The Golden Builders

by Tobias Churton

  Two strongholds of faith in the Fraternity of the Rose Cross – one mythical, one real.(left) The Invisible College as ‘seen’ in Schweighardt's Speculum Sophicum Rhodo Stauroticum (1618):signs in the sky (Serpentarius and Cygnus) trumpet the New Age. (right) Augustus von Anhalt andhis castle at Plötzkau – one of the first men to read the Fama Fraternitatis, experience its seductive power, and search for its provenance.

  Modest memorial to Elias Ashmole, a ‘saint of the gnostic church’, at his birthplace in Breadmarket Street, Lichfield, Staffordshire. Three and a half centuries ago, Ashmole was fêted as one of the foremost brains of the world.

  (above) Carving at St Chad's, Stafford. Could the ‘ORM’ who established the mason, be Ormus le Guidon, lord of Biddulph, who returned from the crusades with a Saracen mason?

  (left) Sir William Wilson's carving of Charles II; south door, Lichfield Cathedral. Wilson was made an Accepted Mason in Ashmole's presence on March 11 1682 at Mason's Hall, Basinghall St, City of London.

  Two dragons entwine about a ball of fire. Alchemy survives on the wall of a cowshed built from the stones of what was once Dieulacres Abbey, Staffordshire, founded by the earl of Chester in 1214; one of the witnesses to the chartulary was Roger de Meinwarin, ancestor of Ashmole's first wife, Eleanor Mainwaring.

  (above) Memorial to the chapel at Upper Peover, Cheshire, built by Randle and Margery Mainwaring in 1456.

  (left) Alabaster memorial to Philip Mainwaring and his wife, lord of Peover in the 1550s. The Mainwarings had enjoyed a long association with church decoration and restoration and freemasons, long before Colonel Henry Mainwaring was “made a Free Mason” with Elias Ashmole in October 1646.

  Part Three

  ELIAS ASHMOLE (1617-1692)

  it is not less absurd, then strange, to see how some Men… wil not forebeare to ranke True Magicians with Conjurors Necromancers, and Witches…who insolently intrude themselves into Magick, as if Swine should enter into a faire and delicate Garden, and, (being in League with the Devill) make use of his assistance in their workes, to counterfeit and corrupt the admirall wisdome of the Magi, betweene whom there is as large a difference as between Angels and Devils.

  (Elias Ashmole : Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum. 1652, p.443.)

  Chapter Eleven

  A Mighty Good Man

  Lichfield is still a beautiful city set in a shallow valley, six miles south of the river Trent in south-east Staffordshire. Surrounded by undulating fields and leafy lanes, the city is laid out on a bed of warm sandstone, the centre of which is dominated by England's only three-spired cathedral, a particularly inviting medieval structure whose heavy (but rarely unhappy) restoration in the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries testifies to the destructive power of the Civil War in England.

  A small plaque above an estate-agents in Breadmarket St. commemorates the birthplace of Elias Ashmole and informs us that Ashmole was made Windsor Herald to King Charles II and that he was the founder of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford. Few would imagine that behind this token record lurks one of the most intriguing and inspiring stories in the whole of English history.

  His Life

  Elias Ashmole was born on 23 May 1617, the son of Simon Ashmole, saddler and bailiff of the city. At Ashmole's baptism in S. Mary's, the name Elias flashed through his godfather's mind and, as a result of this inspiration, he insisted that Elias be the boy's name. Was Ashmole's godfather, Thomas Offey (sacrist of the cathedral church), aware of a prophecy circulating throughout Europe at the time wherein the New Age would be preceded by the return of ‘Elias the Artist’ : the prophet Elijah? We do not know, but from the day of his baptism to the night of his death, Elias Ashmole's life - for all its exceptional range of interests - would be entwined about the world of prophecy and spiritual magic. He always believed, and was probably encouraged to believe, that there was something special about him.

  Elias was an unusually gifted boy, attending and excelling at Lichfield Grammar school and singing in the cathedral choir, thereby imbibing the spiritual flavour of the best of the catholic Church of England. On Elias's maturity, material considerations demanded he make his fortune through practising Law and in 1638, at the age of twenty-one, he began soliciting in Chancery, at which time he also met his first wife Eleanor, daughter of Peter Mainwaring, a Cheshire squire of slender means and, perhaps, a friend of the family. Eleanor Ashmole was to die childless only three years later.

