The Shadow of Solomon: The Lost Secret of the Freemasons Revealed

The apparent dichotomy of Dr Wilkins was a mystery to all. But for his group to thrive and survive, he made a strict masonic ruling from the outset: Whatever else might be discussed, the subjects of religion and politics were prohibited. Notwithstanding this, the Bible became a subject of continued study from the time of Wren’s Gresham College lecture in 1657, particularly in respect of chronology and astronomical time frames. In fact, this lecture was a manifesto of things to come from the group, since it referred to the tyranny of the Greek and Roman cultures upon which all 17th-century academic society was based.

Despite his scientific genius, the Eton-educated Robert Boyle was short-sighted and not particularly adept at mathematics, so Robert Hooke helped him a good deal with calculations and experiments. Both were fascinated by the power of exerted pressures, so Boyle concentrated on air pumps, while Hooke investigated springs. In the course of their collaborative work, important mathematical formulae relating to compressed air and compressed springs were discovered. They become known respectively as Boyle’s Law and Hooke’s Law—two of the most crucial precedents in the world of emergent science, and equally important today.

A Royal Charter

In time, and specifically from 1660, the Rosicrucian aims of the group emerged into the open with the Restoration of the flamboyant King Charles II. Quite suddenly, and irrespective of clerical opinion, they gained approval and recognition by way of a Stuart charter in 1662, to become known henceforth as the Royal Society. Their motto was established as Nullis in verba, which translates roughly to ‘Take no one’s word for it’—a motto which had been used previously by Sir Francis Bacon.

The Society’s new status was achieved by two influential members, namely the Scottish statesman Sir Robert Moray and the Gresham College president William, Viscount Brouncker—both of whom had direct access to the king. In the event, it was Moray who approached King Charles on behalf of the fraternity, securing his patronage and encouragement. Having been Attaché to Cardinal Richelieu in France during the Protectorate, Moray was a man of enormous influence in court and government circles, and was greatly respected by the royal household. By that time, other subsequently famous characters, such as Elias Ashmole and the diarist John Evelyn, had joined the group. Viscount Brouncker (though not a scientist) became the Society’s first President, with Robert Hooke appointed as the first Curator and, on 20 May 1663, some 150 Fellows were elected from the fastgrowing overall membership.

The House of Stuart progenitor, Robert the Bruce had inaugurated the Elder Brethren of the Rosy Cross in 1317—a Knight Templar institution13 which was inherited 11 generations later by King Charles II. It is no coincidence that the first two known prominent masonic initiates in England, Sir Robert Moray and Elias Ashmole, were both foundation Fellows of the Royal Society and members of the Rosicrucian movement. The Royal Society’s New Philosophy (as Wren had dubbed it) was therefore largely Rosicrucian and, as such, was immediately concerned with matters of hermetic alchemy.

King Charles’s paternal aunt, Princess Elizabeth—the daughter of King James I (VI)—had married Frederick V, Elector Palatine, in 1613. Hence, it comes as no surprise that the House of Stuart, with its link to the Bohemian Palatinate, accompanied by John Wilkins’ own Rosicrucian chaplainship, was eager to acknowledge the enthusiastic brotherhood of the Royal Society. In so doing, King Charles effectively reconstituted the Brethren of the Rosy Cross, taking on the Grand Mastership of his family’s traditional Order.

To leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that the Royal Society was a Rosicrucian establishment, the Society’s historian Thomas Sprat included a descriptive frontispiece illustration in his 1667 History of the Royal Society (see plate 12). Designed by John Evelyn and engraved by Wenceslas Hollar, the Society’s inaugural picture depicts a bust of King Charles, along with Viscount Brouncker and Sir Francis Bacon who had died many years before in 1626. Also featured in the engraving is the trumpet-bearing Angel of Fame from the Fama Fraternitatis of the 1614 Rosicrucian Manifestos, along with a number of books and masonic devices.14

Having moved to join their colleague Christopher Wren at Gresham College, the founding Fellows soon became a threat to all sectors of the establishment, whether governmental, educational or clerical. But, despite this, they appeared like a breath of fresh air to the people at large—and best of all, they had the popular King Charles as their patron, with his personal access to the masonic archive of the Kings of Scots.

