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Preston, William (entry A)

Since the majority of Grand Jurisdictions in the United States use the Webb-Preston Work, and since Thomas Smith Webb, whom Mackey described as the "father of American Freemasonry, founded his own teachings on those of Preston, and since Preston's Illustrations of Masonry has, next to Mackey's own, been the most widely-read book in American Masonry for a century and a half, American Seasons have a larger interest in Preston than in any other Masonic leader of the past 150 years, excepting only the names of Webb himself, of Mackey, and of Pike. Preston was British (see page 795) but even in his home-land he has never had the importance he has had here.

It happens that until recent years almost the only source of information about Preston as a man was in Gould's History of Freemasonry and in his Concise History of Freemasonry; it also happens that in both of these books Gould pronounces a judgment that not only is harsh but is so phrased (doubtless unintentionally) as to leave the impression that Preston was not mentally responsible. Scholars have long since known that Gould's judgment is not just, but Gould is read widely and they are not, hence it is of service to American Masons to give a truer portrait, and to ease American Masons of the paradox of having everywhere the Preston Work, and at the same time of having two books so widely read which picture Preston in a sense so opposite to his American reputation. To do so will not discredit Gould; a great mass of facts remains in Gould's books after a few fallacies are removed. On page 115, Vol. I (of the Dudley Wright edition of Gould's History of Freemasonry), Preston is quoted to the effect that York had for centuries been looked up to as the cradle of Freemasonry; Gould's criticism makes this appear as if Preston had been writing about the Grand Lodge of All England, at York. In a comment on the editions of Preston's Illustrations of Freemasonry (page 291; Vol. I), Gould writes:

"One can believe that his information was acquired, as he interprets it, piecemeal, or, like Mahomet and Joseph Smith, each effort was preceded by a special revelation." (This sneer is effected by ignoring the circumstances under which Preston had to collect his data; a Grand Lodge censorship had left the Craft illiterate, and had compelled students like Preston to seek data at large, often from the memories of the oldest Masons. The then Grand Secretary of the Grand Lodge was not helpful.) On page 297, Vol. I, Gould writes that "the veracity and accuracy of Preston," "counts for very little"; on the same page he accuses Preston of writing "mythical history" about Wren. On page 337 of the Concise History (London; 1903) is a contemptuously written paragraph on Preston and Dermott, the former of whom he describes as "a journeyman printer"; the latter as "a journeyman painter." (The Dukes of Athol, less snobbish than Gould, did not disdain to associate for years with the "journeyman painter"-- especially since they were working in a Fraternity founded by journeymen Masons.)

On page 338 Gould becomes openly insulting: " Preston, however, was by a long way the greater romancer of the two, or perhaps it will be better to describe him as a Masonic visionary who untrammeled by any laws of evidence--wrote a large amount of enthusiastic rubbish wherein are displayed a capacity of belief and capability of assertion, which are hardly paralleled at the present day by the utterances of the company promoter or even of the mining engineer." It is a curious fact that much of what Gould calls "enthusiastic rubbish" was taken by Preston straight from the Book of Constitutions which the Grand Lodge itself had published in one edition after another, and as an official book. It is true that much of the historical portion of Preston's Illustrations has become discredited by later knowledge, but it was published in 1772 when any kind of Masonic knowledge was difficult to find; Gould's own two histories also have suffered the same fate, and by a strange irony he is nowhere more in need of revision than in what he said about Preston; and in at least two of his quarrels with Preston it turns out that it was Gould who was mistaken; but errors about data and mistakenness in historical hypotheses do not show that Preston was a liar er a visionary any more than they show that Gould was one. By another strange irony, Preston suffers more at the hands of Wright's revised Gould's History than he did in the first edition, because in it Preston is victimized by blunders of fact in addition to having no atonement made for the original injustice. One of these blunders is too long to quote. On page 306, Vol. VI, it is stated that Preston's had been "the Standard of Masonic Work in England for nearly twenty years." Preston was in the Modern Grand Lodge; his "Work" was not therefore used in the Ancient Grand Lodge; it was never a Standard Work in England, and has never been since, because England has never had a Standard Bork. It also states that an unknown "English Brother" brought Preston s "Work" to Webb in 1800; Webb had already published his book in 1797. Webb is called Thomas G.; his name was Thomas Smith; etc. Preston was born into a distinguished family in Edinburgh (1742), and would have inherited a fortune had it not been very largely lost in the rebellion of 1745. His father was a distinguished and highly talented man. Preston himself graduated from the Edinburgh High School and then passed through the University. He then became amanuensis and secretary to Thomas Ruddiman, a scholar of large erudition who was famous as an editor of learned texts, and under whom Preston was thoroughly drilled in the minutiae and strict rules of language and of editing.

At that time the first publishing house in England, and with only one or two exceptions the first publishing house in the world, was Strahan's at London, the King's Printer. In 1760, and with letters of introduction from men of influence in Edinburgh, Preston entered Strahan's, beginning as a compositor in order to learn the publishing business from the ground up. From compositor he became a proof-reader, and in time head proof-reader, and then became general superintendent of the firm. On his death in 1785 Strahan left him an annuity, but Preston remained on under the younger Strahan, and id 1804 became a partner. Strahan was publisher of the works of Samuel Johnson, Adam Smith, Edward Gibbon, Professor Robertson, Blackstone, David flume, Dr. Blair, etc., and with these men and men like them Preston had friendships and acquaintanceships over a long period of years.

The same learning, thoroughness and great ability which brought him to a headship in a famous firm, he carried into his Masonic work. The old Lodge of Antiquity was in the doldrums when he entered it and likely to perish; he built it up to about one hundred members, among them a number of members of Parliament.

When the Grand Lodge decided to prepare a new edition of the Book of Constitutions they asked him to edit it, and to give him free access to Grand Lodge archives appointed him an assistant to the Grand Secretary, James Heseltine, and under the agreement that Preston's name should appear on the title-page as editor. When the work was nearing completion, the jealous and petty-minded Heseltine proposed that John Northouck's name should also appear alongside of Preston's though Northouck had done none of the work. Preston resigned rather than suffer Heseltine's indignities, and it was this which was the real beginning of the disagreement which split the Lodge of Antiquity. When the troubles which then ensued came upon hire, Preston proved himself a man as great in dignity and self-respect as in ability; the abuses leveled at him by a Grand Lodge Officer did not make him bend, nor did he ever falter in his great confidence in Freemasonry or in the Grand Lodge itself; he was completely vindicated in due time, was received again with honor, and in his will left large sums to the Grand Lodge benevolence. In the whole of England there was no man less like the romancer, the untruthful historian, the visionary, the fabricator in the caricature which Gould painted; nor could any writer have been guilty of a more vulgar lapse of taste than to bracket Preston with sellers of worthless stock or with such a half-mad man as the Mormon Joseph Smith. (The authentic account of Preston is the history of the Lodge of Antiquity, No. 2, by Rylands and Firebrace. The above discussion of the single question of his character and reputation pro supposes that the reader has already read the biographical article at page 795.)

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