Emanuel Swedenborg,

Secret Agent on Earth and in Heaven

 The Northern World

North Europe and the Baltic c. 400–1700 A.D.

Peoples, Economies and Cultures

Editors
Barbara Crawford (St. Andrews)
David Kirby (London)
Jón Viðar Sigurðsson (Oslo)
Ingvild Øye (Bergen)
Richard W. Unger (Vancouver)
Piotr Gorecki (University of California at Riverside)

VOLUME 55

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.nl/nw

Emanuel Swedenborg,
Secret Agent on Earth
and in Heaven

Jacobites, Jews, and Freemasons

in Early Modern Sweden

By
Marsha Keith Schuchard

LEIDEN • BOSTON
2012
Cover illustration: The Sephirotic Tree of Duke Carl of Soudermania. With kind permission
of the Svenska Frimurare Arkiv, Stockholm.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Emanuel Swedenborg, secret agent on Earth and in heaven : Jacobites, Jews, and Freemasons
in early modern Sweden / by Marsha Keith Schuchard.
p. cm. — (The Northern world, ISSN 1569-1462 ; v. 55)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-90-04-18312-4 (hbk. : acid-free paper) 1. Swedenborg, Emanuel, 1688–1772.
2. Swedenborg, Emanuel, 1688–1772—Political and social views. 3. Spies—Sweden—
Biography. 4. Jacobites—History—18th century. 5. Jews—Sweden—History—
18th century. 6. Freemasons—Sweden—History—18th century. 7. Sweden—Politics
and government—1718–1772. 8. Sweden—Foreign relations—1718–1814. 9. France—
Foreign relations—1715–1774. 10. Scotland—Foreign relations—18th century.
I. Schuchard, Marsha Keith.

DL750.S88E52 2011
289’.4092—dc23
[B]
2011034533

ISSN 1569-1462
ISBN 978 90 04 18312 4

Copyright 2012 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands.

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To Susanna Åkerman-Hjern, Olle Hjern, Kjell Lekeby,
and Robert Carleson, who opened the doors.
 CONTENTS

Preface ................................................................................................. xi
Acknowledgements ............................................................................ xvii
Abbreviations ..................................................................................... xix

Introduction. Emanuel Swedenborg and “The Troubles of the

North”: An Historical Overview ..................................................... 1

Chapter One. The Swedberg Family in Uppsala:

Philo-Semitism and the Gothic Kabbalah, 1688–1710 ........... 14

Chapter Two. Swedenborg in London: Under Hanoverian

Storm Clouds, 1710–1713 ............................................................ 37

Chapter Three. Intrigues on the Continent: The Rosicrucian

Ros and the Jacobite Rose, 1713–1715 ....................................... 68

Chapter Four. The Nordic Temple of Solomon: Architecture

of Wisdom or War, 1715–1719 .................................................. 100

Chapter Five. Swedenborg and the Jacobite Diaspora: Defeat

and Depression, 1719–1727 ......................................................... 140

Chapter Six. The International Masonic Chess Board:

New Players in the Expanding Global Game, 1727–1734 ...... 177

Chapter Seven. Paris and La Maçonnerie Nouvelle:

Illuminated Knights and the Écossais Crusade, 1735–1738 ... 213

Chapter Eight. Italy and La Maçonnerie Magique: In the

Service of Three Kings, 1738–1739 ............................................ 253

Chapter Nine. On the Threshold in Holland, England, and

Sweden: The Sacred Temple of the Brain, 1739–1743 ............ 289
viii contents

Chapter Ten. The Internal Man Externalized: From Spiritual

to Temporal Warfare, 1743–1744 .............................................. 328

Chapter Eleven. Restoring the Temple: London, Edinburgh,

and Jerusalem, 1744–1745 ........................................................... 360

Chapter Twelve. Losing the Temple: Culloden and

Stockholm, 1745–1747 .................................................................. 396

Chapter Thirteen. Jacobites, Masons, and Jews: Citizens of

Earth or of Heaven, 1747–1749 .................................................. 429

Chapter Fourteen. The Quest for Soleil d’Or: Masonic and

Rosicrucian Politics, 1749–1754 ................................................. 463

Chapter Fifteen. Of the Royal Arch and Arch Rogues:

Kabbalistic Calculators and Political Negotiators, 1754–1760 503

Chapter Sixteen. The Earthly and Heavenly Intelligencer:

Shifting Alliances and Illuminist Politics, 1760–1763 ............. 542

Chapter Seventeen. “Milord Rosbif ” versus the Secret du Roi:

Hanoverian Challenges to Swedish Freemasonry, 1763–1766 578

Chapter Eighteen. Temple of Wisdom or Brothel of

Perversion? Virile Potency versus Political Impotency,
1766–1768 ....................................................................................... 614

Chapter Nineteen. Ambassador from Heaven and Financier

on Earth: Laying up Treasures Above and Below,
1768–1769 ....................................................................................... 644

Chapter Twenty. Interpreting the Hieroglyphics: Political,

Technological, and Masonic Espionage, 1769 .......................... 669

Chapter Twenty-One. Partisan Persecution and Rosicrucian

Ecumenicism: The King’s Spirit and the Queen’s Spiritus
Familiaris, 1770–1771 ................................................................... 694
 contents ix

Chapter Twenty-Two. A Final Act in the Diplomatic Theater:

Partition of Poland, Salvation of Sweden, 1771–1772 ............ 726

Epilogue. The Royal Art of Masonic Kingship:

From Stuart Exile to Swedish Restoration, 1688–1788 ........... 749

Bibliography ........................................................................................ 761

Index .................................................................................................... 789
 PREFACE

ESOTERIC INTELLIGENCE AND EXOTERIC POLITICS

In February 2007, as I endured the hour-long subway ride to the

British National Archives at Kew, where I spent many months read-
ing diplomatic and espionage reports on eighteenth-century Sweden,
I was startled by the headline of a front-page article in The Guardian:
“The brain scan that can read people’s intentions.”1 Ian Sample, the
science correspondent, reported on new computer imaging techniques
that allow scientists “to probe people’s minds and eavesdrop on their
thoughts,” by identifying patterns in the brain that reveal “what a per-
son planned to do in the near future.” Though many neuroscientists
urge caution “and say we can’t talk about reading individual minds,”
they acknowledge that they will soon be able to tell whether someone
is making up a story or intending to commit a crime or act of ter-
ror. The technology is already leading to thought-controlled artificial
limbs, wheelchairs, and computer writing. At Kew, as I opened the
great leather-bound volumes of spy reports, I was overwhelmed with a
sense of dejá vu, for such cerebral feats of mind-reading and thought-
transfer were the stock-in-trade of Emanuel Swedenborg, the mysteri-
ous scientist-seer, who was also a master intelligencer.
Like the neuroscientists, I was for a long time cautious about what
I was learning in diplomatic and Masonic archives, for Swedenborg
was renowned and revered as a brilliant scientist, visionary theoso-
pher, benign mystic, and inspiration for the founders of the New
Jerusalem Church. For some conservative New Churchmen, the idea
of Swedenborg’s undertaking a decades-long career as a secret intel-
ligence agent contradicted their often hagiographical version of his
biography, and they rejected any secular-political interpretations of his
visions. However, as more and more evidence emerged about his very
active but very secret political and diplomatic activities, the need to
produce a historically-based, internationally-contextualized biography
became a scholarly desiredatum.

1
Ian Sample, “The brain scan that can read people’s intentions,” The Guardian (9
February 2007).
xii preface

Certainly, as a literary historian, I had never intended to write such

a book, for my interest in Swedenborg had been provoked by his influ-
ence on authors such as William Blake, William Butler Yeats, and James
Joyce. In the process of trying to learn where Swedenborg gained access
to themes of Jewish Kabbalism, I stumbled upon his participation in
Masonic and Rosicrucian networks, in which Kabbalistic techniques
of meditation on the Hebrew scriptures were used to achieve states of
clairvoyance, ecstatic vision, and spirit-communication. And, finally,
I learned that these esoteric sciences played a key role in much exo-
teric diplomacy, in which an extensive “mystical underground” existed
beneath the surface of the “enlightened” eighteenth century. Within
this diplomatic underground, nationalistic agendas were implemented
within international contexts, which was especially true for Sweden, a
small kingdom which was buffeted by the power plays of much larger
nations, who embroiled Sweden in international crises.
Given the deliberate secrecy shrouding the activities of intelligence
agents, who must remain almost invisible, the researcher must work
with the fragments of evidence which survive in unexpected as well as
official sources. Moreover, the international scope of Sweden’s diplo-
matic outreach and of Swedenborg’s travels means the the investiga-
tion must cross national borders and delve into local contexts that
seem distant from and even alien to his homeland. Dr. Karl de Leeuw,
a Dutch historian of eighteenth-century espionage and cryptography,
observes that this kind of research is “highly complicated by the scar-
city of material,” for in Dutch archives one looks in vain for “any clues
on the activity of a Black Chamber during this period.” But the secret
chamber definitely existed, and the paucity of surviving documents
makes clear
how difficult the treatment of a subject like this can become if any refer-
ences in other sources are lacking. It may put the historian of espionage
in the eighteenth century in a position similar to the historian of antiq-
uity who, most of the time, is left with only bits and pieces; too much to
ignore, but too little to give an account that is fully satisfying for one’s
curiosity.2

2
Karl de Leeuw, “The Black Chamber in the Dutch Republic During the War of the
Spanish Succession and its Aftermath,” The Historical Journal, 42 (1999), 135.
 preface xiii

To overcome such limits, the biographer must reconstruct in min-

ute detail the historical context of the secret agent’s month-by-month
activities.
Despite the enormous volume of Swedenborg’s writing, both pub-
lished and unpublished, and the questions raised by his contempo-
raries about the “real” purpose of his many journeys and international
financial transactions, a consensus emerged among his later biogra-
phers that he lost interest in political and scientific affairs after his
great “revelatory” visions in 1744–1745. Moreover, believers in the
purely divine origin of his dreams, visions, and spirit-communica-
tions (including those which reported detailed political information)
made no attempt to interpret them within their real-world political
and diplomatic context. Fortunately, the important examination of his
financial records and political collaborators, undertaken by F.G. Lindh
in 1927–1929, and supplemented by Lars Bergquist in 1999, opened
the doors to a further chronological investigation of his clandestine
intelligence activities.3 Their relatively brief but provocative arguments
that Swedenborg was personally and secretly subsidized by Louis XV
to serve the political and military policies of the pro-French party of
“Hats” in Sweden made possible my more extensive examination of
his decades-long career as a secret agent. Moreover, I learned that
Swedenborg’s service to the Hats’ pro-French agenda included service
to the pro-Jacobite agenda, which further complicated his clandestine
activities.
In recent years, similar questions about the esoteric and exoteric
motives of various philosophical and scientific figures have piqued
the interest of historians. For example, the British philosopher A.C.
Grayling has stirred up controversy with his argument that the asso-
ciation of René Descartes with the Rosicrucians was not motivated by
sympathy for the mysterious fraternity. Instead, he suggests, Descartes
served his fellow Jesuits as a spy on the Rosicrucians, which led him
to enroll in a Protestant army and university as a cover for intelli-
gence gathering. Explaining that “my principal aim is to recount what
is known of Descartes’ life, and to situate his life in its tumultuous
times,” he notes that this kind of approach has been neglected by

3
F.G. Lindh, “Swedenborgs Ekonomi,” Nya Kyrkans Tidning (May 1927–October
1929); Lars Bergquist, Swedenborgs Hemlighet: en Biografi (Stockholm: Natur och
Kultur, 1999), published in English as Swedenborg’s Secret: a Biography, trans. Norman
Ryder (London: Swedenborg Society, 2005).
xiv preface

previous biographers, “with the result that they miss what is possibly
a significant aspect of this story.”4 The notion that Descartes was a spy
“is by no means far-fetched and, if correct, goes a long way to explain
some of the many curiosities and inexplicabilities of Descartes’s life
and doings.” After Descartes’s death in Stockholm in 1650, questions
about the relation of his alleged Rosicrucianism to his “moderniz-
ing” scientific methods reverberated in Sweden during Swedenborg’s
student days.
Closer to Swedenborg’s adult experience, his cousin-by-marriage—
the great botanist Carl Linnaeus—combined modern experimental
methods with explorations of mystical and esoteric subjects. On the
basis of Linnaeus’s statement that it is necessary to keep silent about
his inquiries into “the most secret mysteries of nature” and the large
number of occult and magical books in his library, A.J. Cain, the emi-
nent historian of science, has even raised the question, “Was Linnaeus
a Rosicrucian?”5 Like Swedenborg, Linnaeus drew upon the theories
of sexual polarities and equilibriums in the Hermetic and Kabbalistic
traditions to develop his philosophy of the natural and supernatural
worlds. Cain concludes that “It would not surprise me to learn that
there was in the Swedish (and other) universities an occult under-
ground, in which Linnaeus was a participant.” Rather than an expo-
nent of Aufklärung, Linnaeus “thought himself to be one of the great
illuminati,” who penetrates “the arcana of Nature.” The very strange
manuscript, Nemesis Divina, that Linnaeus began writing in 1740 pro-
vokes further questions about his supposedly “enlightened” views of
man and nature.6 Wolf Lepenies observes that the dedication which
Linnaeus wrote to his son, “resembles the introduction of a novice to
a secret cult.”7
Neither Linnaeus nor Swedenborg sensed any contradiction between
their early modern world-view and their modern scientific practices.
While Swedenborg struggled to find divine “correspondences” in the

4
A.C. Grayling, Descartes: The Life of René Descartes and its Place in his Times
(London: Free Press, 2005), xiii–xiv, 9.
5
A.J. Cain, “Was Linnaeus a Rosicrucian?,” The Linnean, 8 (1992), 23–44.
6
Carl von Linné, Nemesis Divina, ed. and trans. M.J. Petry (Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic, 2001). The complete work was not published until 1968, with an English
translation appearing in 2001.
7
Wolf Lepenies, “Linnaeus’s Nemesis Divina and the Concept of Divine Retaliation,”
Isis, 73 (1982), 112, 192.
 preface xv

minute articulations of the natural world, Linnaeus sought “signatures”

of spiritual significance in fauna and flora. Both men also searched for
spiritual “signatures” in the daily lives and political affairs of their coun-
trymen. As Linnaeus traced the workings of divine nemesis through-
out human history, he explored portents, dreams, hauntings, ghosts,
spell-binding, and clairvoyance. In the process, he revealed a pecu-
liarly spiritualistic view of Swedish political history. Like Swedenborg,
he was consulted by politicians and diplomats about the meaning of
these “supernatural” phenomena. Swedenborg went even further, for
he believed that the waves and tremulations emitted by metals and
minerals were also emitted by the human brain and body, and these
emanations could be interpreted by the alert and sensitive (or “illumi-
nated”) observer. Thus, he assured his political allies and readers that
he possessed the physiognomic and telepathic skills to read minds.
Moreover, he utilized these skills to decipher the secret intentions and
hidden motives of political and diplomatic opponents.
In these claims, Swedenborg was not unique, for the employment of
intelligencers gifted with psychic skills was considered a necessity by
nearly every eighteenth-century ruler, including sceptics like Frederick
II of Prussia. The practice of up-dated versions of the “science” of phys-
iognomy, which enable the observer to analyze facial expressions and
body postures to reveal concealed thoughts, functioned much like the
computerized brain scans and facial-body profiling used today by CIA,
MI5, and airport security officials. The analyses and predictions found
in the voluminous eighteenth-century diplomatic and spy reports
function much like the prognostications of today’s “think tanks.”
Many of Swedenborg’s accounts of dream-visions and spirit-com-
munications were not published until the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries, when the inclusion of detailed political and diplomatic
information provoked controversies about the sincerity and authentic-
ity of his supernatural revelations. However, he certainly did not view
his clandestine, secular work as contradicting his religious principles.
In fact, he viewed it as his patriotic and moral duty. In this sense,
he acted much like John le Carré, the twentieth-century British secret
service agent, who became the best-selling author of erudite espionage
novels. In a late-life interview, Le Carré affirmed that patriotic intel-
ligence work had a moral, almost spiritual appeal to him. He explained
that becoming a secret agent suited his sense of vocation: “It was if the
whole of life prepared me for this moment. It was like entering the
xvi preface

priesthood; it was the call . . . I really believed that I had found a cause
I could serve.”8 Swedenborg similarly connected the roles of priest
(Sacerdoti) and diplomatist (politico), and he viewed his secret intel-
ligence work for the French king as a spiritual calling, for Louis XV
was “God’s instrument.”9
The following study of the role of esoteric intelligence in exoteric
politics will raise many questions about our preconceptions of the
rationalist, scientific mentality of the “enlightened” eighteenth cen-
tury. In tracing Swedenborg’s long career, we come upon the persis-
tence of early modern–even pre-modern—religious and philosophical
beliefs, which fueled the imaginations of major thinkers as well as the
machinations of major political players.

8
“ ‘Burgling Houses on Her Majesty’s Service was Fun,’ says Le Carré,” The
Independent (21 December 2000).
9
Swedenborg to Benzelius (14 February 1716); quoted in Rudolph Tafel, Documents
Concerning the Life and Character of Emanuel Swedenborg (1875; facs. rpt. Elibron
Classics, 2005), I, part ii, 249; L. Bergquist, Swedenborg’s Secret, 364.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Over the long years of research on this project, I have been encouraged
by the interest and support of many scholars, even when my inves-
tigations and conclusions ran counter to their own previously-held
positions on various subjects. I am most grateful to Antoine Faivre,
Professor Emeritus at the Sorbonne, who read portions of the manu-
script and strongly recommended its publication. I further thank my
fellow researchers in Sweden–Susanna Åkerman-Hjern, Olle Hjern,
Robert Carleson, David Dunér, Carl-Michael Edenborg, Anders
Hallengren, Hans Helander, Kjell Lekeby, Andreas Önnerfors, and
Torsten Westlund. In Holland, Karl de Leeuw and his wife Elizabeth
provided hospitality and valuable assistance for my research in the
Dutch Royal and State Archives. In France, Edward Corp, Patrick
Geay, and André Kervella provided valuable information on Jacobite
politics and Freemasonry. In Germany, Bernd Roling, Lutz Greisiger,
and Eberhard Zwink reinforced with their erudite studies my argu-
ment for Kabbalistic influences. In Denmark, Michael Boeving, Dan
Christensen, and Sune Christian Pedersen sent valuable information.
In Israel, David Katz encouraged my research, and Pawel Maciejko
shared his important findings on the Sabbatian-Frankist movement. In
Poland, Peter Pininski traced the continuing ramifications of Stuart-
Polish relations. In Great Britain, Jane Clarke, Robert Collis, Eveline
Cruickshanks, Keri Davies, Julia Gaspar, and Steve Murdoch shared
their relevant scholarship and encouraged me to go further in my inves-
tigations. In the United States, Max Aue helped me with some difficult
German translations, while Craig Atwood, Allison Coudert, Deborah
Forman, Matt Goldish, Gregory Johnson, Lisa Kahler, Jeff Kripal, Jim
Lawrence, Paul Peucker, Arthur Versluis, and Elliot Wolfson contrib-
uted to the on-going debates about esoteric and exoteric issues.
Further thanks must go to the staffs of the following libraries and
archives. In London, Richard Lines, Steven McNeilly, James Wilson,
and Nora Foster helped me with the resources of the Swedenborg
Society. Harriet Sandvall and Martin Cherry assisted my work
in the library of the United Grand Lodge of England. Lorraine
Parsons made possible my work in the Moravian Church Library.
In Edinburgh, Robert Cooper provided access to the library of the
xviii acknowledgements

Grand Lodge of Scotland and provided important Masonic docu-

ments. In Glasgow, Adam Maclean helped me identify the alchemi-
cal books in Swedenborg’s library through the outstanding Hermetic
collection at the University of Glasgow. Further research in England
was carried out at the British National Archives at Kew, the Royal
Archives at Windsor Castle, the British Library, the Royal Society
of Sciences, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Royal Society for
the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce; and the
Bodleian Library; in Scotland at the National Library of Scotland,
Scottish Record Office, and archives of the Royal Order of Scotland; in
Sweden at the Riksarkivet, Kungligbibliotek, Svenska Frimurarorden
Arkiv, and Linköping Stiftsbibliotek; in Holland at the Algemeen
Rijksarchief, the Koninklijk Huisarchief, and Library of the Grand
Lodge of the Netherlands; in France, the Archives du Ministère des
Affaires Étrangères; in the United States, the Huntington Library,
Philosophical Research Library, and Academy of the New Church.
Finally, Marie Hansen and the staff of the Interlibrary Loan Office at
Emory University in Atlanta have unfailingly found many rare vol-
umes and articles for me–going far beyond the call of duty.
My husband, Ronald Schuchard, and my three daughters, Ashley,
Caitlin, and Justine, are delighted and relieved that this long research
project, which involved much international travel and massive pho-
tocopying, has finally come to fruition. Their patient tolerance, good
humor, and wicked wit have added to the sheer fun and sense of
adventure involved in historical detective work.
 ABBREVIATIONS OF FREQUENTLY CITED WORKS

ACSD Academy Collection of Swedenborg Documents, Bryn

Athyn, Pennsylvania.
AQC Ars Quatuor Coronatorum.
BDI J.F. Chance, ed., British Diplomatic Instructions.
BL British Library.
DNB Dictionary of National Biography.
HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission.
NA. SP National Archives, State Papers, Kew. England.
ODNB Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
RA Riksarkivet, Stockholm, Sweden.
SBL Svensk Biografisk Lexikon.
Stuart Papers Royal Archives, Windsor, England (microfilm).
TJHSE Transactions of Jewish Historical Society of England.
UP University Press.
 INTRODUCTION

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG AND “THE TROUBLES OF THE

NORTH”: AN HISTORICAL OVERVIEW

This revisionist historical study of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772),

the famous Swedish scientist and visionary, places him in the interna-
tional political and diplomatic context that developed in the wake of
the Williamite “Glorious Revolution” and Hanoverian Succession in
Britain, which had an unusually intense and long-lasting impact on
Sweden. In 1714, when the Elector of Hanover became King George I
of Britain, he set his new kingdom on a collision course with Sweden,
for he was determined to occupy the Swedish possessions of Verden
and Bremen, which would give Hanover an outlet to the North Sea.
From his prison camp in Turkey, the Swedish warrior king, Charles XII,
began to shift his foreign policy away from Hanoverian England
and to support a Franco-Jacobite diplomatic and military agenda.
Charles’s most trusted diplomats undertook serious negotiations with
the Jacobites, supporters of James III, the exiled Stuart claimant to
the British throne. After Charles’s escape from Turkey, he was sup-
ported by Swedenborg’s family and political allies, who undertook
various pro-Jacobite projects. However, the participation of Emanuel
Swedenborg in these events virtually disappeared from history, as later
“Whig-Protestant historiography” steadily minimized and even sup-
pressed the role of Lutheran Sweden in the Stuarts’ campaign—a role
that continued throughout Swedenborg’s lifetime.
Though much has been written about Swedenborg’s scientific and
theological beliefs, his biographers and critics have tended to shy
away from the vague but persistent claims that he participated in
secret political, diplomatic, and Masonic affairs.1 The first small open-
ing into this clandestine underworld was provided by F.G. Lindh, a

1
For basic works on his scientific and theological views, see Martin Lamm, Emanuel
Swedenborg: The Development of his Thought, trans. T. Spiers and A. Hallengren (1915;
West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2000); Ernst Benz, Emanuel Swedenborg:
Visionary Savant in the Age of Reason, trans. N. Goodrick-Clarke (1948; West Chester,
PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2002); Cyriel Odhner Sigstedt, The Swedenborg Epic:
The Life and Works of Emanuel Swedenborg (London: Swedenborg Society, 1981); and
2 introduction

Swedish member of the Swedenborgian New Church, in a series of

articles published in Nya Kyrkans Tidning (1927–1929).2 After mak-
ing an extensive and scrupulous examination of Swedenborg’s bank-
ing and financial records, Lindh came to the conclusion that he
served as a secret intelligence and financial agent for the pro-French
party of Swedish “Hats” and, more surprisingly, for the French king,
Louis XV, who personally funded the anonymous publication of
his famous work, Arcana Caelestia (London, 1749–1756). However,
Lindh’s articles, published in Swedish in an obscure church journal,
were virtually unknown to scholars and were not cited by any biogra-
phers of Swedenborg until 1999.3
Lindh’s revelations about Swedenborg’s political and financial col-
laborators made possible my further examination into the strong
Franco-Scottish influence on Swedish politics, for the Carolinian,
Holstein, and later Hat parties were strong supporters of the Stuart
cause. The links between these political agendas intensified after the
death of Charles XII in 1718 in Norway, from where he had planned to
launch a Swedish-Jacobite invasion of Scotland. Swedenborg and his
political allies believed that the king was murdered by a Hanoverian
agent (as Samuel Johnson wrote, by “a dubious hand”). The subsequent
disputed succession, which made Prince Frederick of Hesse the king of
Sweden, despite the more popular claim of Duke Charles Frederick of
Holstein, led to a thirty-year struggle by the Holstein partisans, who
played the role of Jacobites in Swedish political affairs. Swedenborg
and his family were strong supporters of the Holstein faction and of
its later embodiment in the pro-French “Hat” political party (versus
the pro-Hanoverian “Cap” party).
Over the next decades, foreign supporters of rival political parties
in Sweden would deal with “The Troubles of the North,” in which
they aimed at rival versions of “The Tranquility of the North.” These

Sigrid Toksvig, Emanuel Swedenborg: Scientist and Mystic (New York: Swedenborg
Foundation, 1983).
2
F.G. Lindh, “Swedenborgs Ekonomi,” Nya Kyrkans Tidning (1927–1929).
3
Lars Bergquist, Swedenborgs Hemlighet: en Biografi (Stockholm: Natur och
Kultur, 1999), 400–14; published in English as Swedenborg’s Secret: a Biography,
trans. Norman Ryder (London: Swedenborg Society, 2005), 353–66. Alfred Stroh, the
pioneering Swedenborgian researcher, admired Lindh’s research and argued that his
documents are “deserving of wider notice”; see Sigrid Odhner, “An Account of My
Work in Sweden from August 1925 to August 1926,” New Church Life, 47 (1927), 9.
Unfortunately, conservative New Churchmen did not agree, and Lindh’s work was
first attacked and then ignored.
 emanuel swedenborg and “the troubles of the north” 3

terms of diplomatic cant, which were repeated by all politicians deal-

ing with Sweden, were given opposite definitions by the competing
nations. To the French and Jacobites, the “Tranquility of the North”
was to be achieved by strengthening initially the Hat party and ulti-
mately the Swedish monarchy, so that the formerly powerful kingdom
could regain its role as a major player in international affairs. To the
Hanoverians and Russians, the “Tranquility” would be achieved by
preserving and even weakening Sweden’s divided government and
demoralized military, so that she could never again play the dis-
ruptive role of her former warrior kings, Gustavus Adolphus and
Charles XII.4 Foreign bribes and secret subsidies fed the extensive cor-
ruption of the misleadingly named Swedish “Age of Freedom.” With
considerable courage, finesse, and discretion, Swedenborg negotiated
his way through these complex and often dangerous political byways.
Underlying “The Troubles of the North” were the competitive sys-
tems of Freemasonry, in which Hanoverians and Jacobites utilized their
clandestine networks to carry out their international political agen-
das. According to conventional English Masonic history, “authentic”
or “modern” Freemasonry began in 1717 when four London lodges
formed the supposedly apolitical Grand Lodge of England.5 What
has been missing from that official history is the role that Sweden
played in the Tory-Stuart Masonic networks that contributed to the
Swedish-Jacobite plot of 1715–16. With the exposure and suppression
of that plot in January 1717, England’s Whig ministry worried about
the Jacobite-Tory influence within Freemasonry; thus, the loyalist
Grand Lodge was organized in June as a Hanoverian-Whig counter-
move. According to the Enlightenment historian Margaret Jacob, “In
Hanoverian England, Whiggery provided the belief and values, while
Freemasonry provided one temple wherein some its most devoted
followers worshipped the God of Newtonian science.”6 However, this
was not the form of Freemasonry that attracted Swedenborg and his
Swedish and European colleagues. Instead, they joined Franco-Scottish

4
Russia’s relations with the Swedish Holstein and Hat parties varied over the years,
ranging periodically from support to more generally opposition. Hanoverian England’s
relation with the two French-allied parties was consistently antagonistic.
5
The official English Grand Lodge history was first published by the anti-Jacobite,
Scottish Presbyterian James Anderson in The Constitutions of the Freemasons (1723),
rev. ed. (1738); facsimile rpt. Abingdon: Burgess, (1976).
6
Margaret Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons, and
Republicans (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1981), 121.
4 introduction

(Écossais) lodges developed by exiled supporters of the Stuarts, which

drew upon older traditions of Kabbalistic and Rosicrucian symbolism,
while they utilized secret international networks to fraternally bind
their “dispersed brethren,” ensure security, and maintain mystical
morale.
In a case where “the victors wrote the history,” for over two cen-
turies there was little scholarly work on Jacobite Freemasonry (with
some English Masonic historians claiming that it never existed).7 The
conventional wisdom that Jacobitism was predominantly a Catholic
cause led to the omission and even suppression of Protestant Sweden’s
important support of Stuart claims and contribution to Écossais
Masonry. Fortunately, over the past two decades, an important revi-
sionist movement has emerged in Jacobite studies. Moving beyond the
Anglo-centrism of much earlier scholarship, “Diaspora scholarship”
has become “one of the most exciting new fields which are opening
up the history of Jacobitism.”8 A French Masonic historian points to
recently discovered, eighteenth-century Scandinavian documents that
reveal the “intense Masonic activity by diplomats in the Baltic areas,”
and he urges scholars to pay much more attention to the diplomatic
and military context.9 This international approach is especially relevant
to Sweden, a small nation caught up in a complex web of alliances with
France, Poland, Spain, Turkey, and, intermittently, Russia and Prussia.
Complicating these alliances were Sweden’s relations with the global-
ized Jacobite networks and various heterodox Jews and Moslems.
However, despite the promising growth of “Diaspora scholarship,” his-
torians could still lament in 2010 that the role of Jacobites in Sweden
“has barely been touched” and that the Swedish archives “are virtually
unexplored territory.”10 This study aims to fill those gaps.

