The “Avignon Society” was the Masonic lodge of Illuminés, founded by Pernety and later headed by Count Grabianka. Rainsford was an initiate, and it has to be assumed that Woulfe was too. So were the two “Hebrews” identified by Richard Brothers in his later writings: John Wright and William Bryan. In a pamphlet of 1796, written in the madhouse, Brothers described these men as his “two particular witnesses.”81 They had certainly witnessed remarkable things. John Wright was a carpenter from Leeds who in 1788 was told by the Holy Spirit that he must leave his large family and go to London. There he became involved with the Swedenborgians, and met a like-minded copper-plate engraver named William Bryan. In January 1789, the Holy Spirit instructed the two men to go to Avignon, which was heart-wrenching for Bryan as his wife was recovering from a still birth. After many adventures, they reached the papal city, where they were welcomed by the lodge. Wright describes how the Illuminés met every evening to share bread and wine in commemoration of the death of Christ, which makes them sound like part-time monks. The two Englishmen were able to consult the lodge's mysterious oracle (who may have been a young woman) and were eventually initiated. The oracle spoke a language, informed by occult philosophy, that diverged from that used to express the popular Christian beliefs of Wright, although Bryan, who read more widely, may have been familiar with it. She made predictions about the downfall of the Ottoman Empire and how Palestine “shall be the centre of that faith, of which it was the cradle.” She told them that “we are continually surrounded with spirits, good and bad, and they are almost continually in conversation with men.” She told Wright that his spiritual guide was named “RAPHAEL.” The two men eagerly accepted what was told them. After six months of spiritual discoveries, they went back to England.82
Wright first met Richard Brothers on 14 July 1794, the anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, after hearing about his books of prophecy. Bryan, who encountered Brothers's writings when they were “read in a party of my friends at Bath,” was not at first convinced that the retired sailor really was the “Prince of the Hebrews,” but he soon changed his mind.83 Before the end of the year, a grateful Brothers had included both men in the second edition of his prophecies. Peter Woulfe, on the other hand, had already decided that “Bryant” was dangerous, writing to Rainsford: “You cannot now doubt, but there was good foundation for what I wrote to you about Bryant last September when you were at Southamton [sic]; had you attended to it, the wicked designs of our republican societies would have been then known. Bryant is gone to settle at Bath.”84 Bryan's connections with “republican societies” cannot be traced, but he trained in copper-plate printing with William Sharp, a member of the London Corresponding Society. Sharp had been examined by the Privy Council in connection with the treason trials of 1794, but was released. Like Bryan, he practised animal magnetism and became a supporter of Brothers. Another link between Bryan and radical circles was the publisher George Riebau, a Swedenborgian who was also a member of the London Corresponding Society.85
His attachment to the Avignon Society brought fierce opprobrium on Brothers's head. Sarah Flaxmer, a self-proclaimed prophetess, asserted that Satan had established “a synagogue at Avignon,” whose members “are his angels; some of these are dispersed into all nations, and go about as angels of light, to deceive the elect of God.” They had duped Brothers, but if she were in that synagogue, “and Satan their High Priest at the head, and all his Angels around me, the Lord would send his Angels to deliver me from their power.” Evoking the Apocalyptic vision of the woman clothed with the sun (Revelation 12:1–2), Flaxmer called for a female leader to restore Jerusalem—and, of course, she offered herself.86 Brothers made no reply to her. In fact, he only alluded to the Avignon Society once in his later writings. In a passage in which he named John Wright as “chief of the priesthood” and promised to provide for Bryan, he assured them that their trip to Avignon was “for the purpose of receiving a testimony of me.”87 He said nothing at all about the occult philosophy of the lodge.
