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By Dan Byrnes
SYDNEY, Australia, was settled by the British on 26 January, 1788, as a small and unprepossessing convict colony. This article presents information proposing that the initiative, which was quite creative in geopolitical and other terms of the day, was influenced to a debateable extent by men who were Freemasons. The question is: does this matter at all?
Further, that
pursuit of the evidence leads one to dispute noted critics of
English Freemasonry, as well as to dispute with at least one
classic apologist for English Freemasonry, John Hamill.
(John Hamill, The Craft: A History of English Freemasonry.
London, Crucible, 1986, [Hamill is librarian, United Grand Lodge of
England.])
Further, that there
is too little reliable information on the influence of Freemasonry
in Britain during the reign of George III, from 1760. We now know
that American Freemasons were influential before and during the
course of the American War of Independence. But there is little
information on the fallout-factors resulting in London amongst
Freemasons there once it was known that the American had won their
war.
See Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood:
Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order,
1730-1840. Institute of Early American History and Culture,
University of North Carolina Press, 1996. ISBN 0-80872282-5.
(See also, A. Ralph Epperson, The Unseen Hand; An Introduction
to the Conspiratorial View of History. Tuscon, Arizona, Publius
Press, 1985. Thirteenth printing of 1992.)
Further, that the discussion leads to matters too-little discussed concerning the American Revolution, the aftermath in England of the Revolution; to a little-known visit made to London by Thomas Jefferson in the timeframe of the recent movie, Jefferson in Paris; and that once the evidence is considered, matters will look and feel a little different (?).
Meanwhile, to
suggest that Freemasons had an influence in early Australian
colonial history is not, by 2000, a particularly original
suggestion, and I have spoken with one Australian Freemason who
over 25 years ago explored notions that the first governor of
Britain's new convict colony, Captain Arthur Phillip (1738-1814),
was a Freemason. This proposal gained no credence from evidence
available in London at that time (and I have checked since, only to
draw a similar blank).
My own view is that Governor Phillip was not just "a Freemason",
but a useful and productive one. There is, however, not a shred of
documentary proof for such a view.
From a small flier
on Freemasonry in NSW, marking Sir Joseph Banks as a Freemason in
1770, when Banks was due to go on Cook's first voyage of
exploration into the Pacific:
"There were Freemasons among those who arrived with the First Fleet
under Captain Arthur Phillip in 1788. The first attempt to start a
Masonic Lodge in the infant colony was made in 1796. It was
unsuccessful. Masonic meetings were held on board Naval Ships and
with Army Regiments who brought Travelling Lodges with them.
Eventually the first Lodge in Australia was formed in Sydney in
1820. It was called "Australian Social Lodge" and it is still
functioning under the name of Lodge Antiquity."
And see also, The NSW Freemason, Vol. 25, No.
1, February 1993).
In several recruiting booklets for Freemasonry issued in Sydney in 1993, it is mentioned that Masons were "probably" on the First Fleet to Australia. Does this "probably" mean anything useful? Has Freemasonry had an unrecognised role in the social history of both Britain and Australia? Some Australian Freemasons will suggest that Freemasons were involved in the establishment of Australia as a convict colony, but their information is vague, and has not yet not been systematically tied to solid historical information.
Since the 1970s, it
has been proposed that the second governor of New South Wales,
Post-Captain John Hunter RN , was a Freemason.
(See work by Kate Thomas cited below).
It is well-known that the third governor of New South Wales (NSW), Philip Gidley King, was strongly anti-Masonic; though there is no indication he might have resented Masons once he was back in England. It is also known that the fourth governor of NSW, William Bligh, the captain thrown off HMAV Bounty by Fletcher Christian in 1789, was not only a naval Mason, he was a personal friend of a notable Mason, the Duke of Clarence, later William IV
Bligh, deposed as governor of NSW by a largely-unpunished revolt in 1808, was replaced by NSW' first military governor, Lachlan Macquarie, with experience in India, who is said to have been a Freemason, but an inactive (lapsed?) one.
Where to begin? Since the above remarks suggest a wide geographical spread to possibilities? Not to speak of a probable need to examine various associates of these NSW governors in London, or England. Genealogy is of considerable value; and it also focuses more attention on women of the families in question.
Given the personnel named above, particularly William Bligh, the information arising drives one to delve deep into the biographies of men of the City of London, men often regarded as mere "merchants", in ways not attempted before. Bligh was a "nephew-in-law" of Duncan Campbell (1726-1803). And Duncan Campbell can, for a time, become the focus of a useful argument.
From 1775-1776, with the outbreak of the American Revolution, Duncan Campbell, a London merchant and convict contractor selling the labour of transported convicts, dealing with Virginia and Maryland, also Jamaica, became the overseer of the much-hated Thames prison hulks. Since 1758 he had been shipping English convicts from the Home counties to North American colonies, chiefly Virginia and Maryland, and backloading tobacco for the re-export trade between London and Europe. This London-American business was ruined with the outbreak of the Revolution, but he successfully managed to retain his London-Jamaica business, which was conducted in conjunction with many Campbell relatives he had on Jamaica, mostly in south-western Jamaica.
Today, Campbell is known to history as only, or merely, the hulks overseer, and thus he is mentioned in preludes to the history of the first settlements of English convicts at Sydney, Australia.
Campbell was also partly responsible for Bligh gaining command of HMAV Bounty, but curiously enough, and as a blind spot in history, no biographer of Bligh has thought to discover Campbell's reactions when Bligh arrived back in London to furiously report the mutiny on the Bounty. Bligh was a Freemason. So was Campbell.
Meanwhile, the following from a Masonic writer seems a
reasonable impression of the English history of the day:
"Most Freemasons do not realise how closely allied speculative
Masonry was allied with radical social change at its foundation. If
we look back on the last half of the seventeenth century in
Britain, we see a time of turmoil in the realms of belief,
government and industry.
The Stuart kings were deposed and constitutional monarchy
established, at the cost of civil war. ... a time of great
uncertainty .... But a small group of people realised that the core
values that underlay all the various groups of society were the
possible basis of a new kind of social movement, dedicated to
brotherhood across social barriers, ethical standards without
religious bigotry, benevolence as a life of orientation and
learning as a strategy for social improvement. Speculative Masonry
was a social organisation that emerged from this time of turmoil.
Its fundamental principles and values were the basis of a major
social organiser that helped create a new kind of society out of
the chaos of collapsing pre-industrial society."
The NSW
Freemason, Vol. 25, No. 1, February 1993., p.
8.
Not only do these remarks propose that Freemasonry can be of
general interest to the social historian, they can be related
specifically to material recently uncovered about Freemasonry and
merchants associated with convict transportation to early
Australia.
Dan Byrnes, "The
Blackheath Connection: London Local History And The Settlement At
New South Wales, 1786-1806," published in: The Push: A
Journal of Early Australian Social History, No. 28. 1990. pp.
50-98.
From the mid-1780s, Freemasonry in Britain was seen as a stabilising force in society and was therefore encouraged, or at least, not inhibited in its development. British society needed stabilising influences after the American Revolution, and more so as the French Revolution, devoted to "liberty, egality and fraternity", led to an upheaval in Europe which was naturally feared in Britain. In Britain, this seems more or less a political use of Freemasonry, not a Masonic manipulation of politics.
It does appear that one outcome was that Masonry became popular with those responsible for the policing of British society, which was related to a revision of social mores and also related to a demonisation of the proletariat - those without property and therefore those who were politically defenceless - people at risk of becoming criminal.
For this reason, in as much as the handling of transportable convicts was part of the policing of Britain, Freemasonry naturally was an influence with naval men, soldiers and civilians on a tour of duty or settling at New South Wales. That is, Freemasonry was part of the social history of the British colonisation of NSW, but so far much unrecognised.
0 But if Freemasons in London can possibly be associated with the colonisation of Australia, what might have been a Masonic motive, as distinct from any other conceivable motive to be associated? The prevailing belief amongst the administrative classes - the "establishment" - was that the state of crime was beyond all control, that the flotsam and jetsam of society ought to be transported. Steadying the state of crime and its deleterious influences would have fitted the Masonic definition of the creation of "a new Jerusalem". So, now that it has been found that some Freemasons in London have had an unknown relationship to events leading to the "founding" of Australia... it may have been that those Freemasons were conducting an exercise in building a "new Jerusalem" It is as though, two if not three "new Jerusalems" were involved.
After the American Revolution, indeed, the question might also be raised: in a mystical sense, was the creation of the Australian convict colony the creation of a Masonic "new Jerusalem" in the Pacific? Even if mystical ideas are sometimes rather woolly, this idea fits. Created by "the establishment: a "new Jerusalem" could be many things, more so when attached to the moods of a growing empire with substantial martial spirit and military power. One of the first remarks about the Australian colony was that it was too protean - when attempts were made to define it, it eluded definition. Equally, Freemasonry eludes definition. Arguably, the penal colonisation of Australia was the creation of a "new Jerusalem". The logic could easily have been - if a convict colony did not allow an increase in virtue, at least it meant a reduction in evil in the home country.
By "establishment" is meant magistrates, staff at the Home Office, politicians, those engaged in administering transportable convicts, some men of science at The Royal Society, such as Sir Joseph Banks; and naval personnel. Also requiring new inspection are merchants at all levels in the world of commerce, shipmen sending vessels to Australasia. The ships needed to be insured at Lloyd's of London, and this fact adds overtones from London's commercial world. Unfortunately, we have no information on which individual underwriters took insurance on vessels bound for Australia, that is, we don't know which underwriters had a taste for Pacific insurance risks. But, London-based whalers would be competing in the Pacific with many American and some French whalers.
The first "new Jerusalem" was (would have been?) a London cleansed of the evil of excessive numbers of criminals. The second, perhaps, was a charitable sense that a new opportunity for those criminals had been made available in a fresh new land. A third, more so from the 1798 Irish rebellions, may have been a wish to continue to subdue Ireland - which in this light had an excess of Catholics, criminals, and politically active dissidents, often led by Irish Freemasons, whom English Freemasons prefer to ignore. The establishment created in Australia also had the potential to address these Irish evils, the British thought.
In any case, perceived opportunities for creating a "new Jerusalem" had various matters in common. These included, social concern about criminality, anti-Catholicism, an admirable use of maritime resources, existing British scientific interest in the Pacific region, and as far as criminals were a social bother, an attitude, "out of sight, out of mind". In Britain, the custom of transporting criminals was a cultural obsession which had developed an ever-stronger grip on the attitude of the British judiciary after 1718. By 1786, British authorities could literally not envisage life without recourse to the transportation of certain classes of prisoners.
And it matters not that this "new Jerusalem" was built, as it were, as a tripod, as it had three legs in Britain, Ireland, and Australia. A "new Jerusalem" is in any case a mental construction. There is no reason why the foundations of a "new Jerusalem" could not be placed in three different geographical locations (?).
************
A recent book on English prisons confirms opinions which have been expressed since the 1780s by the prison reformer John Howard. Richard Byrne writes, "there has never been a city with more prisons than London, and probably none whose courts have sent so many to public torment and execution." If Freemasons would wish to claim anything about the involvement of their brethren in the administration of prisoner handling as it relates to the "founding" of Australia, they would also need to consider the brutality of British penal attitudes to offenders, the cultural obsessions ranged around the custom of transportation, and despite the work of legal reformer, Jeremy Bentham, the refusal to build domestic prisons.
Some broader outlines of the situation vis-a-vis Freemasonry itself should be provided. In the 1780s, a split existed in English Freemasonry, which was already challenged by Scottish Freemasonry, and a sub-variant of Scottish Freemasonry, known as "Atholl Freemasonry", promoted by the Earl of Atholl.
Whether Atholl Freemasonry was Jacobite in spirit or not is not
made clear. But it might be expected that at least some adherents
of Scottish Freemasonry around London, the Atholl variant or not,
were "infected" with the political spirit of Jacobitism. These
splits in the brotherhood were healed by 1813, when a union of
English Freemasonry was achieved largely via the cooperation of
English royalty who were Freemasons.
Daiches in The
Paradox of Scottish Culture suggests that Scots Jacobite
sentiment became associated with ideas of Scottish independence. K.
M. Daiches, The Paradox Of Scottish Culture. London, Oxford
University Press, ?, p. 35.
The Scots poet Robbie Burns in some of his best songs associated
themes of the lost Jacobite cause, love and exile. (But one might
as easily see Jacobites as yearning nostalgically for the lost
order of feudalism). Burns was an enthusiastic Mason and owed his
initial literary success to the support of Masonic brethren.
J. J. Carter and J. H.
Pittock, (Eds), Aberdeen and the Enlightenment. Aberdeen
University Press, 1987. This book contains essays on Robbie Burns
and Masonic and other matters; see Marie Roberts, Burns and the
Masonic Enlightenment, pp. 331-338.