7
John Hamill, official spokesman for the United Grand Lodge of England, dis-
missed the Jacobite-Masonic role as a “romantic invention,” “nonsense,” and “just so
much blowing in the wind”; see his article, “The Jacobite Conspiracy,” Ars Quatuor
Coronatorum, 113 (2000), 97–113. He is currently revising his position, in the light of
emerging international evidence.
8
Paul Monod, Murray Pittock, and Daniel Szechi, eds., Loyalty and Identity:
Jacobites at Home and Abroad (Houndsmill/New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 5.
9
Pierre-Yves Beaurepaire, La Europe des Francs-Maçons, XVIII e–XXI e Siècles
(Paris: Éditions Belin, 2002), 51.
10
Monod, Pittock, and Szechi, Loyalty and Identity, 5. However, credit must be
given to the historians Claude Nordmann and Göran Behre for opening the doors
to research on Jacobitism in Sweden, and their works will be frequently cited in the
following chapters.
 emanuel swedenborg and “the troubles of the north” 5

The limits of Whig historiography were compounded by the mod-

ernist bias of many academics, who viewed the eighteenth century
as predominantly one of Aufklärung, the steady march of rational
enlightenment. The continuing importance of Renaissance ideas of
spiritually-infused nature, of correspondences between macrocosm
and microcosm, of esoteric and exoteric sciences, of belief in angels
and spirits, was often ignored or marginalized when dealing with the
complex intellectual and political worlds of early modern thinkers.
Moreover, the role that secret societies, such as the Rosicrucians and
Freemasons, played in preserving these traditional occult and spiritual
beliefs was often minimized or even mocked. That they retained politi-
cal potency throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was
generally ignored.
Thus, the early biographers of Swedenborg were stymied in their
efforts to explain the French tradition that he was an important influ-
ence on the development of esoteric or “Illuminist” Freemasonry. In
1867 his British biographer William White noted that “Swedenborg
haunts French literature as a founder or associate of secret societies, but
when we require the evidence we get nothing but rumour.”11 In 1869
L.P. Regnell, a Swedish Freemason and member of the Swedenborgian
New Church, responded with an account of Swedenborg’s initiation
in a London lodge during his visit there in 1710–13 and his subse-
quent Masonic career.12 In 1870 Samuel Beswick, an Anglo-American
Swedenborgian, elaborated on Regnell’s account in The Swedenborg
Rite and the Great Masonic Leaders of the Eighteenth Century.13 In
1873–74 a French journal, Le Monde Maçonnique, published the pro-
ceedings of the Philalèthes convention, held in Paris in 1784–87, in
which the international participants reported on their researches into
Masonic history. Frère Le Normand affirmed that “Schwedenborg en
Suède était Me …” (using the Masonic identification symbol of three

11
William White, Swedenborg: His Life and Writings (London: Simkin, Marshall,
1867), 447.
12
A condensed version of Regnell’s letter was published by Rudolph Tafel in
“Swedenborg and Freemasonry,” New Jerusalem Messenger (1869), 267–68. According
to the Reverend Olle Hjern, current minister of the Swedenborgian church in Sweden,
Regnell was a reliable historian. For problems with the dates cited by Regnell and
Tafel, see ahead, Chapter Two.
13
Beswick’s book is a perplexing mix of valuable fact and unverifiable speculation,
and his claims will be examined in the following chapters.
6 introduction

dots forming a triangle).14 Frère Maubach added that the best way to
make progress in “la vraie Science maçonnique” is to study “les oeuvres
de Schwedenborg,” for they reveal the true cult and divine mysteries of
the first order, which present the correspondences that greatly further
the occult sciences.15 Significantly, none of the Philalèthes attendees
or correspondents from Sweden, France, or Britain contradicted these
claims.
Nevertheless, in 1875 the New Church historian, Rudolph Tafel,
reversed his earlier acceptance of Regnells’ report and rejected
Swedenborg’s Masonic affiliation, because he heard from the Grand
Lodge of England that “the accounts of the first part of the last cen-
tury were destroyed.”16 Tafel was further informed that Freemasonry
was not introduced into Sweden until 1736. Despite the inaccuracy of
these reports, Tafel’s rejection was widely accepted, and Swedenborg’s
Masonic affiliation disappeared from biographical and critical studies
of his career. For more than a century, the case did not improve, due
to the restrictive secrecy maintained by Swedish and Eastern European
Masonic libraries. However, with the recent, gradual opening up of
Masonic archives in Sweden, Finland, Russia, and Eastern Europe, new
evidence is emerging that forces a revision of the official, Whig ver-
sion of Masonic history promulgated by the Grand Lodge of England.
In the process, a new perspective on Swedenborg’s Jacobite-Masonic
diplomatic activities is emerging from the historical shadows.
For example, the historical links between Scottish and Swedish
Freemasons can be traced back to 1652, when Edouart Tessin was ini-
tiated in an Edinburgh lodge, for he can now be identified as a Swedish
military architect from Swedish Pomerania.17 He and his son were sub-
sequently employed by Charles II on the construction of the great stone
mole in Tangier. In 1670 his Swedish kinsman Nicodemus Tessin showed
his architectural drawings to Sir Christopher Wren and Charles II,
who invited him to Stuart service. Though Nicodemus did not accept
the invitation, he became a strong supporter of Stuart dynastic

14
Charles Porset, Les Philalèthes et les Convents de Paris (Paris: Honoré Champion,
1996), 379.
15
Ibid., 414.
16
R. Tafel, Documents, II, 735–39.
17
On the Tessin family, Scottish Freemasonry, and the Stuarts, see Marsha Keith
Schuchard, Restoring the Temple of Vision: Cabalistic Freemasonry and Stuart Culture
(Leiden: Brill, 2002), 513, 571–76, 582, 641–45, 717.
 emanuel swedenborg and “the troubles of the north” 7

claims.18 While in London, he was possibly initiated in a “craft” or

“operative” lodge, for his son Carl Gustaf Tessin noted that his father
was always proud to call himself a “master mason.” Swedenborg was
a confidential friend of the Tessin family, and in the early 1700s he
closely followed Nicodemus’s career as royal architect to Charles XII.
Thus, the reported London initiation of Swedenborg ca. 1710–13, when
he was studying the mathematical and technological skills involved in
operative and military masonry, is quite plausible.
Following earlier Scottish traditions, when royalist Freemasons sup-
ported the restoration of Charles II in 1660, the exiled Jacobites took
abroad with them their strategy of organizing military field lodges. In
the late eighteenth century, Elis Schröderheim, a Swedish initiate and
confidante of the Masonic king Gustav III, recorded his belief that
political and military Freemasonry was utilized by the organizers of
the Swedish-Jacobite plots of 1715–18.19 His argument was reinforced
by the modern historian Claude Nordmann, who argued that Swedish
members of Franco-Scottish regiments were initiated in military field
lodges ca. 1715–18.20 After the death of Charles XII in November 1718
and the victory of the anti-Jacobite Hessian party, there is no surviving
evidence of Masonic activity in Sweden during the 1720s. However, in
1729–31 several Swedish noblemen were initiated into Écossais lodges
in Paris, and in 1735 Carl Gustaf Tessin (son of Nicodemus) became
leader of the French- and Jacobite-affiliated Masons in Sweden. Over
the next decades, Swedenborg would be closely associated with the
Masons initiated in Paris, and his Swedish political mentors and
employers were all high-ranking members of the fraternity. The
Swedish Masonic historian Andreas Önnerfors has recently demon-
strated that in eighteenth-century Sweden, Freemasonry developed
from Jacobite support into an instrument of state.21

18
Nicodemus Tessin moved from London to Rome, where he served Queen
Christina and her neo-Rosicrucian courtiers.
19
Elis Schröderheim, Anteckningar till Konung Gustaf IIIs Historia (Örebro, 1851),
266–67.
20
Claude Nordmann, Le Crise du Nord au Début de XVIII e Siècle (Paris, 1962), 10,
153 n. 148.
21
Andreas Önnerfors, “From Jacobite Support to a Part of the State Apparatus–
Swedish Freemasonry between Reform and Revolution,” in Cecile Revauger, ed.,
Franc-maçonnerie et Politique au Siècle des Lumières (Pessac: Presses Universitaires
de Bordeaux, 2006), 219.
8 introduction

Swedenborg’s association with Scottish-style Freemasonry (which

as early as 1638 declared its links with a Stuart king, Rosicrucianism,
and second-sight) explains much about his own study and practice of
psychic techniques of vision-inducement and intelligence gathering.22
As a mining engineer and student of anatomy, his scientific study of
the emanations or waves produced by minerals and metals and the
magnetic rays or tremulations produced by the brain and body led
him to believe that he could read minds, through mental telepathy,
clairvoyance, and physiognomical analysis of facial expressions and
body postures. These skills were considered legitimate, even “modern,”
tools of espionage by his political allies.
From his erudite brother-in-law and intellectual mentor, Eric
Benzelius (the Younger), Swedenborg also gained unusual access to
heterodox Jewish mystical lore, for Benzelius worked closely with a
converted Jew, Rabbi Johann Kemper, a former disciple of the seven-
teenth-century “false messiah,” Sabbatai Zevi, on Christian-Kabbalistic
interpretations of the scriptures.23 From his early readings about Jewish
esoteric traditions, Swedenborg became familiar with the Kabbalistic
meditation techniques which produce trance states, spirit communica-
tion, and clairvoyance—techniques which he later utilized for political
analysis and predictions. His further study of Kabbalistic methods of
Hebrew letter-number transpositions and allegorical writing proved
valuable to the code-making and deciphering of his diplomatic
confidantes.
As a post-graduate student in England in 1710–13, Swedenborg was
recruited to intelligence work by Count Carl Gyllenborg, the Swedish
ambassador in London, who was a close friend of Jonathan Swift, a
great admirer of the ambassador and Charles XII. Gyllenborg sent
Swedenborg to The Hague, where he assisted the Swedish diplomats
during the negotiations leading to the Treaty of Utrecht. They in turn

22
These merged Masonic themes were published by Henry Adamson in The Muses
Threnodie (Edinburgh, 1638):
For we be brethren of the Rosie Cross,
We have the Mason word, and second sight,
Things for to come we can foretell aright.
And we shall show what misterie we mean,
In fair acrosticks Carolus Rex is seen.
23
Elliot Wolfson, “Messianism in the Christian Kabbalah of Johann Kemper,” in
Matt Goldish and Richard Popkin, eds., Jewish Messianism in the Early Modern Period
(Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 2001), 138–57.
 emanuel swedenborg and “the troubles of the north” 9

sent him to Paris, Hamburg, Brunswick, Rostock, Griefswalde, and

Stralsund, where he gathered intelligence, invented various military
devices, and wrote about his developing psychic skills. Swedenborg’s
father recommended Emanuel to Charles XII’s service because of
his knowledge of Hebrew, for he knew that a party of Turkish Jews
planned to accompany the king when he returned to Sweden. From
1715 to 1718, Swedenborg was employed by Charles XII as a military
engineer and examiner of the Swedish artisan guilds, including the
operative masonic guilds.24
From Eric Benzelius’s unpublished papers much new and surprising
evidence emerges about the progressive religious initiatives undertaken
by Charles XII, who was generally portrayed in English-Hanoverian
propaganda as an intolerant tyrant, who tried to reduce his subjects to
slavery. Benzelius and Swedenborg were privately informed about the
king’s intention to declare “liberty of conscience” in all Swedish ter-
ritories—a policy which replicated the promise made by the Catholic
Pretenders, James II and James III, to their prospective British subjects.25
However, Charles’s death in 1718 not only aborted his plan to restore
James III but also Benzelius’s effort to open Sweden to Jewish schol-
ars and traders. The king’s declaration of toleration was suppressed
and is virtually unknown in Sweden today. Over the next decades, the
efforts of Swedish reformers to bring Jewish financial and intellectual
expertise to the kingdom would remain “a struggle between God and
Mammon,” and it was a struggle in which Swedenborg participated.
Drawing on documents in Swedish, British, French, and Dutch dip-
lomatic and Masonic archives, as well as the unpublished Stuart Papers,
this study provides the previously unknown diplomatic and Masonic
context for Swedenborg’s political activities, foreign travels, scientific
theories, and theosophical writings. Throughout his long and busy life,
Swedenborg maintained a negative attitude towards the Hanoverian
regimes in England and believed that he had sympathetic supporters
in Scotland. He was closely connected with the Swedish East India
Company, which was founded and dominated by Scots and Jacobites.
Surprisingly, his many biographers have long maintained that he was
an Anglophile and even placed him in the wrong political party (the

24
For a preliminary study of his Masonic career, see Marsha Keith Schuchard,
“Jacobite and Visionary: the Masonic Journey of Emanuel Swedenborg,” AQC, 115
(2002), 32–60.
25
Linköping, Stiftsbibliotek: Bref till Benzelius, V, 40 (21 May 1716).
10 introduction

pro-English, pro-Russian “Caps”). Not until the Swedish diplomat Lars

Bergquist published Swedenborgs Hemlighet (Swedenborg’s Secret) in
1999 was this fundamental error corrected. In an important chapter,
“Money from Paris and ‘a good king,’ ” Bergquist reinforced Lindh’s
argument that Swedenborg’s secret patron was Louis XV, whom
Swedenborg revered as “God’s instrument.”26 To serve Louis, “le Bien
Aimé,” was to serve God’s plan of governance for earthly affairs, which
corresponded to heavenly affairs.
Though Bergquist provided some new archival evidence for
Swedenborg’s French subsidy and diplomatic connections in the 1750s,
he was mainly interested in Swedenborg’s philosophical and religious
beliefs, and he did not provide a detailed, chronological account of
his decades-long intelligence activities. Thus, I have used new archival
sources to document Swedenborg’s personal relations with the diplo-
matic agents of Louis XV’s Secret du Roi, the king’s private diplomatic
and espionage network that often implemented policies opposite to
those of his public ministers. The Secret was especially concerned with
Swedish, Polish, and Russian affairs, and Swedenborg provided intel-
ligence, gleaned from the natural and supernatural worlds, on these
troubled kingdoms. Given his claims about the spiritual sources of
his political “revelations,” I have related his writings on psychic tech-
niques, dream interpretation, methods of dissimulation, Kabbalistic
meditation, and Hebrew numerical-linquistic coding to his diplomatic
and espionage role. In the process, this study provides a new perspec-
tive on the extensive esoteric networks that functioned underneath
the exoteric politics of the “enlightened” eighteenth-century. It will
become clear that in Sweden, the mystical and royalist beliefs of the
Renaissance and early modern Europe were maintained well into the
so-called modern era. Moreover, the connections between Scottish
and Swedish history, which emerged so strongly in the seventeenth
century, are shown to survive, often at great peril to both nations,
throughout the next century.
Some examples of the role that Swedenborg played in these inter-
national developments will demonstrate this new perspective. In 1715
in Greifswald he published a poem, Camena Borea, which expressed
in Rosicrucian allegory his recent work as an intelligence agent at the
court of Louis XIV; in 1721 in Holland he collaborated with the finan-
ciers of the Jacobite pirates of Madagascar; in 1734 in Eastern Europe he

26
L. Bergquist, Swedenborg’s Secret, 362, 364.
 emanuel swedenborg and “the troubles of the north” 11

gathered intelligence on Stanislaus Leszczynski’s campaign for the

Polish throne; in 1736–37 in Paris he collaborated with the Swedish offi-
cers and Jacobite Masonic bankers who supported Stanislaus; in 1738–
39 in Italy he participated in a Franco-Jacobite plot to gain Spanish
funding for a contingent of Swedish soldiers to invade Scotland, and
he made a previously unknown journey to Spain; in 1740 in London,
in another previously unknown journey, he contacted J.T. Desaguliers,
a prominent but disaffected Whig Mason; in 1744 at The Hague he
recorded his initiation into the Jacobite-Masonic high degrees and his
mission to bring “a Trojan horse” into England; in 1744 in London he
recorded his visions of figures connected to Charles Edward Stuart’s
planned military campaign; in 1745 in London he wrote a messianic
treatise which predicted the Stuart prince’s restoration of the Temple
in the North; in 1759 in London he helped his confidante A.J. von
Höpken, the Swedish prime minister, to evaluate Choiseul’s project
for a Franco-Jacobite-Swedish invasion of Britain; in 1761 he intimi-
dated Madame de Marteville, a British-subsidized Dutch diplomatic
spy, and Queen Louisa Ulrika, sister of Frederick the Great, with his
spirit-derived knowledge of their secret financial intrigues and cor-
respondence with England and Prussia; in 1771 in London he simi-
larly frightened into silence Christopher Springer, a British-employed
Swedish spy, to prevent him from interfering with King Gustav III’s
planned royalist revolution in Sweden.
While Swedenborg’s intelligence activities occurred “under the
radar,” he also published his theosophical beliefs in eroticized spiritu-
ality and visionary meditation, which won him both fame and infamy.
In an earlier book, Why Mrs. Blake Cried: William Blake and the Sexual
Basis of Spiritual Vision (2006), I have discussed those beliefs and their
influence on various artists, philosophers, and occultists. In this new
book, I place his esoteric studies and psycho-sexual experiences within
the “real world” context of politics and diplomacy. For example, dur-
ing Swedenborg’s last three years, he contributed to the efforts of a
radical Rosicrucian in Hamburg and Kabbalistic Jews in Amsterdam
and London to develop a new syncretic religion, which would merge
Christian, Jewish, and Muslim mystical themes. This rather bizarre
and secretive project had significant political ramifications in Sweden,
Denmark, and Europe.27

27
For a summary of the complex, international ramifications, see Marsha Keith
Schuchard, “Yeats and the ‘Unknown Superiors’: Swedenborg, Falk, and Cagliostro,”
12 introduction

In the decade after Swedenborg’s death in London in 1772, his

Masonic patron Gustav III declared “liberty of conscience” in Sweden,
opening the kingdom to Catholics and Jews. Like Charles XII, Gustav
believed that he was carrying on a Stuart tradition of religious tol-
eration. Recently published documents reveal that the king and his
brothers performed Kabbalistic-Swedenborgian rituals in a secret
Masonic “Sanctuary,” modelled on the Temple of Jerusalem, in the
royal palace.28 They also introduced the Masonic degree of “Stuart
Brother,” to be given to their most loyal supporters. In 1783, during a
visit to the elderly Charles Edward Stuart in Italy, Gustav was named
the Pretender’s successor as Grand Master of the Masonic Order of
the Temple—an order that Swedenborg had envisioned in London in
1745. When Charles Edward died in 1788, a century after Swedenborg’s
birth, Gustav assumed the Grand Mastership, and the Temple was
indeed restored in the North.29 Determined to use Freemasonry as
an instrument of state, Gustav expanded the mystical Swedish Rite
into the enemy territories of Russia and Prussia, forming in effect an
esoteric-political “fifth column.”
While there is substantial contextual and financial evidence for
Swedenborg’s secret political role, there is still a problem of missing
and destroyed letters and manuscripts. Swedenborg’s heirs and execu-
tors took it upon themselves to get rid of any material that would hurt
his and his family’s “respectable” image. Crucial pages were torn out
of his journals and manuscripts and were subsequently destroyed. He
himself suppressed or left behind in foreign cities various writings and
records, while his political mentor Benzelius burned his own “danger-
ous” political papers just before his death in 1743. These lacunae will
be duly noted throughout this study, especially when there is definite
evidence that the documents once existed.
To portray Swedenborg as a secret agent on earth and in heaven is
not to diminish his stature as a talented scientist, religious reformer,
and visionary theosophist. At great risk to himself, he chose to serve

in Marie Roberts and Hugh Ormsby-Lennon, eds., Secret Texts: The Literature of Secret
Societies (New York: AMS, 1995), 149–56. Also, Robert Carleson, “Affären Boheman
I ny belysning. En analys av esoteriska idéströmningar I det tidiga svenska frimurar-
samhället,” Acta Masonica Scandinavica, 13 (2010), 119–87.
28
Dan Eklund, Sten Svensson, and Hans Berg, eds., Hertig Carl och det Svenska
Frimuriet (Uppsala: Forskningslogen Carl Friedrich Eckleff, 2010), 295; Kjell Lekeby,
Gustaviansk Mystik (Sala/Södermalm: Vertigo Förlag, 2010), 448–49.
29
Claude Nordmann, Gustave III: un Démocrate Couronné (Lille, 1986), 214–20.
 emanuel swedenborg and “the troubles of the north” 13

his embattled country as a courageous patriot, willing to answer the

call of more worldly politicians when Sweden’s welfare and very exis-
tence were threatened by powerful enemies. His unusually long and
active career (his final feat of “spiritual espionage” was performed at
age eighty-three) and his many foreign journeys (to England, Holland,
Denmark, Germany, Bohemia, France, Italy, and Spain) necessitate a
lengthy study. Questions about the reality of his visions and accusa-
tions about his political motivations would provoke the curiosity of
contemporaries such as Catherine the Great, Immanuel Kant, Johann
Caspar Lavater, Friedrich Christoph Oetinger, Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, William Law, John Wesley, and William Blake.
By merging for the first time the multiple layers of Swedenborg’s
multi-faceted career into a detailed, chronological narrative, this
biographical-historical study provides new insights into one of the
most fascinating and troubling figures of the eighteenth century—and
into the complex and troubled history of the Swedish and Scottish
“Northern World.”
 CHAPTER ONE

THE SWEDBERG FAMILY IN UPPSALA:

PHILO-SEMITISM AND THE GOTHIC KABBALAH, 1688–1710

Emanuel Swedenborg, who was to gain fame as a master of the natural

and supernatural sciences, was born in Stockholm in February 1688,
the third child of Jesper Swedberg, a chaplain in the horse guards of
King Charles XI.* Son of a farming and copper-mining family, the
robust and blunt-speaking Swedberg gained the king’s favor when he
encouraged the soldiers to learn to read, while at the same lambasting
mere “brain faith” that did not result in pious behavior and charitable
action. Four years before Emanuel’s birth, the king sent Swedberg on
a study tour to England and the Continent, where he formed many
of the opinions that he would forcefully impose on his most sensitive
son.1 For better or worse, the huge shadow of his father would loom
over Emanuel’s inner and outer worlds for the rest of his life.
During his travels, Jesper Swedberg met royalist churchmen, inno-
vative scientists, and philo-Semitic scholars, and he developed contacts
that would be resumed by Emanuel during his later travels. For three
months in England, the chaplain observed and admired the scientific
work of the Royal Society, but he did not approve of the factionalism
that would soon wrack the British church and state. Recording his
negative response to “all the many sects and parties,” he explained,
I mean those that the so-called reformed church is divided into. Not
speaking of the biggest party which is called Thoris and Whigs, of High
church and Low church, of Quakers and Anabaptists, but only of the
so-called English church.2

* When Jesper Swedberg’s sons were ennobled in 1719, their surname was changed
to Swedenborg, which I will use for Emanuel throughout this study in order to avoid
confusion.
1
On Swedberg’s early career, see R. Tafel, Documents, I, 88–153; Henry W. Tottie,
Jesper Swedbergs Lif (Uppsala, 1885–86); and Gunnar Wetterberg, Jespers Swedbergs
Lefvernes Beskrifning (Lund: Hakan Ohlsson, 1941).
2
Signe Toksvig, Emanuel Swedenborg: Scientist and Mystic (New Haven: Yale UP,
1948), 16.
 philo-semitism and the gothic kabbalah, 1688–1710 15

His observations in 1684 reinforced his belief that “Disunity is of the

Devil, who promotes it and derives the greatest satisfaction from it,
especially in the teachers of the congregation.”3
Impressed by the religious tolerance of the Stuart king, Charles II,
and the campaign for religious unity by the High Anglicans, Swedberg
travelled to France in 1685. There, despite the strong anti-Papal senti-
ments of his native Lutheran Church, he came to admire the active
charity carried out by Roman Catholics, who could not be easily dis-
missed as superstitious Papists.4 Their practical accomplishments in
aiding the poor influenced his growing determination that the Swedish
church should have a useful impact on the nation’s living standards.
Swedberg’s son Emanuel would later develop a whole mystical theol-
ogy of “use.”
In Germany Swedberg called on various Orientalists, of whom
the most important was Esdras Edzard, whose successful conversion
efforts in the Jewish community fanned Swedberg’s millenarian hopes.
During his ten weeks’ residence in Edzard’s Hamburg home, he learned
of his host’s outreach to Jews who had been believers in the messianic
mission of the Jewish Kabbalist, Sabbatai Zevi, but who now suffered
disillusionment after their hero’s conversion (forced) to Islam.5 Edzard
had learned from Manuel Texeira, Resident in Hamburg for the abdi-
cated Swedish queen Christina, about their mutual fascination with
the Sabbatian movement. An enthusiasic Christina even danced in the
streets with her Jewish friends in the messianic year of 1665.6 Edzard
also heard from Texeira about his subsequent embarrassment at the
failure of the movement. While Swedberg was in Hamburg, the Jewish
banker still served as Resident for Christina and Charles XI, and news
about Jewish affairs and Sabbatian controversies on the Continent
continued to be of great interest to the Orientalist scholars at Uppsala
University.
When Jesper Swedberg returned to Sweden in August 1685, he
informed the king about Edzard’s missionary work among the Jews,
and he convinced him to support similar efforts among the Indians in

3
Quoted in Anthony F. Upton, Charles XI and Swedish Absolutism (Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1998), 171.
4
R. Tafel, Documents, I, 101–03.
5
Elisheva Carlebach, Divided Souls: Converts to Judaism in Germany, 1500–1750
(New Haven: Yale UP, 2001), 81–83, 259 n. 56.
6
Susanna Åkerman, Queen Christina of Sweden and Her Circle (Leiden: Brill,
1991), 188–94.
16 chapter one

the New World, whom he and Edzard believed to be descendants of

the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. Four years earlier, Charles XI had been
convinced by Swedberg’s friend, Professor Lars Normann, to allow a
small number of heterodox Jews into Sweden, and the king presided
over their baptism.7 However, he soon came under pressure from the
conservative clergy about the Jewish “threat” to Sweden. Warning that
wrong customs might be absorbed into the evangelical rite, the clerics
argued that the purity of the national Lutheran church must be pro-
tected. Thus, in December 1685 Charles XI reluctantly issued a royal
edict which prohibited the practice of the Jewish religion in Sweden.
In so doing, he set off a bitter though secretive controversy that would
taint Swedish efforts at economic and educational reform throughout
the next century. No bigot himself, the king did not act forcefully on
the edict and an uneasy, unofficial tolerance developed. A small num-
ber of Jews were allowed to stay, as long as they did not proselytize.
In 1688, when Swedberg’s third child was born, he took great plea-
sure in giving him the Hebraic name Emanuel. In so doing, he copied
Edzard, who had told his Swedish guest how he laid his hands upon
the heads of his grown-up children and blessed them, “just as the
patriarch Jacob blessed his sons Ephraim and Manasseh, and just as
Christ blessed the little children.”8 Swedberg affirmed that “the name
of my son Emanuel signifies ‘God with us’; that he may always remem-
ber God’s presence, and that intimate, holy, and mysterious conjunc-
tion with our good and gracious God.” Swedberg became fluent in
Hebrew, and he often conversed with his tutelary angel in a mixture
of Hebrew and Swedish, which he believed had been spoken in the
Garden of Eden.
In 1692 the king appointed Jesper Swedberg as Professor of Theology
at the University of Uppsala. Reinforced by the atmosphere of philo-
Semitism at the university, Swedberg made his own home a center of
Hebrew studies. As the father reported what his attendant angels said
in the holy tongue, his son Emanuel spent hours meditating on his
own Hebrew and Biblical studies. Whenever Emanuel uttered pious
thoughts, his delighted parents announced that an angel seemed to
speak through him, and the child soon reported that angels visited
him in the garden.9 His father’s religious enthusiasm made an indelible

7
Hugo Valentin, Judarnas Historia i Sverige (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers, 1924),
26–27, 84.
8
R. Tafel, Documents, I, 103, 194–95.
9
Cyriel Sigstedt, The Swedenborg Epic (New York: Bookman, 1952), 61.
 philo-semitism and the gothic kabbalah, 1688–1710 17

impression on the sensitive child, for Jesper never doubted the reality
of the spirit world, which was revealed to men in dreams and visions.
Like most Swedes, his attitude towards spirits was essentially medi-
eval and magical, and he believed that he could influence the spirits
to work for him in pious causes. He claimed to occasionally possess
second-sight or clairvoyance, a gift his son would later demonstrate.10
Jesper also demonstrated “hypnotic healing powers”; through a
combination of intense Bible readings and personal persuasion, he
exorcized spirits and cured mental ailments in many subjects.11 His
son thus picked up an enduring interest in spiritual or psychic medi-
cine. At the same time, the family tutor and medical student Johan
Moraeus stimulated in Emanuel a sense of wonder at the intricacies
of the human body—which represented God’s temple on earth. In a
pattern that would later produce startling psychic effects, Emanuel
learned to combine intense self-scrutiny on his own bodily processes
with intense meditation on spiritual subjects. Carrying out his own
“scientific” experiments, the child learned how to methodically control
his breathing patterns and to place himself in a state of meditative
trance.
After Jesper was appointed Bishop of Skara in 1703, he left the fifteen
year-old Emanuel in Uppsala, where he moved into the home of his
new brother-in-law, Eric Benzelius (the Younger), who had married
his older sister, Anna Swedberg. Benzelius had recently been appointed
university librarian, and for the next seven years, he guided his young
protégé through his studies. Benzelius’s influence soon superseded
that of Bishop Swedberg, and he became the dominant force in the
formation of Emanuel’s intellectual, spiritual, and political ideas.
Surprisingly, Benzelius’s forty-year role as Emanuel’s primary men-
tor has been largely unexamined by Swedenborg’s biographers. Thus,
a fresh examination of Benzelius’s eclectic interests, political beliefs,
and international network of correspondents will shed significant light
on the early experiences that influenced Swedenborg’s development
into a scientist-seer, who secretly gathered intelligence on earth and
in heaven. At the same time, many of the vague and confusing claims
about Swedenborg’s early access to secret traditions of Kabbalism,
Rosicrucianism, and Freemasonry will take on historical plausibility.

