A Short History Of The
Early Days Of Templarism
By Stanley C. Warner
LARGE numbers of our members and, in fact, many of our Templar speakers, are still imbued with the fiction that modern Masonic Templarism has a direct connection with and is the lineal descendant of the Knights Templar Order, instituted in 1113 by Hugh DePayne to protect pilgrims on their journey to the Holy Land, and one often hears both publicly expressed and inferentially suggested that our present Grand Master holds his office in direct accession to the martyred Jacques de Molai, whom an avaricious king of France, with the concurrence of an infamous Pope of Rome, burned at the stake in Paris, March 18, 1313: this despite the fact that this pleasing fiction has been discarded by numbers of our prominent Masonic writers and historians during the last quarter of a century, Sir Knight Colman in his Centennial address to the Grand Encampment in 1916 upon the subject of the early history of that body, said:
"There is no probability, hardly even any possibility, that our modern Order of Christian Masonic Knighthood is directly connected with the ancient Order of Christian Knights whose name and date we proudly bear and whose valiant character and Christian virtues we emulate."
Dr. Rugg, Past Grand Master of the Grand Encampment, in his Centennial address to the Grand Commandery of Massachusetts and Rhode Island, said:
"Tradition and common belief have their value, but they must not be allowed to offset historic evidence. It is the part of unwisdom to cling to a theory that has been generally discarded by those who have made the most extensive and careful examination of the grounds on which it rests. In this case the most reliable authorities concur in judgment that Masonic Templary, as recognized in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, is not historically connected with or lineally descended from the chivalric orders of the Crusades."
Sir Hopkins, Past Grand Master of the Grand Encampment, at the Conclave held in Louisville in 1901, said:
I readily admit that we can not show an indisputable title to this inheritance, but the claim is precious although the title may not be secure. I would fain believe that the founders of the Order did not leave the organization which they founded and cemented with their blood to become the plaything of chance or to rest upon the uncertain tenure of the will or whim of a rapacious king and a weak pope. I am disposed to admit that it is only a sentiment, but it is one to which some of us cling tenaciously and which we only surrender when we recognize that tradition must yield to history."
Sir Knight Parvin, Past Grand Recorder of Iowa and for many years closely connected with the Grand Encampment, has said: "The popular theory under which so many writers view the origin and history of Templar Masonry would trace it back by some mysterious line of connection to the Order of Malta which was dissolved in 1798, or back to the Order of the Temple, which ceased to exist in 1313, and the latter theory, even at this day, has many advocates. A better and truer theory, is to credit the whole system of Masonic Templarly to the inventive genius of the ritual makers of the eighteenth century."
Lieut. Col. W.J.B. MacLeod Moore, Supreme Grand Master, ad vitam, of the Sovereign Great Priory of Canada, frequently declared in his annual allocutions that Freemasonry was not the successor of the military Templars.
The published addresses of the distinguished Templars to which references have been made are not of easy access to the membership of our Order, and in presenting a short account of our early history at this time, we have in mind that the information will be thereby more generally available to such Templars as are interested therein. We make no claim of any personal research, but simply present to you the facts as collected from the works of Eminent Sir Knights who have made a life study thereof.
Four long centuries elapsed after the death of Jacques de Molai and the destruction of the ancient Order before history or even Masonic tradition suggests the existence of Masonic Templarism. During these four centuries civil history is silent as to the Templars, and little is known or related of the Masonic Order. Masons met without charter or other authority, initiated candidates, often without even an organized lodge or without record of the same, this by a claim of inherent right, and with no intent or desire to make their proceedings public. It was only in 1717 that the Masonic Fraternity assumed an organized existence, and it was shortly after this date that we find the first suggestion of the Modern Templar Degree. The long cherished alleged connection of the two orders through Scottish sources rests largely upon the fact that among the adherents of the Stuart Pretender who fled to France after his defeat in the early part of the eighteenth century, was one Chevalier Ramsay, a Mason, a gentleman of much culture, and a tutor of the Second Pretender, Charles Edward. This distinguished exile, while in France, is said to have developed a Masonic system with a sixth degree, designated the Knight of the Temple, and during one of his visits to Scotland, to have created Knights Templar there. With the Pretender's approval he attempted to use his Masonic connection to aid the exiled Stuarts, and in grafting upon Masonry a Military Order, he may have had in mind the assistance which it might be to his benefactor. Masonic authorities differ as to the truth of these statements, but in any event the Templar Degree was occasionally conferred in Great Britain during the middle of the eighteenth century, and encampments of the Order were during that period formed at London, York, Bristol, and Salisbury, more or less intimately connected with Craft Masonry.
Moore says that "Templarism was first introduced into the British Empire in the Masonic lodges known as the Ancients under the Duke of Athol, who was also Grand Master of Scotland, in the eighteenth century," and that about 1780 the Templar Degree was merged into the Masonic system, following the Royal Arch in the sequence of additional degrees.
W. Redfern Kelly, G.C.T., in a series of articles in the Toronto Freemason, published since this speech was first written, says that the records of the York Grand Lodges, designated also the Grand Lodge of all England, of date June, 1780, announced that lodge as asserting authority over five degrees or orders of Masonry, the Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, Master Mason, Royal Arch and Knight Templar, and also show the conferring of the Templar Degree at York, England, on November 29, 1779. He further asserts that this Grand Lodge was the only one which officially recognized the Order of the Temple as being Masonic, in either Great Britain or Ireland during the eighteenth century.
The history of the Order of the Temple, by Sir Patrick Colquhoun of London, England, published in 1878, is authority for the statement that in 1769 the Mother Kilwinning Lodge of Scotland issued a charter to Kilwinning Masonic Lodge of Dublin, which authorized the conferring of the degree of Knight Templar therein, but it would appear that the Order was found in Dublin prior to that date in the possession of military organizations composed of the soldiers of Scotland and Ireland. It is probably by this same military source that the Order was introduced into this country in Boston about the same period. Hughan, the great English Masonic authority, makes the positive statement that the first authentic record of the conferring of the Order is found in the minutes of St. Andrews Royal Arch Lodge in Boston under date August 28, 1769, where we read that "the petition of Bro. William Davis coming before the lodge begging to have and receive the parts belonging to a Royal Arch Mason, which being read, was received and he unanimously voted in, and was accordingly made by receiving the four steps, that of Excellent, Super-Excellent, Royal Arch, and Knight Templar."
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