4 Legacy of Invention

The Georgian Movement

Prior to James Anderson’s mention that key masonic documents had been lost and destroyed, this was also stated to have been the case in 1718. George Payne, an early Grand Master of the premier Grand Lodge asked his members to bring whatever old literature they could find, so as ‘to shew the usages of antient times’. But it was subsequently recorded that the more valuable manuscripts were ‘tragically lost’. Anderson noted particular examples in his revised 1738 Constitutions, stating that papers ‘writ by Mr Nicholas Stone, the Warden of Inigo Jones, were too hastily burnt by some scrupulous Brothers, that those papers might not fall into strange hands’. The question has recently been posed in the journal Freemasonry Today: ‘Could it be that there was a ritualistic form of Accepted Freemasonry prior to 1717 that was unpalatable to those who wished to review the movement in the 1720s?’1

The answer to this would appear to be ‘yes’. Everything points to the fact that speculative Freemasonry in England prior to Hanoverian intervention was not a role-playing organization as evolved from the dining clubs in 1717. It was concerned with matters that required scientific or technical qualification or experience. Such things would have been foreign to many, and generally unpalatable to the emergent Grand Lodge masons of the London group. It is impossible to discover precisely what these new members did as a cohesive unit outside of performing rituals in their tavern rooms. But in view of the benevolent reputation that evolved, it is likely that they established a Box Club to cement the aspect of mutual support. This was a custom of the old trade guilds, whereby contributions were made into a central pool for the benefit of less fortunate members. The welfare of ‘poor and distressed Freemasons’ and the support of their immediate relatives, including widows and orphans, is still a major concern today.

Irrespective of the new-style Freemasonry, the Royal Society prevailed into Hanoverian times, and thence after Queen Victoria’s death into the Edwardian reign of Saxe Coburg-Gotha—the Germanic house of Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert, that was obliged to change its name in 1917. After the accession of Victoria’s grandson King George V in 1910, World War I was looming, and people began to believe there was a German fifth column in Britain. Notwithstanding the immediate royal family with its roots in Hanover, shopkeepers and business people of German extraction—even the Lord of the Admiralty, Louis Battenberg—found themselves at the wrong end of public opinion. By 1917, with the war well under way, the situation was so bad that King George changed his Saxe Coburg-Gotha family name to Windsor (in allusion to the royal castle in Berkshire). At the same time, Lord Louis changed his Battenberg of Hesse name to the more English-sounding Mountbatten.

Through all this, the Royal Society pressed on regardless, and today remains one of the world’s foremost scientific institutions. But things did change after 1688, and more especially after 1714 when the enthusiastic flair of the early pioneers was subsumed by a more austere Georgian regime.

The Gresham Days

The life and times of England during the early years of the Royal Society were recorded by two of Britain’s best-known diarists: John Evelyn, a cultivated man of means and lawyer of the Middle Temple who became Commissioner of the Privy Seal,2 and Samuel Pepys, who became Secretary to the Admiralty.3 In fact, Evelyn and Pepys joined forces to plan the Naval Hospital at Greenwich—one of the supreme achievements of Restoration architecture. Although not so well known as the others, Robert Hooke’s diary is equally informative.4

Pepys recalled in his journal how, on 15 February 1665, he first visited Gresham College where he met with Robert Boyle, Christopher Wren and others of the Royal Society who were not content to view the world through the eyes of Ptolemy and Aristotle. By 1664, Pepys was a regular visitor, and although he lacked personal training and experience in matters of mathematics and science, he found the meetings enthralling. What he loved most were the laboratory gadgets and gizmos, soon acquiring his own telescope, microscope, thermometer, scales and geometric instruments, which he said were a great help to his work at the Navy Board.

