Chris Earnshaw: Author

Modern Speculative Freemasonry was born at a Lodge meeting at the Rummer and Grapes Tavern, later moving to the Horn Tavern. The first three Grand Masters had changed the existing Operative Mason’s rituals in some way, and the only way to find out what those changes were, was to compare the current ritual to the bits of ritual that exist prior to the establishment of the Premier Grand Lodge in 1717, the event Masonic scholar Albert Pike calls the “Revival.”  The allure of researching the early days of Freemasonry is that we can learn about the objectives of the first three Grand Masters, and thus answer some or all of the following questions:

•  Why the Lodge at the Horn Tavern was so different from the other three Lodges whose “Constitution is Immemorial.”
• What was the secret scroll owned by a librarian at the University of Oxford that might hold the formula for alchemy’s ultimate prize, the Philosophers’ Stone?
•  Why valuable documents were destroyed during the early days of the Grand Lodge of England.
•  How did the son of the only “black” queen of England become Freemasonry’s first royal Grand Master?
•  Why the Bishop of London treated Pocahontas as “visiting royalty,” and what became of her?
•  Who was the Chinese mandarin, who may hold the secret to one of the degrees?
•  Why a rival “Chinese” secret society tried to bring down Freemasonry.

This book answers these questions, and many more!