The Royal Society originated when twelve cultivated men adopted the custom, shortly after 1640, of meeting sporadically in London for conversation and discussion at the residence of one of them or in a tavern near Gresham College. Soon after, under the patronage of the monarch, they decided to set up an association for the study of the mechanisms of nature.
To ensure that dogma was not an obstacle, they banished from their assemblies all discussion of religious and political overtones. And this despite the fact that the twelve founders differed as much in political and religious matters as they did in scientific expertise and social rank.
Among the names of the first members of the Royal Society are scientists who gave names to their discoveries: Hooke's Law, Boyle's Law, Huygens' construction, Newton's laws, Brownian motion, not to mention lesser scientists such as Christopher Wren, John Evelyn, John Wilkins, Elias Ashmole, John Flamsteed and Edmund Halley. However, the men who founded this Society were not only the first scientists, but at the same time the last "magicians". Indeed, Ashmole belonged to a Rosicrucian society and practised astrology, Newton studied and wrote about Rosicrucian alchemical concepts, and Hooke conducted experiments with spiders and unicorn horns.
- The Reverend John Wilkins, who presided over that first assembly, was the son of an Oxford blacksmith. At the time of his death in 1672, he was Bishop of Chester.
- Viscount William Brouncker was elected the first president of the Royal Society, because the king insisted that he should hold the post. Brouncker spent years translating Descartes' theories on music into English. He was also an able mathematician. He was a Freemason.
- Robert Boyle had spent most of the Civil War writing theological treatises. An extremely competent physicist, he gave his name to the law relating the pressure and volume of gases.
- Alexander Bruce, Earl of Kincardine, had supported the Stuarts throughout the Civil War and had been forced to flee Britain. He went to The Hague to accompany Charles II on his return to London as part of his retinue. He was a Freemason.
- Sir Robert Moray, born on 10 March 1608, had studied at the University of St. Andrews. He was a Freemason.
- Sir Paul Neile, born 1613, a courtier of Charles I, was knighted in 1633. In 1640 he was elected MP for Ripon; he was a great lover of science and a specialist in the patient polishing of optical lenses for telescopes.
- Jonathan Goddard, a physician, had obtained his doctorate from Cambridge in 1643, Professor of Physics at Gresham College, Rector of Merton College, Oxford.
- Dr William Petty invented modern statistics. He developed recording and analytical techniques that were the origin of today's Office of National Statistics. Born in 1623, he went to Paris to study medicine and chemistry. Petty entered Brasenose College (Oxford), and received his doctorate. In 1650 he took up the chair of Anatomy at Brasenose and was also appointed Professor of Music at Gresham College.
- William Ball was a royalist and amateur scientist. Charles II chose him as his first treasurer. He was the Society's first magnetic officer.
- Laurence Rooke was Professor of Geometry at Gresham College.
- Sir Christopher Wren was a scientist and the greatest architect of his generation. Born on 20 October 1632, his father was Secretary of the Order of the Garter. He was a Freemason.
- Abraham Hill was more of a businessman than a scientist. He became interested in monetary theory and finance.
Such original founders of the Royal Society formed two main groups, half of whom were royalists on the fringes of public life during Cromwell's rule and who had returned to London seeking to thrive at the court of King Charles II. On the other hand, almost all of the other half were university professors on the parliamentary side under Cromwell, but who on Charles's return to the throne had been expelled from all but Gresham College.
Of the founding twelve, at least five were Freemasons.
The final act of the first meeting of the Royal Society was to draw up a list of forty people considered suitable for membership of the newly created group. Of the initial forty members, twenty-four were from academia, and sixteen held influential political positions. Robert Boyle called it the Invisible College, and its members "cornerstones of the Invisible College" (or Philosophical College, as they called themselves). "They are people who have chosen to strive to put aside narrow-mindedness, by the practice of a charity so extensive as to reach out to all that can be called man, which cannot but be called universal goodwill. And such is their concern for the need of good works, that they take the whole of mankind under their care".
The role of Gresham College
Gresham College was established in 1579 as a result of a bequest stipulated in the will of Sir Thomas Gresham. And no fewer than ten holders of Gresham chairs became Fellows of the Royal Society when it obtained its first charter. Namely: Christopher Wren, Walter Pope, Daniel Whistler, Laurence Rooke, Isaac Barrow, Robert Hooke, William Petty, Thomas Baynes, Jonathan Goddard and William Croome.
Now, Sir Thomas Gresham had been joint Warden General of the Masons, along with the Earl of Bedford. Shortly afterwards, King James appointed the architect Inigo Jones as Keeper General of the Masons and Surveyor to the Crown. Jones was then "appointed by his sovereign to preside over lodges". In 1607 King James laid the foundation stone of a new banqueting hall at Whitehall Palace in the presence of Master Jones and his Wardens William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke and Mr. Nicholas Stone, Master Mason of England, accompanied by numerous brethren duly attired, and other eminent persons invited for the occasion. Inigo Jones remained in Masonic office until 1618, when he was succeeded by the Earl of Pembroke.