10
William White, Emanuel Swedenborg: His Life and Writings, 2nd. rev. ed (London:
Simpkin, Marshall, 1868), 20–21.
11
Ibid., 5.
18 chapter one

When Emanuel moved into Benzelius’s home, his brother-in-law was

already a famous man.12 Born into a prominent clerical family in 1675,
Benzelius became the heir and eventually the acclaimed exponent of
the unusual Swedish tradition of philo-Semitism. Always struggling
against clerical obscurantism and strong popular sentiments of anti-
Semitism, this Swedish tradition survived in the sheltered enclaves
of academia and the secretive conclaves of Pietism, largely because
it enjoyed the discrete support of the Swedish monarchy.13 Having
mastered Hebrew by age nine, Benzelius benefitted from the Semitic
outreach of Charles XI, for he studied under the Orientalist professors
Lars Normann and Gustaf Peringer, who were protected by the king.
Through his teachers, Benzelius gained access to rare traditions of het-
erdox Judaism—an access he would later share with Swedenborg.
Normann was especially interested in Kabbalistic theosophy, and
he encouraged his students to study the Zohar, the great thirteenth-
century compilation of Jewish mystical texts.14 In the 1690s, he sent a
student to study with a learned Jewish Kabbalist in Sulzbach. Peringer
shared Normann’s interests, and he would direct Benzelius’s thesis
on Maimonides’s Siclus Judaicus in 1692. Like his mentors, Benzelius
soon moved beyond the rationalistic Judaism of Maimonides, and he
became fascinated by Jewish mysticism and “heresies,” which seemed
to point towards Judaeo-Christian rapprochement.15
In 1696 the king allowed Peringer to invite two Karaite Jews to
Sweden, for he believed that they were “the Lutherans among the Jews.”
The Karaites presented their anti-Talmudic beliefs to an assembly of
scholars, and Benzelius was intrigued by this glimpse into the secretive
world of heterodox Judaism. His professors persuaded Charles XI to
grant him a three year travel scholarship in order to establish contacts
with Orientalists in Europe and England. With Bishop Eric Benzelius

12
H.L. Forsell, Minne af erkebiskopen Erik Benzelius den yngre. Svenska Akademiens
Handlingar (Stockholm, 1883), vol. 58, pp. 112–476; Bjorn Ryman, Eric Benzelius d.y.
En frihetstida politiker (Lund: Hakan Ohlssons, 1978).
13
For the outstanding scholars of Jewish mystical lore at Uppsala, see Bernd
Roling, “Erlösung im angelischen Makrokosmos: Emanuel Swedenborg, die Kabbala
Denudata und die schwedische Orientalisk,” Morgen-Glantz: Zeitschrift der Christian
Knorr von Rosenroth-Gesellschaft, 16 (2006), 385–457.
14
Mats Eskult, “Rabbi Kemper’s Case for Christianity in his Matthew Commentary,”
in T.L. Hettema and A. Van der Kooij, eds., Religious Polemics in Context (Assen:
Royal Van Gorcum, 2004), 151–57.
15
Forsell, Benzelius, 126–29.
 philo-semitism and the gothic kabbalah, 1688–1710 19

(the Elder) and royal chaplain Swedberg supporting the mission, cleri-
cal opposition was carefully avoided.
When Benzelius set off on his travels in summer 1697, his primary
goal was to visit the philosopher and polymath Gottfried Wilhelm
Leibniz, librarian to the Hanoverian court, who would advise him on
the Hebraic, Arabic, and Oriental works to be collected for Swedish
libraries and who could recommend the young Swede to his network
of correspondents. Benzelius also wanted Leibniz’s help in formulating
plans for a learned society in Sweden that could overcome Sweden’s
isolation from the international exchange of information maintained
by the royal societies in London and Paris. In carrying out this mis-
sion, Benzelius entered a renewed controversy about the authenticity
and purpose of the Rosicrucian movement. With Leibniz at the center
of these debates, Benzelius had a rare opportunity to learn about the
obscure early history of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry in Europe
and Britain—a history that would eventually shape his own and
Swedenborg’s plans for a “collegia curiosorum” in Sweden.
The prolonged controversy about the reality and purpose of the
Rosicrucian fraternity had been re-ignited in Sweden by the publi-
cation of Adrien Baillet’s Vie de Monsieur Descartes (Paris, 1691).
Baillet thanked Leibniz for providing rare information on Descartes’s
early experiences, and his revelations about Descartes’ alleged
Rosicrucianism provoked intense curiosity in Uppsala, where the bat-
tle between Cartesianism and Lutheran orthodoxy was still heated.16
The book also provoked a barrage of hostile pamphlets in Europe,
which made Leibniz fear that the ridicule poured on the Rosicrucians
would spill onto the honest efforts of Cartesians to reform science and
education.17
For Benzelius, Baillet’s odd account, which seemed to conceal as
much as reveal about Descartes’s actual relation with the Rosicrucians,
must have been particularly interesting. Baillet also revealed that
Descartes and Christina had drawn up plans for an academy of learn-
ing in Sweden in 1650.18 Fired with similar ambitions, Benzelius hoped
to learn more from Leibniz about his own and Descartes’s ideas about
societies of polymathia and pansophia. Leibniz had visited Christina

16
See Adrien Baillet, La Vie de Monsieur Descartes (Paris, 1691), I, xxvi, 90–91.
17
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Sämtliche Schriften (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1923–
1986), s.1, vol. 5, p. 283. [Henceforth cited as SS.]
18
Baillet, Descartes, 412.
20 chapter one

shortly before her death in 1689, and he subsequently became a mem-

ber of her “Accademia fisico-matematica” in Rome, which included
many Rosicrucian elements.19 Leibniz also met and admired her
Rosicrucian collaborator Giuseppe Francesco Borri, and he lamented
the alchemist’s later imprisonment by the Inquisition.20 From his
current Swedish correspondents, Leibniz knew that the ideals of the
Rosicrucian Enlightenment received a warmer welcome in Sweden
than in Italy or Germany.21
When Benzelius arrived in Hanover in August, he was welcomed by
Leibniz, who became quite fond of the brilliant young scholar. Given
Benzelius’s desire to learn about the work of learned societies, Leibniz
could provide him with a wealth of information, for the philosopher
had long experience with Rosicrucian and Masonic organizers of sci-
entific societies. In his youth Leibniz himself had joined an alchemical
society at Nuremberg (in 1666–67), which had links with an earlier
Rosicrucian network.22 His studies in Rosicrucian and Kabbalistic liter-
ature influenced the mathematical theories he published in Dissertatio
de Arte Combinatoria (1666).23 In 1672, while in Holland, Leibniz spent
much time with Constantijn and Christiaan Huygens, who informed
him that Sir Robert Moray, their close friend, was “the soul” of the
English Royal Society. They probably also informed him that Moray,
a Scottish supporter of the Stuarts, was a student of Rosicrucianism
and an ardent Freemason.
When Leibniz visited London in 1673, he was welcomed warmly
by Moray, who introduced him to interested members, showed him
the chemical-alchemical laboratory at Whitehall, and arranged the
demonstration of Leibniz’s calculating machine. Though the other
Fellows treated the visitor coldly, Moray proudly nominated him for

19
W. Totok and C. Haase, eds., Leibniz (Hanover, 1966), 46; Leibniz, SS, s. I, vol. 11,
pp. 647–49.
20
Totok and Haase, Leibniz, 46; Leibniz, SS, s.1, vol. 11, 647–49; Henry Oldenburg,
Correspondence of Henry Oldenburg, eds., A.R. and M.B. Hall (Madison: Wisconsin
UP, 1973, I, xxxix, 358; II, 481, 511, 527, 531, 539.
21
For Swedish Rosicrucian interests, see Sten Lindroth, Paracelsismen i Sverige
till 1600 Talets Mitt. Lychnos Bibliothek 7 (Uppsala, 1943); Sven Rydberg, Svenska
Studieresor till England under Frihetstiden (Uppsala, 1951); Susanna Åkerman, Rose Cross
Over the Baltic: The Spread of Rosicrucianism in Northern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 1998).
22
George M. Ross, “Leibniz and the Nuremberg Alchemical Society,” Studia
Leibnitiana, VI (1974), 222–42.
23
Leibniz, SS, ser. VI, vol. i, 203, 233 plate; vol. ii, 556–57; Allison Coudert, Leibniz
and the Kabbalah (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic, 1994).
 philo-semitism and the gothic kabbalah, 1688–1710 21

Fellowship in the Royal Society. Leibniz later referred positively to

other British Freemasons, such as Arlington, Evelyn, and Wren. Paul
Wiedeburg argues that Leibniz was deeply influenced by the merged
Rosicrucian-Masonic networks he encountered during this period.24
As we shall see, Swedenborg would later be influenced by similar clan-
destine networks.
While with Leibniz, Benzelius had a rare opportunity to converse
with Francis Mercurius Van Helmont, son of the famous Paracelsan
physician, Jan Baptiste van Helmont. Dressed plainly in Quaker clothes,
the eighty-three year-old Van Helmont was lively and alert while he,
Leibniz, and Benzelius discussed Kabbalism, Pythagoreanism, Chinese
religions, and various millenarian beliefs.25 Leibniz had long been inter-
ested in the Kabbalistic notions of Van Helmont and his collaborator,
Knorr von Rosenroth, who together published the Kabbala Denudata
(Sulzbach, 1677–1684), a compilation of Latin translations of Zoharic,
Lurianic, and other Jewish mystical texts.26
In his brief diary notes, Benzelius referred to his discussions with Van
Helmont, which included the latter’s anonymous treatise “Adumbratio
Kabbalae Christiane,” appended to the Kabbala Denudata. In this sec-
tion, Van Helmont pressed the analogy between the Jewish concept
of Adam Kadmon, the macrocosmic man, and the Christian concept
of Jesus, the primordial man. Benzelius recorded that Van Helmont
communicated to him information on “Cabbala. De Rosenroth.
Harmoniae Evangelicae.” The three men also discussed Trithemius’s
system of Kabbalistic cryptography and angel magic. Benzelius was so
impressed that he acquired rare editions of the Kabbala Denudata and
Trithemius’s Polygraphie.27 As we shall see, both these works would
have important influences on Swedenborg. In 1785 a Masonic disciple
of Swedenborg would claim that the Kabbala Denudata was the major
influence on his theosophical system.28 Trithemius’s cryptographical

24
Paul Wiedeburg, Der Junge Leibniz: Das Reich und Europa (Wiesbaden: Franz
Steiner, 1970), II, 22.
25
Linköping, MS. B 53: Benzelius, Diarium (1697–1703). Entries for 13–21 August
1697.
26
Allison Coudert, The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life
and Thought of Francis Mercurius Van Helmont (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 308–29.
27
Linköping: MS. Benzelius, Catologus Librorum, ff. 118, 140.
28
Ibid., f. 118; Benedict Chastanier, Du Commerce établi entre l’Ame et la Corps
(Londres, 1785), 87.
22 chapter one

and angelic theories would later influence Swedenborg’s diplomatic

codes and spirit communications.
While Benzelius was with Leibniz, the philosopher was eagerly fol-
lowing the activities of the Russian Czar, Peter I, who was making a
scientific pilgrimage to the West in search of technological expertise
and educational reform.29 Leibniz wrote to Benzelius’s Swedish friend,
Johan Gabriel Sparwenfeldt, about his admiration for Peter, who
was then in Holland studying ship-building.30 He noted that Peter’s
“maxime” was to actively participate, “de sa propre main,” in all the
steps for apprenticeship (“garçon”) to designing (“architecte”), just
as he passed through all the “degrés militaires.” Though Leibniz was
frustrated in his effort to meet Peter, he continued his correspondence
with the Czar’s officer General Francis Lefort, who allegedly joined a
Masonic lodge in Holland (probably an operative, craft lodge like the
one Sir Robert Moray joined forty years earlier).31
It is unknown whether the Czar also attended a Dutch lodge, but
he complained that the Dutch masters were unable to instruct him
in “in the Mathematical Way,” despite his acquisition of manual and
technical skills.32 An Englishman told him that such skills (the higher
principles of design and construction) were “in the same Perfection
as other Arts and Sciences” in Britain. He thus accepted William III’s
invitation to visit London, where he stayed (in loose incognito) from
January to April 1698. Peter and his party resided in the home of the
aged John Evelyn, who had earlier investigated operative Masonry,
contributed Masonic emblems to the Royal Society, and shared mysti-
cal Masonic bonds with Moray.33

29
For Peter I’s esoteric as well as scientific interests during this visit, see Robert
Collis, The Petrine Instauration: Religion, Esotericism and Science at the Court of Peter
the Great, 1689–1725 (Turku: Turun Ylipisto, 2007).
30
Leibniz, SS, s. I, vol. 13, pp. 758–59.
31
Tatiana Bakounine, Le Répertoire biographique des francs-maçons russes
(Bruxelles: Editions Petropolis, 1940), 290; Schuchard, Restoring the Temple, 545–46.
32
Anthony Cross, By the Banks of the Neva: Chapters from the Lives and Careers of
the British in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997), 160.
33
British Library, Evelyn MS. 65: “Trades: Secrets and Receipts Mechanical,”
f. 243 on the necessary skills of “the Free-Mason.” For more on Evelyn’s Masonic
associations, see Marsha Keith Schuchard, “Leibniz, Benzelius, and Swedenborg:
the Kabbalistic Roots of Swedish Illuminism,” in Allison Coudert, Richard Popkin,
Gordon Weiner, eds., Leibniz, Mysticism, and Religion (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic,
1998), 95, 105 n. 61.
 philo-semitism and the gothic kabbalah, 1688–1710 23

Working with artisans and studying mechanics, mathematics, and

architecture, Peter became privy to the role that British Masonic lodges
played in the technological, ethical, and spiritual training of craftsmen.
That he also learned the higher “Mathematical Way” is suggested by
his alleged initiation into Freemasonry by the great mathematician and
architect Christopher Wren, who included naval architecture among
operative Masonic skills.34 According to Russian Masonic tradition,
when Peter returned to Russia, he allowed Lefort and his Scottish offi-
cials to establish a lodge, where he himself served as Junior Warden.
It is quite possible that Leibniz, who had known Moray and earlier
Masonic virtuosos, was aware of and informed Benzelius about this
Masonic enterprise. The Scottish-Russian-Masonic connection would
later become important to Swedenborg’s participation in Swedish mil-
itary and political affairs.
In his letter to Sparwenfeldt, Leibniz suggested that Van Helmont,
if only he were younger, would be the perfect master to instruct Peter,
for he knew all the arts and sciences. Leibniz also believed that Van
Helmont was a Rosicrucian who had mastered the secrets of Kabbalah.
Benzelius shared this admiration for the octogenarian adept, and
after Van Helmont’s death in 1698, Leibniz sent him his unpublished
epitaph:
Here lies the other van Helmont, in no way inferior to his father.
He joined together the arts and sciences and
Revived the sacred doctrines of Pythagoras and the Kabbalah.
Like Elaus he was able to make everything he needed with his own hands.
Had he been born in earlier centuries among the Greeks,
He would now be numbered among the stars.35
Though Leibniz and Benzelius were much more cautious than
their eccentric friend, it was probably through Van Helmont that
Benzelius learned about a semi-secret society that managed to pur-
sue Kabbalistic and Rosicrucian studies while avoiding public con-
troversy. During a visit to London in early 1697, Van Helmont had
joined the Philadelphian Society, which he believed was a revival of
his father’s earlier Philadelphian dreams.36 When Benzelius travelled

34
Bakounine, Répertoire, 404; Cross, By the Banks, 28; Robert Collis, “Freemasonry
and the Occult at the Court of Peter the Great,” Aries, 6 (2006), 1–24.
35
Translation by Coudert, Impact, xiii n. 1; Erik Benzelius, Letters to Erik Benzelius
from Learned Foreigners, ed. Alvar Erikson and E.N. Nylander (Göteborg, 1983), I, 41.
36
Hillel Schwarz, The French Prophets (Berkeley: California UP, 1980), 37.
24 chapter one

to London in September 1699, he immediately sought out Dr. Francis

Lee, a “brother” in the society.37 Through Lee, Benzelius gained access
to a neo-Rosicrucian society which preserved earlier Kabbalistic and
Masonic traditions.
An erudite physician with strong Jacobite sympathies, Lee had to
flee England after the Williamite revolution of 1688 which de-throned
the Stuart king, James VII and II. After studying medicine in Italy and
Holland, he returned in 1692 to London, where he maintained a low
profile because of his political vulnerability. He introduced Benzelius
to the Boehmenist writings of Jane Lead and John Pordage, as well as
the Kabbalistic writings of heterodox Jews.38 Benzelius acquired the
Theosophical Transactions (1697), edited by Lee and Richard Roach,
in which their discourses on the Hermetic-Kabbalistic marriage, the
divine humanity of Adam Kadmon, and the spiritual descent of the New
Jerusalem strikingly foreshadowed the later themes of Swedenborg.
Two years earlier, “Rabbi” Lee (as he was called) had become
intrigued by a current Sabbatian revival, which had unexpected rami-
fications into Sweden. Lee wrote enthusiastically:
That there is also something moving at this Day in the Spirits of the
very Jews . . . is well known to several, who have intimately discours’d
‘em upon divine Matters, and the Fulfilling of Scripture Prophecies . . . I
forebear, considering that many things relating to them, and to the rest
of the Tribes of Israel are to be kept secret until the Appointed Day.39
As we shall see, the emergence and failure of this Jewish messianic
movement—which was stimulated by the Sabbatian prophet Zadoq of
Grodno—had a powerful influence on Rabbi Moses Aaron of Cracow,
who would subsequently convert to Christianity, immigrate to Sweden,
and become the intimate friend of Benzelius.
Benzelius may have joined Lee’s society or some related secret
fraternity; from his later correspondence, it is clear that he joined
a “club” in London whose “brothers” were perhaps Philadelphians
or Freemasons.40 Unfortunately, there are no surviving diary notes

37
Erikson, Letters to Benzelius, I, 36.
38
On Pordage, Lead, and Lee, see Arthur Versluis, Wisdom’s Children: A Christian
Esoteric Tradition (Albany: State University of New York, 1999), 39–78.
39
[Francis Lee], A letter to Some Divines, concerning the Question whether God
since Christ’s Ascension, doth anymore reveal himself to Mankind by the Means of
Divine Apparitions (London, 1695).
40
Erikson, Letters to Benzelius, I, 31–36.
 philo-semitism and the gothic kabbalah, 1688–1710 25

on Benzelius’s experiences in England, which raises the question of

whether he took an oath of secrecy with his “brothers.”41
Besides his Philadelphian contacts, Benzelius made important
friends in the Royal Society in London, including Sir Hans Sloane,
the current secretary.42 A moderate Whig, Sloane never let politics
interfere with his friendships, which often crossed party lines.43 An
early Freemason, he amassed a vast collection of manuscripts and
rare imprints on Masonry, Rosicrucianism, and the occult sciences.44
Benzelius also formed lasting connections with a host of Non-Jurors,
scholars and theologians who refused to swear allegiance to the “usurp-
ing” William III. Among them was George Hickes, who had earlier
served as chaplain to the Scottish Duke of Lauderdale, who had shared
Masonic bonds with the late Moray.45
In 1697, while hiding from the Whig government in Scotland,
Hickes studied the traditions and practices of operative masons:
I went to Halbertshire. This is a strong, high tower house built by the
Laird of Roslin in King James the 5th time. The Lairds of Roslin have
been great architects and patrons of building for many generations. They
are obliged to receive the mason’s word, which is a secret signall masons
have thro’ out the world to know one another by. They alledge ‘tis as old
as Babel when they could not understand one another and they con-
versed by signs. Others would have it no older than Solomon. However
it is, he that hath it will bring his mason to him without calling to him
or your perceiving the sign.46
Two years later, in 1699, Hickes spent much time with Benzelius and
may have passed on this rare Masonic information, either orally or in
their subsequent correspondence.
It was probably Hickes who introduced Benzelius to Robert Leslie,
the Irish-born son of the Non-Juring Charles Leslie, who was then

41
Linköping, MS. Benzelius Itinerarium: records only his arrival in England in
September 1699 with no further notes.
42
British Library: Sloane MSS. 3342, f. 1; London, Royal Society: Journal Book,
IX, 178.
43
Bruce Lenman, “Physicians and Politics in the Jacobite Era,” in Eveline
Cruickshanks and Jeremy Black, eds., The Jacobite Challenge (Edinburgh: John
Donald, 1988), 79.
44
E.J.L. Scott, Index to the Sloane Manuscripts in the British Museum (London:
British Museum, 1904).
45
Schuchard, Restoring the Temple, 585.
46
Historical Manuscripts Commission 29: 13th Report. Portland MSS., appendix ii
(1893–94), II, 56. [Henceforth cited as HMC].
26 chapter one

publishing fiery Jacobite propaganda.47 Robert sensed a kindred spirit

in Benzelius, and he arranged for his father’s works to be shipped to
his friend in Sweden. Of particular interest to Benzelius was Charles
Leslie’s treatise, A Short and Easie Method with the Jews (1689), in
which he utilized arguments from Philo and the Kabbalists to con-
vince the Jews that the Anglican Church presents no obstacles to their
conversion. After giving a history of Jewish false messiahs, including
Sabbatai Zevi, Leslie argued that “Your own Cabalists do distinguish
God into three lights; and some of them call them by the same names
as the Christians, of the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit.”48
Though “your Cabala makes your outward Law but the Cortex or Shell
of the hidden mysteries contained within it,” yet you are grown to that
violent prejudice against it “because it leads directly to Christianity.”
Leslie’s position would soon be adopted by Benzelius, while father
and son continued to correspond with their Swedish friend over the
next years.
We will return to Benzelius’s other Jacobite friends when we exam-
ine Swedenborg’s contacts with them during his visit to England in
1710–13. All of these men suffered persecution by the Whig govern-
ment, which fueled Benzelius’s admiration for their courage and prin-
ciples. Like Leibniz, Benzelius also concluded that Tory-Whig and
Jacobite-Williamite polarizations contributed to the decline of the
New Science. Despite the hospitality of Sloane, Benzelius soon became
aware of the bitter factionalism and personality clashes that currently
plagued the Royal Society.49 With little royal support, the society was
seen by some members as on the verge of destruction. Ambitious and
internationalist members like Sloane looked enviously to the Académie
des Sciences in Paris, which had recently received financial support and
new statutes from King Louis XIV.
In July 1700 Benzelius travelled to Oxford, where he explored the
great Hebraic and Rosicrucian collection donated by John Selden to
the Bodleian Library. He was guided through the collection by Thomas
Hearne, the Jacobite librarian, who welcomed Swedish visitors and
catalogued Selden’s collection. Benzelius took notes on annotations

47
Erikson, Letters to Benzelius, I, 56, 58.
48
Charles Leslie, A Short and Easie Method with the Jews, 8th rev. ed. (London:
George Strahan, 1737), 87, 118, 136.
49
Michael Cyril William Hunter, The Royal Society and its Fellows, 2nd. ed.
(London: British Society for the History of Science, 1994), 46–47.
 philo-semitism and the gothic kabbalah, 1688–1710 27

in various editions of the Zohar, and he made a celebrated discov-

ery of an unknown manuscript by Philo Judaeus.50 Stimulated by Van
Helmont’s enthusiasm for Philo’s theories of “mystical etymology,” he
became fascinated by the Jewish philosopher’s merging of the Mosaic
and Platonic traditions.51 In Philo’s version of the logos doctrine,
Benzelius believed he found incontrovertible proof that “true Jewry”
was expecting the appearance of Christ.52 While in Oxford, Benzelius
made a lifelong commitment to the collecting and editing of Philo’s
works.