Duncan Campbell in the 1780s lived at Blackheath, a London suburb just south-east of Greenwich, which for present purposes in the 1780s, and still today, can be regarded as "stockbroker belt". In the 1780s, Blackheath was semi-rural, charming, close enough to London for "commuting" to business premises in the City on a daily basis, and given the crime rate of the day, probably safe for its inhabitants. Until 1989, it had not been known that a group of merchants resident at Blackheath had personally taken steps to charter their ships to government to carry convicts to New South Wales.
As ignorance in history goes, the fact that these merchants were not known as residents of Blackheath is almost "synonymous" with the oversight historians made in not wondering what Campbell's reactions were when his protégé and relative, Bligh, arrived in London furiously thundering about the mutiny on the Bounty and associated questions of the maintenance of naval discipline. In fact, there exist sets of linked questions which, when answered, point to Blackheath, and also to little known aspects of Freemasonry in London and at Blackheath during the period 1780-1800.
By 1989 it was already known in Blackheath, London, and well-known certainly by a local historian, Neil Rhind, that Blackheath had been home to an odd club, The Knuckle Club, which was a winter-playing offshoot of The Blackheath Golf Club. This golf club was the first in Britain part from St. Andrews in Scotland. The Knuckle Club was also a Masonic Club, and met at a local inn, The Green Man. Customarily these golfers repaired to well-known Blackheath hostelries, firstly The Chocolate House, then The Green Man, at about 4.30pm, for a meal and their Masonic meeting.
The name Knuckle Club came from the dishes they were served at The Green Man. By 1787 the club membership was 55, of whom 30 were City merchants, and some 20 had residences at Blackheath. Possible or actual links between Blackheath men can be traced. Charles Suttie, captain of The Blackheath Golf Club in 1772, may have had connection to a Capt. Suttie who from the mid-1760s was dealing with convict contractor Duncan Campbell, when Campbell was shipping Philadelphian timber to Jamaica, a trading proposition destroyed by the American War of Independence.
In 1778 the captain of Blackheath Golf Club was William Innes, son of an Edinburgh banker, a West India merchant, of Lime St., City. MP for Ilchester 1774-75. Duncan Campbell was captain of Blackheath Golf Club in 1783. It is feasible that on behalf of a central committee of England's West India merchants, Innes helped promote the idea of a breadfruit voyage to Tahiti, and in that case, Campbell as a West India merchant would have known all. The point is that Innes was on this committee; Campbell was not.
The Masons of The Knuckle Club played each Saturday, in
those days, only 5-7 holes were played per game, in the mornings or
early afternoons, for "exercise".
See Henderson and Stirk, variously, whose Ch. 2 is titled: The
Organisation by Scottish Freemasons of the Early Golfing
Societies. Golf was popular amongst London's Scots. On The
Knuckle Club and The Royal Blackheath Golf Club, see
Browning, op cit; Henderson and Stirk, op cit;
Hughes, op cit. On the Masonic element in the disbandment of
The Knuckle Club: Browning, p. 40; Hughes, p. 18. The
de-Masonised Knuckle Club was disbanded in 1844 (Henderson
and Stirk, p. 53).
(By the 1780s, if not before, strong links had been created by
Scots, Freemasons and golfing societies. Information on The
Knuckle Club is contained in: Robert Browning, A History of
Golf: The Royal and Ancient Game. London, JM Dent and Sons,
1955., p. 55.
(By the 1780s, if
not before, strong links had been created by Scots, Freemasons and
golfing societies. Information on The Knuckle Club is contained in:
Robert Browning, A History of Golf: The Royal and Ancient Game.
London, JM Dent and Sons, 1955., p. 55
The Knuckle Club was established as a winter-playing club on 17
January 1789 and disbanded for unknown reasons by consent of the
members in 1825. Once it disbanded, also by consent of the members,
the first several pages of its minute books were destroyed, which
may suggest that its establishment, or its non-golfing philosophy,
may have been other than innocuous. The Knuckle Club as a
non-Masonic, winter-playing golf club was finally dissolved in
1844.
The Knuckle Club was established as a winter-playing club on 17 January 1789 and disbanded for unknown reasons by consent of the members in 1825. Once it disbanded, also by consent of the members, the first several pages of its minute books were destroyed, which may suggest that its establishment, or its non-golfing philosophy, may have been other than innocuous. The Knuckle Club as a non-Masonic, winter-playing golf club was finally dissolved in 1844.
In the present context, the most noted members, and also captains of The Blackheath Club, and/or The Knuckle Club, were Duncan Campbell and Alderman Macaulay.
By 1793, alderman George M. Macaulay was captain of Blackheath Golf Club (And/or The Knuckle Club?. He was one of a City firm, Turnbull, Macaulay and Gregory who by 1786 were sending supplies to Canada for government. A notable Blackheath Golf Club member was Alexander Dalrymple, hydrographer of the East India Company; and a variety of East India Company, captains lived at Blackheath. Including the Larkins family, who also sent a convict transport to Sydney, Royal Admiral, which normally took tea from China!
Related to, but apart from that, it also became known for the
first time in 1989 that living at Blackheath in the 1780s had been
other ship managers, non-Masons, evidently, who had also shipped
convicts to Sydney. They were the Enderby family of whalers,
"chieftains" of the English Southern Whale Fishery based in London.
An Enderby associate, John St. Barbe, a writer of marine insurance
at Lloyd's of London. And probably, a later insurance associate of
St Barbe's, Thomas King, who was a member of a firm of slavers in
the City of London, Camden, Calvert and King (CC&K).
CC&K regularly gathered slaves in their own ships on the
African West Coast and sent them to Jamaica. CC&K also had a
few ships in the Southern Whale Fishery; plus much of two
fleets of convict ships to Sydney, known as the Second and Third
Fleets.
See Michael Flynn, Second Fleet, cited below.
CC&K consisted of Anthony Calvert, William Camden and Thomas
King. Calvert is difficult to trace genealogically. Camden was
probably associated with a London firm of sugar bakers, Camden.
Thomas King is also difficult to prove, genealogically. The name
King is found at Blackheath, but it is not certain if it was the
same man. However, it is also known that Thomas King of Camden,
Calvert and King was a business partner with John St Barbe
respecting long-term dealings in insurance at Lloyd's of London,
from about 1796. (During the American Revolution, St Barbe was one
of several shipping contractors consistently favoured by government
[navy] contract writers, presumably so favoured as he did a good
job.) So a strong possibility exists that the name King as found in
lists of residents about Blackheath in the period was the very same
Thomas King.
See parts of The Blackheath Connection, cited below, for more on
CC&K and the Royal Africa Company.
It may or may not be relevant, but during the 1750s, Scots were distrusted in London due to fear that they might carry the "infection" of Jacobite political feeling. This fear evidently eased; but this fear may have had some effect in creating distrust of Scots-Antient Freemasonry, which drove adherents to close ranks and form enclaves, which they apparently did from 1770, and which has only been recently discovered.
According to Hamill, in the 1740s, English Freemasonry (the Premier, or Moderns of the Grand Lodge established in 1717) entered a period of decline in London, due to an expansion that had been too quick to be properly managed.
This seems rather hard to believe, but perhaps something can be attributed to poor records keeping, slow communications, and complacent management; plus, competition. A rival form of Masonry was making significant headway, the Antients.
In search of the Antients we come to Laurence Dermott, who is generally regarded as one of the list of the illustrious British Freemasons which includes Dr James Anderson, Desaguliers, and later Thomas Dunckerley; the Dukes of Atholl , the Earl of Moira and the two Royal Masons effecting the union of 1813...
HRH, the Duke of Kent, was a member of the Premier Grand Lodge.
Between 1790-1813, HRH George, Prince of Wales (later King George
IV), was Grand Master of the Premier Grand Lodge, England. (As
noted in Hamill's lists) George was a personal friend of the Sir
William Curtis noted above. Belton (p.11) notes that: "On the long
and brilliant Masonic career of this [4th] Duke of Atholl it is
needless to enlarge". (Which is meaningless to any non-Mason).
Atholl surrendered his office in 1781, was re-elected in 1791, and
remained Antient Grand Master till 1813 when he was succeeded by
HRH Duke of Kent.
Notes from: Charles
Belton, Grand Master's Lodge No. 1. Record Of Members From 1759
To 1895. London, 1895. Copy British Library.
Between 1771-74, John, third Duke of Atholl, was Grand Master of
the Antient Grand Lodge, England. He died in 1774. John, the 4th
Duke of Atholl, was a strong adherent of Antient Freemasonry who
became Grand Master of the Antients in London on 25 February, 1775,
admitted to a Free Mason (to 1, 2,3, degree), "with Dickey in the
chair". The fourth Duke, "the most illustrious" [Mason], was later
installed as Master of the Grand Master's Lodge. He surrendered his
office in 1781, was re-elected in 1791, remaining Grand Master till
1813 when he was succeeded by HRH Duke of Kent.
Notes from: Charles
Belton, Grand Master's Lodge No. 1. Record of Members From 1759
To 1895. London. 1895. Copy, British Library.
Between 24 November, 1790 and 12 May, 1813, when the Masonic
Union was accomplished, HRH George Augustus Frederick, Prince of
Wales, was a Modern Grand Master.
(Notes from: John Lane, A Handy Book to [the study of] Lists of
Lodges of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of England. "Moderns And
Ancient". London, 1889., p. 24, p. 102. Copy, British
Library.)
In 1790 Peter Mestayer was in Grand Lodge No. 1. (See Belton). This
was probably Peter Evet Mestayer, who was later a short-term
convict contractor and whaler about Australasia.
The Grand Lodge (with relations improving between the Ancients
and the Moderns) met at the Crown and Anchor tavern, Strand, 11
December, 1793 with Grand Master the 4th Duke of Atholl (Hamill
says, amongst Masons with this Grand Lodge was Robert Gill (who may
have been a London alderman? - Gill helped establish the Royal
Masonic Institution For Boys) as grand sword bearer.
(Wells, p. 36.)
The Antients in England from the 1750s were happy to keep with Royal Arch Masonry, but Royal Arch disturbed the Premiers so much, debates about Royal Arch were not concluded until 1817. From 1751, the Moderns and the Antients competed for members in both London and the provinces. Additional degrees began to appear in English Freemasonry from the mid-1750s, but they were not elaborately organised until the 1790s. (In 1754 was published a spoof on Freemasonry called The Free Mason Examin'd, which "revealed" that the rituals of Freemasonry were "really based" on legends about the building of the Tower of Babel).
In 1753, Robert Turner was Grand Master of the Antient Grand
Lodge of England. However, we do not know if the controversial
matter of the formation of the rivals to the Grand Lodge Moderns
had been a plan of Turner's from 1755. The Antients Grand Lodge had
been formed some years before, not by Modern "schismatics" but by
disgruntled Irish Masons unable to gain entry to English lodges.
They formed their own Grand Lodge. The Moderns responded in 1755 by
declaring the Antients irregular. But, alarmingly by about 1755,
the Modern Grand Lodge discovered that about 271 Modern lodges had
ceased to exist.
(Hamill, p. 46.)
In 1762, the Moderns Grand Lodge sought a mode of retaliation against the Antients and considered seeking a Charter of Incorporation from parliament. The Antients Grand Lodge soon realised that if this happened, they would be on the outer, officially, of the Modern Grand Lodge. The Bill was presented in 1768 but in a surprise reaction, the Craft generally was against it as it was feared the Bill might allow the "appropriation" of charity funds meant for other purposes.
Arriving in 1765 was what would prove to be an upsetting force for the Moderns, or Premiers, which Hamill does not adequately explain: the Dukes of Atholl. These dukes were strong adherents to Antient Freemasonry and had recently been freed from their duties as hereditary owners of the Isle of Man, which they had been for four centuries. They sold the island to the British Government in 1765. Here, a treatment on the history of Freemasonry on the Isle of Man would be fascinating; and if it were written it would probably involve Richard Betham, the father-in-law of William Bligh, as follows: Betham married Mary (Mollie), a sister of Duncan Campbell already mentioned above.
According to the British Treasury, the Isle of Man by 1765 was
the centre of a vast smuggling network, meaning a loss to the crown
of about 330,000 pounds sterling in custom duties.
(R. H. Kinvig, The Isle Of Man - A Social, Cultural and
Political History. Liverpool University Press, 1975.)
Concerning Britain's purchase of the Isle of Man, there is recorded a correspondence between the Duke of Atholl on the Isle of Man and the Treasury in London. (Here, admittedly, I have not yet discovered if the Dukes of Atholl promoted Masonry on the Isle of Man - and I am also assuming that Betham, like his son-in-law Bligh, and brother-in-law, Duncan Campbell, was a Mason).
James Murray the second Duke of Atholl died in 1764, to be succeeded by his son-in-law, John, the 3rd Duke of Atholl (died 1774). The Lords Commissioners of HM Treasury soon treated on the purchase of the Isle and preventing an illicit trade to the detriment of the revenue of the crown. On 20 August, 1765, the third Duke of Atholl replied defensively to the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury; the Island had been in the family for four centuries, he had never engaged in illicit trade, nor did his predecessor; about 30-40,000 people lived on the island; he had been but a few months in possession of the Island.
