A Finding List: Part 3.

Elizabethan Facts and Historical References

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Mackey Albert’s opinion on Bacon In Albert G. Mackey’s An Encyclopaedia Of Freemasonry And Its Kindred Sciences (1874), there is no name reference on Shaksper or Shakespeare; only on Bacon, and here it is:

Bacon, Francis. Baron of Verulam, commonly called Lord Bacon. Nicolai thinks that a great impulse was exercised upon the early history of Freemasonry by The New Atlantis of Lord Bacon. In this learned romance Bacon supposes that a vessel lands on an unknown island, called Bensalem, over which a certain King Solomon reigned in days of yore. This King had a large establishment, which was called the House of Solomon, or the College of the workmen of six days, namely, the days of the creation. He afterwards describes the immense apparatus which was there employed in physical researches.
There were, says he, deep grottoes and towers for the successful observation of certain phenomena of nature; artificial mineral waters; large buildings, in which meteors, the wind, thunder, and rain were imitated; extensive botanic gardens; entire fields, in which all kinds of animals were collected, for the study of their instincts and habits; houses filled with all the wonders of nature and art; a great number of learned men, each of whom, in his own country, had the direction of these things; they made journeys and observations; they wrote, they collected, they determined results, and deliberated together as to what was proper to be published and what concealed.
This romance became at once very popular, and everybody’s attention was attracted by the allegory of the House of Solomon. But it also contributed to spread Bacon’s views on experimental knowledge, and led afterwards to the institution of the Royal Society, to which Nicolai attributes a common object with that of the Society of Freemasons, established, he says, about the same time, the difference being only that one was esoteric and the other exoteric in its instructions. But the more immediate effect of the romance of Bacon was the institution of the Society of Astrologers, of which Elias Ashmole was a leading member.
Of this society Nicolai, in his work on the Origin and History of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, says: “Its object was to build the House of Solomon, of the New Atlantis, in the literal sense, but the establishment was to remain as secret as the island of Bensalem; that is to say, they were to be engaged in the study of nature; but the instruction of its principles was to remain in the society in an esoteric form. These philosophers presented their idea in a strictly allegorical method.
First, there were the ancient columns of Hermes, by which iamblichus pretended that he had enlightened all the doubts of Porphyry. You then mounted, by several steps, to a chequered floor, divided into four regions, to denote the four superior sciences; after which came the types of the six days’ work, which expressed the object of the society, and which were the same as those found on an engraved stone in my possession. The sense of all which was this: God created the world, and preserves it by fixed principles, full of wisdom; he who seeks to know these principles (that is to say, the interior of nature) approximates to God, and he who thus approximates to God obtains from his grace the power of commanding nature.
This society met at Masons’ Hall in Basinghall Street, because many of its members were also members of the Masons’ Company, into which they all afterwards entered and assumed the name of Free and Accepted Masons, and thus he traces the origin of the Order to the New Atlantis and the House of Solomon of Lord Bacon.
It is only a theory, but it seems to throw some light on that long process of incubation which terminated at last, in 1717, in the production of the Grand Lodge of England. The connection of Ashmole with the Masons is a singular one, and has led to some controversy. The views of Nicolai, if not altogether correct, may suggest the possibility of an explanation. Certain it is that the eminent astrologers.

Magna Carta In the historical drama of King John Shakespeare does not mention Magna Charta, the granting of which was the great event of the reign. The fair inference may be that he was not in sympathy with such a movement. Francis Bacon also in all his writings does not allude to the subject. He despised the people and thought them unworthy of taking any part in public affairs. He stood inflexibly, even against the nobles, for the royal prerogatives. Any attempt to extort concessions from a King by force was his special abhorrence.

Manuscript play of Sir Thomas More The manuscript play of Sir Thomas More, now the Harleian MS., 7368 in the British Museum, has been identified as the work of the Elizabethan playwright Anthony Munday. The manuscript was first edited from the Harleian MS., by Alexander Dyce, for the Shakespeare Society, in 1844. The chief value of his edition consists in the fact that he used the MS., before it had been repaired, and that therefore it is the authority for those portions of the text, which have since become illegible. Other editions have been issued by Mr. A. F. Hopkinson (privately printed) in 1902, and by Mr. C. F. T. Brooke, in his Shakespeare Apocrypha in 1908. But the edition by Dr. W. W. Greg, printed for the Malone Society in 1911, holds the field. With infinite pains the editor has scrupulously revised the text and has determined and criticized, most successfully, the several handwritings found in the MS. The entire MS., has been reproduced in collotype in the Tudor Facsimile Texts by Mr. J. S. Farmer in 1910. Spedding claimed it, both as regards composition and handwriting, to Shakespeare being more experienced and better qualified to hazard an opinion on the handwriting, but, not being an expert, he confines his remarks to recognition by general impression: that the writing “is a hand which answers to all we know about Shakespeare’s. It agrees with his signature, which is a simple one, written in the ordinary character of the time.” He states that “it agrees with the tradition that his first occupation was that of a Noverint or lawyer’s copying clerk: [did he work for Francis Bacon who was a well known scholar of law?] for in that case he must have acquired in early youth a hand of that type, which, when he left copying and took on to original composition, would naturally grow into such a hand as we have here.”

