ROBBINS, JOSEPH, ORATION BY.
American Masons behind the tiled doors of their Lodges and Grand Lodges during the past one and one-half eenturies have listened to orations which would be everywhere famous had they beeR delivered in public, for there has ever been an unbroken succession in the Craft of orators, of great tribunes, of great speechmakers—John Marshall, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, Stephen Douglas, down to Thomas Riley Marshall, William J. Bryan, and Dr. Parkes Cadman. Among these have been a number of orations which have helped to make Masonic history: Clare's Oration before Grand Lodge; Preston's Oration before Grand Lodge; Ramsay's Oration in Paris; Drake's Oration before the York Grand Lodge; Paul Revere's Orations; Joseph Tew's famous Provincial Grand Lodge speeches (published in two volumes); etc. It is unfortunate that most of them have not been preserved, and that such of them as lie in old Grand Lodge Proceedings are not collected and published.
In the opinion of literary critics, and applying the canons of eloquence rather than the criteria of Masonic scholarship, the most perfect eloquence of American Masonry is found in Dr. Joseph Robbins' oration, delivered by him to the Grand Lodge of Illinois, a Grand Lodge which was to number among its future Grand Orators Governor Frank Lowden. Dr. Robbins was born in Leominster, Mass., September 12, 1834; was made a Mason in Wyoming Lodge, Mass., Dec. 28, 1856. He transferred his membership to Quincy Lodge, No. 296, Quincy, Ill., where he removed in 1858, and where he lived until he died July 19, 1909. He was elected T. . M.-., and re-eleeted twelve successive times. He was Grand Master for two terms, in 1876 and 1877; and had been Grand Orator in 1868. His Oration remained famous and familiar for half a eentury; the complete text was published in The Builder.
ROME, A LODGE AT.
The Jacobite Lodge at Rome came without announcement, worked a few years, vanished and left scarcely a trace, and was always small enough to meet in a private room; yet, like the Rosetta Stone, it has a significance out of proportion to its age or its size because of a number of unique features in its organization and its work; so much so, that William James Hughan, and at the request of the Grand Master of Masons in Scotland, wrote a book about it: The Jacobite Lodge at Rome: 1736-7; Torquay; printed for Lodge of Research, No. 2429, Leicester, England; 1910.
The Lodge met at the Three Kings, Strada Paolina, Rome. Its by-laws were written in Latin, and consisted of twelve rules, each of one sentence. The earliest date in the still-existing Minutes is August 16, 1735; the last is August 20, 1737; including first and last there are Minutes of twelve meetings. John Cotton was Master to and including March 19, 1736; from then on the Right Honorable the Earl of Winton (also spelled Wintown) was Master. The title of the Master is variously given as Master, Maitre, Great Master, Grand Master. In a list of founding members written by hand in the Minute Book William Howard is named as Master; his name is followed by two Wardens, and thirteen members; this means that the Lodge had held at least one meeting before Aug. 16, 1735.
Andrew Lumisden made a gift of the Minute Book to the Grand Lodge of Scotland in 1799. In a memorandum which he wrote to accompany the gift he said, among other things: "Pope Clement XII, having published a most severe edict la Bull] against Masonry, the last Lodge held at Rome was on the 20th August, 1737, when the Earl of Wintown was Master. [The Bull was dated in 1738.] The Officer of the Lodge [sometimes used as title for the Tiler], who was a servant of Dr. James Irvin, u as sent, as a terror to others prisoner to the Inquisition, but was soon released (This exemplary, or token, punishment was doubtless visited on the servant, instead of on the responsible head of the Lodge, because he was a servant, which is an interesting commentary on the morals of the Vatican.)
Bro. Hughan proves that Prince Charles Stuart the Roman Catholic pretender to the English throne, w as not in this Lodge, and that there is no trace of any connection with him. After having studied the biography of each member Bro. Hughan BTote: "Evidently the membership of the Lodge was mainly, if not exclusively, composed of Jacobites...." He believes that the founders were members of Scottish Lodges. Bro. Wintown was Master before he had taken the Third Degree, but it is very significant that he became a Master Mason in 1736; it may indicate that the Lodge at Rome had three Degrees at that period.
ROYAL ARCH WORLD DISTRIBUTION.