On 12 September, 1765, the Lords Commissioners of the Treasury
wrote again to the Duke of Atholl. The year 1765 saw passage of the
Isle of Man Purchase Act by the British Government. The Isle of Man
Court of Tynwald from the later Act of the same name put the terms
of the government of the Island. Then entered Richard Betham as
receiver-general for the Isle of Man.
(Information from Manx Museum. I am indebted to Manx archivist, Ann
Harrison. On Betham: Atholl Paper Index, The Manx Museum Library,
Isle of Man, entries on Betham (died 1789). Betham was made a Judge
of the Admiralty Court on 6 September, 1765; Betham was appointed
first Receiver-General or Collector of Customs as well as water
bailiff of Douglas.)
On 26 September, 1765, Betham was made a Judge of the Admiralty Court, and he was appointed first Receiver-General or Collector of Customs as well as water bailiff of Douglas, the Isle of Man (a post he held till he died in 1789). And as Manx receiver-general, Betham "warred on smugglers". Betham as Manx receiver-general moved in precisely the circles - semi-authoritarian - which might have attracted a man to Masonry, but I am so far unaware of any records on the Isle of Man about Freemasonry. (Betham was from Glasgow, and I merely suspect he was a Freemason.) As a Mason, William Bligh was a Mason, probably devoted to a rite common in naval circles. (Bligh entered the navy as a child and perhaps was initiated into Freemasonry having been impressed by it even before he reached his twenties).
Duncan Campbell's Letterbooks are sprinkled with letters to Betham, who came from Thrimby Grove, Westmoreland. Betham is reputed to have been friends with Edinburgh philosopher David Hume, chemist Joseph Black, the economist at Glasgow, Adam Smith. He enjoyed lasting friendship with Lord Selkirk at St. Mary's Isle, who by repute was once in love with Duncan Campbell's sister of Glasgow, Mollie.
So in all this, assuming that Atholl or Antient Masonry was promoted on the Isle of Man by the dukes of Atholl, Betham, Bligh and Duncan Campbell, via his connections in Glasgow, and the West Indies among others, at least knew about Antient Freemasonry. Perhaps, Campbell in London ended a Freemason adhering to the Scots-Antient rite? I assume Betham was an Antient also. Bligh, however, was probably a Modern-Premier-English Mason? Whatever. Bligh appears to have been a keen Mason.
A captain of The Blackheath Golf Club in 1766 was
Alexander Duncan, a Master Mason. In 1766, the president of The
Royal Society was a Scot, the Earl of Morton (A Moderns
Mason?), an Edinburgh man.
Henderson and Stirk,
1981, p. 8.
A captain of The
Blackheath Golf Club in 1766 was Alexander Duncan, a Master
Mason.
Henderson and Stirk, 1981, p. 8.
During the 1930s
and 1940s, the Australian historian and biographer of Bligh,
Mackaness, himself a Mason, compiled various books on Masonry.
Including, Mackaness and Cramp, A History of the United Grand Lodge
of Ancient, Free and Accepted Masons Of New South Wales.
Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1938. Two Vols. See also the entry on
Freemasonry, Australian Encyclopaedia, Grolier, 1958-1962,
which gives 1797 as the earliest date for Masonic activity in
Australia, probably on Norfolk Island.
Mackaness' biography
of Bligh was published by 1931, but he failed to note that Bligh
was a Mason. But certainly, in one portrait of Bligh, the later
governor of NSW wears a Masonic medallion depicting square and
compass. Mackaness has distributed information that Bligh was
friendly with a royal Mason, the Duke of Clarence, later William
IV.
The Duke of Clarence is said by Mackaness to have been a friend
of Bligh about 1781, which seems a little hard to believe. See
George Mackaness, (Ed), Fresh Light On Bligh - Some Unpublished
Correspondence. Australian Historical Monographs. Vol. V. (New
Series). Reprinted 1976 by Review Publications., Dubbo., p. 37.
Hamill lists HRH William Henry, Duke of Clarence) (later King
William IV) as Grand Master of the Premiers in 1787. See also
Kennedy, Bligh, cited below, p. 177, on Bligh's friendship with the
Duke.
Bligh's patron at
The Royal Society from 1787, Sir Joseph Banks, is known to
have been a Mason.
On Banks: Robert Freke Gould, (on Freemasonry), Military Lodges,
1732-1899): The Apron and the Sword, or Freemasonry Under Arms,
being an Account of Lodges in Regiments and Ships of War and of
famous soldiers and sailors (of all countries) who have belonged to
the society. London, Gale and Polden, 1899.
Strangely, Mackaness
had Duncan Campbell's Letterbooks in his possession from the late
1920s until his death, when in the early 1950s they went to the
Mitchell Library in Sydney.
Byrnes, Commentary, in Oldham, cited below, p.
255.
Mackaness has written that in Bligh's eyes, Campbell was his "friend, guide, and philosopher", a term redolent of a formula of some description. (Duncan Campbell's Letterbooks are sprinkled with letters to Betham as a matter of natural family business).
In 1770, says
Hamill, citing Sadler's quite recently discovered information, some
Scottish members of two Antient Lodges in London broke away to form
up to five of their own Lodges, and their own Grand Lodge in
London. One suspects that here in this shadowy matter, only
recently discovered by historians of English Freemasonry, was not
unconnected with the popularity of both golf and Freemasonry at
Blackheath, a matter more known to historians of golf than
Freemasonry. But this is only a suspicion.
Hamill, pp. 52-53.
In brief, it seems that some Scots Freemasons in the mid-1780s in London departed Masonic orthodoxy and created five or so independent lodges. It may have been that their rite was Scots-Antient? Duncan Campbell and George Macaulay may have two men involved in this Masonic unorthodoxy? (Born in 1750, Macaulay was from the Isle of Wight, which seems to have been a strongly Masonised community).
Were there other Masons of note who could possibly now be mentioned? By 1772 Duncan Campbell had an address at Mincing Lane, in the City, and was partner with the official London convict contractor, John Stewart, who died in 1772 and had been greatly despised by American colonial administrators for shipping convicts and their diseases into colonial communities.
An aldermen of
London was Lord mayor, (Sir) Watkin Lewes, a Mason later, if not by
1781. Sir Watkin Lewes, MP for London and a City Alderman, had been
initiated on 5 November, 1781 in the Lodge of Emulation No. 12, and
was later listed on the Register of Premier Grand Lodge (Moderns).
But Lewes later went to the Antients. Sir Watkin Lewes became first
Worshipful Master of the Lion and Lamb Lodge, an Atholl lodge, No.
258, constituted in 1789. Sir Watkin was MP for London and
Alderman, Lord Mayor in 1781. In 1781 he was admitted to the Lodge
of Emulation now No. 21 of the Moderns.
See Bro. G. Abbott, History of the Lion and Lamb Lodge. Bro.
Hughan notes that Watkin Lewes was elected an Antient Junior Grand
Warden in 1789. In 1790, Lewes entered Holy Royal Arch Masonry as
conferred by the Antients.
Lewes is one of the few London alderman after 1780 actually listed as a Freemason, and hence his activities must have been conspicuous in his own day, as aldermen generally did not lack publicity. At this time in England the Antients were making inroads on the English moderns; argument persisted about ritual. Lewes' change of allegiance must have made waves at the time, for his case is still to be noted over two centuries later.
Amongst Scots: in
1772 the captain of The Blackheath Golf Club was Charles
Suttie, noted above. From about 1776 there had begun a serious
in-fight, as the Scots Antients, given leadership by the Duke of
Atholl, denied that the English Moderns could have any supremacy
over Scots Ancients. There occurred a virtual civil war in English
Freemasonry. In April 1777, the Moderns in England virtually
outlawed the Antients; the division was to grow more sharply by
June, 1791, when the Duke of Atholl rejoined the fray as returning
Grand Master of the Antients.
Wells, p. 51.
It may even be possible, one day, to create Masonic links to Duncan's Campbell's activities in managing the first hulks establishment, from 1776. Early on, convicts worked at the Woolwich Arsenal, emplacing docks which were probably used as cannons were loaded onto naval vessels. In 1777, Captain George Smith became provincial grand master for Kent. An Antient, he was an inspector at the Military Academy at Woolwich. By 1777, Duncan Campbell had gained the management of the Thames River Hulks near Woolwich for a year. But one would need to know more names of Masons in the Kent area to prove anything here. Campbell however moved in precisely the kind of authoritarian social environment which proved a fertile ground for Freemasonry in that era. In 1783, Campbell was Captain of Blackheath Golf Club.
Whatever, the
history of the Pacific Ocean informs that The Royal Society
deeply influenced Britain's view of the Pacific, the voyages of
Captain James Cook having been promoted by the Society. We also
know that Alexander Dalrymple, a Scot deeply interested in "the
great Southland" of the Pacific, and who vied with Cook for command
of the expedition into the Pacific for what became Cook's first
voyage, was also later a golfer at The Blackheath Golf Club,
which also owed its existence to the influence of royal Scots.
A Mr. Dalrymple is listed as a golfer of Blackheath in W. E.
Hughes, cited below, pp. 3-6. Hughes for example has preserved
information on the bets golfers made with each other. Such bets
were frivolous, speaking of bonhomie. A number of East India ships
captains lived at Blackheath, one being a relative of George
Macaulay, Larkins, noted above. See Byrnes, The Blackheath
Connection.
Dalrymple is noticed in A. Carey Taylor, Charles de Brosses, The
Man Behind Cook, in The Opening Of The Pacific - Image And
Reality, Maritime Monographs and Reports, No 2, 1971,
London, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich., pp. 3-19.
Also noticed here are the names of some Englishmen interested in
the Pacific elsewhere mentioned in this article, plus Bougainville;
Capt. James Cook, Commodore Byron (the grandfather of the poet),
Wallis, Carteret, Joseph Banks. And the matter of the contest
between Dalrymple and Cook for command of an expedition after 1769
to observe the transit of Venus from Tahiti. Dalrymple may or may
not have been a Freemason?
Is it surprising that Macaulay had helped send one chartered ship in the First Fleet of convict ships to Sydney in 1786-1788, and sent one of his own ships later, Pitt. That the captain of Pitt had been said to have made an historic voyage, pioneering a "sea lane" between Sydney and India, but that Pitt's owner had been lost to history, despite having had a ship in the First Fleet? Matters become worse.
If this Thomas King was one and the same, of CC&K and also the associate of St Barbe, then Blackheath began to seem like a decided hub of interest in two related matters - shipping convicts to Sydney and exploring either the wider Pacific (which interested whalers), or, finding trade via India or China. Certain knotty historical research problems arose. Among them: what had Freemasonry to do with anything, specifically?
Related to, but
apart from that, it also became known for the first time in 1989
that living at Blackheath in the 1780s had been other ship
managers, non-Masons, evidently, who had also shipped convicts to
Sydney. They were the Enderby family of whalers, "chieftains" of
the English Southern Whale Fishery based in London. An Enderby
associate, John St. Barbe, a writer of marine insurance at Lloyd's
of London. And probably, a later insurance associate of St Barbe's,
Thomas King, who was a member of a firm of slavers in the City of
London, Camden, Calvert and King (CC&K). CC&K
regularly gathered slaves in their own ships on the African West
Coast and sent them to Jamaica. CC&K also had a few ships in
the Southern Whale Fishery; plus much of two fleets of convict
ships to Sydney, known as the Second and Third Fleets.
(See Michael Flynn, Second Fleet, cited
below.)
CC&K consisted of Anthony Calvert, William Camden and Thomas King. Calvert is difficult to trace genealogically. Camden was probably associated with a London firm of sugar bakers, Camden. Thomas King is also difficult to prove, genealogically. The name King is found at Blackheath, but it is not certain if it was the same man. However, it is also known that Thomas King of Camden, Calvert and King was a business partner with John St Barbe respecting long-term dealings in insurance at Lloyd's of London, from about 1796. (During the American Revolution, St Barbe was one of several shipping contractors consistently favoured by government [navy] contract writers, presumably so favoured as he did a good job.) So a strong possibility exists that the name King as found in lists of residents about Blackheath in the period was the very same Thomas King.
Golf was
introduced to London at Blackheath by James I, (reigning 1603-1625)
from 1608 if not earlier. Although, it is probable that golfing
society at Blackheath failed to survive the departure of James I
from London, then resurfaced.
Neil Rhind, The Heath: A Companion Volume to Blackheath Village
and Environs. Blackheath, London. Bookshop Blackheath Ltd.
1987., pp. 47ff. Rhind has published two other volumes on
Blackheath.
In Scotland
meanwhile, close links between golfers and Freemasons were quite
deliberately encouraged, though the reasons why are not stated. By
the 1760s there was being developed in Scotland and London an
increasingly strong connection between golfing and Freemasonry
which has been little explored by historians of Freemasonry.
Henderson and Stirk; W. E. Hughes, p. 3.
Follows the names of
various London Freemasons known to history, just for reference.
I am indebted here to information from Mrs. K. A. Jowett,
assistant librarian, Library and Museum of the United Grand Lodge
of England, Freemason's Hall, Great Queen Street, London WC2B 5AZ.