  In May 1644 Ashmole was appointed with two others as commissioner for the gathering of excise money in Staffordshire. Later in the same year he was at Oxford, trying to get Parliament to pressure the governor of Lichfield into surrendering excise monies. While at Oxford he became a member of Brasenose College, studying geometry, mathematics, astronomy and judicial astrology. These were all subjects favoured by his hero, the Hermetic magus, John Dee. Dee (1527-1608) had been court astrologer to Queen Elizabeth I and was widely regarded as the most brilliant man of his time, famed in England and on the continent for his knowledge of mathematics and spiritual alchemy. In 1652 Ashmole would write of Dee as a man deserving of “the commendation of all Learned and Ingenious Schollers, and to be remembered for his remarkable abilities” - not the least of which lay in mathematics, of which Dee was “in all parts… an absolute and perfect master.” This interest in what he saw as the unjustly neglected Dee inheritance would occupy him on occasion for the rest of his life.

  It says something of the character of the English Civil War that while Prince Rupert's Royalists1 were being routed by a Parliamentary army at Marston Moor (July 2 1644), Ashmole was embroiled in the study of astrology, only to be brought away from his books by his being put in charge of the eastern defences of Oxford in support of the Royalists from May to December 1645. He was then sent to defend Worcester from Parliament, resulting in another failure for Prince Rupert's forces. Worcester fell ten days after Lichfield Close was surrendered to Parliamentary forces (July 14 1646), during which latter siege (and accompanying plague) Ashmole's pious and much-loved mother died. Ashmole returned to Lichfield to bid his mother the saddest farewell. The picture of Lichfield which presented itself to him must have shaken him to the roots. Parliamentarian forces were in the process of completing the demolition of the many ancient art-works both within and without the cathedral, while using the interior as a stable for their horses; that holy place which had once smelt of sweet incense now reeked of horse-manure. There were plans afoot to reduce the cathedral to rubble. The cathedral records - or what survived of them (the Parliamentarians had held the Cathedral Close before) - were being destroyed wholesale, and in the flames Ashmole could see hundreds of years of English history going up in smoke, never to be recovered. Nevertheless, he did succeed in saving some of the cathedral's library-books from the hands of the Parliamentarian vandals. Having saved what he could, there followed a curious interlude in Elias Ashmole's life.

  Ashmole retired from the fray to the house of his father-in-law, Peter Mainwaring, at Smallwood, near Congleton in Cheshire, in order to meditate on the shocking events he had witnessed. Less than three months later, on 16 October 1646, at 4.30pm :

  I was made a Free Mason at Warrington in Lancashire with Colonel Henry Mainwaring [a Parliamentarian] of Karincham in Cheshire; the names of those that were then at the Lodge, Mr Richard Penket Worden, Mr James Collier, Mr Richard Sankey [a Catholic], Henry Littler, John Ellam, Richard Ellam and Hugh Brewer.

  This is the earliest account of an apparently ‘non-operative’ or ‘speculative’ Free Masonic Lodge known to English history, and raises a host of questions pertinent to the history of the Craft. We shall look at these questions in due course.

  The year 1646 saw the end of Ashmole as armed opponent of Parliament and the return of the magus-to-be to his books. In 1648 he added the investigation of botany and alchemy to his studies. Alchemy, whose abstruse symbolism permeates the atmosphere of Free Masonry, very soon began to consume his interest.

  In the November of
the year in which his king was beheaded (1649), Ashmole made a rich marriage to a widow2 after astrological consultation, a marriage disapproved of by the members of the lady's family who brought a series of lawsuits against him : responsibilities which he later said profoundly restricted his concentration on alchemy. Nevertheless the following year saw the publication of Fasciculus chemicus, a translated alchemical text by John Dee's son Arthur (1579-1651) for which Ashmole, as ‘James Hasolle’ wrote the Introduction. Ashmole had thought that Arthur Dee was dead and was surprised to discover that Dee junior had in fact only been away in Russia, as the much-respected physician to the Czar, and had since returned to Norwich. Dee replied to a letter of Ashmole sent on 23 January to the effect that he did not object to Ashmole's use of his work. Friends of Ashmole met Dee in London but Elias missed his own opportunity, for Arthur Dee died the next year (1651). Arthur Dee left a son, Rowland, who was a merchant in London and who gave Ashmole a family pedigree in 1674 during a prolonged period of Dee-interest in Ashmole's life.