After a visit to Paris, where he met savants who would become impor-
tant to Swedenborg, Benzelius returned to Uppsala in December 1700.53
Laden with manuscripts and books for his own and the school col-
lections, he was determined to utilize his new appointment as uni-
versity librarian to implement Leibniz’s conception of the library as
a vehicle for spreading “pansophia.” Given Sweden’s poverty, how-
ever, Benzelius’s effort was doomed to frustration for, as D.K. Bowden
observes, Leibniz’s ideas on librarianship were “so radical, so ambi-
tious, and so far-reaching for that period that they must have been
considered . . . extreme, if not fanatical.”54 Nevertheless, Benzelius
strove to gather advanced scientific and mathematical books, as well
as heterodox antiquarian, alchemical, and Kabbalistic works. He also
pursued an extensive correspondence abroad (of which over three
thousand letters are preserved in the Linköping diocesan library).
When the young Swedish king, the eighteen year-old Charles XII,
marched his army onto the Continent in 1700, he was accompanied by
scholars and linguists eager to establish contacts abroad. He would not
return to Sweden for fifteen years, and his communication lines even-
tually stretched from the homeland to Turkey, Palestine, and Egypt.55
Despite the economic hardships wreaked on Sweden by the far-flung
military campaign, the contact with the Middle East reinforced the

50
Christian Wolf, Bibliothecae Hebraeae (Hamburg: T.C. Felginer, 1721), II, 1460.
51
Allison Coudert, “Some Theories of Natural Language from the Renaissance
to the Seventeenth Century,” in Magia Naturalis und die Enstehung der modernen
Naturwissenschaften. Studia Leibnitiana Sonderheft 7 (1978), 66.
52
Forssell, Benzelius, 210–14.
53
For Benzelius’s and Swedenborg’s contacts in Paris, see ahead Chapter Three.
54
D.K. Bowden, Leibniz as a Librarian (London: University College, 1969), 3–9.
55
Ragnhild M. Hatton, Charles XII of Sweden (New York: Weybright and Talley,
1968).
28 chapter one

fascination with Semitic and Oriental studies at Uppsala. Moreover,

during the king’s absence, Uppsala became the center of Swedish intel-
lectual life, as Benzelius and his colleagues strove for greater academic
and religious freedoms.
In June 1703 Benzelius married Anna Swedberg, and one month
later her fifteen year-old brother Emanuel moved into the household,
where he lived for seven formative years. Under Benzelius’s guidance
at the university, Emanuel pursued a Leibnizian course of study, in
which a sound basis in the Classics became the jumping off point for
explorations in the “progressive” disciplines—i.e., science and Semitics,
calculus and Kabbalah, mathesis and mysticism.56 Most important for
his future development into an “illuminist” was his access through
Benzelius to rare teachings of Jewish Kabbalism, especially in their
crypto-Sabbatian form.
In 1697, at the invitation of Professor Normann, a converted Jew
from Poland—the former Moses ben Aaron of Cracow—came to
Uppsala, where he assumed the new name of Johann Kemper. It was
Charles XI’s last act of conversionism and philo-Semitism to allow
Kemper to act as Hebrew lecturer at the university.57 Normann encour-
aged Kemper to devote himself to Zoharic studies, which the rabbi was
eager to do, for he was annoyed at Jewish literal interpretations of the
Hebrew scriptures and believed in multi-level explications (a view that
Swedenborg would later share).58
As noted earlier, in 1695 Kemper had been swept up in the messi-
anic movement of a Sabbatian prophet, who summoned Jews to return
to Jerusalem. As Kemper remembered in his Zoharic treatise “Maqqel
Ya’aqov,”
What a great confusion there was amongst the Jews. They emptied their
homes and sold everything . . . they prepared and established the way to
go by foot with the Messiah to Jerusalem with security and trust. There
was one particular person in Vilna whose name was R. Zadoq, and he
was the principal and chief cause for this confusion.59

56
In Uppsala the professors often offered private, extra-curricular courses which
explored subjects beyond the bounds of the traditional curriculum. This was especially
true for the Oriental scholars, who investigated many heterodox subjects.
57
Hans Joachim Schoeps, Barocke Juden, Christen, Judenchristen (Berne/Munich:
Francke, 1965), 60–67; Valentin, Judarnas, 84–85.
58
Eskult, “Rabbi Kemper’s Case,” 154, 157.
59
Wolfson, “Messianism,” 163.
 philo-semitism and the gothic kabbalah, 1688–1710 29

Elliot Wolfson suggests that the messianic disappointment occasioned

by this event served as a catalyst for Kemper’s conversion in 1696:
The path of Sabbatian messianism apparently led to a dead-end for
Kemper—yet another false start, but it did open up a new path for him
expressed in his embrace of the Christian faith. One may conjecture that
the decision to convert allowed Kemper to preserve the religious impulse
of Sabbatianism while still moving beyond the spiritual gridlock that he
may have felt by remaining an observant Jew.60
Possessing “complete mastery over traditional Jewish learning of both
an exoteric and esoteric nature,” Kemper was determined to “establish
the truths of Christianity on the basis of Jewish sources,” especially
from the Zohar. Benzelius and Kemper worked closely together until
the latter’s death in 1716, when Benzelius helped Kemper’s students in
their effort to publish his Christian-Kabbalistic writings.
While Swedenborg lived with Benzelius and studied Hebrew, it
seems certain that Kemper was his instructor.61 Not only Benzelius
but Jesper Swedberg was impressed by Kemper, who gave a Christian-
Kabbalistic explanation for “the ‘ancient custom’ of Jewish fathers
placing their hands on the heads of their sons and blessing them so
that they may be saved from Satan and protected beneath the wings of
the Messiah.” Kemper thus gave new resonance to Swedberg’s adop-
tion of that Jewish custom when he named his son Emanuel. Kemper
himself stressed the importance of the Jewish naming ritual, which
was reflected in the two titles he gave to his major treatise:
I, Moses Kohen of Cracow who is now Johann Kemper, and [the trea-
tise] is called Matteh Mosheh on account of my past name, and [it is
called] Maqqel Ya’aqov on account of my present name, for I struggled
with and against the Jewish people, and I prevailed.62
As Benzelius and presumably Swedenborg were in close contact
with Kemper, the rabbi pleased his Lutheran friends by arguing that
the truths of Christianity can be established on the basis of Zoharic
sources, which show that “the messianic faith of the Christians was in

60
Ibid., 163.
61
See George Dole, “Philosemitism in the Seventeenth Century,” Studia
Swedenborgiana, 7 (1990), 5–17. Moshe Idel, the leading Israeli scholar of Kabbalism,
affirms that Swedenborg studied Kabbalah while at Uppsala University; see his article,
“The World of Angels in Human Form,” in Studies in Jewish Mysticism Presented to
Isaiah Tishby (Jerusalem, 1984), 66, n. 251 [Hebrew].
62
Wolfson, “Messianism,” 168 n. 3.
30 chapter one

fact the truly ancient Kabbalah of Judaism.” In his singular and elabo-
rate treatises, he drew on the complexities and paradoxes of Sabbatian
theosophy in order to win Jews over to Christian beliefs and Christians
over to Jewish ritual practice. Swedenborg’s access to Kemper’s teach-
ing would be the first step of his later entrée into the strange world of
Judaeo-Christianity, an underworld where secret or former disciples
of Sabbatai Zevi presented to Christians a highly attractive form of
Christianized Kabbalah.
Wolfson notes that Kemper’s syncretic method fit in
with the larger cultural patterns of his historical moment and geographi-
cal setting attested in the post-Reformation fraternities of neo-Rosicru-
cians and Freemasons, which loosened considerably the boundaries
between Judaism and Christianity, in large measure due to the interest
of these occult fraternities in Jewish esotericism.63
Kemper’s esoteric writings on the angel Metatron would influence
later Swedish Freemasons who developed Kabbalistic rites centered
on “Metatron, the Middle Pillar.”64
While Swedenborg was a student, the philo-Semitism that made
Uppsala a leading university in Oriental studies was compounded
of genuine respect for Jewish traditions and aggressive conversionist
aims. At his popular lectures, Kemper taught that the beliefs about
the Messiah in the old Jewish synagogues were the same as those of
the early Christians. With “great exegetical ease and remarkable flights
of speculative fancy,” Kemper was able to assimilate Kabbalistic and
Christian concepts so well that he was “capable of living with a foot
in both worlds.”65 Working with Benzelius as an amanuensis in the
library, Kemper helped with his annotations to Philo, an interest
shared by Swedenborg.66
With Kemper, Benzelius also explored the theosophy of the Zohar,
which the Rabbi applied to a new Kabbalistic interpretation of the
Gospel of St. Matthew. Kemper taught that the key to the Kabbalah lay
in the pattern of debasement and subsequent elevation of the Messiah,

63
Ibid., 142.
64
Eklund, Svensson, and Berg, Hertig Carl, 114–15.
65
Ibid., 141.
66
Forssell, Benzelius, 127–29; Martin Lamm, Swedenborg: Eine Studie uber seine
Entwicklung zum Mystiker und Geisterseher. Trans. Ilse Meyer-Lune (Leipzig: Felix
Meiner, 1922), 113–17.
 philo-semitism and the gothic kabbalah, 1688–1710 31

which had its parallel in Matthew’s account of Jesus.67 Hans Joachim

Schoeps argues that Kemper’s messianic interpretations veiled his
private belief that Sabbatai Zevi was the true Messiah.68 According to
Wolfson, though Kemper continued to draw on Sabbatian writings, he
became a genuine Judaeo-Christian, for whom the Kabbalah provided
a linking bridge between the two religions.
Kemper and Benzelius placed great hopes in their young king,
who shared his father’s interest in the Karaites and Jewish lore. In
1698 Charles XII had sent his own queries to a Polish Karaite named
Kukizov, who published a reply.69 Now campaigning in Poland,
Charles sought more contacts with heterodox Jews, and he enlisted
Kemper’s help. In November 1704 in the great hall of the university,
Kemper delivered an address in Hebrew in which he praised the king’s
philo-Semitism and Sweden’s millenarial destiny.70 Charles XII had the
speech translated into Yiddish and published in order to win over the
Jews of Poland and the Ukraine to his military and political campaign.
The king’s overtures stirred hopes in European Jewish communities
that he would lift the 1685 ban on Jewish immigration. Thus, in 1707 a
group of Venetian Jews privately petitioned Charles XII to allow them
to bring their families to Sweden in order to develop foreign trade. The
Jews offered a handsome sum to the king, with the provision that the
transaction would be kept secret.71 However, the project was shelved
by the governing Council in Sweden.
For Benzelius, these overtures to the Jews were promising signs
of the opening up of Sweden to new ideas in religion, science, and
economics. He also argued that Kabbalistic studies were central to
Sweden’s national identity, notions which he derived from studying the
works of Johannes Bureus (d. 1652), the erudite and eccentric Swedish
polymath, who developed a system of “Nordic Kabbalah, a Notaricon
Suethica, or a Kabala Upsalica.”72 A mystical royalist, Bureus utilized
his Kabbalistic studies to help King Gustavus Adolphus issue “Gothic
propaganda which expressed national chauvinism.” He subsequently

67
Valentin, Judarnas, 86.
68
Schoeps, Barocke Juden, 66.
69
“Karaites,” Encyclopaedia Judaica.
70
Schoeps, Barocke Juden, 109.
71
Valentin, Judarnas, 27.
72
Thomas Karlsson, Götisk kabbala och runisk alkemi: Johannes Bureus och den
götiska esoterismen (Stockholm: Stockholm UP, 2009), 163–66.
32 chapter one

dedicated his Adelruna Rediviva to Queen Christina, who shared his

Rosicrucian and Hermetic interests. Benzelius collected Bureus’s man-
uscripts, and he inscribed his name on Bureus’s elaborate drawing of
the sephirotic tree of the Kabbalah.
Kemper was also interested in Bureus’s system, which provided
“a highly individual path of initiation which leads to unity with
God.”73 He and Benzelius learned about the influence of John Dee’s
Monas Hieroglyphica (1570) on Bureus’s Rosicrucianism.74 And they
discussed with their students the later developments in Christian
Kabbalism expressed in Knorr von Rosenroth’s Kabbala Denudata
and Pythagorean Kabbalism revealed in Van Helmont’s works.75
Benzelius had learned from Leibniz that the theories of the latter two
were important to mathematical and scientific advancement.
Young Swedenborg, who was at the center of these developments,
must have shared his mentor’s enthusiasms. Bernd Roling argues that
he was deeply influenced by the symbolism and theosophy of the
Kabbala Denudata.76 Swedenborg also acquired Benedict Lund’s Lucos
Haebreorum & vertum gentililium (“The Holy Grove of the Hebrews
and of the Ancient Peoples”), published in 1699.77 More impor-
tantly, he inscribed his name, Emanuel Swedberg, in David Lund’s
De Sapientia Salomonis (1705), which discussed the Kabbalists’ prac-
tice of contemplating the ten Sephirot in order to restore the Divine
Light that formerly had reigned with Adam and King Solomon.78 The
tract contained observations on the Sepher Yetsirah, on the influxum
Divinum, and the Sephira Chokma (wisdom), which were used in
Kabbalistic meditation to inwardly perceive the arcana Dei (secrets of
God). When these Kabbalistic themes emerged in Swedenborg’s later

73
Ibid., 165, 262.
74
Susanna Åkerman, “Three Phases of Inventing Rosicrucian Tradition in the
Seventeenth Century,” in James Lewis and Olav Hammer, eds., The Invention of
Sacred Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007), 160–64.
75
Anders Norrelius, Phosphorus Orthodoxae Fidei veterum Cabbalistarum
(Amsteldami: Samuelem Schoonwald, MDCCXX), 6–28.
76
Bernd Roling, “Emanuel Swedenborg, Paracelsus und die Esoterischen Traditionen
des Judentums in Schweden,” Offene Tore, 203–28.
77
Swedenborg’s inscribed copy is in the archives of the Academy of the New
Church, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania.
78
Susanna Åkerman, “De Sapientia Salomonis: Emanuel Swedenborg and the
Kabbalah” (forthcoming). I am grateful to Dr. Åkerman for informing me about this
newly discovered volume.
 philo-semitism and the gothic kabbalah, 1688–1710 33

theosophical writings, he would claim to have received unique revela-

tion through divine influx.
During Swedenborg’s student days, he acquired various publications
expressing seventeenth-century theories of Storgöticism, the pansophic
belief in “great Gothic Sweden.” He owned works by Sigrid Forsius,
who used his expertise in the esoteric sciences to bolster the war effort
of Gustavus Adolphus. That Forsius was a skilled mathematician and
surveyor was not incompatible with his work as Kabbalistic prophet
and Hermetic alchemist—a multi-faceted role that foreshadowed
Swedenborg’s own career. Swedenborg also owned many works by
Johannes Messenius, the great Storgöticist historian, whose fourteen-
volume Scondia Illustrata was published under Peringskiöld’s direction
in 1700–05.79 At this time, Benzelius was completing his own critical
study of Johannes Magnus’s more bizarre chronological claims in his
Kabbalistic historical works.80

In June 1709 Swedenborg submitted his thesis, Selecta Sententia, to

the university.81 Though decidedly the immature production of an

79
Emanuel Swedenborg, Catalogus Bibliothecae Emanuel Swedenborgii, ed. Alfred
Stroh (1772; Homiae: Aftonbladet, 1907), 10. The original title (in Swedish) was “A List
of the collection of books left behind by the deceased, wellborn Assessor Swedenborg,
in various languages and sciences, which will be sold in the Book Auction Chamber
in Stockholm, Nov. 28, 1772.” The sale was advertised in Swedish newspapers. In 1883
the New Church historian Rudolph Tafel received a copy of the catalogue and made
clear that all of the books belonged to Swedenborg; see “Catalogue of Swedenborg’s
Library,” New Church Life, III (1883), 183. In 1907, when Alfred Stroh published a
reprint of the Catalogue, he stated that all the books were in Swedenborg’s library.
Moreover, they represented “the collection of a lifetime” and indicated “Swedenborg’s
continued interest in scientific questions long after his distinctly scientific period”; see
Alfred Stroh, “Research Work on Swedenborgiana at Stockholm and Uppsala,” New
Church Life (June 1907), 345–47.
However, more conservative New Church critics later claimed that the books
in the two Appendices belonged to someone else, evidently because they revealed
Swedenborg’s acquisition and reading of political, scientific, and Hermetic works
for decades after he became a “revelator” in 1744; see Alfred Acton, “Swedenborg’s
Library: An Alphabetical List,” The New Philosophy, 72 (1969), 115–24, in which he
omits the Appendices. I agree with Tafel and Stroh and will make use of the entire
library catalogue.
On Messenius, see Michael Roberts, Gustavus Adolphus (London: Longmans,
Green, 1953), 521–25.
80
Eric Benzelius, Monumenta Historica Vetere Ecclesiae Sveogothica (Uppsala,
1709); Kurt Johannesson, The Renaissance of the Goths in Sixteenth-century Sweden
(Berkeley: California UP, 1991), 222.
81
Alfred Acton, “Selected Sentences from L. Annaeus Seneca and Publius Syrus the
Mime,” The New Philosophy, 70 (1967).
34 chapter one

undergraduate, the thesis revealed the influence of his studies in

Storgöticism. He drew on Loccenius’s Rerum Suecicarum Historia
(1654), which described the role of Bureus’s Kabbalistic-runic theories
in Gustavus Adolphus’s nationalist agenda.82 Loccenius also discussed
Stiernhielm’s linguistic theories about the Hebraic roots of Swedish, as
well as the traditions of incantations and “magica deliraments” that so
fascinated Christina and other Swedish scholars. He referred further
to the Jewish lore of Philo, Bodin, Grotius, and Normann, as well as
the neo-Platonism of Pythagoras and Macrobius. Thus, as Swedenborg
planned to make a postgraduate study-trip to England, he was familiar
with Sweden’s earlier Kabbalistic and Rosicrucian traditions.
Even more important was his reading in D.G. Morhof ’s Polyhistor lit-
terarius, philosophicus, und practicus (Lübeck, 1708). Morhof provided
a massive guidebook to societies and authors who promoted pansophia
and polymathia. Admired by Leibniz and Benzelius, Morhof fearlessly
praised the secret occult societies and heretical thinkers who dared to
advance science and learning. After immersing himself in the massive
Polyhistor, Swedenborg assured Benzelius that Morhof provided him
with “good resources” for his upcoming trip to England.83 As a guide-
book, the Polyhistor pointed to the England of the early Royal Society,
which Morhof visited in 1670 and which confirmed his conception of
Rosicrucian-style universal learning.84 Morhof argued that the occult
sciences and magical arts were closely linked to “the principles of
natura mechanicus,” and he used Leibniz’s Arte Combinatoria as an
example of pansophia through polymathia.85 Morhof ’s encyclopedic
work provided Swedenborg with access to the theories of a vast range
of Hermeticists and Kabbalists—including Bodin, Bruno, Campanella,
Boehme, F.M. van Helmont, Borri, and Kircher.
Most provocative, though, in the light of Swedenborg’s subsequent
experiences in England, was Morhof’s chapter “De Collegis Secretis.”86
Here he traced the history of secret colleges of occult wisdom, from

82
Ibid., 3, 319–20, 327, 341, 364–65; Johannis Loccenii, Rerum Suecicarum Historia
(Holmiae: Johannis Janssonii, 1654), I, 79, 83–93, 157.
83
Alfred Acton, Letters and Memorials of Emanuel Swedenborg (Bryn Athyn, PA:
Swedenborg Scientific Association, 1948), I, 3.
84
“Daniel G. Morhof,” Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 22 (1885), 237–42; Henning
Boetius, Daniel Georg Morhofens Unterricht von der Teutschen Sprache und Poesie
(Berlin, 1969), 401–46.
85
Daniel G. Morhof, Polyhistor (Lubeck, 1708), II, 333 ff.
86
Ibid., I, 132–47.
 philo-semitism and the gothic kabbalah, 1688–1710 35

the ancient Jewish schools of prophecy to the modern Rosicrucians.

He saw the Pythagorean fraternity, as described by Iamblichus, as a
forerunner of the “Fratrum Roseae Crucis.” He described the impact
of Robert Fludd and John Heydon on the Rosicrucian fraternity and
its sciences in England, and he praised Fludd as a “mirabilis ingenii
homo,” gifted in Kabbalah, medicine, and mathematics.87 Significantly,
Morhof included in this Rosicrucian tradition the English scientist
Dr. John Wilkins, who would soon become an intellectual hero to
Swedenborg. For Benzelius, Morhof’s inclusion of Leibniz—his own
intellectual hero—in the pansophic enlightenment must have been
gratifying.88
In summer 1709, as Swedenborg applied for a passport to England,
his Swedish mentor Benzelius and his German literary guide Morhof
had shaped his notion of Stuart England as the refuge of reforming
Rosicrucians and virtuous virtuosi—modern scientists of the body and
soul, earth and heaven. In the present reign of Queen Anne, sister of the
exiled James Stuart (called James VIII and III by the Jacobites), there
seemed to be new glimmerings of the Rosicrucian Enlightenment in
England.89 Moreover, under the presidency of Isaac Newton, the Royal
Society appeared to scientists abroad to have regained its leadership in
the New Science.
On 13 July Swedenborg wrote Benzelius to ask for his recommen-
dations to members of the Collegio Anglicana, “that I might thereby
make advance somewhat in mathesi, or, which is said to be their chief
pursuit, in Physica and Historia Naturalia.”90 Like Leibniz, Swedenborg
saw mathesis as the discipline which summed up all the others—the
true arte combinatoria of numerology, mechanics, and Kabbalah.
A few days later, Swedenborg learned of the disastrous defeat of
Charles XII at Poltava and the king’s subsequent flight to Turkey.
Swedenborg’s trip to England was abandoned, as General Stenbock des-
perately roused Sweden to defend herself against the invading Danes,
who were eager to exploit the weakness of the country without her
warrior king. Not only Sweden’s enemies but her supposed friends—
especially the Elector of Hanover and the Whigs in England—began

87
Ibid., I, 140; II, 418–32.
88
Ibid., I, 2, 5; II, 439.
89
The Jacobites called him James VIII of Scotland and James III of England and
Ireland. For convenience, I will use the title, James III.
90
Acton, Letters, I, 3.
36 chapter one

to see her unprotected territories on the North Sea and Baltic as ripe
for the picking.
A disappointed and frustrated Swedenborg spent the follow-
ing year virtually isolated at his father’s home in Brunsbo. A sym-
pathetic Benzelius tried to arrange for his brother-in-law to work
with Christopher Polhem, the eccentric mechanical genius. After
Swedenborg visited Polhem in spring 1710, the mechanist judged
him capable of collaborating in his experiments. Significantly, these
included alchemical projects, as revealed by Polhem’s sending to
Benzelius in November his “Rules for Alchemy based on Mechanical
Demonstrations.”91 Polhem probably described his own experiences
in England to Swedenborg, for during his trip abroad in 1694–96,
Polhem developed an aggressively pansophic view of science, based on
his admiration of Huygens, Leibniz, and the early British virtuosos.92
However, Swedenborg did not take the position with Polhem, for he
suddenly sailed to England in July 1710—without notifying Benzelius.
He seems to have left secretly, under some kind of official or cleri-
cal orders, as part of a mission to Count Carl Gyllenborg, the new
Swedish ambassador in London.93 Swedenborg would soon learn that
his Rosicrucian and philo-Semitic interests carried increasingly com-
plex and hazardous political implications in England.

91
Sten Lindroth, Christopher Polhem och Stora Kopparberget (Uppsala, 1951), 58.
92
Ibid., 26, 47–51.
93
See Marsha Keith Schuchard, “Swedenborg, Jacobitism, and Freemasonry,” in
Erland J. Brock, ed., Swedenborg and His Influence (Bryn Athyn, PA: Academy of the
New Church, 1988), 359–80.
 CHAPTER TWO

SWEDENBORG IN LONDON:
UNDER HANOVERIAN STORM CLOUDS, 1710–1713

That Swedenborg was wading into dangerous waters was made clear
during his voyage from Gothenburg to London. His ship was boarded
and searched by French privateers and fired upon by an English war-
ship.1 He was expected by Ambassador Gyllenborg, and a small boat
manned by Swedes met the ship offshore on the Thames. They per-
suaded Swedenborg to try to slip secretly into London, but he was
caught by the British authorities and charged with breaking the quar-
antine laws. Gyllenborg was able to secure Swedenborg’s release, and
the twenty-two year-old student entered an England well on its way
to becoming Sweden’s most bitter enemy.2 By the time he left, almost
three years later, he had become enmeshed in a clandestine and dan-
gerous plot to restore the Stuart Pretender to the British throne.3
Moreover, he would learn that Kabbalistic, Rosicrucian, and Masonic
studies could become valuable assets in esoteric espionage and exo-
teric diplomacy.
As a young and inexperienced student, Swedenborg’s role in the
diplomatic thicket of espionage, ciphers, and secret couriers was
undoubtedly minor—and secondary to his scientific and religious
studies. But Gyllenborg was in desperate need of help from trust-
worthy Swedes in England to help him promote Charles XII’s cause
and to contact potential English supporters for a pro-Swedish foreign
policy in Queen Anne’s ministry. Most Tories and the queen herself
were sympathetic to Sweden’s deplorable conditions—famine, poverty,
plague—and wanted to aid their treaty-bound ally during Charles XII’s

1
Acton, Letters, I, 10–11.
2
For background, see John J. Murray, George I, the Baltic, and the Whig Split of
1717 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1969); Nordmann, Crise du Nord.
3
The word “Pretender” derived from the French word prétendant (claimant, can-
didate), and it initially had no negative connotations. It was used in the neutral or
positive French sense by Swedish supporters of James VIII and III. However, the
English word was given negative connotations (false claim, illegitimate pretense, etc.)
by opponents of the Stuarts. In this study, I will retain the Swedish-French meaning
of the word.
38 chapter two

confinement in Turkey. However, many Whigs saw Sweden’s weakness

as an invitation to territorial and commercial aggrandizement. Since
Gyllenborg’s 1703 arrival in London, where he served the Swedish
ambassador Leijoncrona, he had been distressed by the hostile pro-
paganda directed against the Swedish king by Whig pamphleteers.
Though he tried to publish counter-messages, the situation steadily
deteriorated.
By 1710 the embassy in London was receiving no money from the
governing Council in Sweden. When Leijoncrona died on 8 April
1710, he was so deeply in debt that Gyllenborg had to sell the late
ambassador’s books and furniture.4 Now promoted to embassy chief,
Gyllenborg could barely afford to run his mission, much less print
the necessary replies to attacks on Sweden. Thus, he sought assis-
tance from Swedes who visited London—to carry messages, to solicit
funds, and to make friends with influential Englishmen. In March the
political controversies in London had ramified into the Lutheran (or
“Swedish”) church, where for many years the Germans and Swedes
had worshipped together. The Swedes, who resented the increasing
Hanoverian-Whig influence in the church, resolved to build their own
place of worship. Gyllenborg wrote about the problems to Bishop
Swedberg, who oversaw Swedish religious practices in London. The
bishop confided this to his son, and on 10 May Emanuel sent a dona-
tion in his own name to the building fund.5 After Swedenborg’s risky
arrival in London, he would spend much time with Gyllenborg, who
introduced him to the world of diplomatic intrigue.
In Swedenborg’s first letter from London to Benzelius (13 October
1710), he revealed his instant immersion in the turbulent milieu of
Jacobite political and Non-Juror theological developments. Probably
warned by Gyllenborg about English postal espionage, Swedenborg’s
letters were always slightly veiled and allusive, as though Benzelius
would read more into his accounts than met the eye. Swedenborg had
asked Benzelius for letters of introduction to his correspondents in
England, who were nearly all scholars and theologians in the Non-
Juror camp. While he was in England, a religious and political crisis
developed which drove many of these “High Flying” Anglicans into

4
Z.C. Uffenbach, London in 1710, ed. W.H. Quarrell and M. Mare (London: Faber
and Faber, 1934), 49–50.
5
Acton, Letters, II, 768–69.
 under hanoverian storm clouds, 1710–1713 39

secret support of the Jacobites. The Whig-inspired arrest and impeach-

ment of the Non-Juring preacher Henry Sacheverell in late 1709 so
offended Tories and the mass of the populace that riots and a bitter
pamphlet war erupted throughout the spring and summer of 1710.6
Gyllenborg, who was an ally of the Tories and High Anglicans, fol-
lowed the disturbances with interest, for the ill-managed trial led to
the fall of the Whig ministry in August. On 13 October Swedenborg
described to Benzelius
the internal dissensions between the Anglican church and the Presbyter-
ians, who burn with a mutual hatred that is almost deadly. The torch and
trumpet of the disturbance is Dr. Sacheverell, whose name is heard from
every lip . . . his book read in every coffee house.7
A Swedish companion of Swedenborg, the Oxford graduate Eric
Alstryn, noted the political dimension to the split between High and
Low Church: “So many publications are issued by both parties about
the royal power over the subject and the subject’s duty to the King,
that I think this would be possible nowhere else than here.”8 Despite
the admiration of Swedenborg and Alstryn for the greater freedom of
speech and press in England, they found the politicalization of reli-
gious issues unattractive.
Sacheverell’s famous sermon, which painted the Whigs as “false
brethren” who would disintegrate the Anglican church, had been
denounced as “rank Jacobitism.”9 Certainly, his trial and triumph
brought to the surface the latent Jacobite sympathies of many Anglican
churchmen. Swedenborg would have found these Jacobite tendencies
among the surviving English friends of his father and Benzelius, and
even more so among the Swedish congregation in London. Because of
the similarity of beliefs (and ambitions) between the High Anglican
and the Swedish Lutheran churches, Bishop Swedberg and Gyllenborg
were working towards a unification of rites. In London the Swedish
clergy wore Anglican church dress and conformed to many High
Church practices.