Tel: (071) 831-9811. Mrs. Jowett wrote to a researcher I employed
on 28 May, 1993.
Various books
mention Freemasonry in the Royal Navy and note that Freemasonry was
popular in the East India Company, as well as the armed
services.
PM William Pitt was NOT a Freemason in 1799 when the Unlawful
Societies Act was being discussed, but he was a member of a group
called "Knights of the Moon".
Mason Edmund Burke (thought to be the politician), attended a Mason
meeting on 3 March, 1769, for members of the Lodge named the
Jerusalem Lodge No. 44, now erased, St. John Jerusalem Tavern, St.
John's Street, Clerkenwell.
Mason, Hon. Thomas Harley (was he the Lord Mayor of that name,
related to Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford and Mortimer?),
Morning Bush Lodge No. 13, now Emulation Lodge No 21, Morning Bush
Tavern, Aldersgate St., London, initiated 31 March, 1761. In 1763
he became a Grand Steward.
Mason Nathaniel Newnham, Morning Bush Lodge No 13, now Emulation
Lodge No. 21, Paul's Head Tavern, Cateaton St., London, initiated 5
November, 1781 at age 35. Address Powis Place, Great Ormond St.
This was probably the noted alderman of London of that name, thus,
a contemporary of alderman Macaulay.
Mason Timothy Curtis, Dundee Arms Lodge No. 9, (now Old Dundee
Lodge No. 18), Private Room, Red Lion St., Wapping. Initiated about
1773. Address Wapping, occupation, biscuit baker. Mason and brother
of Timothy, William Curtis, Dundee Arms Lodge No. 9, initiated 11
December, 1777, occupation gentleman. These were brothers, William,
also a London alderman, placing a ship Lady Penrhyn in the
First Fleet in a partnership with alderman Macaulay of Blackheath.
Later, William Curtis was knighted. He was personal friends with
King George IV and went with him to Scotland/Edinburgh in 1822 on a
visit which gave zest to many Scottish Freemasons.
See Prebble's book, cited below.
Mason, one Duncan Campbell Friendship Lodge No. 3 (Now No. 6).
Initiated before 1788, address Suffolk Street, Haymarket, and Upper
Harley Street, Cavendish Square, occupation Esq., in 1788 he became
a grand steward. It is not known if this was the hulks
overseer.
John Hamill's book
on the English Craft, which can now be regarded as a
classic, if only for want of competition, is rather coy about
Scottish Freemasonry, and conveys mysteriously little about Irish
Freemasonry. Irish Freemasonry tended to be "mobile", as many army
regiments adhered to Irish Freemasonry.
In brief, Hamill can tell us nothing about a peculiar branch of
Freemasonry at Blackheath, known as The Knuckle Club.
For more information here, see Byrnes, The Blackheath
Connection, cited below.
And so, as far as one has read on Freemasonry, The Knuckle Club did not exist. Even as a golfing club, its members might have been businessmen from the City, relaxing on weekends over golf probably followed by drinks or a meal - many of them living locally. And even as businessmen, they might have been merely insurance underwriters, or an alderman of London. Except that some of them had been shipping convicts to Australia, and that was a question involving not just the policing of London, but the policing of England, Wales, then Ireland, and to a much lesser extent, Scotland.
And it has been claimed by critics of Masonry in England that from about the 1780s, Masons in England began to have an undue influence on the policing of the nation. If that was indeed so, it might be expected that the names of Masons might turn up in terms of matters relating to shipping convicts to Australia? And so by 1989, unexpectedly, the names of men who were Masons, and also interested in shipping convicts out of the country, bobbed up located in of all things, a Masonic Golf Club at Blackheath! Formerly unknown to history!
If we turn from
Hamill, a librarian for Masonry, to recent critics of the influence
of Freemasonry in English life since the 1780s, we come across
other anomalies in discussions. During the 1980s, there arose
controversy in Britain after the publication of two books
investigating Freemasonry. The authors were Stephen Knight and
Martin Short.
Stephen Knight, The Brotherhood: The Secret World of the
Freemasons. Sydney, Grafton Books, 1985. Martin Short, Inside The
Brotherhood: Further Secrets of the Brotherhood. Sydney, Grafton
Books, 1990.
And so, the situation in London from 1786? In modern anti-Masonic books such as those by Stephen Knight and Martin Short, it is complained that Freemasons have an objectionable grip on the judiciary and the conduct of the British police force. What such books lack, and what their Freemason critics also ignore, is information on how or when such allegedly objectionable influences began. I feel this influence grew in London after 1786, more so after the French Revolution.
Part of the controversy ranged around suggestions that Freemasons - as members of a "secret organisation" - exert an undue influence on policing, in politics, in local government, to a dangerous extent. The controversy prompted John Hamill, as London historian of Freemasonry, to respond with his book, The Craft. In The Craft, Hamill remarks (p. 87): "The development of English, and Irish and Scottish, Freemasonry abroad closely follows the development of Britain as an Imperial power." He adds, that the decline of Imperial power was mirrored in formerly subservient (colonial) lodges seeking independence [from the Grand Lodge of England, the organisation's governing body].
Is this disingenuous? Why does Hamill speak so little of Irish Freemasonry? Were there links between the spread of the British Empire and the spread of Freemasonry within the Empire that have escaped historians? The Imperialist writer, Kipling, was a noted Freemason. Were some but not all Imperialists also Freemasons, or were some but not all Freemasons also Imperialists? Does it matter? As Freemasons may rhetorically ask in order to elude definition, as they often do: "Is Masonry a secretive society, or a society with secrets?"
Names useful for any debate, and easily discoverable in history, are already listed above. And so, the critics of Masonry say remarkably little that is useful, about what actually went on with Masonry in London and environs between, say, 1783 (the year of the Treaty of Paris which effectively meant Britain and the American colonies were no longer at war), and 1813, when breaches in Masonry generally in England were healed. In the interim, Britain acquired virtually an entire new continent, Australia. But, why was the year 1813 so important?
How should historians approach conspiracy theories in history? Does Freemasonry attempt to deflect or distract attention from questions which should properly interest historians? If no valid questions exist here, there is no reason for the historian to regard Freemasonry as anything but a social club.
If serious
historical questions and issues do exist, historians and Freemasons
should possibly share information? None of this would mean that
Freemasons as individuals cannot make an impact on history.
Certainly, Altmann (cited below) is correct in suggesting that the
historian will have trouble in evaluating the influence in history
of an organisation such as Freemasonry. The problems encountered
are more severe than the problems associated with dealing with the
historical influence of any religion, sect, or cult, and are made
more difficult by the element of Masonic secrecy.
(See Dr. Berthold Altmann, "Freemasonry and Political Parties In
Germany", p. 278 of the American Masonic publication, New
Age, May, 1955., cited by Paul Fisher, p. 205. There is little
about Freemasonry that appeals to the scientific historian.
Freemasonry seems like a bundle of paradoxes, puzzles,
contradictions and deliberate elusiveness. It defies analysis, and
those defending Freemasonry against bitter critics often seem to
prefer it that way.
Freemasons were often loyal freethinkers in England. For the historian, the real problem is this: does the [alleged] secrecy of Masons hide or camouflage interventions in historical processes which should be matters on the public record? Does any of this relate to how historians should approach conspiracy theories in history? Does Freemasonry attempt to deflect or distract attention from questions which should properly interest historians? If no valid questions exist here, there is no reason for the historian to regard Freemasonry as anything but a social club.
If serious
historical questions and issues do exist, historians and Freemasons
should possibly share information? None of this would mean that
Freemasons as individuals cannot make an impact on history.
Certainly, Altmann (cited below) is correct in suggesting that the
historian will have trouble in evaluating the influence in history
of an organisation such as Freemasonry. The problems encountered
are more severe than the problems associated with dealing with the
historical influence of any religion, sect, or cult, and are made
more difficult by the element of Masonic secrecy.
See Dr. Berthold Altmann, "Freemasonry and Political Parties In
Germany", p. 278 of the American Masonic publication, New
Age, May, 1955., cited by Paul Fisher, p. 205. There is little
about Freemasonry that appeals to the scientific historian.
Freemasonry seems like a bundle of paradoxes, puzzles,
contradictions and deliberate elusiveness. It defies analysis, and
those defending Freemasonry against bitter critics often seem to
prefer it that way.
In part, Freemasonry
defines itself by its capacity to elude definition. It follows that
the historian finds Masonry difficult to grapple with. In 1993, an
anonymous Freemason in New South Wales wrote, apparently in an
editorial capacity:
"The nature of Freemasonry and of its traditions is responsible
for the difficulty the historian encounters in evaluating the
influence which the Fraternity has exercised on the development of
the Enlightenment... and all other progressive
ideologies."
If Masonry did promote an influence in England which was pernicious from the 1780s, and until today, for example, by recruiting men in government, or senior civil servants, police or the judiciary, we can ask: the notables of the period are well known to history: which men might have influenced or been so influenced? Such questions can be quite specific.
It should be possible, for example, for the historian to discover the personal friends of the Duke of Atholl, who might also have been Masons. So, the oddest matter to consider in this context is that many names arise in Freemasonry - and at Blackheath - which were also connected with moves to transport convicted criminals to Australia. Among such names connected with early European Australian history is the luminary of science of the day, particularly Botany, Sir Joseph Banks, who was often in the company of George III.
Some critics anyway of Freemasonry regard it as a determinedly conspiratorial organisation, which seems unwarranted in the English case. After 1780, lists that I can find of men in British life who were well-known as corrupt, tend to include few men known to have been Freemasons. Meanwhile, it could perhaps be said, that of the few known Freemasons in British life who have been said to have been corrupt, Duncan Campbell was one of them. It remains to be seen if he was actually corrupt, but most historians of the Thames, treating the Thames prison hulks, have enthusiastically damned Campbell as corrupt.
Why have these names been overlooked in the history of Freemasonry, when they are so easily available otherwise as being connected with moves associated to found a convict colony on the eastern Australian coast? Such questions cannot apparently be answered by either an apologist for Masonry, Hamill, nor critics of Masonry such as Sharp or Short.
In short, it is possible to name many relevant names, but is it desirable to name names? Yes, indeed. For example, IF, as Knight and Short might tend to claim, Masonry in England found adherents amongst the police and judiciary, leading to "a pernicious and unwonted influence", before, say, 1813, it so happens that names arising in such occupations ought to be noted, and are in fact noted in the history of convict transportation to Australia. What happens, then, when such history is examined in depth? Lists of names develop, of a convict hulks overseer, his political masters, the botanist Sir Joseph Banks, convicts who were convicted by a particular judge on a particular circuit through English cities, towns and counties, all at a time when moves to create a London, or an English police force were faltering except in the case of the creation of the Thames Water Police in the 1790s, as promoted by magistrate Patrick Colquhuon. Colquhuon anyway before the American Revolution had transported convicts to North America; he knew his business intimately.
It seems simple at bottom: Freemasons in England being loyal to the status-quo were not merely allowed, they were encouraged to influence the management of many institutions, on the grounds that their influence would stabilise society. Since much early Australian history has to be regarded as penal history, the names of many legal men in London and outlying counties can be mentioned, as the magistrates and judges sentencing prisoners. To prove a hypothesis that many legal men handling prisoners sent to NSW were Masons, or not, all that would be needed is for London's Freemasons to open their books of memberships. The influence of Freemasonry, or lack of it in the application of the law, should become readily apparent.
I doubt this information would ever be revealed, but only the suggestion needs to be made. It would easily be in the power of English Freemasons affronted by writers such as Stephen Knight and Martin Short to rebut implications in their books. Such a move would be entirely in the ambit of the kinds of "authentic" research of which John Hamill would approve.
When matters are
seen in this perspective, it becomes clear that as "history", for
the period 1780 to 1813, both the critics and apologists for
English Freemasonry are researching and writing naively. In
fact, if there were any secrets to be known, it has been the case
since 1780 that a great deal could have been found out by
inspecting biographies of people associated with the "founding" of
Britain's first convict colony at Sydney. This naiveté has not
affected aspects of the writing of American history in the same
period, since it has long been known popularly, that up to 53 of
the 56 signatories of the American Declaration of Independence (or
the Constitution?) were Freemasons.
(See Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry
and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840.
Institute of Early American History and Culture, University of
North Carolina Press, 1996. ISBN 0-80872282-5.)
We find that information can be usefully focussed at Blackheath. The names of Blackheath men who after 1786 were directly associated with convict ships taking prisoners to Australia were Duncan Campbell, John St Barbe, the Enderby family of whalers, the London alderman George M. Macaulay, the Larkins family of East India Company of traders (or, ships husbands). Genealogies can be developed for the families of all these men. For example, General "Chinese" Gordon, arises within the Enderby genealogy.
Other people of general interest in the period who lived in areas quite near Blackheath (with no implication they were Masons intended) are the banker Sir Francis Baring and "the father of Lloyd's of London", John Julius Angerstein. Angerstein was a personal friend of George III.
