Page 17 - The Early History of The Lodge of Nine Muses No. 235. UGLE

PROGRESS TOWARDS REASON

HE APPOINTMENT OF the Duke of Manchester of the Royal Lodge
as the next Grand Master must have been hailed with a sigh of relief by all
Tthose who had been opposed to measures of retaliation against the Grand
Lodge of the Antients. The Duke had been opposed to the coercion of the American
Colonists, having refused to raise a Regiment for that purpose, and his Lodge had
opposed ‘incorporation’. He was our last Ambassador to France before “The Terror”.
In the Nine Muses, besides talented refugees and supporters of the Liberal Arts
and Sciences, a number of British Noblemen became attracted to the Lodge. These
included the 3rd Earl of Effingham (who had recently declined to become Grand
Master of the ‘Antients’ and was a member of the Shakespeare Lodge to which General
Salter belonged) the 6th. 7th and 8th Earls Ferrers, the 8th Earl Cranstoun and the
3rd Viscount Dudley and Ward. It is most noticeable that they or their predecessors
had all been Grand Masters of the Premier Grand Lodge and politically they were all
17
Whigs. Of even greater significance is that the 6th Earl of Kellie, who had actually
been a Grand Master of the ‘Antients’ from 1760-1765 and had a reputation as a
musician, also joined. For obvious reasons his name was not reported to the Grand
Lodge in the returns but it does appear in the list of members published in the
Freemasons’ Magazine of February, 1796. That all of these Whig Noblemen were
opposed to coercion of the American Colonists is a further indication of the political
concentration of men of reason and compromise who were congregated within the
Lodge. This is to be contrasted with the composition of the Lodge of Friendship, No.
3, which appears to have contained a concentration of the rival ‘pro incorporation’
camp, whose noblemen had all been descended from Jacobites. 18
In order to ensure that the successor to the Duke of Manchester would be more
positively inclined towards eventual peace, Ruspini, now R.W.M. of the St. Alban’s
Lodge obtained support for the candidature of the 6th Earl Ferrers from that Lodge and
had him proposed as Grand Master by a member of the Lodge of the Nine Muses. 19
This must have seemed a prudent course because, though it was generally hoped that
H.R.H. the Duke of Cumberland would accept, previous experience had shown that
this was far from certain and it would have been unwise to trust to luck at this stage.

17 Two of Ruspini’s sons went to the great Whig School of the day, St. Peter’s, Westminster.
18 See Note 12, op.cit.
19 Bro. Thomas Preston.