Page 59 - An account of the Lodge of Nine Muses No. 235. 1777 to 2012UGLE

Lodge of the Nine Muses 59

After the Union Thomas Harper was elected annually to the Board of General
Purposes or to the Board of Finance until 1831.
He died on 25 April 1832, at a very advanced age, it is said ninety-six; this is
uncertain, but he had been a Mason for seventy-one years.
26
Bro. Waller Rodwell Wright (1806) also signed the Act of Union, which he
had helped to draw up. His signature may be seen, for the “Moderns”, opposite
Bro. Harper’s; his seal is also unintelligible. He was D.G.M. of Malta in 1815.
At the first joint meeting of the two Grand Lodges on 27 December 1813,
when the Act of Union was read and confirmed, Bro. Thomas Harper was present
as D.G.M. of the “Antients”, and among the “Moderns” Bros. H. J. da Costa,
P.G.M. of Rutland, Sir William Rawlins, P.G.W., and the Hon. Washington Shirley,
P.G.W. and P.G.M. of Warwickshire, were present, all at some time members of
the Nine Muses.
Bro. Edwards Harper, who had been W.M. of the Grand Master’s Lodge in
1803, joined the Nine Muses in 1822. At the time of the Union he was G.S. of
the “Antients”, and he was appointed joint G.S. of the United Grand Lodge with
Bro. Wm. H. White, who had held the same office in the “Moderns”.
Bro. Harper also acted as Secretary to the unhappy Lodge of Reconciliation,
during its uphill efforts to establish a modus vivendi between the adherents of the
“Antient” and” Modern” usages.
He retired from the joint Grand Secretaryship in 1838. A copy of his letter of
resignation is preserved at Grand Lodge and is given below as an example of the
formal epistolary manner of the day.

London, 19th October 1838.
M.W. GRAND MASTER,

During the past year the state of my Health has been so indifferent that I have
not felt myself equal to discharge the duties of my Office with that attention and
punctuality, I have been accustomed to do: And it has been painful to me, to know,
that from such cause, several omifsions in business have resulted.
I have therefore for some time contemplated a residence in the Country which
would compel me to retire from the Grand Lodge Secretaryship.

26 The details of the career of Bro. Thos. Harper are taken largely from “Notes on the Masonic
life of Thomas Harper”, a paper written by the late. W. Bro. R. J. Reece, P.G.D., Secretary of
the Grand Master’s Lodge.