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Article FURTHER COMMENTS ON " FACTS AND FICTIONS." Page 1 of 2 Article FURTHER COMMENTS ON " FACTS AND FICTIONS." Page 1 of 2 →
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Further Comments On " Facts And Fictions."
FURTHER COMMENTS ON " FACTS AND FICTIONS . "
BY BRO . JACOB NORTON . ( Continued from page 149 ) .
I DID not consult the Freemason of 1885 and 1886 , which contains articles by Bro . Lane and Bro . Abbott , about the "lost link" or oldest record of the "Ancients , " discovered by Bro . Sadler in 1885 . Well , according to
Bro . Abbott ' s account , the whole number of those who originated the Ancients' organisation , on the 17 th July 1751 , consisted of seventy-four men . These divided themselves into five Lodges ; later on , in July , another Lodge
was added ; it started with eight members . The Masters of these Lodges ( forming themselves into a kind of Grand Lodge , began to grant Charters ) . I presume , the said Lodge of Masters placed their Lodge on the list as No . 1 .
How long a Lodge with No . 1 lasted is not very certain , The earliest Lodges of the Ancients begin with No . 2 , and
No . 1 continued vacant till 1759 , when it was assigned to a Lodge now known as the " Grand Masters' Lodge . " The Lodges ranging from No . 2 to No . 7 were older than the original No . 1 was . I , howevor , could find no more than
70 names for the first five Lodges . These names I classified into what seemed to me as decidedly not Irish . Second , into what I deemed decidedly Irish ; and third , those that 1 deemed doubtful ; and they sum up as follows , 46 decidedly not Irish , 15 decidedly Irish ,- and 9
doubtful . Admitting , however , that 9 doubtful were also Irish , wo have 46 nop Irish to 24 Irish , and if Macintosh was placed among the un Irish , there would bo more than
two to one against the Irish . So much for Bro . Sadler ' s theory that the origin of the rival Grand Lodge was due to " Pat ' s" revenge for an insult given by the Grand Lodge to tbree Irish Masons in 1735 .
Again , of these seventy Grand Lodge makers , no less than seventeen , or about 25 por cent ., were soon after expelled . Assuming , however , that Bro . Abbott ' s counting ot 74 names was correct , and assuming that No . 6 , when
it was erased in December 1752 , mustered ten members , the sum total of the Aucients' originators would couut 84 , " and out of theso 84 no less than 27 . or nearly 33 per
cent ., were soon after expelled ; and ifc is my firm belief tho remainiug 53 of the Ancients' originators were not a whit better than those whom they expelled .
Those who have not personally witnessed the bad feeling engendered among Masons when a Grand Lodge jurisdiction is divided into hostile ranks can scarcely imagine or realize its effect . I , however , have witnessed it , and even
see its effects now by what is going on among the Scotch Riters in almost every State in America . Thus , when I camo to New York , in 1842 , I found there two rival
Grand Lodges . Later on there was another split , and they had three Grand Lodges , and each of these denounced the other two as illegitimates , bogus , & c , & c .
Again , since 1848 , the city of Boston became the Sanctum Sanctorum , or Holy of Holies , for the " Northern Jurisdiction " Scotch Riters . Up to 1860 Bro . Raymond , of Boston , enjoyed the magnificent title of" Thrice Illustrious
Sovereign Grand Commander of the Northern Jurisdiction of the U . S . of America , " and Bro . C W . Moore was his " Thrice Illustrious Grand Secretary of the Holy Empire . " But in 1860 the Sovereign and his Secretary had a quarrel
which resulted in tho Sovereign deposing his Secretary , and the Secretary deposing his Sovereign . The first appointed a new Secretary aud the Second appointed a new Soyereign . Then " the tag oi war began , " which lasted
for six years , daring which time scores of abusive pamphlets were fired off by the rival factions against ; each other , and the hatred between them was equal to that between North and South about the slavery question .
I must , however , premise that Scotch Riters , as a rule , are naturally splitters and dividers , and wherever that wonderful kind of Masonry was planted , sooner or later it split np into two or more factions . In New
York two rival bodies have existed since 1813 . Tbey are respectively known as Qerneauites aud Gourgassites . The Cerneauites , however , seemed to have got the upper hand , for while they kept up
their organization , poor Gourgas ' s concern dwindled to nothing , and for some years he remained Grand Sovereign only over himself . But , -in 1844 , Charles W . Moore , of Boston , helped Gourgas to revive his concern , and in 1848
Further Comments On " Facts And Fictions."
