Godfrey Higgins, Anacalypsis and the York Grand Lodge -Dr David Harrison
The York Grand Lodge attracted many writers after its demise at the close of the eighteenth century in an effort to investigate its origins and mysteries. One such writer was Godfrey Higgins; a Freemason, social reformer and radical writer of religious works, the most renowned of these works being Anacalypsis, which was published posthumously in 1836. Godfrey Higgins was born in 1772, he resided at Skellow Grange near Doncaster, living the life of a comfortable country squire. He was educated at Cambridge and studied law, becoming a Yorkshire magistrate and a reformer, playing a leading role in uncovering the abuse of the patients at the York Lunatic Asylum.
Higgins was a member of the prestigious London based Prince of Wales Lodge, which boasted such members as Prime Minister George Canning and of course the Prince of Wales. Higgins had visited the last Grand Secretary of the York Grand Lodge – owner of the York Chronicle William Blanchard - and mentions in Anacalypsis that he had seen certain documents, particularly describing the copy of the ‘Old Charges’ that would later become known as the York MS No. 1. He discussed how it was written on the back of the parchment roll that Francis Drake had presented it to the York Grand Lodge, and that it had been found in Pontefract Castle, Higgins also putting forward that there was a tradition that the lodge records were sent to the castle during the Civil Wars.
Higgins also stated that he had passed the documents on to the Duke of Sussex, who was the Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge at the time of his writing, though it appears that it was only a copy that was presented to the Duke, as the original manuscript is still kept in York. According to Hughan in his Old Charges, a copy of the York MS No. 1 was made around 1830 by order of Bro. William Henry White, (The Grand Secretary of the time) but not being a perfect copy, another was copied by Bro. Robert Lemon, (Deputy Keeper of State Papers) and was presented to the Duke of Sussex. Both transcripts are still preserved, likewise a letter from the latter gentleman to the Duke, dated September 9th, 1830, states that ‘it might be interesting to collate the transcript, said by Preston to be in the possession of the Lodge of Antiquity, with that from which the above is made.’1
Putting forward that the York Grand Lodge had older origins, Higgins enigmatically stated that ‘the presumption was pretty strong’ that the Druidical Lodge – a lodge that was under the sway of the York Grand Lodge that had been based in Rotherham - was the same as the Culdees of Monastica. He went further to link the Masons of York to India,2 his arcane comments on the York Grand Lodge, and his visit to Blanchard, later being discussed by the esoteric Masonic writer Arthur Edward Waite.3 More recently, historian Andrew Prescott remarked that Higgins may have been an influence on the radical Richard Carlile when he published his Masonic ritual in his early nineteenth century exposé Manual of Freemasonry.4
Other writers that visited William Blanchard, who became the last surviving member of the York Grand Lodge, included William Hargrove, who in 1819, claimed to have been shown documents that had once belonged to the York Grand Lodge by Blanchard, including the now long lost final minute book of 1780-1792. Hargrove wrote the renowned History and Description of the Ancient City of York which was published in 1818,5 and his visit to Blanchard, and the documents he witnessed, was referred to by later prominent Masonic writers such as Robert Freke Gould in his widely read History of Freemasonry,6 and by the aforementioned Arthur Edward Waite, who both continued to research the importance of the York Grand Lodge.
York was a thriving cultural centre, with artists, writers and natural philosophers, with many clubs and societies being formed during the later eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Growing interest in natural philosophy in York can be seen with the formation of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society in 1822, which included a number of Freemasons – the most prominent member being Thomas Dundas MP - the Philosophical Society being behind the building of the Museum in 1829 and also being active in saving a number of historic York buildings from demolition, such as part of the city walls.7 The Yorkshire Philosophical Society became an extremely popular society, attracting the leading members of the Yorkshire intelligentsia, and a home was soon needed for the many archaeological, zoological and botanical collections that the members had donated, as well as the growing library of the Society. Donations for the Museum building fund not only came from the members, but from leading figures in Yorkshire society, some of whom were also prominent Freemasons or linked to Freemasonry, such as Robert Sinclair, Recorder of York and past Grand Master of the York Grand Lodge, who donated £20, Edward T. Copley (Wolley), the son of the last Grand Master of the York Grand Lodge, who also gave £20, and Godfrey Higgins, author and Freemason, who gave a donation of £25.8 Other contributors to the Museum building fund included Richard Dalton of the York ‘Union’ Lodge, and many other recognisable names related to York Masons, such as Drake, Fairfax and Gascoigne.9
Indeed, Higgins and Sinclair are an example of the many Freemasons at this time that supported the building of new civic buildings like the Museum; buildings that promoted education for the people and symbolise the charitable ethos of Masonry. Similar support for educational civic buildings can be seen in Warrington, Lancashire, where leading Freemasons were involved in many learned societies and actively took part in the laying of the foundation stone of the Warrington Museum and Library in 1855. Parallels can also be seen in other northern English towns such as Oldham, where local Masons supported the Oldham Lyceum and in Wigan, where the family of prominent Freemason Lord Lindsay actively supported the Mining and Mechanical School.10
Higgins was a keen archaeologist and was very much interested in Druidry, and his ideas certainly exemplifies the interests of other writers and philosophers who put forward ideas on the romantic origins of Masonry at this time, ideas that can be seen in the works of Thomas Paine and Richard Carlile for example, capturing the public imagination and at the same time promoting Masonry as a Society with a more ancient past.11 Higgins developed an interest in the history of religions, writing extensively on mythology. As a member of the Society of Antiquaries, he explored the hidden mysteries of the past, publishing his celebrated work The Celtic Druids in three parts between 1827-1829. The York Grand Lodge became a focus for his research, Higgins believing that the Grand Lodge at York had an older lineage, its rites and ritual belonging to a more ancient and antiquated culture.
