American Lodge of Research: "Considering the Legacies of Jacobus Rex" 3/29/2011

The 350th Stated Communication of the American Lodge of Research will be held on Tuesday, March 29th, 2010, at 8pm

French Ionic Room, 10th Floor
Masonic Hall
71 West 23rd Street
New York, New York

W:.M:. Steven Lloyd Starkes will make his inaugural presentation, "Jack of All Trades: Considering the Legacies of Jacobus Rex."

PRE-MEETING OFFICERS' DINNER
Please join the officers for an informal "on-your-own" dinner at 6 pm at the Outback Steakhouse, across from Masonic Hall on West 23rd Street.

"Jack of All Trades: Considering the Legacies of Jacobus Rex"
Before our Gentle Craft donned the royal robes of Ceremonial Speculation there was only stone, and the Master Builders who alchemically turned Architecture into Enchantment. Yet lost in the rubble of those last quarries sits a stone that the Masonic historians have repeatedly rejected. It is the Worshipful Cornerstone of King Solomon reincarnate, King James VI and I - a.k.a. Jacobus Rex.

James VI & I (19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scots as James VI from 24 July 1567 (at age 13 months). On 24 March 1603, he also became King of England and Ireland as James I when he inherited the English crown and thereby united the Crowns of the Kingdoms of Scotland and England (each country remained legally separate, with their own Parliaments, judiciary, coinage etc., though both ruled by James). James VI & I continued to hold both crowns until his death in 1625, but based himself in England (the larger of the two realms) from 1603 when he succeeded the last Tudor monarch, Elizabeth I.

Under James during the Jacobean era, the "Golden Age" of Elizabethan literature and drama continued, with writers such as William Shakespeare, John Donne, Ben Jonson, and Sir Francis Bacon contributing to a flourishing literary culture. James himself was a talented scholar, the author of works such as Daemonologie (1597), True Law of Free Monarchies (1598), and Basilikon Doron(1599).

Some important legacies of "Jacobus Rex" will be examined -- some for the first time -- and given their due and proper notice.

H/T Brother Michael A. Chaplin