: ‘ There is no period in the history of the military orders in Scotland more obscure than the four teenth century.’6
Notwithstanding the obscurities, a certain pattern does emerge: after 1338, the Hospitallers began to acquire Templar holdings in Scotland, albeit in a decidedly equivocal way; pr ior to 1338, however , no Templar property was passed on, yet with the exception noted above there is no record anywhere of anything else happening to it. What is more, the Templar lands, when the Hospitallers did eventually receive them, were kept separate. They were not parcelled out, integrated with the Hospitaller s’ other holdings and administered accordingly. On the contrary, they enjoyed a special status and were administered as a self contained unit in themselves. They were handled, in fact, not as if St John actually owned them, but were simply, in the capacity of agents or manager s, holding them in trust. As late as the end of the sixteenth century, no fewer than 519 sites in Scotland were listed by the Hospitallers as ‘ Terrae Templariae’ — part, that is, of the self – contained and separately administered Templar patrimony! 7
In fact, the disposition of Templar land in Scotland involved something quite extraordinary — something which has been almost entirely neglected by historians, and which enabled the Temple to sustain at least some degree of , as it were, posthumous existence. For more than two centuries in Scotland — f rom the beginning of the fourteenth to the middle of the sixteenth — the Templars, it appears, were actually me rg e d with the Hospitallers. Thus, during the period in question, there are frequent references to a single joint Order — the ‘ Order of the Knights of St John and the Temple’ .8
It is a bizar re situation, and it raises some tantalising questions. Did the Hospitallers anticipate some future resurrection of the Temple and under take, perhaps by some secret agreement, to hold Templar property in trust? Or could it be that the Order of St John in Scotland had taken into its ranks enough fugitive Templar s to administer their own lands?
Both answers are possible; they are not mutually exclusive. Whatever the truth of the matter , it is clear that Templar lands enjoyed a unique status which has not been officially defined in the historical record. And they continued to do so. In 1346, a Master of the Hospitallers, Alexander de Seton, presided over the regular legal session at the former Templar preceptory of Balantrodoch. By this time, the site had, finally, passed into the hands of the Hospitallers. Never theless, it was still being administered separately, possessing a status of its own as part of the Templar patr imony. Two of the charters witnessed by Alexander de Seton survive. 9 They indicate that despite the date, thirty- four years after the suppression of the Templars, ‘ Temple Courts’ were still being held.
‘ Temple Courts’ of the same kind, retaining the same name, were to continue sitting for a good two centuries. Once again, we are confronted with evidence that the Order of St John, though given authority over Templar proper ties in Scotland, was, f or reasons never explicitly stated, unable legally to assimilate them. Once again, we are confronted with the suggestion of an invisible Templar presence looming in the background, waiting f or an oppor tunity to reassert itself and legally reclaim its her itage. And all of Scotland — the monarchy, the wealthy landowner s, the Order of St John itself — seems to have colluded in the veiled design.
The Elusive Knight — David Seton
Early in the nineteenth century, a noted genealogical lawyer and antiquarian named James Maidment discovered a chartulary — a roll or bound volume of land deeds — f or ‘ Ter rae Templariae’ within the Order of St John between 1581 and 1596. In addition to the two known preceptor ies at Balantrodoch and Maryculter , this document listed three others — at Auldlisten, Denny and Thankerton. 10 It also listed more than 500 other Templar properties, from crofts and fields, flourmills and farms, to castles and four entire townships. Spurred by his discovery, Maidment under took further research. His final tabulation, transcribed in a manuscript now housed in the National Library of Scotland, lists and names specifically no f ewer than 579 Templar holdings! 11
What had happened to this land? How had it been disposed of , and why had records pertaining to it all but vanished from the historical chronicle? At least some answer s to these questions can be found in a family which was among the most important and influential in Scotland during Bruce’ s time. Their name was Seton.
As we have seen, Sir Christopher Seton was married to Bruce’ s sister . He was present at Bruce’ s murder of John Comyn and himself killed Comyn’s uncle when the latter attempted to intervene. He was also present at Bruce’ s coronation at Scone in 1306. Subsequently, at the Battle of Methven, he was captured and, on Edward I’ s order s, executed. A similar fate befell his brother , Sir John Seton. Both, in fact, died alongside Bruce’ s brother , Neil. In 1320, Christopher Seton’ s son, Alexander , along with representatives of such other eminent Scottish families as the Sinclair s, signed the Declaration of Arbroath.
