William Penn was the visionary leader of the Quakers – Christian nonconformists who then happened to be causing a great deal of annoyance to the Church of England. So Charles II, who was unwilling to meet his obligations to Penn in cash, offered him instead a region in North America the size of England, on condition that Penn use it to develop a province where Quakers and other nonconformists could enjoy ‘freedom of worship and self-government’. The name Pennsylvania was chosen by King Charles II himself, and means ‘Forests of Penn’, apparently in honour of Admiral Penn, William's father.
William Penn saw this, quite literally, as a God-sent opportunity to carry out what he called the ‘Holy Experiment’, and thus, to Charles II’s delight, gladly accepted the offer and challenge. Yet not in his wildest biblical dreams would Penn have imagined the final outcome. As for Charles II, he thought that he had lumbered the irksome Quaker with a piece of useless real estate, not realising, of course, that he had in actual fact planted the seed of Britain's demise in the American colonies.
By the Rivers of Babylon
William Penn set sail for America in early 1682, his thoughts filled with dreams and visions of the great city he would found in the New World. Many contemporary documents show that Penn visualised what he constantly called ‘my Greene Country Town’ modelled on his rural properties back in England. But according to one of William Penn's most distinguished biographers, Susan Coolidge: … the city of Babylon is said to have been in Penn's mind as a model for his proposed city.51
Much suggests that Coolidge is correct. It is known, for example, that Penn, was greatly inspired by the idea of placing his city between two rivers, the Delaware and the Schuylkill, in much the same way that ancient Babylon had been situated between the Tigris and the Euphrates Rivers. Another factor is the so-called gridiron layout adopted by Penn, which required an alignment of parallel avenues running east-west and crisscrossing with another set of avenues running north-south – a scheme that, according to some historians, was apparently used for ancient Babylon.52 The third factor is, of course, the name that Penn chose for his city: Philadelphia, the ‘City of Brotherly Love’, in which people of different races and languages would be re-united.
In the Bible, Babylon was, of course, where the Tower of Babel had been built under Nimrod, when all men had spoken a single language. And for many Freemasons, the Tower of Babel serves as the ultimate talisman or symbol of their origins. In his celebrated essay The Origins of Freemasonry, Thomas Paine explained why: It is always understood that Freemasons have a secret which they carefully conceal; but from everything that can be collected from their own accounts of Masonry, their real secret is no other than their origin, which but few of them understand; and those who do, envelop it in mystery… In 1730, Samuel Pritchard, member of a constituted lodge in England, published a treatise entitled ‘Masonry Dissected’; and made oath before the Lord Mayor of London that it was a true copy: ‘Samuel Pritchard maketh oath that the copy hereunto annexed is a true and genuine copy of every particular.’ In his work he has given the catechism or examination, in question and answer, of the Apprentices, the Fellow Craft, and the Master Mason. There was no difficulty in doing this, as it is mere form. In his introduction he says, ‘the original institution of Masonry consisted in the foundation of the liberal arts and sciences, but more especially in geometry, for at the building of the Tower of Babel, the art and mystery of Masonry was first introduced, and from thence handed down by Euclid, a worthy and excellent mathematician of the Egyptians; and he communicated it to Hiram, the Master Mason concerned in building Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem’.53
Thomas Paine correctly went on to point out that: Besides the absurdity of deriving Masonry from the building of Babel, where, according to the story, the confusion of languages prevented the builders understanding each other, and consequently of communicating any knowledge they had, there is a glaring contradiction in point of chronology in the account he gives. Solomon's Temple was built and dedicated 1,004 years before the Christian era; and Euclid, as may be seen in the tables of chronology, lived 277 years before the same era. It was therefore impossible that Euclid could communicate anything to Hiram, since Euclid did not live till seven hundred years after the time of Hiram.54
What Paine, a pragmatist, failed to understand is that English Freemasonry does not have a ‘history’ in the sense scholars understand the term, but rather a ‘symbolic history’, where principles and ideologies of the Craft are elucidated or ‘symbolised’ by biblical, mythical and even historical events such as the building of Solomon's Temple and the Tower of Babel. To academic historians this sort of thing amounts to nothing more than pseudo-history – a yarn of absolutely no historical value concocted to glorify particular individuals or cultures by associating them with the biblical story. But Freemasons know better. Symbolic history – even though false or, at best, grossly distorted and exaggerated – is to be valued in itself for its effects on society and on mass human behaviour.