In 1942 the Grand Chapter, Royal Arch Masons of Missouri, published a Baedeker for Royal Arch Masons in the armed forces which showed the number and distribution of regular Chapters and Grand Chaps ters as of that date. The data are such as to deserve permanent record. Unless otherwise specified numbers refer to Chapters. Capital letters following numbers denote jurisdiction according to the following key:
GGC= General Grand Chapter of United States; S = Scottish, I = Irish, E = EngTlish.
Alaska- 4(GGC). Arabia: 1(S). Argentine: 8(E). Australia: there are Six Grand Chapters. Barbados: 2(S). Bermuda: 3(E)- 3(S). Brazil: 2(E). British Guiana: 2(E); 2(S). Canada: has nine Grand Chapters and 311 Chapters. Canal Zone: 2(GGC). Cape of Good Hope: 28(E); 1(I)- 15(S). Chile: 3(S), 1(GGC). China: 10 (EGC); 3(Sj; 1(GGC). Cuba: 1(GGC). Egypt: 6(E); 1 (S) . In England are 1644 Chapters, 438 in London alone. Fiji Islands: 2(S). Gibraltar: 3(E)- 1(S), 1(I). Gold Coast: 7(E); 1(S). Hawaii: 1(GGC). India: 29(E); 1(I); 3(S). Bombay: 24(E); 19(S). Burma: 7(E); 1(S). Ceylon: 6(E); 1(S). Madras: 16(E),3(S). Northwestern: 1(E); 1(S). Punjab: 20(E); 4(S). Rajputana; 1(S); 1(E).
Iraq: 2 (E) . Ireland: 342 Chapters. Antigua: 1 (E) . Malta: 3(E)- 1(S). St. Helena: 1(E). Cyprus: 1(E). Isle of Man: 5(E). Isle of Mauritius: 1(S). Isle of Pines: 1(S). Isle of Wight: 6(E). Jamaica: 4(E); 1(S). Japan (Whites) 4(E). Jersey: 3(E). Kenya: 1(E)- 3(S). Malay States : 11 (E); 3(S) . Mesopotamia : 1 (E) . Mexieo : 3(GGC). Military Chapters: 2(S). Monte Carlo: 1(E). Moroeeo: 1(S). Natal: 10(E); 1(I) • 6(S).
New South Wales: Gr. Ch. of N. S. W. has 74; Ireland 1; Seotland 144. New Zealand: G. C. of N. Z. has 68,2(I)10(Ep 13(S). Nigeria: 6(E)- 1(I)- 2(S). Northern Rhodesia: 1(E). Nyasaland: 1(S). Orange Free State: 4(E)- 5(S). Palestine: 1(E). Peru 2(S). Philippine Islands: 1(GGC)- 1(S). Porto Rico: 1(GGC). Quebee: 23 under G. C. of I.; 1 (E) . Queensland: G. C. of I. has 95; 1(E)- 4(S). Seotland: 541 and G. C. of S. Siam: 1(S). Sierra Leone: 1(E); 1(S). South Australia: G. S. of S. A. has Chapters in majority of cities and tows. South Rhodesia: 3(E); 2(I); 2(S); Sudan: 1(E). Syria: 1(S). Tanganyika: 4(E). Tasmania: 6(S). Transvaal: 18(S); 16(E); 4(I). Trinidad: 4(S). Turkey: 1(E) at Constantinopel. Uganda:1(AS) Uruguay:1(E). Victoria, Autralie G. C. of V. has 65. Virgin Islands: 1 (E) . B estern Australia: Chapters in most towns under G. C. of VENT. ant-; 7(S).
ROYALTY AND ENGLISH MASONRY.
Queen Anne's children had died before her; and when she passed, two descendants of the original Stuart family had an almost equal genealogical claim to the throne:
George, the Elector of Hanover; and James Stuart, Son of the exiled James II. The latter was a Roman Catholic; the former was a Protestant. The Tories were divided between the two, but the Whigs were determined that once and for all England should become officially a Protestant country, and therefore culled George to the throne. He was a middle-aged Germanw coarse and arrogant, and personally never Texas popular; even so, James Stuart, and contrary to a romantic tradition in novels, was equally coarse and arrogantly so that his adherents in England and Scotland, the Jacobites, gained no strength for their cause from his personality.
