Part 3: Secret Societies of America's Elite.....The Lodge and the Revolution...Smugglers,Patriots,and Masons

I love books that allow you to add depth to understanding any certain subject.John Hancock is remembered by most it seems for his signature.Mr Sora here adds great insight into Hancock,that they omit in the official narrative,same with Samuel Adams. Adams more famous for his beer these days,was a master of propaganda,directed at his fellow colonists,and ace provocateur of his time.We would call him a crisis actor these days.He had to be good at something because the beer company failed under his leadership at that time.

I think it is fair to say,that if a country was born in 1776,its shadow also appeared at that time, and has prospered right up to this day.This can be seen in who benefited from the Crime in that time, and who benefits from criminal activity today.Perfect example would be a so called officer of the government taking bribes through his or her personal foundation,and said government is powerless to stop it. Now you tell me who is winning.... 

PART TWO 

The Lodge and the Revolution 

FOUR HUNDRED YEARS AFTER the Templar order was outlawed by the papal authority, it was still alive in the form of numerous entities. Despite being fractured by the religious squabbles of Europe, the order still retained many of its goals, which included survival, resistance to the overbearing religious powers of the day, and a conspiratorial brotherhood of self-protection. By the early eighteenth century there were several institutions that could claim direct descent from the original Knights Templar. Among these groups were military orders that could exist in the open and secret societies that survived underground. The secret society of underground Masonry in Scotland was the most authentic remnant Templar group, and it would later call itself the Ancient Lodge.

The underground lodge system had been the refuge of the ex-Templars; for decades it helped many survive and evade arrest. Through the centuries, however, the lodge system became more open, and it gave birth to the more public Freemasonry. The world and the Masonic lodges would then become divided as a result of religion, politics, and economics. No longer would every Mason be welcomed in every lodge. 

Europe and Masonry would be torn apart by the revolt against the papacy. The conflicts that had started in Europe found their way over the Atlantic, as did the solutions. The revolt against the Church led to a revolt against the aristocratic system that kept the majority in a peasant caste. This economic revolt gave rise to a middle class in which anyone could participate provided he could find a means. Secret societies and law breaking provided the fastest route to economic prosperity. 

Europe was rife with conspiracies great and small. Men conspired to protect themselves from the horrors of the constant wars over religion. They conspired to protect their own industry by keeping competition out. They conspired to break a multitude of trade laws that did little to foster trade and much to enrich the kings. And everywhere there was conspiracy, there were places for conspirators to meet. The lodge system provided that refuge. 

Not all conspiracy could be considered bad. Joining a secret society in America provided the means to raise one's station in life, to find work, to belong to a community, and to transcend the religious squabbles of the Europeans. At the same time, it also provided avenues to wealth through breaking the law, and it bred dissent and stirred the mobs against the weak government. Once the hostilities against the crown started, secret societies allowed the colonists to create a spy network and to strike the enemy in the most unsuspecting way. 

The American Revolution began as a reaction to Britain cracking down on smuggling. Those whom the British declared smugglers were considered by the Americans simply to be merchants, although these merchants had something in common. Like pirates, the smugglers needed connections to survive. This meant belonging to the right lodges. While smuggling was done by individual merchants, it required a support system that was anything but small. Merchants buying even basic commodities from any of the numerous European possessions in the New World were almost always breaking the law. A system of trust evolved through a secret society: Masonry. 

The American Revolution was fought by a network of spies, diplomats, smugglers, Freemasons, and slave traders. Although they were rarely united politically, they did share an interest—and the means to accomplish their interest. Masonic ties allowed conspirators from England, New England, New York, and the Carolinas to find a common ground and make critical moves behind the scenes. One prominent example is Benjamin Franklin, who moved freely through Masonic circles that stretched from London to Paris and Nantes. Franklin was able to stir dissent among the British, bring in supplies from the Netherlands, and ultimately bring the French into the war. From Britain, Franklin enlisted members of a hedonistic entity known as the Hellfire Club, whose orgiastic activities would shock even modern Britain to muster public support against the war and for the Sons of Liberty. Through a smuggling network that operated in the Caribbean from Bermuda and from Europe, American sea captains supplied the Revolutionaries with munitions. Franklin's Masonic connections in France were wealthy slave traders, often Huguenots, who operated through lodge systems that reached everywhere their ships sailed. Friends were also found among the aristocratic class in France, with Masonry again paving the way—even as the royals were ardent Catholics. 

In a most audacious move, a wealthy French family bribed the British admiral heading the war effort to deny support to Cornwallis at Yorktown. At the same time the French contingent led by the Knights of the Sovereign Order of Malta supplied the American side. The American Revolution was won not on the battlefield as much as in the secret meetings of numerous conspirators like Benjamin Franklin and his lodge brothers. 

With the war won, the architects of the new republic gave birth to a government steeped in Masonic symbolism, while Washington founded an aristocratic society where breeding and heredity were the most important tickets for admission. Strange? Yes, but less so as one understands the maelstrom of the eighteenth-century world, in which the old ways of religious and aristocratic authority were being challenged on a regular basis. 

The dramatic changes that affected everyone's daily life created a nation while also fostering a new elite. The new elite, unfortunately, promoted an elitist attitude long after the independence that allowed criminal activity, as long as they were the ultimate beneficiaries. 

John Hancock might serve as the best example of a well-connected Mason who became a great patriot for the sake of his own fortune. With one foot in an elite lodge and the other in a workingman's lodge, he somehow was able to present himself as a champion of liberty and a prince of industry. Hancock rode in a well-appointed carriage around Boston clad in the aristocratic purple that was his trademark, yet he would be a hero to the thousands of hardworking dock workers who depended on him for employment. One could argue that the American Revolution started when a ship belonging to Hancock, the Liberty, was seized. The event and the actions that followed connected the wealthy Hancock and his lodge to the working class, who belonged to numerous other lodges, and to Sam Adams. 

John Hancock was born into a wealthy and connected mercantile family. He became one of the wealthiest merchants through inheritance from an uncle. He understood from early on that a merchant needed connections, and one very important way to develop those connections was through Masonry. Hancock's uncle became a Mason in an aristocratic lodge in Canada. By being admitted to a lodge in one city he could then attend lodge gatherings in other cities. In Boston, Hancock would attend the meetings of a working-class lodge known as Saint Andrew's. 

Masonry was undergoing a great change. The craft in America and England had seen a dilution of its original values, which had included liberty and equality. While liberty was prized by all, equality was not present in the new class system. What would be called "modern" Masonry shared much with the rising mercantile and professional classes that formed the English Whig party in the political arena and a bourgeois class in the economy. With new Masons accepted by invitation and common agreement, individuals in the lower echelons of the changing society—a stonemason, for example—were not always welcome. This was a repudiation of the Masonic ideals, and the effect was that an elite class was allowed to develop and service the careers of its members. 