Within William Penn's vision of a ‘New Babylon’ between the rivers of the New World, was also a vision of a Mesopotamian-style ‘Garden of Eden’, whereby a huge area of 10,000 acres – of which 1,200 were reserved for Philadelphia – was to be developed in Penn's curious concept of a ‘Greene Country Towne’ with its ‘gridiron’ system of intersecting avenues. In this biblical ‘theme park’ each citizen would be allocated ‘sizable areas of green’. Eighty acres in the centre of Philadelphia were specifically reserved for ‘gentlemen's estates’ with mansions set at least 800 feet apart from each other separated by lavish gardens and fields. The wide streets of the gridiron crisscrossed in perfect rectangular symmetry, and at each corner of the citycentre were ‘squares’ – forerunners of today's urban parks. In their midst was a fifth, larger ‘square’, with a wide avenue radiating from each side to form a giant croisée or ‘cross’.
The whole city was circumscribed within a gigantic rectangle whose longer side ran east-west. Oddly, however, this great rectangle was not perfectly oriented to the astronomical cardinal directions (i.e. due north, south, east and west) but was instead fixed about 10° south-of-east. This may have been to keep the layout more or less parallel to the adjacent rivers. But a more esoteric purpose is by no means out of the question in such a ‘City of Brotherly Love’. We note with interest, therefore, that the Sun aligns itself at rising with the axis of Philadelphia on two days of the year: 16 February and 13 October.55 The latter date marks the anniversary of the suppression of the Knights Templar which took place, as we saw in Chapter Fifteen, on 13 October 1307. Whether by accident or by design, as we will show later, the same date of 13 October also crops up in connection with the cornerstone ceremony of the White House in Washington, DC.
Penn entrusted the design of Philadelphia to Thomas Holme, an accomplished urban architect, who published Penn's scheme in 1683.56 Copies of Holme's design have survived, and the ‘gridiron’ principle can clearly be seen, with its four corners and central ‘squares’. It was perhaps appropriate that such a geometrical city should not only serve as the capital of the newly-formed United States of America for the twelve years from 1789 to 1801, but should also have become the ‘capital’ of American Freemasonry. Today about 25 ‘Masonically related sites’ are recognised in Philadelphia, not least the great Masonic Temple on Broad Street with it ‘Egyptian’ and ‘Solomonic’ rooms. On Fifth and Arch Street stands the Free Quaker Meeting House; it served as the Masonic Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania in the crucial years between 1775 – 1777. And let's not forget the National Memorial Arch dedicated to ‘Brother’ George Washington (rebuilt by the Freemasons of Pennsylvania in 1996).57
Such roots go deep. Just 40 years after William Penn's arrival in the New World, the utopian city that he created was to become the home of America's first Freemasons …
But before we investigate the intense Masonic character of the early history of the city of Philadelphia, it is worth emphasising that the idea of imbuing Masonic idea
s and symbolism into the plans of a city is by no means fanciful thinking – as we will see in this ‘brief deviation’ …
A Brief Deviation: Kilbourne Plat
The surveyor Hector Kilbourne was responsible for designing the original plan of the city of Sandusky, Ohio (and in 1819 became the first Master of the Science Lodge No. 50, the first Masonic lodge in Sandusky). Being a Freemason, Kilbourne decided to integrate the ‘square and compass’, the best-known Masonic symbol, into the layout of the streets in the central downtown area now known as Kilbourne Plat. There can be absolutely no doubt that this was his intention, as not only one can very obviously discern the famous Masonic symbol in the original city plan, but just outside the city has been placed an ‘historical marker’ in the form of a large bronze plaque by the Ohio Historical Society which reads: Hector Kilbourne, a Freemason and the surveyor who made the original plat of Sandusky (as Portland) in 1816, laid out the streets to form the Masonic emblem. Huron and Central Avenues are the arms of the compass. Elm and Poplar Streets the sides of the Mason's square. The first Masonic Lodge was founded in Sandusky in 1819, with Kilbourne as Master.
