are found in the ideas of equity and charity to which all men are obliged. The destruction of this Temple, and the captivity and slavery of its worshippers, symbolized the pride and ambition which have produced political subjection among men. The unpitying hosts of Assyrians who destroyed the Temple and led the people into captivity are the kings, princes, and magistrates whose power has overwhelmed oppressed nations with innumerable evils. And finally, the chosen people charged with the duty of rebuilding the Temple are the Freemasons, who are to restore men to their original dignity. Cromwell had divided the Order which he founded into three classes or degrees. The third or Master's degree was of course not without its Hiramic legend, but the interpretation of its symbolism was very different from that which is given at the present day.

The Abbé thus explains it. The disorder of the workmen and the confusion at the Temple were intended to make a profound impression upon the mind of the candidate and to show him that the loss of liberty and equality, represented by the death of Hiram, is the cause of all the evils which affect mankind. While men lived in tranquillity in the asylum of the Temple of Liberty they enjoyed perpetual happiness. But they have been surprised and attacked by tyrants who have reduced them to a state of slavery. This is symbolized by the destruction of the Temple, which it is the duty of the Master Masons to rebuild; that is to say, to restore that liberty and equality which had been lost.

Cromwell appointed missionaries or emissaries, says Larudan, who propagated the Order, not only over all England, but even into Scotland and Ireland, where many Lodges were established.

The members of the Order or Society were first called Freemasons; afterward the name was repeatedly changed to suit the political circumstances of the times, and they were called Levelers, then Independents, afterward Fifth Monarchy Men, and finally resumed their original title, which they have retained to the present day.

Such is the fable of the Cromwellian origin of Freemasonry which we owe entirely to the inventive genius of the Abbé Larudan. And yet it is not wholly a story of the imagination, but is really founded on an extraordinary distortion of the facts of history.

Edmund Ludlow was an honest and honorable man who took at first a prominent part in the civil war which ended in the decapitation of Charles I., the dissolution of the monarchy, and the establish

ment of the Commonwealth. He was throughout his whole life a consistent and unswerving republican, and was as much opposed to the political schemes of Cromwell for his own advancement to power as he was to the usurpation of unconstitutional power by the King. In the language of the editor of his memoirs, "He was an enemy to all arbitrary government, though gilded over with the most specious pretences; and not only disapproved the usurpation of Cromwell, but would have opposed him with as much vigor as he had done the King, if all occasions of that nature had not been cut off by the extraordinary jealousy or vigilance of the usurpers."1

Having unsuccessfully labored to counteract the influence of Cromwell with the army, he abandoned public affairs and retired to his home in Essex, where he remained in seclusion until the restoration of Charles II., when he fled to Switzerland, where he resided until his death.

During his exile, Ludlow occupied his leisure hours in the composition of his Memoirs, a work of great value as a faithful record of the troublous period in which he lived and of which he was himself a great part. In these memoirs he has given a copious narrative of the intrigues by which Cromwell secured the alliance of the army and destroyed the influence of the Parliament.

The work was published at Vevay, in Switzerland, under the title of Memoirs of Edmund Ludlow, Esq.; Lieutenant-General of the Tories in Ireland, One of the Council of State, and a Member of the Parliament which began on November 3, 1640. It is in two volumes, with a supplementary one containing copies of important papers. The edition from which I cite bears the date of 1698. There may have been an earlier one. With these memoirs the Abbé Larudan appears to have been well acquainted. He had undoubtedly read them carefully, for he has made many quotations and has repeatedly referred to Ludlow as his authority.

But unfortunately for the Abbé's intelligence, or far more probably for his honesty, he has always applied what Ludlow said of the intrigues of Cromwell for the organization of a new party as if it were meant to describe the formation of a new and secret society.

Neither Ludlow nor any other writer refers to the existence of Freemasonry as we now have it and as it is described by the Abbé

1 Ludlow's "Memoirs," Preface, p. iv.

Larudan in the time of the civil wars. Even the Operative Masons were not at that period greatly encouraged, for, says Northouck, "no regard to science and elegance was to be expected from the sour minds of the puritanical masters of the nation between the fall of Charles I. and the restoration of his son."1

The Guild of Freemasons, the only form in which the Order was known until the 18th century, was during the Commonwealth discouraged and architecture was neglected. In the tumult of war the arts of peace are silent. Cromwell was, it is true, engaged in many political intrigues, but he had other and more effective means to accomplish his ends than those of Freemasonry, of whose existence at that time, except as a guild of workmen, we have no historical evidence, but a great many historical facts to contradict its probability.

