246 FROM THE ART OF BUILDING TO THE ART OF THINKING
reference to "the Holy Church" to which masons had always been
expected to swear fidelity. This omission appears to show that the
expression "Holy Church" was not assumed to refer to the Anglican
church. The Orangemen deemed it preferable simply to suppress a dan-
gerous connection to a Catholic tradition.
In the next chapter we will revisit these incidents of religious inter-
ference and the controversies they raised with the formation of the
Great Lodge of London and with Scottish Freemasonry.
The Decline of Operative FreemasonryAt the same time that speculative and "accepted" Freemasonry was
developing under the effect of philosophical, religious, and political
influences, the corporation of professional masons was undergoing a
slow death.
In 1666, a terrible fire destroyed 40,000 houses and 86 churches in
London. Given that there were only seven lodges at that time in
London, nine tenths of whose members were accepted masons, it
proved necessary to summon masons from all the counties of England
to rebuild the city. These masons and architects put themselves under
the authority of the Company of the Masons of London and the archi-
tect Christopher Wren. Seven years earlier, under the direction of Wren,
construction on Saint Paul's had begun, with King Charles II laying the
first stone. At that time, the count of Arlington was the protector of the
corporation, but operative masonry was nonetheless in full and obvious
decline.
In 1703, the Lodge Saint Paul made a decision that reveals how
Freemasonry had gradually transformed: "The privileges of masonry
will henceforth no longer be reserved for construction workers alone,
but, as it is already a practice, they will be extended to persons of all
estates who would wish to take part therein, provided they be duly pre-
sented, that their admission be authorized, and that they be initiated in
the usual manner."
The history of speculative Freemasonry had begun.