The 29 Lodges of the 16th District, Grand Lodge, Free and Accepted Masons of Ohio, Crawford, Erie, Huron, Seneca, and Wyandot Counties and The Ohio Historical Society58
Considering that this Masonic city design was hatched so soon after the design of Washington, DC in 1791, we feel entirely justified in looking for similar ‘Masonic’ influences in other major American cities which played a key role in the events that led to the creation of the USA.
The candle-maker's son
By the final quarter of the 18th century Philadelphia had grown to become the second largest English-speaking city in the world after London. And is its name implied its local culture was intensely Masonic. At the same time it was a rich commercial centre which, in direct contrast to its proclaimed ‘brotherly love’, was heavily engaged in the black slave trade. Tradition has it that it was in the city of Philadelphia that the first Masonic lodge in America was consecrated, the St. John's No. 1 Lodge.59 It was also in Philadelphia that the most renowned of all American Freemasons, Benjamin Franklin, received his initiation.60
Born the son of a candle-maker in Boston, Benjamin Franklin left his home town in 1723 after losing his job because of the political tone of articles he had written for his brother's newspaper, the New-England Courant. The young Franklin settled in Philadelphia where he was encouraged by William Keith, the governor of Pennsylvania, to set himself up in the publishing trade. To this end, he was sponsored by Keith to go to England in order to acquire experience in the publishing business. Franklin stayed in London from 1724 to 1726 then returned to Philadelphia where he eventually founded the Pennsylvania Gazette. This was the newspaper in which appeared the first published commentary on Freemasonry in America.61
In 1730 Franklin was made a Freemason at the St. John's lodge in Philadelphia, and by 1734 became its Grand Master.62 From 1737 to 1753 Franklin was in charge of the Philadelphia post office. A deist and preacher of religious tolerance, Franklin was also a scientist and, in 1751, gained fame and notoriety when he invented the lightning conductor after flying a kite in a thunderstorm.
Franklin revisited England between 1757 and 1762, this time as the representative of the colony of Pennsylvania. He was to return again two years later, staying until 1775. During this last sojourn in London, Franklin entered into lengthy negotiations with the British government, and was instrumental in toppling the Stamp Act imposed by the British Parliament on the American colonies. As such, Franklin sowed the political and intellectual seeds that would lead to open opposition against the British in America and, ultimately, to the War of Independence. In 1775, when he heard that the colonists were preparing for an armed uprising against the British, Franklin felt that his position in England was becoming too dangerous and so made his way back across the Atlantic. He arrived in Philadelphia in May 1775, just two weeks after the first shots were fired against the British at Lexington. In June the Revolutionary army confronted the British forces at Bunker Hill, marking the beginning of a full-scale war.
Thomas Paine
It was from Philadelphia, too, that another popular journalist, Thomas Paine, a Quaker and staunch deist, began a violent attack on the British in his writings. Paine was born in Norfolk, England, and was the son of a Quaker and corset-maker. After repeated failures to forge a career, his luck began to turn when he met Benjamin Franklin in London in the early 1770s. Franklin advised him to seek his fortune in America and provided him with letters of recommendation. Paine arrived in Philadelphia in 1774 and two years later, in January 1776, published his celebrated pamphlet Common Sense, in which he put forward the notion of a ‘Declaration of Independence’. It sold over half a million copies and some even believe it served as the basis of the formal Declaration of Independence that was eventually compiled by Thomas Jefferson in July 1776.
