MassachusettsHamiltonHistoryCh3

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CHAPTER 3: HENRY PRICE AND HIS COMMISSION

The fact that a Commission as Provincial Grand Master was issued to Henry Price presents some very interesting features. Ordinarily the persons granted such Commissions were men of considerable social standing. Henry Price in 1733 was socially a very unimportant person as such things went in the eighteenth century. He had much charm of manner and later demonstrated great business ability, as has already been shown. In 1733 he was a young tailor, thirty-six years of age, who had been in business for himself only about four years. His place was yet to be made. How came it that he was made the pioneer standard bearer of Freemasonry in North America? The answer is undoubtedly to be found in the patronage of Governor Jonathan Belcher.

Belcher himself is a very interesting personage. He was born in 1682. His father was a man of large income. His grandfather married a sister of Deputy Governor Thomas Danforth. His mother was a member of an important Connecticut family. One of his sisters married Daniel Oliver and became the mother of Lieutenant Gov. Andrew Oliver and Chief Justice Peter Oliver. Another sister married George Vaughan, of Portsmouth, later Lieutenant Governor of New Hampshire. He was thus a member of the Colonial aristocracy of wealth and office, with important contacts in England.

Graduating from Harvard in 1699 he went to Europe and traveled extensively in England and on the Continent for half a dozen years. He must have had friends who were very influential socially as during his travels he twice visits Hanover and was presented to the Electress Sophia and the Electoral Prince George. The Electress was, under the Act of Settlement, the heir-apparent of Queen Anne. The Electress did not survive the Queen, but her son succeeded in 1714 as George I. Belcher returned to Boston late in 1704 or early in 1705. In 1704, according to his own statement he was made a Mason. This was probably done in London, where we do not know, as it was thirteen years before the formation of the Grand Lodge. He was the first man of American birth, so far as any records show, to have been made a Mason.

Returning home, he went into business and was very successful. His first official appearance in politics was his election as a member of the Governor's Council in 1718. He was re-elected in 1719, 1720, 1722, 1723, 1726, 1727, and 1729, but his last election was negatived by Governor Burnet, probably because he was absent in England on a mission very displeasing to the Governor. Belcher seems, however, to have had a good deal of political influence as it is said that he, even in London in 1715 had much to do with the appointment of Samuel Shute to the governorship of Massachusetts. Possibly his personal acquaintance with King George had something to do with it.

In 1728 the perennial dispute between the Governor and the Legislature became acute. The Governors were appointed by the Crown, but their salaries v?ere fixed and paid by the Legislature and by annual appropriations. A condition more certain to cause constant quarrels can hardly be imagined. Massachusetts had a regular agent in London, but in 1728 the Legislature sent Belcher over to assist him in ^resenting their case against Governor Burnet. A few months later Burnet died. Belcher set his influence to work and landed in Boston August 10, 1830, with his Commission as Governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire in his pocket. He served as Governor until 1741 when his political enemies secured his removal on charges filed with the home government. The charges were probably unfounded. In some oases the signatures are known to have been forged. tie went back to London a few years later, re-established his credit with the government and, in 1746, was appointed Governor of New Jersey. He died in office in 1757.

Exactly what the relation was between Governor Belcher and Henry Price we do not know. That it was a fairly close one appears from two significant facts. As already noted Price's first act after reading his Commission as Provincial Grand Master was to appoint the Governor's son, Andrew, his Deputy Grand Master. This was predetermined as his other appointments were only pro tempore. At about the same time the Governor gave Price a commission as cornet in his troop of mounted guards. This troop had by law certain privileges and the post of cornet therein carried the rank of major. The advantage of such an appointment lay in the distinct improvement in social status which it conferred. Major Price became a much more important person than Henry Price, tailor, and more suitable for the position of Provincial Grand Master of Masons in his Majesty's Dominion in North America.