6
Geoffrey Holmes, The Trial of Sacheverell (London: Eyre Methuen, 1973).
7
Acton, Letters, I, 14.
8
Ibid., I, 37.
9
C.J. Abbey and J.H. Overton, The English Church in the Eighteenth Century
(London, 1878), 65.
40 chapter two

When Sir Jacob Bancks, a Swedish-born member of the House of

Commons, spoke on the divine right of kings, he set off a barrage
of Whig charges that the Swedish king and church supported the re-
introduction of absolute monarchy in England.10 He was soon attacked
by the Whig polemicist William Benson, who published A Letter to
Sir J— B—, by Birth a S—, but Naturaliz’d, and now a M—r of the
Present Parliament, Concerning the late Minehead Doctrine, which
was Established by a certain Free Parliament in Sweden, to the utter
Enslavement of that Kingdom (1711). Benson claimed that the Swedish
clergy tricked the people, just as the emissaries of the Popish Pretender
do the English.11 He further charged that the absolutist Swedes “breed
their clergymen at Oxford: so that ‘tis more than probable that this
Passive and Absolute Doctrine had its Original in south-Britain.”
Daniel Defoe, an equally hostile pamphleteer, echoed Benson’s accu-
sation, portraying the Swedes as “ignorant High Church Lutherans,
who want to bring in the Popish Pretender.”12 Gyllenborg, who had
protested Defoe’s attacks on Charles XII as early as 1704, was even
more alarmed by Benson’s pamphlets.13
In Benson’s anti-Swedish diatribe, he relied heavily on extracts
from An Account of Sweden, published anonymously in 1694. Benson
revealed that the author was John Robinson, recently appointed Bishop
of Bristol by Queen Anne. The revelation came as a shock to Gyllenborg,
who had been working with Robinson on Bishop Swedberg’s plans
for unification of the Anglican and Swedish churches.14 Robinson had
lived in Sweden for nearly forty years, and he had been a close friend
of Eric Benzelius the Elder and Jesper Swedberg. He learned Swedish
and became the trusted confidante of the Swedish kings Charles XI and
XII. Returning to England in 1709, he surprised his Swedish friends
by becoming a manipulative politician and an opportunistic ally of the
Hanoverian Tories.

10
“Jacob Bancks,” SBL; Herbert Wright, “Some English Writers and Charles XII,”
Studia Neophilogia, 15 (1943), 105–31.
11
William Benson, A Letter to Sir J— B— (London: A. Baldwin, 1711), 26–28.
12
[Daniel Defoe], An Account of the Swedish and Jacobite Plot (London, 1717),
65.
13
J. Murray, George I, 65.
14
Hilding Pleijel, Svensk Lutherdom (Stockholm, 1944), 88–92; R.M. Hatton, “John
Robinson and the Account of Sweden,” Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research,
28 (1955), 128–59.
 under hanoverian storm clouds, 1710–1713 41

Robinson opposed Sacheverell and was rewarded with the Bristol

bishopric in October 1710.15 Because Gyllenborg then believed that
Robinson was a friend to Sweden, he was pleased at the promotion
and called him “nôtre Évêque.”16 In December Gyllenborg wrote to the
bishop, asking his assistance in the correspondence with Charles XII
in Turkey.17 Thus, when Benson’s attack on Sweden (which utilized
Robinson’s criticism of the country) came out in January 1711,
Gyllenborg was confused and disturbed.
Under Robinson’s bland and amiable demeanor, he concealed a
deceptive and dishonest nature. He had kept his authorship of An
Account of Sweden a closely guarded secret, for he had written it to
curry favor with the new English regime of William III. He subse-
quently tried to suppress the volume, because he feared that a revela-
tion of his authorship would ruin his growing intimacy and influence
with Charles XI. Even worse, Robinson was terrified that the post-
Revolution government in England would find about his own fam-
ily’s Jacobite history. The 1711 revelation of his authorship by Benson
won him plaudits from those Whigs and Hanoverians most inimical
to Sweden.
Hoping to sort out the Benson-Robinson controversy, Gyllenborg
called on Swedenborg to help him learn more about Robinson’s hid-
den agenda. Swedenborg had recently received a letter from his father
(dated December 1710) that included a pamphlet Jesper had written,
with a request that Robinson translate it for publication in London.18
After Benson’s attack was published in January, Gyllenborg sum-
moned Robinson in February to his embassy in order to clear up the
controversy. The Swedish ambassador was obviously worried that he
and Charles XII, who had welcomed Robinson to his campaign head-
quarters in 1703, had been deceived by the Englishman.
When Gyllenborg questioned Robinson about Benson’s allegations,
the bishop lied about his Account of Sweden, claiming that another
English diplomat had re-written much of the original and that Benson
had twisted it to his own political purposes. He even supported
Gyllenborg’s plan to protest Benson’s pamphlet to the British govern-
ment. Gyllenborg then sent to the Council in Sweden his report on

15
Holmes, Sacheverell, 273.
16
RA Anglica, #212. Gyllenborg to Palmquist (21 September 1711).
17
Ibid., #211. (20 December 1710).
18
Acton, Letters, I, 17.
42 chapter two

the interview, in which he seemed to accept Robinson’s explanation.

However, Gyllenborg no longer trusted the bishop as a fair and honest
mediator between England and Sweden.
The historian John Murray observes that between 1709 and 1711,
“England pursued a vacillating policy” towards Sweden that was “a
comedy of blunders and errors”—to a “point of disgust, self-interest
dominated British policy.”19 Robinson had proved himself a wily poli-
tician while engaged in “diplomatic labours dangerous and exciting”
in 1707–08, and in 1709 he was willing to abandon his pro-Swedish
sympathies in order to obtain a diplomatic post in Poland, where King
Augustus II was a bitter enemy of Charles XII. When the Duke of
Marlborough objected to sending Robinson as minister to the Polish
king, because of Robinson’s “known partiality to Sweden,” the Lord
Treasurer Godolphin answered:
that would certainly bee right, if he [Robinson] were not entirely
changed in all that matter, and if he did not resolve to bee useful to King
[Augustus] in endeavoring to bury and lay asleep all that matter, and
turn it all to his future quiet, and to his being useful to the Allyance.20
Though Robinson’s opportunistic shift of loyalties was kept secret by
the diplomats, Gyllenborg sensed something insincere in the bishop’s
protestations of fidelity to Charles XII.
Within this context, Bishop Swedberg’s letter, which included his
bizarre account of an anexoric visionary, takes on a political (and
almost comical) significance in the British charade, and Swedenborg
was probably present during Gyllenborg’s interview with Robinson.
Pressed by the ambassador to prove his honesty and sympathy for
Sweden, Robinson used Jesper Swedberg’s pamphlet (which he received
from his son Emanuel) to reassure Gyllenborg, while he also provided
fuel for the Whigs’ mockery of superstitious Sweden. Robinson under-
took the translation and published An Account of a Swedish Maid, who
has lived six years without food, and has had of God, strange and secret
Communications (London, 1711). He then sent the work to Memoirs
of Literature, which published a summary in June 1711.
According to Swedenborg’s father, the young girl ate nothing for six
years but remained healthy, as she conversed with spirits and enjoyed

19
J. Murray, George I, 67–70.
20
Henry Snyder, ed., The Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1975), III, 1867, 1872–73.
 under hanoverian storm clouds, 1710–1713 43

visions of heaven.21 Her worried parents sent for a conjuror, but the
apparition of a child told her not to cooperate, for “God would be her
physician and comforter.” When the visions appeared, a brightness
filled the room, and she fell into ecstasy. She was carried to a beauti-
ful white church, where she saw the spirits of people she knew, but
she was not allowed to name them. Though she could not read, she
quoted passages from the Bible when she emerged from her trances.
Swedberg affirmed that “it is very certain that she sees the star,” and
it is “all true.”
Of more interest to Robinson’s current political patrons was
Swedberg’s claim that General Stenbock, the great Swedish military
commander, frequently visited the maid, who prayed for the success of
his and Charles XII’s troops on the battlefield.22 Emanuel Swedenborg,
who had recently composed a “Triumphant Ode to Stenbock,” was
privy to this visionary assistance to Sweden’s military efforts. In August
1711 he referred jokingly to the account of the maid’s anorexia, but the
incident provides an odd foreshadowing of his own visionary-military
experiences in later years.23 Charles XII would share his interest in the
effects of fasting on mental states, and Swedenborg would read widely
on the subject over the next three decades.24
Robinson placed Bishop Swedberg’s account in volume III of the
Memoirs of Literature, which included another Swedish translation by
Robinson of Magnus Gabriel Block’s “Reflections on the Astrological,
Fantastical, and Enthusiastical Prophecies of this Time.” Block, a
physician in Linköping, described a stone with pictures which were
looked upon as “Prophetical Enigmas by some Visionaries,” who com-
pare them to the prophecies of Paracelsus and others on the Battle
of Poltava.25 The rationalist Block hoped to cure his countrymen of
their credulity and criticized the “extatical prophets and interpreters of
the Apocalpse.” Paracelsus, their oracle, was a “Visionary, Cheat, and
Plagiarist.” Block’s pamphlet stimulated the pansophic chemist Urban
Hjärne to issue a controversial defense of Paracelsus in 1709. Benzelius

21
Memoirs of Literature, II, 69.
22
Political passages published by Dr. John Hill in The British Magazine, I (September
1746), 252–54.
23
Acton, Letters, I, 42.
24
He would discuss this research in The Animal Kingdom (1744); see ahead,
Chapter Eleven.
25
Sten Lindroth, “Hiarne, Block, och Paracelsus. En redogorels for Paracelsusstriden,”
Lychnos (1941), 197–98, 229.
44 chapter two

collected Block’s and Hjärne’s works, for he and Swedenborg were

interested in both men’s arguments.26 The continuing controversy
over Charles XII’s military and spiritual role would provoke Jesper
Swedberg to publish in 1712 a sixteenth-century prophecy of the
king’s heroic exploits.
Swedenborg purchased and studied the complete run of Memoirs
of Literature, in which he found reinforcement for his studies of
Morhof ’s Polyhistor.27 The journal targeted readers interested in het-
erodox theosophy and millenarian prophecy. Thus, in volumes I and
II, Swedenborg read learned articles on Hermetic, Kabbalistic, and
Sabbatian theosophy, as well as unusual praise of the Knights Templar.
In volume III, he read of Fischlein’s “proof ” that “the Brethren of the
Rosa-Crux actually formed a society,” and that a member named Simon
Studion had written “the Naometry, or the Opening of the First Book,
written within and without the Key of David, and his Pen resembling a
Wand.”28 Running throughout the volume was an important summary
of Leibniz’s Theodicy (Amsterdam, 1710), in which he cautiously wove
the Kabbalistic theories of Von Rosenroth and Van Helmont into his
scientific cosmology. Encouraged by this positive review, Swedenborg
subsequently acquired the Theodicy. The eclectic articles on the eso-
teric sciences and mystical fraternities in the Memoirs of Literature
provided the young student with food for thought and tips for inves-
tigation in the decades ahead.
While Gyllenborg tried to decipher the political motivation behind
Bishop Robinson’s actions, he shared with Bishop Swedberg his con-
cern about growing Whig hostility to Sweden. Emanuel soon became
aware of the Jacobite suspicions that hovered over the Swedish com-
munity in England, for his father, as bishop in charge of the Swedish
church in London, was viewed as an ally of the Jacobite Non-Jurors.
In 1710, when the Swedish congregation adopted the motto, Rosa
inter spinas, it seemed to flaunt its sympathy for the white rose of the
Stuarts.29
Many Whigs were suspicious of Gyllenborg, who was not only an
ally of the Non-Jurors but had married into an English Jacobite fam-
ily. His wife, Sarah Wright, was an outspoken supporter of the Stuarts,

26
Linköping: Benzelius, Catalogus, f. 153.
27
Acton, Letters, I, 42.
28
See Memoirs of Literature, III, 43, 57, 115, 349.
29
Hans Cnattinguis, Bishops and Societies (London: SPCK, 1959), 42.
 under hanoverian storm clouds, 1710–1713 45

and she introduced her husband to important partisans of the exiled

royal family. However, the ambassador recognized that he must tread
warily, while he negotiated with Whigs and Tories for Sweden’s inter-
ests. When Swedenborg called upon him for a favor in spring 1711,
Gyllenborg was cautious about its implications. The ambassador had
already bailed Swedenborg out for his illegal entry into England, but
now he warned him away from another risky enterprise.
In 1709 Benzelius had shipped to England, for distribution to his
Non-Juror friends, copies of his edition of Vastovius’s Vitis Aquilonia
(1708), which described the lives of Catholic saints. Benzelius believed
that Vastovius had faithfully transcribed from popular medieval tradi-
tions the marvelous tales of miracles and visions. However, the British
government treated severely the importation of suspected “Papist”
materials. Benzelius’s books were confiscated at the Customs House,
with a demand for information about the author and a high duty
charge. Swedenborg asked Gyllenborg to help get them released, but
the customs officials did not comply with the ambassador’s request.
Gyllenborg explained to Swedenborg why the government was sus-
picious about the books. Under William III a long list of new penal
laws was enacted against Catholics and Dissenters, which utilized con-
fiscation of books and papers as a prelude to imprisonment.30 These
laws were now invoked with increasing ferocity against “heterodox
opinions” and suspected Jacobite sympathizers. For Jacobite agents
abroad, “the Searchers of the Custom-House” had become a serious
threat to their communication lines with England.31 Thus, on 11 April
1711, Swedenborg sent a warning to Benzelius: “There is great hazard
for me in inquiring after them, since Vitis Aquilonia is a Catholic and
superstitious book; and the importation of such books is subject to
severe penalty, by an Act of Parliament in 2 William and Mary’s year.”32
Perhaps to protect himself in case of post office spies, Swedenborg did
not sign his name to this letter.
Benzelius had intended for Swedenborg to use the gift of the books
as a means of meeting his old friends and current correspondents. He
was angry at Swedenborg’s characterization of the book as Catholic,
for he seemed to miss the warning note in the letter. Benzelius was

30
Abbey and Overton, English Church, 18–19.
31
Bodleian: Carte MS. 212. f. 5 (Middleton to Menzies, 30 January 1710).
32
Acton, Letters, I, 23.
46 chapter two

probably not aware that several of his friends who would receive the
books—such as Charles and Robert Leslie, George Hickes, etc.—were
under threat of arrest for suspected Jacobite activities. In June 1711
Benzelius believed that help for the confiscated books would surely
come when Bishop Swedberg was elected a corresponding member of
the “Society for Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts” (called the
SPG). However, this affiliation would only worsen the suspicions of
Jacobitism surrounding Swedenborg’s efforts to release the books.
The SPG was the missionary branch of the “Society for Promoting
Christian Knowledge” (SPCK), which was founded by High Tory
churchmen in 1699 and which maintained ties with the Pietists in
Germany.33 The first secretary of the SPCK was Edward Chamberlayne,
a staunch royalist, tutor to Charles II’s sons, and original member of
the Royal Society. In 1679 the Freemason Elias Ashmole sent him
to Stockholm to invest King Charles XI in the Order of the Garter.34
Chamberlayne was the publisher of Anglia Notitiae, or the Present State
of England, which after his death in 1703 was continued by his son, John
Chamberlayne. The family’s Stuart loyalties provoked Whig hostility,
and in 1705 Guy Miege published Utrum horum. Tyranny or Liberty,
which criticized the “high-church principles” of the Chamberlaynes
and Anglia Notitiae. John Chamberlayne was so intimidated by the
attack that he subsequently maintained a low profile, even though he
continued his work for the SPCK.
Swedenborg recorded that he “became very well acquainted” with
John Chamberlayne, who was an F.R.S. and fluent in sixteen lan-
guages (he translated all the foreign correspondence for the SPCK).35
Chamberlayne understood well the political risks involved in Sweden-
borg’s efforts to release Benzelius’s books, and he advised him to get
Benzelius to fill out a long account of detailed “particulars” and “cir-
cumstances” which would free the books from Jacobite suspicions.
Despite his worries about the “great hazard” and “severe penalties”
involved in the Customs House affair, Swedenborg continued to sup-
ply Benzelius with information on Jacobite controversies in England.
In August 1712 he wrote that he was shipping “Leslie, Truth of

33
Cnattinguis, Bishops, 7, 41; W.K.L. Clarke, A History of the S.P.C.K. (London:
S.P.C.K., 1959), 15–27.
34
“Edward Chamberlayne,” DNB.
35
Acton, Letters, I, 37.
 under hanoverian storm clouds, 1710–1713 47

Christianity” and “Letter to Sir Jacob Banck.”36 Again, Swedenborg did

not sign his name to the letter. If a book on medieval saints could get
him in trouble, then the shipment of Leslie’s work was asking for it. As
noted earlier, Robert Leslie had befriended Benzelius in England, and
he and his father Charles Leslie (author of the pamphlet) continued to
correspond with their Swedish friend.37
Both men were great admirers of Charles XII, whom they viewed as
a monarch in the mould of the legitimate Stuarts. Robert, in his earlier
correspondence with Benzelius, expressed the joy of their Tory friends
at the success of the young Swedish king against the Russians: “the
piety of this King’s Father, and ye justice of his own cause contributed
no less to victory than his soldiers’ Resolution and his own Bravery
and Conduct.” Charles Leslie then wrote Benzelius about his own
desire “to cultivate a better understanding between your Renowned
Church and ours, than hitherto has been”:
I have taken notice, in a piece lately printed here, of ye constitution of
your Church of Sweden, as kept independent of the Regale, in ye Election
of her Bishops and the Exercise of her Spiritual Authority . . . That ye
King do’s not Interpose, by way of Authority (as here) in ye Election
of Bishops, particularly that he did not in ye Election of your most
Reverend Father to the Archbishopric . . . I pray heartily for the success
of your Glorious King, in his Just Cause. He seems to be an Instrument
in ye Hand of God for Great Things.38
In the decade since Robert Leslie met Benzelius, he and his father had
undertaken dangerous organizational and propaganda work for the
Stuart Pretender. Just before Swedenborg arrived in London, Charles
Leslie was involved in a highly publicized Jacobite controversy. His
defense of the High Churchmen and the Stuart succession in The Good
Old Cause (1710) provoked a furious response from Benjamin Hoadly
in The Jacobite Hopes Revived by our late Tumults and Addresses
(1710). Leslie had infuriated the Whigs by his witty remark that “Whigs
may creep in anywhere but into Heaven, where there is an absolute
Monarch, and no Parlements.”39 Hoadly roundly condemned Leslie:

36
Ibid., I, 41.
37
Erikson, Letters to Benzelius, I, 56, 58, 70–71.
38
Ibid., I, 70–71.
39
Benjamin Hoadly, The Works of Benjamin Hoadly (London: Bowyer and Nichols,
1773), I, 635.
48 chapter two

Here is a Jacobite, who takes them [“Enemies of the Government”] to be

on his side, and looks upon them as the Voice of the People (which for
once shall be the voice of God) calling home the Pretender . . . This author
would not thus boldly hector and bully the present Establishment if he
had not pretty good assurances that there are now designs on foot for an
invasion, or a Restoration . . . nothing is wanting but a fair wind.
Britains, awake. Do not let such Orators talk you into Popery and
Slavery. Remember King William’s last speech—those who do not sup-
port us are for “a Popish Prince and French Government.”40
In July 1710 Whig pressure led to an arrest warrant for Charles Leslie,
who went into hiding with sympathetic friends in London.41 Living
in disguise, he continued to publish and work for the Jacobite cause.
He maintained contact with Gyllenborg, and he gathered information
on potential Swedish help for the Pretender. Escaping to France in
April 1711, Charles presented a Memorial to James III at St. Germain,
in which he outlined the seeds of what became the “Swedish-Jacobite
Plot.” Leslie claimed that Queen Anne favored James and that the
English people would rise in his favor.42 If the French king, Louis XIV,
was not in a position to send troops to Scotland, “may not some pro-
posals be made to the King of Sweden . . . in case of a double marriage,
which must be proposed to him, he would have a chance of succeed-
ing to the crown of England, as the King of England would to that of
Sweden.”
According to this scheme, Charles XII would marry James II’s
daughter, Louise Marie, and James III would marry Charles XII’s
sister, Ulrika Eleonora. Louis XIV would send troops to Charles XII
in Pomerania, which would release Swedish troops for Scotland. The
Swedish king will be more easily reconciled to France sending troops,
“for he is aware that the government of England is not favorably dis-
posed to him.” Leslie must have learned the last fact from Gyllenborg,
who had sent to Charles XII the anti-Swedish tracts of the Whigs.
Leslie concluded with a seductive vision for the Swedes. By an alli-
ance with the Stuart claimant, Charles XII “might once more have the
balance of Europe in his hands, and give a general peace upon reason-
able terms.”

40
Ibid., I, 641–42.
41
“Charles Leslie,” DNB.
42
James Macpherson, Original Papers Concerning the Secret History of Great Britain
(London: Strahan and Cadell, 1775), II, 211–18.
 under hanoverian storm clouds, 1710–1713 49

Swedenborg was undoutedly aware of the Jacobite significance of

Leslie’s work, The Truth of Christianity, which he sent to Benzelius in
August 1712. While Leslie was in France from April 1711 to August
1713, he advised the Pretender not to dissemble his religion, for
James III’s sincerity and piety were respected in England. However,
he urged James to listen with an open mind to his presentation of
the beliefs of the Anglican Church. The Truth was written with these
Jacobite hopes in mind. Arguing against radical deists like John Toland
and Jean Leclerc, Leslie presented a Jewish argument for the Sinaitic
revelation and a Catholic argument for Christianity. His polemical aim
was to show that Anglicanism subsumed and transcended both—thus
smoothing the path for James’s “natural” conversion to the English
national church. “As I said before to the Jew, so I do now to the
Roman-Catholick, that I have made his cause my own, and argued
for it all that was possibly in my power.” It was a clever ploy and won
from James a promise to listen to Leslie’s arguments in favor of the
Anglican Church.
James Stuart was certainly no bigot, and his Catholicism was infused
with the universalist teachings of the great Archbishop Fenelon. His
court included Protestants of various sects as well as Catholics, and he
repeatedly promised freedom of religion to his potential British sub-
jects.43 The Whig propaganda that branded all Jacobites as “Papists”
was dishonest, for the great majority of James’s British supporters were
Protestants. In his memorial to James, Leslie presented the Lutheran
faith of Charles XII as a plus with the English public; a Swedish alli-
ance would defuse the Whigs’ anti-Catholic propaganda.44 Leslie
advised James to correspond with Charles XII through “the Swedish
resident, who is here, until he can send a minister to treat with him.”
It is unclear whether Leslie referred to Carl Gyllenborg in London or
Eric Sparre in Paris, though both of them soon became involved in
Jacobite planning.
In London, the Swedish ambassador worked closely with Lord
Bolingbroke, secretary for northern affairs in Queen Anne’s Tory

43
For the Stuarts’ tolerant policies, see Anne Barbeau Gardiner, “For the Sake of
Liberty of Conscience: Pierre Bayle’s Passionate Defense of James II,” 1650–1850, 8
(2003), 235–55. For James III’s belief in and practice of religious toleration, see Gabriel
Glickman, “Andrew Michael Ramsay (1686–1743), the Jacobite Court and the English
Catholic Enlightenment,” Eighteenth-Century Thought, 3 (2007), 293–329.
44
Macpherson, Original Papers, II, 217.
50 chapter two

ministry, to develop a more favorable policy towards Sweden.

Swedenborg may have met Bolingbroke, for his cousin and constant
companion Andreas Hesselius recorded a visit to Bolingbroke on
11 February 1712.45 From the reports of British diplomats attending
Charles XII in Turkey—and probably from Gyllenborg’s own state-
ments—Bolingbroke concluded that Sweden was forming a secret alli-
ance with France and would eventually mount a two-front attack on
the Austrian Empire and England.46 Thus, ending the English war with
France and strengthening the Anglo-Swedish alliance were important
priorities in his foreign policy.
At the same time, Bolingbroke and his Tory allies were secretly try-
ing to persuade Queen Anne to pass the succession on to her brother,
James Stuart, but he believed the Jacobite cause was hopeless if James
did not change his religion. True or false, Whig attacks on the Tories as
“Papist Pretenders” undermined the popular sympathy for James. Thus,
Leslie’s efforts in Paris were considered critical. Despite Bolingbroke’s
interest in the proposed Swedish-Jacobite alliance and his sympa-
thy for Gyllenborg’s pleadings, he was frustrated by Charles XII’s
intractable attitude towards England. The Swedish king, whose own
honesty and honor were unimpeachable, insisted that England live
up to her treaty agreements with Sweden. While anti-Swedish pro-
paganda accelerated in England, Bolingbroke played what he admit-
ted was “a trimming, dilatory game” with Gyllenborg and the Swedish
government.
When Swedenborg purchased and posted William Benson’s Letter
to Sir Jacob Bancks (1711), he entered another political minefield of
Jacobite controversy. Gyllenborg had worried about Benson’s enlist-
ment of John Robinson as an ally of the Whigs’ anti-Swedish pro-
paganda campaign. For Benzelius, who ordered Benson’s pamphlet,
the attack on the Swedish clergy as supporters of royal absolutism
must have stung. Benson claimed that Charles XI, a deeply pious
man, became absolute through the cooperation of the clergy, who “as
was their delight had delivered the nation over to a tyrant.”47 Though
Benzelius and Bishop Swedberg were great admirers of Charles XII,

45
Nils Jacobsson, ed., Andreas Hesselii anmärkingar om Amerika, 1711–1724
(Uppsala och Stockholm, 1938), 13.
46
John F. Chance, “England and Sweden in the Time of William III and Anne,”
English Historical Review, 16 (1901), 676–711.
47
Benson, Letter, 27.
 under hanoverian storm clouds, 1710–1713 51

they chafed under the war policy that the king could impose, at his
whim, upon the impoverished country.48 They hoped to see Sweden
return to the mixed monarchy of Gustavus Adolphus, a process the
young reform-minded king would possibly agree to—if he would ever
return home.
However, Benson’s attacks were so partisan and chauvinistic that
they placed any Swedish criticism of Charles XII in a disloyal light.
Benson, who coveted Bancks’s seat in Parliament, chastized the expa-
triate Swede:
It might have been imagined that you had renounced that kingdom
[Sweden] because it had utterly lost its Liberty; and ’tis very strange that
you, who are happily escaped out of the House of Bondage into a blessed
Canaan [England] should be hankering after the Leeks of Egypt.49
Benson denounced the Tories, Jacobites, and sympathizers with
Sweden as “shameless advocates of Tyranny and Slavery.” In the wake
of the Sacheverell disturbances, over one hundred thousand copies of
Benson’s pamphlet were sold.50
Gyllenborg protested to the English government about Benson’s
pamphlet, which was as much an attack upon Queen Anne’s Tory
ministers as upon Sweden. As Benson published more attacks,
Gyllenborg anonymously published defenses of Sweden and her heroic
king.51 When he sent Benson’s pamphlets to Charles XII in Turkey, the
king was so shocked at the violent language that he asked the British
government—his supposed allies—to suppress the works. From June
1711 to January 1713, Gyllenborg repeatedly sent to Bolingbroke and
the Advocate General his king’s request that something be done “pour
pallier le crime du dit Benson.”52 The Britons’ failure to do so further
embittered Charles XII’s attitude toward England. Benson’s intem-
perate Whig attacks drove Gyllenborg and Bancks even closer to the
activist Jacobites, who praised Charles XII as a legitimate, national
sovereign who maintained God’s design for earthly and heavenly
governance.

