Description
Book SynopsisUpdated with a new preface, this study provides a comprehensive biography of Thomas Dunckerley. An eighteenth-century success story, Dunckerley rose from obscurity to a twenty-year-long career in the Royal Navy, the centerpiece of which was the famous Siege of Quebec. He retired from the navy to climb to the highest echelons of English Freemasonry, holding Grand Masterships and Provincial Grand Masterships across England and across Orders. He was a tender family man, an inspiring leader and heroic patriot. He also had a secret. When Dunckerley was in his forties, his mother left a deathbed confession of her seduction and adulteryand his illegitimacy. As Dunckerley revealed his mother's confession, his friends and Masonic colleagues were thunderstruck to discover he was not the son of a porter at Somerset House, but of the late King George II.For his contemporaries and biographers, all good things in his later career seemed to flow from this revelation. His mother's confession was not D
Trade ReviewSommers has revealed a stunning story of self-deception and re-invention. In a shrewd re-examination of the hagiographic accounts she shows the sleights of hand underlying our understanding of the past, its many twists of fate, and what enthusiastic biographers do with them. A must-read for modern historians and their students. -- James Allen, Southern Illinois University
The intricate historical detective work involved in Sommers's exposure of Dunckerley's invention of his own past is fascinating and compelling. -- David Stevenson, University of St Andrews
Sommers's revelatory and revisionist biography of Thomas Dunckerley offers an entertaining and insightful entrance into the demimonde of royal patronage, institutional instability, and status anxiety which surrounded eighteenth-century English Freemasonry. This work destabilizes stodgy fraternal histories while demonstrating how 'the Craft' assumed its modern shape through the sincere efforts of imperfect men. -- William D. Moore, Boston University
Table of ContentsPreface Prologue: In the Aftermath of War Chapter 1: The Making of a Myth Chapter 2: Those he Left Behind Chapter 3: Dunckerley all at Sea Chapter 4: Dunckerley Ashore Chapter 5: The Trappings of Royalty Chapter 6: Making a Mason Chapter 7: Provincial Grand Master of England Chapter 8: Appendant Orders and Higher Degrees Chapter 9: Apotheosis Epilogue
