Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from A Short Masonic History, Vol. 1: Being an Account of the Growth of Freemasonry, and Some of the Earlier Secret Societies
There is probably no topic of more elusive nature to discourse upon than that of the secret societies which were the ancestor of modern Freemasonry, for the early ones are enshrouded in mystery, and their records have to be dug up from various writers and pieced together like a Mosaic, while with later ones there has always been a striving to find an early original amongst their historians, who frequently gave free rein to their fancies. Succeeding authors, awed by the glamour of their topic, have gravely repeated in solemn tones the lighter fancies of their predecessors, and thus the ultimate harvest has been one of mixed grain and cornflowers. From such stories it is the duty of the present-day writer to try to pick out the real from the fanciful, and to tell the tale as it should be told. Whether the author has succeeded or not must be left to his readers to judge, but here he desires to acknowledge the valuable aid he has obtained from the transactions of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, which is now well known as the learned Society of Freemasonry, and whose endeavours, it is hoped, may in course of time throw light on many of the present obscure pages of the history of the Craft, and of other secret societies.
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