Page 36 - An account of the Lodge of Nine Muses No. 235. 1777 to 2012UGLE

36 An Account of the

Company, who have most obligingly hunted through their respective records.
Mr Mountain adds of Sir William:

His public work was conscientiously and unostentatiously performed; it
was not scattered, as he became too deeply interested in whatever claimed his
attention. As Treasurer of the Bishopsgate Ward Schools and of the London
workhouse he gave point to his loyalty by making generous gifts and bequests.
Sir William was appointed S.G. W. in 1802, and joined the Nine Muses in
1805; of his earlier Masonic career we have no knowledge.
He was a bachelor though, according to Bro. Webb, “wedded to he Nine
Muses” – an irreproachable polygamy.
Two fine portraits of Sir William are known to have existed. One, reproduced
in a supplement to The Times for 25 April 1926, is in the grand manner, and shows
Sir William as a handsome man in the prime of life, seated upright and cross-
legged and wearing civic robes; an opening in the wall at the back gives on to a
landscape with clouds and buildings. The other, also seated, is in a more intimate
style; Sir William is shown as an old man, in his regalia as a Grand Officer. This
was reproduced in Links with the Past, a brochure produced by the Eagle and
British Dominions Insurance Company in 1917. It was hoped that one or the
other might have been reproduced here, but all attempts to trace the whereabouts
of the paintings have failed, and even the blocks have disappeared.
It will be noticed that the only officers of the Lodge are the Master and two Wardens
and a Secretary, but at the next meeting, on 28 February 1814, Bro. (Thomas) Harper was
elected Deputy Master for the current year, an office which he held till his retirement
in 1827, and Bro. Turner was re-elected Secretary, not appointed as now by the Master.
The Tyler, not mentioned in the first minutes, was Bro. Miller, who continued to
serve the Lodge till the beginning of 1834, when a new Tyler, Bro. Dawes, appears.
A note in the margin opposite the minutes for 9 March 1830, says that Bro. Miller
had then been seventeen years in attendance; this brings his whole tenure up to
some twenty-one years; not a bad record. A list of the Tylers is given in Appendix D.
From Bro. Martin’s appointment in 1818 to 1833, and from 1851 to 1860,
each Master served for two years consecutively.