Marprelate controversy A pamphlet-war which raged so furiously in 1588 and 1589, between the revilers of the Bishops on the one side, and revilers of the Puritans on the other, and in which the appeal was made by both parties to the basest passions and prejudices of the vulgar. [Also see Part II: Marprelate Martin.]

Mason etymology The search for the etymology or derivation of the word Mason has given rise to numerous theories, some of them ingenious, but many of them very absurd. Thus, a writer in the European Magazine, for February 1792, who signs his name as “George Drake,” lieutenant of marines, attempts to trace the Masons to the Druids, and derives Mason from May’s being in reference to May-day, the great festival of the Druids, and on meaning men, as in the French on dit, for homme dit. According to this, May’s therefore means the Men of May. But this idea is not original with Drake, since the same derivation was urged in 1766 by Cleland, in his essays on The Way to Things in Words, and on The Real Secret of Freemasons. [See Appendices Mason etymology].

Masonic Pillars The Golden Pillars: Hiram, King of Tyre, according to Menander, dedicated a pillar of gold to Jupiter, on the grand junction he had formed between Eurichorus and Tyre (Ios-con-Apion). In the Temple of Jupiter Triphylius, in the fabulous island of Panchaia, there was a golden bed of Jupiter six cubits in length and four in breadth, upon which there stood a golden column, and a chronicle of the actions of Uranus, Saturn and Jove was inscribed upon the column in Panchaian letters, or, as Diodorus says in another passage, in the sacred Egyptian letters. The Two Pillars Of Solomon: Pillars or obelisks were often used to commemorate remarkable events in the private annals of nations. The Wisdom of Solomon, therefore, induced him to construct a pair of commemorative pillars, and to place them at the entrance of the porch, for a reason which will shortly appear. He called their names Jachin and Boaz, which signified strength and erection, and their union stability. The right hand pillar was named after Jachin, the son Simeon, and that on the left from Boaz, the great grandfather of David. Our traditions say that Hiram gave a name to one pillar and Solomon to the other. Boaz referred to the Sun, because he rejoiceth as a strong man to run his course; and Jachin to the Moon, because it was predicted of Solomon that in his Kingdom, peace and righteousness should flourish so long as the Sun and Moon endure. 1
De Quincey writes: “The two pillars, also, Jachin and Boaz (strength and power), which are amongst the memorable singularities in Solomon’s Temple, have an occult meaning to the Freemasons, which, however, I shall not undertake publicly to explain. This symbolic interest to the English Rosicrucian in the attributes, incidents and legends of the art exercised by the literal Masons of real life, naturally brought the two orders into some connection with each other. They were thus enabled to realize to their eyes the symbols of their allegories; and the same building which accommodated the guild of builders in their professional meetings, offered a desirable means of secret assemblies to the early Freemasons. An apparatus of implements and utensils such as were presented in the fabulous sepulchre of Father Rosycross, were here actually brought together. And accordingly, it is upon record that the first formal and solemn lodge of Freemasons, on occasion of which the very name of Freemasons was first publicly made known, was held in Mason’s Hall, Mason’s Alley, Basinghall Street, London, in the year 1646. 2 Into this lodge it was that Ashmole, the antiquary, was admitted. Private meetings there may doubtless have been before, and one at Warrington (half-way between Liverpool and Manchester) is expressly mentioned in the life of Ashmole; but the name of a Freemasons’ Lodge, with all the insignia, attributes and circumstances of a lodge, first came forward in the page of history on the occasion mentioned. It is, perhaps, in requital of the services at that time rendered in the loan of their hall; that the guild of Masons as a body, and where they are not individually objectionable, enjoy a precedency of all orders of men in the light to admission, and pay only half fees. Ashmole, by the way, whom I have just mentioned as one of the earliest Freemasons, appears from his writings to have been a zealous Rosicrucian.” 3

Mermaid tavern Was delightful outside and inside, with low panelled rooms, immense fireplaces and dog-grates. Many Monograms, names, and dates were carved on the stone fireplaces. It used to stand on the south side of Cheapside, between Bread and Friday Streets, to attend the meetings of the famous Mermaid Club, said to have been founded by Sir Walter Raleigh. Here were to be found Spenser, Beaumont, Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Carew, Donne, and many others, in eager witty converse. In later days the Elizabethan poets and dramatists, led by Ben Jonson, went even further afield to the Devil tavern, which stood at No. I, Fleet Street, where they held their meetings in a room called the Apollo, the chief adornments of which, a bust of Apollo and a board with an inscription, Welcome to the Oracle of Apollo, are still to be seen in an upper room of Messrs. Child’s Bank, which now occupies the site. Ben Jonson tells us that “the first speech in my Catiline, spoken to Scyllds Ghost, was writ after I had parted with my friends at the Devil tavern; I had drank well that night, and had brave notions.” (Ordish). 4 Beaumont well described the brilliancy of these gatherings in his poem to Ben Jonson:

What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid! Heard words that have been
So nimble, and so full of subtle flame,
As if that everyone from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest
And had resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life.