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Liber XXV · Secret Societies

Liber XXV · Secret Societies · Chapter II: Freemasonry

Elias Ashmole: Antiquary, Astrologer and Early Freemason

Elias Ashmole (1617–1692): his 1646 initiation as a Freemason at Warrington, his astrology and alchemy, the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum and his museum.

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Elias Ashmole (1617–1692) was an English antiquary, astrologer, alchemical editor and herald, best remembered today for the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford and for a short entry in his diary: on 16 October 1646 he was "made a Free Mason" at Warrington in Lancashire. That note is one of the earliest records of a gentleman with no connection to the building trade being admitted to a lodge on English soil, and it makes Ashmole a key witness to the transformation of an old craft into speculative Freemasonry.

Early Life, Law and the Civil War§

Ashmole was born on 23 May 1617 at Lichfield in Staffordshire, the son of a saddler. He sang as a chorister in Lichfield Cathedral, then moved to London, where he worked for relatives and qualified as a solicitor. His first marriage, to Eleanor Mainwaring, ended with her death in 1641. When the Civil War broke out he sided with the king, serving as a commissioner of excise and then in the royalist ordnance at Oxford and Worcester, where Charles I's cause collapsed in 1646.

The defeat left Ashmole, like many royalists, without office. It also gave him time. Over the next decade he devoted himself to study: astrology, alchemy, botany, heraldry and antiquities. He kept careful notes on his own life, often recording the exact hour and minute of events so that he could cast horoscopes for them, and these notes, later published as his diary, are the reason so much is known about him.

Ashmole's Initiation at Warrington, 1646§

In the autumn of 1646 Ashmole was staying with his first wife's family in Cheshire. His diary entry for 16 October records that at 4.30 in the afternoon he was made a Freemason at Warrington, together with his relative by marriage Colonel Henry Mainwaring of Karincham in Cheshire, and lists the names of those present in the lodge. Historians who have traced these men have found that most were local gentlemen and landowners rather than working stonemasons, which suggests that by the 1640s at least some lodges in north-west England were already admitting members for social or intellectual reasons.

The entry is brief and says nothing about what took place. It does, however, establish that a lodge could be convened, that it admitted gentlemen, and that a person like Ashmole thought the event worth recording. It is often described as the earliest documented initiation in an English lodge. A slightly earlier case is that of Sir Robert Moray, admitted at Newcastle in 1641 by members of the Lodge of Edinburgh who were with the Scottish army, but that was a Scottish lodge acting abroad. David Stevenson's work on Scottish lodges has shown that non-operative members were already being admitted in Scotland earlier in the century.

The London lodge of 1682§

Ashmole's diary mentions Freemasonry once more, decades later. On 10 March 1682 he received a summons to a lodge at Masons' Hall in London, and the next day he attended the admission of several gentlemen into the "Fellowship of Free Masons". He noted that he was the senior fellow present, having been admitted thirty-five years before, and that the company dined at the Half Moon Tavern in Cheapside. This lodge, held under the London Masons' Company, shows that a gentlemanly "acception" existed alongside the working trade long before the formation of the Premier Grand Lodge of London in 1717.

Later Masonic writers made much more of Ashmole, sometimes claiming that he wrote the Masonic rituals or carried Rosicrucian secrets into the lodges. There is no evidence for either claim. His importance lies in what he recorded, not in any role as founder.

Astrology and Alchemy§

Ashmole's intellectual passions were astrology and alchemy. He became a close friend of the astrologer William Lilly, whose autobiography he later encouraged, and of George Wharton, a royalist astrologer, and he attended the annual feasts of the London Society of Astrologers. He cast horoscopes for himself and others, and used electional astrology to choose favourable moments for undertakings, from journeys to legal business, carefully noting the times in his diary. The broader tradition he worked within is described in our guide to astrology.

