Freemasonry and the Military

Freemasonry and the Military - Authors - Bro Kevin Tongs and Bro Andrew Codd

When the research for this lecture was begun, it was thought that it would be a simple case of researching a couple of military lodges (of which there were approximately 217).  Come with a few amusing anecdotes and that would be that. What was not realised was how much the military helped to shape Freemasonry, and how much military masons helped to shape the world as it is today.

This lecture looks at mainly English modern freemasonry from the founding of Grand lodge by four London Lodges on St John the Baptist’s Day, 24 June 1717, and the role of English military masonry in the development of the craft.  It will not be getting drawn into the debate over the place of the Templars in Masonic military history, nor the speculation over earlier Masonic origins. Neither will it be looking at the role that military masons played on both sides of pretty much every revolution, uprising and war for independence that took place in Europe and the Americas throughout the 1700s, 1800s[1], and 1900s and it will not be producing a roll call of notable military masons, although it is tempting to look at the lives and Masonic careers of the likes of Wellington, Garibaldi, Earl Alexander of Tunis, Kemal Ataturk (the father of modern Turkey), Washington and the Bonaparte family.  These are topics for separate lectures.

Having said that, it would be wrong to start this lecture without mentioning several early military masons.  Sir Robert Moray was one of those fine Presbyterian Scottish gentlemen of an adventurous disposition who went to France in the 1630s and volunteered to fight on the army of the catholic King of France, Louis XIII.  He fought in the Thirty Years War (France versus the Habsburg Holy Roman Empire and the King of Spain. He then returned to Scotland and for the Scots and invaded England, and while stationed in Newcastle he was initiated on 20 March 1641 into an Edinburgh Masonic Lodge.  Sir Robert Moray is the first recorded military lodge member. 

He then fought on the King’s side during the English Civil War (unlike most Scots). After the King’s defeat and capture, Moray fled to France, but returned to England at the Restoration of Charles II, and was one of the founders of the Royal Society.  He was also a friend and patron of Thomas Vaughan, the Welsh Rosicrucian.

Also of interest is Elias Ashmole, whose collection founded the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.  He fought for Charles I, and at the end of the war in 1646 he was taken prisoner by Roundheads in Lancashire.  He was initiated in Warrington on 16 October 1646.  His father-in-law Col Henry Mainwaring, who was an officer in the Roundhead army, was initiated at the same time. As we will see, this is not the only time that Freemasonry unites protagonists from opposing sides.  

There have been military masons almost as long as there has been ‘modern’ Freemasonry (we should be careful how we use that word, as we will see later), and they have been instrumental in the development of the craft.  The year after the establishment of the Grand Lodge, Bro Payne was elected Grand Master, with Captain Josiah Elliot an Army officer, and Mr Jacob Lamball, a carpenter as his Grand Wardens. Mr Payne was Grand Master again in 1720, and the last commoner to hold that rank, and he proposed the Duke of Monagu to succeed him. John Montagu, 2^nd Duke of Montagu was one of the great personages of the state.  He had acted as High Constable at the coronation of George I, and was colonel of a regiment of Horse Guards. He was reputed to be the richest man in England.

It might be worth mentioning that at this time, Roman Catholics were not excluded from Freemasonry (neither were Jews). They could not be MPs, army officers, or hold any public position in the state, but they would be welcome in a lodge, so a lodge became one of the very few places were men of differing religions, social backgrounds and political persuasions could meet.

As Freemasonry flourished and grew in England, so it did on the continent, and one of the most interesting early military masons has to be King Frederick II of Prussia, better known as Frederick the Great, who became a mason in 1738 against the wishes of his barking mad father.  As well as producing one of the finest European armies, he also introduced Freemasonry into Sweden and became the Grand Master of Swedish Grand Lodge.