Well, on the 27th of December, 1663, a general meeting of Masons was held at St. Albans, at which Sir John Denham was appointed Warden General of the Craft. Sir John Denham was one of those on the list of members proposed for membership of the Royal Society. But so were Christopher Wren, William Hammond and Alexander Bruce.
Other Freemasons in the Royal Society
In Scoon and Perth Lodge there is a painting depicting the initiation of King James VI of Scotland. The Lodge Charter states: "His Majesty King James VI, entered as a Freeman, Freemason and member of the Craft in 1601" with John Mylne presiding at the meeting. In 1631 another John Mylne, son of the John who initiated King James, was made a Master Mason to Charles I. The third John Mylne took part in the Masonic meeting at Newcastle in 1641 at which Sir Robert Moray became a Freemason.
Elias Ashmole himself mentions in his diary on 3 January 1661: "This afternoon my admission into the Royal Society was voted upon". Years earlier, his cousin, Colonel Henry Manwaring, had introduced Ashmole to a lodge of Freemasons meeting in Warrington so that Ashmole had been made a Freemason on the evening of 16 October 1646. In fact, in his diary he records on 16 October 1646 that: "I am made a Free Mason at Warrington, Lancashire, with Colonel Henry Manwaring of Karincham, Cheshire".
The names of the Lodge members at this time are Mr. Richard Penket, Warden; Mr. James Collier; Mr. Richard Sankey, Henry Littler, John Ellam, Richard Ellam and Hugh Brewer.
Ashmole says in his entry of 11 March 1682 that he "received a summons to appear at a lodge to be held on the following day, at Masons Hall, London". Present at this lodge was William Hammond, Fellow of the Royal Society.
Masonic Symbolism in the Royal Society
At one of the Society's meetings, the Mason John Wilkins presented the first copy of the recently completed official book of Thomas Spratt's A History of the Royal Society on 10 October 1667. On the frontispiece of this work was an engraving by John Evelyn, which highlighted the relevance of Francis Bacon to the founders of the Royal Society. The palate shows a room. The front of the projection is supported by an arch and two pillars. The floor of the room is a black and white checkerboard. On the walls, there are many tools hanging: four compasses, three squares and two plumb bobs, etc. To the left of Charles II sits William Brouncker, then President of the Society. On the right sits Francis Bacon.
Why this interest in Bacon? No doubt because he is the author of The New Atlantis, a work published in 1626 in which Bacon sets out novel ideas on the organisation of research and science. The book is an adventure story of a ship that gets lost in the South Seas. The adventurers arrive on a lost island called Bensalem, whose inhabitants possess the first information-based economic system. At the centre of their civilisation is the House of Solomon, or College of Six Days' Work.
All personnel employed in the House of Solomon are assigned a particular task, and all of them combined form a vast study of science. Some extract material from books, others conduct experiments, others collate the results of experiments. Another group goes on journeys, and others are engaged in researching technical applications or designing new experiments. The masters of Solomon's House turn all cooperative tasks into coherent and organised theories.
The exemplary institution imagined by Bacon in the New Atlantis was christened Solomon's House. It was intended to "show a model house of learning, for the benefit of mankind".
Its inhabitants were sworn not to reveal certain secrets. The details of the College of the Six Days of Creation were to be ignored by the rest of mankind and discovered only to initiates. The foreigner acquired a first degree of knowledge by the revelations of the initiates, but before that, he had been subjected to tests and interviews not devoid of ritualism.
The symbol of light is another feature that resembles the Masonic and Baconian utopias. "But thus you see that we trade, not in gold, silver or jewels, not in silks or spices, but only in the first creature of God, which was light. And I tell you that our trade was only to obtain light in all parts of the world where it was possible to find it".
The Baconian utopia also took up the symbolism of the palm tree, which, like the Masonic acacia, sponsored immortality; and the members of the College of Six Days were to call each other brothers.
In the same 17th century, the spiritualised Temple of Solomon had been taken as an allegorical figure in English Puritan literature, of which John Bunyan's book, Solomon's Temple Spiritualized, is a good example. From the same perspective, one can analyse Campanella's City of the Sun, Valentin Andrea's Christianapolis or Comenius' United Europe (1592-1671). In 1890/1891, the Comenius Society was founded in Germany. Its first president and driving force was Ludwing Keller, recalling the Appeal that Leonhardi had made twenty years earlier. And it is no coincidence that Ludwing Keller was an important Freemason and admirer of Krause, Comenius, Leibniz, Herder, Krause and Fröbel.
Excerpted from: Robert Lomas, El Colegio Invisible, Madrid, 2006, pp. read more 20-85 and from Pedro Ãlvarez Lázaro S. J. (Pontifical University of Comillas), La MasonerÃa Escuela de Formación del Ciudadano. La educación interna de los masones españoles en el último tercio de siglo XIX, Madrid, 1996, pp. 35-39.