Irish Freemasonry

There is no certain evidence that operative lodges existed in Ireland, and there is only a single literary allusion to a Speculative Lodge at Dublin in 1688. The first certain date is 26 June 1725, when a meeting of the Grand Lodge at Dublin elected the Earl of Rosse as its 'New Grand Master'. The Dublin Grand Lodge, however, was not the only one in Ireland. Just as in England, provincial lodges were wary of submitting to a central authority. Many of them paid little attention to directives from Dublin. while in Cork an independent Grand Lodge of Munster survived for seven years until 1773. For the rest of the eighteenth century the Grand Lodge of Ireland had no rivals and, except for the brief emergence of a Grand Lodge in Ulster in the early nineteenth century, it has continued to act as the sole Masonic authority in Ireland.

In Masonic terms, Ireland was also a model of religious tolerance. Protestants and Catholics came together in the Craft, and for many years the statesman and patriot Daniel O'Connell played an active part in Irish Freemasonry, resigning from the Craft only when a misguided belief that Freemasons were to blame for the excesses of the French Revolution led the Roman Catholic hierarchy to enforce the anti-Masonic Bulls of 1738 and 1751. This foolish action led to a great exodus of Catholics from the Craft, for which a terrible price in sectarian violence has subsequently been paid.

But despite such setbacks, Irish Masonry flourished. Lodges under the Irish Constitution were founded overseas and from 1732 it was the Grand Lodge of Ireland that issued the first travelling warrants to regiments of the British Army. While this had little impact on English Freemasonry, a later influence in English Masonry was to create an upheaval in the Craft that would have dramatic and far reaching consequences.