Acta Macionica est _publié pour la Grande Loge Régulière de Belgique par la Loge de Recherches Ars Macionica n°30 à Bruxelles

Acta Macionica wordt voor de Reguliere Grootloge van België gepubliceerd door de Onderzoeksloge Ars Macionica nr.30 te Brussel

Acta Macionica is published for the Regular Grand Lodge of Belgium by the Research Lodge Ars Macionica n°30 in Brussels



The secret conspiracies of the Duke of Wharton Grand Master, 1722-1723

Matthew Scanlan

1 would like to begin wich two quotes:

The first lodge in France was founded by partisans of the dethroned Stuarts which, in 1728, was recognised by a Grand Master, the English Duke of Wharton.

… in 1728 … the Duke of Wharton, past grand master of the grand lodge of

London, was installed as the first grand master of the existing masonic lodges [in France].

hese two quotations are taken from speeches delivered at the 275th anniversary celebrations of French Freemasonry which took place on 2425 June 2003 at the Hôtel Matignon in Paris. The first is taken from a speech delivered by the French Foreign Minister, Dominic de Villepin, and the second is extracted from a speech given by the Prime Minister of France, JeanPierre Raffarin, and they both illustrate and echo the important role that many ascribe to Philip Duke of Wharton in the early years of modern Freemasonry. However, there is a problem with what has been written about this rather colourful character. Masonic researchers, such as the nineteenth-century historian, Robert Freke Gould, tended to concentrate almost exclusively on Wharton masonic life and, as a result, they failed to examine his association in a wider, social and political context. Conversely, historians of Jacobite! history such as Frank Melynn?, Eveline Cruickshanks’, and Paul Monod“, have all highlighted Wharton's affiliation with the masonic movement, yet they have also failed to examine the relationship between Freemasonry and Jacobitism in any depth.

‘The term Jacobite was an appellation used to describe followers of the exiled royal house of Stuart after che enforced exile of James Il, king of England, Scotland and Ireland, in 1688-89. As the Latin for James is ‘Jacobus’, his supporters, and those of the Stuart house in general, became known as Jacobites.

? See Frank McLynn, The Jacobites (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1988), & Bonnie Prince Charlie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), esp. pp. 532-535, 548.

Eveline Cruickshanks, ‘Lord Cowper, Lord Orrery, the Duke of Wharton, and Jacobitism', Albion (Spring 1994), 26, p. 39n.53.