2019-04
In this portion of our website, I will present various articles that I hope readers will find interesting and educational. Hopefully a new one each (calendar) month. Most, if not all articles will not be my own creation, so I will indicate my source of information.
LODGE OF PROMULGATION (1809-11):
In 1809, when Union with the Antients was in sight, the premier Grand Lodge authorized a ‘Special Lodge of Promulgation’ to determine the Ancient landmarks of the society to consider the points of variation that had so far existed between the practices of the two fraternities. A Master and Wardens were nominated for it and twenty-three brethren were elected to membership. Of these eleven were either Past Grand Wardens or Provincial Grand Masters, and nine were Masters of lodges including, curiously enough, the Grand Master, the Duke of Sussex, as Master of Antiquity. A significant Minute of the lodge’s proceedings relates to a meeting in December 1809:
Resolved that Deacons (being approved on due examination to be not only Ancient but useful and necessary Officers) be recommended.
This tells us not only of how Deacons – previously seen mostly in lodges of the Ancients but not in those of premier Grand Lodge – came to be essential in the United fraternity. It stands also as an example of how the Lodge of Promulgation worked. A further recommendation was that Installation of Masters-elect, being a ‘landmark’ of the Craft, should be ‘observed’. The complete record demonstrates how, in nearly every subject that came under review, it was the Ancients’ practice that this lodge composed of Moderns tended to favour. One proposal which was not adopted was for the appointment of a ’Professor of the Art and Mystery of Speculative Masonry’ to settle doubtful points!
Although the lodge closed in 1811, members of it later served on the committee which dealt with the arrangements for effecting the Union itself in 1813.
I thank our Webmaster for allowing me to continue in contributing to the Masonic Education portion of the website.
From ‘A Reference Book For Freemasons’ – compiled by Frederick Smyth and published in 1998.
R.W. Bro. Robert South