Bro . Raymond bought the Sovereignty of the Scotch Rite from Gourgas , and removed its headquarters from New York to Boston . Up to 1860 tho Scotch Rite concern was confined to a few only . Bro . Raymond was no scholar , but
he was a rich gentleman . Bro . Moore was puffed up as "the greatest Masonic jurisprudence authority in the world . " The remaiuing few privileged brethren were
either Doctors , Lawyers , or past Dignataries of tho Grand Lodge . Such , I believe , was the case in the other States of the Union subject to the Boston Soveroign Raymond . Iu
1845 Gourgas introduced the Scotch Rite into England , where Doctors Leeson , Oliver , Crucefix , and other supposed Masonic sages , appropriated it to themselves . All these Scotch Riters displayed a tremendous amount of learning ; they dived into all kinds of hidden mysteries ; they were familiar with the Kabballa , the Eleusinian Mysteries , Egyptian Hieroglyphics , and what not , and the mass of the
Fraternity were too ignorant to suspect that those learned degreers were as ignorant of Masonio history as they themselves were . These Scotch Riters were therefore , up to 1860 , regarded and venerated as a kind of Masonic aristocracy . The split in 1860 between Raymond and Moore resulted
in demolishing the Scotch Rite exclusiveness . Bro . Moore , who was for years the Grand Master maker for the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts , whom everybody feared and flattered , saw at once that the Raymond party would
oust him out of his Grand Secretaryship in the Grand Lodge , to obviate which he offered to turn all Masons into thirty-seconders of the Scotch Rite for the small sum of twenty-five dollars . Iu reality , however , every one that had
a vote in the Grand Lodge , or a prospect of getting a vote , was thirty-seconded for nothing , and as many as three hundred individuals were turned into thirty-seconders in one night . On the other hand Raymond united with the
New York Cerneauites ; these opened a hall of their own , and also turned for little or nothing hundreds into thiriiers . The result is , Scotch Riters may now be counted b y thousands in Boston , and thirty-thirders by scores , but as
every Scotch Rite thirty-thirder seems to possess an inherent right of openiug a new concern of his own whenever he pleases , hence since the union was effected between
divers factions in 1866 , several other thirty •thirders set up new concerns of their own , and in all cases they begin by giving away their degrees for little or nothing .
The Ancients when they started adopted the samo plan . Thus the Grand Lodgo of England , since 1729 , charge for a Warrant £ 2 2 s ; the Ancients' price for a Warrant was only 10 s 6 d ; the price for initiation and joining a Lodge
was probably reduced at the same ratio . If a dozen men clubbed together and paid one shilling each , they could get a Warrant to open a Lodge and have eighteen-pence to spare for beer , and if for five shillings or so one could be
number of Masons and of Lodges too , but the difficulty
initiated into Masonry , it was very easy to increase the
was in keeping these together , and this will account for large numbers of the originators of the Ancients' concern being expelled very soon after , and ifc will also account for the disappearance of the earliest Lodges of the Ancients , as
I shall show hereafter . Thus , No . 2 of the Ancients' lived longer than the rest of the Lodges of 1751 . It seems that ; the brother who brought with him the Ancients' Masonry to Philadelphia applied to Lodge No . 2 to procure for
Philadelphia a warrant . After some delay Dermott wrote to Philadelphia , in 1766 I believe ; your application , said he , was made iu a wrong corner . The Lodge is composed of poor mechanics ( I write from memory ) , and he referred disparagingly to one of its members , doubtless tho chief
leader of the Lodge . We see that the social status of the
oldest Lodge of the Aucients remained unimproved in 1766 , thus proving that if a decent tradesman happened to be initiated therein he found the company too disagreeable to remain with them , and the result was , a few years later
No . 2 disappeared from the list , and another Lodge got her number . But here is another instance of the kind of Lodges that were chartered by the Aucients . Bro . Abbott , in the Freemason of 1886 , says :
" And for the amusement of the reader , I may state that No . 35 , Warranted 19 th April 1754 , is described as meeting , on the 2 nd and 4 th Friday , at the King ' s Bench Prison . " Having proved the worfchlessness of the original
Ancients of 1751 , I must here add that a change for the better no doubt took place after tbe nobility begau to patronise them . After Dermott succeeded , by hij bragging and lying , to make insiders and outsiders believe that his
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software.