  Ashmole now began to live up to his self-given title of Mercuriophilus Anglicus, the English Mercury-lover. In 1651, Ashmole's diary records his being made ‘son’, that is to say spiritual heir to William Backhouse3 , an alchemist recluse of Swallowfield, Berkshire, being enjoined thereby to call Backhouse ‘father’. The relationship of ‘father’ to ‘son’ may well be in imitation of the traditional relationship between the mythic arch-sage of alchemy, Hermes Trismegistus, and his pupils : Asclepius, Tat and Ammon. Ashmole was clearly seeking spiritual initiation4 . Ashmole wrote a poem5 which offers ample indication of the depth of spiritual feeling to which his intercourse with Backhouse led him.

  From this blest Minute I'le begin to date My Yeares & Happines …& vow I ne're perceiv'd what Being was till now.

  See how the power of your Adoption can Transmute imperfect Nature to be Man.

  I feele that noble Blood spring in my Heart, Which does intytle me to some small parte Of…Hermes wealth…

  The poem goes on, emphasising that it was alchemy's power to transmute the man rather than the metal which led him to offer his fate over to what he calls the “Hermetick Tribe.” Elias clearly followed his own path in his pursuance of alchemical secrets and, considering he had apparently only taken the subject up three years previously, he had made speedy progress. Only five years after meeting Backhouse he was already acknowledged by other independent adepts as the leading British figure in the Art. Ashmole's relationship with Backhouse and indeed Ashmole's career in general was watched with great interest by the Rosicrucian-influenced reformer Samuel Hartlib, who became known to Ashmole personally (some time after Ashmole's initiation). In Hartlib's Ephemerides (1650, sect.4. p.6) we also learn that Hartlib enquired of William Petty concerning Backhouse. William Petty frequented John Wilkins' rooms at Wadham College, Oxford between 1648 and 1651, at which meetings the core idea of the Royal Society was established (according to Sprat's official history of the Society). Petty called Backhouse “an Elixir man”, and it is difficult to tell whether this designation for an alchemist dedicated to finding the “Elixir of Life” had any pejorative meaning attached to it. One intuits here that Ashmole was not a member of the core group whose associations fostered the Royal Society but was of great interest to at least some of them. Most notably there is the case of Ashmole's desire to join the Rosicrucian Brotherhood.

  Ashmole almost certainly believed that the Fraternity of the Rose-Cross actually existed in some form or other. In the Bodleian Library's Ashmole manuscript collection6 there exists, appended to a hand-written copy of the first ‘Rosicrucian Manifesto’, the Fama Fraternitatis (first published in Cassel, Germany in 1614), a fervent petition to “the most illuminated Brothers of the Rose Cross” that he, Elias Ashmole might be admitted to their fraternity. Professor Frances Yates believed this to have been “an entirely private pious exercise” based on Ashmole's knowledge that the convention for approaching the Fraternity was to understand that the Brothers of the Rose-Cross could detect the true will of the aspirant without themselves seeing any written petition. Unfortunately, we do not know the date of this petition. Ashmole himself, along with the entire British Rosicrucian movement, was entirely ignorant of the true social and political context in which the so-called Rosicrucian manifestos were formed.

  In 1652 there appeared Ashmole's Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, the product of a brilliant research enquiry into the English alchemical tradition. In the following year, Ashmole recorded in his diary the astonishing report that his spiritual master William Backhouse (who thought he was dying) had passed on to Ashmole the secret of “the true Matter of the Philosopher's Stone.” What this may have been, Ashmole did not say.

  Restoration

  1660 was the year of the Restoration of Charles II, and one might have thought that the monarch had more pressing business to deal with than to give his assent to the foundation of the Royal Society and to entertain the pleas of Elias Ashmole. But that would be to forget the work of the men who helped ease the way for Charles II : men such as Samuel Hartlib and Sir Robert Moray, liasing with Charles through the court of Elizabeth, ex-Queen of Bohemia in the Hague. The Restoration had meanings other than the return of the Crown. There was the restoration of the dignity of the Church of England, and there was the restoration - one might even say renaissance - of the Ancient Wisdom founded upon the Square, that is to say, the Temple : a luminous idea which in its simplicity avoided the more contentious language of magic and the real threat of persecution and social unrest. The puritannical Right was active, but many had been exhausted by it.