48
Ryman, Benzelius, 230–31; C.L. Lundquist, Council, King, and Estates in Sweden,
1713–1714 (Stockholm: Almquist and Wiksell, 1975), 100, 120, 162.
49
Benson, Letter, 2–3.
50
J. Murray, George I, 12.
51
[Carl Gyllenborg], Reason and Gospel against Matter of Fact: or, Reflections upon
two Lettes to Sir Jacob Banks (London, 1711).
52
RA Anglica, #212. Gyllenborg to Bolingbroke (19 June 1712).
52 chapter two

At the ambassador’s residence, Swedenborg evidently met another

supporter of the Jacobite cause—William Penn, the famous leader of
the Quakers. Bishop Swedberg admired Penn’s work in Pennsylvania,
and Emanuel would later praise him.53 Swedenborg’s cousin and com-
panion Hesselius described his own meeting with Penn at Gyllenborg’s
on 8 February 1712, when Penn gave Hesselius a letter of introduction
to the resident governor of Pennsylvania.54 The Jacobite sympathies of
the Quakers throw an interesting light on the alleged “Papistical intol-
erance” of the Stuart kings. Penn had been a friend and admirer of
James II, and he believed in the sincerity of James’s declarations of lib-
erty of conscience for all religions.55 During James II’s exile, Penn was
persecuted and frequently arrested by William III, who accused him
of conspiring for a Jacobite restoration. Queen Anne admired Penn,
however, and invited him back to court, a move that reinforced Whig
fears that the queen secretly planned to pass the throne to James III.
Penn’s friendship with Gyllenborg in 1712 is suggestive, for the
Quaker was allegedly involved in Louis XIV’s plans for a Jacobite
restoration. These included the scheme to marry James II’s daughter
to the Swedish king in hopes of securing military aid from Sweden.56
However, the princess’s death in April 1712 foiled the project. Though
Penn was ailing and unable to do much, the Pretender was glad to hear
from England in 1712 that Penn was still “honest”—a Jacobite code
word for “loyal.”57 Many years later (in 1744), Swedenborg would hear
the ritual word “honest” at his own Jacobite Masonic initiation, at a
time when he and Gyllenborg were once more caught up in Jacobite
plotting.58

53
Jesper Swedberg, America Illuminata (Skara: H.A. Moeller, 1730), 48, 56; Emanuel
Swedenborg, The Spiritual Diary, trans. Alfred Acton (London: Swedenborg Society,
1962), #3414.
54
Jacobsson, Hesselii, 45.
55
Vincent Buranelli, The King and the Quaker: a Study of William Penn and
James II (Philadelphia: Pennsylvania UP, 1962).
56
“William Penn,” DNB; Charles Petrie, The Jacobite Movement: the First Phase,
1688–1716 (London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1950), 131.
57
On the Jacobite significance of “honest,” see Paul Monod, Jacobitism and the
English People, 1688–1788 (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989), 156; and Ian Higgins,
Swift’s Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994), 79.
58
Emanuel Swedenborg, Emanuel Swedenborg’s Journal of Dreams, trans. J.J.G.
Wilkinson and ed. William Woofenden (New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1986),
#43. [This edition is henceforth cited as Swedenborg, Journal of Dreams].
 under hanoverian storm clouds, 1710–1713 53

Whatever involvement that Swedenborg may have had—integral or

peripheral—in the political efforts of Gyllenborg and the Society for
Promotion of the Gospel, his primary aim in England was the explo-
ration of the scientific world. Benzelius had charged him to learn as
much as possible about the current operation of the Royal Society.
Shortly after Swedenborg left for England, Benzelius established a
“Collegia Curiosorum,” which brought together the more liberal pro-
fessors at Uppsala to discuss “the investigation of the facts of nature.”59
Swedenborg’s contacts with the English Society reinforced the eclectic
vision of Benzelius and Leibniz, for most of the Fellows he met also
merged Kabbalistic and Hermetic studies with experimental science.
Moreover, they maintained the original Masonic interests of Moray,
Ashmole, and other founders. Despite the dearth of written records
from the early 1700’s, there is evidence that over one-fourth of the
Fellows were or became Freemasons.60
As we shall see, the later tradition that Swedenborg was initiated
into a Masonic lodge in London is quite plausible—if not yet prov-
able. In 1869 Mr. L.P. Regnell, a New Churchman and Freemason in
Lund, Sweden, wrote an account (in Swedish) of Swedenborg’s affili-
ation to Rudolph Tafel, the New Church historian, who published a
partial English translation:
In the archives of the [Masonic] Chapter in Christianstad, there is an
old book of records, containing the minutes of a convention or lodge
held in Wittshöfle, June 5th, 1787. King Gustavus III, and his brother,
the Duke Charles of Söderman-land (later Charles XIII) were present,
and the latter presided at the lodge. Many brethren from the southern
part of Sweden, Stockholm, from Pomerania, Greifswald, and Stralsund,
were present; the names of the officers that assisted at the meeting are
also given. Among other things, the minutes state that the first brother
of the watch, Lieutenant Colonel and Knight Baltzar Wedemar, upon
this occasion delivered a lecture on Masonry, which was listened to by
all with great attention and interest. In this lecture he mentioned the
writings of Assessor Emanuel Swedenborg, and spoke of his career as
a Freemason; that he visited Charles XII at Altenstedt, in order to have
the high order of Masonry introduced into Sweden; that Mr. Wedemar
himself had visited the lodge in London, which Swedenborg joined in
the beginning of the year 1706 and that the signature of his name is in

59
Forsell, Benzelius, 276–77.
60
Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment, 112; Nicholas Hans, “The Rosicrucians of
the Seventeenth Century and John Theophilus Desaguliers, the Pioneer of Adult
Education,” Adult Education, 7 (1935), 229–40.
54 chapter two

the register of the lodge, etc. The minutes state further, that the king and
duke were both aware of the fact that Swedenborg had been a member
of the order, and the same was known to the other brethren who were
present. The lodge which Swedenborg joined, and which bears his name,
is No. 6 in London. In a German work entitled ‘Latona,’ which appeared
in Leipzig, in the department of news, there is an article relating all the
particulars of Swedenborg’s reception in the order.61
In his translation, Tafel published only part of Regnell’s letter, and
he appended a brief summary of an important claim: “That he joined
an English lodge, Emanuel, says Mr. R., is known to every brother in
England.”62
The Swedish scholar David Dunér, who has examined Tafel’s tran-
scription and Swedish Masonic documents, notes that Tafel made sev-
eral errors in the names and dates.63 Regnell named the speaker as
Baltzar Weduwar (not Wedemar) and gave the date of the meeting as
1778 (not 1787). In June 1778 Gustav III and his brother attended a
large lodge meeting at Wittsköfle Castle near Kristianstad. Weduwar
held the second highest degree in this lodge. Both Regnell and Tafel
got the date 1706 wrong, for Swedenborg did not arrive in London
until 1710. The New Church historian Cyriel Sigstedt, who accepted
Regnell’s claim about a London initiation, added in the margin of the
complete Swedish letter that 1706 should be corrected to 1710.64 That
Swedenborg lodged in “the houses of artificers in order to learn their
crafts” suggests a practical motive for joining a Masons’ lodge, for
their operative training included many of the skills in mathematics,
mechanics, and optics that interested him.65 Moreover, he may have
learned from Benzelius about Czar Peter’s similar motive for (alleg-
edly) becoming a Freemason in London.

61
Rudolph L. Tafel, “Swedenborg and Freemasonry,” New Jerusalem Messenger
(1869), 267–68. According to Rev. Olle Hjern, current pastor of the New Church in
Stockholm, Regnell was a reliable historian.
62
A transcription of Regnell’s complete letter in Swedish is in ACSD 24.11.
63
Personal communication (1 April 1999) from Dr. David Dunér, University of
Lund, who was then writing a dissertation on Swedenborg’s scientific work. See his
article, “Swedenborgs Spiral,” Lychnos (1999).
64
Cyriel Sigstedt, “A Chronological List of the Swedenborg Documents. Appendix
and Additions” (1943). Typescript in Swedenborg Society, London. See #57. She also
inserted “1710” in the margin of the ACSD complete letter.
65
George Trobridge, Swedenborg: Life and Teaching, 4th rev. ed. (1907; London:
Swedenborg Society, 1935), 295.
 under hanoverian storm clouds, 1710–1713 55

A year after Tafel’s article appeared, the Anglo-American Sweden-

borgian Samuel Beswick drew on Regnell’s account in his book, The
Swedenborg Rite and the Great Masonic Leaders of the Eighteenth
Century (1870), in which he further elaborated Swedenborg’s Masonic
career.66 Unfortunately, Beswick gave little documentation for his argu-
ment, but he may have received the information from Swedish Masons
resident in England. Tafel, who initially accepted Regnell’s claim, later
disavowed it when he published the Documents Concerning the Life and
Character of Emanuel Swedenborg (1875).67 He had received a reply
from the Grand Lodge in London that “the accounts of the first part of
the last century were destroyed,” and another report from the editor of
the German Masonic journal “Latona” (sic) that Freemasonry was not
introduced into Sweden until 1736. Unfortunately, both replies were
historically inaccurate and misled Tafel.
There are many surviving accounts of Freemaonry in England from
the early eighteenth-century (and in Scotland from the late sixteenth
century), and the correct title of the well-known German journal was
Latomia. Tafel did not check out Regnell’s assertion about the German
articles, and he thus missed the important accounts in Latomia of King
Charles XI’s extension of privilege to a lodge in Gothenburg in the sev-
enteenth-century, of Swedenborg’s affiliation with Swedish Masonry,
and of a Masonic medal struck in Swedenborg’s honor shortly after
his death in 1772.68 Documents preserved today in the Grand Lodge in
Stockholm also reveal that Swedish Masons believed that, after 1688,

66
In 1822 Beswick was born into a Swedenborgian family in Manchester, England.
C.B. Wadström and the Nordenskjöld brothers, important Swedish Swedenborgian
Masons, resided in Manchester in the 1790s, and could have provided information on
Swedenborg’s Masonic association to friends in the city. Beswick further claimed that
he “Got his degrees in a Lodge of Swedes in England,” which would explain his access
to many oral and archival traditions of eighteenth-century Swedish Freemasonry.
Though his book on The Swedenborg Rite is a frustrating mix of valuable fact and
unverifiable speculation, his claims should not be ignored by scholars but placed within
their historical context and then evaluated. For biographical material on Beswick, see
Robert Gilbert, “Chaos Out of Order: The Rise and Fall of the Swedenborgian Rite,”
AQC, 108 (1995), 122–49. Gilbert, a member of the New Church in England, summar-
ily rejected Swedenborg’s Masonic affiliation, but he made no attempt to investigate
Swedish Masonic or political history; Swedenborg’s many Masonic friends; or Swedish,
French, German, and Russian Masonic publications which affirm his membership.
67
R. Tafel, Documents, II, 735–39.
68
See “Historische Erinnerung aus Schwedens Vorzeit” Latomia (1842), 93;
“Geschichte der Freimaurerbrüderschaft in Schweden und Norwegen,” Latomia, VII
(1846), 175–76; and Merzdorf, “Die Münzen der Freimaurerbrüderschaft Schwedens,”
Latomia, XXV (1866), 62.
56 chapter two

degrees called “anciens elus” (ancient chosen ones) were developed by

supporters of the exiled James II.69 As we shall see, Swedes allegedly
participated in Franco-Scottish field lodges ca. 1716–18, and there is
definite evidence of Swedish initiations in Paris in 1729–31.70 After
Tafel’s dismissal of Swedenborg’s Masonic affiliation, no future biog-
rapher referred to Regnell, and his Swedish report fell into oblivion.
However, a further examination of the Masonic milieu in London and
of Swedenborg’s known Masonic acquaintances in the city will give
more credibility to Regnell’s account.
In August 1710, soon after Swedenborg’s arrival in London, a pam-
phlet war erupted between the Whig Bishop of London and the Non-
Jurors, who included many of Benzelius’s old friends. The bishop
accused the Non-Jurors of using
a kind of Cant, which is a language understood by one sort of people,
but by none else; and some of them compare it to the Word, Mark, or
Token of a certain company call’d the Free-Masons, which is very well
known to every member of that sage society, but kept as a mighty secret
from all the world besides.71
The bishop further accused the Non-Jurors of supporting Sacheverell,
with “some secret designs and form’d contrivances” in their clubs and
cabals, in order to bring in the Pretender.72
In Swedenborg’s first letter to Benzelius, he described the Sacheverell
conspiracy. He also reported his attendance at a public Masonic cer-
emony, which was fraught with Jacobite connotations. From the time
of his arrival, Swedenborg followed the final construction work on
St. Paul’s Cathedral. He inspected carefully the interior and exterior
design. Overseeing the work were its architect Christopher Wren
and his son—both Freemasons.73 Wren had earlier served as Grand
Master and Deputy Grand Master, and an important lodge met on
the premises of the cathedral. During Swedenborg’s lifetime, members

69
Svenska Frimurarorden Arkiv: MS. 157.117. I am grateful to the archivist Kjell
Lekeby for sending this information.
70
See ahead, Chapters Four and Six.
71
[John Swinfen], The Objections of the Non-subscribing London Clergy, against the
Address from the Bishop of London . . . printed in the Gazette of Thursday, August 22,
1710 (London: A. Baldwin, 1710), 3.
72
Ibid., 19.
73
J.R. Clarke, “Was Sir Christopher Wren a Freemason?,” AQC, 78 (1965), 201–
06; “A Note on the Place of Sir Chr. Wren’s Death and His Funeral in 1723,” Wren
Society, 18 (1941), 181–82.
 under hanoverian storm clouds, 1710–1713 57

of the Swedish Rite affirmed that in 1710 Wren was “elected for the
second time Grand Master of the Society” and held the office until
1716.74 Thus, in October 1710, when Swedenborg wrote Benzelius
that he had watched the completion of the “temple” of St. Paul’s, he
revealed his attendance at an historically important Masonic event.75
While Christopher Wren fils placed the capstone, his proud father and
“other Free and Accepted Masons chiefly employed in the Execution
of the Work” performed the appropriate Masonic ceremonies.76
Swedenborg could even have met the elder Wren through Gyllen-
borg, for the ambassador attended meetings of the Royal Society with
the architect, who shared his Jacobite sympathies. In fact, Wren was
present at the meeting on 14 December 1710 when Gyllenborg was
first proposed and approved as an F.R.S.77 While Swedenborg tried
to meet members of the Royal Society, he undoutedly had the help of
Gyllenborg, who knew many of the Fellows. The society provided the
ambassador with an important venue to identify potential supporters
for a pro-Swedish foreign policy, among both Whigs and Tories. It is
also possible that Gyllenborg became a Freemason in London, for he
befriended several Masonic members of the Royal Society—such as
Dr. John Arbuthnot, Dr. John Woodward, and Sir Hans Sloane.78 He
also knew the brothers Thomas and Richard Rawlinson, both Jacobite
Freemasons, who were elected to the Society in January and December
1713 respectively. Richard Rawlinson would later follow Swedish-
Jacobite affairs closely, and he acquired many of Gyllenborg’s secret
diplomatic papers.79
Gyllenborg’s intimate friend Jonathan Swift was also a Freemason
(probably first initiated in 1688 in a lodge at Trinity College, Dublin

74
Margaret Jacob, Living the Enlightenment: Freemasonry and Politics in Eighteenth-
Century Europe (New York: Oxford UP, 1991), 92. Jacob gives 1774 as the date of the
comment on Wren in a letter from Vignoles to Zinnendorf (member of the Swedish
Rite). However, the original in the Grand Lodge Library, the Hague, is dated 3 March
1772 (“Documens du Fr. De Vignoles”).
75
Acton, Letters, I, 13.
76
Christopher Wren, Parentalia (London, 1750), 293.
77
British Library: Sloane MSS. 3342, f. 89, 104. “Minutes of the Royal Society,
1699–1712.”
78
The three attended meetings during Gyllenborg’s association with the Society; see
Sloane MSS. 3342. For their Masonic affiliation see, Robert F. Gould, “The Medical
Profession and Freemasonry,” AQC, 7 (1894), 151.
79
Bodleian: Rawlinson MSS. D. 569, 570–72, 870.
58 chapter two

and later associated with lodges in Ulster and London).80 Even more
significant for Gyllenborg’s diplomatic needs, Swift’s political col-
league Robert Harley, First Earl of Oxford, was an F.R.S. and a secret
Freemason; at this time, Oxford served as Prime Minister in the Tory
government.81 Within a few years, Gyllenborg would collaborate
not only with Oxford but with the Earl of Mar, the Earl Marischal
George Keith, and his brother James Keith (all Scottish Masons) in the
Swedish-Jacobite plot, and he would participate in revived Stuart-style
Masonry in Sweden in the 1740’s.
It was probably Gyllenborg who introduced Swedenborg to Hans
Sloane, a friend and correspondent of Benzelius, who would later fol-
low Swedenborg’s scientific writing.82 Sloane was also close to Sarah
Wright, Gyllenborg’s outspokenly Jacobite wife, and he was evidently
more sympathetic to the Stuart cause than generally recognized.83 A
great bibliophile with eclectic interests, Sloane collected early manu-
scripts on Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, and he was reportedly the
source of a transcription of Thomas Martin’s manuscript “Narrative
of the Free Masons Word and Signs” (1659), which was entered in
the Register Book of the Royal Society circa 1708.84 The manuscript
described the Jewish and Yorkist traditions of Freemasonry, as well as
its royalist loyalties. Sloane would certainly have recognized its role in
Restoration politics.
Swedenborg also met Sloane’s caustic critic, Dr. John Woodward,
who in May 1710 temporarily patched over his public quarrel with
Sloane.85 Woodward fondly remembered Benzelius and welcomed his
brother-in-law. Swedenborg described the usually irascible Woodward
as “so civil to me that he took me to some of the learned and the mem-
bers of the Royal Society.”86 Woodward combined his brilliant geo-
logical studies with theosophical interests, and he collected works by
Hermes Trismegistus, Dee, Maier, Van Helmont, Ashmole, Kircher,

80
On Swift and Gyllenborg, see F.P. Lock, The Politics of “Gulliver’s Travels”
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), 54–58, 135. On Swift and Masonry, see J.H. Lepper
and P. Crossle, History of the Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons of Ireland
(Dublin: Lodge of Research, 1925), I, 445–57; W.J. Williams, “Alexander Pope and
Freemasonry,” AQC, 38 (1925), 111–48.
81
Paula Backscheider, Daniel Defoe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989), 214.
82
Acton, Letters, I, 341–43; Erikson and Nylander, Benzelius’ Letters, passim.
83
British Library: Sloane MSS. 3342. f. 75, 78.
84
Sloane owned the original manuscript; see Scott, Index Sloane.
85
British Library: Sloane MSS. 3342. f. 75, 78.
86
Acton, Letters, I, 40.
 under hanoverian storm clouds, 1710–1713 59

etc.87 He was currently giving lectures on “The Bible and Its Uses,”
while writing a long essay on the inferiority of Egyptian wisdom to
that of the ancient Jews.88 An active Freemason, Woodward touched
on several Masonic themes in this essay, which seemed targeted at
abuses of the fraternity promulgated by John Toland and other free-
thinkers.
In January 1712, when Swedenborg moved on to Oxford, he almost
certainly met John Theophilus Desaguliers, who would later lead the
Whig-Hanoverian campaign to divert Freemasonry away from its
Scottish-Stuart roots.89 Desaguliers was the son of a Huguenot refugee
who became minister of the French chapel in Swallow Street, London.90
After gaining his B.A. from Oxford in 1709, he replaced his teacher
John Keill as lecturer in mathematics and experimental science at
Hart Hall. At that time, according to Jonathan Swift, Keill’s career was
blocked by Whig, Low-Church interference, for “Party reaches even
to Lines and Circles, and he [Keill] will hardly carry it [a promotion]
being reputed a Tory.”91
At Oxford, Desaguliers soon gained a reputation as a clear and
pragmatic exponent of Newtonian science, and Swedenborg was well
aware of this particular expertise. He later referred “to the celebrated
Desaguliers,” discussed his experiments, and made a secret journey
to London in 1740 in order to visit him.92 From his first days in
England, Swedenborg was determined to master Newton’s mathemat-
ics and experimental philosophy, and he hoped to meet the celebrated
but difficult genius. In October 1710 Swedenborg wrote Benzelius, “I
visit daily the best mathematicos in the city here.”93 These mathemati-
cos—Flamsteed, Hauksbee, Halley, Raphson, etc.—were all friends of
Desaguliers.
During his six months in Oxford, Swedenborg must have attended
Desaguliers’s lectures. He would subsequently demonstrate a thorough

87
Catalogue of . . . Woodward, 21, 33, 63, 75, 126, 190.
88
[John Woodward], “Of the Ancient Wisdom of the Ancient Egyptians,”
Archaeologia, 4 (1776), 212–310.
89
Acton, Letters, I, 486.
90
“John Theophilus Desaguliers,” DNB; A.R. Hall, “Desaguliers,” Dictionary of
Scientific Biography, ed. Charles Gillespie (New York: Scribner’s, 1970–).
91
Larry Stewart, The Rise of Public Science (Cambrdige: Cambridge UP, 1992), 208.
92
For the journey, see RA: Hollandica #608 (Preis to Desaguliers, 24 March 1740).
For Desaguliers’s experiments, see Emanuel Swedenborg, The Five Senses, trans. Enoch
Price (1914; rpt. Bryn Athyn, PA: Swedenborg Scientific Association, 206), xi.
93
Acton, Letters, I, 13, 20.
60 chapter two

familiarity with the latter’s writings in his own scientific publications.

The two men returned to London at the same time (circa July 1712),
when Desaguliers began a new lecture series, and both mingled with
Fellows of the Royal Society. It was probably through Masonic con-
tacts at the Society that Desaguliers became interested in Freemasonry,
for he joined Lodge #4 at the Rummer and Grapes in Channel Row.94
It was his fellow Mason Sloane who in July 1713 proposed Desaguliers
as an F.R.S. and suggested that he should be made operator for the
society.95 For some reason, however, the society did not act on Sloane’s
proposal.96
At the time when Swedenborg studied Desaguliers’s work, the sci-
entist was not involved in politics. However, when Newton increas-
ingly recognized that Desaguliers could be useful as an experimenter
and propagandist, the Frenchman (a former protégé of the Tory Keill)
became an active Whig. On 8 July 1714, when Newton proposed
Desaguliers to the Royal Society, he was promptly accepted. After the
accession of George I in August 1714 and the exposure of the Swedish-
Jacobite plot in January 1717, Desaguliers would work toward moving
the Masonic lodges in London into the Hanoverian camp.
Though attendance at Desaguliers’s lectures in Oxford had no
political significance, Swedenborg’s other contacts at the university
led him into the world of academic Non-Jurors who were increas-
ingly involved in Jacobite politics. Critics charged that the university
was “debauched with Jacobitism,” while its chancellor, James Butler,
2nd Duke of Ormonde, was not only a Stuart sympathizer but a
Freemason.97 Gyllenborg was aware of Ormonde’s position, and he
would soon collaborate with him in Swedish-Jacobite plotting.98 As we
shall see, a secretary to Ormonde, Dr. William King, would become
privy to Swedish-Jacobite projects and would later collaborate with
Jacobite-Masonic propagandists.99

94
M. Jacob, Radical, 22–25; Duncan Lee, Desaguliers of No. 4 and His Services
to Freemasonry (Printed for private circulation among members of of No. 4 Lodge,
January 1932).
95
J.L. Heilbron, Physics at the Royal Society During Newton’s Presidency (Los
Angeles: U.C.L.A. Press, 1983), 31.
96
L. Stewart, Rise, 120.
97
Frank McLynn, Charles Edward Stuart (London and New York: Routledge, 1988),
532; André Kervella, La Maçonnerie Écossaise dans le France de l’Ancien Régime, les
Années Obscures, 1720–1755 (Paris: Rocher, 1999), 200. The date of his initiation is
unknown.
98
RA: Anglica #212. (5 October 1711).
99
“William King,” DNB; for his later Jacobite activities, see Chapter Seven.
 under hanoverian storm clouds, 1710–1713 61

Benzelius had written letters of introduction for Swedenborg to

his old friends at the Bodleian Library, who welcomed the young
Swedish student. The head librarian, Dr. John Hudson, who admitted
Swedenborg, was currently corresponding with Benzelius about their
mutual studies in Jewish lore.100 Like most Oxford scholars, Hudson
was a supporter of the Stuarts, though he was to become increas-
ingly cautious and frightened as persecution increased in 1713–15.
Hudson’s assistant in the library, Thomas Hearne, was not so timo-
rous. A passionate Jacobite, Hearne stayed in contact with Stuart par-
tisans at home and abroad over the next two decades. Hearne knew
and admired Benzelius, and he welcomed Swedish students to the
Bodleian.101 Recently, Swedenborg’s friend Woodward had written
Hearne about his contact with a traveler from Sweden, whose work
in natural history he admired (a probable reference to Swedenborg).102
If Swedenborg and Hearne spent much time together, then Hearne’s
dangerous Jacobite activities and concern about spies and possible
arrest may explain Swedenborg’s relative silence about his six months
in Oxford.
Hearne would be a valuable guide for Swedenborg, while he explored
Oxford’s scientific world and the collections in the Bodleian. Hearne
knew Desaguliers, whom he praised as “an ingenious young man”
and noted his forthcoming translation of Ozanum’s Mathematical
Recreations.103 However, when Desaguliers later became a spokes-
man for Hanoverian Freemasonry, Hearne scorned him as “Chimney
Desaguliers,” who “spends most of his time on mechanical things.”
Because of his own sympathy for the more spiritually-oriented science
of the original Royal Society, Hearne made a great effort to acquire
and catalogue rare manuscripts and books from the Stuart golden
age. He also admired the esoteric writings of the Elizabethan magus,
Dr. John Dee, and his kindred spirit, the “generous” Robert Fludd. In
1715 he described a catalogue of books “in the Rosicrucian faculty”
and expressed his amazement at the “great number of Manuscripts”
available on the illuminated fraternity.104 As we shall see, Swedenborg’s

100
Acton, Letters, I, 35, 40; Erikson, Benzelius’ Letters, 61; Erikson and Nylander,
Letters to Benzelius, I, 159, 161.
101
Acton, “Life,” I, 51; Hearne, Reliquae, III, 188–95.
102
Thomas Hearne, Remarks and Recollections of Thomas Hearne (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1884–1921), III, 132, 202, 378.
103
Hearne, Remarks, III, 135; VI, 221.
104
Ibid., II, 3–7, 57, 277; III, 61, 105–06.
62 chapter two

interest in Dee’s angelic codes and Fludd’s Rosicrucian science was

possibly stimulated by his readings in the Bodleian.
While Swedenborg was using the library under the auspices of
Hudson and Hearne, the Jacobite position became more precarious, for
in April 1712 the French negotiatiors at Utrecht approved the future
succession of Georg Ludwig, Elector of Hanover, to the British throne.
Hearne would eventually share the Swedes’ and Jacobites’ low opin-
ion of Bishop Robinson, chief English negotiator at Utrecht. A friend
and supporter of the Jacobite churchmen Charles Leslie and Francis
Atterbury, Hearne possibly learned of their overtures to Gyllenborg
and Charles XII, for the first tentative steps towards a Swedish-Jacobite
alliance were now being taken. Hearne was a great admirer of
Charles XII, whom he described as “the most couragious, victorious,
and religious King of Sweden,” and he later approved the Swedish-
Jacobite plan to invade Scotland.105 Thus, current Whig charges of
secret “Restorationist” collusion between Swedish and Oxfordian
scholars had some basis in fact.
At Oxford Swedenborg met another Jacobite, the great astrono-
mer Edmund Halley, who had long been friendly with Gyllenborg.
Halley was interested in Swedish science, and he would later collect
Swedenborg’s works.106 He often collaborated closely with Hearne, who
appreciated the astronomer’s loyalty and gratitude to “the fallen House
of Stuart” for the favors he had received. Halley privately despised
William III, and he published articles that praised those strong kings
(Charles II and Louis XIV) who patronized their national societies of
science:
None but Societies, of those too countenanced and encouraged by the
Prince, can successfully prepare this collection of Materials. All the
Learning, Care, Life, and Wealth of one Private Man can never answer
to this Design.107
Halley was responding to the generous subsidy given by Louis XIV
to the French Academy of Sciences in 1699, while the English society
suffered from its dependency on the inadequate voluntary donations

105
Ibid., VI, 31, 284.
106
A.L.N. Munby, Sales Catalogues of Eminent Persons. Vol. II: Scientists (London,
1975), XI, 174, 198, 275.
107
Edmond Halley, Miscellanea Curiosa (London, 1700), I, xxvii; he was quoting
Fontenelle.
 under hanoverian storm clouds, 1710–1713 63

of private citizens. Swedenborg, who purchased Halley’s Miscellanea

Curiosa (1700), would long remember this caveat, when he fruitlessly
sought royal support during the first decades after Charles XII’s death.
Halley’s negative opinion of William III was not limited to the king’s
failure to support scientific research. In 1705 the astronomer told
John Hudson that William had paid £1,000 to “infamous villains” to
do away with two Non-Juring bishops.108 Hearne believed the story
because Halley was “a person of unquestionable integrity.”

