Ritual , Secrecy , and Civil Society
tion recorded in the new minute book of the Grand Lodge pointedly declared that it is ' not in the Power of any person , or Body of men , to make any Alteration , or Innovation in the Body of Masonry without the Consent first obtained of the Annual Grand Lodge '. 45
The early Grand Lodge was keen to encourage this process of invention of the past . Grand Lodge was anxious to demonstrate it was older than its rivals . The Grand Lodge established in York in 1725 claimed to date back to Edwin . 46 The Jacobite Andrew Michael Ramsey made a celebrated speech in 1730 which sketched out an alternative narrative of the origins of Freemasonry , looking to the Templars and the Crusades . 47 This provided an alternative Jacobite and Tory history to counterweigh the Whig narrative of Anderson . In 1736 , a Grand Lodge was also formed in Edinburgh , which looked back to Kilwinning and beyond . The Grand Lodge in London urgently needed to recapture the initiative in the claims to ancient status . It ordered James Anderson in preparing the revision of the Book of Constitutions published in 1738 to document the succession of Grand Masters back to the beginning of time . Anderson accordingly declared that the first Grand Master of Freemasons in England was
St Augustine , thereby trumping York , and that the very first Grand Master of Masons was Noah . 48
In 1738 , it was these earlier antecedents which were more important to Anderson and the Grand Lodge in London than the story of 1717 . Anderson never claimed that Grand Lodge was begun in 1717 ; he presents it as a revival . It was a story pieced together from various claims and tales current in the 1730s to fill a gap in the links back to Noah . When the new Book of Constitutions was published in 1738 , little notice was taken of the story of 1717 . Contemporaries were more interested in the older fables . Laurence Dermott , the Grand Secretary of the Ancients , mocked this custom of prefacing masonic publications with ‘ a long and pleasing history of Masonry from the Creation ’. 49 Dermott was determined to go one better by writing the history of masonry before the creation , including an account of the first Grand Lodge when Lucifer was expelled from heaven . Are such histories of any use in understanding the secret mysteries of the craft , Dermott wondered . 50
The potency of historical narratives , invented and otherwise , in freemasonry was apparent in William Preston ’ s defence of the privileges of the Lodge of Antiquity , the successor
45 Quatuor Coronatorum Antigrapha X ( 1913 ), p . 50 ; Prescott and Sommers , ' Did Anything Happen in 1717 ?', p . 50
46 Prescott and Sommers , ' Did Anything Happen in 1717 ?', p . 55 . 47 Lisa Kahler , ' Andrew Michael Ramsay and his Masonic Oration ', Heredom 1 ( 1992 ), pp . 19-47 . 48 1738 Constitutions , pp . 4 , 140 .
49 Laurence Dermott , Ahiman Rezon , or Help to a Brother ... ( London : Printed for the Editor and sold by Bro James Bedford at thre Crown in St Paul ' s Churchyard , 1756 ), p . v .
50 Ahiman Rezon , pp . vi-vii .
14