Magic, Technology and Class War

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Keith Thomas has charted some of the street level reasons for the 'declining appeal of the magical solution' from the 16th century in northern Europe, such as rising levels of health and material welfare, the beginnings of newspapers, advertisements, fire fighting, deposit banking and trade or life insurance, in other words practical and this-worldly provisions against hazards and misfortune. In doing so he observed:


We are therefore forced to the conclusion that men emancipated themselves from these magical beliefs without necessarily having devised any effective technology with which to replace them...But the ultimate origins of this faith in unaided human capacity remain mysterious...The most plausible explanation seems to be that their (the Lollards, 'early heretics') spirit of sturdy self-help reflected that of their occupations...In the fifteenth century most of them were artisans - carpenters, blacksmiths, cobblers, and, above all textile workers...Their trades made them aware that success or failure depended upon their unaided efforts, and they despised the substitute consolations of magic.288

The 'spirit of sturdy self-help' would not appear to be sufficient explanation. Islamic scholars 500 years and more before had sought the 'ancient wisdom' of Plato, Aristotle and Pythagoras, had copied and distributed texts Christendom still regarded as heathenish outpourings. Generations of Muslims had then argued over the ideas and had innovated pragmatic solutions to their more local problems, setting in train the rationalist revolution which ultimately penetrated Western Europe. Did the guilds 'begin' in the 'Middle East'? Probably not, but Gothic Cathedrals and stonemasonry did. Why would the symbolic and the ritual context of what became 'The Craft', the building and destruction of Solomon's Temple, the loss, the search for and the location of the secret knowledge, not arrive with the practical skills of stone building?

The erosion of European mediaeval magical beliefs was seen to be necessary in practice precisely because of the prevalence of dangerous or impractical 'charms and magical observances' in a range of crafts and manufacturing techniques, for instance, the spinning and weaving of cloth:


In the early industrial period the mining industry generated a host of semi-magical practices..(such as 'knockers', taboos against whistling underground, and divining rods)..The building industry similarly gave rise to a mystic fraternity...non-operative Freemasonry..

The shift in emphasis was not swift nor ever comprehensive and the assistance of God became more valuable rather than less in the new religion. But a greater space for individual expression was opening up, where, ultimately, even the most devoted practitioners of mutual aid would lose sight of the need for mutual responsibility.

The efficient, ruthless or astute master craftsmen, rising in the social scale, took 'their' organisation with them, since they were the most powerful. This left a gap for renewed 'industrial' organisation and militance by those left behind, the small masters and journeymen.289 Protection of the trade Court was sought by older members of Companies from the inevitable worker combinations:


By (their) judgments, unruly apprentices were whipped, journeymen on strike were imprisoned and masters offending against regulations were fined. Members were forbidden to carry trade disputes before any other court, unless the court of their Companies had first been appealed to in vain.290

Increasing conflict between the parties was bound to flow into struggle for an impartial 'umpire.' The records show working people insisting over and over again that long-established custom and procedure, codified in legislation, be followed, their opponents insisting that changed times required changed, 'modern' procedures. The location of decision-making power over work and its context was in fact slowly shifting into the hands of increasingly powerful, law-oriented elites opposed to the idea that control of the product of a work unit be in the hands of that unit.

Unwin's broad and detailed consideration of guilds291 sought to understand the evolution, not of magic, but of organisation and 'the transformation of social forces into political forces.' He believed there was nothing new about the 'modern.'292 His analysis of the fraternal associations led him to believe they constituted the driving force behind centuries of political change293:


The political liberty of Western Europe has been secured by the building up of a system of voluntary organisations, strong enough to control the State, and yet flexible enough to be constantly remoulded by the free forces of change. It is hardly too much to say that the foundations of this system were laid in the gild.294

During Edward III's reign a special Statute was passed to solve a labour shortage but it proved a failure and savagely repressive laws prohibiting the movement of artisans provoked the Peasants' Rebellion of 1361. Subsequently, wages and conditions drifted, for a time, in favour of the employee. The 1568 Elizabethan 'Statute of Apprentices' (5 Eliz c.4) transferred jurisdiction over apprentices and journeymen to Justices of the Peace.295 We can agree with Howell's argument about 19th century labour-capital conflicts that this legislation was not a break but the key link between the previous 500 years and the subsequent 300 years:


The regulations in the statute of apprentices...codified the orders or ordinances existing for centuries among the craft-guilds, and applied them to all the trades of the time.296

Here the key shift was to make magistrates the arbitrators in disputes, particularly with regard to the quality and quantity of wages and of apprentices. Under 5 Eliz c.4:


(No-one) could lawfully exercise, either as master or journeyman, any art, mystery or manual occupation, except he had been brought up therein, for seven years at least, as an apprentice.
Whoever had three apprentices must keep one journeyman, and for every other apprentice above three, one other journeyman.