At a professional level, Pepys found his greatest ally to be the tenacious Robert Hooke, whose work with springs, pulleys and the like led him to invent a depth-sounding device, a diving bell and the marine barometer—all of which were of great significance to the Navy. However, not everything was straightforward for Hooke, especially when it came to giving unpractised public demonstrations. In one experiment concerning respiration, he was sealed in a large cask from which the air was gradually extracted, but things went badly wrong. By virtue of the cask’s inner environmental change towards a vacuum state, his colleagues could not undo the seal quickly enough, and the near frantic curator finally emerged, gasping, with permanent damage to his ears and nose!5

Nevertheless, mishaps or otherwise, London was bustling again in the 1660s after its 11 years of puritanical suppression. Charles II was skilful, well-liked and perfectly suited to the mood of the era. His primary concern was to allow the nation considerable freedom. In this regard, he allowed an abandoned gaiety to prevail, reopening the inns and theatres, while at the same time a new romantic spirit of learning and enquiry was born.

The group’s interest in hermetic subjects was notably encouraged by the Cambridge Platonist Henry More and his pupil Anne, Viscountess Conway of Ragley Hall, who nurtured a group of intel lectuals called the Hartlib Circle,6 to which Robert Boyle and the physician William Petty belonged. They recognized that medieval alchemy, in the way it was generally portrayed (ie, the manufacture of gold from base metal), was a delusion conveyed to the outside world by propagandists and failed adepts. Alchemy, they knew, was a combination of practical and spiritual arts which had its root in metallurgy as practised by the ancient artificers.

Robert Boyle (who refused to take Holy Orders as scientists were expected to do) was as much a mystery to his friends as was John Wilkins. His father was the richest man in Britain and he wanted for nothing, yet few young men worked so hard and long without the need for personal gain. Being such a high-profile figure, Boyle suffered more than the others from clerical harassment, and he was viewed as being highly suspicious by the Church because of his determined research into matters of the occult. The bishops were aware that he had his own specially equipped alchemical workshop, and they watched him closely.

Ostensibly a scrupulous man, it is evident that Robert Boyle confronted a real dilemma in his work. He stated that so much alchemical writing was too obscure to be of any real value, but nevertheless he studied all that he could in order to pursue his research. Whether Boyle actually succeeded in making the Philosophers’ Stone is unclear, but it seems that he did see it in operation after a Viennese friar found a quantity of the mysterious powder secreted in a small casket at his monastery.7 In a related report to the Royal Society, Boyle made particular mention of the powder’s ability to manipulate specific gravity—an attribute which has now been demonstrated in today’s laboratory research.

The Vienna discovery is somewhat reminiscent of a similar box of alchemical powder which John Dee obtained from the Dissolution remnants of Glastonbury Abbey.8 Boyle also managed to find an Eastern source for the Stone in its natural state, without having to go to the trouble of manufacturing it. This, once again, is something which has recently been shown to be possible. In his subsequent Royal Society Philosophical Transactions paper, Boyle noted that his objective was not to make gold but to ‘produce good medicines for general use’. Given the reoccurring importance of this powder in the continuing story of Rosicrucian research (a powder of gold classified by physicists today as ‘exotic matter ‘), it might prove to be the missing link to the otherwise ambiguous King Athelstan legend in the masonic Charges. By virtue of some writing found with the powder, John Dee associated it with St Dunstan, the 10th-century Abbot of Glastonbury, who was attached to King Athelstan’s court. It is also clear that it was an important substance at the Temple court of King Solomon (see page 354).

By virtue of a later programme to sanitize the early Royal Society’s image in the Hanoverian era, Robert Boyle’s alchemical pursuits were strategically lost to academia until modern times. Although he is best remembered for Boyle’s Law concerning the volume of gases, along with his research into the elasticity of air, few have recognized that the tireless work and findings of this wealthy nobleman’s son were fuelled by his overwhelming desire to understand the nature and functions of the great alchemical secret.

