freemasonry influence Brougham’ s legal reforms? The same question can be asked of many other prominent figures in British history who were freemasons. In July 1885, the English masonic newspaper, The Freemason, listed members of the government and royal household who were freemasons. 24 Among those named by The Freemason were Sir Charles Dilke, President of the Local Government Board from 1882 to 1885, who was the leader of the radical faction within the Liberal party and the most eminent advocate of republicanism. Despite his republican views, Dilke became a close friend of the Prince of Wales. How far was this friendship fostered by their common freemasonry? Likewise, Dilke was close to French republican leaders such as Gambetta, who were also masons. The list in The Freemason also included one of Dilke’ s political opponents, Lord Randolph Churchill, father of Sir Winston Churchill. Lord Randolph was a populist Tory whose personality was one of the most puzzling in 19th-century politics. In the case of Lord Randolph, further investigation of his masonic career would be interesting for the extent to which it would assist in interpreting his difficult character.
Just as the masonic archive provides new information about people, so it also sheds new light on places. The masonic archive is particularly rich in information about local life and networks. The campaign for more democratic town government in the 1820s and 1830s has been overshadowed by the movement for parliamentary reform, but municipal reform was in some ways a more potent focus of local political activism. In the town of Monmouth on the Welsh borders a campaign against the control of the town by the Duke of Beaufort created fierce local controversy in the 1820s. 25 The archives of the English Grand Lodge include correspondence which gives new information about this dispute. 26 The leader of the reform party, Trevor Philpotts, was the master of the local masonic lodge, the Royal Augustus Lodge. One of the members of the lodge was Joseph Price, a cantankerous member of the group opposed to reform. In 1821, Price was accused by Philpotts of abusing his position as a magistrate by granting a friend preferential treatment in prison. The masonic lodge passed a series of resolutions against Price, one of which referred to his alleged abuse of his judicial authority. Price protested to the Grand Master, the Duke of Sussex, that this procedure was unmasonic. The Duke suspended the lodge, much to the annoyance of Philpotts who was anxious that the lodge should participate in the forthcoming consecration of a lodge in nearby Newport. Following protests by Philpotts, the Duke
24
The Freemason, 4 July 1885, p. 329.
25
Keith Kisack, Monmouth: The Making of a County Town, London: Phillimore, pp. 56-109.
26
Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London, returns of the Royal Augustus Lodge No. 656, Monmouth; United Grand Lodge, Letter Book B, ff. 126, 134, 192; Historical Correspondence, 5 / D / 5-6. See Appendix, Document No. 3, below.
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