Wages were to be assessed yearly by the justices of the peace, or by the town-magistrates, at every general sessions first to be holden after Easter. The same authorities were to settle all disputes between masters and apprentices, and to protect the latter.


The later Act of James 1. c.6, expressly extended the power under 5 Eliz c.4 for justices and town-magistrates to fix wages for all labourers and workmen. Unwin has explained how what was a second wave of Company Charters and legitimations in the 17th century was inevitably caught up in the great political and religious struggles of the time and was part of the mechanism changing the nature of the major economic cleavage between mercantile and industrial capital into one between wage labourers and employers of labour. As the Stuart protectionist policies were defeated by Parliament's intransigence, it was, again, the small master, 'whose class constituted the industrial democracy of the time', and the journeymen who were forced into defensive alliances.297

Policies intended to protect the more local small master and journeyman from the competition of 'forrins' were incompatible with the interests of the larger manufacturer and exporter who wished to service markets further afield. As the Civil War broke out, the journeymen and the small master were in the throes of adapting while conserving as much of past practice as possible.298

The Long Parliament of 1640-1, appealed to by the rank-and-file 'in its most revolutionary period', could not turn a deaf ear, but results were slight and after the Restoration in 1660 of Charles II the older, 'gentry' influences resumed complete control. New charters were sought, in vain. Indeed the idea of an incorporation of craftsmen now took on a dangerous, sinister aspect for those already in power. Unwin refers to opposition by the Carpenters, Joiners and Shipwrights Companies to the attempt by the sawyers, whom they employed, to obtain independent status by charter:


If they are incorporated, the smallest combination amongst them will bring the building trades to a standstill, as experience has sufficiently shown in the past even without incorporation. Moreover their main object is to exclude

"all those sorts of Labourers who daily resort to the city of London and parts adjacent, and by that means keepe the wages and prizes of these sorts of labourers att an equal and indifferent rate"
and their success would be



"an evil president, all other Labourers, to Masons, Bricklayers, Plaisterers, etc, having the same reason to alledge for incorporation."299
Unwin concluded that failure along these traditional lines drove the wage-earning class into secret combinations 'from the obscurity of which the trade union did not emerge till the nineteenth century.' This interpretation is interesting as it is from this time of 'diving down' that observers begin to speak of fraternities and benefit societies as 'secret societies.' On Unwin's part it seems to be an attempt to link his material to that of the Webbs, upon whom he relies entirely for post-1700 detail. He draws on their contrast of 'the unsteady, isolated and impermanent character of journeymen's combinations in the fifteenth century' with 'the increasingly coherent, continuous and influential activity of trade unions'.300

What it seems to me we have is an ideological shift occasioning selective blindness. 'Trade unions' could be officially sanctioned while they were called 'craft gilds' and controlled by the issue of charters. Recourse to magic might occur behind closed doors, but charms and spells were not about to be used in official documents or public ceremonies. 'The word' was being replaced by words, but what some called 'magic' others would see as part of the era's religious faith. 'Travelling networks' were OK while they aided pilgrims and labour shortages but not if 'the State' decided that a) they were causing a drain on funds, or b) they were helping subversion, or c) they were part of an oppositional 'labour movement' bent on the destruction of capitalist enterprise.

As power shifted and ideology was fashioned to suit, language shifted. By the 17th century, mediaeval terms for worker combinations were replaced with 'club' and 'tavern society'. SF scholars could here assist students of British post-Stuart industrial relations to explore the parallel and not entirely separate worlds of sanctioned and non-sanctioned trade combinations. The non-sanctioned kind were illegal since 2-3 of Edward VI, c 15, and 5 of Elizabeth, c 4. Up to 1795 a worker could not legally travel in search of employment out of 'his' own parish, but of course 'he' often had no alternative.

