Dr James Anderson’s Constitutions of the Antient and Honourable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons was compiled with Grand Lodge’s authority, appearing in 1723, 1738 and 1746. The 1738 edition contained a brief history of English Grand Masters prior to the formation of Grand Lodge (1717), including Inigo Jones, Sir Christopher Wren and Henry Jermyn, Earl of St Alban. After Anderson died, the 1746 edition appeared minus the historical section, and ever since, Grand Lodge has held that there were no 17th century Grand Masters. Debate has focused on Wren however, and the other names in the list have been largely ignored.
    There is enough evidence of ‘speculative’ (non artisan) Freemasonry in the 17th century to argue that the organisation could have had a figure-head and a governing body, and that the 1738 list might be true. The title ‘Grand Master’ was apparently an 18th century one, but the office was real enough. Inigo Jones (1573-1652) promoted the introduction of classical architecture into England, and strove to educate masons and patrons alike in its theory and practice, including its roots in the proportions of Solomon’s Temple. From the Inigo Jones MS. at Worcester Masonic Library, there is circumstantial evidence that he founded a lodge to this end. His chief patron was Charles I’s wife, Queen Henrietta Maria. Jermyn (1605-1684) was her Platonic lover and, as de facto controller of her household, was closely involved with some of Jones’ projects.
    Only in the 1738 list is Jermyn stated to have been a Freemason, but beside Jones’ influence on him, there is circumstantial evidence that he was one. He was an intimate friend of the proven Freemason Sir Robert Moray, who called him “a very noble Gentleman”, and Jermyn’s poet-secretary Abraham Cowley was one of the most energetic founders of the Royal Society, which shared a number of early members with Freemasonry. Another poet whom he patronised, Sir William D’Avenant, wrote in Madagascar (1638) that Jermyn was inspired by geometry (“mighty numbers”). Spiritually, Jermyn was an ideal Free Mason : an Anglican, he spent much time at Presbyterian chapels, and aided Catholics and Greek Orthodox believers without denominational prejudices.
    When he became an Earl in 1659, Jermyn chose the title “St Alban”. He had no connection with the place, but St Alban was the traditional founder of English Freemasonry. Returning to England at the Restoration (1660), he developed St James’s Square, Westminster, in perfect Jonesian style, and modified and implemented Jones’ plans for additions both to Somerset House and the Queen’s House at Greenwich. As Keeper of Greenwich, he began the rebuilding of the palace in classical style, assisted by Jones’ protégé John Webb, and brought over the gardener Le Notre from France to landscape the park.
    As a close friend of Charles II and the principal employer of working masons in London, Jermyn was an obvious candidate to be the Freemasons’ principal. In 1738, Anderson wrote that Jermyn held a General Assembly in 1663, at which he established rules designed to reorganise Freemasonry after the disruption of the Civil War. Having begun his career as an architect, Wren (1632-1723) went to Paris in 1665 to meet the many craftsmen there. He gained introductions to them through Jermyn, who was then the English ambassador. By 1666, according to Anderson, Wren and Webb had become Jermyn’s Grand Wardens, with Sir John Denham as Deputy Grand Master. Denham, the King’s Surveyor General, had been one of Jermyn’s main intelligence agents during the Commonwealth. In 1666, Jermyn was busy negotiating the end of the Anglo-Dutch War. The 1738 Constitutions state that Jermyn resigned that year in favour of Earl Rivers, a cousin of Jermyn’s.
    If Anderson had fabricated a list to glorify the Craft, his choice of Grand Masters was curious. By the 18th century, Jermyn and his successors, Rivers, the Duke of Buckingham and Lord Arlington, were all associated with the sort of pro-French, pro-Stuart policies which were anathema to the Hanoverian regime. This argues for the truth of the 1738 Constitutions and makes more explicable the removal of their names from the edition which was issued a year after the 1745 Jacobite Rebellion.
    Anderson wrote fact, not fiction. Many records of the Craft were lost at the beginning of the 18th century, some deliberately, but he had records no longer available to us, and very old Brothers could still remember Jermyn’s era. Significantly, Deputy Grand Master Martin Folkes, one of those who oversaw Anderson’s work, was the son of Jermyn’s lawyer and had access to many of his papers, which are now lost.
    Freemasonry has always relied on the secrecy of its oaths. In 1723, while Wren was still alive, his privacy was respected, so his name, and therefore those of his predecessors, was not published. By 1738, he was dead and his secret, that he had been Grand Master but had neglected the lodges, could be revealed. Wren’s son, author of Parentalia, a monumental biography of Wren, never refuted the story, and no protests are recorded from the heirs of the other Grand Masters named in 1738. In 1746, however, Grand Lodge decided it would be simpler to recite its history and derive its authority from its own foundation in 1717, so a fascinating and spiritually rewarding chapter of Freemasonic history was consigned to the dust-bin.
    If the 1738 Constitutions are true where they concern the 17th century, they provide an outline of a thriving national organisation, still linked closely to the avant garde of architecture, developing through the study of classical geometry and its kindred “hidden mysteries of Nature and Science” towards the ‘speculative’ art and science of the Grand Lodge era. Freemasons may look with pride at Greenwich, Somerset House and St James’s Square, from which developed the whole of London’s West End, and know that they were made possible by Jones and Jermyn, two of the Craft’s most active 17th century leaders.