THE ARCANE SCHOOLS - Fort Myers Beach Masonic Lodge No. 362

doubtless, of a felt need of community of action for the welfare of
the Craft. There was no idea of innovation, but, as Anderson states in
a note, "it should meet Quarterly _according to ancient Usage_,"
tradition having by this time become authoritative in such matters.
Hints of what the old usages were are given in the observance of St.
John's Day[117] as a feast, in the democracy of the order and its
manner of voting by a show of hands, in its deference to the oldest
Master Mason, its use of badges of office,[118] its ceremony of
installation, all in a lodge duly tyled.
Second, it is clear that, instead of being a deliberately planned
effort to organize Masonry in general, the Grand Lodge was intended at
first to affect only London and Westminster;[119] the desire being to
weld a link of closer fellowship and cooeperation between the Lodges.
While we do not know the names of the moving spirits--unless we may
infer that the men elected to office were such--nothing is clearer
than that the initiative came from the heart of the order itself, and
was in no sense imposed upon it from without; and so great was the
necessity for it that, when once started, link after link was added
until it "put a girdle around the earth."
Third, of the four Lodges[120] known to have taken part, only
one--that meeting at the Rummer and Grape Tavern--had a majority of
Accepted Masons in its membership; the other three being Operative
Lodges, or largely so. Obviously, then, the movement was predominantly
a movement of Operative Masons--or of men who had been Operative
Masons--and not, as has been so often implied, the design of men who
simply made use of the remnants of operative Masonry the better to
exploit some hidden philosophy. Yet it is worthy of note that the
leading men of the craft in those early years were, nearly all of
them, Accepted Masons and members of the Rummer and Grape Lodge.
Besides Dr. Anderson, the historian, both George Payne and Dr.
Desaguliers, the second and third Grand Masters, were of that Lodge.
In 1721 the Duke of Montagu was elected to the chair, and thereafter
members of the nobility sat in the East until it became the custom for
the Prince of Wales to be Grand Master of Masons in England.[121]
Fourth, why did Masonry alone of all trades and professions live after
its work was done, preserving not only its identity of organization,
but its old emblems and usages, and transforming them into instruments
of religion and righteousness? The cathedrals had long been finished
or left incomplete; the spirit of Gothic architecture was dead and the
style treated almost with contempt. The occupation of the Master
Mason was gone, his place having been taken by the architect who, like
Wren and Inigo Jones, was no longer a child of the Lodges as in the
old days, but a man trained in books and by foreign travel. Why did
not Freemasonry die, along with the Guilds, or else revert to some
kind of trades-union? Surely here is the best possible proof that it
had never been simply an order of architects building churches, but a
moral and spiritual fellowship--the keeper of great symbols and a
teacher of truths that never die. So and only so may anyone ever hope
to explain the story of Masonry, and those who do not see this fact
have no clue to its history, much less an understanding of its genius.
Of course these pages cannot recite in detail the history and growth
of the Grand Lodge, but a few of the more salient events may be noted.
As early as 1719 the _Old Charges_, or Gothic Constitutions, began to