Thus, we have a transition but not a break or a replacement. Mediaeval trades had 'degrees of skill and status', and had developed fraternal 'lodges' with formal internal structure including oath-taking ritual, for sociability, religious observance and mutual defence purposes. Some or all of a search or journey, certainly represented in the perambulation of the SF lodge room, an oath-taking, a symbolic death, quartering the year with meeting-feasts which emphasised the Saint's Day of St John, and levels of status or 'degrees', appear on both sides of the 'transition'. It is probable therefore that operative guilds provided the essential ideas and the basic ritual structure to more than SF.

Unwin's account ends with a story of an extended conflict in the last decades of the 17th century between the Feltmakers Company and journeymen hatters. He appears to be arguing that the lack of known records of a hatters' combination alongside instances of their court appearances, indicating such an organisation operating, supports his assertion that the operatives had suddenly decided to go underground. Court evidence actually asserts the men had "Clubs" 'where they entered into unlawful combination' and "raised several sums of money for the abetting and supporting such of them who should desert their masters' service" - ie, a system of unemployment or strike benefits. Unwin commented in Webberian terms that, of course, a combination of journeymen was no new thing, but that the important question was:


How far did it resemble a modern trade union? or to put the question in another form, how far did it possess the conditions essential to continuous existence and successful activity?301 [My emphasis]

Lipson whose analysis in the main supports that of Unwin responds to this key question by giving two answers - firstly, in reference to the 'craft guilds' and secondly to the journeymen guilds:


At first (the craft guilds) appear to have been private and voluntary associations which struggled into existence in the face of vigorous opposition on the part of the municipal authorities...Subsequently, however, the authorities... actively encouraged the formation of crafts and the...gild system, in order to tighten their hold over those engaged in trade and more effectively to exact a satisfactory standard of workmanship....The craft gilds now became public bodies invested with semi-legal authority, an organic but strictly subordinate department of civil administration..302

Lipson argues these guilds were quite different to 'modern trade unions' on 6 Webberian grounds which remain unconvincing: that is, they comprised only skilled artisans; they were urban not rural; membership was compulsory; they included all grades of producers, including entrepreneurs; they were not selfish but were concerned for public welfare; and they were semi-public bodies, 'integral parts of municipal administration'.

He argued that the later, 15th century 'journeymen gilds' bore a 'very striking similarity' to 'trade unions':


Unlike the craft gilds, (they) comprised only the class of wage-earners banded together in defiance of their employers, and their efforts to secure an improvement of their economic position make the parallel to trade unionism still more evident.303

However, he knocked them out on the grounds that they 'failed [!] to establish a stable and permanent organisation' and they 'failed', repressive legislation apart, because the more gifted and energetic leaders kept rising up and out of journeymen ranks - again, a less-than-convincing argument. A continuing, perceived need for secrecy, and for secrets, from guild times to 'modern' times among the artisans renders Unwin's thesis about a sudden 'diving down' into 'secret societies' untenable and strengthens the liklihood of linkages between the mediaeval benefit societies and the 19th and 20th centuries.

Interestingly, SF authors rarely discuss a break in the flow of fraternal transmission, either in the short-term, at the confiscations of monastic lands and wealth by Henry VIII in particular, or in the longer-term, during the bureaucratic-transition of guild/Company decision-making structures to State institutions. Ludlow quoted the relevant legislation including a key qualification to support his belief that no significant break occurred:


The religious gilds were first struck at in 1545, by the 37 Henry VIII; c.4, which enabled the king to grant a commission to certain persons to enter upon the lands of all colleges, charities, hospitals, fraternities, brotherhoods, gilds, and stipendiary priests, and to seize them to the king's use. Two years later (1547), the Act 1 Edw. VI, c. 14,...absolutely confiscated to the Crown..."all fraternities, brotherhoods and gilds, within the realm of England and Wales...and all manors, lands, tenements, and other hereditaments belonging to them or to any of them" other than "corporations, gilds, fraternities, companies and fellowships of mysteries or crafts..." 304 (My emphasis)

James II used sometimes contradictory policies regarding the London Companies305 in seeking control of Parliament. His replacement of original Charters with new ones worded more to his liking, was accompanied with the statement that he


designed not to intermeddle or take away...the rights, propertyes or priviledges of any company nor to destroy or injure their ancient usages or franchises of their corporations...306

Other evidence, such as the 'lodge books' of the Coventry Silk Weavers of the 1650's, indicates that from English guilds to Companies in format and in 'rites of association', very little had changed.307

