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https://archive.org/details/NestaHWebsterWorldRevolution
"... in 1250 a Hungarian ex-priest named Jacobi organized a crusade against the priests and nobles, and at about the same date the order of the Templars was founded in Jerusalem by certain gentilshommes of Picardy during the Crusades. On their return to France the Knights Templars instituted themselves as a power independent of the Monarchy, and under their Grand Master, Jacques du Molay, rose against the authority of the King, Philippe le · Bel. In 1312 several of their number were arrested and accused, amongst other things, of spitting on the crucifix and of denying the Christ.
In the course of their crossexamination they declared that they had not been fully initiated into the Statutes of the Ortler, and that they suspected "that there were two sorts, some that were shown to the public, others that were carefully hidden and were not even known to all the Knights." 1 Jacques du Molay and several of the leaders were executed, and, according to the Chevalier de Malet, "those who had escaped the storm afterwards met in obscurity so as to re-knit the ties that had united them, and in order to avoid fresh denunciations they made use of allegorical methods which indicated the basis of their association in a manner unintelligible to the eyes of the vulgar: that is the origin of the Free Masons."
2 This last assertion finds further confirmation from the Martiniste Papus, who explains that the " Grand Chapter" of French Freemasonry founded in the eighteenth century was constituted under the Templars, '' that is to say that their most eminent members are animated by the desire to avenge Jacobus Burgundus Molay and his cornpanions for the assassination of which they were the victims on the part of two tyrannical powers: Royalty and Papacy."
3 Meanwhile Freemasonry in England had developed
1 Recherches politiques et historiques, by the Chevalier de Malet (1817), 2 Ibid. p. 39. p. 87. 3 Martinès de Pasqually, by Papus, p. 140. In the above passages I have only touched very briefly on the origins of Continental masonry, as the subject was recently fully dealt with in the very interesting articles that appeared in the Morning Post during July 1920 under the title of The Cause of World Unrest, and republished in pamphlet form by Grant Richards.
along quite different lines. This is not the place to discuss its aims or origins; suffice it to say that although French Freemasonry of the Grande Loge Nationale derived from one of the same sources - the Confrererie of the Rose Croix - and received its first charters from the Grand Lodge of London (founded in 1717), the two Orders must not be confounded. The craft masonry of Britain, which was largely a development of the real guild of workingmasons, has always retained the spirit of brotherly association and general benevolence which animated its founders, and has adhered throughout to the principle that "nothing touching religion.."
