Page 24 - The Early History of The Lodge of Nine Muses No. 235. UGLE

THE EXPULSION OF THOMAS HARPER
AND ITS AFTERMATH

N 1800, Ruspini was again R.W.M. of the Lodge of the Nine Muses after the
death of Lord Rancliffe. That same year, Thomas Harper joined and was appointed
I Secretary of the Lodge. The following year he was elected to the highest office in
the rival Grand Lodge, namely Deputy Grand Master. The same year, he and the next
two senior Officers of that Grand Lodge, all of whom were members of ‘Moderns’
lodges of several years’ standing, were arraigned in front of the Committee of Charity
of the Premier Grand Lodge for being members of both Constitutions, under the rule
that Lord Petre had passed in 1777 and which had been ignored ever since. Francis
Columbine Daniel was the accuser.
Earl Moira himself decided to take the Chair and appointed his Senior Grand
30
Warden, Sir William Rawlins, as his deputy. After an investigation lasting two years,
Thomas Harper was expelled on the 9th February, 1803, by the Premier Grand
Lodge for what Sadler called “failing to effect a Union!” No one seems to know what
happened to the other two accused Grand Officers. However, the whole affair is most
unedifying and it is not necessary here to go into it in greater detail. 31
This expulsion seems to have caused misgivings in the minds of those most directly
responsible for it. Immediately afterwards, on 22nd February, 1803, both Earl Moira
and Sir William Rawlins joined the Lodge of Antiquity. Then, on 10th March, 1803, Sir
William was exalted in the Chapter of St. James, where he found Thomas Harper still
quite ‘a live wire’ therein. The Premier Grand Lodge of their own volition had no power
over the Grand Chapter, and so we find Earl Moira also being obligated in the Chapter
of St. James on 9th June, 1803, exalted in the Grand Chapter on the 28th of the same
month, and on the same day he was elected First Grand Principal of the Order.
With no Secretary and no efforts made by Ruspini, the Lodge of the Nine Muses failed to
meet for over two years. On 17th February, 1804, Ruspini presented to the Prince of Wales’s
Lodge “all the furniture and paraphernalia formerly belonging to the Lodge of the Nine
Muses” including their Candlesticks, which had already become well known, but excluding
their Jewels and Warrant, which he retained. Perhaps it was chance, but it so happened that Sir
William Rawlins was present on this occasion as a visitor from the Grand Stewards’ Lodge.

30 Sir William was then a member of the Globe Lodge, the same Lodge as Thomas Harper! He was
the founder of the Eagle Insurance Company.
31 For this story see AQC. 26. “Ahiman Rezon”.—C. C. Adams, and AQC. 23. “A Chapter from the
early History of the Royal Naval Lodge No. 59.”— Canon Horsley.