Aside from his great political impact, Paine is known in Masonic circles for promoting the same idea as the British archaeologist (and fellow and council member of the Royal Society), the Freemason William Stukeley – who claimed that Freemasonry took its rituals from the ancient Druids who, in turn, had inherited them from the ancient Egyptians.63 In an article on this subject Paine informs us of his view that ‘the ancient Druids … like the Magi of Persia and the priests of Heliopolis in Egypt, were priests of the Sun’. Paine goes on to say: The Christian religion and Masonry have one and the same common origin: both are derived from the worship of the Sun. The difference between their origins is that the Christian religion is a parody on the worship of the Sun … And in what period of antiquity or in what nation this religion was first established, is lost in the labyrinth of unrecorded time. It is generally ascribed to the ancient Egyptians … The religion of the Druids, as before said, was the same as the religion of the ancient Egyptians. The Priests of Egypt were the professors and teachers of science, and were styled priests of Heliopolis, that is of the City of the Sun …64
In the same article, Paine supports his own claims by quoting Captain George Smith, inspector of the Royal Artillery Academy at Woolwich and Provincial Grand Master of Masonry in Kent, who had asserted that: Egypt, from whence we derive many of our mysteries, has always borne a distinguished rank in history, and was once celebrated above all others for its antiquities, learning, opulence and fertility. In their system, their principal hero-gods, Osiris and Isis, theologically represented the Supreme Being and Universal Nature … The Egyptians in the earliest ages constituted a great number of Lodges, but with assiduous care kept their secrets of Masonry from all strangers. These secrets have been imperfectly handed down to us by oral traditions only, and ought to be kept undiscovered to the labourers, craftsmen and apprentices, till by good behaviour and long study they become better acquainted in geometry and the liberal arts, and thereby qualified for Masters and Wardens …65
We shall see later how Thomas Paine went to Paris during the French Revolution and befriended the astronomer Charles-François Dupuis who, as we shall recall, was an advocate of the view that the city of Paris owed its origins to the Egyptian goddess Isis. We shall also see how Paine developed a close friendship with the writer Nicolas de Bonneville, a Freemason, mystic and radical revolutionary, and with the mathematician and philosopher, the Marquis de Condorcet, likewise a revolutionary and a member of the Nine Sisters lodge.66 Paine, who was to arrive in Paris at the height of Robespierre's reign, may have played a part in the attempt to induce the populace of Paris to adopt the new republican Cult of the Supreme Being, and perhaps even the cult of Nature-Reason-Liberty which was flaunted as a pseudo-Isis cult at the Place de la Bastille in August 1793 …
Franklin in France
We saw in Chapter One that in late 1776, thirteen years before the French Revolution broke out, Benjamin Franklin was sent to France to serve as the first ambassador of the newly formed Republic of the United States. Being the most senior of the signatorie
s of the Declaration of Independence, and also the inventor of the lightning rod, Franklin's huge fame had preceded him, and he was now hailed as a sort of cult hero upon his arrival in Paris. His primary mission was to gain support, both financial and militarily, for the American war against the British. This he succeeded in doing, largely through complex behind-the-scenes negotiations with Charles Gravier, the Count of Vergennes, Louis XVI’s minister of foreign affairs.
Witty and wise, Franklin was taken by the pre-revolutionary French as a symbol of ‘liberty in the New World’. He was the hero who opposed the British – and, by extension, the oppression and despotism of European monarchs in general. He was quickly to become the darling of the social salons in Paris and, invariably, the favourite of the elitist Masonic lodges. As we also saw in Chapter One, Franklin joined the famous Nine Sisters lodge while he was ambassador in Paris and, in 1777, was to become its Grand Master.
The Nine Sisters lodge was the natural successor of an older lodge, Les Sciences, founded in 1766 by the astronomer Jérôme Lalande and the philosopher and atheist, Claude Adrien Helvétius. In 1771, after the death of Helvétius, Lalande and Helvétius's widow, Mme Anne Catherine Helvétius, were instrumental in the founding of the Nine Sisters lodge. Mme Helvétius ran the famous elitist salon in the Rue Sainte-Anne in Paris, which was renowned throughout Europe for the intellectual excellence of its members.67 She also hosted another salon at Auteuil near Paris, which maintained very close links with the Nine Sisters lodge.68