A Scottish example from a later period is further illustrative. It appears that on 4 January 1690 William and Mary of Orange signed a Charter, validating and confirming all former charters 'in favor of the gild-brethren, tradesmen, or any society, or deaconry' within Glasgow at least, said Charter being further confirmed by act of parliament on 14 June, 1690. These Corporations, 'the only considerable body in that community' and still governing that City in 1777, included fourteen incorporated trades. They had all been 'raised' in the period 1520 to 1560, the 'cause of erection' in all cases being 'in order to raise a fund for the maintenance of (their) poor.' These trades were only granted legal place within the governing structure by a 'letter of gildry' in 1605, a letter confirmed by act of parliament, 11 September, 1672. The oath sworn in 1770 as a freeman member of one of these corporations included:


Here I protest, before God, that I confess and allow, with my heart, the true Protestant religion, presently professed within this realm, and authorised by the laws thereof. I shall abide thereat, and defend the same to my life's end; renouncing the Roman religion, called Papistry...308

The Merchants and the Trades each, then, had their 'House' which was their governing body and their funds collector and disburser, in other words their 'Grand Lodge.' In 1777, it was still the case that 'deputies' from each of the constituent trades, plus an elected Deacon, 'Baillie' and a Collector made up the 'parliament' of the Trades-House. Each of the Corporations was governed in a similar fashion: eg, the hammermen, by a deacon, a collector and 12 masters; the coopers by a deacon, a collector and 8 masters; the masons by a deacon, collector and 6 masters; and so on. These were all elected annually by the freemen of the trade, and the disposal of the public money, belonging to the corporation, was vested in them. The tradesmen paid for their 'freedom of the town' and a 'freedom-fine' from which the poor of that trade were relieved usually at the rate of 2/- per week.

The Edinburgh Society of Journeymen Shoemakers 'having existed since 1727' reprinted their 'Articles' in 1778. A selection follows [NB the use of 'Preses, ie 'President']:


I.That each entrant shall not be above the age of thirty-six years, brought up to the said trade, and a Protestant; shall be attested by two members to be of a healthy constitution, free from all hereditary or constitutional disease, of a good moral character; must be subject to the Society's regulations...The Society shall not be regulated by any party or faction, but by a majority of votes, according to the tenor of articles.
II. That each entrant shall pay Seven shillings and sixpence Sterling, besides clerk and officer's fees, as entry money, and fifteenpence Sterling every quarter day as quarter accounts...

IV. Each member shall remain twelve months from the date of his entry before he can receive any supply in sickness or lameness, burial-money...

V. The Preses shall be chosen every quarter-day by a poll from the whole Society, and whoever is chosen by a plurality of votes shall take the charge; if he should refuse, shall pay Two Shillings and Sixpence Sterling. The Key-Masters shall be chosen by the roll...The Preses and Key-Masters, shall choose, every one for himself, two Committee members...

VII. The Preses and Key-Masters shall visit the sick and lame in rotation, weekly, along with a Committee member...

VIII. It is appointed and agreed, that all Quarter-Accounts, Fines, etc, shall only be employed for the support of the sick and the lame, and to pay the other dues of the Society; and the Society determine to transact nothing contrary to the right and property of the sick and lame...

XI. Any person convicted of raising or following a faction, or inducing animosities into the Society, shall be suspended from all benefits from the Society, for the space and term as the Society shall find...

XXIV. It is agreed and appointed, that no cursing, swearing, or indecent behaviour shall be found in any member at their meetings...no member shall be found accessory to mobs or tumult..309

The lack of any reference to trade regulations in these Articles and their concern that all monies were used for benefit payments, have been taken to indicate an a-political and generally passive attitude. Rather, they indicate the custom that all trade regulations would be handled at the 'Trades-House' [Trades Hall] level, not at individual 'lodge' level.

On the one hand, the guilds over 700 years developed, among other things, a corporate structure, the Company, in order to strengthen or to establish monopolies over their particular trades. On the other, their very success prompted firstly, Royal attempts to dominate economic affairs, secondly, rank-and-file dissension, and thirdly, competition which, encouraged by increased levels of production, distribution and consumption, burst and overwhelmed the controls over work practices the brethren had collectively struggled for so long to put or to keep in place.310

The Livery Companies showed the way for industrial capitalism. They initiated the 'very features which (shaped) modern business associations'. At the same time their 'social and fraternal structure', surviving into the 19th and 20th centuries, clearly showed they were 'the legatees of mediaeval traditions.' And the most important tradition?


