Ritual , Secrecy , and Civil Society
lines of development , with key people or institutions portrayed as the originators of freemasonry . But history does not work like this . It is complex and full of the kind of knots of interconnections that Marc Bloch described . We can see this in the way that William Schaw took medieval traditions and fused them with Renaissance ideas . The fascination of Freemasonry is in trying to trace these interconnections and not in seeking to promote one theory above another — freemasonry is about transitions , Rosicrucians , monasticism , Enlightenment and the Royal Society , all together .
The foundation of a Grand Lodge in London has been taken as a key watershed in masonic history . As we have exhaustively documented elsewhere , all the existing evidence suggests that the story of the foundation of the Grand Lodge by four lodges in London in 1717 first published by James Anderson in the 1738 Book of Constitutions is unreliable . 38 It contains many internal contradictions and , where we can trace sources of information that Anderson probably used , they are suspect . Other contemporary testimony , such as that of the antiquary William Stukeley , contradicts Anderson . Furthermore , a contemporary minute in the possession of the Lodge of Antiquity in London states that the London lodges gave up their powers in trust to a Grand Lodge comprising masters and wardens of the lodges and under the direction of a Grand Master at a feast in Stationers Hall in London on 24 June 1721 . Such a transfer of powers can only by definition happen once and , given the lack of contemporary evidence for the existence of Grand Lodge before 1721 , we contend that the Grand Lodge in London was founded in 1721 , not 1717 .
It might seem that by insisting on the date of 1721 for the foundation of Grand Lodge we are closing out evidence for the earlier development of Freemasonry , but this is by no means the case . Rather , disposing of the shibboleth of 1717 makes it easier to accommodate evidence of earlier freemasonry . This evidence is not only confined to Scotland . In York , non-working masons seem to have been admitted to stonemasons ' lodges in the seventeenth century . 39 There are hints of other organisations in Staffordshire and Cheshire . 40 There are also suggestions of early masonic activity in Ireland 41 and it is likely that Jacobite regiments and exiles had taken some freemasonry with them from Scotland to the continent after
38 Andrew Prescott and Susan Mitchell Sommers , '‘ Searching for the Apple Tree : Revisiting the Earliest Years of English Organised Freemasonry ’ and ' New Light on the Life of James Anderson ' in Reflections on 300 Years of Freemasonry , ed . John S . Wade ( London : Lewis Masonic , 2017 ), pp . 641- 54 , 681-704 ; ' Did Anything Happen in 1717 ?', Ars Quatuor Coronatorum 131 ( 2018 ), pp . 43-60 .
39 Neville Barker Cryer , York Mysteries Revealed ( Hersham : Lewis Masonic , 2006 ), pp . 186-214 ; David Harrison , The York Grand Lodge ( Bury St Edmunds : Arima , 2014 ), pp . 15-34 .
40 For example , Oxford , Bodleian Library , MS Rawlinson C . 918 is an elaborate book to be used by the Provincial Grand Lodge of West Chester but it is undated and it is uncertain whether it might predate the appointment of the first Provincial Grand Master for North Wales in 1727 .
41 Sean Murphy , ' Irish Jacobitism and Freemasonry ', Eighteenth-Century Ireland / Iris an dá chultúr 9 ( 1994 ), pp . 75-82 .
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