Politics and religion were still inseparable, and the Modern Lodge Masons were pro-Parliament and very much Protestant at a time when the world was still fighting a constant series of wars over the religious leanings and marriages of its kings and queens. 

On June 24, 1717, representatives from four English lodges met at the Goose and Gridiron ale house in London and created the Grand Lodge. By going public the Grand Lodge, also known as the Mother Lodge, ended centuries of underground operations. Instead of being a craft guild where members of the same trades could meet and act to serve one another's interests, no longer was a particular trade required for membership. Masonry in the Grand Lodge style became "speculative" masonry; this modern interpretation eliminated the titles and tools of a working craft and made them into mystical symbols. There were four major lodges in England that went public to create the Grand Lodge. They had been meeting for years, so it was not much of an event at the time. Within two years the number of lodges increased tenfold, but as many as twenty-six had been already in operation.1 

When these lodges met, they toasted the Hanoverian king and sang patriotic songs. Because this was just a short time after the most recent Scottish rebellion, the Modern Masons hoped that going public would distance them from the Scottish Masons and help them avoid suspicion. 

The establishment of the English Modern Grand Lodge as a public institution served more than one purpose: It allowed English masons to publicly distance themselves from Jacobite Masons, and it also may have forced the Scottish and Irish lodges to go public. In a very complicated world where the change of the monarchy would often lead to war, these lodges were ostensibly pro-Catholic and pro-monarchy; in England they were the basis for the Tory party. But at the same time as these lodges were accused of being reactionary, they actually held the finer Masonic ideals to be true. 

Although they often fell on the Catholic side of the never-ending religious wars, the Grand Lodge had more to do with Templar tradition than adherence to the papal authority. The Grand Lodge had three degrees: Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, and Master Mason. The Scottish Rite Masonry claimed higher degrees and direct descent from the Templar organization. 

In 1603 James VI of Scotland became James I of England. James was a Stuart, and his family was connected to the Guise-Lorraine families of France, who had been instrumental in the creation of the Knights Templar. The old Templar sword and the trowel of the master builder, which were so important to the roles born hundreds of years before, were now part of the Stuart heraldry. The Stuart ascension to the throne attempted to undo the losses of both Scotland and Catholicism. Noble Scottish families played a strong role in England's affairs, and two families, the Hamiltons and the Montgomeries, moved to Ireland to start the Ulster Plantation.2 James I was Catholic and a Freemason, and in the early seventeenth century his status would politicize Masonry. James constantly fought with Parliament, which tried to increase its influence in matters such as taxation, foreign policy, and religion. The Stuart rule would not last the century; it ended with the Glorious Revolution of 1688. 

Charles I, the son of James I, ascended the throne in 1625. The Parliament of 1640 to 1641, however, declared that it and not the king had the power to tax. This threat to the king's power might have led to the 1641 rebellion in Ireland against the Protestant rule. While Charles I was actually Anglican, his wife and his Stuart family were Catholic. Parliament saw the Irish rebellion as a conspiracy; they felt the king was using the rebellion to raise troops to form a counterrevolution against Protestantism. Parliament attempted to end the king's power to raise troops, but the king ordered soldiers to arrest certain members of Parliament. Civil war broke out, and it ended with the Stuart king being beheaded.

The alternative to Charles's actions was worse, however, with Cromwell attacking not only Catholics but extremist sects of Protestants as well. His Commonwealth did not last the decade, and, remarkably, the son of the beheaded king, Charles II, was put on the throne. Charles II abolished many of the privileges of the monarchy, but when his Catholic brother, James II, took the throne the old religious bugaboo reared its head again. James was dumped in the Glorious Revolution. 

Charles and James had a sister, Mary, who had married the Dutch prince of Orange. James also had a daughter named Mary, who was a Protestant and who also strengthened the family bond with the Dutch by marrying the son of the Prince of Orange, William III. The Dutch House of Orange was united from earlier times with the German House of Nassau, a region bordering on the state of Hesse. It would shed the designation Nassau-Orange and come to be called simply the House of Orange. German families were especially adept at the art of strategic marriages, and after the hard-won struggle to get the English throne, the Stuarts would lose it to the House of Orange. 

A new Bill of Rights was established under William of Orange and Mary, but it did not resemble the later American Bill of Rights, as it banned Catholics from the throne. The rule of William and Mary also gave rise to the Tory and Whig factions. The Whig faction was made up of several powerful English and Scottish families and was based in Protestant Holland, which was under the rule of the House of Orange. A brotherhood modeled on Masonry was established and called itself the Order of Orange. It was anti-Catholic, and its legacy lives on today in Belfast, where the no-longer-secret order has one hundred thousand members.3 

When William died (years after Mary passed away), the daughter of James II, Anne, took the throne. When Anne died, the House of Orange relinquished the throne to the rulers of the German state of Hanover. From that point on the Hanoverians provided England with all her monarchs, though they did change the family name much later to the House of Windsor to appear less German. Anne was succeeded by the grandson of Elizabeth Stuart and Friedrich, Count Palatine. 

The Stuarts clung to the belief that they could regain the throne. For the purpose of putting a Stuart heir back on the throne, a new branch of Freemasonry was created by Michael Ramsay, a Scottish mystic and the tutor of the children of James III. His plan was to resurrect the old ideals. He modeled the new branch after the Knights Templar, and for the first time in three hundred years he would publicly claim what many in Scotland and Ireland had kept secret: that the Masonic organization was the direct heir of the original underground organization. One of Ramsay's co-organizers, the Earl of Derwent Water, claimed that the authority to create the Knights Templar lodge came from the Kilwinning Lodge, Scotland's oldest lodge. [I wonder how much of Diana's background cost her life to end in Paris?D.C]

The Kilwinning Lodge was actually formed before the arrest of the Templars. It dates to 1120, and by the seventeenth century it was practicing speculative Masonry, meaning it wasn't simply a craft guild. The history of the Kilwinning Lodge is complicated, as it was first independent, then joined, then separated from, and then joined again the Grand Lodge of Scotland. 

Following the creation of the new lodge, a series of pro-Stuart Jacobite uprisings of the early eighteenth century began, which culminated in the horrible defeat at Culloden in 1746. To the English, Culloden was meant to be the last attempt by Scotland. After the battle the survivors were hunted down and killed. Their families, too, were prosecuted, and a massive Scottish emigration ensued—much of it to the Americas. 

Events in the not-so-United Kingdom affected the American continent in many ways: European wars became American wars, Protestants increased their suspicions of Catholics, and the displacement of populations and religious intolerance caused waves of migrations by Puritans, Huguenots, and Scotch and Irish Catholics. These events also forever changed Masonry. Masonry was linked to the Stuarts in Scotland, as the craft had developed and lodges had met since the ancient days of Henry Sinclair's guardian status. It was not, however, a Jacobite conspiracy, as lodges met in England as well among the anti-Jacobite, pro-Whig, pro-Parliament system that was in power. 