In alchemy he was chiefly a collector, editor and student of texts. In 1650 he published, under the anagram "James Hasolle", the Fasciculus Chemicus, a translation of a Latin collection by Arthur Dee, the son of John Dee. In 1658 he published The Way to Bliss, a prose treatise on the philosophers' stone. He also recorded receiving alchemical teaching from an elderly practitioner, William Backhouse, whom he called his father in the art.

The Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum (1652)§

Ashmole's most important contribution to esoteric literature is the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, published in 1652, the same year that Thomas Vaughan issued the first English edition of the Rosicrucian Fama and Confessio. It is an anthology of English alchemical poetry, mostly of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, gathered from manuscripts. It includes Thomas Norton's Ordinal of Alchemy, George Ripley's Compound of Alchymy, verse attributed to Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate and Edward Kelley, and many shorter anonymous pieces, illustrated with engravings.

Ashmole added a long "Prolegomena" and annotations. In them he defended alchemy as an ancient and pious science, distinguished the true philosophers from mere gold-seekers, discussed the angelic magic of John Dee and Edward Kelley, and praised the antiquity of English learning. He planned further volumes, including one of prose treatises, but never completed them. The Theatrum remains a valuable source because it preserved poems that might otherwise be lost and records how a seventeenth-century reader understood them. See our survey of Western alchemy for the tradition these poems represent.

Herald, Royal Society and the Ashmolean Museum§

The Restoration of 1660 changed Ashmole's fortunes. Charles II appointed him Windsor Herald and comptroller of the excise, and he was one of the original fellows of the Royal Society, founded in the same years. His second marriage, in 1649, to the wealthy and much older Lady Mary Mainwaring, had brought him money and lawsuits; after her death he married Elizabeth Dugdale, daughter of the antiquary William Dugdale, in 1668.

In 1672 he published The Institution, Laws and Ceremonies of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, a substantial work of heraldic and ceremonial history that was dedicated to the king. He also acquired the famous collection of natural and man-made curiosities assembled by the Tradescant family of gardeners, the "Ark" at Lambeth, after a long legal dispute with John Tradescant's widow, Hester. Ashmole offered this collection, with his own books and manuscripts, to the University of Oxford, which built a museum to house it; the Ashmolean opened in 1683 and is often called the first public museum in Britain. Among the manuscripts that reached Oxford were papers of John Dee, which Ashmole had obtained in 1672 after they were found hidden in a chest.

Ashmole died in London on 18 May 1692 and was buried at Lambeth. His books and manuscripts are now in the Bodleian Library.

Ashmole's Place in Esoteric History§

Ashmole stands at a crossroads in English intellectual life. He belonged to the world of Renaissance occult philosophy, which still treated astrology, alchemy and angelic magic as serious knowledge, and to the new world of the Royal Society and empirical natural history. He was also present, though only in passing, at the early stage of a fraternity that would become modern Freemasonry. Writers who later linked the Rosicrucians, the alchemists and the Freemasons often pointed to him as the man in whom these streams met. Historians are more cautious: his diary shows interest in all three, but no proof that he joined them together in any organised way.

Frequently asked questions§

When was Elias Ashmole made a Freemason?§

According to his diary, Ashmole was made a Freemason at Warrington in Lancashire on 16 October 1646, at about half past four in the afternoon, together with Colonel Henry Mainwaring. The entry also names the members of the lodge who were present.

Was Elias Ashmole the first speculative Freemason?§

He was not the first, but his is one of the earliest documented admissions of a non-operative gentleman in an English lodge. Sir Robert Moray was initiated at Newcastle in 1641 by members of a Scottish lodge, and Scottish lodges had admitted gentlemen even earlier.

What is the Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum?§

It is an anthology of English alchemical poems that Ashmole edited and published in 1652, with a long introduction and notes. It includes works by Thomas Norton and George Ripley and verse attributed to Chaucer and Edward Kelley.

Why is the Ashmolean Museum named after Elias Ashmole?§

Ashmole gave the University of Oxford the Tradescant collection of curiosities, which he had acquired, together with his own collections. The university built a museum to house them, which opened in 1683 under his name.

Sources and further reading§