country where the pure Masonry of which it must have been a corruption did not exist. Scottish or Stuart Masonry was a superstructure built upon the foundation of the symbolic Masonry of the three degrees. If in 1715 there was, as we know, no such foundation, it follows, of course, that there could have been no superstructure.

The theory, therefore, that Stuart Masonry, or the fabrication of degrees and the change of the primitive rituals to establish a system to be engaged in the support and the advancement of the falling cause of the Stuarts, was commenced during the lifetime of James II., and that the royal château of St. Germain-en-Laye was the manufactory in which, between the years 1689 and 1701, these degrees and rituals were fabricated, is a mere fable not only improbable but absolutely impossible in all its details.

Rebold, however, gives another form to the Legend and traces the rise of Stuart Masonry to a much earlier period. In his History of the Three Grand Lodges he says that during the troubles which distracted Great Britain about the middle of the 17th century and after the decapitation of Charles I. in 1649, the Masons of England, and especially those of Scotland, labored secretly for the re-establishment of the monarchy which had been overthrown by Cromwell. For the accomplishment of this purpose they invented two higher degrees and gave to Freemasonry an entirely political character. The dissensions to which the country was a prey had already produced a separation of the Operative and the Accepted Masons-that is to say, of the builders by profession and those honorary members who were not Masons. These latter were men of power and high position, and it was through their influence that Charles II., having been received as a Mason during his exile, was enabled to recover the throne in 1660. This prince gratefully gave to Masonry the title of the "Royal Art," because it was Freemasonry that had principally contributed to the restoration of royalty.1

Ragon, in his Masonic Orthodoxy, is still more explicit and presents some new details. He says that Ashmole and other Brethren of the Rose Croix, seeing that the Speculative Masons were surpassing in numbers the Operative, had renounced the simple initiation of the latter and established new degrees founded on the

1" Histoire de Trois Grandes Loges," p. 32.

2 Ragon, "Orthodoxie Maçonnique," p. 29.

Mysteries of Egypt and Greece. The Fellow Craft degree was fabricated in 1648, and that of Master a short time afterward. But the decapitation of King Charles I., and the part taken by Ashmole in favor of the Stuarts produced great modifications in this third and last degree, which had become of a Biblical character. The same epoch gave birth to the degrees of Secret Master, Perfect Master, and Irish Master, of which Charles I. was the hero, under the name of Hiram. These degrees, he says, were, however, not then openly practiced, although they afterward became the ornament of Ecossaism.

But the non-operative or Accepted" members of the organization secretly gave to the Institution, especially in Scotland, a political tendency. The chiefs or protectors of the Craft in Scotland. worked, in the dark, for the re-establishment of the throne. They made use of the seclusion of the Masonic Lodges as places where they might hold their meetings and concert their plans in safety. As the execution of Charles I. was to be avenged, his partisans fabricated a Templar degree, in which the violent death of James de Molay called for vengeance. Ashmole, who partook of that political sentiment, then modified the degree of Master and the Egyptian doctrine of which it was composed, and made it conform to the two preceding degrees framing a Biblical allegory, incomplete and inconsistent, so that the initials of the sacred words of these three degrees should compose those of the name and title of the Grand Master of the Templars.

Northouck,' who should have known better, gives countenance to these supercheries of history by asserting that Charles II. was made a Mason during his exile, although he carefully omits to tell us when, where, how, or by whom the initiation was effected; but seeks, with a flippancy that ought to provoke a smile, to prove that Charles II. took a great interest in Masonry and architecture, by citing the preamble to the charter of the Royal Society, an association whose object was solely the cultivation of the philosophical and mathematical sciences, especially astronomy and chemistry, and whose members took no interest in the art of building.

Dr. Oliver, whose unfortunate failing was to accept without careful examination all the statements of preceding writers, how

1 "Constitutions," p. 141.

ever absurd they might be, repeats substantially these apocryphal tales about early Stuart Masonry.

He says that, about the close of the 17th century, the followers of James II. who accompanied the unfortunate monarch in his exile carried Freemasonry to France and laid the foundation of that system of innovation which subsequently threw the Order into confusion, by the establishment of a new degree, which they called the Chevalier Maçon Ecossais, and worked the details in the Lodge at St. Germain. Hence, he adds, other degrees were invented in the Continental Lodges, which became the rendezvous of the partisans of James, and by these means they held communication with their friends in England.1

But as the high degrees were not fabricated until more than a third of the 18th century had passed, and as James died in 1701, we are struck with the confusion that prevails in this statement as to dates and persons.

