The Importance of William Preston
This article is taken from the August 2019 Issue of the Fraternal Review titled, “William Preston”.
CONTRIBUTIONS BY RITUALISTIC MASONS
Soon after the “revival,” or the organization of the Grand Lodge in 1717, Rev. James Anderson and Dr. John T. Desaguliers arranged lectures into the form of questions and answers for the first time. This was adopted by the Grand Lodge as the authentic lectures. In 1732, Martin Clare revised the lectures. In 1763, Wm. Hutchinson again revised and “improved” the lectures and gave more Christian applications to their rites and ceremonies.
BEGINNINGS OF WILLIAM PRESTON
The greatest of all ritualists, however, was William Preston. Preston was made a Mason in a lodge of “Ancients,” in 1763, and soon after induced that lodge to be reconstituted by the “Moderns.” In 1767, he became Master of his lodge.
Preston believed that Freemasonry should not only be a progressive moral science, but that it should have an educational value in giving its votaries more knowledge of the liberal arts and sciences. As a result, he produced “Illustrations of Masonry,” and no book having more influence has ever been written on Masonry.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF MASONRY BY WILLIAM PRESTON
He was the father of the monitor. By 1774, he had completed his system of “work” and established a school of instruction. From that time to the present, the Preston “work” has been, and undoubtedly far into the future it will continue to be, one of the most potent influences of the ritual.
Preston’s system of work changed through development, particularly in the 1780s. His book was intended as a commentary on his system and an illustration of it. He did this without, of course, revealing anything which could be regarded as a masonic secret.
Preston’s work provided explanations and symbolism given in the system as practiced from the time he launched the Order of Harodim in 1787 and throughout the decisions of the Lodge of Promulgation which started to meet in 1809. Preston has given a great deal to the masonic working of the present time in England, probably in Ireland and Scotland also, and consequently in many parts of the British Commonwealth.
THE LASTING EFFECT
Whatever opinions may be held on the character of William Preston, there can be no doubt that his thoughts on, and arrangement of, masonic ritual, procedure and symbolism represent the major contribution by any one man to the practice of Freemasonry.
William Preston took the very rough and ready forms which had developed by the 1760s and by the sheer influence of what he taught and wrote, forced the words and practices used by the early 1800s to be something of much higher quality.
[Bro. Silas H. Shepherd, “The Webb Ritual in the United States,” The Builder, Vol. II, No. 6, June, 1916, 166.]
[Colin Dyer, William Preston and His Work. (Shepperton, U.K.: Lewis Masonic, 1987), 3.]