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Brothers past
THE LIBRARIAN
Dr Ric Berman examines the life of librarian and QC Lodge member Henry Sadler and explains why he was wrong about his views on the rivalry between the Antients and Moderns
In 1887, Henry Sadler (1840-1911), the Grand Tyler of Grand Lodge, was appointed sub-librarian of the then relatively new Library and Museum. In that role he was instrumental in bringing about a major expansion, extending its opening hours and collecting, organising and indexing a vast array of archival material. The latter provided the basis for his research and that of many other members of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, No. 2076, the first and premier Lodge of Masonic research. Indeed, Robert Freke Gould, the prolific Victorian Masonic historian and a fellow member of QC, said of Sadler that ‘scarcely a single Masonic book would have been written without the author being assisted by him’.
The formation of QC Lodge (consecrated in 1886), and the growth in Masonic research encouraged by Sadler’s work, increased the importance of the Library and Museum and lists of donations and acquisitions begin to appear in Grand Lodge’s Quarterly Communication from 1893. Partly as an acknowledgement of the major contribution he had made, when Sadler retired as Grand Tyler in 1910, he was appointed librarian and curator on a full-time basis with an annual salary of £150. Unfortunately the appointment was to be brief; he died just a year later.
Sadler is perhaps best-known today for his comments on the rival Antients and Moderns Grand Lodges and, in particular, for his statement that there was no schism between the two organisations before they agreed to unite in 1813. His remarks became received wisdom and were echoed not only by his peers, but also by many later Masonic historians.
Sadler’s assessment of Antients Freemasonry focused (rightly) on the influence of the majority ‘Irish faction’: the expatriate Irish who had fled famine to seek new economic opportunities in Britain and who in the 1750s and 60s made up the largest component of the Antients’ members. However, differences in Masonic ritual, although later magnified by both Moderns and Antients Grand Lodges, were, in fact, relatively minimal.
Sadler’s cornerstone argument, his key point, was that since the expatriate and especially London Irish had not been members of English Lodges, the rivalry between the two organisations and their respective members could not be termed ‘a schism’.
His argument was essentially this: that one cannot leave an organisation of which one has not been a member. And it was given additional weight in the 1950s when JR Dashwood – another member of QC Lodge – editing the Antients Grand Lodge Minutes, added a legalistic underpinning by observing that the situation could not have been otherwise since no exclusive Masonic territorial jurisdiction had been formulated at the time.
However, despite its widespread acceptance, Sadler’s assessment jars with both contemporary evidence and primary source material. Moderns’ Freemasons did leave to join the Antients. Some had found themselves de facto rejects from the Grand Lodge of England following the expulsion or suspension of around a quarter of London’s Lodges in the decade to 1750.
Some Antients Freemasons also chose to join the Moderns. One example is William Preston, after whom the Prestonian Lectures are named. Somewhat ironically, having joined the Moderns, Preston subsequently led a breakaway group from the Lodge of Antiquity and formed yet another rival Grand Lodge: ‘the Grand Lodge of England South of the River Trent’. (As an aside, Preston was later welcomed back to the Grand Lodge of England and in 1790 the Lodge of Antiquity was re-united.)
The two rival Antients and Moderns Grand Lodges fought a running battle in the press and in Masonic pamphlets, as well as in the forewords that preambled across successive editions of Ahiman Rezon, the Antients’ Constitutions.
What was a real and intense Masonic schism deepened as the 18th century progressed, with both Moderns and Antients Grand Lodges adamant that anyone who joined their respective rival would be sanctioned. Indeed, the Antients wrote in their Grand Lodge Minutes on 1 June 1774, that:
‘If any lodge under the ancient constitution of England... shall have in their possessions any authority from the Grand Lodge of Moderns or in any manner assemble or meet under such authority, [they] shall be deemed unworthy of associating with the members of the Ancient Community and the warrant they hold under this Right Worshipful Grand Lodge shall be immediately cancelled.’
Another factor ignored by Sadler was that many expatriate Irish were prevented or dissuaded from joining English Lodges. This was a function of two factors: a fear that the influx of Irish émigrés would overwhelm Lodge charities; and the dissemination by the English press of a highly negative Irish stereotype, a view
that echoed within the establishment and within parts of English Freemasonry.
Anti-Irish and anti-Catholic prejudice was rampant in 18th-century England, ranging from legal discrimination to periodic mob violence, such as the 1736 Spitalfields riots against competition from cheaper Irish labour. The institutional bias against the Irish in England was such that by the 1750s and 60s, anti-Irish bigotry was endemic. It can be seen especially in the courts, where a disproportionate number of Irish men and women were arrested and, when convicted, were handed sentences far harsher than those received by the English, Welsh or Scots. The bigotry and the divisions it created were ignored by Sadler. But we are driven to ask why this was the case when the evidence was so compelling.
There are several potential explanations. First, although Sadler was writing towards the end of the 19th century, the 1813 Union between the Antients and Moderns Grand Lodges and the more socially inclusive Freemasonry that followed was relatively recent and not all Masonic tensions had been fully resolved. Second, institutional bigotry against Ireland had persisted and although many were seeking to establish a more mature political relationship, the question of Irish Home Rule remained extremely delicate. In that respect, Sadler may have had an understandable desire not to provoke a debate that may have soured Anglo-Irish Masonic relations. And third, issues of Masonic unity – and their absence – were to the fore in the 1880s. An argument over the specific nature of the oath taken in Lodge had divided international Freemasonry with a large part of the English-speaking Masonic world, including UGLE, the Grand Lodges of Ireland and Scotland, and Grand Lodges in the United States, ranged against the Grand Orients of Europe and Latin America.
Sadler’s argument that there was no schism between Antients and Moderns was probably incorrect even in the terms in which he framed the question, and it is certainly incorrect when 18th-century English Freemasonry is examined holistically. However, his comment does allow us to reflect that history is not only a function of the interpretation of data, but also of each historian.
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