The new king was crowned George I in 1714, and was to reign for thirteen years. The New Grand Lodge of Speculative Masonry was erected in London three years after his coronation, but when the Duke of Wharton undertook to swing it over to the Jacobite side it threw him out and wrote into its Book of Constitutions a law to forbid any political activity by Lodges or Masons. Masons were to be peaceable citizens, loyal to the government. At the time, this meant in effect loyalty to the Hanoverian Dynasty, which is still the Royal House of Britain.
Almost from the first, members of the new Royal Family came into Freemasonry, and with them members of the old nobility and of the high aristocracy in England, Ireland, and Scotland; and not as members in name only but as active workers in Grand Lodge, Provincial Grand Lodges, and Lodges. A non-Masonic British nobleman was an exception. Their relatives by blood and marriage on the Continent were brought in by them; and the fact partly explains the extraordinary spread of the Fraternity over Europe and as far east as Moscow during the first twenty-five years after the erection of the Mother Grand Lodge.
American Masons have never realized how completely the Grand and the Provincial Grand Lodges of Britain have been officered by members of the Royal Family and the nobility, and even now, and in spite of the great amount of inter-visitation which went on during the Second World War, it continues to be difficult of full realization.
The City of Derby was far from London, the Court, and from its social circles; the home city of scientists, inventors (Watt and Arkwright among them), and capitalists, it became the cradle of the Industrial Revolution; these facts make it the more striking that the records of one of its Lodges, Tyrian No. 953, in its minutes from 1766 to 1885, are studded with titled names: the Duke of Cumberland, Brother of George III, granted its Warrant, which also was signed by the Earl of E5ingham. In 1798 the Lodge contributed A:42 toward a jewel which was presented to the Earl of Aloira, Grand Master of the Antients when he became Governor General of India. Daniel Coke, a member of Parliament, was twice W.-. M.-.. The Sixth Duke of Devonshire was W. . M.-. in 1813 and in 1814, and was Provincial Grund Master from 1814 to 1858, when he svas sueeeeded by the Marquis of Hartington, Seeretary for War. Viseount Tamworth was made a Mason in Tyrian in 1810; and the second Lord Scarsdale in the same year. Both Augustus and Edvard Curzon mere initiated in 1815; Francis Curzon was NV. . M. . in 1826. Earl Howe, Augustus Stanhope, and Earl Ferrers were entered between 1815 and 1848.
Among its visitors were scores of men of the nobility who carried titles among the oldest in Britain.
Two Hundred Years of Freemasonry; A History of the Britannic Lodge, No. 55 (Kening & Son; London; 1930), one of the most brilliant of the smaller Lodge histories, home Lodge of the famous John Coustos, had so many members of British and other royal families between 1773 and 1817 that it is called "the Royal period." On the membership list at the same time were two foreign kings, three Hanoverian kings and five royal Dukes. The Earl of Moira was "perpetual Master."
But the most remarkable instance of Royalty in Lodges was No. 259, of which Prtnce of Wales Lodge, by Thomas Fenn, privately printed in 1890, is the history. It was instituted in 1787 by his Royal Highness, George, Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV. "The Lodge was originally intended to consist only of those who were honored with appointments under H. R. H. or men firmly attached to his person and interest.... Amongst the earliest initiated in this Lodge, were twenty of H. R. H.'s footmen and household servants. They were not admitted as members, but were initiated by order of H. R. H. as serving Brethren without payment of fees."
Among its long list of Royal and otherwise most eminent persons (come in by Royal invitation) were: Duke of York, Duke of Clarence, Lord Lake, Thomas Dunckerley, Major St. Leger (cousin of Elizabeth St. Leger, the Irish "lady Freemason"), General Bowles (afterwards appointed to be "Provincial Grand Master" to the Creek Indians in America!), General Paoli, the Corsican patriot, Earl of Zetland, Duke of Roxburgh, Prince of Moliterno, Prime Minister George Canning, Sir David Pollock, Godfrey Higgins (author of the stupendous monument of erudition, The Anacolypsz
a second Earl of Zetland, Lord Monson, Earl of Yarborough, Duke of Beaufort, Lord Rendlesham, Lord Catthorpe, the Maharajah Duleep Singh of India, Viscount Lake, Youssuff Aziz Effendi, Earl of Wigtown, Duke of Sussex (Grand Master from 1813 to 1843), Lord Churchill, Lord Monson, Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild, Prince of Wales (Edward VII), W. . M.-. from 1874, Grand Masterfrom 1875, etc., etc.