The most important tradition enabling the Companies to live long after they had lost their monopoly of supervision over their trades and crafts was that of fraternal charity.311

Such a legacy was increasing, not declining, in relevance since competition was sharpening artisinal isolation. That is, the rich and powerful were forging improved methods of being rich and powerful, increasing the vulnerability of 'their employees' yet each strata continued a committment to fraternal charity.

By the Settlement Act of 1662 two justices of the peace were given power to eject any newcomer to a parish without means. Briggs has commented this was a measure 'intended to deal with the whole population of the poor as only rogues and vagrants had been dealt with previously.' Whether called 'rogues', 'vagrants' or 'tramping brothers' the intention and the effect would seem to have been the same. Enclosures, pauperism, cheap labour, factories and mines using techniques of mass production, and producing defensive combinations of alienated individuals - the road ahead was clear.

Fraternal charity, we may see therefore as the vehicle for the rites of association into the period after the onset of the Industrial Revolution, proper. The long, slow gestation of economic rationalism has meant the originating ideas and purposes behind the rites have grown fainter, but the language and the general format has blurred less than we might think, since they were more-or-less 'fixed' before terminal damage had been done.

What has made 'modern' fraternalism most difficult for practitioners or would be practitioners is that a sense of the connections between the material and the immaterial has been largely lost. Imagining the ineffable has not become unfashionable, as much as it has rusted and decayed due to lack of use. This does not imply that reviving or rebuilding fraternalism in all its aspects requires a return to mediaeval, Catholic beliefs or 'magic' practices, but a re-education of capacity to 'see' the necessary connections.

'Charges' such as that of the Alnwick, and Swalwell Lodges, both in the north of England, and others, need to be approached with this requirement in mind. To judge their 'content' on the basis of the presence or absence alone of certain words is, I believe, to miss much of the point.

The 'Orders to be Observed by the Company and Fellowship of Freemasons att a Lodge Held at Alnwick [Newcastle, England] Septr 29, 1701, Being the Genll Head Meeting Day' are only likely to be found within SF literature yet as Gould tells us this was a fully operative lodge till 'at least the year 1763' when it was (probably) absorbed into SF ranks. Verified lodge minutes run from 1703 to 1757. Gould says:


(These) records...constitute the only evidence of the actual proceedings of an English lodge, essentially, if not, indeed, exclusively operative, during the entire portion of our early history which precedes the era of Grand Lodges.312

Disappointingly, he goes on to say:


It should be stated that the question of degrees receives no additional light from these minutes, indeed, if the Alnwick minutes stood alone...there would be nothing whatever from which we might plausibly infer that anything beyond trade secrets were possessed by the members.

He brings to bear evidence from what became in SF hands the Lodge of Industry at Swalwell, a village in the County of Durham, for which operative records run from 1725 to 1735 when it also accepted a 'deputation' from the London Grand Lodge and became, officially, a speculative lodge. The 1st and last, the 14th, Alnwick 'Orders' read:


1st - That it is ordered by the said Fellowship thatt there shall be yearly Two Wardens chosen upon the said Twenty-ninth of Septr., being the Feast of St Michaell the Archangell, which Wardens shall be elected and appoynted by the most consent of the Fellowship. 313
14 - Item, That all Fellows being younger shall give his Elder fellows the honor due to their degree and standing. Alsoe thatt the Master, Wardens, and all the Fellows of this Lodge doe promise severally and respectively to performe all and every the orders above named, and to stand bye each other...(etc)..


Gould quibbles at the lack of mention of 'the Master' at certain other points of these Orders, as he does at a lack of mention of 'Degrees' with a capital. He does not seem to find the 11th Order convincing either:


Thatt if any Fellow or Fellows shall att any time or times discover his master's secretts, or his owne, be it nott onely spoken in the Lodge or without, or the secretts or councell of his Fellows, that may extend to the Damage of any of his Fellows, or to any of their good names, whereby the Science may be ill spoken of, forr every such offence shall pay..£3 13s 4d.314

He footnotes this Order with one taken from the Swalwell Lodge minutes, namely:


If any be found not faithfully to keep and maintain the 3 ffraternal signs, and all points of ffelowship, and principal matters relating to the secret craft, each offence, penalty £10 10 0.315

After discussing the possible implications of these he weakly concludes only that the absence of mention of 'Degrees' within Alnwick Lodge might imply that it was unaffected by the parallel existence of SF lodges closeby, in other words that it is still only to the SF history that we should look for a formalised degree structure. He makes no attempt to explain what 'the Science', 'the secret craft' 'points of ffelowship', etc, might mean in this operative context in the north of England in the 18th century.

