‘Sir Robert Moray Seminar: Masonic History in the Making’

Scotland on Saturday! A great program awaits you if you can get to the research lodge in Edinburgh on the 26th. From the publicity:

Lodge Sir Robert Moray 1641 cordially invites you to attend our forthcoming seminar.

◦ Matthew Leigh: “Theatre, Theatricality, and Play in 18th Century Masonic Ritual”

◦ Adam Bruce: “From the 30 Years’ War to the Bishops’ War: The significance of the Muddy Field Outside Newcastle.”

◦ Charles Winston: “Elias Ashmole and Sir Robert Moray: Astrology and Astronomy”

◦ John Hawkins: “Early ‘Scots’ Freemasonry in England, France, and Germany, 1723-47”

Saturday, September 26

Doors: 9:30 a.m. Seminar: 11

The Masonic Hall, 19 Hill Street

Admission: $30, including lunch, etc.

Tickets here.

As you know, Matthew Leigh is the author of The Masons and the Mysteries in 18th Century Drama (2019), of which its publisher says: “The fathers of modern Freemasonry sought a classical pedigree for their rituals and forms of association. This volume offers the first academic study of how Freemasons writing in the first half of the 18th century deployed their knowledge of antiquity to bolster this claim and how the creative literature of the period reflected their ideas.” He is a professor of Classics at St. Anne’s College, Oxford University. (I hope he’s a Mason, but I don’t know.)

Lodge Sir Robert Moray 1641

Bro. Bruce is fifth from front. He is Marchmont Herald at the Court of the Lord Lyon.

Bro. Adam Bruce is a Past Master of Lodge Robert Moray 1641. Bro. Charles Winston’s name is recognizable from back issues of The Philalethes, and he is secretary of the Grand Lodge of Scotland’s History and Heritage Group. You remember Bro. John Hawkins from his 2022 Prestonian Lecture, “The Royal Family and Freemasonry.”

This is not the first Sir Robert Moray Symposium. They seem to be held every couple of years.

If you’re unfamiliar with Robert Moray, the Scotsman was initiated into Freemasonry in 1641, during the Scots’ siege of Newcastle upon Tyne during the First English Civil War, making him the first non-operative made a Freemason on English soil—five years before Elias Ashmole.

     

‘2022 Prestonian Lecture’

    

Magpie file photo

Obtaining this scant information was like extracting secrets from the proverbial Bone Box, but that’s what I do for my readers. You three mean a lot to me.

Bro. John Hawkins will be the 2022 Prestonian Lecturer, presenting his “The Royal Family and Freemasonry.”

I certainly would be interested in hearing that. For three centuries, Freemasonry in England has courted royal patronage, beginning with the Duke of Montagu, Grand Master in 1721. Subsequent grand masters have included princes, dukes, earls, the occasional marquess, plus the odd viscount. And, of course, there were those kings at the Navy Lodge 2612.

Anyway, that’s all the information I was able to learn at this time. My thanks to W. Bro. Tony Harvey, the Prestonian Lecturer of 2012, for answering my query. He also says Bro. Hawkins will present his lecture at Nottinghamshire’s Installed Masters Lodge on June 1.

W. Bro. George Boys-Stones is still on duty, presenting his lecture, “A System of Morality,” through the current term, which is an extension of his 2020 tenure that was interrupted by the pandemic. In fact, he will be speaking tomorrow at Lodge of Antiquity, where William Preston served in the East in 1774. I had him booked for dates in New York and New Jersey a year and a half ago, and maybe that still can be salvaged. Hope ends in fruition.

Commemorative bookplate for those who buy
Bro. George’s book tomorrow.

The Prestonian Lecture is a tradition in the United Grand Lodge of England, and is named for William Preston (1742-1818), who published his Illustrations of Masonry in 1772, which informs the rituals worked in a great many Craft lodges to this day.

Congratulations Bro. Hawkins!