Robin Hood and Her Merry Women: Modern Masons in an Early Eighteenth-century London Pleasure Garden
Issue: Vol 4 No. 1 (2013) Vol. 4. No 1 - 2 (2013) : Women and Freemasonry
Journal: Journal for Research into Freemasonry and Fraternalism
Subject Areas: Religious Studies
Abstract:
The Brothers and Sisters of the Honourable Community of Modern Masons are a hitherto unnoticed eighteenth-century mixed-gender, para-masonic society. The surviving evidence of their activities is found in announcements of meetings in the London newspapers: details of benefit performances that the lodge sponsored in London theatres; an engraving of a meeting; and the lodge’s song. While the location of these Modern Masons, based in a minor pleasure garden in semi-rural Clerkenwell, suggests that this was a minor local London phenomenon, the evidence suggests a much more significant group, active in support for the political ambitions of Frederick Prince of Wales.
Author: Andrew Pink
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