  Ashmole was in close touch with events in Lichfield. A letter of 19 January 1660 from the churchwardens of S. Michael's Lichfield to Ashmole's chambers in the Middle Temple thanked him for “freely giving £5 towards the building of S. Michael's church in Lichfield” -happily still thriving. Shortly after Charles II's generally welcome return to these islands, Ashmole was granted his first meeting with the new king (16 June 1660). The issue he chose to bring to Charles' attention was the condition of Lichfield Cathedral - that but for the vestry and the chapter-house it was roofless. Nevertheless, the clerks were still keeping the canonical hours amid the ruined interior. Charles II “much lamented” the state of Lichfield Cathedral and made it possible for Ashmole to set about organising its reconstruction. On 18 July, Ashmole wrote of how his friend

  Mr Dugdale moved Dr Sheldon [bishop of London] to become an Instrument for the repaire of Lichfield Cathedral, and proposed that the prebends &c. that were to be admitted should parte with one half of the profits of their living towards the repaire of the Fabricke, which would be no great burden to them, considering their livings are all improved to a treble value at least, and by this example the Gentry might be invited to join with them in some considerable contribution.

  Three years later, having urged the appointment of Bishop Hacket7 to oversee the reconstruction, Ashmole contributed £20 and again £10 towards the restoration of the cathedral. (He was praised for this act in a Latin poem by Thomas Smith, cathedral sacrist). The restoration of the cathedral was understood to be an unmistakable analogy for both the alchemical renewal of the spirit which underpinned Ashmole's life and, possibly, for the practical application of Temple symbolism. In 1662, Ashmole wrote to the cathedral subchanter, outlining a gift of rare sets of church anthems and service-books dedicated “to the service of your Temple”. Ashmole was certainly interested in the Temple of Jerusalem. There are among his papers extracts in his own hand taken from John Lightfoot's The Temple : Especially as it stood in the dayes of our Saviour. With measurements of the second Temple of Jerusalem. (London. 1650)8 . It is impossible to say, however, whether this was a personal interest or whether it was connected with his being a Free Mason. A year later Ashmole gave a further £30 to the Cathedral and on 17 March 1666 : “I bestowed on the Bailiffs of Lichfield a large chased silver bowl and cover, cost me £28 8/6d” The letter of thanks from the Bailiffs of Lichfield, Joh
n Burnes and Henry Baker, is highly revealing of both the way they saw Ashmole and the way they thought he saw the cathedral. It is very hard to imagine a similar letter being sent today. We have the marvellous picture of Ashmole, a servant and intimate of the King, an astrologer and profound scholar being hailed by a group of bailiffs as nothing less than a magus.

  as if some propitious stars arising in the East had, (at this time) gone before our Magus [Ashmole], steering its course to this our city of Lichfield, and stood over the new-erected pyramids of our cathedral, (where as yet a star appears) darting its benign influence on this poor and loyal city, inviting the Magi from afar, to offer some tribute to it…like one of those true Magi that offered to Christ in his poorest condition, you have largely offered to the repaire of his Church our ruined Cathedral. But you have likewise Annually and liberally offered, relieved, and refreshed Christ in his members, the poor of our City.

  (Ashmole gave at least £5 a year to the poor of Lichfield). The references to Ashmole as a magus and the description of the restored spires as “pyramids” suggest strong Hermetic implications and in-references. His reputation in such matters was now public knowledge - and was approved of. Ashmole may well have thought the New Age of the Brotherhood was well under way - but which Brotherhood?

  Charles II bestowed the office of Windsor Herald upon Ashmole in 1660. Significant people were speaking up on Ashmole's behalf. Such men must have included Samuel Hartlib and Sir Robert Moray. As one with the Royal Eye upon him, Ashmole's work began to acquire a new, magisterial and established character.

  On 2 January 1661, Ashmole was elected to be one of the 114 founders of the Royal Society, to “meete together weekly”. Ashmole was judged “willing and fit” to participate in “a designe of Founding a College for the Promoting of Physico-Mathematicall Experimentall Learning.” Ashmole probably did not realise that the eventual confining of Royal Society study to purely material phenomena on Baconian experimental lines (Bacon would have been surprised if Magic was to be excluded from Science) would eventually budge Ashmole's beloved Neoplatonic cosmos out of public science and into the private world of the gentleman-scholar or secret Hermetic enquirer. But this long process, thought of in the last century as the ‘triumph of science over superstition’, was hardly yet underway. Isaac Newton also would have been dismayed at the arrogance of materialism. He was as concerned with the lineaments of the Temple as he was with the gravity which held them in place.