"Isaac Newton University Lodge of Royal Ark Mariners No 112
Warranted 29 April 1874"
So it has said on every Lodge summons. With the recent successful sesquicentenary of the Isaac Newton Mark Lodge only two years past (1870-2020, celebrations delayed to 2022 by COVID) and the mechanisms and requirements still fresh in mind, the likelihood was that the process could simply be repeated to gain a sesquicentenary warrant for our RAM lodge. All we needed to do was give evidence of continuous meeting since the consecration.
And so the earliest minute book was located at the back of a dusty cupboard at Cambridge Masonic Hall. Curiously, the cover is emblazoned “Cambridge University Ark Mariners No 23”. No mention of Sir Isaac or our familiar number, 112.
Indeed, the very first but undated minute is headed “University Ark Mariners No 23”, and refers to the recent takeover of RAM by Mark Grand Lodge, which event dates to 1871. This takeover was not universally welcomed. There had been several attempts to form a separate RAM Grand Lodge and the fact that our Ark was originally numbered 23 indicates that the Lodge may have been part of just such an alternative Grand Lodge. Records show that in 1871 28 RAM lodges were in existence. That the RAM degree had been increasingly worked in Mark lodges might have been a driver for the takeover at a time when the tribulations of setting up Mark Grand Lodge (1856) were recent memory. In the end, Mark Grand Lodge purchased the rights to the RAM degree outright in 1884 and the receipt is still retained at Mark Masons Hall.
Our earliest available minute book record describes the meeting of 4 brethren – Bros Walker, Caldwell, Miller and Wace – and the “advancement” of several Isaac Newton Mark Masons into the RAM degree. The senior candidate was Bro Cuthbert Edgar Peek, of Pembroke College. Peek was a student of astronomy and surveying and in 1884 (then a FRAS) he set up an observatory in Rousdon, Devon. In 1876 he is recorded as being installed as Commander of the Lodge now described in the minute book as Isaac Newton University Lodge of Royal Ark Mariners No 112. The records provide that three meetings occurred in 1876, but then…. nothing for 9 years.
Our 1874 warrant names five brethren as petitioners. Bros Bryan Walker, Robert Caldwell, Robert Miller and Frederic Wace together with Roger Birdwood. Who were our illustrious predecessors? All were University men.
Rev Bryan Walker was made a fellow of Corpus Christi College in 1866, having gained his MA that year. LL.M. 1868; LL.D. 1874. Ord. deacon, 1868; priest (Ely) 1870. Rector of Landbeach, Cambridgeshire , 1871-87. Died Aug. 16, 1887, aged 47, at Landbeach rectory.
Dr Roger Birdwood was born in India in 1851 and studied at Kings College. B.A. 1873; M.A. 1881; M.B. 1887; M.D. 1889. MRCS 1877. Medical Superintendent of Park Hospital, Hither Green, in 1909. Sometime General Superintendent of small-pox arrangements of the Metropolitan Asylums Board. Medical Superintendent of smallpox hospital ships, South Western Fever Hospital and North Eastern Fever Hospital, 1884. House Surgeon of Gravesend Hospital, Kent. Served as Civil Surgeon in the Galeka and Zulu Campaigns. Died Jan. 2, 1924, aged 72, at Twickenham.
Robert Kalley Miller B. 1842 at Kilmarnock. Studied first at Glasgow Uni then Peterhouse.
Fellow, 1867; Bursar, 1876-84. Esquire Bedell, 1870-3. Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Royal Naval College, Greenwich, 1873-5. Died June 2, 1889, at Melbourne House, Tunbridge Wells.
Frederic Charles Wace. B. June 17, 1836, St Johns College. Fellow, 1860-75. Senior Proctor, 1873-4. Esquire Bedell, 1877-93. Mayor of Cambridge, 1890-1; Alderman of Cambridgeshire . County Council, 1889-93. Died Jan. 25, 1893, in Cambridge; buried at Cherry Hinton.
Robert Townley Caldwell, B. Mar. 16, 1843, in Barbados. A Corpus Christi man, Fellow, 1865-1906. Bursar 1871-99. Tutor, 1879-92. Master, 1906-14. He was called to the Bar, 1874. On the South Eastern Circuit. As bursar of Corpus Christi, he is said to have shown great business capacity in the management of the estates and finances of the College; as Master, he carried through many needed reforms. More of Bro Caldwell later, but he died Sept. 8, 1914, in Scotland, as the result of a motor accident.
After the 1876 meetings, our next chronological record is that an emergency meeting of the RAM lodge was summoned on 11 March 1885, and Bro Cuthbert Edgar Peek is still listed as WCN, although he does not seem to have been present and his successor, Bro CAC Jones, was installed in his stead. Charles Alfred Jones of St John's College was both a Priest and teacher and Chaplain of St John's College, 1861-2. After the Installation, the main business of 11 March was the admission of 20 candidates. All proposed by Bro FC Wace and seconded by Bro RT Caldwell. Indeed one of the candidates, Bro D Hall, had actually summoned the meeting and was immediately appointed Scribe on his admission that evening. Nothing changes! Bro Wace was appointed treasurer, and remained so until 1891, the year he passed away. I promised more of Bro Caldwell – is that name familiar? After that 1885 meeting he does not appear in Lodge office again. Perhaps some explanation is that it is the same RT Caldwell who became Provincial Grand Master of the Craft Province of Cambridgeshire in 1891, until his death in 1914. His name is of course preserved in the Caldwell Lodge which meets at March.
Our continuous history really begins from that emergency meeting in 1885, and so as we cannot prove continuous working since 1874, we do not qualify for a sesquicentenary warrant (yet!). As to why the lodge did not meet between 1876 and 1885, we can only speculate. It is notable I think that the status of the RAM degree under Mark Grand Lodge jurisdiction was ratified formally in 1884, the year before, by their purchase of all rights to the degree. The earlier annexation of the RAM degree by Mark was not universally welcomed and perhaps this caused umbrage finally settled by the sale. We cannot know.
Nonetheless it is appropriate on the 150th anniversary of the issuing of the Lodge warrant to remember not only those brethren whose names appear on it as petitioners - Walker, Caldwell, Miller, Wace and Birdwood, but also the essential contributions of Bros Wace and Caldwell. Without doubt in my mind, they saved our lodge in that emergency meeting in 1885.