In America the Grand (Modern) Lodge was established early. Though accurate records remain undiscovered, one of the earliest appointments was by the Duke of Norfolk, who in 1730 granted to Daniel Coxe of New Jersey the grand master title for New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania. 

In 1733 Henry Price founded a Grand Lodge in Boston. 4 James Oglethorpe, known in American history as the founder of the colony of Georgia, established and became master of his colony's lodge in Savannah. His family included active Jacobites, and his less than enthusiastic command of English forces led to his court-martial. 

By 1738 there were established lodges meeting in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Charleston, and Cape Fear, North Carolina.5 They attracted and admitted the merchants and shipowners while excluding the average worker. This was not the intent of Scottish Masonry, which stuck to the principles of an egalitarian society. 

In Boston and Philadelphia new lodges sprang up, seemingly without any authority. The most celebrated is the Saint Andrew's Lodge in Boston, which met at the Green Dragon Tavern. It received its warrant from the Scottish Rite Lodge rather than the Grand Lodge, and a fissure was created in American Masonry. The ancient lodges attracted a handful of the merchant class but were made up mostly of craftsmen, artisans, carpenters, and shipwrights. The notable exceptions in the Saint Andrew's Lodge were Dr. Joseph Warren, who became grand master, and John Hancock. Both men served important roles in the early conflicts that ignited the war. 

Masons played roles on both the English and the American sides of the conflict. In the confusion, a revolution started by the Boston Whigs operating out of a lodge chartered by a Scottish lodge system found as opposition the Catholic Scots that had remained Tory. As brother fought brother and neighbor fought neighbor, Masons too would fight on either side of the American Revolution. 

Masonic influences started the war, and Masonic connections tipped the balance toward the Revolutionary side. When the war was finally over, Masonry played the single most important role in creating the new nation. 

Chapter 5 

SMUGGLERS, PATRIOTS, AND MASONS 

On November 16, 1776, the first salute acknowledging the sovereignty of the United States of America was fired. It might have been fired by France, which was just days away from joining the fighters for the American colonies. It might have been fired by Spain, which was next in line and being wooed by American agents. Or it might have been fired by any number of European countries that wished to see Britain suffer a setback in its conquest of the world. But it wasn't. 

The shot was fired by the tiny Dutch possession of Saint Eustatius, an island in the Caribbean that was unknown at that time except to sea captains and traders, and is hardly known today despite the Caribbean's appeal to travelers. The shot was fired in reply to a national gun salute by the American brig Andrew Doria. While few have even heard of the tiny island commonly called Statia, it was pivotal in deciding the American Revolutionary War and, as a result, American independence. The Golden Rock, as the island was also called, was the central headquarters of a massive smuggling operation that had gone on throughout the century and that provided guns and ammunitions to the struggling Continental army. 

At a most critical time of the American Revolution, the British Admiral Rodney was in command of a fleet of British warships. He had been instructed to rendezvous with Cornwallis at Yorktown, where the British were dug in and waiting for reinforcements and supplies.

Rodney was responsible for bringing help to Cornwallis from his fleet and instructing the fleet in New York to bring more help. Had Rodney reached Virginia, the combined ragtag war-weary Americans and their new allies may not have succeeded. 

Rodney decided instead to punish the tiny island of Saint Eustatius. He later justified his action by claiming, "This rock of only six miles in length and three in breadth has done England more harm than all the arms of her most potent enemies, and alone supported the infamous American rebellion." Instead of speeding toward Virginia, Admiral Rodney took his time in attacking and then looting the island's hundreds of merchant ships and stores. The tiny "free" port, the home of smugglers of several nationalities, paid the price for aiding the American cause. It wasn't until 163 years later when the president of the United States, Franklin Roosevelt, a Dutchman by descent who was born into a family that was no stranger to the smuggling business, would honor the Dutch island for firing this first salute. A plaque honoring Saint Eustatius and its governor, Johannes de Graaff, who had ordered the salute, was presented. 

It is very possible that Saint Eustatius managed to play two roles: being one of the key supply depots of the war and providing Admiral Rodney with a diversion. The actions of the island may have caused Rodney to miss the most important role he might have played in the Revolution—as well as the ability to emerge from the battle with his wealth and prestige intact. It was no accident that Rodney was not present to save the war. 

There is no question that the Battle of Yorktown was the single most critical battle of the ten-year war. After Saratoga was lost by the British, the English public began to lose its appetite for a protracted war. Yorktown cinched victory for the Americans, and it was a true defeat of the British military, thanks in no small part to the French army and navy. It disheartened the English populace and finally tipped the scales in the Parliament. The surrender of Cornwallis accompanied to the tune of "The World Turned Upside Down," played by the military band as the army turned in its weapons, marks the beginning of the end of the war, although the peace treaty would have to wait another two years. It also marks the recognition of American independence. 

But the war that ended with the diversion provided by a smugglers' haven also started with an attempt to curb smuggling. 

LIBERTY SEIZED 

In May 1768 the Liberty, a sloop carrying a cargo of wine imported from Madeira, entered Boston Harbor. The captain told the customs agent, Thomas Kirk, that it contained twenty-five casks of wine, but the agent knew that the ship could carry much more cargo than declared. It was, after all, a ship belonging to John Hancock. The customs agent decided to look for himself. 

Once aboard the Liberty, Kirk was shoved into a cabin by a gang of men who then nailed the door shut. While the agent was locked on board, the ship was unloaded. When Kirk was released he was warned by another captain that his life and property were in danger should he ever open his mouth about what happened. He might have complied, except that the British warship Romney had also pulled into Boston Harbor. Kirk filed his report, accusing one of the city's most prosperous merchants of smuggling. 

The captain of the Romney landed troops, seized the Liberty, and towed her out to his own ship. He underestimated the anger of the Boston mob, however. One thousand men made their living because of the ambitious firm run by the Hancock family. They took to the streets armed with clubs. Their first targets were the customs agents. Several were beaten by the mob. One, Joseph Harrison, had his own boat at the wharf, which the mob burned. While the crowd stoned the customs house, the Madeira wine of John Hancock was safely removed from the docks.1 

It is no coincidence that Boston would become the headquarters of the American Revolution. Boston's economy, and in fact the economy of the entire eastern part of Massachusetts, depended on its maritime interests. The king of England depended on the income he could siphon off the business of trade, and he passed laws that hindered the profitability of trade. As a result Boston was also the epicenter of American smuggling. 