Brothers was generally indifferent to the views of his supporters. One of the latter was Nathaniel Brassey Halhed, the only Member of Parliament who spoke up for the “Prince of the Hebrews.” An Orientalist, Halhed had served in the East India Company and was known as the translator of a set of Brahmin lawcodes from Persian. Curiously, he established no connection between Hindu sacred writings and Brothers's visions. While he admitted himself to have been “fortunate enough to discover the true meaning couched under the Hindu triad of Energies or Powers,” he made no attempt to apply this to Brothers's critical view of the Trinity. Halhed simply believed Brothers to be neither an impostor nor a madman, which meant that he had a good claim to being a second Moses.88
The prophet's own lack of an opinion on most theological subjects may have been an attractive feature in the minds of his adherents. We do not know how many of the latter existed, but they were certainly numerous, as fear of Brothers's popularity became intense in 1795. One critic alleged that “the whole herd of Jacobins, and some under the name of Patriots,” were defending him, and that “an army of Brotherites” would “rise and erect their Prophet.”89 This was a fantasy, but it was widely accepted. Throughout 1795, Brothers's pretensions were furiously denounced in print, and just as ardently upheld.90 Only one work published in this controversy, however, contained occult material, and it was a spoof. “Moses Gomez Pereira,” allegedly a Jewish supporter of Brothers, presented the “supernatural” prophecies of the “Prince of the Hebrews” as a key to the signs of the zodiac. He also implied that Brothers was a Freemason.91
Brothers's moment of fame passed with the end of the year. The imposition of the Two Acts and the gradual easing of the corn shortage stabilized the government and weakened the opposition. Eventually, many of Brothers's followers drifted away to a new leader, a prophetess who claimed, like Sarah Flaxmer, to be the woman clothed in the sun. She was Joanna Southcott, a farm servant from Devon, who began publishing her revelations in 1801. Her communications with the Spirit and with angels were direct, highly emotional and at times charged sexually. She believed in witches, but thought astrology to be wrong because it distracted people from Scripture. She expressed no interest in occult philosophy or science, and was dismayed by the Swedenborgian view of a world full of spirits, which she found unscriptural.92 Southcott deliberately cultivated an anti-intellectual stance on issues about which she was better informed than she cared to admit. Occult thinking was hardly unknown in the lower ranks of society, especially in the West Country, and the Methodists among whom she grew up were not immune to its appeal. Her rejection of learned aspects of the occult seems to have been a conscious choice, made in the wake of the Brothers affair. She had no desire to be reviled as a tool of occult Freemasonry or locked up as a madwoman.
Brothers remained in the madhouse until after the death of William Pitt the younger in 1806. By that time, he had adopted an almost fawning stance towards the British government, and he no longer demanded that George III stand aside for him. He attacked Joanna Southcott, condescendingly, in a pamphlet that associated women with the weakness of Eve.93 His most interesting later work, however, and the only one of his writings that can be considered an effort at occult philosophy, was a description of Jerusalem based on Ezekiel's vision. This far-ranging treatise begins with a utopian description of the rebuilt city as it would appear under its new prince, with regular streets, parks, colleges and other public buildings. Every house was to have a garden, “where the poorest families may walk and enjoy themselves—where their children may play in safety, to acquire daily fresh health and strength.” The land of Palestine was to be improved through the communal labour of all men and women. Brothers proceeded to pronounce on the measurements of the Temple, and to offer a theory of biblical architecture. He went even further, attacking the “sophistical delusion” of the Trinity, along with the Pythagorean theory of the transmigration of souls (which he traced to the Brahmins), Newton's theory of gravity and the
heliocentric universe of Copernicus.94 Although he relied on Scripture and what he thought of as common sense in making these claims, Brothers was evidently trying to address issues that had obsessed occult thinkers, from Solomon's Temple to the cosmos. As was typical of him, his responses showed little awareness of previous writings.
Today, Brothers is sometimes seen as a precursor of British colonialism and Zionism, because he advocated a resettlement of Palestine without much regard for the existing inhabitants.95 This may put too conventional a gloss on his writings. He was an embarrassment to later colonizers, not a heroic forerunner. Palestine was never more than a blank slate on which his vast dreams were to be realized, just as Wright and Bryan and the Avignon Society were just supporting elements in his magnificent fantasy of princedom. By involving them in his world-shaking schemes, however, he tainted them as subversive, dangerous and perhaps insane. We may have sympathy for Brothers as a man wrongly imprisoned, who seems genuinely to have cared about the plight of the poor; but, ultimately, everybody and everything around him was sacrificed without compunction to his consuming prophetic vision.
