Grand Lodge of London Formed

June 24, 1717

Four London lodges, the Goose and Gridiron, the Crown, the Apple-Tree, and the Rummer and Grapes, met at a tavern and agreed to form a Grand Lodge. Speculative Freemasonry, a fraternity of the curious, the ambitious, and the mildly mystical, would spread across Enlightenment Europe with astonishing speed. Within fifty years lodges thrived from Philadelphia to St. Petersburg, counting kings and commoners among their brethren.