nciples, and those the most dangerous for the peace and preservation
of States," and that therefore except the first three degrees of
Masonry, which are really ancient and universal, everything is "chimera,
extravagance, futility, and lies."[391] Did Barruel and Robison ever
use stronger language than this?

To attribute the perversion of Masonry to Jacobite influence would be
absurd. How could it be supposed that either Ramsay or Lord Derwentwater
(who died as a devout Catholic on the scaffold in 1746) could have been
concerned in an attempt to undermine the Catholic faith or the monarchy
of France? I would suggest, then, that the term "Scots Masonry" became
simply a veil for Templarism--Templarism, moreover, of a very different
kind to that from which the original degree of the Rose-Croix was
derived. It was this so-called Scots Masonry that, after the resignation
of Lord Derwentwater, "boldly came forward and claimed to be not merely
a part of Masonry but the real Masonry, possessed of superior knowledge
and entitled to greater privileges and the right to rule over the
ordinary, i.e. Craft Masonry."[392] The Grand Lodge of France seems,
however, to have realized the danger of submitting to the domination of
the Templar element, and on the death of the Duc d'Antin and his
replacement by the Comte de Clermont in 1743, signified its adherence to
English Craft Masonry by proclaiming itself Grande Loge _Anglaise_ de
France and reissued the "Constitutions" of Anderson, first published in
1723, with the injunction that the Scots Masters should be placed on the
same level as the simple Apprentices and Fellow Crafts and allowed to
wear no badges of distinction.[393]

Grand Lodge of England appears to have been reassured by this
proclamation as to the character of French Freemasonry, for now, in
1743, it at last delivered a warrant to Grand Lodge of France. Yet in
reality it was from this moment that French Freemasonry degenerated the
most rapidly. The Order was soon invaded by intriguers. This was
rendered all the easier by the apathy of the Comte de Clermont,
appointed Grand Master in 1743, who seems to have taken little interest
in the Order and employed a substitute in the person of a dancing master
named Lacorne, a man of low character through whose influence the lodges
fell into a state of anarchy. Freemasonry was thus divided into warring
factions: Lacorne and the crowd of low-class supporters who had followed
him into