Clodagh Finn: Inside the secret world of the first lady Freemason

US journalist and author Kathleen Aldworth Foster reading a 300-year-old letter written by Elizabeth Aldworth, the first lady Freemason and a distant relative, in the lodge room at Doneraile Court in Cork.

Come with me now, this is special. We’ve been invited to stand in the very spot where Corkwoman Elizabeth St Leger Aldworth discovered the secret rites of a Freemason initiation ceremony some 300 years ago — and was almost put to death because of it.

Her great, great, great, great, great granddaughter, artist Mary St Leger, is here, standing in the library of Doneraile Court, Cork, recalling the night a young Elizabeth spied on the adjoining lodge room in November 1712.

The account of her discovery, her threatened death for eavesdropping, and later her surprise invitation to join the Freemasons is a startling fact of history. And the story of the first Lady Freemason has passed through generation after generation carrying the verbal DNA of the family, says Mary St Leger.

There are written accounts, too. The latest, Doneraile Court. The Story of the Lady Freemason, a work of historical fiction by US journalist and author Kathleen Aldworth Foster — note the shared name — is the reason we are here.

She is also present in this striking Georgian house in north Cork, and she is taking us back to that moonlit night in November when Elizabeth hears male voices coming through the wall into the library. Some say she hid in a grandfather clock; others that she hid behind a curtain and, others still, that she took a brick out of the wall, still loose during renovations, to see what was going on next door.

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Kathleen Aldworth Foster believes the latter — and has proof to back it up. A floorplan dating to 1700 notes that the wall between the library and the lodge was under repair on the night 17-year-old Elizabeth made her life-changing discovery.

She goes on to explain that her heroine prised a loose brick out of the wall and saw her father Arthur, first Viscount Doneraile and a Master Mason, performing arcane rituals in the adjoining lodge room.

At first, she is spellbound; then terrified that she would be discovered.

David J. Butler, Provincial Grand Librarian and Freemason archivist, author Kathleen Aldworth Foster with a portrait of her distant relative and subject of her new book, the First Lady Freemason Elizabeth Aldworth, in the background.

The author conjures up the fraught atmosphere as she reads a section of her book, describing the spyhole and what Elizabeth saw as she looked through it.

“Excitement ran through her as the scene inside the lodge room revealed itself to her for the first time. The room was dimly lit by three candles, all placed on a small oval table in the middle of the room. A single log burned in a fireplace at the far end, and the men all sat motionless in armchairs along the four walls. She could see a black and white checkered floor below them.”

Death threat

The tension rises as she crouches on tired muscles and strains to see a secret ceremony, open only to men. In real life, the Freemasons have said in interviews that they are not a secret organisation, just an organisation with secrets.

If that has piqued your curiosity, Kathleen’s description of its rites and rituals — and, yes, the famous handshake — will thrill.

Meantime, Elizabeth St Leger is so appalled by the initiation of a member at the point of a dagger that she trips, making a racket as she tries to flee the library. At the door, she comes face to face with the butler — and tyler, or guardian of the lodge — whose sword is drawn in his hand.

She lets out a bloodcurdling scream.

The dramatic scene, however, is not just brought to life in Kathleen’s imagination. In an 1811 account, published by S Kennedy of Patrick Street, Cork, it is clear that Elizabeth St Leger faced death for her transgression.

“He [the butler] was soon joined by the members of the Lodge present, and luckily, for it is asserted, that, but for the prompt appearance of her brother, Lord Doneraile, and other steady members her life would have fallen a sacrifice to what was then esteemed her crime.”

There’s more to the story of how the lodge debated the incursion before reaching the highly unorthodox decision of admitting its first female member.

The beauty of being at a book launch held in the place of the real action is that we don’t have to imagine the scene so evocatively described in the novel, but simply walk into the room next door.

The wooden ceiling of the lodge, which is open to the public thanks to the Office of Public Works, is engraved with a design showing the cardinal points of a compass. It echoes the Freemason symbol of a square and compass.

Kathleen Aldworth Foster again reads from her book, giving us an informed taste of what really happened here.

For those bursting with curiosity, she also describes a Freemason handshake; or the “grip of the Entered Apprentice”, as she puts it in her book: “Elizabeth extended her right hand to her father. When his hand took hers, he placed his thumb on the knuckle of her forefinger and applied enough pressure where she felt it.”

Truth or fiction?

You can find out if you really want to. Freemasons have also said that kind of information is out there if you care to look, although they are not at liberty to divulge it. 

Restored letter

Back in Doneraile Court, though, another surprise awaits. A real letter written in 1715 by a very real Elizabeth Aldworth has been restored and is read out —for the first time — by David J Butler, Provincial Grand Master and Freemason archivist.

In it, Elizabeth is writing to her cousin to ask him to vouch for the bearer —
the daughter of a servant of hers — who is going to Midleton to collect an annuity. By then, she has married Freemason and MP Richard Aldworth to become the Honourable Elizabeth Aldworth.

The couple lived their long lives together at Newmarket Court. She remained active in the fraternity all of her life and was said to have been seen in a carriage wearing the full regalia. She certainly took the organisation’s guiding principle — “goodwill to all and a desire to help those less fortunate” — to heart though, gaining a reputation as a philanthropist.

There wasn’t a day when she did not dispense some act of benevolence or charity, the Limerick Chronicle noted when she died in her eighties around 1772.

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She was buried in St Fin Barre’s cathedral in Cork city with full Masonic honours. The story, though, does not end there. During construction work at the cathedral a few decades later, her coffin was opened and a fellow Freemason claimed her body was in a state of wonderful preservation. “She was attired in a dark silk dress, white stain shoes, and silk stockings of a similar colour. Her person was comely; her face of a dusky or ash colour; her features quite perfect and calm.”

How American journalist Kathleen Aldworth Foster came to discover her own distant relative is a story in itself, which she relates in her book (available from donerailecourt.com).

We can just be thankful that she has written it because, 300 years on, as she writes: “the Honorable Elizabeth Aldworth remains the first and only female Freemason recognised in Ireland as a member of the regular, all-male fraternity.”