For another four hundred years, the Setons were to remain prominent in Scottish affairs and Scottish nationalist activities. It is not therefore surprising, nor even particularly vain, that yet another Seton, George, in 1896, should under take a comprehensive chronicle of his forebears. In this monumental volume, A History of the Family of Seton, the author lists numerous of his ancestors bearing titles ranging from the inconsequential to the illustrious. He also lists numerous other Setons who do not figure in standard noble genealogies. Some of them are humble artisans and burghers. Among this entangled forest of family trees, there is one particularly enigmatic and relevant entry:
c.1560. When the Knights- Templar s were deprived of their patrimonial interest through the instrumentality of their Grand-Master Sir James Sandilands, they drew off in a body, with David Seton, Grand Prior of Scotland (nephew of Lord Seton?), at their head. This transaction is alluded to in a cur ious satir ical poem of that per iod, entitled:
Haly kirk and her theeves
Fye upon the traitor then, Quhas has brocht us to sic pass, Greedie als the knave Judas!
Fye upon the chur le quhat solde Halyer the for heavie golde; Bot the tempel f elt na loss, Quhan David Setoune bare the crosse.
David Seton died abroad in 1581 and is said to have been bur ied in the church of the Scotch Convent at Ratisbon [now Regensburg, near Nuremburg]. 12
It is a tantalising fragment, alluding explicitly to the Temple. It becomes even more tantalising by virtue of its date. Two and a half centuries after the Templars were officially suppressed, the poem suggests, they were still fully operational in Scotland, and undergoing a f resh cr isis. But who, precisely, was David Seton? And who, for that matter , was Sir James Sandilands?
The latter , at least, is easy enough to trace. James Sandilands, f ir st Baron Torphichen, was born around 1510, the second son of landed gentry in Midlothian. Sandilands’ s father was a friend of John Knox, who, af ter his return to Scotland from Geneva in 1555, resided on the f amily’ s estate at Calder . Despite his father ’ s association with a Protestant reformer , the young James Sandilands entered the Order of St John some time shortly before 1537. In 1540, he requested from James V a saf e conduct to travel to Malta and obtain there, from the Grand Master , official confirmation of his right to succeed to the Preceptorship of Torphichen on the death of its sitting incumbent, Walter Lindsay. Sandilands’ s r ight to succeed Lindsay was duly confirmed by the Grand Master of the Hospitaller s, Juan d’ Omedes, in 1541. Returning home from Malta, the ambitious young man stopped in Rome to have his newly promised sinecure ratified by the Pope.
Five years later , in 1546, Walter Lindsay died. In 1547, the Master in Malta officially recognised Sandilands as Prior of Torphichen. In the Scottish Parliament, he became known as Lord St John and sat on the Privy Council. By 1557, he was back in Malta, engaged in a prolonged and evidently rather silly dispute with a putative relative, also a member of the Order , over a question of certifiable nobility. To the discredit of both men, the argument culminated in a public brawl, and the putative relative was imprisoned. 13 In 1558, Sandilands returned to Scotland. Here, along with his f ather , he supported the Reformation and actively opposed the Queen Regent, Marrie de Guise — elder sister of François, Duc de Guise, and Charles, Cardinal de Lorraine — who, in 1538, had married James V.
It must have seemed puzzling at first how and why Sandilands could support Protestant reform against a staunchly Catholic ruler , while still remaining a member in good standing of a Catholic military order . He contrived, nevertheless, to accommodate these conflicting allegiances, and his ulterior motives were soon to become outrageously clear . In 1560, by act of the Scottish Parliament, the Pope’ s authority in the country was abolished, and the Order of St John’ s rights to the ‘ Precepterie of Torphephen [sic] Fratibus Hospitalis Hierosolimitani, Militibus Temple Solomonis’ were annulled. 14 As Prior of St John, Sandilands was thus obliged to turn over to the crown the properties he administered for the Order . He did not object. Instead, in 1564, he presented himself to the new monarch, Mary Queen of Scots, as:
. . . present possessor of the Lordship and Preceptories of Torphephen [sic] which was never subject to any Chapter or Convent whatsomever , except only the Knights of Jerusalem and the Temple of Solomon. 15
On payment of a lump sum of 10,000 crowns plus an annual rent, Sandilands proceeded to negotiate f or himself a perpetual leasehold on the properties he had previously administered f or the Hospitallers. As part of the transaction, he also obtained the hereditary title of Baron Torphichen.
With an entrepreneurial spirit that any modern yuppie might envy, Sandilands thus effectively swindled the Hospitallers, illicitly disposing of their lands for his own advantage and profiting very handsomely from the deal. It is almost certainly to this affair , or to some aspect of it, that the poem quoted above refers — for the holdings Sandilands disposed of were not just Hospitaller holdings, but also par t of the Templar patrimony.
