Francis Bacon and his secret society - Grand Lodge of Colorado

AND HIS SECRET SOCIETY. 293
against putting any trust in the information which is about to
be imparted to him.
" Grand Masters of England before the Revival of Masonry
in 1717. This list has been collated from several authorities. It
is, however, not given as fact, but as tradition."
Here the " tradition " of St. Alban, which in
Preston's Illustrations
is presented as true history, is repeated. The first
Grand Master is said to have been—
" A. D. 287. Saint Alban, a Roman Knight, when Carausius
was Emperor of Britain."
Say that the origin of Freemasonry was traditional, yet what
need is there to invent an Emperor Carausius? 1
After a sketch of the History of Masonry in England, under
St. Augustine, King Alfred, and the Knights Templars, we are
gradually made to perceive how, from very early times, the
great family of the Pembrokes and the Montagues were connected
with (or said to be connected with) Masonry. Roger de
Montgomery, Earl of Shrewsbury, is said to have employed the
fraternity in building the Tower of London. Gilbert de Clare,
Marquis of Pembroke, presided over the lodges in the reign of
Stephen, when the Chapel, afterwards the House of Commons,
at Westminster, was built by the Masons. On the accession of
Edward I., 1272, the care of the Masons was entrusted to the
Archbishop of York, the Earl of Gloucester, and " Ralph, Lord
of Mount Hermer, the progenitor of the family of the Montagues,
" who finished the building of Westminster Abbey.
Even when we come down to the history of Inigo Jones, as a
Mason and architect of the palace at Whitehall, and of many
other magnificent structures in the time of James I., we are
reminded that it was to William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke,
that Inigo Jones owed his education ; that by his instrumentality
Inigo Jones was introduced to the notice of the King, " nomil
We can only suppose that Carausius was either a pseudonym for James I.,
whose "steward and chief ruler of the realm" Bacon really was; or that two
facts are mixed, and that a record of something connected with Prince, afterwards
King Charles (Carolus) may be here hinted. Those who follow up these
devices for imparting knowledge will not fiiid either of these suggestions to
he impossible, or exceptionally strange.