To many of the members of Lodges of Research, wherever situated, it has been a veritable Holy Grail of Masonic research the dream of a supportable, cogent account of the formation of the Premier Grand Lodge in 1717 and a comprehensive and realistic explanation of the events which transformed this new organization into what it later became, and how its format still exists to a large extent even to this day.
Realistically it has long been realized that there will never be a totally provable explanation, but Freemasons have hoped that an explanation based on fact, or at least on clearly supportable conjecture would one day evolve.
Ever so slowly this dream has been materializing assisted by a developing hypothesis which effectively accounts for all of the events and happenings that occurred at the time of Grand Lodge’s foundation, and which has not been proved to be definitively wrong by any new subsequently forthcoming information.
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2014 - RE-THINKING THE ORIGINS OF MODERN FREEMASONRY - Murray Treseder