But if working in
detail, we come in particular to related lists of the names of the
political masters of the convict shippers in question. The
politician who (more skilfully than history suggests) guided
matters leading to the creation of a convict colony at Sydney was
Thomas Townshend, first Viscount Sydney, with portfolio, the Home
Office. (Not a Mason as far as is known, he was given his
viscountcy for his work in 1783 in helping write the Treaty of
Paris making peace with the Americans).
Evan Nepean (dates), under-secretary of the Home Office, a
workaholic and a meritocrat, that is, a man of relatively low birth
who rose due to recognition due to his undoubted administrative
abilities. (He was, I suspect, a Mason). Later in his career he was
a governor of Bombay.
Perhaps, Jenkinson, , guiding the whalers,
Perhaps, various notables of the East India Company, including its
governor of about 1793, the banker, Sir Francis
Baring.
Last of a possibly interesting list, Thomas Shelton, not a political master at all, but the only official at the Home Office with the authority to draw a contract for the transportation of convicts to Australia.
Sir Joseph Banks was no political master, but he nevertheless wielded considerable influence as a scientist, if not a Mason. Certain matters become clearer when it is understood how Bligh gained command of HMAV Bounty. It is suggested above that a Blackheath golfer, the banker Innes, could have promoted the idea of a breadfruit voyage, and that he knew Duncan Campbell as a Blackheath golfer. Both were West India merchants. By 1787, Campbell was employing Bligh as an ordinary ships captain working the London-Jamaica run. It would have been easy for Campbell, persuaded by Innes, to promote Bligh's name as a useful captain for a breadfruit voyage. In fact, in mid-1787, Campbell moved his counting house (which also had many convict records) from Mincing Lane to 3 Robert Street, the Adelphi. His new address was only 45 seconds walk from the premises of The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Commerce and Manufacture, etc. Campbell was not a member of that organisation until mid-1787, as can be found from consultation of its membership book. From mid-1787, Bligh's name was promoted as a possible captain, which coincides with the date Campbell joined this Society. The conclusion seems fair: Campbell promoted Bligh, then on Jamaica or returning from Jamaica, as captain for the breadfruit voyage. This came to the attention of Sir Joseph Banks; and the rest is history.
But what is interesting here in Duncan Campbell's Letterbooks is that he gives no record of having joined this Society. Nor are there any copies of letters indicating he did promote Bligh in this way. One concludes, Masons kept any correspondence on Masonic matters apart from their usual correspondence. If all this was indeed the case, then the breadfruit voyage culminating in the mutiny on the Bounty was "a Masonic job"; and, presumably a job well-known as such in Masonic circles on Jamaica. Once one begins gathering information in this way, the probably influence of Masonry begins to spread in history as ink spreads in water...
Various other problems exist with discussing the Masons of Blackheath. The roles in history of some of them have been unknown/ignored to date. For example, alderman Macaulay's ship Pitt made one voyage between Sydney and India, acknowledged as "historic" by maritime historians, as noted above, but Macaulay as Pitt's owner has been written out of history! Despite the fact that Macaulay's name, as connected with the ship Lady Penrhyn, is noted in Governor Phillip's first book on events at Sydney, Voyage, published in 1789, the first book published on "Australian history".
It may be best then to discuss tendencies which arise in the discussion of Freemasonry, so far. Freemasons, naturally, defend their organisation and its belief system. Criticism of modern British Freemasonry has lately been fierce. In Australia, since about the mid-1970s, Freemasonry has been attacked little; no scandals have been especially imputed to men who are or have been Freemasons. And in recent years, Australian Freemasons have responded to obviously high-level calls from within their organisation to be more candid in their dealings with the press. An earlier policy of "no comment" has been rescinded. The Australian press has generally responded with fairness.
Meanwhile, if matters were pursued seriously in "history", problems would probably become worse. It has been remarked that up to 53 signatories of the Declaration of American Independence were Masons. That George Washington was a Mason. Hamill points out that during the American Revolution, many Loyalists were Freemasons. This means, that rebellious American Freemasons fought both Loyalist Freemasons resident in America, plus English Freemasons! Hamill is correct on one point: statistics on such matters tend to be meaningless unless we know how many American Loyalists were also Freemasons. Since history is usually written from the side of the victor, neither the winners or the losers of the American Revolution are likely to bother to count Loyalist Freemasons as meaningful players.
That the record has been misread by Australians (who incidentally have never inspected the influence of Freemasonry in social history in print) is by now a matter of interest in its own right. We may be able to conclude then, with saying that London Freemasons did share a notion about "a new Jerusalem", but there was no conspiracy: the business of creating a new convict colony at Sydney was discussed openly enough in England's newspapers of 1786. But in trying to explain how this new Jerusalem was created, we come face to face with many views about Freemasonry. Where we are interested about any historical impact made by Freemasons, we learn for example that Freemasons can be as ignorant as their critics about certain issues.
The Grand Lodge of England of Accepted Masons was instituted in 1723 with the Duke of Wharton as grand master, despite protests from other lodges, including that of York, which claimed greater antiquity. Of course, from the 1720s, the "operatives" were no longer heard from. The date 1726 applies to the first extant minutes of a purely speculative lodge, at the Swan and Rummer Tavern, Finch Lane, London. Remarkably, it is seemingly only from 1726, that we know of the existence of the three degrees which form the basis of the Craft.
In 1723, the first secretary of the Grand Lodge in London became William Cowper, Clerk of the Parliaments, who kept the first proper minutes. Cowper's role might suggest that legal men were interested by this time, as were some military men. From 1725, when there were 64 lodges in England, the first English provincial grand masters were Col. Francis Columbine for Cheshire, and General Hugh Warburton for Cheshire and North Wales, about 1727.
In 1725, embattled York defied London and declared itself the Grand Lodge of All England. But then, strangely, York did little and from 1741 it became dormant. York "reappeared" in 1761, embracing Royal Arch, and was a governing body for Knights Templar; later it reappeared again as a Grand Lodge and developed more lodges, then it inexplicably disappeared again in 1792, never to reappear. And so while York and Northumbria are often mentioned in discussions of English Freemasonry (and are mentioned by Hamill), another important area allegedly was Staffordshire (which Hamill does not mention).
From 1728-1729, during the First Founding of the British Empire, began the "export" of Freemasonry. Lodges were established at Gibraltar, and Fort William at Calcutta. Capt. Ralph Farr Winter was appointed provincial Grand Master for the East Indies in 1729. As British Imperial influence extended, so did lodges, another being established in Bengal in 1729. (Hamill, p. 87.)
In 1729, one of England's first Grand Masters was Thomas Howard, 8th Duke of Norfolk, a Catholic. English Freemasonry was spread to Italy about 1733 by an Englishman, Lord Sackville, but here, Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln would suggest that Sackville would have been merely experimenting, inspecting conformity between existing (originally French) forms of Freemasonry, and the English variety he would have been used to.
In 1735 the French Lodges made a Scottish baronet, J. H. McLean, their Grand Master. The greatest noblemen of France were Masons, and some were opponents of Papal authority. In 1730, English Freemasonry was introduced to America when Daniel Cox was appointed provincial Grand Master for New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In 1733, Henry Price was appointed a provincial Grand Master for English Freemasonry for New England. Between 1730 and 1775, the Premier Grand Lodge appointed 23 provincial grand masters in America. The rival Antients Grand Lodge of England was also active on the eastern American seaboard. The Antients Provincial Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania appointed over 50 lodges for North America and the Caribbean. A pattern later developed where each American state formed its own grand lodge.
In 1738, Pope Clement XII issued a Papal Bull against the Freemasons, warning Catholics against it. The English Freemason and writer Horace Walpole wrote on the papal condemnation, that it had been ignored in England. By 1738, according to Hamill, English Freemasonry had appeared in the West Indies and Caribbean, with a grand master being appointed and a lodge set up in Antigua in 1738. Barbados was organised in 1740. A Lodge was set up in Jamaica in 1739, and the Craft had its greatest success in Jamaica. By 1738-39, as Anderson's and other writings show, the London Grand Lodge was exercising a "judicial" control over provincial lodges in England as well as lodges abroad.
By 1738, according to Hamill, English Freemasonry had appeared in the West Indies and Caribbean, with a Grand Master being appointed and a lodge set up in Antigua in 1738; Barbados was organised in 1740. A Lodge was set up in Jamaica in 1739, and the Craft had its greatest success in Jamaica. Hamill. In 1740, one of the earlier aristocratic (but not Royal) grand masters of English-Modern Freemasonry was John, 3rd Earl of Kintore, Grand Master, Premier Grand Lodge, England, [from Hamill's lists].
In 1740, one of the earlier aristocratic (but not royal) grand masters of English-Modern Freemasonry was John, 3rd Earl of Kintore, grand master, Premier Grand Lodge, England. In 1741, James, 14th Earl of Morton was the Grand Master, Premier Grand Lodge, England. Some of the earliest records (in London) of the Royal Order of Scotland date from about 1741, so presumably they dated from before 1741 in Scotland. Hamill suggests, one of the earliest records of the Royal Order of Scotland arises in 1741; a date by when golf and Masonry may have become linked in Scotland.
The commentator Lawrence, relying on Cowan, feels that the Scottish Rite took shape in France about 1740, and about that year, adherents to the Scottish Rite began aggressively challenging the Catholic Church. Some views are that The Ancient and Accepted Rite, which allows a range of higher degrees, originated in France in the 1750s with a 25-degree rite of perfection. This rite went to the West Indies in 1761-1762 with a Jewish Mason, one Stephen Morin, and from there to Charleston in South Carolina. In 1741, James, 14th Earl of Morton was the Grand Master, Premier Grand Lodge, England, [from Hamill's lists].
During the 1740s, [Hamill, p. 122] Knights Templar Freemasonry arose.
This probably originated in France, where there arose a revival of interest in chivalric orders in the 1740s. This variety was "worked" in England from 1777, and by 1791 the influential Thomas Dunckerley formed a Grand Conclave for it, with himself as Grand Master, to be succeeded by Lord Rancliffe. (The Duke of Kent became Grand Master of this Masonry in 1804.) While Knights Templar Masonry made slow progress, any progress it made at all might suggest a dissatisfaction with the limited number of degrees offered by the Premier Grand Lodge. The rivals to Premier Freemasonry do seem to have adopted a tactic of offering a greater variety of degrees.
In any reconstructed chronology, meant as a guideline only, we find as follows: For example... One noted Mason was John Campbell (1705-1782) 4th Earl of Londoun, governor of Virginia and commander of all British Forces in America in 1756, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England in 1736, first (past or provincial?) Grand Master to visit a Grand Lodge in America, Boston Grand Lodge on 31 January, 1757 (when four members of Campbell's staff were entered). He had been commissioned in the Scots Greys at an early age, succeeded his father to the title, was one of 16 representative Scottish Peers in Parliament. Governor of Stirling Castle and Edinburgh. ADC to the king when serving in Flanders in 1745. Appointed governor of Virginia succeeding General Braddock, but "due to politics at home and poor handling of colonial authorities in the new world, he served only 23 July 1756 to December 1757". In 1762, he took part in the Peninsula Wars in Portugal, was promoted full general by 1770, retired to Scotland as titular Governor of Edinburgh till his death in 1782.
Between 1747-1752, Freemasonry was neglected by the Premier Grand Master (London Moderns), the 5th Lord Byron (great-uncle of the poet), which did nothing to alleviate the difficulties of the Moderns. The Premier deputy Grand Master, Dr Thomas Manningham, tried vainly to stem the rot.
Disregarding
Continental proceedings, older British writers on Freemasonry
tended to emphasise the year 1751 as significant, as Masonic Lodges
began near London from 1751. References to earlier events are
labelled TI, or, Time Immemorial. Such older writers tended to
avoid discussing facts on "the tradition", and they remained coy
about the civil war that was to be fought between the Premier
Moderns and the Antients till 1813, and on proceedings in America,
where the Antients competed with the Moderns for members, and where
Royal Arch was less controversial. The Moderns disliked Royal Arch,
but minutes are extant from 1753 of Royal Arch Masonry at Lodge
Fredericksburg, Virginia.
(See John Lane, A Handy Book to [the study of] Lists of Lodges
of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons Of England. "Moderns And
Ancient". London, 1889. Copy, British Library.)
The year 1751 can be noted for other reasons. Stephen Knight writes [Stephen Knight, p. 28] that 1751 was a crucial year in London in that there occurred a strong reaction to the de-Christianization of Freemasonry instituted by Dr James Anderson and Desaguliers, of the Moderns, from about 1723. Some Freemasons called themselves "the Antients", and the Antients had looked askance at the de-Christianized Premier/Modern Grand Lodge formed from 1717. In 1751 the Ancients created a rival Grand Lodge, and they adhered to some links with Christianity and to other aspects of what was considered to be an older tradition. There was also a third grouping, linked with the Moderns, called Traditioners. From 1751, the Moderns and the Antients competed for members in both London and the provinces.
