Oswego District AGL article January 2011

Two Grand Lodges & Brother William Preston

Brothers & Friends: The holiday season is drawing to a close and a New Year is upon us. Many of the lodges are dark for the next few months. I truly hope it finds each of you and your families well.

Last year at this time I did a few articles on the history and development of our beloved ritual. This year I intend to flesh them out a bit. Most of us know that the ritual as we know it emerged in England during the early 18th century. On the 24th of June in 1717, four London lodges of predominantly operative masons assembled at the Goose & Gridiron Ale-house and formed what became the Premier Grand Lodge of England, the first masonic Grand Lodge. Some time later several mainly Irish lodges felt that masonry as practiced by the Grand Lodge was not sufficiently rigorous and in 1751, formed a second Grand Lodge calling themselves the “Antients” referring to the 1717 group as “The Moderns”, not to be considered a compliment.

Since there were two grand lodges, there was little resembling standard work practiced in the British Isles, which brings us to William Preston, surely one of the most important freemasons of the last three centuries. Brother Preston was an author, scholar and printer born in the mid 18th century. Utilizing knowledge gained through his research and correspondence with freemasons around the world he designed and created a common format for meetings and degrees. He traveled widely throughout Britain, Ireland and Scotland conducting extensive research with the intention of making masonic teachings and rituals plus the basic arts & sciences accessible to all masons. The end result of this was “Illustrations of Masonry”, a handbook for masons.

I recently obtained a copy and find it fascinating reading and obviously the creation of a truly great mind. There are four sections or “books” within the physical document. The first, explains the virtues of freemasonry. The second describes the history and conferral of the three degrees. The third covers freemasonry's principals. The fourth and by far the largest, covers the history of masonry in England. Lastly an appendex contained many songs and odes, all told over 370 pages. With what had become his life's work, Preston brought the disparate masonic practices together into a single convention that could be accepted by the craft's leaders throughout our young nation. Preston's “Illustrations” was the source document for Thomas Smith Webb's Monitor from which sprang the American ritual we use today. “Illustrations of Masonry” is available as a pdf on the web and I highly recommend it to any of you with a desire to understand the origins of modern English language freemasonry.

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The Preston and Webb books are available elswhere on this site. They are large (17 meg) documents so if you have dialup internet access it will take some time for download.

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