Meetings 2011
The detailed programme for the latter part of this year have now been finalized. In September the Lodge will meet in Cape Town, South Africa. For further details please see below.
The Installation Meeting will be held on Thursday, 10th November and further details will be posted on this page as soon as is possible.
Please note that the details of each meeting will remain on this page for information purposes. The next meeting date is coloured in this manner.
Unless otherwise stated all meetings are held at Freemasons Hall, Great Queen Street, London, and start at 5.00 p.m. precisely
Thursday, 17th February 2011.
Bro. Michael Taylor: ‘Opposition to Freemasonry in 18th Century France, and the Lettre et Consultation of 1748’.
Bro Taylor addresses the growth of, and opposition to, Freemasonry in the ‘century of enlightenment’ in France. He illustrates this by a detailed examination of a printed pamphlet and a manuscript version found in the Hallamshire College Library within Tapton Masonic Hall in Sheffield. The paper will attempt to show the measures taken in the first half of the century to suppress the Order; to discuss the arguments levelled against it by the writers of the pamphlet; deal with their failure to have any significant impact; and outline some probable reasons for this failure. It will trace the origins of some of the contents of the pamphlet and attempt to show the thread of continuity in subsequent attempts to discredit Freemasonry which have continued into the present day.
Bro. Michael Taylor was born in 1941 in Scunthorpe, Lincolnshire. Educated at Scunthorpe Grammar School, he graduated from the University of Durham with a BA in French and Spanish. He recently took an MA at the University of Sheffield in the History of Freemasonry and Fraternalism. He has had a long and distinguished career, teaching both French and Spanish in Scunthorpe and Grimsby in further education. Following retirement he became involved in the Centre for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism at the University of Sheffield. During this time Bro. Taylor was involved in the translation of French Masonic texts and articles for Jan Snoek and Alexandra Heidle, and he has latterly worked with Andreas Onnerfors in translating some 18th century French pamphlets. He is a Past Master of the St Lawrence Lodge, No. 2078 in Scunthorpe within the Province of Lincolnshire. Bro. Taylor’s particular area of interest is in 18th century Freemasonry.
Thursday, 12th May 2011.
Bro. E. John T. Acaster: ‘Early 17th Century Ritual: Ben Jonson and his circle’.
It is unfortunate that during the last 50 years little further light has been shed on English Freemasonry prior to 1717 so that the same few facts are recycled ever and anon. The more extensive evidence presented by David Stevenson since 1988 has attracted belief in Scotland as manifesting the first Freemasons. Bro Acaster’s paper will present evidence of the use in Jacobean London (1603–1625) of private ritual forms recognizable to the modern Freemason. This should provoke fresh thinking.
Benjamin Jonson became a Freeman of London via the livery Company of Tylers and Bricklayers. In his gregarious life as a playwright and poet he seems to have reflected and refined elements of initiatory experience he had met with. Bro. Acaster makes no claim that the extracts here presented from his writings are Freemasonry as such. His paper merely puts into the record that the sort of ideas which have descended to us as Masons in our ritual were to be found in London at around the same time as William Schaw was regulating the building trade, with its art of memory, in Edinburgh.
Bro. John Acaster entered Freemasonry in London in 1970, subsequently moving to Manchester where he joined the founders of Maccabee Lodge, No. 8947 in 1980. His Masonic career has been spent mainly within the Province of East Lancashire, of which he was appointed Senior Warden in 2006. By profession he is a retired bank manager. He became a school inspector on accepting early retirement, and was privileged for several years to be elected as chairman of the Association of Lay Inspectors. In that position he compiled, from members’ evidence, annual reports to the Education Select Committee of the House of Commons on lay inspectors’ judgements of Ofsted’s performance. This delicate yet incisive task ensured his repeated re-election!
Bro. Acaster’s historical research was originally centred on banking history: he contributed regular articles on this for his bank’s quarterly review in the 1970s and 80s. Speaking and writing on Masonic history, he became President of the Manchester Association for Masonic Research in 2002 and was elected into Quatuor Coronati Lodge in 2007. He is currently chairman of the Council of QCCC. John has occupied many roles in civic life, charitable and otherwise. He is a past President of the Manchester Statistical Society and a member of the Council of Manchester Cathedral. Thus his Freemasonry is kept within its proper social square and compass!
Thursday, 23rd June 2011.
Professor Susan Mitchell Sommers: ‘Thomas Dunckerley: A True Son of Adam’
Dunckerley (c.1720–1795) was so influential in his day that he scarcely needs an introduction, or so one might have thought. Henry Sadler’s 1891 biographical study has long stood as the final word on Dunckerley’s life and accomplishments. Sadler’s work is a fine example of how new historical methods were brought to bear on Masonic history which, until that point, had relied on hearsay and pious mythology. Drawing largely on Dunckerley’s correspondence and contemporary newspaper accounts, Sadler affirms Dunckerley’s claim to be the illegitimate son of George II. Dunckerley has thus come down to us, according to Sadler’s conclusions, as a Masonic wunderkind – an illegitimate and unrecognised son of George II whose exceptional personal qualities manifested themselves early in life, commanding the respect and friendship of his social superiors, and whose eventual royal recognition and unsurpassed Masonic authority were the just rewards of a life focussed, laser-like, on virtue and service.
The Dunckerley that is endorsed by Sadler’s study is, however, largely a creature of Dunckerley’s own invention. Dr Sommers’s current research reveals a much more interesting and ambiguous character – one whose personal quest for respectability and preferment also drove his aggressive pursuit of Masonic order, ritual uniformity, and the creation of a unified system of higher degrees. This paper will share current research on Dunckerley’s personal life and ambitions, offering a much more nuanced and intriguing portrait of the man than has heretofore been presented.
Professor Susan Mitchell Sommers is Professor of History at St Vincent’s College in Latrobe, Pennsylvania. She earned a BA and MA at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and an MA and PhD from Washington University in St Louis. Dr Sommers is the author of Parliamentary Politics of a County and its Town: General Elections in Suffolk and Ipswich in the Eighteenth Century (Greenwood Press, 2002), as well as several articles and book reviews. Her current book projects include: The Radical Brotherhood: The Society of the Gentlemen Supporters of the Bill of Rights, Job’s Children: A London Demimonde, 1770–1820, and a biography of Thomas Dunckerley.
Tuesday, 27th September 2011 IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT
The September meeting of the Lodge has been changed from Thursday, 8th September to Tuesday, 27th September at the Masonic Centre, Ringlands Drive, Pinelands, Cape Town, Republic of South Africa when R.W. Bro. James Daniel, PM, PJGW, will deliver a paper entitled “Lord Carnarvon’s visit to the Cape in 1887”.
Arrangements for the trip to South Africa have now been finalised and members of the Correspondence Circle are invited to join the Members of the Lodge on this ground breaking meeting of the Lodge. Details of the visit can be downloaded (this is a pdf file) by clicking here or on previous links. The downloaded pdf file contains details of costs, itinerary, and contact information for those wishing to take part.
Thursday, 10th November 2011 (Installation Meeting)
Brother Anthony Baker will be Installed as the Master of the Premier Lodge of Research.
The next meeting of the Lodge will be on Thursday, 16th February 2012. To see next year’s calendar click here or on the previous link.
The dates of meetings in 2011 and the details of the lectures delivered will remain here for a time for the interest of visitors.