In those early days, the Royal Society welcomed members of various philosophical disciplines in the knowledge that all creative pursuits were as much science as those things which were most obviously so. Music was based upon mathematics, as was fine art, architecture and the metre of poetic writing. They were all aspects of the time-hon-oured Liberal Arts. It was decided, therefore, that men of such creative talents had much to offer the fraternity, which expanded to include the poets Abraham Cowley and Edmund Waller, along with the poetic dramatist John Dryden and the antiquary John Aubrey.

This practice was severely criticized by the French philosopher Voltaire (1694-1778) who, in making a comparison with the Academie Français, wrote that the Royal Society was badly governed and in need of laws. What he failed to realize was that this was precisely what made the Society work so well and achieve so much. It existed outside the constraints of formal academia and thereby afforded a freedom of research and expression that was not apparent in the strictly regulated French institution.

Fraternal Disputes

Not just confined to the dusty backrooms of Gresham College or to fume-laden laboratory workshops, the world of the founding fraternity was one of committed enthusiasts who took their working debates into every corner of their lives. It was a constant whirl of frock-coated, bewigged gentlemen, embroiled in the fevered conversation of inns and coffee houses. The City of London presented a more colourful stage than they had found in Oxford. It was a world of doctors and merchants, financiers, fine ladies and costermongers—all amid a bustle of carriages in narrow, rutted streets where flower girls cried, paupers begged, and the women of the night plied their trade.

Working colleagues though the Fellows were, it cannot be said that all was friendship and harmony within the group. In fact, there were many disputes—some heated but short-lived, while others rumbled on over the years. At one meeting, the botanist Sir Hans Sloane (whose manuscripts eventually formed the core of the British Museum collection in 1753) was rebuked by the President for making faces at his dissenters, and the medical professor John Woodward even fought a duel on the College steps after a row had disrupted the proceedings.

Within the Sloane collection was Manuscript 3848. Now at the British Library (dated October 1646) it is a constitutional document of old Masonic Charges from 77 years before James Anderson compiled his Constitutions,9 and is one of the pre-1688 documents that Anderson accused Christopher Wren of losing. Also, Sloane Manuscript 3323 is of a similar masonic nature, as is SM 3329—and both are from the latter 1600s. The important document in this group is 3848—the others appear to stem from it. Unlike the Regius and Cooke manuscripts (see page 23), the content of Sloane 3848 is mainly of Scottish origin10 and discusses, among other things, the secret words of Freemasonry and rituals of identification.

In the course of occasional Society arguments, certain important discoveries were shelved and ultimately forgotten—a good example being Robert Hooke’s 1662 marine chronometer for determining longitude. Consequently, a century later, the research was begun again from scratch by the Yorkshire joiner John Harrison. He achieved his result knowing nothing of Hooke’s original design, which was not rediscovered until 1950 in the library of Trinity College, Cambridge.11

In contrast, however, there were times when the Fellows would leap to each other’s aid. On one occasion, Christopher Wren was specifically asked to submit the result of an experiment concerning the incubation of chickens’ eggs but, owing to more pressing commitments, he failed to comply. Nevertheless, Hooke told the President that he had indeed received Wren’s submission in part, and he covered for his friend by verbally concocting a most plausible temporary report.

The worst disputes arose by virtue of Robert Hooke’s salaried employment as the Society’s Curator, whereas the other Fellows were all fee-paying members. Because of his specifically defined occupation, it was Hooke’s role to conceive and progress all manner of experiments, passing them over to others for completion, and then helping them when necessary. The problem was that it often became a matter of debate as to who could actually claim credit for any resultant discovery or invention.

In February 1665, Samuel Pepys described in his diary a particular Society meeting at which Hooke (then aged 30) lectured on the nature of comets, proving with dates and examples that comets are periodic. At that time there was a nine-year-old boy living nearby in Shoreditch. His name was Edmund Halley, and he grew to become one of the most famous astronomers of all time—the Astronomer Royal no less. However, for all his great accomplishments and deserved status, Halley is most popularly remembered for announcing in 1704 that comets are periodic, long after Hooke was recorded by Pepys as pronouncing the very same.

