A daily advancement QC writes
ADVANCING THE CRAFT Dr Ric Berman details the life of John Montagu, 2nd Duke of Montagu, on the Tercentenary of his appointment as the first noble Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England
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he nomination and installation of John Montagu (1690-1749), the first nobleman to become Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England, marked the beginning of Freemasonry’s ascent to the heights of 18th-century English (as well as European and American) society. It was a testament to Montagu’s prestige that significant numbers of aristocrats followed him into Freemasonry. And the more middling followed in their tens of thousands as the century progressed. Montagu’s nomination as Grand Master in March 1721 was a turning point in Freemasonry’s public persona. It underpinned Grand Lodge’s authority over the growing number of lodges in London and provincial England, and elsewhere, including Britain’s growing American colonies. Before 1721 the annual ‘Grand Feast’ was on a sufficiently small scale to have taken place in the long room above a London tavern. But in June that year, with Montagu about to be installed at the head of the Society of Freemasons, the event was moved from the Goose and Gridiron in St Paul’s Churchyard to the nearby Stationers’ Hall, in order to accommodate the many hundreds who now wished to attend. The 1723 Constitutions recorded the occasion, James Anderson noting that: Noblemen and Gentlemen of the best rank, with Clergymen and learned scholars of most professions and denominations, [have] joined and submitted to take the charges and to wear the badges of a Free and Accepted Mason, under our present worthy Grand Master, the most noble Prince, John, Duke of Montagu.
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Montagu’s decision to accept the role of Grand Master not only validated Freemasonry, but also added to its appeal. It suggested that the Craft was morally and politically sound, fashionable and fun. With Montagu on board, the installation and feast also received widespread publicity, with press reports in many of London’s newspapers, and in the provincial and overseas press. Montagu was an excellent choice as Grand Master. Intelligent, wealthy and exceptionally well-connected, he was the only surviving son of Ralph Montagu, the 1st Duke, and Elizabeth Wriothesley, the daughter of the 4th Earl of Southampton, a former Lord High Treasurer. Ralph Montagu had been England’s ambassador to France, where he had witnessed the persecution of the Huguenots – French Protestants – at first hand. The experience affected him deeply and he became ‘a great supporter of the French and other Protestants [driven] to England by the tyranny of their princes, [and] an admirer of learning and learned men’. His son, John, shared a similar outlook. Not only had he been surrounded by Huguenot friends and family at Broughton Hall, the family home, but his maternal grandmother, Rachel de Massue, had been a Huguenot aristocrat. Henri de Massue, 2nd Marquis de Ruvigny (1648-1720), later the Earl of Galway, another leading Huguenot and one of William III’s principal military commanders, was his second cousin. That several leading Huguenots – not least the Rev Dr Jean Theophilus Desaguliers – were at the helm of the new Grand Lodge was no coincidence.
Montagu’s installation as Grand Master validated Freemasonry as morally and politcally sound, fashionable and fun
FMT Summer 2021
18/05/2021 11:45
