Page 164 - An account of the Lodge of Nine Muses No. 235. 1777 to 2012UGLE

164 An Account of the

The Committee’s letter was duly considered at the next meeting on 13
December. Apparently the Lodge, having got in first, was not enthusiastic, for the
only recorded response was that “Bro. Clay subscribed £1. 1. 0.”
Prince Augustus Frederick, Duke of Sussex, was born in 1773, the sixth son
and the eleventh of the fifteen children of King George III. He became the first
Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge in 1813, and held the office till his
death in 1843. He was educated at Göttingen, and was a man of liberal views
and of wide interests. He was President of the Society of Arts in 1816, and of the
Royal Society from 1830 to 1839. There is a vigorous portrait of him by Guy
Head in the National Portrait Gallery.
12 March 1838. Agreed that “Brother Frederic Twynam now residing at the
required distance from London to entitle him to such a right, be continued a
Member of the Lodge on paying the Quarterage to the Grand Lodge.” There are
a number of similar entries in the minutes but what the distance was cannot now
be said. The 1826 By-laws do not refer to the matter, and there does not seem to
have been any general Masonic rule or custom governing the point.
It may have been thirty miles, for on 13 December 1836, “Brother R. E. Arden
PM & W M pro tem. moved an addition or alteration to the By-Laws to the effect
that any Member residing thirty miles or more from London, may be considered a
subscribing Member of the Lodge on paying the quarterage to the Grand Lodge.”
But there is a note in the margin, “It is not said that this was carried. But if it had
been put and carried it would not have become a By Law not having been discussed
at a meeting of the Lodge & confirmed at a succeeding meeting. JMC Sec . 25/5/62.”
r
A loose paper between the last two pages of the first Minute-Book has a draft
of a somewhat similar proposal, but with a limit of twenty miles. It is undated,
but is written on the back of a summons to attend the Grand Lodge, addressed
to the Master and dated 23 November 1863; nothing seems to have come of it.
Other instances occur, as in 1842 when Bro. Goddard had “gone to live
at Tenby”, and in 1843 when “Br. R. E. Arden announced that he had been
requested by Br F. Twynam late SD of the Lodge to state that his avocations
would require him to reside some years abroad and that he requested to be placed
on the list of Absentees, but to be still continued a Member of the Lodge upon