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The Premier Grand Lodge and its Imitators

The stage was now set. The craft lodges were in eclipse, or were eking out a precarious existence, with the support of non-operatives, as social and charitable clubs. Against this background the first Grand Lodge came into being. Whether it was a symptom of the turning tide, or whether it caused it to turn, we cannot say. All that is really known is told in the oldest version of the story. Late in 1716, "the few lodges at London, finding themselves neglected by Sir Christopher Wren, thought fit to cement together under a Grand Master, as the center of Union and Harmony, viz.: the lodges that met:

1. At the Goose and Gridiron Ale-House, in St. Paul's Churchyard. [This lodge is still working, under the name of Antiquity, No. 2, English Registry]

2. At the Crown Ale-House, in Parker's Lane, near Drury Lane. [It lapsed in 1736.]

3. At the Apple-tree Tavern, in Charles Street, Covent Garden [now Fortitude and Old Cumberland, No. 12, E R.]

4. At the Rummer and Grapes Tavern, in Channel Row, Westminster [now Royal Somerset House and Inverness, No. 4, E.R.]

They, and some older brothers, met at the Apple-tree Tavern. [This was late in 1716 or early in 1717.] And, having put into the chair the oldest Master Mason (now the Master of a Lodge), they constituted themselves a Grand Lodge pro tempore, in due form, and forthwith revived the Quarterly Communication of the officers of Lodges (the Grand Lodge), resolved to hold the Annual Assembly and then to choose a Grand Master from among themselves, till they should have the honor of a noble brother at their head.

Accordingly, on St. John the Baptist's Day [June 24], in the year of King George I, A.D. 1717, the assembly and feast of the Free and Accepted Masons was held at the aforesaid Goose and Gridiron Ale-House. Before dinner the oldest Master Mason (now the Master of the Lodge) in the chair proposed a list of proper candidates; and the brethren by a majority of hands elected Mr. Anthony Sayer [1672-1742 ], Gentleman, Grand Master of Masons."

This date marks the formal beginning of modern Freemasonry. From the first meeting we derive our traditions of a regular Annual Communication to choose the officers, and of the Grand Master’s Banquet. At this time the most distinguished brother was the Rev. Dr. John Theophilus Desaguliers (1683-1744), a noted scientist. It has been surmised that he engineered the preliminary meeting of 1716/17. In 1719 he became the third Grand Master.

In 1721 the Order got its first noble Grand Master, John Montagu, 2nd Duke of Montagu (1690-1749). His tenure made membership in the Masons more fashionable. Ever since, the premier Grand Lodge has been headed by none but peers of the realm or princes of the blood royal. During Montagu's year in office the task of perusing, correcting, and digesting the "Old Gothic Constitutions" was assigned to a Presbyterian clergyman, the Rev. Dr. James Anderson (1679-1739). Two years later he published his Constitutions, which contained a fanciful history of the Craft, a series of charges which are reprinted basically unaltered to this day, and thirty-nine articles to regulate lodges and Grand Lodge. Anderson is sometimes charged with wholesale innovation, but surely the members of Grand Lodge would not have consented to radical departure from existing practice, or betrayal of their collective wishes. Among the ancient customs which are endorsed is the practice of charity "for the relief of indigent and decayed brethren.”

The Old Charges had enjoined staunch devotion to the established church, and even after 1717 the ritual was resolutely Trinitarian. Thus, in a Masonic exposure published in London in 1724, we read, How many lights? Three.... What do they represent? The three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost" (Early Masonic Calechisms, p.78). Here Anderson's Constitutions did break new ground in leaving Masons' particular opinions to themselves, "by whatever Denominations or Persuasions they may be distinguished". One effect of this was seen in 1732, when the Master of a London lodge was Daniel Delvalle or Dalvalle, "an eminent Jew snuff merchant.”

Even though the number of lodges increased rapidly, the Grand Lodge was confined to London for several years. There were certainly old lodges meeting outside London which did not place themselves under it. As late as November, 1723, the fifty-two constituent lodges were all situated within ten miles of Charing Cross. But once expansion began it was dramatically swift; by 1725 there were lodges at Bath, Bristol, Norwich, Chichester, and Chester. At the same time English Freemasonry began to spread throughout Europe (lodges at Paris, 1725; Madrid and Gibraltar, 1728; The Hague, 1731; Bordeaux and Valenciennes, 1732; Florence and Hamburg, 1733), and even beyond (Calcutta, 1728; Boston, 1733). In 1735 the Grand Lodge first claimed jurisdiction over the whole of England.

The notion of a grand lodge seems to have been contagious, for in 1725 an old lodge in the city of York - independent of course of the London Grand Lodge - constituted itself as the "Grand Lodge of All England". (It was never a missionary lodge, and eventually withered away in 1792.) About the same year, the Grand Lodge of Ireland was instituted. And in 1736 the Scottish lodges organized the Grand Lodge of Scotland. Both bodies were active far beyond the homeland. In 1756 the Grand Lodge of Scotland founded lodges at Boston, Massachusetts, and Blandford, Virginia. In the following year Colonel John Young was named Provincial Grand Master over all the lodges in America under the Scottish Constitution. The Grand Lodge of Ireland was less prompt to institute lodges overseas. The first warrant issued for America seems to have been to a lodge at New York in 1763. Long before this, however, lodges under the Irish Constitution had been active all over the world. These were the military lodges - regiments of the British army with travelling warrants. They were a peculiarly Irish development; though the other Grand Lodges eventually followed suit, most military warrants continued to be Irish. The earliest was issued in 1732, to the First British Foot Regiment.

Back in England, in 1738 a second much expanded edition of Anderson's Constitutions was published. It is the source of the story of the formation of Grand Lodge quoted in a modernized form above.