In May 1722 the French government informed their British counterparts of a plot: a planned rising by the supporters of the Stuart cause, the Jacobites. It was to be aided by Irish regiments based in France and Spain. Details of the plot were not immediately known but the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Walpole, and Secretary of State, Lord Townshend, transformed Hyde Park into a military camp, requested Dutch military assistance and recalled troops from Ireland. Jacobite leaders in London were placed under surveillance and all foreign mail was intercepted. It was against this backdrop that Freemasonry acquired its second noble grand master, Philip Duke of Wharton.
    On 16 June 1722 The London Journal reported that a deputation of Freemasons met with Lord Townshend, to request that they might hold their traditional midsummer meeting. Townshend was reportedly relaxed about the proposal and a series of press reports announced the meeting was to take place on Monday 25 June at Stationers’ Hall. An eye witness reported that they dined well, but when the band began to play Let the King enjoy his own again, a popular Jacobite song, they were ‘immediately reprimanded by a person of great gravity and science’, an allusion to the Past Grand Master 1719-20, Dr. John Theophilus Desaguliers, Secretary of the Royal Society.
    James Anderson later recorded that ‘the better sort’ within Grand Lodge wanted the Duke of Montagu to remain as Grand Master, but Wharton opportunistically engineered his own election and was installed irregularly, as he had ‘appointed no Deputy’. Yet curiously, there is no mention of any problem in The Constitutions of 1723, while The Daily Post of 27 June 1722 explicitly stated that Desaguliers had been appointed as Wharton’s Deputy.

The Revolution

About the time of Wharton’s election intelligence reached Westminster of a ship called The Revolution which was carrying Irish and Scotch recruits who were to take part in an invasion to restore the exiled Stuarts. Secretary of State, Lord Carteret, was informed that a letter had been intercepted at Cadiz, addressed to the Commander of a ship who was engaged in the service of the Pretender, James Stuart. The intelligence revealed that a ‘Spanish Squadron’ was ‘probably’ going to rendezvous with the vessel ‘upon her return from Genoa’, and join with two other ships which, like The Revolution, were well manned and well gunned.
    In early September details of the conspiracy were uncovered which became known as the ‘Atterbury plot’ after Francis Atterbury, Bishop of Rochester, who was in charge of Jacobite affairs in England. The conspirators planned to capitalize on discontents among the Guards, the City Corporation, the Westminster mob and the Thames watermen. Key buildings in London were to be seized, including the Tower of London, the Royal Exchange and the Bank of England. Once London had fallen the rising was to be supported by landings of Irish regiments in the service of France and Spain.
    In early December, Captain Scott of HMS Dragon arrived at Genoa and demanded the right to seize The Revolution and its crew of ‘traitors and rebels to the King’. However the Doge refused and so too did the Republic of Genoa. Regardless, Scott forced his way into Genoa’s harbour and seized the ship only to find that its Captain had already left after having burned his papers.
    Evidently the ship was allowed to continue on its way as Carteret received further intelligence of The Revolution and other pro-Jacobite ships. When it was eventually captured letters found on board led to the arrest of an Englishwoman suspected of recruiting for the Jacobites. She denied the charges but attempted to solicit the assistance of a number of people, most notably, the ‘Duke of Worton’.

