Consequences of The 1723 Constitutions part 1: Ireland

In the Tercentenary of The 1723 Constitutions, Dr Ric Berman explains its repercussions for Freemasonry in other countries, starting with Ireland

England, a choice that attracted considerable interest. From that point, Freemasonry featured in many, if not most, of the Dublin press. John Whalley’s Dublin News Letter, for example, carried a description of Montagu’s installation in July 1721 and, the following month, John Harding’s opposition-leaning Dublin Impartial News Letter reported the initiation of several wellknown aristocrats and political figures at the King’s Arms tavern in St Paul’s Churchyard, London.

The Duke of Wharton’s decision to join the Craft also drew attention, with Ireland’s newspapers alerting their readers to ‘his Grace [having been] admitted into the Society of Freemasons’. Despite having sold most of his Irish estates to invest in South Sea stock, a decision that proved to be a financial disaster, Wharton had many friends among the Anglo-Irish elites, including Richard Parsons, 1st Earl of Rosse, who would later become the first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Ireland.

As in England, Irish Freemasonry was led publicly by the aristocracy. Parsons had succeeded to his father’s viscountcy in the Irish peerage as a child and, at the age of 22, was raised to an earldom by George I to reward and encourage his political loyalty.

Parsons was installed as Grand Master of Ireland in 1725 and probably remained the titular head of Irish Freemasonry until 1731. He then departed on a grand tour of Europe and Egypt and was succeeded by James King, 4th Baron Kingston, who had been Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England in 1728-9. Throughout the 1720s, ’30s and ’40s, there was a strong connection between the Grand Lodges of England and Ireland.

We are marking the Tercentenary of The 1723 Constitutions by exploring the context in which it was written and explaining some of the more significant content. Another issue is the consequences of the publication of The 1723 Constitutions

A good place to begin would be Ireland, the home of the world’s second oldest Grand Lodge, established in 1725. The introduction to Ireland of the English model of modern Freemasonry lagged developments in England by around four years. The starting point was probably the Duke of Montagu’s decision to accept the position of Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of

Parsons had rank, celebrity and extensive connections in Ireland, where the family had had a presence and estates for some 200 years. He was young, affluent, and a loyal Hanoverian, as were his Grand Officers. And like the Duke of Montagu, Parsons served as a beacon to attract others into Freemasonry.

Some historians have argued that in its formative years, the Grand Lodge of Ireland was subject to a factional struggle between Irish Jacobites and pro-Hanoverian Whigs and that Irish Freemasonry was split accordingly. There is only slight evidence to support this view. Indeed, the opposite appears to have been the case, with Irish Freemasonry dominated by pro-Hanoverian elites.

The principal motivation behind the creation of the Grand Lodge of Ireland and the participation of Dublin’s aristocrats, gentry and professional classes was twofold: a desire to emulate the splendour and renown of the Grand Lodge of England, as well as a wish to identify with the Enlightenment ideas with which Freemasonry was associated. This was something seen elsewhere, including the formation of organisations such as the Dublin Society, which promoted science and national improvement in Ireland.

The Dublin press published regular articles on Freemasonry throughout the 1720s, including popular exposés such as The Grand Mystery of the Free-Masons Disclosed and the riposte, The Free-Masons Vindication, being an Answer to a Scandalous Libel . At the same time, The 1723 Constitutions was advertised widely and available for sale in Dublin’s booksellers.

The first record of the Grand Lodge of Ireland appeared in June 1725 in the Dublin Weekly Journal , which published an account of Parson’s appointment as Grand Master. The article describes the procession, installation and grand feast, recording that more than 100 gentlemen met at the Yellow Lion in Warborough Street and ‘after some time putting on their aprons, white gloves and other parts of the distinguishing dress of that Worshipful Order… proceeded over Essex bridge to the Strand and from thence to the King’s Inns’.

The parade comprised the masters and wardens of ‘six lodges of gentleman freemasons… under the jurisdiction of the Grand Master’ and after ‘marching round the walls of the great hall… the grand lodge, composed of the Grand Master… Grand Wardens and the masters and wardens of the lodges, retired to the room prepared for them where… they proceeded to the election of a new Grand Master’.

The article continues, recording that they afterwards ‘went to [a] play, with their aprons etc., the private brothers sat in the pit, but the Grand Master, Deputy Grand Master and Grand Wardens, in the government’s box’. The press report implied that the Grand Lodge of Ireland had been in existence for some time. However, the opposite was more probably correct.

Although modelled on the Grand Lodge of England, there were some points of difference even in 1725, including the election of Grand Officers by the members of Grand Lodge as a whole.

In 1730, John Pennell, later Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Ireland, published the first Irish version of The 1723 Constitutions. He had advertised in George Faulkner’s Dublin Journal for a minimum of 200 subscribers and achieved that without difficulty. His constitutions contain a small number of variations in ritual when compared with that in London, including the prayer at initiation and the function of deacons, a role undertaken in England, in part, by stewards. For reasons more political than Masonic, these and other variations came to be seen as substantive.

In 1751, another edition of The Irish Constitutions was published by Edward Spratt, the Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge of Ireland. In his dedication to Lord Kingsborough, the Grand Master of Ireland, Spratt makes the point that he should not be considered as the author, but as ‘editor and transcriber’, writing that authorship should be ascribed to the ‘learned and ingenious brother, James Anderson’. Spratt underlines that there are no essential differences in his volume as compared with the original 1723 Constitutions, bar the absence of ‘those Rules that tended to the Steward’s [sic] Lodge’ since Ireland had no such lodge, ‘a thing not practised here’.

A schism developed between London and Dublin in the second half of the 18th century linked to the creation of the Irish-led, London-based Antients Grand Lodge. Although resolved in 1813 with the creation of the United Grand Lodge of England, the Antients’ influence magnified Irish Freemasonry’s tendency towards greater social inclusivity and expanded the number of those who became Freemasons, not just in Ireland and England, but also globally, especially in America.

Linked to this was the publication in 1756 of Ahiman Rezon, the Antients’ Constitutions by the Antients’ Grand Secretary Laurence Dermott, which displaced The 1723 Constitutions in Antients and Irish Lodges, albeit that it too was based on The 1723 Constitutions Dermott promoted Antients’ Freemasonry by opening up the organisation to a wider membership and ushering in compulsory charity contributions, creating a proto-friendly society. The Irish and Antients Grand Lodges also innovated by issuing travelling warrants, not least to British regiments transiting through Ireland, a move that helped to spread Freemasonry throughout the globe.