Whilst the vast majority of military masons are army men (if only because it was and still is very difficult to find the space on a fighting ship to convene a lodge), Thomas Dunkerley proves the exception.  Born in 1724, he entered the Navy as a gunner and rose to become a respected Petty Officer.  He became a Freemason, and formed naval lodges in several ships were he served and in Canada were he was stationed for a time.  From time to time in his naval career, important people intervened and used their influence on his behalf; but it wasn’t until he was 36 that his mother, on her deathbed, told him her great secret.  His father was the Prince of Wales, who afterwards became George II.  When Dunkerley left the Navy, George III granted him a pension and several members of the royal family helped him financially.  He also banned smoking in Lodges, However, during the Crimean War ,British officers acquired the habit of smoking cigars and cigarettes from their French allies (something else to blame the French for), cigar-smoking became popular with Edward, Prince of Wales and was introduced into Lodges in the 1860s. Another Naval Mason you might have heard of is Philip, Duke of Edinburgh who was a member of Navy lodge Number 2612 (along with King George VI).

After the creation of the Grand Lodge in 1717, military lodges were established which moved about from place to place with the regiment.  The 1815 Constitution makes it clear that the consent of the commanding officer had to be obtained before a military lodge could be formed, and he could order the closure of the lodge.  It was for the commanding officer to decide who could be admitted to the lodge, and in the eighteenth century few COs allowed other ranks to join.  Grand Lodge introduced the rule that civilians could not join a military lodge, because they wished the local inhabitants to be initiated in their own fixed lodges; but this rule was often waived in practice, and many regimental lodges invited the local gentry to join.  The actual wording of the 1815 Constitution is quite interesting:

No Military Lodge shall, on any pretence initiate into masonry any inhabitant or sojourner in any town or place at which its members may be stationed nor any person who does not at the time belong to the military profession nor any military person below the rank of Corporal, except as serving brethren, or by dispensation from the Grand Master, or some Provincial Grand Master.

   

The term ‘serving brethren’ is interesting and a bit of typically British hypocritical compromise.  Serving brethren were literarily that; brethren who served, either as stewards or musicians and they normally came ‘from the ranks’. It would be fair to say that they were initiated into the mysteries, but not the privileges of Freemasonry, and while they attended meetings they  had no say in the conduct or ‘management’ of the lodges.  All brethren are equal; but some more so!

However, despite the regulations civilians were intiated into military lodges, and when the regiment moved on, the local residents continued to attend the meetings of the lodge, and then asked Grand Lodge to constitute them as a new affiliated lodge.  For example, with many British regiments stationed along the Atlantic seaboard (pre-American war of independence!), from Nova Scotia and Canada to South Carolina and Georgia, lodges grew rapidly in the American colonies, a practice we will see repeated elsewhere. For instance, the first Masonic lodge in Japan was a British military lodge founded in 1864 in Yokohama. A quick aside while we have mentioned Japan – after defeat and surrender in 1945, the American commander-in-chief and Governor of Japan and Freemason, General Douglas MacArthur gave every assistance to the Japanese Freemasons.  For the first time native Japanese were allowed to become Freemasons and Freemasonry played its part in making Japan the democratic and western-looking country that it has become since the Second World War.

Another example of a military lodge that followed this pattern is Lord Kitchener Lodge, which started life in Egypt, but is now in Cyprus having moved there (CHECK HISTORY).  In 1922, it amended its original by-law covering initiates and joining members to read:

This lodge is formed for the association of Commissioned Officers, Warrant Officers and Non-Commissioned Officers of Sergeant and upwards (no Corporals here!) and equivalent ranks of the Royal Navy and (that new-fangled invention) the Royal Air Force.

Initiates had to be serving members, but ex-military could join as joining members.  But in keeping with the pattern set by all military lodges, it is interesting to note that on 11 Jan 1958, a Greek Cypriot, Mr George Savvides is noted in the minutes as ‘such a great tower of strength in the lodge’.  In 1985, Lord Kitchener Lodge membership gives a fair representation of the administration of a near-East garrison, with membership comprising 3 Majors, 5 Captains, a Warrant Officer Class 1, 7 ‘Misters’, the NAAFI Manager, the head of the Postal and Courier Unit Royal Engineers, 3 from the Dept of the Environment/PSA(i.e. ‘works’ dept), a Sovereign Base Area Policeman, 2 members of the Greek Cypriot Fire Service and 5 members of ‘Civilian Wing, 9 Signal Regiment’.

