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.
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
