Description Freemasonry had a major influence on politics and literature in eighteenth-century Britain, but many historical accounts have been limited by an overly Anglo-centric focus, which omitted the importance of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Europe in its development.
Table of content Introduction Chapter 1 - The Ruined Temple and the Flight of Knights (1685-1691) Chapter 2 - Freemasons, Rosicrucians, and Radical Clubs (1691-1703) Chapter 3 - Jacobites, Williamites, and Disputed Architectural Traditions (1695-1703) Chapter 4 - Judaized Scots, Jacobite Jews, and the Problem of "False Brothers" (1702-1712) Chapter 5 - Building Castles in the Air, at Home and Abroad (1710-1716) Chapter 6 - The Swedish-Jacobite Plot and the Grand Lodge of London (1716-1719) Chapter 7 - Scottish-Swedish Masonic Traditions and English Innovations (1719-1722) Chapter 8 - Atterbury, W.
She lives in Atlanta, Georgia.
D has written extensively on eighteenth-century Cabalistic and "illuminist" Freemasonry and its influence on Swift, Ramsay, Swedenborg, and Blake.
Marsha Keith Schuchard, Ph.
By providing a detailed, chronological account of these developments, this book fills many gaps in eighteenth-century Masonic history.
These Rivalries and polarizations were reflected in the Tory-Jacobite writings of Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, Moses Mendes, Eliza Haywood, Chevalier Ramsay, and many others, while Whig-Hanoverian authors such as Daniel Defoe, Jean-Theophilus Desaguliers, "Orator" Henley, and Henry Fielding supported the loyalist agenda of the Grand Lodge of England.
The assumption that Freemasonry generally espoused a rationalistic Enlightenment agenda omits the Hermetic, Cabalistic, and chivalric themes that infused the cossais (Scottish-French) higher degrees which expanded rapidly in Europe and eventually in Britain itself.
The persistent "conventional wisdom" that the fraternity was non-political ignored the intense Jacobite-Hanoverian and Tory-Whig Rivalries that continued From the 1690s.
Description Freemasonry had a major influence on politics and literature in eighteenth-century Britain, but many historical accounts have been limited by an overly Anglo-centric focus, which omitted the importance of Scotland, Ireland, Wales, and Europe in its development