Encouraged by Halley in his mathematical and longitude studies,

Swedenborg returned to London in July 1712. His Oxford friends
apparently recommended that he take lodgings with their Jacobite col-
league Samuel Parker, who had earlier befriended Benzelius. A leader
in Non-Juring circles, Parker welcomed many “learned foreigners” to
his boarding house.109 Pressured out of Oxford in 1705, when he was
accused of running a secret “Jacobite academy,” Parker continued to
publish his journal, History of the Works of the Learned (1699–1711).
Benzelius read the journal when he was in England, and Swedenborg
now promised to send him an account of “all I have read in History
of the Learned.”110
Through Parker’s journal, Swedenborg acquired a thorough ground-
ing in the philo-Semitism, conversionist aims, and millenarian dreams
that fascinated so many Non-Jurors and Jacobites. In various articles,
Jewish converts to Christianity revealed the singular opinions of their
Kabbalistic friends about the nature of angels, while other Jews utilized
Kabbalah for political predictions.111 A long summary of Basnage’s
History and Religion of the Jews (1710) presented a clear exposition of
the basic tenets of the Zohar:
The Jews esteem the Caballa as a noble and sublime science, which
leades men by an easy path in the Knowledge of God and His Works,
which are unaccessible to the Ignorant. They pretend that this Service
which the Patriarchs received directly from Angels, hath been commu-
nicated from Hand to Hand down to their Doctors, by an uninterrupted
Tradition . . . This Caballa is the Art of Symboles, Allegories, and Mystical

108
Thomas Hearne, Reliquiae Hearniana, ed. Philip Bliss, 2nd. ed. (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1894–1921), I, 51.
109
Ibid., I, 9; III, 178; “Samuel Parker,” DNB.
110
Acton, Letters, I, 23.
111
History of the Works of the Learned, II, 84–85; IV, 189; IX, 417–20. [Henceforth
cited as HWL].
64 chapter two

Explications. ’Tis the Opinion of the Caballists, that there is no Letter

nor Number, nor Name of God in the Scripture, but profound Mysteries
may be found in it, if we set ourselves to search them out.112
Basnage further discussed:
the mysteries contained in the Letters of the Hebrew Alphabet; of the
Relation these Letters have to Angels, animate and inanimate Creatures,
the force of these Characters when used for Figures, which is called
Gematrie . . . the Mysterious Significations attributed to Words of Sacred
Scripture.
The Kabbalistic techniques of letter-number transpositions would
soon prove relevant to Swedenborg’s collaboration with Ambassador
Palmquist in Utrecht, as the latter developed complex new diplomatic
codes. As we shall see, Kabbalistic techniques for achieving commu-
nication with angels and spirits would later influence Swedenborg’s
esoteric intelligence work.

During Swedenborg’s last eight months in London (July 1712 to

February 1713), he became increasingly disillusioned with the
Newtonians in the Royal Society. Sten Lindroth notes that Swedenborg
and his scientific mentors in Sweden were not sufficiently trained in
mathematics to really understand Newton.113 As the quarrel between
Newton and Leibniz over priority in the invention of the differential
calculus became more rancorous, many of Swedenborg’s friends—
especially John Woodward—sympathized with Leibniz.114 Swedenborg
complained wearily to Benzelius that the English are so chauvinistic
and blind in defense of their countrymen that they cannot be ques-
tioned about Newton’s theories—“it were a crime to bring them in
doubt.”115 Even more dispiriting, the English people generally disliked
the Swedes. John Murray observes that “their feeling bordered on
contempt” for the Swedes, though “their insular self-satisfaction and
provincialism extended to all foreigners.”116 No wonder Swedenborg
gave up on his longitude project, as he ruefully informed Benzelius:
“since here in England, with this civilt proud people I have not found

112
Ibid., IX, 708.
113
Sten Lindroth, Swedish Men of Science, 1650–1950 (Stockholm: Swedish Institute,
1952), 15.
114
Joseph Levine, Dr. Woodward’s Shield (Berkeley: California UP, 1977), 110–13.
115
Acton, Letters, I, 33.
116
J. Murray, George I, 21.
 under hanoverian storm clouds, 1710–1713 65

great encouragement, I have therefore separeradt it [laid it aside] for

other lands.”117
A discouraged Woodward wrote to Hearne that “a Mystery of
Iniquity” reigns over the Royal Society in London, and that “those
who are ye most capable of serving ye Design of ye Society, stand
off, and will not communicate or join where there are such doings.”118
As Swedenborg diligently studied French, he hoped that the savants
in Paris would be more open-minded. Hearne would later regret the
Royal Society’s rudeness to foreign visitors and applicants, noting that
the Society “sinks every day in its credit both at home and abroad.”119
Worse, “this Society is now as much tinged with party principles as
any public body and Whigg and Tory are terms better known than
naturalist, mathematician, or antiquary.”
Rather than becoming a Newtonian, Swedenborg became a Wilkin-
sian, for it was John Wilkins, original founder of the “Invisible College,”
who most fired Swedenborg’s imagination and ambition. Swedenborg
purchased Wilkins’s posthumously published Mathematical and
Philosophical Works (1708), and he wrote Benzelius that his writ-
ings “are very ingenious.”120 He would draw on them and try to rep-
licate many of the experiments over the next decades. Wilkins, like
his Masonic friend Moray, believed that the Royal Society should
avoid political and religious sectarianism. The biography appended to
Wilkins’s Works stressed his role as mediator between Royalists and
Cromwellians.
An admirer of Robert Fludd, Wilkins placed his own work clearly
in the Rosicrucian tradition.121 In the preface, he praised the scientific
works of Roger Bacon, Albertus Magnus, Agrippa, Dee, and Kircher;
he then lamented that “vulgar opinion attributes all such strange
operations unto the power of Magick.” In a section called “Daedalus,
or Mechanical Motions,” he described many practical experiments in
mechanics, magnetism, optics, etc. Swedenborg was greatly impressed
with this section, and it was no coincidence that he titled his first

117
Acton, Letters, I, 39.
118
Hearne, Remarks, III, 99.
119
Hearne, Reliquiae, III, 71.
120
Acton, Letters, I, 30.
121
John Wilkins, The Mathematical and Philosophical Works (London, 1708),
41–44, 136–40.
66 chapter two

scientific journal, Daedalus Hyperboreus (Northern Daedalus), prob-

ably in tribute to Wilkins.
Swedenborg’s new intellectual hero also argued that the Jews had
much to contribute to the advancement of science. In another work,
Mercury: or, the Secret and Swift Messenger (1641), Wilkins noted:
And if you will believe the Jews, the Holy Spirit hath purposely involved
in the Words of Scripture, every Secret that belongs to any art of Science,
under such Cabalisms as these. And if a Man were expert in unfolding
of them, it were easie for him to get as much Knowledge as Adam had
in his Innocency, or Human Nature is capable of.122
The numerical and linguistic computations used by Kabbalists were
especially important for mathematicians.
That the Kabbalistic and esoteric “sciences” had a real methodol-
ogy and technique of learning was revealed to Swedenborg when he
read John Smith’s Select Discourses (1660).123 A Cambridge Platonist,
Smith had been a friend of Henry More and F.M. van Helmont, and
he responded eagerly to their Kabbalistic theories. He was especially
interested in the ancient Jewish schools or colleges of “Prophetical
Education,” which taught the techniques of achieving prophetic
visions and communication with angels.124 The “Hebrew Masters” tell
us that the old prophets had “some Apparition or Image of a Man or
Angel presenting itself to their imaginations.” The angel would dic-
tate anthems and doxologies or explain the mystical significance of
Scriptural verses. The prophet was trained to interpret the political
oracles of the Urim and Thummim. The “Cabalistical Jews” revealed
these secrets in the “book Zohar.”
Swedenborg’s readings about Kabbalistic linguistic and mystical
techniques would be reinforced by his readings of Robert Hooke’s
similar studies, which took on an increasing political significance after
his return to London from the Jacobite stronghold of Oxford (the
influence on Swedenborg of Hooke’s analysis of John Dee’s Kabbalistic
codes will be examined in the next chapter). Whig polemicists fre-
quently argued that the Kabbalistic interests of Non-Jurors were insid-
iously linked to Jacobite plotting. Charles Leslie had drawn upon this

122
Ibid., 42.
123
Acton, Letters, I, 30.
124
John Smith, Select Discourses (London, 1660), 203, 252–57, 304.
 under hanoverian storm clouds, 1710–1713 67

Jewish-Jacobite connection when he issued his famous call to the Jews

to join the “true” Anglican Church.
In 1709 a Whig pamphleteer accused “our Lesleyan and Sacheverellian
false brethren” of maintaining “Jacobite synagogues” in the interest of
the Pretender.125 That the Jacobites were indeed working with sympa-
thetic Jewish agents to raise money for James Stuart lends some cred-
ibility to the Whig charges.126 In September 1711 Gyllenborg began a
secret collaboration with these Jewish agents, who also supported the
cause of Charles XII.127 The possibility of expanded Jewish assistance
became increasingly important to Sweden’s interests after April 1712,
when the Elector of Hanover became the designated successor to the
British throne. From that point on, Sweden and England embarked on
a dangerous collision course. Thus, Swedenborg’s recent explorations
in Jewish lore became oddly relevant to Gyllenborg’s emerging politi-
cal plans during Swedenborg’s last six months in England.

125
Abbey and Overton, English Church, 66.
126
Marcus Lipton, “Francis Francia—the Jacobite Jew,” Transactions of the Jewish
Historical Society of England, 11 (1924), 190–205.
127
RA Anglica, #212. Gyllenborg to Palmquist (21 September 1711).
 CHAPTER THREE

INTRIGUES ON THE CONTINENT:

THE ROSICRUCIAN ROS AND THE JACOBITE ROSE,
1713–1715

In August 1712, as Swedenborg’s disillusionment with the Whigs and

Newtonians in the Royal Society increased, the future Hanoverian king
of England marched his troops into the Swedish territory of Verden
in northern Germany.1 Though the Elector claimed to be protecting
Verden for the imprisoned Charles XII, Gyllenborg rightly suspected
that he would keep the territory as part of Hanoverian aggrandize-
ment. Thus began what the historian J.F. Chance calls “the intricate
and unscrupulous diplomacy by which George finally deprived Sweden
of most of her German possessions.”2 Recognizing that England was
now an enemy of Sweden, Gyllenborg and Charles XII began a serious
realignment of Swedish foreign policy. To reclaim Swedish territory
from the aggressive Hanoverians, Sweden must raise money for arms
and dramatically improve the nation’s economic and trade situation.
The king and his diplomats turned to unusual and unexpected agents
to strengthen their embattled cause, and Swedenborg would soon be
counted among their number.
Like the Jacobites, Charles XII found sympathetic and valuable
assistance from Jewish advisers. In Turkey the Swedish king relied
heavily on the service of Daniel de Fonseca, a Jewish diplomat of great
intelligence and erudition.3 A former Marrano who studied medicine
in France, Fonseca moved to Constantinople, where he acted as an
agent for the French government and became a favorite of the Swedish
king. As Charles XII began to move closer politically to France, due
to his diminishing trust of England, Fonseca mediated the secretive
overtures.

1
J.F. Chance, British Diplomatic Instructions, 1689–1789: Volume I. Sweden, 1689–
1727 (London: Royal Historical Society, 1922), 18–21. [Henceforth cited as BDI:
Sweden].
2
J.F. Chance, “The Northern Policy of George I to 1718,” Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society, n.s., 20 (1906), 80.
3
“Daniel de Fonseca,” Encyclopaedia Judaica; Cecil Roth, History of the Marranos,
rev. ed. (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1941), 310.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 69

The king studied Hebrew, maintained a scholarly interest in Jewish

and Muslim lore, and admired the tolerant mixing of races he observed
in Turkey. His entourage soon included substantial numbers of Jewish
creditors, who would later follow him to Sweden.4 This sympathy was
reinforced by his most trusted officer, Count Stanislaus Poniatowsky,
who was half-Jewish and represented the peculiarly mystical synthesis
of Judaeo-Christian nationalism that flourished in the Polish territo-
ries bordering on the Ottoman Empire.5 Poniatowski was assisted by
Fonseca, who “entered into his designs with the greatest abilities.”
From their experience in Turkey, the king’s Swedish financial
advisers—especially Johan Silfverkrantz and Casten Feif—concluded
that Sweden should open her doors to Jewish immigration. In 1711
Silfverkrantz, with the king’s approval, sent a secret report to the gov-
erning Council in Sweden advising the recruitment of Jewish mer-
chants and financiers who could help develop Swedish trade in the
Levant. But the advice was ignored because of prejudices against the
Jews. As Hugo Valentin observes, “All discussion remained a fight
between God and Mammon.”6
The continuing prejudice in Sweden also distressed Rabbi Kemper,
who petitioned the Council in 1712 to be allowed to lecture on Jewish
rituals at Uppsala, where he would demonstrate the esoteric Christian
meaning encoded in those rituals. His request was rejected, but the
blockage inspired him to labor even harder at his Christian-Kabbalistic
treatises, in which he argued that the messianic salvation is related to
the world-wide dissemination of the Gospel. The rabbi was a great
admirer of Charles XII and, as Elliot Wolfson observes, in “Me’irat
ʿEinayyim,”
Kemper praises the monarchy of Sweden for spreading the Gospel to all
corners of the world, and thus preparing for the great day of the Lord.
Kemper’s participation in this missionizing activity consisted of trying to
convince the Jews in particular to repent in the name of Jesus and assent
to the messianic faith.7

4
Theodor Westrin, “Anteckningar om Karl XIIs kreditorer,” Historisk Tidskrift
(1900), 1–53.
5
Nordmann, Crise, 153; Stanislaus Mnemon, La Conspiration du Cardinal Alberoni,
la Franc-Maçonnerie et Stanislas Poniatowski (Cracovie Université, 1909), 60–67.
6
Valentin, Judarna, 28.
7
Wolfson, “Messianism,” 180 n. 150.
70 chapter three

While Charles XII sent out important expeditions of scholars to

Palestine and Egypt, Ambassador Gyllenborg began more serious
negotiations with the Jacobites in England and France, for the British
government’s dishonest policy towards Sweden became more mani-
fest. On 11 March 1712 Jesper Swedberg, a supporter of Gyllenborg’s
projects, wrote to Charles XII and informed him of his son’s studies
in England; he then offered Emanuel to the king’s service.8 The bishop
believed that his son’s expertise in “the oriental tongues” (primarily
Hebrew) would make him a valuable asset to the king.9
Swedenborg’s subsequent actions suggest that Gyllenborg received
royal permission to employ him in secret diplomatic initiatives. The
young student had planned to stay in England until 1715, but in August
1712—in response to the Hanoverian occupation of Verden and the
subsequent shift towards France by Charles XII and Gyllenborg—he
began to study French in preparation for a move to Paris in three or four
months.10 Though there is very little documentation on Swedenborg’s
activities after he left for the Continent, he would serve Gyllenborg’s
political agenda until the count’s death in 1746.
Curiously, Swedenborg’s study of John Wilkins’s works rendered
him politically useful to the beleaguered ambassador. Wilkins pro-
vided valuable information on secret codes, ciphers, disappearing inks,
and other tricks of espionage and intelligence gathering in his appro-
priately titled Mercury: or the Secret and Swift Messenger, Shewing How
a Man may with Privacy and Speed Communicate his Thoughts to a
Friend at a Distance. Wilkins pointed out that “the ignorance of Secret
and Swift Conveyances” of diplomatic information “hath often proved
fatal . . . to Whole Armies and Kingdoms.”11 These words would prove
prophetic for Gyllenborg, Sparre, and the Jacobites, when their cor-
respondence was intercepted and published in 1716–17.12
After giving a learned history of cryptography and cipher-writing
(drawing on the works of Hermes Trismegistus, Francis Bacon, and
Trithemius), Wilkins described techniques for making disappearing
inks and special papers to conceal messages. The real masters of secret
communication were the Jews, whose “parabolical” techniques even

8
Sigstedt, “A Chronological List,” #78.
9
See his later letter of recommendation; Acton, Letters, I, 64.
10
Ibid., I, 42.
11
J. Wilkins, Works, 5.
12
Hatton, Charles XII, 439.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 71

influenced Jesus.13 Through their Kabbalistic techniques of “combina-

tio,” or changing the places and numerical powers of letters, the Jews
can hide many messages in misleading exoteric statements. Wilkins
gave examples of the techniques of gematria and notarikon, showing
their use in secret correspondence.14
Wilkins also revealed methods of “secret discourse by signs and
gestures,” through certain positions of fingers and hands. In The
Tatler (1707), which Swedenborg read, Richard Steele revealed that
these “signs and tokens” were still used by the Freemasons of his day.
Wilkins may have discussed these methods with his Scottish friend,
Sir Robert Moray, who viewed the tricks of secret writing as a special
Masonic technique, in which certain Kabbalistic symbols (such as a
pentacle) signalled that a text in invisible ink followed the visible text.
Moray instructed a fellow Mason that “Of all Vitriols, the white is best
for the eyes when you go starr-shooting [alerted by the pentacle]. It
makes hid things visible, and leaves the ground still undisclosed.”15
When negotiations began at Utrecht to end the War of the Spanish
Succession and the Great Northern War, Sweden’s position became
increasingly perilous. Jacobite and Hanoverian spies and agents
flocked to the Dutch city, and secret communications became critical.
The British government’s system of postal espionage was expanded
to an unprecedented degree.16 From Gyllenborg’s Jacobite contacts at
Oxford, he learned that the university’s mathematicians often served
as decipherers for the crown, with Swift’s Tory friend John Keill per-
forming these duties for Queen Anne until he lost his academic post to
Desaguliers. At this time, “Oxford had a major reputation for training
in the skills required to decipher codes.”17 Thus, given Swedenborg’s
recent mathematical studies at Oxford, as well as his familiarity with
Hebrew and Kabbalistic “secret writing,” Gyllenborg must have sensed

13
J. Wilkins, Works, 9–10, 27–29, 58–62.
14
Gematria (numerology) interprets the Hebrew scriptures by calculating the
numerical value of the letters, while Notarikon (acrostics) finds new meanings from
the positions of the letters.
15
David Stevenson, “Masonry, Symbolism, and Ethics in the Life of Sir Robert
Moray, FRS” Proceedings of Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, 114 (1984), 412.
16
Paul S. Fritz, “The Anti-Jacobite Intelligence System of the English Ministers,
1715–1745,” The Historical Journal, 16 (1973), 268–69.
17
William Gibson, “An Eighteenth-Century Paradox: the Career of the Decipherer-
Bishop, Edward Willes,” British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 12 (1989), 69.
72 chapter three

his potential usefulness for the clandestine communications under-

taken by Swedish diplomats between England and the Continent.
A chief player in these intrigues was Francis Lewis Francia, a Jewish
Jacobite, who worked so well for the cause that he became “a kind of
paymaster for the Pretender.”18 A former Marrano, he knew Fonseca,
through whom he gained access to highly secret information on Charles
XII. Francia was almost certainly the Jew who came to London to assist
Gyllenborg in September 1711. Writing to Baron Johan Palmquist,
Swedish ambassador at The Hague, Gyllenborg reported that “Le Juif
dont vous me fites l’honneur de m’ecrire, il y a quelques tems arriva
hier, et m’est venu voir ce matin.”19 In obedience to Palmquist’s orders
and for the agent’s protection, Gyllenborg had the Jew lodged in “une
maison circomcise.”
In 1711–12 Francia corresponded with Abbot Butler, a Jacobite agent
at Cambrai, and the Duc d’Aumont, who became French ambassador
to England.20 When d’Aumont arrived in London in December 1712,
he was immediately contacted by Gyllenborg.21 Francia’s services were
also utilized by Harvey of Combe, who was “a stickler for Sacheverell”
and an ardent High Churchman, which made him useful for the efforts
of Gyllenborg and Bishop Swedberg to unite the Anglican and Swedish
churches.22 Collaborating clandestinely with the Swedish ambassadors
and Stuart supporters, Francia eventually became the major financial
agent in the Swedish-Jacobite plot. Lieutenant-General Arthur Dillon,
the chief Jacobite organizer in Paris, worked closely with Sparre and
Francia, and he admired and trusted “the Jacobite Jew.”23
Dillon was also the repository of all Jacobite correspondence in
cipher.24 Francia employed different handwritings and complex
numerical codes in his Jacobite correspondence, and he functioned as
an alert and discrete intelligencer. He allegedly became a Freemason,
which sheds some light on Gyllenborg’s own use of Masonic-style

18
Lipton, “Francia,” 190–201.
19
RA Anglica, #212. (21 September 1711).
20
The Trial of Francis Francia for High Treason . . . 22 January 1716 (London, 1717),
5–7.
21
RA Anglica, #212. Gyllenborg to Engelbrecht (19 December 1712).
22
John Oldmixon, The History of England during the Reigns of King William and
Queen Mary, Queen Anne, and King George I (London, 1735), 630.
23
HMC: Calendar of Stuart Papers (London, 1902–23), IV, 499, 519.
24
Marquise Campana de Cavelli, Les derniers Stuarts á Saint-Germain en Laye
(Paris: Librairie Académique, 1871), I, 136.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 73

symbols (cross, circle with dot, rectangle, triangle) in his ciphered cor-
respondence.25 Gyllenborg also hoped to utilize Swedenborg’s stud-
ies in mathematics, Hebrew, and French, for he and other Swedish
diplomats in Europe were developing complex French-Swedish codes,
which included Kabbalistic-style transposition of letters and numbers.26
Five decades later, the British ambassador in Sweden, who penetrated
Swedish coding techniques, began to call his own ciphering “my
Hebrew.”27
Gyllenborg knew that Swedenborg would have access through
Benzelius’s friends in Paris to influential Frenchmen, while the Swedes
worked toward a secret alliance with France. Gyllenborg’s collabora-
tor Bolingbroke believed that Charles XII had a secret agreement with
Louis XIV and would possibly join in battle against Britain and her
Austrian allies.28 Thus, Bolingbroke was determined to reach a peace
agreement with France, through the negotiations at Utrecht, as a
necessary preliminary to turning English policy toward a Stuart res-
toration. As Bolingbroke argued, a Tory-Jacobite government could
then save the imprisoned Swedish king, “in spite of himself.”29 But
Bolingbroke had not counted on the stubborn enmity of the Elector
of Hanover towards Sweden. Determined to gain Swedish territory for
Hanover, Georg Ludwig pursued a foreign policy opposite to that of
Bolingbroke and the Tory ministers.
In autumn 1712 General Magnus Stenbock—the great Swedish
soldier and hero to Swedenborg—defeated the Danes and marched
into northern Germany to reclaim Sweden’s North Sea posses-
sions. Gyllenborg’s hopes revived, and he received promises from
Bolingbroke that a British squadron would help Stenbock.30 However,
the British stalled, and Gyllenborg believed that they deliberately
undermined Stenbock’s position at Tönning. Gyllenborg’s concerns
were shared by the Duc d’Aumont, who returned to London from
the peace negotiations at Utrecht convinced that the English were

25
John Shaftesley, “Jews in Regular English Freemasonry, 1717–1860,” Transactions
of the Jewish Historical Society of England, XXV (1977), 150–209 [henceforth cited as
TJHSE]; RA Anglica, #211: Gyllenborg to Palmquist (17 December 1710).
26
P. Fritz, “Anti-Jacobite Intelligence,” 269.
27
British Library: Hardwicke MS. 35,444, f. 278 (24 October 1766). Sir John
Goodricke’s report from Stockholm.
28
Murray, George I, 74–75.
29
Ibid., 77.
30
Chance, “England and Sweden,” 702–03.
74 chapter three

deceiving Sweden.31 Even more disturbing was a Whig-inspired mob

attack on d’Aumont (2 January 1713), in which the French ambassa-
dor was accused of distributing secret funds to win friends for Louis
XIV and the Pretender.32
This incident was followed by a series of threatening letters, sent
anonymously to d’Aumont, warning him that his Jacobite sympathies
would lead to a fiery end. On 26 January, while Gyllenborg and the
diplomatic representatives of Venice and Florence were dining with
d’Aumont, the latter’s house was set on fire by arsonists. The Tory
ministers charged the Whigs with the horrific deed, and Queen Anne
offered d’Aumont a royal palace on the Thames—a move that pro-
voked mob cries that d’Aumont was actually hiding the Pretender.
Gyllenborg had learned earlier from Bolingbroke that Bishop
Robinson was not cooperating in their secret French-Swedish-Jacobite
agenda.33 In fact, the ambassador sensed that Bolingbroke was los-
ing control of his political policy, while his rivals among the Tories
pressed for greater Hanoverian powers. Fearing further British betray-
als, Gyllenborg needed help for the Swedish negotiators at Utrecht.
Swedenborg’s subsequent actions suggest that Gyllenborg recruited
him, in the hope that his family’s friendship with Robinson—chief
British negotiator—might provide some leverage for Sweden’s posi-
tion. Gyllenborg needed someone who could closely observe Robinson,
for he no longer trusted him and feared that the bishop was playing
a double game.
Thus, in January–February 1713, in the wake of attacks on d’Aumont
and Gyllenborg, Swedenborg changed his plans and travelled to Utrecht.
At this time, Swedenborg’s relations with his father were quite tense,
for the bishop had cut back on his travel funds.34 Despite no money
coming from home, he received enough financial support to undertake
this new mission, which was possibly subsidized by d’Aumont, who
was using French funds to help his friend Gyllenborg. For the next
two years, while Swedenborg was involved in clandestine diplomatic
work in Europe, he generally maintained a discrete silence about his
activities.