The resistance was financed by a handful of men including John Hancock, Josiah Quincy, Elbridge Gerry, James Bowdoin, and Richard Derby 2 Smuggling served as both the cause of and the solution to the problem. What would be regarded as free trade for the New England merchants was actually smuggling under the laws of Great Britain. The economic life of the colonies depended on breaking the laws. America became so adept at smuggling that it was the primary means of supplying itself for the long war. 

Britain had passed a series of laws over the course of the previous hundred years, starting in 1660 when the king put restrictions on certain commodities. Tobacco was the first smuggled item, and later molasses continued a lively business. In 1707 Parliament forbade any commerce that did not sail through Britain and sail out on a British ship. In 1733 the Molasses Act closed the loopholes that allowed the Caribbean trade, as well as trading with the French.Virtually all trade in molasses was illegal under British maritime trade rules, although they were rarely enforced. 

A commodity such as sugar cost 30 percent more from a British island in the Caribbean than in a French-controlled island. In fact, the available sugar produced for export in the British West Indies was not enough to keep the Rhode Island distillery business supplied. On the other hand, a ship loaded with lumber from New England would not find enough of a market among the British islands. Trading with the Dutch and French was a necessity made illegal by regulation. 

The Molasses Act, which specifically targeted the rum and sugar trade, appeared to New England merchants as intentionally designed to aid the British West Indies plantations at the expense of the New England merchants. But from the English king's viewpoint, he was merely treating American merchants equally. He regarded merchants as ripe for the plucking. In fact, American merchants were possibly better protected at sea than were English merchants at home. 

The merchants of the newly formed colonies would steadily accept their positions as smugglers as the law became entirely counterproductive to business. Those who complied were soon out of business; those who defied the law succeeded. For the people seeking freedom from religious persecution, necessity brought such changes. The colonists were already persecuted by the very nature of their religion, so being on the wrong side of the trade laws mattered little. 

The Huguenots in Europe had already made a very strong presence in the ranks of the merchant traders. They were often French, but under constant threat of the Catholic monarchy, they were a mobile population. Exiled for years in the Netherlands, they became allied with Walloon-speaking peoples, and together they migrated across the Atlantic. 

The anti-Rome reaction that later became known as the Reformation began long before Martin Luther. The Cathar movement in the south of France had been more of a threat to Rome than Islam represented. The Cathari believed in a purity in which man and woman shared in directly relating to God. This purity was made possible without a patriarchal hierarchy of priests, bishops, cardinals, and popes. To the papacy the threat of losing power and the implied threat of loss of revenue produced by Church taxes were more important than the armies of Islam. The purists Cathari took as their symbol the dove, which even in Catholic art represents knowledge. The same Gnostic sentiment was shared by the Knights Templar. Their worship of an alleged severed head called Baphomet was actually an appreciation of wisdom, or sophia in the Greek translation. Although under torture some Templars confessed to worshiping a severed head, there is no proof of its existence. 

When the pope decided the Cathari would be the victims of a crusade, he had to get support from England; the Templars of France had refused. Ironically, the Templars, who were supposed to take direction only from the pope, fought against their master. The end for the Cathari came at the siege of Montsegur, where Templar knights defended the Cathari until their surrender.

While both the Templars and the Cathari were victims of the Church, the tradition of a more humanistic Cathar religion continued. The blood of the Cathar defenders watered the soil of southern and western France, and when the seed of the reformers was planted three centuries later, it bore the most abundant fruit in those lands. Both the Templars and the Cathari carried their ideas into exile into nearby Switzerland, and this group of cantons became a country that protected the reform movement. 

Although Martin Luther of Germany and John Calvin of France, who were both exiled to Switzerland, were better known for the Reformation, it had begun earlier among the populace of France. Hughes Besancon, a preacher, may have gave his name to the people of the Reformation, the Huguenots. They were often more than just spiritual descendants of the earlier attempts at reforming Christianity. The Templar eight-sided cross became the cross of Languedoc and subsequently the Huguenot cross. Combined with the descending dove, the symbolism of the cross and dove is hard to miss. 

THE TEMPLE AND THE CROSS 

As a large contingent of French Templars had survived in what would become Switzerland, it is not surprising that the Protestant Reformation, under leaders like John Calvin, would find refuge in Switzerland at the same time that the religious revolution was spreading rapidly through France and into England. Within twenty years of Calvin's proselytizing, Huguenots were established in France; in Kent, England; in the Channel Islands; and in the New World. The reaction to the conversion was equally swift. 

In 1545 Protestants were massacred—often burned at the stake—in twenty-two towns. It seemed like the anti-Cathar crusade was starting all over again. The powers behind the original Knights Templar were often found on both sides of the reform movement. The Guise family, which owned the border state of Lorraine, were militant Catholics. The duc de Guise instigated anti-Huguenot massacres and toppled any peaceful initiatives that the French king attempted. 

When Charles IX became king of France, the Queen Mother, Catherine de Medici, controlled France. While she was allied with the Guise family, there was no peace. Through the century the Christian-versus-Christian wars worsened, highlighted by high-level assassinations and ultimately the St. Bartholomew's Day Massacre, where tens of thousands of Huguenots were slaughtered. Finally Henry of Navarre became king. He owed his political survival to the Huguenots but needed to remain Catholic to be king. He could appease both groups by bringing peace and religious tolerance to France with the Edict of Nantes in 1598. Religious freedom was granted in degrees to Christians in seventy five towns. By this time the port of La Rochelle, once a Templar stronghold, was now a Huguenot stronghold. Reportedly the Catholic mass was not said for forty years in La Rochelle. 

The cross of Lorraine and the eight-pointed Maltese cross came to represent both sides of the religious conflict. To the Huguenots the cross with a descending dove represented the freedom to seek God through individual knowledge. To the Catholic orders, such as the Knights of Saint John, the same cross represented the feudal order in which the Church and the king were the masters. 

The protection granted under the Edict of Nantes was suddenly revoked a century later, and fifty thousand families fled France for their safety. The Huguenots were a mobile population, but they were also highly organized in lodges or guilds. They would dominate many industries, such as thread and lace making, glassmaking, and cloth manufacturing. With no homeland, many took to the sea as merchants and traders. As merchants they were under threat of both piracy and English customs; many turned to piracy, to smuggling, and to the Americas. The Huguenots were among the largest groups to settle both French Canada and English America. From Nova Scotia to Boston, New York, the ports of the Carolinas, and even south to Florida, Huguenots escaped the volatile climate of Europe. 

The colonies of the New World did not always offer the freedoms desired, but religious and social prejudice was minor in comparison to the repressive religious wars of the Continent. Economic repression became the threat to the colonists' newfound prosperity. The series of laws designed to raise the king's taxes or protect his friends, such as the British East India Company, affected the colonies—some more than others. 

