Kings and World Leaders Who Were Freemasons

No. King Charles III is not a Freemason, and there is no lodge record placing him in the Craft. The assumption that he must be one rests on a real history: his grandfather King George VI and his great-great-grandfather King Edward VII were both Masons, and the British royal family has been entwined with English Freemasonry for more than two centuries. Charles, however, did not follow them into a lodge.

Queen Elizabeth II was not a Freemason either. Regular Freemasonry admits only men, so the Queen was never a member, though she served as a patron of Masonic charities, as the royal family has long done. The Masonic thread in the family runs through particular princes, not through the Crown itself.

Several modern British royals were committed Masons. King Edward VII served as Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England for nearly thirty years before taking the throne, becoming the fraternity’s royal protector as king. His grandsons King Edward VIII and King George VI were both initiated in 1919, and George VI remained a devoted Mason through his reign in the Second World War. Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, was initiated in 1952 in Navy Lodge No. 2612.

The line continues today. Prince Edward, the Duke of Kent, was initiated in Royal Alpha Lodge No. 16 in 1963 and has served as Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England since 1967, making him its longest-serving Grand Master. His brother, Prince Michael of Kent, is an active Freemason who has held senior Masonic rank for decades. The most powerful royal Mason abroad was Frederick the Great of Prussia, the soldier-king initiated in 1738, who went on to found a lodge of his own.

Beyond the crowned heads, Freemasonry ran through the statesmen and revolutionaries who built modern nations. In Britain, Winston Churchill was initiated in Studholme Lodge No. 1591 in 1901, at the start of his political life. Across Latin America, the lodge was a revolutionary network: Simón Bolívar, the liberator of six nations, and José de San Martín, who freed Argentina, Chile, and Peru, were both Masons, as was Benito Juárez, the reforming president of Mexico. Bolívar and San Martín both belonged to the Lautaro Lodge, the secret Masonic society that coordinated much of the independence struggle across the Spanish colonies, and Bolívar himself served as a grand master in Venezuela and Gran Colombia.

The pattern held worldwide. José Rizal, the national hero of the Philippines, and Lajos Kossuth, the leader of the 1848 Hungarian revolution, were members, as were Sir John A. Macdonald, the first prime minister of Canada, and Edvard Beneš, president of Czechoslovakia. Closer to home, Sam Houston, president of the Republic of Texas, was a Mason. For the American side of the story, fifteen United States presidents held verified membership, set out in our guide to the presidents who were Freemasons.

The royal connection invites more attribution than the records support. King Charles III is not a Freemason, and Queen Elizabeth II was not one either. Among the younger royals, neither Prince William nor Prince Harry is a known member, and Prince Andrew, often grouped with the royal Masons, has no established membership. The genuine royal Masons are the specific princes named above, not the whole family.

Further afield, Napoleon Bonaparte is frequently claimed, but no lodge record for him is universally accepted, and the safest course is to treat his membership as disputed rather than settled. As with the celebrity and founding-father lists, proximity to Freemasonry is not the same as membership in it.