Hamill is unhelpful here in that he does not discuss the origins of Irish Masonry. It was apparently long believed in English Freemasonry that the Antients were [merely] artisans whose Craft did not conform, but whether they were tradesmen or not, the Antients were good organisers. Laurence Dermott, wine merchant of London, became their grand secretary between 1752-1771 and deputy Grand Master, 1771-1777 and 1783-1787. Dermott had been born in Ireland and was initiated in Dublin in 1741 into a lodge of which he became Master in 1746. Dermott presumably then espoused Irish Freemasonry by 1746.
Presumably, Sholto was, in 1766, the man who was president of The Royal Society, a Scot, the Earl of Morton, an Edinburgh man. If so, the Earl of Morton was perhaps a renegade to Antient Scots Masonry? But whether that is the case or not, Sholto and the Royal Society from the 1760s did much to promote Britain's scientific interest in the Pacific. By the 1760s, Freemasonry in England by the 1760s had successfully infiltrated The Royal Society, although some would attribute this influence to the time when Isaac Newton was president of the Society. By the 1760s, anyway, Britain was expressing interest in exploring the Pacific Ocean.
Members of the Premier Grand Lodge were led by Grand Master Lord Blayney; despite officially disapproving of Royal Arch, they set up their first Chapter of the Royal Arch of Jerusalem. From then, apparently, senior Premiers practised Royal Arch while denying it to less senior brethren. From 1768 was the first keeping of Grand Lodge and other lodge membership lists, and the idea arose to build a Freemasons' Hall in London. Between 1769-1783, the grand secretary of the Grand Lodge was James Heseltine, who was grand treasurer between 1785-1804. In the Imperial reaches of British Masonry, in 1775, the first Indian initiated as a Freemason was the much-indebted Nabob of the Carnatic, Omdat-ul-Omrah, of Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic, where the East India Company would involve itself in expensive wars.
In 1778 the Captain of the Blackheath Golf Club was William Innes, son of an Edinburgh banker, a West India merchant, of Lime St., City. MP for Ilchester for 1774-1775. In 1775-1776, the Freemasons' Tavern was built in Great Queen Street, London, while James Heseltine was grand secretary. Between 1775-1781, John the 4th Duke of Atholl became Grand Master of the Scots Antient Grand Lodge, England.
To backtrack on events in London... In 1772, a new Modern Grand Master in London was Robert, 9th Lord Petre, a leading Roman Catholic who did much to finalize the building of the London Freemason's Hall. In 1774 the Moderns had purchased land fronting Great Queen Street and the architect Thomas Sandby was engaged to create a design. The Hall was finished by 23 May, 1776.
1766 - The Dukes of York and Cumberland became Masons, plus the Duke of Gloucester. The Duke of Cumberland was a Grand Master Premier in 1767, succeeded by the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV. (Hamill, p. 47.)
1771-74, John, 3rd Duke of Atholl, Grand Master, Scots-Antient Grand Lodge, England.
A major row blew up in Freemasonry in 1779 in London between the Grand Lodge South of the River Trent (which answered to the oddly-behaving Grand Lodge of York), and London's Premier Grand Lodge, after the South of Trenters had made a public procession. Between 1783-1791 Randall William, 6th Earl and 2nd Marquess of Antrim was Grand Master of the Antient Grand Lodge, England.
On 7 February, 1786, Laurence Dermott became deputy Grand Master of Lodge No. 234, Antients, "Domatic", and this lodge may have had some reference to Scots Masonry. Wells explicitly states that Scots Antient Masonry "began" about 1785. (This seems to accord with what is now known in social history about Freemasonry, Scots merchants and golfing at Blackheath, but a conclusion here may be hasty.) In December 1787, Laurence Dermott retired gout-stricken as deputy Grand Master of the Antients, to be succeeded by James Perry.
A little late in the day for English Modern Freemasonry, in 1782, HRH Henry Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, was installed as first Royal Grand Master in England, for Premier Grand Lodge (Moderns). Premier Grand Lodge, Grand Masters are 1782-89, Thomas, 3rd Earl of Effingham, 1782-1790, HRH Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, Grand Master, Premier Grand Lodge, England. (From Hamill's lists).
1783, Duncan
Campbell was Captain of Blackheath Golf Club. 1783-1791, Randall
William, 6th Earl and 2nd Marquess of Antrim, Grand Master, Antient
Grand Lodge, England. (From Hamill's lists.) On 7 February, 1786,
Laurence Dermott became deputy grand master of Lodge No 234,
Antients, "Domatic", with reference to Scots Masonry.
Wells regards Laurence Dermott as "one who may be deemed to have
had the greatest single influence in the shaping of Freemasonry
throughout the world". He had about 47 years in the craft and
helped establish many new lodges.
In 1787, HRH William Henry, Duke of Clarence (Of the Moderns?); in 1787 HRH Frederick, Duke of York, Grand Master of the Premier Grand Lodge (Moderns?); in 1790 HRH Edward Duke of Kent. Also HRH Frederick, Duke of York.
Significantly in London, on 19 April 1788, the Grand Lodge No. 1 dined under "a new dispensation", Mason is Alderman. Sir Watkin Lewes, MP.
The Grand Lodge in London (with relations improving between the Ancients and the Moderns) met at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, on 11 December, 1793 with the Antients' Grand Master being the 4th Duke of Atholl. In 1794, the Premier deputy grand master was Admiral Sir Peter Parker, Bart. The first grand principal of Royal Arch Masonry was Lord Rancliffe.
TOWARD THE MASONIC UNION OF 1813:Various problems within Masonry did however seem to have become resolved in the Grand Union of English Freemasons in 1813 - the union between the Premiers (or Moderns) and the Antients. Added to any disagreement was the dour attitude English Freemasons have had toward the Rosicrucianism that has been popular in France, and perhaps has become even more popular in the United States.
In the 1790s, Masonic meetings held at the Jamaican House Tavern, Rotherhithe St., Bermondsey). Salomon, the promoter of the composer, Haydn was a Freemason. Meetings of several social-improvement groups were held at the Freemasons Hall, including the Bible Society and the Anti-Slavery Society. (Hamill, p. 178.)
In 1801, William Finch in Britain began publishing his lectures on the Craft. In 1803, Moira, the acting Grand Master of Premier Grand Lodge, who had allegedly saved Masonry from the Bill against Unlawful Societies (of 1797-1799), entered Royal Arch Masonry. In 1809, the Premier Grand Lodge ordered a reverse in ritual changes of the late 1730s and warranted a special Lodge of Promulgation to look into differences of ritual, work designed to pave the way for a union of Freemasonry. On 7 March, 1810, a Mason's union was proposed for a new Grand Lodge under grand masters HRH Prince of Wales and the Duke of Atholl, at a meeting at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, London, prior to a reunion [of the Antients and Moderns]. Committees were set up in 1810 to seek a union. The Premier Grand Lodge negotiator was Moira, but the Antients used a committee, which slowed proceedings.
On 7 March, 1810, a Mason's union was proposed for Grand Lodge under Grand Masters HRH and Duke of Atholl, at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, London, prior to a reunion [of Antients and Moderns]. In May 1813, HRH Prince of Wales was succeeded as a Grand Master by his brother, HRH Duke of Sussex, Augustus Frederick. In 1813, the Duke of Atholl resigned as a Grand Master of the Antients in favour of HRH Edward, Duke of Kent.
In 1813, HRH Duke of Sussex as Grand Master of the Premiers, and HRH Duke of Kent as grand master of the Antients concluded union negotiations in six weeks. A great union meeting was held on 27 December forming the United Grand Lodge, the sole Craft authority for England and Wales and English lodges abroad. The Duke of Sussex finally became the United Grand Master when his brother stepped aside, and he stayed as Grand Master till his death in 1843.
In 1817 in Britain, the so-called Union of the two Grand Chapters (Royal Arch) for both the Antients and the Moderns into the United Freemasonry, was enabled to accommodate the formerly difficult matter for the Premiers of Royal Arch. Rather mysteriously, Hamill notes, but does not comment on the fact, that in 1818, after the Napoleonic Wars, in England, HRH the Duke of Sussex received a patent from France to form a supreme council of the Ancient and Accepted Rite. It is not explained why an intervention from France was relevant.
In Scotland meanwhile, close links between golfers and Freemasons were quite deliberately encouraged, though the reasons why are not stated. By the 1760s there was being developed in Scotland and London an increasingly strong connection between golfing and Freemasonry which has been little explored by historians of Freemasonry. (Henderson and Stirk; W. E. Hughes, p. 3.)
Follows the names of various London Freemasons known to history, for reference. (I am indebted here to information from Mrs. K. A. Jowett, assistant librarian, Library and Museum of the United Grand Lodge of England, Freemason's Hall, Great Queen Street, London WC2B 5AZ. Tel: (071) 831-9811.
Various books
mention Freemasonry in the Royal Navy and note that Freemasonry was
popular in the East India Company, as well as the armed
services.
Mason Edmund Burke (thought to be the politician), attended a Mason
meeting on 3 March, 1769, for members of the Lodge named the
Jerusalem Lodge No. 44, now erased, St. John Jerusalem Tavern, St.
John's Street, Clerkenwell.
Mason, Hon. Thomas Harley (was he the Lord Mayor of that name,
related to Robert Harley, first Earl of Oxford and Mortimer?),
Morning Bush Lodge No. 13, now Emulation Lodge No 21, Morning Bush
Tavern, Aldersgate St., London, initiated 31 March, 1761. In 1763
he became a Grand Steward.
Mason Nathaniel Newnham, Morning Bush Lodge No 13, now Emulation
Lodge No. 21, Paul's Head Tavern, Cateaton St., London, initiated 5
November, 1781 at age 35. Address Powis Place, Great Ormond St.
This was probably the noted alderman of London of that name, thus,
a contemporary of alderman Macaulay.
Mason Timothy Curtis, Dundee Arms Lodge No. 9, (now Old Dundee
Lodge No. 18), Private Room, Red Lion St., Wapping. Initiated about
1773. Address Wapping, occupation, biscuit baker. Mason and brother
of Timothy, William Curtis, Dundee Arms Lodge No. 9, initiated 11
December, 1777, occupation gentleman. These were brothers, William,
also a London alderman, placing a ship Lady Penrhyn in the
First Fleet in a partnership with alderman Macaulay of Blackheath.
Later, William Curtis was knighted. He was personal friends with
King George IV and went with him to Scotland/Edinburgh in 1822 on a
visit which gave zest to many Scottish Freemasons. (See Prebble's
book, cited below.)
Mason, one Duncan Campbell Friendship Lodge No. 3 (Now No. 6).
Initiated before 1788, address Suffolk Street, Haymarket, and Upper
Harley Street, Cavendish Square, occupation Esq., in 1788 he became
a grand steward. It is not known if this was the hulks
overseer.
John Hamill's book
on the English Craft, which can now be regarded as a
classic, if only for want of competition, is rather coy about
Scottish Freemasonry, and conveys mysteriously little about Irish
Freemasonry. Irish Freemasonry tended to be "mobile", as many army
regiments adhered to Irish Freemasonry.
In brief, Hamill can tell us nothing about a peculiar branch of
Freemasonry at Blackheath, known as The Knuckle
Club.
And so, as far as one has read on Freemasonry, The Knuckle Club did not exist. Even as a golfing club, its members might have been businessmen from the City, relaxing on weekends over golf probably followed by drinks or a meal - many of them living locally. And even as businessmen, they might have been merely insurance underwriters, or an alderman of London. Except that some of them had been shipping convicts to Australia, and that was a question involving not just the policing of London, but the policing of England, Wales, then Ireland, and to a much lesser extent, Scotland.
And it has been claimed by critics of Masonry in England that from about the 1780s, Masons in England began to have an undue influence on the policing of the nation. If that was indeed so, it might be expected that the names of Masons might turn up in terms of matters relating to shipping convicts to Australia? And so by 1989, unexpectedly, the names of men who were Masons, and also interested in shipping convicts out of the country, bobbed up located in of all things, a Masonic Golf Club at Blackheath! Formerly unknown to history!
If we turn from
Hamill, a librarian for Masonry, to recent critics of the influence
of Freemasonry in English life since the 1780s, we come across
other anomalies in discussions. During the 1980s, there arose
controversy in Britain after the publication of two books
investigating Freemasonry. The authors were Stephen Knight and
Martin Short.
(Stephen Knight, The Brotherhood: The Secret World of the
Freemasons. Sydney, Grafton Books, 1985. Martin Short,
Inside The Brotherhood: Further Secrets of the Brotherhood.
Sydney, Grafton Books, 1990.)
And so, the situation in London from 1786? In modern anti-Masonic books such as those by Stephen Knight and Martin Short, it is complained that Freemasons have an objectionable grip on the judiciary and the conduct of the British police force. What such books lack, and what their Freemason critics also ignore, is information on how or when such allegedly objectionable influences began. I feel this influence grew in London after 1786, more so after the French Revolution.