In the list of Worshipful Masters five are preceded by The Modern Grand Lodge of England from 1717 to 1813 was with the exception of the lowest bracket of officers, staffed by men of the nobility and of the aristocracy, as were also, to a scarcely lesser degree, the Provincial Grand Lodges. The seeond part of Bro. Albert F. Calvert's The Grand dodge of England (Herbert Jenkins Ltd.; London; 1917) consists of 3 gallery of portraits in which appear, among others, the following: John, Duke of Montague Earl of Chesterfield, Duke of Wharton, Duke of Richmond, Duke of Lorraine, Duke of Neweastle, Earl of Crawford, Sir Ceeil Wray, Sir Thomas De Veil (one of the personages in Hogarth's "Night"), Viseount Hareourt, William, Duke of Cumberland, Frederick Lewis, Prince of Wales (this eldest son of King George II was first King's son to be made a Mason; Nov. 5, 1737; the ceremony was performed by Dr. Desaguliers.
Grand Lodge was exactly 20 years old), Lord Raymond, Sir James Thornhill, Marshal James Keith, Frederick III, King of Prussia, Sir Richard Glynn (Lord Mayor), Lord Blayney, Duke of Beaufort, Edward, Duke of York, Frederick, Duke of York, Thomas Harley (Lord Mayor. Sat for his portrait with his hands in a large fur muff), Admiral Sir Peter Parker, Robert Edward, Lord Petre (like one or two others, Lord Petre was a Roman Catholic. While the Marquis of Ripon was Grand Master he became a convert of Roman Catholicism, resigned his Masonic offices, and his membership), Duke of Manchester, Sir Watkin Lewes (Lord Mayor of London), Col. John St. Leger, Duke of Cumberland, G. M. in 1782-1790, Charles Howard, Duke of Norfolk, Duke of York, William Howley, Archbishop of Canterbury, Earl of Moira (this G. M. was in 1806 also G. M. of Scotland), Francis, Earl of Moira, Prime Minister George Canning, C. T. Hunter (Lord Mayor), Duke of Sussex (once lived in Canada where he was a Prov. G. M.; was G. M. of England 181S1843), Prince of Wales (King George IV), Duke of Kent (also lived in Canada for years; G. M. of Antients; father of Queen Victoria, who, after her coronation, and as an honor to him, announced herself Patroness of Freemasonry), Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Clarence (King William IV), Earl of Zetland, Fifth Duke of Richmond, Earl of Carnarvon, Earl of Lathom, Duke of Connaught, Duke of Clarence, Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, (Edward VII), Lord Ampthill, John, Earl of Atholl, etc.
With only a few exceptions these men of title, who usually were also men of large affairs and of great responsibilities in the State, were good and true Masons in every sense, as members and Brothers, and as officers; but their titles were born with them, their authorities went with them, their privileges were continuous, so that a Prince or a Duke continued to be a Prince or a Duke while sitting in the Grand East (called "throne"), which is in contrast to the Ameriean practice, where if a President, Governor, or Senator (the importance of whose of lice is as "high" and even more responsiblethanthatof King, Prince, or Duke) sits in the East or Grand East it is in his capacity only as a Mason—his "titles are left outside the tiled door."
The Modern Grand Lodge between 1721 and 1751 became top-heavy with aristocracy, and many Lodges, especially in London, became exclusive and snobbish; this was in violation of the Landmark of "meeting upon the level" which in Freemasonry was centuries older than the House of Hanover or the House of Stuart; and it was this violation, far more than the violation of two or three customs of ceremony, w hich in Grand Master Byron's time ("the wicked Lord Byron," who once murdered a man in a drunken brawl) was the reason for so many Lodges going over to the Antient Grand Lodge. The Antient Grand Lodge had been erected in 1751 by Irish Masons living in London who could neither visit nor affiliate with London Lodges because they were "mechanics," that is, like the fathers and founders of the Craft, were "workers," or were men in small business. The majority of English writers on Masonic history aide Gould, Calvert, etc.) never fail to quote anything "coarse" that Laurence Dermott ever said about the Moderns; but they never quote the stinging and snobbish things said by the Moderns about Dermott; and never permit a reader to forget that Dermott (God help him!) was a house painter!