The theory, therefore, that Freemasonry owes its origin to Oliver Cromwell, who invented it as a means of forwarding his designs toward obtaining the supreme power of the state, is simply a fable, the invention of a clerical adversary of the Institution, and devised by him plainly to give to it a political character, by which, like his successors Barruel and Robison, he sought to injure it.

1 Northouck's "Constitutions," p. 141.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE ROYAL SOCIETY AND FREEMASONRY

HE hypothesis that Freemasonry was instituted in the 17th century and in the reign of Charles II., by a set of philosophers and scientists who organized it under the title of the "Royal Society," is the last of those theories which attempts to connect the Masonic Order with the House of Stuart that we will have to investigate.

The theory was first advanced by an anonymous writer in the German Mercury, a Masonic journal published about the close of the last century at Weimar, and edited by the celebrated Christopher Martin Wieland.

In this article the writer says that Dr. John Wilkins, one of the most learned men of his time, and the brother-in-law of Oliver Cromwell, becoming discontented with the administration of Richard Cromwell, his son and successor, began to devise the means of re-establishing the royal authority. With this view he suggested the idea of organizing a society or club, in which, under the pretence of cultivating the sciences, the partisans of the king might meet together with entire freedom. General Monk and several other military men, who had scarcely more learning than would enable them to write their names, were members of this academy. Their meetings were always begun with a learned lecture, for the sake of form, but the conversation afterward turned upon politics and the interests of the king. And this politico-philosophical club, which subsequently assumed, after the Restoration, the title of the "Royal Society of Sciences," he asserts to have been the origin of the fraternity of Freemasons.

We have already had abundant reason to see, in the formation of Masonic theories, what little respect has been paid by their framers to the contradictory facts of history nor does the present hy

pothesis afford any exception to the general rule of dogmatic assumption and unfounded assertion.

Christopher Frederick Nicolai, a learned bookseller of Berlin, wrote and published, in 1783, an Essay on the Accusations made against the Order of Knights Templars and their Mystery; with an Appendix on the Origin of the Fraternity of Freemasons.1

In this work he vigorously attacks the theory of the anonymous writer in Wieland's Mercury, and the reasons on which he grounds his dissent are well chosen, but they do not cover the whole ground. Unfortunately, Nicolai had a theory of his own to foster, which also in a certain way connects Freemasonry with the real founders of the Royal Society, and the impugnment of the hypothesis of Wieland's contribution in its whole extent impugns also his own. Two negatives in most languages are equivalent to an affirmative, but nowhere are two fictions resolvable into a truth.

The arguments of Nicolai against the Wieland theory are, however, worth citation, before we examine his own.

He says that Wilkins could scarcely have been discontented with the government of Richard Cromwell, since it was equally as advantageous to him as that of his father. He was (and he quotes Wood in the Athena Oxonienses as his authority) much opposed to the court, and was a zealous Puritan before the rebellion.

In 1648 he was made the Master of Wadham College, in the place of a royalist who had been removed. In 1649, after the decapitation of Charles I., he joined the republican party and took the oath of allegiance to the Commonwealth. In 1656 he married the sister of Cromwell, and under Richard received the valuable appointment of Master of Trinity College, which, however, he lost upon the restoration of the monarchy in the following year.

"Is it credible," says Nicolai, "that this man could have instituted a society for the purpose of advancing the restoration of the king; a society all of whose members were of the opposite party? The celebrated Dr. Goddard, who was one of the most distinguished members, was the physician and favorite of Cromwell, whom, after the death of the King, he attended in his campaigns in Ireland and Scotland. It is an extraordinary assertion that a dis

1 "Versuch über die Besschuldigungen, welche dem Tempelherrn orden gemacht worden und über dessen Geheimniss; nebst einem Anhange über das Enstehen der Freimaurergesellschaft," Berlin and Stettin, 1783.