The mysterious Andrew Michael Ramsay

What Freemason has not heard the name of Andrew Michael Ramsay ? Ramsay and his famous speech (actually, his two speeches) are an essential part of Masonic mythology. 

Have you read them ? Not necessarily. But it is said to be the main inspiration for the knightly higher degrees that developed in French Freemasonry from the 1740s onwards. But do Freemasons know who Ramsay was, what his life was like and what he thought ? Let's discover the fascinating character of Andrew Michael Ramsay.

History of Andrew Michael Ramsay

The origins of Andrew Michael Ramsay, better known in France as Michel de Ramsay or Chevalier de Ramsay, are controversial. It has long been claimed that he was born in Ayr (south-west Scotland) in 1686 and that his father was a baker. A letter from Ramsay, only published in 2018, tends to prove that he was born in Abbotshall (south-east Scotland) in 1693 and that his father was a clergyman. Was his father really of the Ramsays of Dalhousie and his mother of the Erskines of Mar, two great families of the Scottish nobility ? This will undoubtedly remain a mystery, but it is what was written on the patent granted to him in 1723 by the Pretender James Francis Stuart ('The Old Pretender', son of the deposed King James II, 1688-1766).

If Ramsay was indeed the son of a clergyman, this better explains why he studied theology at Edinburgh University, graduating as Master of Arts in 1707. But this date makes us question his birth in 1693, as claimed in the above letter : is it likely that Ramsay completed his university studies at the age of 14 ? Many mysteries surround this figure...

Ramsay was tutor to the children of the Earl of Wermyss until 1709, when he travelled to the Netherlands to meet the Calvinist minister and theologian Pierre Poiret (1646-1719), with whom he corresponded. Then, in 1710, he went to Cambray to meet Fénélon (1651-1715), then archbishop of the city. Previously a deist, Ramsay converted to Catholicism. Fénelon introduced him to Madame Guyon (1648-1717), then in Blois, the inspiration behind French Quietism, a mystical movement that emphasised inner spiritual experience rather than the outward practice of religion. In 1714 Ramsay became secretary to Madame Guyon.



Madame Guyon

In 1715 Ramsay returned to Scotland to join a Jacobite regiment (loyal to the Stuart dynasty, dethroned in 1688) which was defeated at the Battle of Preston in November that year. He was deported to the Caribbean, but the ship carrying him and other convicts suffered a mutiny and eventually docked in France in September 1716. In 1717 he was in Blois at the death of Madame Guyon. He then entered the service of a noble family, close to the great mystic, as tutor to their youngest son, a post he held until 1722.

He then moved to Paris and became very active in Jacobite circles. In recognition of his zeal and devotion, James Francis Stuart ('The Old Pretender', son of the deposed King James II, 1688-1766) recommended him to the Regent of the Kingdom of France, Philip of Orleans (1674-1723), to be made a Knight of St Lazarus. The ceremony took place on 20 May 1723, and the Regent granted him an annual pension of 2,000 livres (around €17,000). The Order of St Lazarus, which had its origins in the Crusades, had become an honorary order in France, enabling the Crown to reward its most loyal servants, and eight quarters of the nobility were required to be admitted as Chevalier de Justice, the most common rank. As an exception, those who could not prove eight quarters could be made Chevalier de Grace for services rendered.

Now Ramsay had been made a Chevalier de Justice without being able to prove even a quarter of nobility, which is strange to say the least. But on 23 May 1723, three days after the knighthood ceremony, James Stuart issued Ramsay with a patent recognising him as a descendant of the Ramsays of Dalhousie and the Erskines of Mar. We will never know if this was true or just a favour to a loyal supporter...

Honours followed for Ramsay, who in 1724 was appointed by James Stuart as tutor to his son Charles Edward ('The Young Pretender' or affectionately 'Bonnie Prince Charlie', 1720-1788), then three and a half years old, and ordered to go to Rome, where the child lived. Conflicts within the exiled Jacobite community in Rome led to his return to France.

From 1729 to 1730, Ramsay stayed in England to promote his writings and was elected to the prestigious Royal Society at the same time as Montesquieu. Back in France, he tried unsuccessfully to enter the Académie Française.

In June 1735 he married Mary Nairne, the daughter of James Stuart's Sub-Secretary, and they had two children. Sadly, his son died in infancy and his daughter at the age of 19. Three months before his marriage, he had received the hereditary title of Baronet of Scotland.

Ramsay died in 1743, probably of a stroke, and was buried in the church of St-Germain-en-Layes, at the heart of the Jacobite stronghold in France.

Who was Ramsay really ?

Ramsay's story is a rather fanciful one, given the uncertainty surrounding his family origins. And we may rightly wonder how this man, whose noble origins (if proven) were not recognised until 1723, managed to receive so many honours from the great and good of the world, to the point of becoming the darling of the Jacobites and the protégé of Cardinal de Fleury (1653-1743), who was to be the strong man of France from 1724 ? In any case, the historical context was certainly a determining factor : whatever their background, James Francis Stuart needed all the good men who could serve him, and the French, in turn, supported anything that could help the Jacobites and harm Hanoverian England.

