[ANON.] AN ENQUIRY INTO THE LATE DISPUTES AMONG THE FREE-MASONS OF IRELAND; WHEREIN IS DETAILED A FREE AND IMPORTANT ACCOUNT OF THE DIFFERENT TRANSACTIONS WHICH GAVE RISE TO, AND CONTINUED THE CONTROVERSY, FROM THE COMMENCEMENT TO THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE GRAND LODGE OF ULSTER (1812)

In a brief note written in 1897 W. J. Chetwode Crawley announced the discovery of this rare pamphlet, which existed in two copies at that time.2 Although Francis C. Crossle and his son Philip – both masonic historians of Irish Freemasonry – transcribed this document,3 they failed to mention it and incorporate its evidence and arguments in their own writings on the same subject4 despite the fact that it is the only contemporary volume that provides a comprehensive – though largely one-sided – account of the early nineteenth-century rivalries in Irish Freemasonry. Crawley, who possessed one of the copies, described the essay

as ‘an unscrupulous polemic against the Grand Lodge of Ireland, and the publication was one of the flickers of the flame that Alexander Seton had lighted’.5 Crawley, the Crossles and most masonic historians in their footsteps – if they bothered to mention this matter at all6 – provided a distorted picture of the history of this dispute which tore apart Irish Freemasonry at the time. For instance, in their The Pocket History of Freemasonry, F. L. Pick and G. N. Knight summarize the beginning of the conflict as follows:

Pick and Knight fail to mention though that Thomas Corker, Seton’s predecessor, left the financial affairs of the Grand Lodge in a chaotic state characterized by many irregularities.