Military Masons and Empire-1

The spread of Freemasonry through military lodges was prolific.  By 1752, there were lodges in Bengal, Gibraltar, the Americas, East Indies (with their own PGM), including Montserrat, Antigua Barbados and Jamaica.  By 1802, Madras, Bombay, Quebec, Bermuda, Honduras, Upper Canada, New Brunswick, Gambia, Prince Edward Island, Ghana and New South Wales could be added to that list.   What helped this spread was the innovation of Irish Grand Lodge, who in the 1730’s introduced the ‘travelling warrant’, and the first of these was issued in 1732 to the 1^st Bn the Royal Scots (the oldest Regiment in the British Army – comes of fighting on the right side in the English Civil War). Scottish Grand lodge got in on the act in 1747, and by 1813 had warranted 21 Regimental Lodges. In 1755, English Grand lodge finally got round to issuing warrants to two Regiments; the 8^th and 57^th. In total there were about 190 Regimental Lodges established between 1732 and 1813. 

Ancients and Moderns

Anyway back to 1752, and 35 years after its inception, Grand Lodge faced a serious revolt.  The Lodge in York, which had been taught that King Athelstan had established a Mason’s lodge at York in the 10^th Century, declared that they were senior to Grand Lodge in London and would not accept its authority.  A number of lodges (including Lodge No 1 in London) joined with the Grand lodge in York, and called themselves the Ancient Grand lodge, and contemptuously dismissed Grand Lodge in London and its followers as ‘Moderns’.

This division lasted 60 years, and was only ended when each rival group had as its Grand Master a royal brother (Duke of Sussex – 6^th son of George III for London and Duke of Kent – 4^th son of George III for York) and they were able to use their royal influence to bring the two lodges together.  However military lodges also played a significant part in bringing about union and concord.

The majority of military lodges belonged to the ‘antients’, as they were keener to issue travelling warrants that the ‘moderns’, also the ancients were more numerous than the moderns in foreign parts as they were more willing to accept members for the middling ranks of society.  For instance an ancient military lodge at Fort St George included a Tavern Keeper, Coach Maker, School master, Carpenter and Jeweller. At one stage the batting was 108 to the ancients and 48 to the moderns.  But in military lodges there was a strong desire for unity, and this was for two main reasons.  Firstly, division between ancients and moderns seemed less important in far-flung and potentially dangerous corners of Empire.  For instance, in the interests of promoting harmony, the Carnatic Military Lodge in Arcot S India admitted ancients ‘Actuated by laudable and generous views to promote Harmony amongst the craft in general and lamenting the existence of distinctions in an order that should be universal’.  Similarly, Ancient Lodge No 152, which had been established in Gibraltar for Army Officers, Ships Captains and merchants (trade!) reported to London in 1785 that ‘in provinces remote from the mother country the various evils that attended the schism are experienced in a degree of which the Brethren in England can have no conception’. Ancent lodge 152 proposed a union of the craft.  Similar proposals came from Jamaica and Quebec.

The second reason for wishing to see union was to avoid the embarrassment of an ancient lodge having to turn away a newly-arrived senior officer or colonial official from the lodge because he was a ‘modern’ mason.

 Military Masons and Empire-2

Freemasonry was introduced into Australia in the first years of colonisation.  Captain James Cook was as Freemason, and military lodges were formed in New South Wales soon after the British first went there in 1788.  A lodge for civilians was established in 1820.  In the early years, when the colony was under military government and a place to which convicts were deported from England, the Freemasons occasionally suffered, as elsewhere under authoritarian governments.  On one occasion an army unit broke into a lodge meeting in Sydney and arrested the masons, because the Governor had thought that their meetings were illegal.  The first Masonic lodge in New Zealand was established in the first years after colonisation in 1842.

Lodges were established in India at an early stage, but they were slow in admitting Indians to the lodges.  Even when the British Freemasons were prepared to admit Muslims, they still objected to Hindus, on the grounds that they worshipped many gods, not one Great Architect.  It was the Duke of Sussex who intervened to order the British Lodges in India to admit Hindus.  He ruled ‘that the various ‘gods’ of the Hindus were not separate gods but personifications of characteristics of one central deity’.  Before the end of the nineteenth century Rudyard Kipling, who was an especially ardent Freemason and was first initiated as a mason in India, was claiming that the religious and racial quarrels which troubled British India disappeared inside the Masonic lodges.  