MERCHANTS AND SMUGGLERS 

For Virginia the laws weren't much of a detriment, as the state's products were shipped directly to markets in England. New England in general, including Boston, was self-sufficient in comparison, a mercantilist entity that had the materials and manpower to build ships and trade with the world. The currency of the time reflects just how important trade was. The most common currency in New England was the Spanish dollar, the famous piece of eight. While many currencies traded hands, including money from France, the Netherlands, and Portugal, they were all valued against the Spanish dollar. 

Merchants who understood their business profited from the unworkable policies and unenforceable rules. A typical starting point was the British-owned island of Saint Kitts, which specialized in false British documents. On Saint Kitts a captain could pay a cash-only fee to secure the necessary documents showing that his cargo was sold in a British port. From Saint Kitts he would then take the cargo to whichever foreign island paid the best for his commodity. 

Trade with foreign nations was so ingrained in New England that smuggling was just a natural consequence. The restrictive laws, enacted one after another, were hardly enforced, as Britain did not have the means. Customs agents in general were receptive to bribes, as were many officials. The numerous ships of the Boston merchants carried restricted items such as gunpowder, paper, and luxury goods along with bulk commodities like sugar, molasses, and spirits aboard the same ships as those carrying legal commodities. 

The damage done was twofold. The British presented arbitrary rules that were apparently designed to sacrifice the interests of some to the interests of others. The Americans, an apparently principled people,  were developing a deeper disrespect for the law. By the time of the Revolution, smuggling had been a way of life for two generations. 

John Faneuil, whose name is immortalized in Boston's Faneuil Hall, was a French Huguenot whose fortune was built on disobeying the laws of the absentee government. He was a Freemason at a time when most Masons belonged to lodges that were composed of people in similar trades. Faneuil lodge consisted of sea captains and merchants. John Hancock was another merchant, shipowner, Mason, and smuggler. 

John Hancock was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, in 1737. He was seven when his father died, so he was sent to live with his uncle Thomas. Thomas, an apprentice bookbinder, had married into one of New England's wealthiest merchant families, and as a result became rich himself. While he claimed he was in the whale-oil business, he did much better than other legal commodity merchants. The whale-oil business was one of the few legal trading businesses in which a person could sell to Britain and get cash, in the form of sterling, rather than trade credits, which depended on the solvency of other houses. 

Thomas Hancock's ships carried foodstuffs to Newfoundland, then took on whale oil in exchange and sailed for England. Others, however, engaged in the same trade, and because of the volatility in the prices of these commodities, the merchants would not always do well. Hancock had a larger house, dressed in a more dignified style than his fellow merchants, and was rapidly building a small navy of trading ships. 

Hancock's secret was that he was importing tea from Saint Eustatius. He had his agents in England, in the Netherlands, and on the island that came to be called the Golden Rock. A Hancock ship would sail south to the Dutch port on Saint Eustatius with legally exported items and return with contraband. Hancock maintained a high degree of secrecy aboard his ships to avoid attracting attention. His men were cautioned never to speak of their business, and were not allowed to write home to their wives. 

As a smuggler, Hancock was also a visionary. Most likely he received news of Europe through his agents in various ports. When he came to the conclusion that war in Europe would spread to the colonies, he anticipated the profits it could bring from importing arms.3 During the French and Indian Wars, the poorly supplied British troops came to Hancock's firm to buy munitions. 

Hancock's sudden rise in wealth thanks to sound business practices— and illegal trading practices—eventually brought him attention. While his contemporaries were mystified by Hancock's wealth, the governor, Thomas Hutchinson, was not. But finding proof was another issue. 

Thanks to the wealth of Thomas Hancock and his firm, his nephew John, whom he adopted, was sent to Harvard and graduated to a partnership in the company. Thomas died in 1764, and John inherited the business. Today the value of his inheritance is estimated at more than $100 million.4 While not yet thirty, John Hancock was at the helm of a thriving business.5 He emulated his uncle in every way; he valued his ostentatious home, he rode in a fine carriage, and he made his money in the smuggling business. 

One of the goods Hancock smuggled was tea. With the opening of trade in China, Americans, like their British cousins, became addicted to the exotic beverage. The colonists drank an estimated six million pounds of tea per year. In 1773 Hancock supplied one million pounds. It was, of course, good business, but although it was very profitable, it was also illegal. The British East India Company was given a monopoly over the tea business, and as coincidence would have it, Thomas Hutchinson, the acting governor of Massachusetts, was an investor in the company. In fact, he committed all his capital to company shares.6 In addition, his pay was linked to how much tax he collected on the tea. 

The British East India Company was the second largest British financial institution, second only to the Bank of England. It was also near bankruptcy, as it had not managed to addict China to opium yet. The company set the price of tea at three shillings a pound, compared with the two shillings a pound set by the Dutch. The company so important to the British aristocracy then had the British government ban all other tea. It was a move that served only to make smuggling profitable and to pit the governor of Massachusetts against her wealthy citizens, who rose to the occasion.

Hancock remained a member of the Grand Lodge for a year, and when he received his inheritance he returned to a Grand Lodge, mingling with people of similar newfound merchant status. His business, however, depended on the labor of the dockworkers and shipbuilders, warehousemen and carpenters, so he could not separate himself completely from the common men of Boston. Hancock remained close to Sam Adams, who had the ear of the worker populace on which Hancock prospered. Carefully treading his way in both circles was a necessity, and when it came time to putting his workers between himself and the British law, Hancock didn't hesitate. 

If Hancock's motivation for rebelling against the crown seemed only monetary, he was fortunate to meet men whose motivations were political. 

SAMUEL ADAMS 

Sam Adams was born in Boston. His father, Samuel Sr., was a pillar of the community and was called the Deacon. He was a merchant who owned a wharf, he was a brewer, and he was an investor in land and property. His high status did not keep him above renting houses that were used as brothels. However, young Sam had grown up with an aversion to sin; he didn't smoke or drink. Born into a family of twelve children, he enrolled in Harvard at age fourteen and placed fifth in his graduating class of twenty-two scholars. 

High standards did not mean great fortune for the son of the Deacon. Samuel Sr. had lost one third of his money in the early 1740s as a result of a currency crisis. Sam Jr., who was studying law at the time, had to leave school. He waited tables. He went to work in a counting house but left the position by mutual consent with the owner. He borrowed £1,000 to start a business, but it failed and the debt remained. Adams then went to work in his father's brewery. But it appeared that Sam Jr. was not career bound; he dressed badly, often wearing the same clothes for days. He had no money, and whatever money he occasionally had he forgot to carry with him. He had few prospects. 

Adams did have a strong sense of values, in both personal life and political affairs. When he was not allowed entry in the Caucus Club, which dominated political affairs, he started his own. While the Caucus Club appealed to the wealthy shipowners and merchants like Thomas Hancock, Sam Adams club allowed in the dockworker and the mill worker. Within his circle were the Loyal Nine, who would manipulate mobs, sometimes by simply putting up signs all over Boston to bring out the mobs the next day. Sam Adams was not a Freemason, but his circles overlapped with Masonic groups and his own secretive cells. He manipulated Masons, dockworkers, shipwrights, and shipowners for his cause. 