He notes 'the general uniformity' of the Alnwick and Swalwell minutes and that it was with 'much solemnity' that the 'head or chief meeting day', the festivals of St John the Evangelist/St John the Baptist, were commemorated. Again, note reference to a 'true and perfect lodge' in the following 1708 minute of an operative lodge:


At a true and perfect Lodge kept at Alnwick, at the house of Mr Thomas Davidson, one of the Wardens of the same Lodge, it was ordered that for the future noe member of the said Lodge, Master, Wardens, or Fellows, should appear at any lodge to be kept on St John's day in (church), without his apron and common Square fixed in the belt thereof, upon pain of forfeiting two shillings and sixpence..(etc).. 316

Note also the size of this fine compared to that for disclosing secrets, above. Gould further notes that nearly forty years after the formation of London's Grand Lodge and perhaps 20 years after it had received a 'deputation' consonant with its adoption of a speculative 'Charter', the minutes of Swalwell Lodge 'teem with resolutions of an exclusively operative character', for example that of 'entering an apprentice in the time-honored fashion handed down by the oldest of our manuscript Constitutions.'317 He also notes, but in a totally other context that lodges 'composed of "operative Masons" [NB his capital] were formed or received constitutions - in 1764 and 1766.'318

On the other side of the self-imposed divide, the assuredly 'speculative' side, Gould records the 'Old Rules' of a Grand Lodge which preceded that at London, viz that at York. Thus the


'Articles Agreed to be kept and observed by the Antient Society of Freemasons in the City of York, and to be subscribed by every Member thereof at theur Admittance into the said Society.
Imprimis - That every first Wednesday in the month a Lodge shall be held at the house of a Brother according as their turn shall fall out.

2 - All Suscribers to these Articles not appearing at the monthly Lodge, shall forfeit Sixpence each time.

3 - If any Brother appear at a Lodge that is not a Suscriber to these Articles, he shall pay over and above his club [ie, subscription] the sum of one shilling.319


Note the use of 'club'. Gould, here, falls into an error he castigates in others, accepting as proof of the claims made, a letter stating the writer has the actual proof in front of him, viz a list of the names of the GM's of this 'Grand Lodge' for the period 1705 to 1734. That these claimed gents are all 'Sirs' or 'Esquires' I forbear to mention. What Gould could have discussed was how it came about that this 'Lodge' came to be, or to claim, the status of being a 'Grand Lodge' and before 1717.

A 1984 revision of Max Weber's thesis concerning an 'affinity' between the rise of bourgeois capitalism and Calvinist-Puritanism in England focussed on Sir Edmund Coke's struggle with Court-assumed prerogatives over economic life.320 Coke, using language and concepts which would be strengthened and extended by Adam Smith, was suggesting free trade as a third force opposed to the 'two traditionalisms', the guild monopolies and 'court-bound capitalism'. He specifically argued that restrictions on entry into misteries and guild control of work conditions amounted to restrictions on trade which were, by definition against the common good and needing to be outlawed.321 When Parliament broke monarchical power, the era of economic rationalism began and the course of industrial relations as we know them was set.

At a time, therefore, when 'speculatives' were entering lodges an
Dear Mr. Dunn:

The recent history of Fredericksburg Lodge No. 4 written by J. Travis Walker gives a good account of the two Lodges chartered or established by the Lodge. They are Falmouth Lodge in Falmouth, active from 1768 until sometime between 1790 and 1817, and Botetourt Lodge No. 7 in Gloucester, Virginia warranted in 1770. Botetourt Lodge applied and receivied a charter from the Grand Lodge of England in 1773 and is active today.

The Grand Lodge of Virginia was founded in 1778. Fredericksburg Lodge and Gloucester Lodge are among the seven Founding Lodges.

Hope this information helps. Can photocopy the entries to send to you upon receiving mailing address.

Sincerely,
Marie Barnett
Librarian