But Regimental Lodges could be quite radical. In 1781 an Army Captain who was master of a regimental lodge initiated and raised some prisoners in the King’s Bench Prison.  Grand Lodge rules that this was ‘inconsistent with the principles of Freemasonry’.

Military Masons at War

PRISONERS OF WAR

And at the risk of saying something complimentary about the French, it is worth noting that many French Freemasons played an active part in the Resistance.  Of the 50,000 Freemasons in France in 1939, 6,000 were arrested and interrogated by the Germans on suspicion of being members of the resistance; 989 were deported to concentration camps in Germany or Poland; and 545 were executed or died.  These included the resistance hero, Jean Moulin, who died under torture at the hands of the Gestapo in Lyons in 1943, and the German Jew, Eduard Ignaze Engel, who was known by his pseudonym, Plantagenet. After playing an active part against the Nazis as a journalist in Paris, and being Master of the Goethe Lodge, the only German-speaking lodge in France, he joined the French resistance movement in 1940.  He was arrested in October 1943 and executed in Buchenwald concentration camp on Christmas Day, 1943.

The part played by both Freemasons and Catholics in the resistance raised the possibility of at last putting an end to the 200 years of conflict between continental Freemasons and the Catholic Church.  The first step in a reconciliation was a secret meeting was arranged in a street in Toulouse between the Freemason resistance leader Marc Rucart and Henri Frenay, of the catholic resistance movement. 

Footnote

Following unrest in England after the French Revolution, two Acts of Parliament were enacted to deal with the situation – the Unlawful Oaths Act 1797 and the Unlawful Societies Act 1799. These acts could easily have been interpreted as applying to Freemasons, but the Prince of Wales, the Grand Master, intervened with Prime Minister Pitt.  He was assisted by his Deputy Grand Master, Francis, Lord Rawdon.  Initiated as a Freemason into a regimental lodge while fighting for the King in the American War of Independence, he had fought at the Battle of bunker Hill and was later promoted to the rank of Major General.  Pitt was sympathetic, and a clause was inserted into the Unlawful Societies Act that exempted masons from the ban on secret societies provided that every lodge supplied the local Justices of the Peace with the names of their members and the times and places of lodge meetings.  This was only abolished in 1967.

Conclusion

Military masons have been instrumental in the expansion of empire and the development of modern Freemasonry, and Freemasonry has been vital for social cohesion, development and rule of Empire.  We firmly believe that the neither world today, nor Freemasonry would be as they are without the military mason.  Similarly, Freemasonry has undoubtedly been of significant benefit to the serving man.  In 1957, Bro Richard Parkinson wrote:

The serviced lodges provided a common meeting ground for all ranks.  The practice of our ceremonies, the contemplation of the good, the true, the beautiful, lifted the mind from dreariness.  Discipline and training made the soldier-mason particularly apt in the work of the lodge. 

We give the last word to Field Marshal Stapleton Cotton CinC Ireland 1822-5 and India 1825-30: 

As a military man, and speaking from experience I can say that I have known many soldiers who were masons, but never a good mason who was a bad soldier.

Bibliography

As this was prepared as a lecture rather than an essay, sources have not been footnoted.  However, much of the material has been drawn from;

‘The Freemasons: The True Story of the World’s Most Powerful Secret Society’.  Jasper Ridley 2008, Constable & Robinson, London.

Builders of Empire.  Jessica Harland-Jacobs. ISBN 978-0-8079-3088-8

1990 Prestonian Lecture.

The Master Mason-at-Arms.  Frederick Smyth 1990.  Burgess and Son (Abingdon) Ltd, Abingdon.

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[1] Although sometimes exaggerated.  For example, of the 55 men who signed the American Declaration of Independence only 9 were certainly masons.  Of the 39 who approved the Constitution in 1787, 13 were (or became) masons, 2 became masons later and only 3 were masons before the outbreak of the revolution in 1775.