Part of the controversy ranged around suggestions that Freemasons - as members of a "secret organisation" - exert an undue influence on policing, in politics, in local government, to a dangerous extent. The controversy prompted John Hamill, as London historian of Freemasonry, to respond with his book, The Craft. In The Craft, Hamill remarks (p. 87): "The development of English, and Irish and Scottish, Freemasonry abroad closely follows the development of Britain as an Imperial power." He adds, that the decline of Imperial power was mirrored in formerly subservient (colonial) lodges seeking independence [from the Grand Lodge of England, the organisation's governing body].
Is this disingenuous? Why does Hamill speak so little of Irish Freemasonry? Were there links between the spread of the British Empire and the spread of Freemasonry within the Empire that have escaped historians? The Imperialist writer, Kipling, was a noted Freemason. Were some but not all Imperialists also Freemasons, or were some but not all Freemasons also Imperialists? Does it matter? As Freemasons may rhetorically ask in order to elude definition, as they often do: "Is Masonry a secretive society, or a society with secrets?"
Names useful for any
debate, and easily discoverable in history, are already listed
above. And so, the critics of Masonry say remarkably little that is
useful, about what actually went on with Masonry in London and
environs between, say, 1783 (the year of the Treaty of Paris which
effectively meant Britain recognised the new United States).
Certainly in one portrait of Bligh, the Governor wears a Masonic
medallion depicting square and compass. [A proposition here is that
Bligh was a Freemason. Bligh wearing a Masonic symbol is depicted
in a compilation brochure, Mutiny on the Bounty
(Compilation, prepared for the National Maritime Museum's 1989
major exhibition: Mutiny on the Bounty, 1789-1989. London.
Manorial Research PLC. 1989. ISBN 0 9513128 2 0., p. 64
(iii).)
So did Freemasonry also leave its stamp on the colonisation of Australia via the interest of The Royal Society in science, and in the Pacific Ocean? It does seem, yes, if only in the figure of Sir Joseph Banks. And so on. It is not impossible that Arthur Phillip was a Mason recruited in 1786 to help stabilise a question of civil order, the management of transportable convicts. Phillip had earlier spied for Britain in France, and had other valuable experience useful to him in commanding the first settlement at NSW.
Phillip is depicted
as a spy in Alan Frost, Arthur Phillip 1738-1814: His
Voyaging. Melbourne, OUP, 1987.
Frost, p. 290, cites Richard Deacon, A History of the British
Secret Service. New York, Taplinger Publishing Company, 1970.
Nepean kept a ledger of secret service payments, now in the
Clements Library, Ann Arbor. Mich. US, (e.g.: Nepean, entry of 2
Nov., 1785, Secret Service Ledger, Clements, Nepean). And, see HO
42 Series. Nepean began to expand secret operations from march 1782
under Shelburne. Frost comments, "Nepean's role in the development
of the modern [secret] service is an unwritten chapter". However...
Frost in Phillip, Voyaging, pp. 131ff, notes Phillip's
previously unknown trip in late 1784 as a British spy in France.
Frost suggests that Philip on his voyage to Toulon to hopefully
inspect French naval forces there may have passed through the
Languedoc. That area, according to that odd book, The Holy Blood
and The Holy Grail, was the seed bed of French Freemasonry. It
was once a centre for study of the Cabala. If Arthur Phillip was a
Freemason, the history of the Languedoc may have interested him.
For any well-informed Freemason, a tour through the Languedoc to
near Marseilles might well have had the status of a formal
pilgrimage?
A recent historian
of Virginia in the American revolutionary period, Rhys Isaac, has
remarked: "Masonry, and its relationships to the ideals of the
American patriots, is a subject that cries out for careful
study."
(Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790.
University NC Press. Chapel Hill. 1982. p. 226. ]
The same applies to discussions of how Freemasonry was transmitted to Australia.
Finis
Below are given a relevant chronology of events and a bibliography:
Chronology
The Grand Lodge of England of Accepted Masons was instituted in 1723 with the Duke of Wharton as grand master, despite protests from other lodges, including that of York, which claimed greater antiquity. Of course, from the 1720s, the "operatives" were no longer heard from. The date 1726 applies to the first extant minutes of a purely speculative lodge, at the Swan and Rummer Tavern, Finch Lane, London. Remarkably, it is seemingly only from 1726, that we know of the existence of the three degrees which form the basis of the Craft.
In 1723, the first secretary of the Grand Lodge in London became William Cowper, Clerk of the Parliaments, who kept the first proper minutes. Cowper's role might suggest that legal men were interested by this time, as were some military men. From 1725, when there were 64 lodges in England, the first English provincial grand masters were Col. Francis Columbine for Cheshire, and General Hugh Warburton for Cheshire and North Wales, about 1727.
In 1725, embattled York defied London and declared itself the Grand Lodge of All England. But then, strangely, York did little and from 1741 it became dormant. York "reappeared" in 1761, embracing Royal Arch, and was a governing body for Knights Templar; later it reappeared again as a Grand Lodge and developed more lodges, then it inexplicably disappeared again in 1792, never to reappear. And so while York and Northumbria are often mentioned in discussions of English Freemasonry (and are mentioned by Hamill), another important area allegedly was Staffordshire (which Hamill does not mention).
From 1728-1729,
during the First Founding of the British Empire, began the "export"
of Freemasonry. Lodges were established at Gibraltar, and Fort
William at Calcutta. Capt. Ralph Farr Winter was appointed
provincial Grand Master for the East Indies in 1729. As British
Imperial influence extended, so did lodges, another being
established in Bengal in 1729.
(Hamill, p. 87.)
In 1729, one of England's first Grand Masters was Thomas Howard, 8th Duke of Norfolk, a Catholic.) English Freemasonry was spread to Italy about 1733 by an Englishman, Lord Sackville, but here, Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln would suggest that Sackville would have been merely experimenting, inspecting conformity between existing (originally French) forms of Freemasonry, and the English variety he would have been used to.
In 1735 the French Lodges made a Scottish baronet, J. H. McLean, their Grand Master. The greatest noblemen of France were Masons, and some were opponents of Papal authority. In 1730, English Freemasonry was introduced to America when Daniel Cox was appointed provincial Grand Master for New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. In 1733, Henry Price was appointed a provincial Grand Master for English Freemasonry for New England. Between 1730 and 1775, the Premier Grand Lodge appointed 23 provincial grand masters in America. The rival Antients Grand Lodge of England was also active on the eastern American seaboard. The Antients Provincial Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania appointed over 50 lodges for North America and the Caribbean. A pattern later developed where each American state formed its own grand lodge.
In 1738, Pope Clement XII issued a Papal Bull against the Freemasons, warning Catholics against it. The English Freemason and writer Horace Walpole wrote on the papal condemnation, that it had been ignored in England. By 1738, according to Hamill, English Freemasonry had appeared in the West Indies and Caribbean, with a grand master being appointed and a lodge set up in Antigua in 1738. Barbados was organised in 1740. A Lodge was set up in Jamaica in 1739, and the Craft had its greatest success in Jamaica. By 1738-39, as Anderson's and other writings show, the London Grand Lodge was exercising a "judicial" control over provincial lodges in England as well as lodges abroad.
By 1738, according to Hamill, English Freemasonry had appeared in the West Indies and Caribbean, with a Grand Master being appointed and a lodge set up in Antigua in 1738; Barbados was organised in 1740. A Lodge was set up in Jamaica in 1739, and the Craft had its greatest success in Jamaica. Hamill. In 1740, one of the earlier aristocratic (but not Royal) grand masters of English-Modern Freemasonry was John, 3rd Earl of Kintore, Grand Master, Premier Grand Lodge, England, [from Hamill's lists].
In 1740, one of the earlier aristocratic (but not royal) grand masters of English-Modern Freemasonry was John, 3rd Earl of Kintore, grand master, Premier Grand Lodge, England. In 1741, James, 14th Earl of Morton was the Grand Master, Premier Grand Lodge, England. Some of the earliest records (in London) of the Royal Order of Scotland date from about 1741, so presumably they dated from before 1741 in Scotland. Hamill suggests, one of the earliest records of the Royal Order of Scotland arises in 1741; a date by when golf and Masonry may have become linked in Scotland.
The commentator Lawrence, relying on Cowan, feels that the Scottish Rite took shape in France about 1740, and about that year, adherents to the Scottish Rite began aggressively challenging the Catholic Church. Some views are that The Ancient and Accepted Rite, which allows a range of higher degrees, originated in France in the 1750s with a 25-degree rite of perfection. This rite went to the West Indies in 1761-1762 with a Jewish Mason, one Stephen Morin, and from there to Charleston in South Carolina. In 1741, James, 14th Earl of Morton was the Grand Master, Premier Grand Lodge, England, [from Hamill's lists].
During the 1740s,
[Hamill, p. 122] Knights Templar Freemasonry arose.
This probably originated in France, where there arose a revival of
interest in chivalric orders in the 1740s. This variety was
"worked" in England from 1777, and by 1791 the influential Thomas
Dunckerley formed a Grand Conclave for it, with himself as Grand
Master, to be succeeded by Lord Rancliffe. (The Duke of Kent became
Grand Master of this Masonry in 1804.) While Knights Templar
Masonry made slow progress, any progress it made at all might
suggest a dissatisfaction with the limited number of degrees
offered by the Premier Grand Lodge. The rivals to Premier
Freemasonry do seem to have adopted a tactic of offering a greater
variety of degrees.
In any reconstructed chronology, meant as a guideline only, we find as follows: For example... One noted Mason was John Campbell (1705-1782) 4th Earl of Londoun, governor of Virginia and commander of all British Forces in America in 1756, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England in 1736, first (past or provincial?) Grand Master to visit a Grand Lodge in America, Boston Grand Lodge on 31 January, 1757 (when four members of Campbell's staff were entered). He had been commissioned in the Scots Greys at an early age, succeeded his father to the title, was one of 16 representative Scottish Peers in Parliament. Governor of Stirling Castle and Edinburgh. ADC to the king when serving in Flanders in 1745. Appointed governor of Virginia succeeding General Braddock, but "due to politics at home and poor handling of colonial authorities in the new world, he served only 23 July 1756 to December 1757". In 1762, he took part in the Peninsula Wars in Portugal, was promoted full general by 1770, retired to Scotland as titular Governor of Edinburgh till his death in 1782.
By 1760, Masonry was widespread in towns large and small in America, and in England it made headway with recruiting the aristocracy. Over 1754-1756, the Hon Edward Vaughan was Grand Master of the Antient Grand Lodge, England. [Hamill's Lists] Over 1756-1760, William, 1st Earl of Blessinton, was Grand Master of the Antient Grand Lodge. Between 1757-1762, Charles Sholto, 15th Earl of Morton, was Grand Master of Premier Grand Lodge (Moderns).
Between 1766-1770, Hon Thomas Mathew was Grand Master, Antient Grand Lodge, England, whilst in 1767 the Grand Master of Premier Grand Lodge was HRH Edward Augustus, Duke of York. Incredibly, after 1766, [Hamill, p. 102. Moira adhered to Royal Arch in 1803. Francis, 2nd Earl of Moira was Grand Master of Premier Grand Lodge from 1790-1813, is generally referred to in Masonic circles as Moira.
Members of the Premier Grand Lodge were led by Grand Master Lord Blayney; despite officially disapproving of Royal Arch, they set up their first Chapter of the Royal Arch of Jerusalem. From then, apparently, senior Premiers practised Royal Arch while denying it to less senior brethren. From 1768 was the first keeping of Grand Lodge and other lodge membership lists, and the idea arose to build a Freemasons' Hall in London. Between 1769-1783, the grand secretary of the Grand Lodge was James Heseltine, who was grand treasurer between 1785-1804. In the Imperial reaches of British Masonry, in 1775, the first Indian initiated as a Freemason was the much-indebted Nabob of the Carnatic, Omdat-ul-Omrah, of Arcot, the capital of the Carnatic, where the East India Company would involve itself in expensive wars.
In 1778 the Captain of the Blackheath Golf Club was William Innes, son of an Edinburgh banker, a West India merchant, of Lime St., City. MP for Ilchester for 1774-1775. In 1775-1776, the Freemasons' Tavern was built in Great Queen Street, London, while James Heseltine was grand secretary. Between 1775-1781, John the 4th Duke of Atholl became Grand Master of the Scots Antient Grand Lodge, England.
Chronology, continued: English Freemasonry in the 1770s:
From 1766, a golf club had been established at Blackheath in London. The club in 1766 was Alexander Duncan, "a Master Mason". 1766-1770, Hon Thomas Mathew, Grand Master, Antient Grand Lodge, England (from Hamill's lists). 1767 - Grand Master of Premier Grand Lodge in 1767 was HRH Edward Augustus, Duke of York. In 1767, Grand Master of Premier Grand Lodge HRH William Henry, Duke of Cumberland, HRH William Henry, Duke of Gloucester.
1766 - The Dukes of
York and Cumberland became Masons, plus the Duke of Gloucester. The
Duke of Cumberland was a Grand Master Premier in 1767, succeeded by
the Duke of Clarence, later King William IV.
