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No brother should be made to feel he has
let the side down by not doing as much as
the Past Masters did when they were in the
chair. A good Mason does not necessarily
have to be a good ritualist as long as he
participates in the affairs of his Lodge,
and his heart is in the right place.
The final statistic we must add into the
equation is the number of certificates issued
by Grand Lodge. In the past ten years alone
the number of men we initiate annually
has fallen by 30% from just under 12,000
to 8,400. Within the next 25 years English
Freemasonry could have shrunk to as little as
half its present size. This means one in every
two Lodges will have disappeared, and even
then we will not have increased the low
numbers we may have in the remaining ones.
The extra financial pressures on our
members will become intolerable and there
will be a corresponding knock-on effect
on our Masonic charities and the 800 or so
Masonic halls we have in England and
Wales. It is clear, therefore, that doing
nothing now is not an option, but knowing
what to do and how to do it is something on
which we should all concentrate our minds.
To plan for the future we must first look
back at our roots and examine the reasons we
were formed and have survived ‘the wreck of
mighty empires’. We spend too much time
worrying about ‘when’ rather than ‘why’ we
were created. What was in the minds of those
men who started Freemasonry and what was
the purpose behind it?
We know that some form of what we call
Freemasonry was being practised in the late
16th century in England long before our
first recorded initiate, Elias Ashmole, was
introduced to a Lodge in Warrington by
Henry Mainwaring in 1646. I have a chair
in my house in Warwickshire which was
originally in Canonbury Tower, Islington.
The Tower was built in the early 16th
century and inherited by my family in 1608.
The two panelled rooms at Canonbury were
carved in oak in 1599. There are many
symbols depicted in the carvings including
levels and compasses. They are almost
certainly connected to this chair, which is
dated 1595. The initials EM, which are visible
on either side at the top, are likely to be those
of Edward Mainwaring, two generations
before Henry, as the crest between them
is that of the Mainwaring family.
This was a period when certain men of
great intellect were planning a future society
as a utopian ideal. Francis Bacon’s book The
New Atlantis is full of Masonic symbolism
and describes an island where just such
a perfect society existed.
Unfortunately, such a vision could not
be grounded in Europe, with its political
intrigue and religious intolerance, hence
the attempt to do so in America through the
Virginia Company – named after the virgin
soil on the other side of the world which
they believed would provide the perfect
conditions for just such a society. Whether
Freemasonry was influenced by this ideal
of perfection is difficult to prove, but it is
certainly one of the main themes running
through our rituals.
So some form of philosophical fraternity
existed in the late 16th century and part of
its ethos was to counter political and
religious intolerance. Freemasonry has
retained that as part of its ethos to this day
as it refuses still to allow any member,
whether in Lodge or in his capacity as a
Freemason, to discuss or to advance his
views on theological or political questions.
This fraternity, which stood for freedom
of expression and thought, had to be kept
secret at a time when men were beheaded
for holding different views to the church
and monarch. Since then, the Order has
gone through varying periods of openness
and intense privacy, but even in its early
days the rituals were widely known through
exposures of one kind or another.
Nowadays we are just coming out of a
period of privacy and are developing a more
open approach with the popular world.
For too long, English Freemasons have
been criticised for their actions, based on
ignorance and prejudice. The perception in
some quarters is that we are a secret society
which practices strange rituals behind closed
doors. It is perceived that we only look after
our own, and in a way which encourages
profitable deals between Masons from
which non-Masons are excluded. We
have also been accused of protecting our
members even when they break the law.
A 1595 chair with Masonic symbolism
owned by Lord Northampton, probably
belonged to Edward Mainwaring two
generations before Henry Mainwaring
intiated Elias Ashmole in 1646
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Over the past 20 years or so we have tried
hard to rid the Craft of those who do not live
up to the high standards we set ourselves.
Every organisation as large as ours is
bound to have some rotten apples in its
membership, but it is quite wrong to blame
Freemasonry for the failings of a few of its
members. It would be equally wrong to
blame the whole judiciary for one crooked
judge or the whole medical profession for
the failings of a single doctor.
Nevertheless, we promote ourselves as an
organisation which teaches the importance
of a high moral code of behaviour and we
must expect to be criticised when our
members transgress. This is a brotherhood
which was designed for the improvement
of the soul of man, but however hard we
try to show ourselves in a true light, we are
always faced with two questions – who are
you and what do you do in your Lodges?
The answer has traditionally been that
our members feel they will be discriminated
against if it is known that they are Masons,
and what we do is private and nobody else’s
business. Of course there are brethren who
genuinely fear they will be discriminated
against if their membership becomes known,
but society now expects transparency in
everything that it perceives may affect
it adversely.
We cannot hope to change our members’
fear of discrimination unless we change the
perceptions which cause it, and to do that
we have to explain to the popular world the
good things that Freemasonry stands for, and
talk openly about the lessons that are taught
in our rituals.
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Copyright 2002-2007
MQ Magazine
Web site created by Mark Griffin
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