Further Comments On " Facts And Fictions."
FURTHER COMMENTS ON " FACTS AND FICTIONS . "
BY BRO . JACOB NORTON . ( Continued from page 149 ) .
I DID not consult the Freemason of 1885 and 1886 , which contains articles by Bro . Lane and Bro . Abbott , about the "lost link" or oldest record of the "Ancients , " discovered by Bro . Sadler in 1885 . Well , according to
Bro . Abbott ' s account , the whole number of those who originated the Ancients' organisation , on the 17 th July 1751 , consisted of seventy-four men . These divided themselves into five Lodges ; later on , in July , another Lodge
was added ; it started with eight members . The Masters of these Lodges ( forming themselves into a kind of Grand Lodge , began to grant Charters ) . I presume , the said Lodge of Masters placed their Lodge on the list as No . 1 .
How long a Lodge with No . 1 lasted is not very certain , The earliest Lodges of the Ancients begin with No . 2 , and
No . 1 continued vacant till 1759 , when it was assigned to a Lodge now known as the " Grand Masters' Lodge . " The Lodges ranging from No . 2 to No . 7 were older than the original No . 1 was . I , howevor , could find no more than
70 names for the first five Lodges . These names I classified into what seemed to me as decidedly not Irish . Second , into what I deemed decidedly Irish ; and third , those that 1 deemed doubtful ; and they sum up as follows , 46 decidedly not Irish , 15 decidedly Irish ,- and 9
doubtful . Admitting , however , that 9 doubtful were also Irish , wo have 46 nop Irish to 24 Irish , and if Macintosh was placed among the un Irish , there would bo more than
two to one against the Irish . So much for Bro . Sadler ' s theory that the origin of the rival Grand Lodge was due to " Pat ' s" revenge for an insult given by the Grand Lodge to tbree Irish Masons in 1735 .
Again , of these seventy Grand Lodge makers , no less than seventeen , or about 25 por cent ., were soon after expelled . Assuming , however , that Bro . Abbott ' s counting ot 74 names was correct , and assuming that No . 6 , when
it was erased in December 1752 , mustered ten members , the sum total of the Aucients' originators would couut 84 , " and out of theso 84 no less than 27 . or nearly 33 per
cent ., were soon after expelled ; and ifc is my firm belief tho remainiug 53 of the Ancients' originators were not a whit better than those whom they expelled .
Those who have not personally witnessed the bad feeling engendered among Masons when a Grand Lodge jurisdiction is divided into hostile ranks can scarcely imagine or realize its effect . I , however , have witnessed it , and even
see its effects now by what is going on among the Scotch Riters in almost every State in America . Thus , when I camo to New York , in 1842 , I found there two rival
Grand Lodges . Later on there was another split , and they had three Grand Lodges , and each of these denounced the other two as illegitimates , bogus , & c , & c .
Again , since 1848 , the city of Boston became the Sanctum Sanctorum , or Holy of Holies , for the " Northern Jurisdiction " Scotch Riters . Up to 1860 Bro . Raymond , of Boston , enjoyed the magnificent title of" Thrice Illustrious
Sovereign Grand Commander of the Northern Jurisdiction of the U . S . of America , " and Bro . C W . Moore was his " Thrice Illustrious Grand Secretary of the Holy Empire . " But in 1860 the Sovereign and his Secretary had a quarrel
which resulted in tho Sovereign deposing his Secretary , and the Secretary deposing his Sovereign . The first appointed a new Secretary aud the Second appointed a new Soyereign . Then " the tag oi war began , " which lasted
for six years , daring which time scores of abusive pamphlets were fired off by the rival factions against ; each other , and the hatred between them was equal to that between North and South about the slavery question .
I must , however , premise that Scotch Riters , as a rule , are naturally splitters and dividers , and wherever that wonderful kind of Masonry was planted , sooner or later it split np into two or more factions . In New
York two rival bodies have existed since 1813 . Tbey are respectively known as Qerneauites aud Gourgassites . The Cerneauites , however , seemed to have got the upper hand , for while they kept up
their organization , poor Gourgas ' s concern dwindled to nothing , and for some years he remained Grand Sovereign only over himself . But , -in 1844 , Charles W . Moore , of Boston , helped Gourgas to revive his concern , and in 1848
Further Comments On " Facts And Fictions."