We have already seen that Governor Belcher had political and social contacts in London of the highest importance. as a veteran Mason he undoubtedly had many Masonic contacts as well. Doubtless to a certain extent, at least, these contacts would be the same. Among the Grand Masters who served in the years between Belcher's advocacy of Shute in 1715 and 1733 were the Duke of Norfolk, premier peer of England, the Duke of Richmond, grandson of Charles II, the Duke of Montague, the Duke of Wharton (outlawed for Jacobite activities in 1729), the Earl of Dalkeith, the Earl of Inchiquin, Lord Paisley, heir to the dukedom of Abercorn, and many others almost as highly placed. We can hardly doubt that it was Governor Belcher's influence that secured the Provincial Grand Mastership for Price. One would give much to know the details of Price's life in the blank period between 1723 and 1732.

If he was in London to take his Masonic degrees in 1730, as is highly probable, but just short of certainty, what took him there? It was a long and expensive trip for a young man just starting out in business for himself. Was he there to establish relations with the London cloth merchants, or in some minor capacity in the party of Belcher, who was in London on important official business at the same time, or both? One wonders. Perhaps Price owed his Masonry as well as his Grand Mastership to the kind office of his good friend the important Governor of Massachusetts.

Henry Price's Commission as Provincial Grand Master was not the first one to be Issued for the American Colonies, although he later claimed that it was. January 27, 1768, he wrote to the Grand Lodge referring to his 1733 Commission: "This Deputation was the first that the Grand Lodge ever issued to any part of America and stands so now in all Lodges on the Continent, Other Deputations hove since been given to different Provinces: but they cannot, according to rule, take rank of mine." The purpose of the letter is to complain that his Commission was never properly registered. Owing to the illness of the Grand Secretary no answer was returned until November 29, 1768, when the new Grand Secretary answered " I know not how your name should have been omitted in the list of Provincials: but Brother Robert Tomlinson, Esq. is the first appearing in our books for any part of America during the Grand Mastership of the Earl of Loudon in 1736." He diplomatically counters by proceeding to say that "these mistakes might have been long since rectified, if you had kept up, according to your Charter, a regular annual correspondence with the Grand Lodge." We shall return to this letter later.

The first Commission for America was issued by Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, Grand Master, to Daniel Coxe (Cox) appointing him Provincial Grand Master for New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. It contains the following interesting and unusual provision, "with full power and authority xxxxx for the space of two years from the feast of St. John the Baptist now next ensuing, after which time it is our will and pleasure, and we do hereby ordain that the Brethren who do now reside, or who may hereafter reside, in all or any of the said Provinces shall and they are hereby empowered every other year on the Feast of St. John the Baptist to elect a Provincial Grand Master, who shall have the power of nominating and appointing his Deputy Grand Master and Grand Wardens." The Commission is dated June 5, 1730, very near the date of the Feast of St. John the Baptist. The departure from the rule of having all Provincial Grand Masters appointed by the Grand Master appears to be unique. It is true that at least two of the Provincial Grand Masters of Massachusetts were appointed upon recommendation of the Grand Lodge, but they held office by virtue of the appointment and not of the election.

Daniel Coxe (1673-1739) was a very busy and important person. He was the son of a London physician who never crossed the Atlantic, but who by the purchase of assignments of royal grants attempted to build up a great estate In America. The younger Coxe came to America in 1702, with Lord Cornbury, the royal governor of New York. From that time on he made his home in America, though he spent a good deal of time in England.

On January 29, 1731, he was recorded present at a regular Communication of the Grand Lodge of England, and a toast was given him as "Provincial Grand Master of North America". This is the first instance of the lack of precision which is so frequent and often so confusing in the records of the pre-revolutionary period. As we have just seen by the terms of his Commission he was not Provincial Grand Master of North America, although so named in the Grand Secretary's record of the Communication.

In New Jersey and thereabouts he was one of the busiest of men. Hls real estate interests were enormous. He was very active in politics, being several times in and out of the Governor's Council. He was twice a Justice of the Supreme Court. In 1722 he drew up the first known plan for a union of the Colonies His plan somewhat resembled the Canadian system, with a Governor-General and Lieutenant Governors for the several Colonies.

Apparently Coxe was so absorbed in his o<n affairs that he found n» time for Masonry. No evidence has yet been produced to show that he did anything under his Commission or that any Provincial Grand Master was elected to succeed him, or even that there was anybody to elect a successor. Until such evidence is produced and it may yet be found, we have to conclude that Price's Commission, while not the first, was the first effective one and that his claim to be founder of organized Masonry in America holds good.


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