And yet, so strange are the ways of men, so Upside down their hearts, the Masons who "made" the Grand Lodges of England and, after 1813, the United Grand Lodge—the ritualists, the hard-working lower officers, and the writers—were commoners: Desaguliers was a doctor; Anderson a dissenting minister; Preston a printer; Dermott a painter (though an extraordinarily well-educated man of genius); Gilkes a grocer; Pine an engraver; and so on; and regardless of how aristo cratic the Modern Grand Lodge itself may ever have been its members gave great honor to these men.
The manly, upright, brainy men of the Lodge at Aberdeen, Scotland, who with such great care wrote out the Work Book in 1670, appended it to a solemn address to Masons who might come after them in their ancient Lodge, which for weight and a sincere eloquence can scarcely be rivalled by any utteranee that ever came out of Freemasonry: "So ends the names of us all who are authors of this Book and the Mason's box [charity] in order, according to our ages as we were made fellow craft, from which we reckon our age; so we entreat all our good successors in the Mason Craft to follow our rule as your patterns, and not to strive for place, for here ye may see above written and amongst the rest of our names persons of a mean degree insert before great persons of quality ....
The history of the Tyrian Lodge, No. 253, of Derby, referred to in an earlier paragraph, is set forth with great compactness in The Centenary Celebration of the Tynan Lodge, No. 253; printed by W. Bacon; Derby; Second Edition; 1885. (The name is from the Latin tyriorum, or trireme.) It is one of the most significant of the early Lodge histories because Derby was in the center of so much of national importance at the time of the Freneh Revolution. Beginning on page 14 the undesignated author gives a number of pages about men of title, fame, eminence who were in the Lodge, connected with it, or then in the Craft. On page 14 he writes: "Francis, Duke of Lorraine, afterwards Emperor of Germany, husband of Maria Theresa, and father of Marie Antionette, whose beauty and whose cruel fate inspired the glowing eloquence of Burke, was initiated at The Hague as early as 1731." This one small Lodge history alone, in its 74 pages, gives documentary proof of the falseness of those books which set out to show that Freemasonry was a conspiracy which plotted the French Revolution, such as were written by Prof. Robison, Abbe Barruel, Nesta Webster, Bernard Fay, etc., because it sho vs that there was as large a number of Masons among the kings, princes, dukes, etc., on the side against the Revolution, as among the leaders on the side in favor of the Revolution—it was there as it was in our own American Revolution; the Fraternity was on both sides and therefore on neither.
Burke, the great antagonist of the Revolution, would certainly not have been a Freemason himself had Freemasonry plotted Louis XVI's overthrow; and he would have known it had such been the fact because the British Government at the time had day-by-day, detailed knowledge of events in Paris from 1787 to 1791.
RUFFIANS, NAMES OF THE.
Theosophical and occultist writers have argued that the combined endings of the three names of the Ruffians form together the my stical, Brahmin AUM, as noted on pace 111; and from this they argue that Freemasonry conceals mysteries from the Far East, etc. Historians have found that Speculative Freemasonry arose in England and developed out of Operative Freemasonry which was for some four or five centuries spread over Britain and Europe; an argument composed of speculations about so slight a fact as the endings of three names is not sufficient to overthrow the massive accumulation of data collected by those historians.
Equally disastrous to the theory is the fact that at one time or another the Ruffians have had other names, and have differed in number; also, the a, u, m endings became crystallized in the Ritual after the founding of Speculative Freemasonry. In the old catechism called The Whole Institutions of Freemasons Opened, a short document published in Dublin in 1725, occur these curious sentences: "Your first word is Jachin and Boaz is the answer to it, and Grip at the forefinger joint.—Your 2nd word is Magboe and Boe is the answer to it, and Grip at the Wrist. Your 3rd word is Gibboram, Esimbrel is the answer ...."
The origin of the Ruffians themselves is undiscovered; perhaps when the Ritual came to be enacted, instead of being largely composed of a set of drawn symbols with verbal explanations, they were introduced and given their names; if so, the endings may be nothing more than a form of verbal symmetry. (The subject of the many instances of verbal symmetry in the Work, along with other forms of symmetry such as 3, 5, 7, etc., awaits research; if the research were conducted according to the canons of literary analysis, in addition to historical analysis, it might yield light on the origin of the form of the Work now in use. Symmetry cannot be either coincidental or accidental, but must imply redaction, or editorship, or authorship. Bro. and Prof. David Eugene Smith has suggested that the three names are suspiciously like certain old variations on the Hebrew word for "jubilee.")
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