Hamill, p. 47.
1771-74, John, 3rd Duke of Atholl, Grand Master, Scots-Antient Grand Lodge, England.
On 7 February, 1786, Laurence Dermott became deputy Grand Master of Lodge No. 234, Antients, "Domatic", and this lodge may have had some reference to Scots Masonry. Wells explicitly states that Scots Antient Masonry "began" about 1785. (This seems to accord with what is now known in social history about Freemasonry, Scots merchants and golfing at Blackheath, but a conclusion here may be hasty.) In December 1787, Laurence Dermott retired gout-stricken as deputy Grand Master of the Antients, to be succeeded by James Perry.
A little late in the
day for English Modern Freemasonry, in 1782, HRH Henry Frederick,
Duke of Cumberland, was installed as first Royal Grand Master in
England, for Premier Grand Lodge (Moderns). Premier Grand Lodge,
Grand Masters are 1782-89, Thomas, 3rd Earl of Effingham,
1782-1790, HRH Frederick, Duke of Cumberland, Grand Master, Premier
Grand Lodge, England,
From Hamill's lists.
1783, Duncan
Campbell was Captain of Blackheath Golf Club. 1783-1791, Randall
William, 6th Earl and 2nd Marquess of Antrim, Grand Master, Antient
Grand Lodge, England. (From Hamill's lists.) On 7 February, 1786,
Laurence Dermott became deputy grand master of Lodge No 234,
Antients, "Domatic", with reference to Scots Masonry.
(Wells regards Laurence Dermott as "one who may be deemed to have
had the greatest single influence in the shaping of Freemasonry
throughout the world". He had about 47 years in the craft and
helped establish many new lodges.)
In 1787, HRH William Henry, Duke of Clarence (Of the Moderns?); in 1787 HRH Frederick, Duke of York, Grand Master of the Premier Grand Lodge (Moderns?); in 1790 HRH Edward Duke of Kent. Also HRH Frederick, Duke of York.
Significantly in London, on 19 April 1788, the Grand Lodge No. 1 dined under "a new dispensation", a Mason is Alderman Sir Watkin Lewes, MP.
The Grand Lodge in London (with relations improving between the Ancients and the Moderns) met at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, on 11 December, 1793 with the Antients' Grand Master being the 4th Duke of Atholl. In 1794, the Premier deputy grand master was Admiral Sir Peter Parker, Bart. The first grand principal of Royal Arch Masonry was Lord Rancliffe.
TOWARD THE MASONIC UNION OF 1813: Various problems within Masonry did however seem to have become resolved in the Grand Union of English Freemasons in 1813 - the union between the Premiers (or Moderns) and the Antients. Added to any disagreement was the dour attitude English Freemasons have had toward the Rosicrucianism that has been popular in France, and perhaps has become even more popular in the United States.
In the 1790s,
Masonic meetings held at the Jamaican House Tavern, Rotherhithe
St., Bermondsey). Salomon, the promoter of the composer, Haydn was
a Freemason. Meetings of several social-improvement groups were
held at the Freemasons Hall, including the Bible Society and the
Anti-Slavery Society.
Hamill, p. 178, Note 8.
In 1801, William Finch in Britain began publishing his lectures on the Craft. In 1803, Moira, the acting Grand Master of Premier Grand Lodge, who had allegedly saved Masonry from the Bill against Unlawful Societies (0of 1797-1799), entered Royal Arch masonry. In 1809, the Premier Grand Lodge ordered a reverse in ritual changes of the late 1730s and warranted a special Lodge of Promulgation to look into differences of ritual, work designed to pave the way for a union of Freemasonry. On 7 March, 1810, a Mason's union was proposed for a new Grand Lodge under grand masters HRH Prince of Wales and the Duke of Atholl, at a meeting at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, London, prior to a reunion [of the Antients and Moderns]. Committees were set up in 1810 to seek a union. The Premier Grand Lodge negotiator was Moira, but the Antients used a committee, which slowed proceedings.
On 7 March, 1810, a Mason's union was proposed for Grand Lodge under Grand Masters HRH and Duke of Atholl, at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, London, prior to a reunion [of Antients and Moderns]. In May 1813, HRH Prince of Wales was succeeded as a Grand Master by his brother, HRH Duke of Sussex, Augustus Frederick. In 1813, the Duke of Atholl resigned as a Grand Master of the Antients in favour of HRH Edward, Duke of Kent.
In 1813, HRH Duke of Sussex as Grand Master of the Premiers, and HRH Duke of Kent as grand master of the Antients concluded union negotiations in six weeks. A great union meeting was held on 27 December forming the United Grand Lodge, the sole Craft authority for England and Wales and English lodges abroad. The Duke of Sussex finally became the United Grand Master when his brother stepped aside, and he stayed as Grand Master till his death in 1843.
In 1817 in Britain, the so-called Union of the two Grand Chapters (Royal Arch) for both the Antients and the Moderns into the United Freemasonry, was enabled to accommodate the formerly difficult matter for the Premiers of Royal Arch. Rather mysteriously, Hamill notes, but does not comment on the fact, that in 1818, after the Napoleonic Wars, in England, HRH the Duke of Sussex received a patent from France to form a supreme council of the Ancient and Accepted Rite. It is not explained why an intervention from France was relevant.
On 12 November, 1825, Alexander Innes burnt the first page of the Minute Book of The Knuckle Club, on the origin of the Club, by consent.
1834, 22 October,
Freemasons interested in settling South Australia met at No. 7 John
Street, the Adelphi, for the formal consecration of SA Lodge of
Friendship, No. 613 under the English constitution, and had another
meeting at the same place in 1835.
Australian Encyclopedia, 1925, entry on
Freemasonry.
1838: The first Australian lodge under the English constitution was the Lodge of Australia No. 820, opened in 1838, now (1925) No. 3 on the register of the United Grand Lodge of NSW. The first Scottish Lodge was Sydney St. Andrew, No. 358. (Australian Encyclopedia, 1925, entry, Freemasonry.) More lodges were established in quick succession. However, some dates for Masonic activity in Australia's earliest European history have been pushed earlier in Atkinson's Volume 1, noted below.
Ends chronology
Now return to the Lost Worlds Index
Mutiny on the Bounty, Compilation, prepared for the National Maritime Museum's 1989 major exhibition: Mutiny on the Bounty, 1789-1989. London, Manorial Research PLC, 1989. ISBN 0 9513128 2 0.
Bro. G. Abbott, History of the Lion and Lamb Lodge. nd.
Dr. Berthold Altmann, "Freemasonry and Political Parties In Germany", p. 278 of the American Masonic publication, New Age, May, 1955., cited by Paul Fisher, p. 205.
Alan Atkinson,The Europeans in Australia. A History. Vol. 1. Melbourne, OUP. 1997.
Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. London, Corgi, 1982-1983.
C. Belton, Grand Master's Lodge No. 1. Record of Members 1759 to 1895. London, 1895. BL 04785. h.6. (This volume contains lists of various Lodges No 1. It also has some history of Freemasonry in Canada, South Africa, and America, but not Australia.)
Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order, 1730-1840. Institute of Early American History and Culture, University of North Carolina Press, 1996. ISBN 0-80872282-5.
Dan Byrnes, 'From Glasgow to Jamaica to London and Australia: the elusive Duncan Campbell (1726-1803)', Cruachan, No. 62, December, 1993. (The Journal of the Clan Campbell Society of Australia).
Dan Byrnes, 'The Blackheath Connection: London Local History and the Settlement at New South Wales, 1786-1806', as published in The Push: A Journal of Early Australian Social History, No. 28, 1990., pp. 50-98. ISSN 0155 8633. ISBN 0 646 09384 3. (Updated, 1996) Total words, 31,776. Total pages, 83.
J. J. Carter and J. H. Pittock, (Eds.), Aberdeen and the Enlightenment. Aberdeen University Press, 1987.
K. M. Daiches, The Paradox Of Scottish Culture. London, Oxford University Press, ?
Mgr. George E. Dillon, Grand Orient Freemasonry Unmasked. Palmdale CA, Christian Book Club, Facsimile of 1885 edition; Dublin, London, Burns and Oates. (A review of the rise of atheism from a strictly Catholic point of view).
Paul Fisher, Behind The Lodge Door. Washington, DC, Shield Publishing Inc., nd.
Michael Flynn, The Second Fleet: Britain's Grim Convict Armada of 1790. Sydney, Library of Australian History, 1993.
Alan Frost, Arthur Phillip 1738-1814: His Voyaging?. Melbourne, OUP, 1987. Here, Frost cites: Richard Deacon, A History of the British Secret Service. New York, Taplinger Publishing Company, 1970.
Ian T. Henderson and David Stirk, Royal Blackheath. London, Henderson and Stirk Ltd., 1981.
Mollie Gillen, Royal Duke, Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex. Sidgwick, 1976.
Robert Freke Gould, Military Lodges, 1732-1899): The Apron and the Sword, or Freemasonry Under Arms, being an Account of Lodges in Regiments and Ships of War and of famous soldiers and sailors (of all countries) who have belonged to the society. London, Gale and Polden, 1899.
John Hamill, The Craft: A History of English Freemasonry. London, Crucible, 1986, [Hamill is librarian, United Grand Lodge of England.]
Aspects of various strains of Freemasonry and the question of
higher degrees as poorly handled in Hamill are treated in:
Walton Hannah, Darkness Visible: A Christian Appraisal of
Freemasonry. Devon, England, Augustine Publishing Company,
1988. Hannah also treats Irish Freemasonry, although not at
length.
Ian T. Henderson and David Stirk, Royal Blackheath. London, Henderson and Stirk Ltd., 1981.
Kent Henderson, The Masonic Grandmasters of Australia. Melbourne, Ian Drakeford Publishing, 1988.
W. J. Hughan, History of Lodge England. London, 1892.
W. E. Hughes, Chronicle of Blackheath Golfers. London, Chapman and Hall, 1897.
Rhys Isaac, The Transformation of Virginia, 1740-1790. University NC Press. Chapel Hill. 1982.
Gavin Kennedy, Bligh. London, Duckworth, 1978.
R. H. Kinvig, The Isle Of Man - A Social, Cultural and Political History. Liverpool University Press, 1975.
Stephen Knight, The Brotherhood: The Secret World of the Freemasons. London, Grafton Books, Edn, 1990. First pub. in 1983. (On the American Revolution and Freemasonry.)
J. Lane, Handy Book to the study of the Lists of Lodges 1723-1814. Copy, British Library.
George Mackaness, The Life of Vice-Admiral William Bligh, RN, FRS. 2 Vols. Sydney. Angus and Robertson. 1931. Copy, Dixson Lib. UNE.
George Mackaness, (Ed), Fresh Light On Bligh - Some Unpublished Correspondence, Australian Historical Monographs, Vol. V, (New Series), Reprinted 1976 by Review Publications, Dubbo, NSW Australia.
George Mackaness, (Ed)., Sir Frederick Chapman, Governor Phillip In Retirement. Available in the series of monographs by Mackaness available from Review Publications, Dubbo. NSW. See also, Chapman, F.
George Mackaness, Admiral A. Phillip. Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1937.
Arthur Phillip, The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay with an Account of the Establishment of the Colonies of Port Jackson and Norfolk Island, Including the Journals of Lts. Shortland, Watts, Ball and Capt. Marshall. Facsimile Edn for Georgian House, Melbourne. 1950.
John Prebble, The King's Jaunt: George IV in Scotland, 1822 (One and Twenty Daft Days). London, Fontana, 1988.
Neil Rhind, The Heath: A Companion Volume to Blackheath Village and Environs. Blackheath, London, Bookshop Blackheath Ltd., 1987. (Rhind has published two other volumes on Blackheath).
A. Carey Taylor, Charles de Brosses, The Man Behind Cook, in The Opening of The Pacific - Image And Reality, Maritime Monographs and Reports, No 2, 1971. London, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich., pp. 3-19.
Kate Thomas, A Biographical Appraisal of John Hunter RN (1737-1821). (Hons Thesis) University of New England, Armidale, NSW, 1992.
Roy A. Wells, Freemasonry in London from 1785. Shepparton, Middlesex, Lewis Masonic, 1984.
Frances A. Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment. St. Albans, Herts, UK, Paladin, 1972.
: The Royal Masonic Cyclopaedia. 1987.
Freemasonry, Its Origins, History etc.. 1862.
Harry Carr's World of Freemasonry. 1984.
Bobby J. Demott, Freemasonry in American Culture And
Society. 1986.
G. F. Fort, Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry.
1875.
B. Foy, Revolution and Freemasonry, 1680-1800. 1935.
J. G. Halliwell-Phillips, Early History of Freemasonry in
England. Nd ? 1944 edn.
William Farquharson Lamonby, Some Notes on Freemasonry in
Australasia from the Earliest Times. 1906.
George Oliver, The Book of the Lodge, 1782-1867. 1986.
Rev. G. Oliver, Historical Landmarks and other Evidence of
Freemasonry Explained. 1846.
(Ends listings)
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