When Sam Jr. was twenty-six, his father died. Sam inherited the brewery, as well as enough money to pay off his debts. He also had enough money to get married; the next year he wed Elizabeth Checkley. But the idyllic life didn't last long. Adams's poor management of the brewery caused the firm to fail. 

Adams was elected tax collector of Boston a short time later, a job that would last until he was forty-seven. It was, however, not a pleasant career. He was accused of malfeasance, sued several times, and almost lost his own property at auction. His failing was his inability to collect from many people, as Boston had suffered severe recessions that kept many unemployed, yet Adams would still count them as having paid. His crime, according to one biographer, was being kind hearted, although at the same time he was considered a poor handler of money. 

When Elizabeth died, Adams was at least solvent enough to marry a second time. In 1764 he owned a home, received income from the wharf, and had a new wife, two children, and a Newfoundland dog that had acquired a hatred for anyone in a British uniform. If his personal financial status was rocky at best, Adams's political thesis always remained solid. He believed the loss of a single liberty was the first step to enslavement. He would never back down from this ideal, even when other Revolutionary War leaders modified their own thinking after liberty had been achieved. He wrote that every man had the right to life, liberty, and property, as well as the right to support and defend such rights. While most of Boston's merchants were going around the laws of England, Adams believed in confronting the laws. Three years before the Liberty was seized in Boston's port, Adams and John Hancock had started a letter-writing campaign to fight the Stamp Act. 

The meeting of Adams and Hancock may be one of the most critical events of the war for independence. Hancock provided the money to keep Adams's political clubs afloat while Adams validated the ideals and enlisted the mobs that would make sure everyone heard about them. Following the Stamp Act, an Adams-incited mob from the waterfront attacked the Admiralty Court and attempted to destroy all its records. Then it turned on the home of Justice Hutchinson, who years earlier had outlawed paper money, bringing ruin to many including Adams's father. A Sam Adams editorial the next day condemned mob violence and pointed out the unfairness of the Stamp Act. In the editorial he called the mobs the Sons of Liberty, naming them after a speech in the English Parliament by Isaac Barre sympathizing with the American cause. Chapters of the Sons of Liberty were then started in every city in the North. 

When the Liberty was seized, Sam Adams again aroused the mobs, telling them, "If you are men, behave like men."7 He also started a celebration to commemorate three years of resistance to the Stamp Act. Free beer flowed thanks to his brewery. But even as Adams was responsible for inciting the mobs, he and a handful of patriot leaders later negotiated peace. Hancock was acquitted of smuggling charges and the mobs went unpunished. This rebellion, along with a general boycott of British goods in Boston and Philadelphia, led to the repeal of the Townshend Acts, but Britain would still quarter troops in Boston. 

Although the situation quieted, the mobs were given plenty of fodder for future riots. While the officers of the British were welcomed in Tory homes, the common man had no room for the common soldier. Bar brawls and street fights were started among commoners, and many British soldiers deserted as a result of the harsh treatment and the hostile daily life. 

Two years after the Liberty affair, a mob armed with snowballs containing rocks went after the British. The fight resulted in gunfire from the redcoats, and four Bostonians were killed. As was Adams's style, the confrontation was orchestrated; three days before the incident, posters appeared informing that the British would be attacking townspeople. Adams's newspaper had been publishing incidents of boys being roughed up by soldiers and of rape committed by the occupying army. The day of the massacre church bells all over Boston rang to alert people that something was happening. Adams would dub the incident the Boston Massacre, a name that has survived in the history books. 

Remarkably, the patriots again brokered the peace. John Adams, who had defended John Hancock in the Liberty incident, defended the captain of the British soldiers in the Boston Massacre. 

The confrontations worked, but even after repealing the Townshend Acts, the king of England decided not to lose face and keep the exclusive right of the British East India Company to sell tea to America. He would also appoint just which agents could import the tea in America. The colonies responded by boycotting tea. Consumption of tea dropped dramatically. In 1769 the colonies had imported tea costing 900,000 pounds sterling, a figure that dropped to 237,000 pounds sterling three years later. This drop of almost 75 percent did not help the British East India Company, which was nearly bankrupt. The king decided that the tea would be forced on the colonies. 

In October 1773 Philadelphia was first to hold meetings and appoint a committee to challenge the authority of the king and the British East India Company. They forced the British tea agents to resign. In November meetings in Boston attempted to force a similar action, but the colonial governor was opposed to their resignation. Three ships sailed into Boston Harbor, and despite the colonists' refusal to unload them, Governor Hutchinson demanded that the city pay the tax on the tea aboard the ships, even if they sailed away unloaded. 

Sam Adams addressed a crowd of eight thousand to rally the opposition to the tea tax, but that was just part of the plan. At the Green Dragon Tavern, later called Freemasons Hall, Saint Andrew's Lodge and other groups, some clandestine, would meet. While the Masonic groups 114 The Lodge and the Revolution were aboveboard and signed in at every meeting, other groups such as the Committee of Correspondence, the North End Caucus, and the Sons of Liberty (with their core group, the Loyal Nine) could not always afford to be so open. The Freemasons, which was an ancient order-chartered lodge, had the largest and most open membership, and often membership overlapped between it and other organizations. The North End Caucus consisted of the wealthier shipowners; the Masons were more a working-class group. 

Adams and his Sons of Liberty decided to dress up as Mohawks and board the British tea ships. They cracked open ten thousand pounds' worth of Darjeeling tea and dumped it into the water. The night of the event, which became known as the Boston Tea Party, was a regular lodge-meeting night. Only five members showed up for the meeting, however, signing their names and leaving a notation in the book that the meeting would not be held on account of the lack of attendance. These members were most likely Tories or were at least opposed to the planned activity, and their signatures would possibly serve as alibis. At least twelve of the thirty known "Mohawks" were Saint Andrew's Lodge members, although Sam Adams was not, and twelve more would join the lodge after the Tea Party. At a time when the Modern Lodges were often Whig and Protestant and the ancient lodges were more Tory, Stuart-leaning, and often even Catholic, the ancient lodge of Saint Andrew's defied the classification of American Masonry. 

Sam Adams was the one to be contended with, and the king knew it. In a late attempt to stop the resistance, Adams was visited by General Gage, who, on behalf of King George, offered Adams a deal he wasn't supposed to be able to refuse. The choice was to make peace with the king and be paid for backing down or to risk the wrath of the king. Adams's reply was, "Sir, I trust I have long since made my peace with the King of kings."The Sons of Liberty sent New England horsemen south to the other colonies, posting handbills with a skull and crossbones warning them of the British reaction.8 

Adams, while not a Mason, displayed the traditional ideals of the craft: liberty, fraternity, and equality. Meanwhile Hancock, a Mason, an elitist who favored a class structure even within the craft, was an active attendee of both a modern and an ancient lodge. A third brand of Masonry was also developing in the Americas: the Military Lodge. 