Barruel and the Occult Lodges
By now, the pattern of the occult breakdown of the 1790s has become clear: first, the members of an occult circle become involved in a wider cause or movement—anti-slavery, animal magnetism, the prophetic ambitions of Richard Brothers. Second, negative publicity links that cause and its supporters with social levelling, subversive ideas and revolutionary radicalism. The effects of such publicity were often paralysing to occult groups, because they tended to shun open debate and anxiously feared any loss of respectability. The result might be a purge or reorganization by the wider group to which the circle was affiliated. Those whose adherence to occult ideas was strongest would have to keep quiet and accept a reshaped public image that was more in keeping with conventional opinion. This helps us to understand the 1791 petition to Parliament of the Swedenborgian New Jerusalem Church, asserting that its members were “loyally and affectionately attached to his Majesty's Royal Person,” and requesting religious toleration in exchange for taking the oaths of allegiance and supremacy.96 Another example of setting aside occult thinking in order to conform to political realities can be found in the assertion of Grand Lodge control over the higher and occult degrees of Freemasonry.
For English Freemasons, the backlash that resulted from the Cagliostro affair was minimal, but worse problems were brewing for the Brotherhood. In 1784–5, the Bavarian government suppressed an allegedly subversive Masonic organization known as the Illuminati. Led by Adam Weishaupt, a professor at the University of Ingolstadt, the Illuminati actually represented a rationalist reaction against occult Masonry. Although they retained some exotic elements—a sense of identification with Zoroastrianism led them to label one higher grade “Magus”—the Illuminati rejected the Templar myth, Swedenborgianism and the whole system of occult higher degrees. They concocted various utopian social and political schemes, but had no concrete plans for realizing them. As the Illuminati consisted of professors, writers, artists, diplomats and members of the German nobility, it is difficult to see them as potential revolutionaries, although the same might be said of many French associations that ended up supporting the 1789 revolution.97 Yet the fearful fantasy that the Bavarian Illuminati were (and still are) an international fraternity of subversive agitators, addicted to various occult beliefs, has been widespread since the late eighteenth century. No Englishman or Scot was a member of the Illuminati, although General Rainsford was affiliated with them through the lodge of Amis Réunis at Paris, which corresponded with the Bavarian Masons.
Whether the Illuminati affair had a role in the history of the Order of Knights Templar in England is difficult to determine, but by 1791 the latter had decided to end their quasi-separate status and put themselves under the direction of a leading figure within the Grand Lodge. This was Thomas Dunckerley, the provincial grand master to whom Ebenezer Sibly had dedicated his edition of Culpeper's Herbal. A former gunner in the Royal Navy, Dunckerley was an entirely self-made man, but claimed the curious distinction of being an illegitimate son of King George I, which he based on the deathbed confession of his mother. How his illustrious parentage may have aided him in attaining high office within the Grand Lodge is unknown, but patriotic zeal and indefatigable energy surely assisted his efforts, so that by the 1780s he was second only to the grand master in authority. Evidently a man with a taste for the occult (Sibly would not otherwise have selected him as a dedicatee), Dunckerley was also attracted to the higher degrees, having served on the Grand Chapter of the Royal Arch Masons as early as 1766. He did not join the schism of the Grand Lodge South of the River Trent, however, opting instead to rise to further distinction as grand master of several English provinces. In 1791, the previously self-governing Knights Templar of York chose Dunckerley as “Head and Chief” of their Order, which effectively meant putting themselves under the protection of the Grand Lodge.98 This was a smart move at a time when the higher degrees were coming under increasing suspicion as a result of the convulsions in France. Despite his plebeian background, Dunckerley had come to embody Masonic respectability and loyalism in an age of upheaval.
