Okay. There's been a bit of interest about the Tempars in Jones' book
Jєωιѕн Revolutionary Spirit. But also, the Freemasons chapter promises to be substantive.
For now, I have the following from the "John Dee" chapter, page 350-351.
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Jones contests the claim that the Freemasons started in the 17th Century. He quotes a historian named Walsh, and says the odor of Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ hung around the Elizabethan court. (That is, the mid-1500s.) Sir Thomas Sackville, author of
Gorbaduc, was the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge at York.
Since Elizabeth was busy killing and persecuting Catholics during her reign, she often clamped down on any secret gatherings she heard about. Once day, queen Elizabeth sent an armed force to break up a meeting Sackville was holding. "Sackville, one step ahead of Elizabeth, placed Masons in the troop sent to break up the meeting. Either Elizabeth was taken in by their ruse, or they admitted her to membership in the lodge and shared with her their secrets and arcana."
Soon, it came to be that the leading Protestants happened to be the leading Masons. Upon Sackville's resignation in 1567, the Lodge split. "The Magnates in England all began as Protestants and ended up as Masons when the revolutionary spirit leapt like a spark from the Protestants to the Masons at the time of the Restoration."
I have previously hinted at the Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ obsession with connecting themselves to the Templars. This was discussed on the first part of page 351. But the end of the page is interesting, though I couldn't make the time to find it a place in my last "John Dee" posting. This little bit discusses Jєωs and the Masons in early America. Jones states that the early Jєωs brought Fɾҽҽmαsσɳɾყ with them. Jones quotes Walsh in describing how 15 Jєωιѕн families arrive to Rhode Island from Holland, and they brought the first Masonic lodge with them. Walsh says:
Descendants of certain of these Jєωs originally from Spain and Portugal, went into the whaling industry, and founded some of the First New England families. A little later, according to a Masonic authority, "American Masonry was introduced into China by the captains of the clipper ships, who came out from new England to trade with the Chinese." .. The official coat of arms of the English Grand Lodge, even to this day, is the one made in 1675 by Rabbi Jacob Jehuda Leon, known as Templo, who went from Holland to England that year. "This coat is entirely composed of Jєωιѕн symbols," explains Dr. Lucien Wolf. "It is obviously an attempt to display heraldically the various forms of the Cherubim pictured to us in the second vision of Ezekiel--an Ox, a Man, a Lion, and an Eagle--and thus belongs to the highest and most mystical domain of Hebrew symbolism... If one looks more carefully, it becomes apparent that they have the hindquarters of goats, with hairy haunches and legs and cloven hoofs that tread upon the motto holiness to the Lord... The trail of Masonry always leads to, and crosses, that of the wandering Jєω, whether he actually founded it or not.
P.S. The historian Jones refers to is fully named Thomas Walsh, author of the book
Philip II.