Christopher Wren - Freemasonry

Freemasonry

Sir Christopher Wren has since the eighteenth century been claimed by the Lodge of Antiquity No. 2, one of the four founding Masonic Lodges of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717, to have been its Master at the Goose and Gridiron at St. Paul's churchyard, while he was rebuilding the cathedral: he is said to have been "adopted" on 18 May 1691 (that is, accepted as a sort of honorary member or patron, rather than an operative). Their eighteenth-century maul with its 1827 inscription claiming that it was used by Wren for the foundation stone of St. Pauls, belonging to the Lodge and on display in the Freemasons' Grand Museum, corroborates the story, which is debatable mainly because it would have been in the interests of the Lodge and the Craft to fabricate it. Anderson made the claims in his widely circulated Constitutions while many of Wren's friends were still alive, but he made many highly creative claims as to the history or legends of Freemasonry. There is also an clear possibility of confusion between the operative workmen's lodges which might naturally have welcomed the boss, and the "speculative" or gentlemen's lodges which became highly fashionable just after Wren's death. By the standards of his time a gentleman like Wren would not generally join an artisan body; however the workmen of St Paul's cathedral would naturally have sought the patronage or "interest" of their employer, and within Wren's lifetime there was a predominantly gentlemen's Lodge at the Rummer and Grapes, a mile upriver at Westminster (where Wren had been to School).

In 1788 the Lodge of Antiquity thought they were buying a portrait of Wren which now dominates Lodge Room 10, in the same building as the Museum; but it is now identified with William Talman, not Wren. Nevertheless, this recorded event and many old records attest the fact that Antiquity thought that Wren had been its Master, at a time when it still held its minute books for the relevant years (which were lost by Preston at some date after 1778)

The evidence whether Wren was a speculative freemason is the subject of the Prestonian Lecture of 2011, which concludes on the evidence of two obituaries and Aubrey's memoirs, with supporting materials, that he did indeed attend the closed meeting in 1691, probably of the Lodge of Antiquity, but that there is nothing to suggest that he was ever a Grand Officer as claimed by Anderson.