ABSTRACT

Most of the charges published in this work were delivered at the Union Lodge at Exeter, probably by several di erent members. e lodge, warranted in 1769 under no. 370, successively met at the Globe, St Mary’s Churchyard and at the New Co ee House, St Peter’s churchyard, in Exeter. It bore no. 244 in 1781 and was erased in 1789.6 According to the minute book of the lodge, Codrington, the author of several charges signing ‘Brother C-R.W.M.’, and Bampfylde,7 the Provincial Grand Master, were members of the lodge. e minute book also names Robert Trewman, an Exeter printer and proprietor of the county paper Trewman’s Flying Post, as an occasional visitor to the lodge between 1775 and 1777.8

e book was intended both for Masons and non-Masons. e editor, Trewman, and the Provincial Grand Lodge, expressed the wish to make it accessible to the general public: ‘I wish those who are not of the Fraternity may read it, as I atter myself they will then entertain a favourable Opinion of a very antient and much talk’d of Institution’. Indeed, the multi-authored addresses and charges are emblematical of the spirit of the Enlightenment. ey are meant to reassure the general public as they exemplify religious tolerance – warning brethren against bigotry – as well as benevolence and philanthopry. Brothers are urged to help one another. Universalism is extolled: ‘ e whole World is but one great Republic, of which every Nation is a Family, and every particular Person a Child’. Masons’ wives were potential readers and had to be reassured as to their husbands’ behaviour. ‘ e Charge on the behaviour of Masons when the lodge is closed’ might well have served that purpose, among others. Several references to women are made. In the rst charge, delivered on St John the Baptist at the Union Lodge in Exeter, the orator explains that women are not admitted in order to preserve brethren from passion and potential rivalry. e fallacious argument was meant to reassure the wives of Masons, who were admitted at prestigious ceremonies such as the dedication of Freemasons’ Hall. Trewman mentions 160 ladies who ‘were complimented with Tickets to see the Ceremonies and hear the musical Performances’. Contrary to the French adoption lodges who initiated women throughout the eighteenth century, British lodges kept women outside, only inviting them to special ceremonies on ‘ladies’nights’.9