THE MILITARY LODGE 

Shortly after the Grand Lodge went public in the early eighteenth century, Freemasonry began to grow in both the colonies and the English army. Within the army the "lodge" was now mobile and the paraphernalia of Masonry carried by the regiment. The commander of a unit was typically the master of the lodge, and both officers and common soldiers were brought together by the brotherhood of the lodge. It often allowed the common-born to advance in rank to officers, an option not available before becoming a lodge brother. Commissions of officers were still purchased, but the commander would frequently lend the candidate the funds for his commission. 

The Irish Grand Lodge, not the English Grand Lodge, authorized the military field lodges. In 1754 the French and Indian Wars began as a result of French and English hostilities in Europe. The population of the colonies had been growing by leaps and bounds, due to immigration from Scotland and Ireland. The new lands offered an escape from the religious war and from post-Culloden persecution, and provided a way to increase one's standing in the world. Many served in the military specifically for the social advancement, and it was no secret that being admitted into a lodge was the ticket—and not just for the common soldier. 

Jeffrey Amherst began his career in the military during the War of Austrian Succession. His military prowess earned him recognition, but by the end of that war he was a middling officer without the prospect of advancement. Although he had been aide-de-camp to General John Ligonier, Amherst was serving as a procurement officer. The outbreak of war gave Ligonier the chance to recommend his protege for a position, yet Amherst did not have the funds to buy a commission. The  funds were loaned by Lionel Sackville, the First Duke of Dorset. Sackville's two sons were very active in Masonry; Charles Sackville founded a lodge in Italy and was a close friend of Sir Francis Dashwood, and George Sackville was a regimental lodge master who would later become the grand master of the Irish Grand Lodge. With the help of friends in high places, Amherst was put in charge of the siege of Louisbourg in Nova Scotia. Amherst's victory at Louisbourg and Ticonderoga and his efforts in attacking Montreal led him to the position of commander of all the British forces in the colonies.

Wherever Amherst served he established a field lodge, and his influence grew because of his military exploits. Amherst was one of the earliest commanders to establish the different fighting methods that would work well in the Americas. Instead of two opposing regiments simply picking away at each other, the new tactics of sharpshooting, camouflage, skirmishing, and scouting were employed in the heavily wooded hills of Pennsylvania and New York. Under Amherst's command many of America's prominent Revolutionary War heroes received their training. These included Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold, who fought at Ticonderoga; Israel Putnam, who later would be the hero of Bunker Hill; Charles Lee, who participated in the attack on Montreal; and the New York patrician Philip Schuyler.9 Amherst captured Louisbourg, Ticonderoga, and finally Montreal in 1760 in the coup that would cause France to admit defeat and sue for peace. 

Amherst was not the only high-ranking military officer to spread Freemasonry throughout the English forces in America. Under his command was Lieutenant Colonel John Young, who fought at Louisbourg and Quebec. Young had been appointed deputy grand master of the Scottish Lodge by William St. Clair of Rosslyn. In 1757 Young was the provincial grand master for all the Scottish lodges in America and the West Indies. He was succeeded by Augustine Prevost, who became grand master of all the warranted lodges in the British army that were Scottish Rite.10 From Amherst to Young, Prevost, and further down the command, the Temple and the Lodge systems show how junior officers have been promoted and subsequently put in charge of lodges that would later dominate Canadian provinces. 

When the American Revolution broke out, many high-ranking British Masons refused to play a role in defeating the American colonists. Sir Jeffrey Amherst turned down a command. Because the Freemasons fought on both sides of the war and Tory-leaning Masons even attended the Green Dragon Tavern in Boston, it is not possible to reach the conclusion that a massive Masonic conspiracy was responsible for the defeat of the British. However, numerous minor conspiracies swirled that certainly thwarted the British military effort. 

Between the Boston Tea Party and the outbreak of war, the groups that Samuel Adams created built up a guerrilla movement that operated from the inner core, the Loyal Nine, and spread to other cells. From there a militia was created and munitions were obtained in secrecy and kept hidden. English intelligence was active too, and soon the English decided to seize the munitions and the patriot leaders. They sent troops into the countryside. The famous "one if by land, two if by sea" warning was given by Paul Revere, a descendant of a French Huguenot family and a master craftsman and a Mason. 

War broke out on April 19, 1775, when the Massachusetts militia, alerted by Revere, attempted to head off an advance guard of British troops. This first battle of Lexington and Concord would go down in history as "the shot heard round the world." Three weeks later Ethan Allen and Mason Benedict Arnold captured Fort Ticonderoga in New York to obtain badly needed supplies and ammunition. In June the Battle of Bunker Hill exposed the weaknesses of both sides. The British "won" the battle at a tremendous cost, leading many to question the motives of General Gage, who could have cut off the Americans from reinforcements and didn't, and General Howe, who had let the American forces withdraw intact. 

The American forces had their own doubts as well. Men were not brought into battle at critical times, the command structure was a shambles, there was a lack of discipline among the soldiers, and there were inadequate supplies or inadequate means of getting the supplies to where they were needed. Among some of the militia, officers were elected, and at critical moments the soldiers huddled together to decide their plan. 

Two days before Bunker Hill, John Adams decided that the colonists needed a "Continental Army" and a commander. His choice for the latter was George Washington. Within days the Continental Congress appointed Washington general and commander in chief of the American army. 

looks like Washington has the

Hapsburg jaw?

George Washington was initiated into Masonry on November 4, 1752, at the age of twenty, in the lodge at Fredericksburg, Virginia. His entrance fee was a steep twenty-three pounds sterling, an amount the average man would be unable to afford. But Washington was not an average man, and although his lodge was an ancient lodge, it still attracted men of greater means. George Washington's life seemed set for that of a modest landowner until 1752, when his brother died. George had looked up to his brother, Lawrence, who had sailed to the West Indies under the command of Admiral Edward Vernon (the namesake of Mount Vernon) to fight the Spanish. When Lawrence suggested George take a seaman's job, their mother prevented him. His brother's family, however, was soon hit with tragedy: Lawrence's three children succumbed to tuberculosis. George went to Barbados with Lawrence in the hopes of alleviating his brother's condition, but the climate change did not help and Lawrence soon died too. 

Through inheritance George's landholdings grew to 2,500 acres.11 Through marriage he would add another 17,500 acres, increasing both his wealth and his social standing. He rose quickly in his lodge as well, attaining the rank of Master Mason within a year. But it was an ancient lodge and not particularly influential. 