In 1567, Sandilands attended the coronation of James VI, subsequently James I of England. In 1579 he died. His heir was his great- nephew, born in 1574, also named James Sandilands, who became Second Baron Torphichen. But the young man soon found himself financially pressed, and proceeded to sell off the lands he had inherited. By 1604, they had passed into the hands of one Robert Williamson, who, eleven year s later , sold them to Thomas, Lord Binning, subsequently Earl of Haddington. They then passed through a number of hands until at last, at the beginning of the nineteenth century, those remaining were purchased by James Maidment.
If Sir James Sandilands is relatively easy to trace and document, David Seton is altogether more elusive. Not only is there much question about who precisely he was; there is even some question about whether he ever actually existed. 16 The only evidence of his existence is the fragment of the poem quoted above, which prompted George Seton to accord him a perplexed footnote in the 1896 family genealogy. And yet scholar s have taken the poem seriously enough to accept it as testimony to something which, it would appear , both history and human agencies have conspired to conceal.
As we have seen, the Seton f amily were among the most distinguished and influential in Scottish history, and were to continue as such for another three centur ies. What is not clear is where precisely the myster ious David Seton f its into their family tree. The genealogist of 1896 suggests, plausibly enough, that he was the grandson of George, Sixth Lord Seton, who succeeded to the title in 1513 and died in 1549. 17
Sandilands, as we have noted, was hostile to Marie de Guise and her marriage to James V. He opposed the dynastic alliance linking the Stuarts with the continental house of Lorraine and its cadet branch, the house of Guise. George Seton was in the opposite camp. In 1527, he had married a certain Elizabeth Hay and had two sons by her , the elder of whom succeeded to the title and became the Seventh Lord Seton, a close friend of Mary Queen of Scots. But in 1539, George Seton married f or a second time. His new br ide was Marie du Plessis, a member of the entourage who had come to Scotland with Marie de Guise; and Seton’ s wedding to her thus placed him in intimate association with the royal court. By Marie du Plessis, Seton had three more children, Robert, James and Mary. Mary Seton was to become a maid of honour to Mary Queen of Scots, and was to go down in ballad and legend as one of ‘ the three Marys’ who accompanied the queen to France for her marriage to the Dauphin, later François II, in 1558. Of Robert and James Seton, however , little is known, save that the latter died around 1562 and the former was still alive a year later . Both would have had time to sire children, and genealogists have concluded that David Seton must have been the son of one or other of them. He would thus have been the grandson of the Sixth Lord Seton and the nephew of the Seventh Lord.
If David Seton is so elusive, where did the family’ s chronicler , wr iting in 1896, obtain even the meagre information he did? At first we knew of only one earlier pr inted source, the nineteenth- century historian Whitwor th Porter , who had access to the Hospitaller s’ archives in Valetta. Writing in 1858, Porter vouchsafes only that David Seton is ‘ said to have been the last Prior of Scotland, and to have retired with the greater portion of his Scottish brethren, about 1572—73’ . 18 He adds that Seton died in 1591, ten year s later than the date given by the 1896 genealogist, and was bur ied in the church of the Scotch Benedictines at Ratisbone. Porter also cites the poem, ‛Haly Kirk and her Theeves’ — with a variant reading of the penultimate line. This line, in the 1896 version, ran: ‘ Bot the Tempel f elt na loss.’ Por ter quotes it as: ‘ But the Order [our italics] felt na losse.’ 19
It is obvious from this that, even as late as the nineteenth century, the issue was still a sensitive one. ‛Tempel’ is quite unequivocal. ‘ Order ’ , however , could as readily denote the Hospitallers as the Templars and, in the context, would seem to do so. Had the 1896 genealogist deliberately tampered with the text? If so, why? If any tampering did occur , it would seem more likely in the ear lier ver sion. Nothing would have been gained by changing ‘ Order ’ to ‛Tempel’ . But to change ‛Tempel’ to ‘ Order ’ would have exonerated the Knights of St John from the suspicion of harbouring Templars in their midst.
The issue would have remained uncer tain, had not an ear lier version of the poem turned up, printed in 1843, fifteen years before Whitworth Porter ’ s quotation of it. It draws not on the archives in Valetta, but on Scottish sources. We will have occasion to consider these sources later . For the moment, it is sufficient to note that this 1843 text of the poem — the earliest known — quotes the line precisely as the Seton genealogist was to quote it in 1896: ‘ But the Tempel felt na loss.
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