debate. Against the state-controlled ritualistic behavior of the royal court, which sought to fix an authoritarian and court-centered hierarchy of power, Shaftesbury argued for the “polite” behavior of the new private clubs, which were founded on the new freedom of expression.48 “All politeness,” as he put it, “is owing to liberty.” Against the “temper of the pedagogue,” which “suits not with the Age,” the English nobleman endorsed the sociability of the club, where prevailed “a freedom of raillery, a liberty in decent language to question everything, and an allowance of unravelling or refuting any argument, without offence to the arguer.” Through this new polite behavior, club members were able to “polish one another, and rub off our corners and rough sides by a force of amicable collision,” resulting in a greater virtue. Moreover, by titling his treatise “An Essay on the Freedom of Wit and Humour,” Shaftesbury made clear that these attributes, as well as theatricality and satire, had the serious purpose of enabling the expression of ideas under the imposition of the authority of church or state: “If men are forbid to speak their minds seriously on certain subjects, they will do it ironically. If they are forbid to speak at all upon such subjects, or if they find it really dangerous to do so; they will then redouble their disguise, involve themselves in mysteriousness, and talk so as hardly to be understood, or at least not plainly interpreted, by those who are dispos’d to do ’em a mischief.” These “speculative conversations,” Shaftesbury further warned, could take place only with the “mutual esteem” of “gentlemen and friends.”49 More coercive forms of social control would be necessary to tame the common people.
By the early eighteenth century, professionals and noblemen were employing the polite behavior and free conversation of private societies to forge a common culture, differentiating themselves from the lower orders. Modern Masonry was an expression of this new elite social vision. The fraternity drew its members from the growing middling ranks of men who had separated themselves from the rest of society through their professional training, education, or greater wealth yet were not among the landed gentry or nobility.50 Its 1723 constitution offered a new way of imagining social relationships, by seeking to inspire “true friendship among persons that must else have remain’d at perpetual Distance.” Unlike the members of a Hobbesian hierarchical society, Masons were to treat one another as equals. Holding their society together was not the coercive power of a patriarch but rather the natural benevolence of brothers. “All preferment among Masons,” the new constitution said, “is grounded upon real worth and personal merit alone.”51
Such equality, however, was reserved for gentlemen, men who could afford the fraternity’s special clothing and expensive fees, and deference continued to be given to nobles. In 1721, “great Joy at the happy Prospect of being again patronized by noble Grand Masters, as in the Prosperous Times of Freemasonry,” met the election of the Duke of Montagu to this post.52 A revision of the guild’s mythic history that posthumously granted the title of grand master to England’s kings reinforced such “memories” of olden times. As with its attraction to both the new science and occult knowledge, the modern fraternity looked forward while retaining something old.
The constitution of 1723 elaborated the new vision of the fraternity and remained, throughout the eighteenth century, the document to which all official lodges subscribed. Written by the Scots Presbyterian clergyman James Anderson, it “digested” the older charges in what he called a “new and better method.”53 Complaining of “gross Errors” in the legendary histories, Anderson updated the list of former grand masters to include not only the kings of England, thereby linking its political history with the development of Freemasonry, but also Augustus Caesar.54 The kings included the first Stuart king of England, James I, who imported the Augustan style of architecture from Renaissance Italy. Instead of the medieval architecture celebrated in the old constitutions, which brought to mind the now unfashionable pursuit of occult wisdom, the 1723 history heralds Augustan aesthetics, which suggested the order and symmetry of the Newtonian universe and the new Enlightenment social theory.55
Similarly, the new constitution transformed the guild’s instructions on religion and politics. Previous constitutions began by invoking the Trinity and contained the injunction that masons shall be obedient to God and the Holy Church. Anderson instead makes no specifically Christian belief obligatory. “A Mason is oblig’d, by his Tenure, to obey the moral law; and if he rightly understands the Art, he will never be a stupid Atheist nor an irreligious Libertine.”56 Taking the latitudinarian view shared by moderate Anglican priests and Protestant dissenters, Anderson pledged the fraternity to a position midway between a parochial High Church Anglicanism and an unbelieving natural religion.57 In doing so, he stepped away from his Presbyterian convictions and his recent sermons decrying both Deists and Unitarians.58 No longer obligated by their fraternity to submit to the religion of the nation, Masons were told to keep “their particular Opinions to themselves” while affirming a common belief in the transcendent.59 By encouraging its members to step outside their religious convictions, the new fraternity proclaimed a religious harmony among all men while prescribing very little. Although the constitutions’ call for men of “whatever Denominations or Persuasions” to join the fraternity suggests that this “religious harmony” was intended to encompass no more than doctrinal differences among Christians, as early as 1731, Masonry’s formerly obedient servants of “the Church” had admitted Jews into their fellowship.60
Political involvement was similarly open. Previous constitutions commanded all masons to “bee true men to the Kinge without any treason or falsehood.”61 Now, aside from an agreement to be “a peaceable Subject to the Civil Powers,” no political position was required.62 At the same time, Whig party leaders were among the early members of the modern fraternity, and Anderson’s history reflected their advocacy of a strong constitution and court-centered government.63 Similarly, he, Desaguliers, and their brothers established a Grand Lodge governed by rules and statutes requiring all lodge members to submit to the authority of their elected officers and all lodges to pledge their loyalty to the Grand Lodge.64 Neither wholly subordinate subjects of a king nor dangerously radical liberals, the members of the new fraternity submitted to its constitutional government, which embraced social stability while celebrating the brotherhood as a model for a well-ordered, cooperative society.
Presenting itself as a harbinger of the new social vision, the fraternity allowed its members considerable latitude in their political and religious convictions. As Shaftesbury argued, the genius of the private club was that it kept a playful distance from the solemn orthodoxies of state and church.65 Meeting in the King’s Arms, the Apple Tree, and other upscale London taverns, lodge members enjoyed long evenings of ritual toasts, “sumptuous” feasts, “innocent mirth,” entertaining orations, and the business of welcoming “noblemen and gentlemen of the first rank” into their order.66 At the same time, by creating a constitutional society that its members could alter through majority vote, the modern fraternity experimented with the reformation of civil society. It further enhanced its progressive image by embracing the new, liberal spirit of religious toleration. Although popular Newtonianism, with its frequent references to God as the Universal Architect, came to dominate Masonic rhetoric, amid the secrecy of the lodge, members were free to entertain a variety of spiritual perspectives. Like the antiquarian William Stukeley, who said that he entered the fraternity in search of “the remains of the mysterys of the antients,” a wide array of Druids, Deists, Jews, Protestants, and Catholics were members of the English fraternity. On the whole, however, as participants in the liberalizing mainstream of early eighteenth-century English society, the gentlemen and nobles of Freemasonry reinforced the progressive ideals of constitutional monarchy and religious toleration.
COLONIAL AMERICAN FREEMASONRY
The Freemasonry that came to America in the 1730s brought this extensive collection of cultural baggage, which the encounter with local culture reworked and transformed. Between the 1730s and the 1760s, Masonic lodges were one of a variety of “polite” societies that formed in America’s coastal cities. These private clubs included