From his brother George had stood to inherit a military rank, that of the colony's adjutant general. The position was divided into three, and George was forced to lobby for a lower rank. He intended to use the position as a starting point and quickly volunteered for action against the French. On his first expedition against the French he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and he was made second in command for another expedition. The driven young commander, who constantly set plans and rules for himself in writing, had broken from the rules of his family. He was a natural leader because of his impressive bearing and his understanding that keeping a certain distance encouraged respect from his men. From his earliest time in the military George looked to his Masonic brothers to fill positions of importance. He brought a Dutch interpreter from his Fredericksburg lodge on his next expedition against the French. This Masonic brother, however, would let Washington down after the loss of Fort Necessity.12 

Negotiating the terms of surrender of the fort was difficult because of the language barrier between the French and American commanders. The interpreter rushed through a document in the rain, and since it was poorly translated, it appeared to frame the English not only as the provocateurs but also as assassins. The French had already claimed the English were the aggressors, and Washington's initial foray was unprovoked. Washington was then put under review and demoted. When he went to war he would go back to the Fredericksburg lodge only once, instead becoming active in the military lodges. 

Before long, another engagement in the French and Indian Wars allowed Washington's bravery to shine through and restored his briefly tarnished reputation. The war had spread to Europe and claimed nearly one million military casualties. The loss of pounds sterling was equally distressing to England, which raised taxes. Unable to collect the necessary taxes at home, Parliament turned to the colonies. The series of repressive measures that would lead to the seizure of the Liberty, John Hancock's ship, and to the beginning of revolution in Boston had their roots in the actions of the French and English wars from years earlier. 

Washington returned home from war to live the life of a country gentleman. He was elected to the House of Burgesses on his third try— possibly because of his engagement to the wealthy widow Martha Dandridge Custis. Her 17,500 acres did much to increase his social standing, and there is evidence that this is what the young military officer sought in a marriage. Just before settling down, he visited another young heiress, Eliza Philipse, for the last time. She was one of the inheritors of a real-estate empire built by the profits earned from supporting  piracy. Washington had been courting Philipse for a while before her family's Tory stance distanced them from the Washington family, which was decidedly Whig. 

While Boston's ancient lodges often represented the more common working man, Virginia's lodges usually leaned toward the aristocratic elite. Washington himself was no exception. When Washington's stepson John Parke Custis attended Kings College in New York, the boy ate with the faculty—a privilege not granted to any other student.13 

After Washington was appointed military commander, he immediately set out to create a real army. He asked the men of the various militia groups to commit to an enlistment of one year, only to discover that few were willing. In fact, the entire Connecticut militia decided to head home. Washington wrote, "Such a dirty, mercenary spirit pervades."14 He then turned to his Masonic brethren for officers. He hoped that the unity found in the lodge system could be brought to the ragtag continentals. According to Lafayette, Washington "never willingly gave independent command to officers who were not Freemasons." At least twelve of the generals in Washington's army were Masons.15 

Washington first looked for candidates from his own Fredericksburg Lodge, later called the No. 4 Lodge, from which he appointed several of his commanders. General Hugh Mercer of Virginia, who would die of wounds at Princeton, was a Mason in the Fredericksburg Lodge. Brigadier General William Woodford was a member of the same lodge, while Brigadier General George Weedon was made a Mason at the Port Royal Kilwinning Cross Lodge, which was affiliated with Fredericksburg. Brigadier General Paul Muhlenberg, who was a member of the Royal Arch Lodge No. 3 of Philadelphia, was also from Virginia. 

The British gave Washington a year to put together a fighting force. Why they had not pursued the weak and non-unified colonials in New England is one of the major questions of the American Revolution. Instead they abandoned New England and made brief inconsequential forays elsewhere in the colonies. Washington anticipated that New York City was where the British would attempt to get serious, and he was right. A massive fighting force of thirty-two thousand troops, the largest the colonies had ever seen, was on its way to New York. 

Washington had fortified Brooklyn Heights, only to be faced with a force that threatened to end the war in one fell swoop. While Washington made a mistake by positioning his troops with their backs to the water, fishermen and sailors from Massachusetts rescued 9,500 men by ferrying them to Manhattan. At the same time, General Howe stopped his advance and sipped tea for two hours in Murray Hill at the residence of Mrs. Robert Murray. Washington continued his retreat to White Plains, then across the Hudson to Fort Lee and west across New Jersey. The British followed slowly. 

The British clearly had the advantage: a superior land army complete with nine thousand foreign mercenaries, a large navy, ample supplies, a large treasury to buy more supplies, and even a large loyalist population, the Tories, who aided their efforts. The Americans had an inferior force, no navy, inadequate supplies, and no means to buy more. Their own population had divided loyalties, as did their leaders. So how did the Continental army defeat the British? The war was won by the efforts of a handful of men, often bound by Masonic ties and sometimes united by religious events, often operating illegally and almost always acting in a self-serving way. In the end the crowning achievement, victory at Yorktown, was accomplished by an audacious act of bribery that was not atypical of the times. 

next

FRANKLIN AND THE MASONIC UNDERGROUND

notes

Part Two: Introduction 

1. Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, The Temple and the Lodge (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1989), p. 174. 

2. Ibid., p. 143. 

3. William Bramley, The Gods of Eden (New York: Avon Books, 1989), p. 228. 

4. Ibid., p. 276. 

5. Steven C. Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social Order 1730-1840 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), p. 46. 

Chapter 5 

1. A. J. Langguth, Patriots: The Men Who Started the American Revolution (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), pp. 95-7. 

2. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Maritime History of Massachusetts 1783-1860 (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1921), pp. 27-8. 

3. Herbert Allen, John Hancock: Patriot in Purple (New York: Macmillan, 1948), pp. 61-9. 4. Robert Leckie, George Washington's War: The Saga of the American Revolution (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), p. 53. 

5. Michael Klepper and Robert Gunther, The Wealthy 100: From Benjamin Franklin to Bill Gates: A Ranking of the Richest Americans, Past and Present (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1996), pp. 191-3. 

6. Langguth, p. 179. 

7. Paul Lewis, The Great Incendiary: A Biography of Samuel Adams (New York: Dial Press, 1973), chapter 9. 

8. Ellis, p. 155. 

9. Baigent and Leigh, p. 209. 

10. Ibid., p. 116. 

11. Langguth, p. 294. 

12. Christopher Hibbert, Redcoats and Rebels (New York: W. W. Norton, 1990), pp. 64-75. 

13. Bullock, p. 79. 

14. Baigent and Leigh, pp. 260-2. 

15. Robert Hieronimus, America's Secret Destiny: Spiritual Vision and the Founding of a Nation (Rochester, Vt.: Destiny Books, 1989), p. 26.