Daily advancement Brothers Past
MENTOR AND MASON
Freemason and one of London’s leading educators, Martin Clare was a proponent of Masonic enlightenment, as Dr Ric Berman explains
Image: Alamy
D
escribed as ‘one of his Majesty’s Justices of the Peace, and the Master of the Academy in Soho Square’ in his obituary in the General Evening Post (18 May 1751), Martin Clare (c1689-1751) sat on the Middlesex Bench until just a few months before his death. But it was his role as an educator and as a Freemason that would defi ne him. Clare was one of London’s most influential Freemasons in the 1730s to 40s, appointed a Grand Steward in 1734, Junior Grand Warden in 1735, and Deputy Grand Master in 1741. He was also a leading member of the King’s Arms Lodge in the Strand, now known as the Old King’s Arms or ‘OKA’. There he was Senior Warden and deputised for the often-absent Sir Cecil Wray, the Master. Clare was also Master of the Lodge at the Shakespeare’s Head in St James’s, where 14 members hailed from the OKA, and attended the Lodge at the British Coffee House in Cockspur Street near Charing Cross. However, Clare is known best as the author of A Defence of Masonry, published in 1730 in response to Samuel Prichard’s ‘exposure’, Masonry Dissected (1730). Clare’s retort was so admired that it was reprinted in Read’s Weekly Journal on 24 October that year. Clare was also a prolific and popular Masonic lecturer. The few surviving Lodge minute books dating back to the early 18th century suggest that it was customary in at least some Lodges for members with skills or hobbies to share their knowledge through talks and lectures. The fi rst surviving OKA minute book underlines this, recording 36 lectures given by a variety of members in the decade to 1743. They cover everything
40
FMT_56_p40-41_brothers_v0.4.indd 40
FMT Winter 2021
15/11/2021 19:19