Bro . Raymond bought the Sovereignty of the Scotch Rite from Gourgas , and removed its headquarters from New York to Boston . Up to 1860 tho Scotch Rite concern was confined to a few only . Bro . Raymond was no scholar , but
he was a rich gentleman . Bro . Moore was puffed up as "the greatest Masonic jurisprudence authority in the world . " The remaiuing few privileged brethren were
either Doctors , Lawyers , or past Dignataries of tho Grand Lodge . Such , I believe , was the case in the other States of the Union subject to the Boston Soveroign Raymond . Iu
1845 Gourgas introduced the Scotch Rite into England , where Doctors Leeson , Oliver , Crucefix , and other supposed Masonic sages , appropriated it to themselves . All these Scotch Riters displayed a tremendous amount of learning ; they dived into all kinds of hidden mysteries ; they were familiar with the Kabballa , the Eleusinian Mysteries , Egyptian Hieroglyphics , and what not , and the mass of the
Fraternity were too ignorant to suspect that those learned degreers were as ignorant of Masonio history as they themselves were . These Scotch Riters were therefore , up to 1860 , regarded and venerated as a kind of Masonic aristocracy . The split in 1860 between Raymond and Moore resulted
in demolishing the Scotch Rite exclusiveness . Bro . Moore , who was for years the Grand Master maker for the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts , whom everybody feared and flattered , saw at once that the Raymond party would
oust him out of his Grand Secretaryship in the Grand Lodge , to obviate which he offered to turn all Masons into thirty-seconders of the Scotch Rite for the small sum of twenty-five dollars . Iu reality , however , every one that had
a vote in the Grand Lodge , or a prospect of getting a vote , was thirty-seconded for nothing , and as many as three hundred individuals were turned into thirty-seconders in one night . On the other hand Raymond united with the
New York Cerneauites ; these opened a hall of their own , and also turned for little or nothing hundreds into thiriiers . The result is , Scotch Riters may now be counted b y thousands in Boston , and thirty-thirders by scores , but as
every Scotch Rite thirty-thirder seems to possess an inherent right of openiug a new concern of his own whenever he pleases , hence since the union was effected between
divers factions in 1866 , several other thirty •thirders set up new concerns of their own , and in all cases they begin by giving away their degrees for little or nothing .
The Ancients when they started adopted the samo plan . Thus the Grand Lodgo of England , since 1729 , charge for a Warrant £ 2 2 s ; the Ancients' price for a Warrant was only 10 s 6 d ; the price for initiation and joining a Lodge
was probably reduced at the same ratio . If a dozen men clubbed together and paid one shilling each , they could get a Warrant to open a Lodge and have eighteen-pence to spare for beer , and if for five shillings or so one could be
number of Masons and of Lodges too , but the difficulty
initiated into Masonry , it was very easy to increase the
was in keeping these together , and this will account for large numbers of the originators of the Ancients' concern being expelled very soon after , and ifc will also account for the disappearance of the earliest Lodges of the Ancients , as
I shall show hereafter . Thus , No . 2 of the Ancients' lived longer than the rest of the Lodges of 1751 . It seems that ; the brother who brought with him the Ancients' Masonry to Philadelphia applied to Lodge No . 2 to procure for
Philadelphia a warrant . After some delay Dermott wrote to Philadelphia , in 1766 I believe ; your application , said he , was made iu a wrong corner . The Lodge is composed of poor mechanics ( I write from memory ) , and he referred disparagingly to one of its members , doubtless tho chief
leader of the Lodge . We see that the social status of the
oldest Lodge of the Aucients remained unimproved in 1766 , thus proving that if a decent tradesman happened to be initiated therein he found the company too disagreeable to remain with them , and the result was , a few years later
No . 2 disappeared from the list , and another Lodge got her number . But here is another instance of the kind of Lodges that were chartered by the Aucients . Bro . Abbott , in the Freemason of 1886 , says :
" And for the amusement of the reader , I may state that No . 35 , Warranted 19 th April 1754 , is described as meeting , on the 2 nd and 4 th Friday , at the King ' s Bench Prison . " Having proved the worfchlessness of the original
Ancients of 1751 , I must here add that a change for the better no doubt took place after tbe nobility begau to patronise them . After Dermott succeeded , by hij bragging and lying , to make insiders and outsiders believe that his