But it should also be noted that Ramsay had the intelligence to spend most of his career in France rather than in Scotland or England, where it would have been much harder for him to claim to be a nobleman if he was not. The Jacobite exiles were certainly in a better position than the French to judge Ramsay's social origin, but James Stuart's recognition of his ancestry in 1723 remains a mystery. Why was it issued only three days after his investiture as a Knight of St Lazarus ?



Knight of St Lazarus

The mystery is compounded when we learn that there is no known portrait of Ramsay. This is astonishing for an aristocrat, even one of recent peerage. In 1921, Arthur Waite, in his "New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry", presented as a portrait of Ramsay a drawing of a Chevalier de St-Lazare, based on the one in Père Hélyot's monumental Histoire des Ordres religieux, published between 1714 and 1748. This is the image you see above. The face of the figure is not the same as in the drawing in Hélyot's work, but is it this of Ramsay ? Another mystery.

Ramsay a Freemason 

Officially, Ramsay was admitted to the Tavern Horn Lodge in Westminster in 1730, during his stay in England from 1729-1730, but this date seems very late given the large number of Freemasons in the Jacobite ranks. It is much more likely that he had already been received as a Freemason into a Jacobite Lodge in France, perhaps as early as 1715. In this case, his reception in London in 1730 would only have served to regularise his status in the eyes of 'official' English Freemasonry, which did not recognise Jacobite lodges. Again, mystery reigns.

Little is known of Ramsay's Masonic career, but in 1736 he was Grand Orator of the first Grand Lodge of France, under the Grand Mastership of Charles Radcliffe Lord Derwentwater (1693-1748), who was one of the signatories to his death certificate and attended his funeral in 1743.

The famous speech of 1736 was given by Ramsay to St Thomas' Lodge No. 1 in Paris, composed mainly of English Brethren. He was to deliver a modified version of the speech to the Grand Lodge the following year, but first wanted to seek the advice and blessing of Cardinal de Fleury, his patron. The Cardinal ordered him not to deliver it, and after this disavowal, Ramsay seems to have ceased all Masonic activity.

Ramsay's thought and his two speeches 

If Ramsay's story is full of mystery, his inner and intellectual life is also the expression of a complex personality in search of spiritual peace. He seems to have been a deist when he arrived in Europe in 1709, which is not surprising as this position was very common in Protestant theological faculties in the eighteenth century. But he was clearly on a spiritual quest, as evidenced by his correspondence with Pierre Poiret, a Calvinist pastor and theologian with a mystical bent. Poiret was the first person he met on the continent. Then, probably on Poiret's advice, he went to Fénélon, with whom he converted to Catholicism, and to Madame Guyon.

These three people whom Ramsay met were at the centre of a constellation dominated by the figure of Madame Guyon. This was Quietism, which taught pure abandonment to the love of God, in an attitude of simple receptivity, without any external practice. Condemned by the Catholic Church, which saw it as a form of questioning the sacraments and church discipline, this movement survived only in Protestantism, thanks in particular to Pastor Poiret, and strongly influenced the Quakers, John Wesley's Methodists and German Pietism.

Quietism had a great influence on Ramsay's thinking. He owed it to his conception of a universalist Christianity for which denominational differences were irrelevant. In this, the Quietist sensibility was in line with the desire, clearly expressed in Anderson's Constitutions, to make Freemasonry a meeting place for men of different faiths, provided they were good men.

Ramsay' speech

This is what Ramsay says in his speech, in both the 1736 and 1737 versions. And his spiritual universalism took him far beyond the confines of Christianity. His thinking was rooted in an esotericism that was first biblical and Solomonic, and then embraced ancient initiations, especially Greek and Egyptian. Ramsay was a true Noachite, convinced of the existence of a universal form of spirituality that would symbolically go back to Noah and transcend the religions that later appeared among men. It should be noted that the allusion to Noahism in the 1736 speech precedes by two years the introduction of this concept in Anderson's Constitutions, in his 1738 edition. Was Anderson influenced by Ramsay in this respect ? If so, Ramsay's speech would be a founding text of universal Freemasonry, and not just of French Freemasonry.

Ramsay's speech is generally remembered as the first to establish a link between Freemasonry and the Crusades, paving the way for the development of the Knightly and Templar Higher Degrees. It was mainly the second version, that of 1737, that developed this theme. This speech was never delivered, but was probably circulated in writing. It was addressed to a mainly French audience, whereas the first was addressed to a mainly English lodge. Although the central content is the same, the first speech of 1736 remained closer to the spirit of Anderson's Constitutions of 1723, emphasising the Solomonic symbolism of Gothic art, the liberal arts and biblical themes. The Crusades are only an episode at the end of the speech, where the name Lodge of St John is explained by the alliance with the Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem. In the second speech of 1737, this theme is strengthened and placed in two places in the text. 

One has the feeling that Ramsay understood that French Freemasons would be less attracted by the biblical and operative symbolism of Freemasonry than their English counterparts, and would be more seduced by a chivalric origin. The rest of history would prove him right.