A Short History Of The Lodge Of Emulation, No. 21.

members delivered the accounts as required , and such as had not complyed with the aforesaid Order were directed to do it before the next Quarterly Communication . " At a Quarterly Communication held at The Queen ' s Head , in Great Queen Street , November 26 th , 1728 , "A Petition

was presented to the Deputy Grand Master by William Benn , Master , and Job Beardsly , Senior Warden of the Lodge held at The Mag Pye , against Bishopgate Street Church , signed by Gerard Hatley , Joseph Burr , and Obadiah Wynne , the Master and Wardens of a Loclge held for some time past at Bishopgate Coffee-house , declaring their intentions and earnest desire to be constituted as soon as it

will suit the convemency ot the Deputy Grand Master to confer that Honour upon them ; and humbly praying to be admitted among the regular Lodges at this Quarterly Communication . " The Deputy Grand Master did ( upon the recommendation of the Gentlemen who appeared for them , and also

upon their application to him some time agoe for the said purpose ) Dispence with their being at present irregular , and admitted them into the Grand Loclge . " This lodge duly appeared in the 1729 List as No . 53 and also in the succeeding lists up to 1743 , when it united with

another lodge and surrendered its Constitution , but the date of its being Constituted was never given , only the year 1728 , as in the case of " The Mourning Bush Loclge . " This incident , to some extent , confirms my previously expressed opinion as to the origin of the loclge last named .

The next list of lodges and members returned to the Grand Loclge and entered in the register is known as the 1730 list , but reaches to the 14 th September , 1732 , the last lodge No . 104 at The ] 'iigin ' s Inn , Derby , having been constituted on that date . It is a source of much regret to all

who have occasion to examine these lists for historical purposes that the one now under notice should indicate great laxity on the part either of the executive or of the Masters of many of the lodges , for out of 104 lodges mentioned in the

book only fifty-five give the names of their members . Another misfortune is that the omissions include several of what are considered to be the most important lodges of the period . I am , however , fortunate in being able to congratulate the Lodge of Emulation on the Masonic spirit and good conduct of their forbears in having promptly returned the names of their members on each of the occasions mentioned .

This list betokens a remarkable change in the fortunes of the lodge as from the comparatively small membership of sixteen in the previous return it now gives quite a formidable array of sixty-three names , being exceeded in point of numbers by two lodges only , each having a membership of sixty--four . One of these lodges was erased in 1830 , but the

other is still on the register as "The St . George and Cornerstone Lodge , " No . 5 . Another lodge , now " The Britannic , " No . 33 , had a list of sixty-three members . It would thus appear that these four old lodges ran each other close , the rest being simply nowhere .

In the absence of the loclge records it is not easy to account for this large and somewhat sudden accession of brethren , especially- as only one of the number appears in the previous list of members . A possible explanation may be that a majority of them were members of other lodges , and

amongst them were several who eventually occupied high positions in the Order , and to whom 1 shall probably refer at a later stage of this history . I find no such difficulty in accounting for the loclge being removed from the sixth place on the roll of lodgesin 1725 to that of the nineteenth in

, , 1730 , by the probability that the preceding lodges had established their claims to priority , as evinced by the Engraved List for 1729 . In view of the facts set forth in the foregoing pages , I think we may safely conclude that , although this loclge was not officially acknowledged before 1723 , its real

origin may be ascribed to a somewhat earlier period which it is now impossible to define . ( To be continued ) .

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