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BUNCH OF GRAPES TAVERN

A VISIT TO THE BUNCH OF GRAPES

From TROWEL, Vol. I, No. 1, 1983:

A 'Phantasy' by Lou King

A Visit to the Bunch of Grapes

My "time machine" has given me many opportunities to return to the past. It has been a dozen or so years since I wrote of my trip to London to bring Brother James Anderson to my Lodge for a visit and nearly that long since I wrote about the Fellowcraft who went to see King Solomon's Temple at Jerusalem.

Since then, however, technology has allowed me to build more advanced time capsules that will provide more space for a larger crew. Hop aboard as we journey back to old Boston. We'll set the dial for 250 years — and away we go.

Here we are in Boston on July 29, 1733. There is King Street. Look at the gilded bunch of grapes hanging over the doors of the Bunch of Grapes Tavern. Let's see if I can engage a room there. From my clothing, the innkeeper thinks I am a foreigner. So he recommends the shop of a merchant tailor named Henry Price who often has ready-made clothing to meet the needs of shipwrecked seamen who lose all they own before they are rescued.

So, off we go to see the very person I had come to interview. In the process of being measured for my new outfit, he is intrigued by my Masonic ring, saying he has never seen one like it before. I am able to satisfy him that I am really a Freemason although I seem to know much more than he does. When I say I have come with the express purpose of attending the meeting he had called for the morrow and at the very place where I am staying, he is completely flabbergasted. Upset and confused by the amount and nature of what I tell him, he doesn't at first know what to do about this stranger who knows so much. It is beyond anything he has ever experienced before. I succeed in reassuring him that I have absolutely no power to change in any way what would be said or done at the meeting, nor the slightest desire to change even a word.

I impress on him in the strongest manner that he is making history. I tell him that in his own century, the Colonies on the seacoast of North America would dissolve their allegiance with Britain and form a new nation, spreading across the continent to the shores of the Pacific Ocean, 3000 miles away. He is stunned by those revelations. When I say that his work tomorrow would grow to be known as the Most Worshipful Grand Lodge of Masons in Massachusetts, the third oldest of such Grand Lodges in the entire world, junior in rank only to the premier Grand Lodge of England and the Grand Lodge of Ireland, he is overwhelmed.

I advise him to not dwell on the things he has heard but to go about the business at hand as though I had never existed. He promises to try mightily to do that. To help him clear my mind I begin asking questions about how he came to be chosen to present the petition he carried to the Grand Master in London. He says that there are not many-Freemasons in New England, most of whom come from Gentlemen's Lodges in England.

Price had come to Boston, a highly skilled journeyman tailor who had earned the right to be called a Master Tailor and as such, to join a Gentlemen's Lodge. As owner of his business in Boston, he is entitled to be known as Mr. Price.

The next afternoon as the Masons are gathering, Mr. Price introduces me as an acquaintance from England and I sit silently in a remote corner observing. There is no great throng in the room Mr. Price has rented. But those who are here give an impression of inflexible determination to follow the principles of Freemasonry and the rules of conduct as laid down by Grand Lodge.

It nowhere appears in any of the histories I have read that any of the men assembled here have the faintest notion of what is to transpire this afternoon. But it soon becomes evident that Mr. Price has been very busy in the three months since his return from London.

As our written histories would have us believe, Henry Price waited for three months and then suddenly — almost as if on the spur of the moment — called the Masons together to form his Provincial Grand Lodge. No fuss, no bother, no questions. But human nature does not work that way. These are busy men who cannot be summoned at the snap of a finger.

I open a conversation with one brother who seems to be well aware of the situation, and he tells me that, since April, Mr. Price had held many meetings. In England, Provincials were quite often casually appointed, given no powers and seldom desired anything beyond the title. But Mr. Price knows that his would be an entirely different situation. Access to London is difficult, often requiring weeks of travel on the turbulent Atlantic. Therefore, he must be given extraordinary authority to make local regulations; to charter lodges; to impose quarterages and fees to meet the financial demands of operating a Grand Lodge; to impose penalties for infractions of regulations; to control the behavior of private lodges and the individual members.

Thomas Kennelly, who is to be installed Senior Grand Warden today, tells me that the Masons of Boston have been meeting, as a lodge, unchartered, under the time immemorial ancient custom of Masons, for some time but they had learned of the new Grand Lodge at London, growing yearly in strength and popularity. When Mr. Price said he was leaving on a business trip to England, they gave him a petition, addressed to the Grand Master, praying that they be regularized with a charter. Price presented the petition but went one step further. Knowing the vicissitudes of overseas communications, Price obtained a commission appointing him "Provincial Grand Master of New England aforesaid and Dominions and Territories thereunto belonging with full power and Authority.

He is empowered with almost all the abilities of the Grand Master himself, unusual at that time and which Price is careful not to abuse.

So, as Price reads his commission, he formally opens his Provincial Grand Lodge. He then appoints his staff of Grand Officers, following closely those of the Grand Lodge itself, an unusual procedure but necessary in view of the distance from London and its consequent delays.

All that remains is the formal presentation of the petition for a charter for the Lodge of Masons meeting in Boston. This is promptly granted, the Lodge officers are installed, and America's First Lodge of Masons is duly chartered and ready for such business as may regularly come before it. Grand Master Price then closes his Grand Lodge in ample form. The First Lodge follows suit and that historic July 30, 1733, is given over to feasting and celebration.

It had been a long and memorable day and I am tired, so I congratulate Brother Price on a flawless ceremony, bid farewell, and retire to my room.

In the morning I pack my bag and climb the hill to the capsule when I meet a furious old gentleman who demands to know by what right I had erected that contraption and insists that I remove it at once. I hop aboard and vanish before the astounded eyes of old Mr. William Hancock. A few seconds later, I find myself seated at my own kitchen table waiting for my breakfast.

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