Anacalypsis still manages to be controversial today, dividing historians in the way the work has influenced modern day Theosophy and occultism. In discussing the work, historian Ronald Hutton summarized Higgins’ provocative ideas on a long-lost ancient source for all religions, beliefs and philosophies, the practices of the York Grand Lodge, according to Higgins, being able to be traced to one of these ancient cultures: ‘The megalithic remains scattered across the world had been the works of a great nation unknown to history, which had discovered religion and writing. This had given its system of spirituality and philosophy to the ancient Indians, Chaldeans, Hebrews, Egyptians, and Druids alike, based on a veneration of the sun with a threefold personification of deity and a myth of a saviour god who dies and then returns.’12 As Freemasons, we may see the ideas of Higgins as not only his own conclusions in trying to understand the hidden mysteries of nature and science, but we may recognize certain glimpses of a Masonic mind trying to understand the Craft.
1 For a further description of the York MS No. 1 see Hughan, The Old Charges of British Freemasons, pp.5-6. Hughan mentions that the document was presented to the York Grand Lodge by Drake in 1736, but Barker Cryer mentioned that the date was 1732; see Neville Barker Cryer, York Mysteries, (Hersham: Private Publication, 2006), p.156. However, William Hargrove in his History and Description of the Ancient City of York gives the date as 1738, which is discussed in H. Poole and F.R. Worts, “Yorkshire” Old Charges of Masons, (York: Ben Johnson & Co. Ltd, 1935), p.110, where Poole and Worts suggest it could be 1736 or 1738. When York Lodge archivist David Taylor and I examined the written text on the reverse of one of the four sheets of parchment that comprise the MS No. 1, the ink was faded somewhat, but we both agreed that the last digit looked like a six. If this is correct then the manuscript was given to the Grand Lodge as late as 1736, and was thus still very much in operation at that time.
2 See Godfrey Higgins, Anacalypsis, (Stilwell: Digireads.com Publishing, 2007), pp.767-70. The York MS No. 1 is still in the possession of the York Lodge.
3 Arthur Edward Waite in his Secret Tradition in Freemasonry, (Kessinger, 1997), pp.50-51, stated that Blanchard had given ‘all the books and papers’ of the York Grand Lodge to William Hargrove, and that Godfrey Higgins from Doncaster, sometime before 1836, went to York and ‘applied to the only survivor of the Lodge who shewed me, from the documents which he possessed, that the Druidical Lodge, or Chapter of Royal Arch Masons, or Templar Encampment was held for the last time in the Crypt [of the Cathedral at York] on Sunday, May 27th, 1778.’
4 See Andrew Prescott, ‘The Hidden Currents of 1813’, The Square, Vol. 40, No. 2, (June 2014), pp.31-2.
5 William Hargrove, History and Description of the Ancient City of York, Vol. I, (York: William Alexander, 1818). 6 R.F. Gould, The History of Freemasonry, Vol.II, (London: Thomas C. Jack, 1883), p.419.
7 For Thomas Dundas see Annual Report of the Council of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, (Thomas Wilson & Sons, 1832), p.39.
8 Annual Report of the Council of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society for 1825, (York: W. Alexander & Son, 1826), p.36 & p.37.
9 Annual Report of the Council of the Yorkshire Philosophical Society for 1830, (York: W. Alexander & Son, 1830), pp.44-48.
10 See David Harrison, Transformation of Freemasonry, (Bury St Edmunds: Arima Publishing, 2010), pp.84-96. 11 See Richard Carlile, Manual of Freemasonry, (Croydon: New Temple Press, 1912), and Thomas Paine, Origins of Freemasonry, in The Works of Thomas Paine, (New York: E. Haskell, 1854).
12 Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p.18.