The Constitutions

On 17 January 1723, according to Anderson’s 1738 Constitutions, a specially convened meeting of the Grand Lodge took place at which Wharton was reinstalled, this time regularly, and with Dr. Desaguliers as his Deputy. But this account does not stand up to scrutiny. The first edition of the Constitutions was prepared before this meeting and yet throughout Wharton and Desaguliers are listed as Grand Master and Deputy Grand Master respectively at a time when, according to Anderson, they were not in office. Likewise the frontispiece of the Constitutions also depicts the Duke of Wharton as Grand Master and standing behind him, in the capacity of Deputy, is Dr. Desaguliers. So what made Anderson claim the contrary? In 1738 Wharton’s Jacobite sympathies were common knowledge but in January 1723 his true allegiances were yet to be exposed. It must also be noted that Anderson was fiercely pro-Hanoverian and, as such, he must have taken a particularly dim view of Wharton’s defection to the Jacobite camp especially while he was still Grand Master, an action that must been troubling for the Whigs within the Grand Lodge in such a politically charged atmosphere.
    On 15 May 1723 Wharton attended Atterbury’s showcase trial in the House of Lords and to the amazement of everyone present, spoke eloquently in his defence. Nonetheless, Atterbury was found guilty and sentenced to a life of exile. Unperturbed, Wharton launched an anti-government publication named The True Briton in which he continued to defend the Bishop and lampoon the government. And on 18 June when Atterbury boarded a man-of-war moored at the Port of London the only Peer who accompanied the huge crowds to the waterside to see him off was Philip, Duke of Wharton.
    Just six days later the grand lodge met at Merchant Taylors’ Hall to install Wharton’s successor, the Earl of Dalkeith. According to Anderson, Wharton ‘came attended by some eminent Brothers in their Coaches’ and with about four-hundred members present the meeting was duly opened. He alleged that some members proposed they should ‘name another’ successor as Dalkeith was absent in Scotland.
    However this prompted the wardens of Dalkeith’s lodge, two military officers - Colonel Thomas Inwood and Captain Andrew Robinson, to announce that he would soon return and after dinner they appointed Desaguliers as his deputy. Fortunately we do not have to rely on Anderson’s somewhat untrustworthy account as this was the first Grand Lodge meeting at which minutes were taken and they reveal the unmistakable traces of an acrimonious dispute.
    They commence with William Cowper, a member of the Westminster Lodge, being ‘ORDERED’ to be ‘Secretary of The Grand Lodge’ which is significant for William Cowper was also Clerk of the Parliaments. Wharton was then asked ‘to name his Successor’ but, on his ‘declining so to do’, the assembly proceeded to elect the Earl of Dalkeith who by proxy ‘nominated Dr. Desaguliers for his Deputy’. The ensuing ballot evidently divided the assembly as Dr. Desaguliers was only elected by a single vote.
    At this Wharton questioned the ballot and with ‘several Brethren withdrew out of the Hall as dividing against approving Dr Desaguliers.’ During his absence, one of Dalkeith’s Wardens, Captain Andrew Robinson, produced a letter from the Earl which affirmed that he, Dalkeith, ‘did Appoint Dr Desaguliers [as] his Deputy’.
    Then on behalf of the Earl and ‘the whole Fraternity’ Captain Robinson protested at the actions of ‘the late Grand Master’ which he described as ‘unprecedented, unwarrantable, and irregular’.
    Upon his return to the hall Wharton was ‘acquainted with the aforesaid Declaration’ and in disgust he and his supporters left the Grand Lodge ‘without ceremony’. Tellingly, the minutes are signed by ‘John Theophilus Desaguliers, Deputy Grand Master’.
    On 28 June the Duke of Newcastle duly informed Lord Townshend that Wharton had ‘appeared in the city at the head of the Jacobites, and whose whole discourse is nothing but infamous scandal against the Government.’ The following day Anderson also wrote to the Duke of Montagu and informed him that his ‘company would have been useful’ as the Wharton had ‘endeavoured’ to ‘divide us against Dr Desaguliers’.
    The said Duke has been deeply engaged all this week among the Livery-men of London in the Election of Sheriffs, though not entirely to his satisfaction, which I’m sorry for, but none can help it except Mr Wallpool [sic], who, they say, thinks it not worth while to advise him.
    Clearly Anderson was aware of the political dimensions of Wharton’s antics. Wharton subsequently renounced Freemasonry and formed the anti-masonic society called the Gormogons. In June 1725 he left England for Vienna where he joined the exiled Stuart court and in March 1726 he arrived in Madrid as an envoy of the Pretender. Predictably, his wayward lifestyle resulted in the Pretender losing faith in his services and after a few inglorious months fighting at the siege of Gibraltar on the side of the Spanish, Wharton found himself desperately short of money.
    In the winter of 1727 the Pretender’s envoy in Madrid told Wharton that his services were no longer required and it was soon after this, in February 1728, that Wharton founded the first foreign lodge in the city. It remains unclear why he should do this after his earlier renunciation of Freemasonry.
    In addition, intriguing documents exist which attest to his alleged status as the first Grand Master of French Freemasonry at this time. He spent the remainder of his life in exile; aged thirty-three, he died and was buried at the Catalan monastery of Poblet in May 1731.

The First Madrid Lodge
The first lodge in a foreign country to be regularly constituted and warranted by the Grand Lodge of England was the Duke of Wharton’s lodge, No. 50, on 19 March 1729. 17 April 1728 – a letter from several masons in Madrid was presented at a Quarterly Communication of the Grand Lodge. The letter, dated 15 February, announced that their lodge met on the first Sunday every month. They promised ‘a longer list of members’ but there is no record of any list being sent. The lodge met in the Hotel de Lys, No. 17, St. Bernard Street, Madrid, on the corner of La Garduña Street, near to the present-day Palacio Real. On 27 March 1729 Grand Lodge agreed that the lodge should be regularly constituted. The warrant had been granted a week earlier.
    The lodge did not feature in the 1728 engraved list of lodges, as it hadn’t yet received its warrant. It was registered as No. 50 from 1729-40, as No. 44 from 1740- 55, and No. 27 from 1755 to 27 March 1768, when it was erased. There is little or no record of the lodge after 1729 until its erasure. In 1741 and 1751 Royal Decrees were issued in Spain against Freemasonry and many were sent to the galleys. In 1793 the death sentence was announced for Freemasons.
    The lodge was later re-started as the ‘Matritense Lodge’ (Lane’s Masonic Records, p. 50, mistakenly refers to it as ‘Matriteuse’), No. 1, on the register of the National Grand Orient of Spain which was founded in 1817.