Page 21 - The Early History of The Lodge of Nine Muses No. 235. UGLE

THE FREEMASONS’ MAGAZINE

EFORE HIS RESIGNATION as Acting Grand Master in 1789, Lord
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Effingham had initiated H.R.H. the Prince of Wales in the presence of
BH.R.H. the Duke of Cumberland and had provided him with the Prince
of Wales’s Lodge (now No. 259). Ruspini was behind both undertakings. In 1790,
Effingham and H.R.H. the Duke of Cumberland, the Grand Master, both died, and
H.R.H. the Prince of Wales was elected the Grand Master and he reappointed the
24
Earl of Moira as his Acting Grand Master. Ruspini was now over 65 years of age
and past his prime. It was during this period that he attempted to ride two horses, the
old Lodge of the Nine Muses supported by the Freemasons’ Magazine on the one
hand and Earl Moira and the Prince of Wales’s Lodge, of which he was the Treasurer,
on the other. Unfortunately, the direction of the two Lodges was divergent and Earl
Moira was not a man to be ridden.
The Freemasons’ Magazine, supported by the Premier Grand Lodge, came
into existence in 1793 and finished abruptly in 1798. It supported, and gave much
information about, Ruspini’s Girls’ School and the happenings amongst the ‘Moderns’
and their leaders. However, it also gave news of several Masonic Orders and Degrees,
including the Royal Arch, which were not recognised by the Premier Grand Lodge,
and reports from Constitutions not in fraternal communication with them. It even
went so far as to publish sermons which had been given to the rival Grand Lodge.
25
Finally, it published the masonic activities of H.R.H. Prince Edward in Canada and
made quite a fuss by printing in full, much in italics, the famous Union Speeches
and H.R.H’s reply that he would do all that he could to effect a Union between
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the Antients and Moderns Grand Lodges. This was not at all the way in which the
new leaders of the Premier Grand Lodge felt about it. They only wished to welcome
seceders back to the fold in line with Preston’s views on Masonic History.

23 “Prinny”, later the Prince Regent and George IV.
24 At this time he was Lord Rawden, inheriting the Irish Peerage of Earl Moira on the death of his
father in 1793. Finally in 1817 he was created Marquis of Hastings when Commander in Chief
in India, for his victories over the Nepalese.
25 Later H.R.H. the Duke of Kent, father of Queen Victoria.
26 Freemasons’ Magazine Vol. Ill July 1794.