The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

In 1717 four London lodges outed themselves as the Premier Grand Lodge of England, which caused a split in the ranks of English Freemasonry, some Masons electing to follow the older York lodge. Despite the schism (which was healed in 1813 when the London and York lodges were brought together as the United Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of England), all the lodges of Britain adopted three main degrees of Freemasonry — Apprentice, Fellow-Craft and Master Mason. On reaching the latter level the Mason received all the privileges and rights of the Lodge.

By 1720 Freemasonry had been exported to France, in 1730 it reached the US, and a decade later it arrived in Russia and Germany. Thereafter there were few corners of the world without a Masonic lodge, although the powerbase of the Brotherhood has continued to be Britain and its American ex-colony, where no fewer than 12 presidents have been Freemasons; the first incumbent, George Washington, laid the foundation stone of the Capitol wearing his Masonic apron. (US conspiracy websites allege that Masonic themes and symbols also pervade Washington’s namesake city, including a pentagram in the street plan and, of course, the Pentagon itself.) To counter the spreading allure of Freemasonry, the Roman Catholic Church not only damned it repeatedly but set up a direct, religiously sound rival, the Knights of St Columbus. Despite Pope Clement XII’s outright ban on Catholic participation in Freemasonry in 1738, some Catholics joined the Brotherhood nonetheless, most notoriously as members of P2.

Religious condemnation of Freemasonry has not been restricted to the Catholic Church. Among the most vociferous contemporary critics of the craft are US conservative evangelical groups, which declare Freemasonry to be at the very least atheistic, at worst a Satanic conspiracy to rule the world. These groups, which are conspiracy theorists par excellence, cite, as proof of Freemasonry’s alliance with the Devil, Albert Pike’s infamous Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871), which hailed «Lucifer the Light Bearer!» (Pike, a former Confederate brigadier general, made the Scottish Rite the main form of Freemasonry in the South.) More ammunition for anti-Masons lies in Memoirs of an Ex-Palladist by Miss Diana Vaughan (1895), which describes Satanic rituals undertaken by Pike’s Palladium network. Alas, the thrilling Memoirs were a fiction created by the 19th-century French anti-Masonic campaigner Leo Taxil. Then there is the dollar bill, which since 1935 has carried the Masonic motto Novus Ordo Seclorum, widely rendered as «New World Order» — although a more accurate translation is «New Order of the Ages» and, far from being a nod to a Satanic would-be hegemony, the quote is a learned nod to Ovid.

In Britain, opposition to Freemasonry has centred on allegations of political interference rather than religious deviation. At the top of the pyramid, the Royal Family is heavily tied into Freemasonry through Prince Philip, a senior figure of the Brotherhood. Philip is alleged by Mohammed Al-Fayed and some anti-Masons to have ordered the murder of Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed. For these conspiracists there is significance in the place of Diana’s death — the Pont de l’Alma Tunnel, Paris, which used to be a meeting place of the Knights Templar — and that she was wearing jewellery in the design of a pentagram.

The Duke of Edinburgh is not the only royal Freemason to be implicated in murder. In Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution (1976), Stephen Knight charged that Freemason Prime Minister Lord Salisbury ordered the Whitechapel killings to cover up the marriage of Victoria’s grandson, Prince Eddy, to a commoner. The actual slaughtering was done by the royal surgeon and Freemason Sir William Gull, who carved Masonic symbols on the prostitute victims.

Knight continued his investigations into Freemasonry with The Brotherhood (1984), which less sensationally accused Freemasons of corruption and favouritism, especially in the police and judiciary. Shortly afterwards Knight died of a brain haemorrhage (predictably there were claims that he had been murdered by Masons) but Masonic scandal-digging continued with Martin Short’s Inside the Brotherhood: Further Secrets of the Freemasons (1989). This told tale after tale of anonymous High Court judges giving preferential treatment to fellow Masons.