It is very painful and embarrassing to the scholar who is really in search of truth to meet with such caricatures of history, in which the boldest and broadest assumptions are offered in the place of facts, the most absurd fables are presented as narratives of actual occurrences, chronology is put at defiance, anachronisms are coolly perpetrated, the events of the 18th century are transferred to the 17th, the third degree is said to have been modified in its ritual during the Commonwealth, when we know that no third degree was in existence until after 1717; and we are told that high degrees were invented at the same time, although history records the fact that the first of them was not fabricated until about the year 1728. Such writers, if they really believed what they had written, must have adopted the axiom of the credulous Tertullian, who said, Credo quia impossible est-"I believe because it is impossible." Better would it be to remember the saying of Polybius, that if we eliminate truth from history nothing will remain but an idle tale.

We must, then, reject as altogether untenable the theory that there was any connection between the Stuart family and Freemasonry during the life of James II., for the simple reason that at that period there was no system of Speculative Masonry existing

1" Historical Landmarks," II., p. 28.

which could have been perverted by the partisans of that family into a political instrument for its advancement. If there was any connection at all, it must be looked for as developed at a subsequent period.

The views of Findel on this subject, as given in his History of Freemasonry, are worthy of attention, because they are divested of that mystical element so conspicuous and so embarrassing in all the statements which have been heretofore cited. His language is as follows:

"Ever since the banishment of the Stuarts from England in 1688, secret alliances had been kept up between Rome and Scotland; for to the former place the Pretender James Stuart had retired in 1719 and his son Charles Edward was born there in 1720; and these communications became the more intimate the higher the hopes of the Pretender rose. The Jesuits played a very important part in these conferences. Regarding the reinstatement of the Stuarts and the extension of the power of the Roman Church as identical, they sought at that time to make the Society of Freemasons subservient to their ends. But to make use of the Fraternity, to restore the exiled family to the throne, could not have been contemplated, as Freemasonry could hardly be said to exist in Scotland then. Perhaps in 1724, when Ramsay was a year in Rome, or in 1728, when the Pretender in Parma kept up an intercourse with the restless Duke of Wharton, a Past Grand Master, this idea was first entertained, and then when it was apparent how difficult it would be to corrupt the loyalty and fealty of Freemasonry in the Grand Lodge of Scotland, founded in 1736, this scheme was set on foot of assembling the faithful adherents of the banished royal family in the High Degrees! The soil that was best adapted for this innovation was France, where the low ebb to which Masonry had sunk had paved the way for all kinds of new-fangled notions, and where the Lodges were composed of Scotch conspirators and accomplices of the Jesuits. When the path had thus been smoothed by the agency of these secret propagandists, Ramsay, at that time Grand Orator (an office unknown in England), by his speech completed the preliminaries necessary for the introduction of the High Degrees; their further development was left to the instrumentality of others, whose influence produced a result somewhat different from that originally intended." 1

"Geschichte der Freimaurerei."-Translation of Lyon, p. 209.

After the death of James II. his son, commonly called the Chevalier St. George, does not appear to have actively prosecuted his claims to the throne beyond the attempted invasion of England in 1715. He afterward retired to Rome, where the remainder of his life was passed in the quiet observation of religious duties. Nor is there any satisfactory evidence that he was in any way connected with Freemasonry.

In the meantime, his sons, who had been born at Rome, were intrusted to the instructions of the Chevalier Michael Andrew Ramsay, who was appointed their tutor. Ramsay was a man of learning and genius—a Scotchman, a Jacobite, and a Roman Catholic-but he was also an ardent Freemason.

As a Jacobite he was prepared to bend all his powers to accomplish the restoration of the Stuarts to what he believed to be their lawful rights. As a Freemason he saw in that Institution a means, if properly directed, of effecting that purpose. Intimately acquainted with the old Legends of Masonry, he resolved so to modify them as to transfer their Biblical to political allusions. With this design he commenced the fabrication of a series of High Degrees, under whose symbolism he concealed a wholly political object.

These High Degrees had also a Scottish character, which is to be attributed partly to the nationality of Ramsay and partly to a desire to effect a political influence among the Masons of Scotland, in which country the first attempts for the restoration of the Stuarts were to be made. Hence we have to this day in Masonry such terms as "Ecossaim," "Scottish Knights of St. Andrew," "Scottish Master," "Scottish Architect," and the "Scottish Rite," the use of which words is calculated to produce upon readers not thoroughly versed in Masonic history the impression that the High Degrees of Freemasonry originated in Scotland-an impression which it was the object of Ramsay to make.

There is another word for which the language of Masonry has been indebted to Ramsay. This is Heredom, indifferently spelled in the old rituals, Herodem, Heroden and Heredon. Now the etymology of this word is very obscure and various attempts have been made to trace it to some sensible signification.

One writer1 thinks that the word is derived from the Greek

1 London Freemasons' Magazine.