The French Revolution shook Freemasonry to its foundations. As in America, the loyalties of Masons were divided according to politics and self-interest. Collectively, they neither supported nor opposed the events of 1789 and after in France. Individually, some took prominent roles in those events, but many more ultimately suffered as a result of them. The changing relationship of Masons to the revolutionary government can be observed in the case of the Avignon Society, which had effectively ceased to exist by 1795, just at the moment when, ironically, it became so notorious in England. The papal authorities at Avignon, convinced that all Masons were dangerous, had begun to clamp down on the lodge in 1791. At the end of that year, however, the territory of Avignon was annexed by the French Republic. Initially, the Brothers welcomed the revolutionary government, but in the dark days of the Terror several of them were arrested, including Pernety and Grabianka. Others fled the city. The lodge became inoperative.99 Richard Brothers's blessing did them no good.
To the conspiracy theorists proliferating in the aftermath of the shock of 1789, the divisions among Masons did not matter. These critics were aware that revolutionary demands had first arisen within clubs and associations that promoted enlightened values and the free exchange of ideas.100 Having little understanding of the diversity of beliefs and lack of political focus typical of Freemasonry, they imagined that the occult lodges had to be responsible for bringing down the French government. Such was the thesis famously proposed by the former Jesuit Augustin Barruel in his three-volume history of Jacobinism (1797–8), a work almost immediately translated into English. The Abbé Barruel entered into a detailed description of the Templar and higher-degree lodges in France, in order to demonstrate that they were committed to a single world government, which made them bitter opponents of national monarchies. “All classes, therefore, every code of [occult] Masonry,” he concluded, “Hermetic, Cabalistic or Martinists, and Eclectic [i.e. the Bavarian Illuminati], all and each forwarded the Revolution; and it little imported to the sect which struck the blow, provided ruin ensued.”101 Barruel was careful to separate the “occult Lodges” (or “Arrières Loges,” as he wrote in French), from the “common” lodges, and he advised his readers “not to confound English Masonry with the occult Lodges, which they have prudently rejected.”102 Living in exile in England, he was too tactful to pick a fight with the Grand Lodge, although he knew that the English also worked the higher and Templar degrees. His scandalized condemnation of Masonic ritual, however, amounted to a blanket condemnation of the myths and rituals of the Brotherhood. No Mason could read his treatise without taking some offence.
Barruel's work was published at almost the same time as Proofs of a Conspiracy by John Robison, professor of natural philosophy at Edinburgh, secretary of the Royal Society there a
nd a close friend of Joseph Black. Robison argued for the existence of a conspiracy against religion and government led by the Freemasons, who longed to be “Citizens of the World.” The original benevolence of the English and Scottish Masons, he argued, had been perverted among the French and Germans by the infiltration of Jesuits and Jacobites, as well as by the “spirit of innovation.”103 The dreadful result was the Order of Illuminati. “Nothing is more clear than that the design of the Illuminati was to abolish Christianity,” Robison maintained, adding that they had an even more insidious sexual goal, since “we now see how effectual this would be for the corruption of the fair sex, a purpose which they eagerly wished to gain, that they might corrupt the men.” Of course, he believed that the Illuminati had actually grown stronger after their suppression in Bavaria, which led him to the same conclusion as Barruel: “That the Illuminati and other hidden Cosmo-political Societies had some influence in bringing about the French Revolution, or at least in accelerating it, can hardly be doubted.”104 Robison ended his almost five-hundred-page demonstration with strident flourishes of British patriotism.
Robison's book went into five editions within a year. Having eventually read Barruel, he appended a postscript to the second edition, noting with satisfaction of the Jesuit writer that “he confirms all that I have said of the Enlighteners.”105 Robison went on to echo Barruel in exempting British Masons from his attacks (which he had not done in the original text), although he argued that they did not really understand the subversive meaning of their own rituals. They owed this happy naivety, Robison claimed, to the British character: “As the good sense and sound judgment of Britons have preserved them from the absurd follies of Transmutation, of Ghost-raising, and of Magic, so their honest hearts and innate good dispositions have made them detest and reject the mad projects and impious doctrines of Cosmopolites, Epicurists, and Atheists.”106 Whether or not Robison realized the incorrectness of the first part of this statement is irrelevant. He was arguing here more as a Scotsman than as a Briton. By equating Britishness with an anti-occult viewpoint, Robison vindicated not only the scientific basis but also the religious and political reasoning of the Scottish Enlightenment.
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