said to have turned the masonic system against Cromwell, so
that towards the end of the seventeenth century the Order rallied to the
Stuart cause.[342]

But all this is pure speculation resting on no basis of known facts. The
accusation that the Jesuits used the system of the Rose-Croix as a cover
to political intrigues is referred to by the Rosicrucian Eliphas Levi as
the outcome of ignorance, which "refutes itself." It is significant to
notice that it emanates mainly from Germany and from the Illuminati; the
Prince of Hesse was a member of the _Stricte Observance_ and Mirabeau an
Illuminatus at the time he wrote the passage quoted above. That in the
seventeenth century certain Jesuits played the part of political
intriguers I suppose their warmest friends will hardly deny, but that
they employed any secret or masonic system seems to me perfectly
incapable of proof. I shall return to this point later, however, in
connexion with the Illuminati.

As to Cromwell, the only circumstance that lends any colour to the
possibility of his connexion with Freemasonry is his known friendship
for Manasseh ben Israel, the colleague of the Rabbi Templo who designed
the coat-of-arms later adopted by Grand Lodge. If, therefore, the Jews
of Amsterdam were a source of inspiration to the Freemasons of the
seventeenth century, it is not impossible that Cromwell may have been
the channel through which this influence first penetrated.

In the matter of the Stuarts we are, however, on firm ground with regard
to Freemasonry. That the lodges at the end of the seventeenth century
were Royalist is certain, and there seems good reason to believe that,
when the revolution of 1688 divided the Royalist cause, the Jacobites
who fled to France with James II took Freemasonry with them.[343] With
the help of the French they established lodges in which, it is said,
masonic rites and symbols were used to promote the cause of the Stuarts.
Thus the land of promise signified Great Britain, Jerusalem stood for
London, and the murder of Hiram represented the execution of Charles
I.[344]

Meanwhile Freemasonry in England did not continue to adhere to the
Stuart cause as it had done under the aegis of Elias Ashmole, and by 1717
is said to have become Hanoverian.

From this important date the official history of the present system may
be said to begin; hitherto everything rests on stray documents, of which
the authenticity is frequently doubtful, and which pr