Page 30 - Amo Amass A-muse is some of the fruit of a lifetimes love of Freemasonry - the Lodge of Nine Muses No. 235

RuSPiNi’S lETTER

OU MAY REMEMBER that after Thomas Harper, our Secretary, had been
expelled by the Premier Grand Lodge in 1803, the Chevalier Ruspini, our
YR.W.M., did nothing to summon the Lodge to meet. The next year, 1804, he
presented our Candlesticks to the Prince of Wales’s Lodge. In 1805, the Lodge resumed
work, with the aid of some members of the Lodge of Antiquity, then No. 1, who joined.
In 1812, the Lodge forcibly removed their candlesticks from the Master of the Thatched
House Tavern and on 16th February 1813, Ruspini wrote a long letter to Frederick
Turner Esq., our Secretary, explaining his point of view. A copy of this letter was sent to
the Prince of Wales’s Lodge for their committee to report upon, which is now attached to
their minutes. Thanks to the action of Brother Bill Dawson and the courtesy of the Prince
of Wales’s Lodge, I now possess a photo-copy of this letter. It is too long to read out tonight
but I thought that you might like to hear extracts from it.
I quote — “In what manner or by what documents did it appear to the Lodge that I
had ever made any claims on their liberality on which they were called to decide? If I ever
did prefer any claim on account of the debt due to me by the former Lodge of the Nine
Muses, surely the present Lodge was not warranted in assuming the consideration and
discussion of the supposed claims.”
In fact Ruspini had written to the Grand Secretary some time before about the debts
due to the hire of the room at the Thatched House Tavern. A Part of Ruspini’s defence
was that the Nine Muses of 1812 was a new Lodge and what he had done before handing
over the Warrant, records and furniture was no concern of theirs. He claims in his letter
that he had paid these debts, I quote —

“which my old friend and brother Mr. Harper well knows I discharged out of my
own purse on account of the former Lodge. But were I inclined to be actuated
by selfish views it would be impossible for me to compromise the question in this
manner, because I should in reality be making away with the just rights of the Prince
of Wales’s Lodge under the appearance of settling a claim of my own. The question
however comes within a very narrow compass. If. after the dissolution of the Nine
Muses, I had a right, and which I was assured I had by many very respectable members