Conclusions

As we have already heard Ripon was accepted into the Catholic Church on the 8th September, 1874. Although he was well acquainted with the relations between the Craft and the Papacy, apparently he was slow to believe that the Papal Bulls which had been levelled at the Craft were still valid.

However, when at the last moment the attitude of the Vatican in regard to Freemasonry was made clear to him, it was relatively much too small a matter to modify the grave decision at which he had arrived. Ripon resigned having withdrawn from the Craft on 2nd September, 1874 sacrificing his political and Masonic career for the greater universal spiritual company of the Roman Catholic Church. At this time Ripon has been in Masonry for twenty-one years, of which he had been the Provincial Grand Master for thirteen years, and the Grand Master for four years. Coincidentally, the lodge rooms on Skellgate in Ripon, still have his regalia as Provincial Grand Master on display. According to the apocryphal story, Ripon gave his regalia for the gardener to burn when he resigned from the Craft. The gardener never carried out his instructions and, thinking that it was worth something of value, kept hold of it. Eventually the regalia found its way to the local lodges.

Ripon resigned from public office in 1901 at the age of 81. He spent much time in London where he was honoured by the Eighty Club at a luncheon in November of that year. On this occasion he made a speech in response to a very warm welcome by the Prime Minister, Asquith:-

Mr. Asquith has said that I have remained through a long public life, a faithful exponent and loyal supporter of certain great political principles. That is true, and it is to that consistent adherence to these noble principles that I owe any success which may have attended my public life... What has been the guiding principle of my course in public life. I started at a high level of Radicalism and in 1852 I was considered to be a very dangerous young man. I am a radical still, just as much as I was then, but I am afraid that I am much more respectable. (Denholme, p.259)

The end came quite suddenly. On the morning of Friday 9 July 1909 he suffered a heart seizure and died later the same day, an hour before his son arrived. He was buried at the church of St. Mary the Virgin in the grounds of his beloved Studley Park.

I will leave the final words to a quote from Denholme’s book on Ripon which neatly encapsulates the life and times of the First Marquess of Ripon:-

It is... the story of an eminently worthy man who did his best... to improve the lot of ordinary folk wherever they lived; from the blackened towns of industrial England and impoverished Ireland, to the dusty plains of famine-ridden India. (Denholme, p.iii)