The Origins of Freemasonry and the Invention of Tradition
300 years of freemasonry . 24 The way in which these celebrations were marketed is an example of the type of slippery terminology that , as Marc Bloch noticed , often muddies discussions of origins . The implication of the UGLE strapline is that freemasonry began in 1717 . But even UGLE couldn ’ t claim that . The strange dramatization that was included in the Royal Albert Hall celebrations refers to the initiation of Elias Ashmole in 1646 and Sir Robert Moray at Newcastle in 1641 , without mentioning that Moray ’ s initiation was by members of the Lodge of Edinburgh . 25 The implication is that the Grand Lodge is equivalent to freemasonry , and that 300 years of Grand Lodge is 300 years of freemasonry .
But is a grand lodge all that freemasonry consists of ? The creation of a grand lodge was after all simply an administrative device whereby the London lodges gave up their rights in trust to a representative assembly comprising Masters and Wardens and governed by Grand Officers . 26 Although the creation of the London Grand Lodge certainly marked a profound change and upsurge in freemasonry , is it right to suggest that a grand lodge is the essential feature of freemasonry ? The claim to 300 years of freemasonry may also be seen as a veiled allusion to the emergence of a three degree system , but most authorities place the appearance of a third degree as a later development , perhaps during the 1720s . 27 Most of the other distinctive features of freemasonry — lodges on a territorial basis , the admission of members who were not working stonemasons , use of ritual , the mason word — can be found much earlier than 1717 , particularly in Scotland . 28
It is not clear why the Enlightenment form of freemasonry which developed in the eighteenth century is considered a purer form of masonry than that practiced in Scotland , Ireland and England in the seventeenth century . Why were we not celebrating 400 or even 700 years of freemasonry in 2017 ? The answer is simple : the United Grand Lodge of England was invoking and manipulating the past to bolster its claims to masonic primacy and to be an arbiter of regularity across the world .
24 ' Celebrating 300 Years . It ' s three hundred years since four London lodges met to establish the world ' s first Grand Lodge for Freemasons . Today there are over 6.5 million freemasons worldwide ': https :// www . ugle . org . uk / celebrating-300-years ( Accessed 7 December 2019 ).
25 Masonic Charitable Foundation , Tercentenary Celebrations at Royal Albert Hall , available at : https :// www . youtube . com / watch ? v = ciNkEPBGc-o ( Accessed 7 December 2019 ). On Moray , see David Stevenson , The Origins of Freemasonry : Scotland ' s Century 1590-1710 ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press ), pp . 166-89 .
26 ' The Grand-Lodge consists of , and is form ' d by the Masters and Wardens of all the regular particular Lodges upon Record , with the Grand-Master at their head and the Grand-Wardens in their proper place ': The Constitutions of the Free-Masons ( London : John Senex and John Hooke , 1723 ), p . 61 ; Andrew Prescott and Susan Mitchell Sommers , ' Did Anything Happen in 1717 ?', Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 131 ( 2018 ), pp . 43-5 .
27 Jan A . M . Snoek and Henrik Bogdan , ' The History of Freemasonry : An Overview ' in Handbook of Freemasonry , ed . Jan A . M . Snoek and Henrik Bogdan ( Leiden : Brill , 2014 ), pp . 17-18 .
28 Stevenson , Origins of Freemasonry , p . 7 .
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