In his 1665 book of microscopic studies entitled Micrographia, Robert Hooke commented on the concentric bands of coloured light which appear around the central area of a tight air-space between two sheets of transparent mica pressed together. From his studies in light waves, he determined that the rings were the result of interference, and that they occur when the separation between the surfaces is of the same order as the wavelength of light. Meanwhile, there was a young fellow studying for his bachelor ‘s degree at Cambridge named Isaac Newton. Many years later, Newton commented on these very same light bands, and today they are known as Newton’s Rings.12

Long before Isaac Newton came into the group’s philosophical arena, Robert Hooke began the first specifically defined research into gravity. Setting a pendulum swinging, he noted that the wider the commencing arc, the longer it took to come to a halt. But why should it come to a halt at all and what force was it that drew the pendulum gradually, through decreasing arcs, to an eventual standstill? The answer was, of course, gravity—a subject which Robert was destined to pursue, for it baffled him that everything pulled or fell downwards, except for the stars which remained in their suspended positions. There had to be scientific laws which determine the nature and function of earthly weight, or the apparent lack of it in the heavens.

Hooke’s Micrographia is one of the greatest scientific volumes ever published, and without doubt the foremost of all works concerning microscopy and biological research. But it was not limited to views through a microscope; there were telescopic observations of the moon and stars, descriptions of his newly invented thermometer, his barometer, his wind gauge and a hygrometer for measuring atmospheric humidity. He distinguished heat from burning, citing that burning ceases when oxygen expires no matter how much heat is applied, and put forward an abundance of revelatory material which brought proven science firmly out of the vague philosophical arena in which it had existed for so long.

This then was the operative scientific world of the Rosicrucian brotherhood in England. In terms of ultimate achievement, however, the Society’s heyday was far from over, and the greatest of all scientists, Isaac Newton, was yet to appear on the scene, 16 years before the 1688 Revolution.

Fire and Pestilence

While Samuel Pepys battled to resurrect a Navy that had fallen into decline during the Cromwellian era, John Evelyn and King Charles prepared a paper concerning plans to improve the environment. Both were troubled by the amount of grime and smoke which enveloped the narrow streets of London, and they called their scheme Fumifugium. But the politicians, with their out-of-town estates, were not remotely interested in the welfare of the city dwellers—only in the revenue derived from them—and so the scheme came to nothing. As it transpired, a little time and thought applied by the reluctant authorities at that stage might have prevented the great disasters which followed soon afterwards.

The poverty ensuing from the harsh Protectorate remained evident in the 1660s, with the towns and cities in a state of filth and decay, while the Whig aristocracy had built themselves fine country mansions with public money. Then came the long, hot summer of 1665, bringing with it the worst of all dreaded diseases: bubonic plague. Pepys recorded that it began in the June when he saw some houses in London’s Drury Lane marked with red crosses and the plea written on their doors, ‘Lord have mercy upon us’. By August, thousands were dying each week. Eventually, the Black Death (carried by rats and fleas) killed nearly 70,000 people in the capital alone—about 15 per cent of the population—as a result of which King Charles made another attempt to save the city. He sensed that another such summer, with severe electric storms, could so easily bring fire to the crowded timber structures that lined the streets and lanes of the capital. He approached the city authorities and gave them express permission to pull down strategically located buildings to create fire breaks, but nothing was done and the consequence was a major calamity.

Again it was Samuel Pepys who gave the news to the King and his brother James, Duke of York, after he had seen a fire spreading on 1 September 1666. He recommended, just as Charles had already suggested, that buildings must be demolished around the fire without delay. But it was too late and the blaze was already moving at an incredible rate. Subsequently, Pepys found the Lord Mayor skulking in Canning Street, knowing the disaster was his fault. With smoke and flames pouring through the alleys and billowing to the sky, King Charles became the director of operations. Hose-in-hand, he laboured among the soldiers and firemen, while his brother James organized the clearing of crucial areas to prevent an outward spread of the conflagration. In the event, however, it was a lost cause and 100,000 residents were made homeless.13