31
Lundquist, Council, 65; Chance, BDI: Sweden, I, 60.
32
Oldmixon, History, 527.
33
Ibid., 521.
34
Richard Smoley, “The Inner Journey of Emanuel Swedenborg,” in Jonathan Rose,
Stuart Shotwell, and Mary Lou Bertucci, eds., Scribe of Heaven: Swedenborg’s Life,
Work, and Impact (West Chester, PA: Swedenborg Foundation, 2005), 10.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 75

Swedenborg later recorded, “I spent a considerable time at Utrecht

during the session of the Congress, at which ambassadors from all
parts of Europe were assembled.”35 His laconic note glosses his close
collaboration with the Swedish diplomats at Utrecht, who struggled
to defend Charles XII’s policies during the difficult treaty negotia-
tions. Baron Johan Palmquist, the main Swedish plenipotentiary, was
delighted to have Swedenborg’s assistance, for he was puzzled and
annoyed at the conflicting signals coming from England. Palmquist
sought reassurance from John Robinson that “the singular and curious
state of mind” of the English government did not mean a betrayal of
Sweden.36 Robinson assumed that he could win over Palmquist to the
mediation of Sweden’s affairs by Queen Anne’s “good offices,” a plan
opposed by Charles XII.37 The bishop tried to “dampen the unfortu-
nate impression the Swedes received,” but his own duplicitous behav-
ior reinforced the Swedes’ distrust. If Swedenborg made his expected
visit to Robinson, he could provide Palmquist with information on the
hypocritical bishop.38 At this time in Utrecht, Robinson was the object
of scathing criticism for his pompous and ostentatious retinue, which
seemed a mockery of his position as a churchman.39
During a side-trip to Leiden, where Swedenborg inspected the
observatory and studied lens-grinding, he composed a poetic trib-
ute to Palmquist, in which the peace negotiations formed the central
theme. Punning on the ambassador’s name, “palm-branch,” he linked
the probability of peace with the arrival of Palmquist’s wife, whose
role as turtle-dove mirrors that of other secret messengers—“Many
secret things are hidden in the flight of this bird, / Things which Pallas
and Venus Cytherea forbid to reveal.”40 Despite his light-hearted tone,
Swedenborg hinted at his assistance to Palmquist’s peace-making
efforts through his ability to receive and interpret coded messages.
Swedenborg’s muse “secretly told me in my ear” that the re-mating of
palm and dove foreshadows peace: “Do you not see the divine token,

35
R. Tafel, Documents, II, 4.
36
Lundquist, Council, 66–70; NA: SP 105 / 271–72.
37
Bodleian: Rawlinson A. 286, f. 310 (Robinson to Bolingbroke, 24 January 1713).
It is curious that Rawlinson acquired a full volume of Robinson’s correspondence
concerning Sweden during the Utrecht negotiations. The letters were evidently inter-
cepted by the Jacobites.
38
Acton, “Life,” 58.
39
Oldmixon, History, 483.
40
Emanuel Swedenborg, Ludus Heliconius and other Latin Poems, trans. Hans
Helander. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, Studia Latina Upsaliensis, 23 (1995).
76 chapter three

will such great portents be hidden from you?” He also hinted at his
role in Sweden’s millenarian destiny, as “the water takes me with it,”
for it is “like some Divine force, which now, living in the waves, /
constantly follows my path.” Perhaps the flattery and hints at supra-
natural insights impressed Palmquist, who made Swedenborg his daily
companion at Utrecht.
Swedenborg was also welcomed by Palmquist’s secretary Joachim
Frederick Preis, who developed a close friendship with the young stu-
dent that lasted forty-six years. At this time, Preis handled much of the
correspondence between the Swedish diplomats in Utrecht, London
and Paris, who feared an imminent betrayal of Swedish interests.41
Though Gyllenborg was privy to Bolingbroke’s plan to make peace
with France and then pass the English throne to James Stuart, he wor-
ried about the intrigues of the Whigs and Hanoverian Tories, who
aimed to forestall any Jacobite moves. Both he and Swift also feared
that the personal rivalry between Bolingbroke and Oxford was ruining
any chance for a coherent Tory foreign policy.
In March and April 1713, Gyllenborg and Swift discussed the increas-
ing danger of Charles XII’s position in Turkey, and Swift noted that
“indeed we are afraid that Prince is dead among those Turkish dogs.”42
Swift possibly relayed to Gyllenborg the news that Lord Strafford, one
of the British negotiators at Utrecht and a Jacobite sympathizer, did
not agree with Robinson’s actions. Meanwhile, in the Dutch city, a
“bevy of agents, spies, and partisans” of the Stuarts and Hanoverians
played out a restless, confusing game of intrigue and bribery.43 Having
procured a treaty with Holland to recognize the Hanoverian succes-
sion, the anti-Jacobites from Britain secretly pressured the French gov-
ernment to do likewise.
Fearing a sell-out by the French and British diplomats, the Stuart
claimant issued a dramatic protest that was delivered to all the pleni-
potentiaries in April. The Swedes sensed the common cause and shared
sentiments of the exiled James III and the imprisoned Charles XII,
who refused to submit to Hanoverian manipulations of his country’s
fate. James declared his “inalienable right against all which may be

41
“Joachim Fredrik Preis,” Svensk Män och Kvinnor, ed. N. Bohman (Stockholm,
1942–1955).
42
See Jonathan Swift, Journal to Stella, ed. Harold Williams (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1948), II, 489, 637, 650–51.
43
James Gerard, The Peace of Utrecht (New York: G.P. Putnam, 1885), 236–37.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 77

done against his interests” and warned that Britons will “become the
prey of strangers and be put under their dominion.”44 His eloquent
defense of his “right and legitimate authority” and his scorn for the
Utrecht negotiators evoked a sympathetic response from the Swedish
diplomats. But his protests were to no avail.
In April, after the Treaty of Utrecht was signed, which ended the
War of Spanish Succession, the Elector of Hanover and his English
supporters determined to further suppress the Jacobites. Meeting often
at Robinson’s residence, the French negotiators bowed to Hanoverian
pressure and ordered the expulsion of the Pretender from French ter-
ritory, despite the protests of his host, the Duke of Lorraine. Then the
Swedes watched helplessly as the British diplomats acquiesced in Georg
Ludwig’s aggression and destruction of Stenbock’s Swedish army.45 On
15 May 1713 a furious Charles XII refused to submit to English arbi-
tration—a defiant gesture that evoked admiration even from his rebel-
lious Council in Sweden. Recorded in their minutes is the statement
that Charles’s refusal gave proof of “a special grandeur of spirit” that
led the councillors to vow “to stand by our brave king.”46
From May 1713 on, Gyllenborg gave up on the government of
England and drew closer to the Jacobite plans of his English in-laws
and friends. In collaboration with Palmquist at Utrecht and Sparre
at Paris, he determined to salvage Charles XII’s foreign policy from
the hostile Hanoverians. It was no coincidence that Swedenborg
met daily with Palmquist, who was an excellent algebraist, for dis-
cussions of mathematics and science.47 While Palmquist worked on
a new set of ciphers, he gave Swedenborg his manuscript treatise on
“Arithmetica,” and the over-worked diplomat probably asked for his
assistance on the code-making.48 In the subsequent correspondence
between Palmquist, Preis, Sparre, and Gyllenborg, the Swedes utilized
complex mathematical codes, which included Kabbalistic-style trans-
positions of numbers, words, and syllables in French and Swedish.49

44
Ibid., 237.
45
Chance, “England and Sweden,” 702–09.
46
Lundquist, Council, 75.
47
Acton, Letters, I, 51.
48
Swedenborg, Catalogus, 15.
49
The intercepted, coded correspondence can be seen in the British Library:
Mackenzie Collection, Add. MS. 32,287, ff. 1–49. See also P. Fritz, “Anti-Jacobite,”
269; C.G. Malmström, ed., Handlingar rörande Sveriges historia under ären 1713–20
(Stockholm, 1854), X, 117–400.
78 chapter three

However, they were up against a formidable enemy, Edward Willes,

an Oxford graduate who became a brilliant decipherer, drawing on
his expertise in linguistics and mathematics.50 Over the next decades,
Willes’s decoding skills and Whig politics would be employed against
the Swedes and Jacobites, while he received profitable bishoprics as
his reward.
After the signing of the Treaty of Utrecht in April and the tragic defeat
of Stenbock at Tönning in May 1713, Palmquist wanted Swedenborg
to remain with him, but he reluctantly allowed him to move on to
Paris, after Swedenborg promised to return next year to The Hague.
That Swedenborg had some political role to play is suggested by the
oddly veiled statements he sent to Benzelius in August. He noted his
“intention of better improving myself in mathesi and also to carry out
my dessign which I have therein.”51 As we shall see from Swedenborg’s
allegorical political poem, Camena Borea, his dessign included secret
intelligence work during his year in Paris.

While Swedenborg was in France, Carl Gyllenborg was appalled at

the British ministers’ attitude to Charles XII, whom they considered
to have vacated his throne.52 He also distrusted Count Arvid Horn
and his councillors in Sweden, who sent secret appeals for help to
John Robinson which undermined the king’s policy. To Gyllenborg,
the deceptive policy of the British government towards Sweden now
seemed mirrored by the deceptive policies of the Swedish Council
towards Charles XII. As head of the Council, Chancellor Horn began
to cut Gyllenborg off from vital information and funds.53 Gyllenborg
suspected even more sinister subversion, and Horn’s opponents would
later charge that he planned to marry the king’s sister, Princess Ulrika
Eleonora, in order to advance to the Swedish throne.54 Disturbed by
these intrigues in Britain and Sweden, Gyllenborg and Charles XII felt
trapped “in a maze of double-dealing,” which led them “to hanker
after the firmness of the old Franco-Swedish alliance.”55

50
Gibson, “Eighteenth-century Paradox,” 69–76.
51
Acton, Letters, I, 49.
52
Lundquist, Council, 62–64.
53
Murray, George I, 78.
54
NA: SP 95/45, f. 41 (Poyntz to Townshend, 23 October 1726).
55
Hatton, Charles XII, 354.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 79

Within this context, Swedenborg’s mission to Paris becomes even

more provocative. Ostensibly going as a science student, he was
briefed by Palmquist and Preis and given letters of introduction to the
Swedish political agents in Paris.56 He thus would meet Ambassador
Eric Sparre, to whom Gyllenborg communicated his growing disgust
with the policy of the Hanoverians and English.57 Sparre was already
friendly with many Jacobites in France; by the time Swedenborg left
Paris in June 1714, Sparre was in direct contact with the Pretender’s
court, while he tried to build Swedish support for a Jacobite offen-
sive. Sparre allegedly became a Freemason, through the association of
his “Sparre Regiment” with the military lodges established by Jacobite
Masons in French service.58 His son Axel Wrede Sparre would later
(1731) be initiated in Paris by his father’s former colleagues, and he
would become a friend and political ally of Swedenborg.
Swedenborg also met Count Carl Gustaf Bielke, who had been nego-
tiating with the Jacobites since 1706 and who now worked closely with
Eric Sparre. Bielke’s son, Nils Bielke, would be initiated in an Écossais
lodge in Paris in 1729–30, and he became a close friend of Swedenborg.59
Another contact was Isaac Cronström, who corresponded with Preis
and Görtz as Jacobite plans matured in 1715.60 Interestingly, the only
Swedish representative whom Swedenborg mentioned in writing was
Per Niklas Gedda, embassy secretary, who later became a British-paid
spy on the Jacobites. Swedenborg may also have met Charles Leslie
(Benzelius’s correspondent), who coordinated many of the negotia-
tions between Swedes and Jacobites. In October 1714 his son Robert
Leslie (Benzelius’s old friend) crossed to France to join the secret
project.61
Soon after his arrival in Paris, Swedenborg received a letter (now
lost) from Henric Benzelius, Eric’s brother, who was in Turkey with
Charles XII. Hinric described the king’s desperate fight against the
whole Turkish army and his current imprisonment—information

56
Acton, “Life,” 61.
57
“Erik Sparre,” Svensk Män.
58
B.J. Bergquist, St. Johanneslogen den Nordiska Första (Stockholm: P.A. Nörstedt,
1935), 33–37.
59
Eero Ekman, Highlights of Masonic Life in the Nordic Countries (Helsinki, 1994),
27–29. For Swedenborg and Nils Bielke, see ahead, Chapter Seven.
60
Paul Fritz, The English Ministers and Jacobitism between the Rebellions of 1715
and 1745 (University of Toronto, 1975), 9.
61
Bodleian: Carte MS. 231. ff. 21–23.
80 chapter three

which Swedenborg must have relayed to the Swedish embassy.62 Henric

also revealed that the king had sent the Orientalist Mikael Eneman, a
protégé of Benzelius, on a secret political mission to Palestine. For
some months, reports about Charles XII’s overtures to Jews, Turks,
and Tartars raised fears in northern Europe that he planned to march
against his enemies at the head of a vast “Oriental” army. Swedenborg
had referred to this projected exploit in his poetic panegyric to General
Stenbock.63 After receiving Henric’s letter, Swedenborg did not write
to Eric Benzelius until 19 August 1713, when he described his work
with Palmquist at Utrecht and his current mathematical studies and
contacts in Paris.64 After that, there is no more surviving correspon-
dence from his year in France.
Though Swedenborg maintained almost complete silence about
his political activities, he later revealed that he spent much time at
Versailles, where he visited the French court and “had the honour of
waiting on Louis XIV.”65 In the allegorical poem that he began writing
during his last months in Paris, he demonstrated his detailed familiar-
ity with the international intrigues centered at Versailles. In Camena
Borea (Northern Songs), Swedenborg described his Ovidian fables
as concealing “all that has been going on in Europe during the past
fourteen or fifteen years.”66 By the time he finished the Camena in
spring 1715, he was virtually hiding out in Swedish Pomerania and
participating in the intrigues of “certain kings and magnates” who flit
through his allegorical groves.67 The completed poem will be examined
later, after an attempt is made to piece together Swedenborg’s experi-
ences in Paris from the fragmentary surviving evidence.
In his letter to Benzelius, Swedenborg said that he avoided the “con-
versie” of Swedes and all company that dissuaded him from his stud-
ies.68 However, in a letter from Rostock in September 1714, he made
clear that he had Swedish companions in Paris. During his Parisian
residence, his friends at the Swedish embassy were carrying on a criti-

62
Acton, Letters, I, 46.
63
Hans Helander, ed., Emanuel Swedenborg, Festivus Applausus in Caroli XII in
Pomerania suam adventum. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis: Studia Latina Upsalienis
17 (Uppsala, 1985), 125.
64
Acton, Letters, I, 49–52.
65
Svenska Mercurius (February 1765); in R. Tafel, Documents, II, 4,706.
66
Acton, Letters, I, 58.
67
Acton, “Life,” 71–77.
68
Acton, Letters, I, 50, 56.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 81

cal correspondence with the royal architect Nicodemus Tessin, who

was struggling in Stockholm to support Charles XII’s policies against
the subversive activities of Count Horn and the Swedish Council.69
Tessin believed that Horn had sent his henchman Roland to Bishop
Robinson in Utrecht with a secret message that the Council would
negotiate with England without the permission of the Swedish king.
Even Bishop Swedberg, who longed for peace, opposed the efforts
of Horn and his allies on the Council, for he believed they under-
mined the monarchy. Swedberg was reportedly the author of an
anonymous pamphlet, An Honest Clergyman’s Thoughts Concerning
the Unhappy Condition of the Swedish Realm now in August 1713, in
which he warned against an oligarchy of nobles, because the best form
of government was a kingdom in which “one governs by the counsel
of many.” He advocated instead a “Royal Vicariate” and suggested that
Princess Ulrika Eleonora should “during the King’s absence be part
of the government” and govern the Realm “with the Counsel of the
Royal Councillors.”
Like Charles XII and Gyllenborg, Nicodemus Tessin looked to the
French king for a more honorable course of action than that pursued by
the Elector of Hanover. Tessin had consulted with the French ambas-
sador in Stockholm, Jacques de Campredon, about Horn’s deceptive
dealings with the English. Campredon later characterized Horn as
“the great intriguer and conspirator; treachery and fraud followed in
his footsteps.”70 Determined to shore up the conception of mystical
monarchy and to win the support of Louis XIV, Tessin worked tire-
lessly on architectural designs for a Temple of Apollo at Versailles that
would be a Swedish tribute to the Sun King.71 As a “master mason”
and participant in the late Queen Christina’s neo-Rosicrucian court in
Rome, Tessin infused his designs for Versailles with neo-Platonic and
Hermetic themes. He described his designs in correspondence with
Isaac Cronström in Paris. Cronström evidently discussed them with
Swedenborg, who included details from Tessin’s designs and symbol-
ism in Camena Borea.72

69
Lundquist, Council, 35, 38, 50, 57.
70
Ibid., 35, 38, 177.
71
See Ragnar Josephson, Apollo templet i Versailles. Uppsala Universitet Ärsskrift
(1925).
72
Emanuel Swedenborg, Emanuel Swedenborg: Camena Borea, ed. Hans Helander
(Uppsala: Almquist and Wiksell, 1988), 160.
82 chapter three

Though Swedenborg revealed almost nothing in his correspondence

about the political context of his experiences in Paris, he was more open
about his contacts with the learned correspondents of Eric Benzelius.
He immediately called on Benzelius’s great admirer, Abbé Jean-Paul
Bignon, president of the Académie des Sciences, who had recently
stimulated a revival of interest in Rosicrucianism by his novella, Les
Aventures d’Abdallah (1712).73 A sympathizer with the Stuarts who later
became an Écossais Freemason, Bignon recommended Swedenborg to
two mathematicians—Paul Varignon and Philippe de la Hire—with
expertise in operative masonry.74
Varignon was the son and brother of “contracting masons,” and
he stated that “his entire patrimony consisted of his family’s tech-
nical knowledge”—which proved important to his scientific accom-
plishments.75 La Hire was the son of a sculptor and architect, and he
was educated among “technicians eager to learn more of the theoretic
foundations of their trade.”76 While working on a difficult problem of
stonecutting, he developed a brilliant method of constructing conic
sections. Indulging his “unusual taste for the parallel study of art, sci-
ence, and technology,” La Hire gave weekly lectures at the Académie
Royale d’Architecture on the theory of architecture and “such associ-
ated techniques as stonecutting.” It seems likely that Swedenborg and
the Swedes who supported Tessin’s plans for the Temple of Apollo
attended these lectures.
The French savants were eager to hear of Swedenborg’s scientific
experiences in England.77 They discussed the unseemly battle between
Newton and Leibniz, in which many of the French sided with Leibniz.
In August 1713 Swedenborg wrote Benzelius that “there is between
these mathematicos and the English, great emulation or invidia
(envy).”78 Though Swedenborg enthusiastically planned to publish his
scientific papers in Paris, he was soon distracted from his purpose. His
subsequent eleven-months’ silence was probably caused by his secret
intelligence work at Versailles.

73
Acton, Letters, I, 47–48.
74
On his Masonic association, see Latomia, 20 (1862), 381.
75
Pierre Costabel, “Pierre Varignon,” Dictionary of Scientific Biography, XIII, 584.
76
Ibid., VII, 576–78. VII, 576–78.
77
Acton, Letters, I, 47–52.
78
Ibid., I, 51.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 83

Swedenborg left Paris in June 1714, just after the English Parliament
placed a price on the head of the Pretender and tried to force him out
of France. Arriving at The Hague, Swedenborg called on Palmquist and
Preis, who informed him about Carl Gyllenborg’s troubles in London.
Gustaf Gyllenborg, the ambassador’s brother, had recently come over
from London and now helped with the secret correspondence between
Holland and England.79 Charles Caesar, M.P. and former naval sec-
retary, was currently working with Carl Gyllenborg to coordinate
Swedish-Jacobite planning. From Turkey, Charles XII had given full
powers to the brilliant Holstein diplomat, Count Georg Hendrik von
Görtz, who now functioned as chief minister for Sweden in diplo-
matic affairs. The political situation—in what Claude Nordmann calls
“le vaste puzzle jacobite”—was becoming confusingly complex, as the
versatile Görtz floated schemes feasible and chimerical through the
international network.80
In June 1714 Görtz proposed the development of a secret Russian-
Swedish-Jacobite alliance. Carl Gyllenborg evidently confided this
scheme to Swift, for in July Alexander Pope recounted to Dr. Arbuthnot
an odd conversation with Swift:
He [Swift] talked of Politicks over Coffee, with the Air & Stile of an
old Statesman, who had known something formerly; but was shamefully
ignorant of the Three last weeks. When we mentioned the wellfare of
England he laugh’d at us, & said Muscovy would become a flourish-
ing Empire very shortly. He seems to have wrong notions of the British
court, but gave us a Hint as if he had a Correspondence with the King
of Sweden.81
Pope then hinted that Swift was under government suspicion for
Jacobite activities.
In June, while Swedenborg conferred with his diplomatic friends
at The Hague, the Austrian Emperor agreed to allow Charles XII to
pass incognito through his dominions, and Görtz began to prepare the
clandestine network of support for the returning king.82

79
André LeGlay, Théodore de Neuhoff (Monaco/Paris: Picard, 1907), 20–22.
80
Nordmann, Crise, 11.
81
Alexander Pope, The Correspondence of Alexander Pope, ed. George Sherburn
(Oxford: Oxford UP, 1956), I, 234.
82
Hatton, Charles XII, 383–85; Nordmann, Grandeur, 187.
84 chapter three

Thus, when Preis subsequently put Swedenborg in touch with Pierre

Balguerie, it was related to this new political and military develop-
ment. Balguerie, member of a Huguenot family who specialized in
arms dealing, was recruited by Preis to serve as Swedish consul in
Holland.83 Görtz was alerted to Balguerie’s new role, and the diplo-
mat then employed him for secret messages and transport of goods.
Using the cover of wine shipments between Sparre, Preis, and Görtz,
Balguerie became a major Swedish agent for arms procurement during
the Swedish-Jacobite plot.84 Swedenborg would visit Balguerie again in
1721, at a time of renewed Swedish-Jacobite activity.85
In July Swedenborg set out for Hamburg, center of the Swedish
communications network, but he planned to stop over in Hanover in
order to meet Leibniz. Though the philosopher was employed by the
Elector of Hanover, he was a great admirer of Charles XII, and the
Swedes and Jacobites hoped to recruit him to their cause. Swedenborg
was disappointed to learn that Leibniz was away in Vienna, so he did
not linger in Hanover, home of a regime that was increasingly inimi-
cal to Sweden.
Arriving in Hamburg a few days later, Swedenborg carried out
some kind of mission for his diplomatic mentors. Baron Görtz main-
tained a large mansion in Hamburg, where he worked with Count
Mauritz Wellingck to support the Swedish-Holstein cause.86 It seems
that Swedenborg first entered the service of Görtz and Wellingck in
Hamburg, for he later considered both men as patrons.87 As Charles XII
placed increasing responsiblity on Wellingck, the diplomat needed
additional help; he had recently requested that Gyllenborg send to
Hamburg the youthful Anders Skutenhjelm, a secretary at the Swedish
embassy in London.88 Skutenhjelm had known Swedenborg in England
and may have recommended him to Wellingck. Also working for
Wellingck was Samuel Triewald, a former student of Benzelius, who

83
“Pierre Balguerie,” SBL; “Balguerie-Stutlenberg,” Dictionaire de Biographie
Francaise (1948).
84
Nordmann, Crise, 131–32.
85
RA, Hollandica #732. Balguerie to Preis (10 December 1721).
86
Nordmann, Crise, 185–86.
87
Acton, Letters, I, 180–88, 406–07.
88
Sigrid Leijonhufvud, Erik Sparre och Stina Lillie (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1911), 151.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 85

would later assist Gyllenborg by making French translations of the

ambassador’s anti-Hanoverian pamphlets.89
While Görtz sounded out the Jacobites for possible assistance to
Sweden, Hamburg functioned as the communications and financial
center between the far-flung Swedish agents in Turkey, Holland,
France, and England. Swedenborg carried a message from The Hague
to the “Swedish Commercial Agent” at Hamburg.90 This was Johan
Gabriel Werwing, who frequently corresponded with Benzelius about
philosophical, diplomatic, and military affairs.91 Like Swedenborg,
Werwing combined studies in mathematics and Jewish lore with his
intelligence work.92 He currently functioned as the Hamburg link
between the Jacobites and Swedish agents, and he would soon be sent
to Paris to work with Eric Sparre.
Werwing was distressed that so many letters from Sweden, includ-
ing Benzelius’s, were intercepted or lost. Thus, he would welcome a
visit from Swedenborg, who could also bring first-hand news from
their mutual friends Palmquist and Preis. The diplomats possibly uti-
lized Swedenborg as a diplomatic or financial courier to Hamburg,
for soon after his arrival, the Cooke brothers (English bankers in the
city) sent a large loan to Charles XII in Turkey which enabled the king
to plan his secret return journey to northern Europe.93 James Cooke,
who served Charles XII in Turkey, would follow the king to Germany
and Sweden. He subsequently acted as a courier between Görtz and
Gyllenborg, and the name Cooke surfaces in Jacobite correspondence.
Cooke would later seek out Eric Benzelius when he travelled to Sweden
in October 1716.94
On 1 August 1714 Queen Anne died in London, and the miscalcula-
tions and timidity of the Jacobites allowed the unobstructed implemen-
tation of the Hanoverian succession. When news of this development

89
Bernard E. Malmström, Grunddragen af Svenska Vitterhetens Historia, I, 36 ff.;
see British Library Catalogue: Karl Gyllenborg, La Crise du Nord, traduit de l’anglois
[by S. Triewald] (1717).
90
Acton, Letters, I, 55.
91
Linköping: Bref till Benzelius, IV, 135, 151, 154, 162, 170.
92
RA: Bergshammarsamlingen: Werwing, #788, 791: letters to Benzelius, Palmquist,
and Preis (1712–14).
93
Acton, Letters, I, 55; Nordmann, Crise, 100; Aubrey de La Motraye, Historical and
Critical Remarks on the History of Charles XII, 2nd ed. (London: T. Warner, 1732),
72–75.
94
Erikson, Letters to Benzelius, 175–77; Linköping: Bref till Benzelius, V, 51.
86 chapter three

reached the Swedish diplomats in Europe, they recognized bitterly that

England was now ruled by an avowed enemy of Sweden, King George I.
That Swedenborg had a secret assignment, while the Swedish agents in
Hamburg planned the Swedish king’s secret return, is suggested by the
fact that he left his diary and papers in the safe-keeping of the “Swedish
Commercial Agent” (Werwing).95 After the death of Charles XII
in 1718 and the execution of Görtz in 1719, Swedenborg’s papers were
never recovered; they may have been deliberately destroyed.
In late August 1714, Swedenborg arrived in Rostock, a port city in
Swedish Pomerania, that was on the route to Stralsund—the planned
destination of the Swedish king. Despite the privateers and sea battles
plaguing the Baltic, he found someone to carry a letter to Benzelius
(dated 8 September 1714). Using the oblique and allegorical language
of coded diplomatic letters, Swedenborg sought news of the Swedish
Council’s plans in regard to the threatened Russian invasion:
I should like to know what the Uppsala Pallas thinks of the Leader of
the Russians, who is only twenty miles from that city. Will she take her
arms and her shield, and prepare to meet him, and lead her Muses with
her; will she have a branch of olive which she prefers to offer. But at a
distance I see how she is instructing her Camena in arms, teaching the
exercises of Mars rather than her own. I would that I might carry the
eagles before her, or perform some other little service for her.96
In his letter, Swedenborg also revealed his work on the Camena Borea,
the Ovidean fables in which he allegorically described the political
intrigues he observed during his residence abroad. In Fable XXII, he
provided a clue to a cryptic statement in the letter—“I would that
I might carry the eagles before her.” According to the editor Hans
Helander, Swedenborg used eagles as a symbol of “the keen-sighted
vigilance of the Austrian spies that were sent to protect the King” on
his proposed secret journey through the Austrian Empire.97
Swedenborg explained to Benzelius that his fables “concealed all that
has been going on in Europe . . . so that we might be able freely to jest
with serious matters, and to sport with the heroes and the men of our
own country.” Though there is no surviving correspondence between
Swedenborg, Benzelius, and his family during his year in Paris, he

95
Acton, Letters, I, 55.
96
Ibid., I, 59.
97
Swedenborg, Camena, 132.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 87

had received from someone detailed information on the political situ-

ation in Sweden and on secret Swedish diplomatic initiatives.98 Now,
while he stayed virtually incognito in Rostock, his friend Palmquist
handled the king’s communications to and from Sweden. Disturbed
by Horn’s subversion of royal policy, Charles secretly planned to recall
Palmquist to Stockholm and make him a court chancellor, for he relied
on Palmquist’s support against his critics.99
In his Camena, Swedenborg expressed his determination that “the
hidden messages underlying the sensus externus” would be difficult to
decipher.100 In the final Fable XXII, he chose the form of allegorical
prose because “it is difficult to understand—in order to be careful,
which is necessary”; it is a “literary form that is almost comparable to
being silent.” In the same Fable, however, he verged dangerously on
an explicit description of his role as a spy. Describing himself as a vatis
or seer, Swedenborg recounted the role of his “vatis factus infans” or
little dog transformed into a child, who worked as a secret spy for his
master among the ladies of a court.
The little dog . . . understood various expressions of people’s will, their
signs and speech, and it could tell its Master what it understood. Its
owner, however, kept this skill of the dog secret, saying that it was a dog
without the ability to speak, and he taught him pleasant frolics, with
which he could win the favour of the girls . . . But the band of virgins did
not as yet know that it could report their talk and their secret actions to
its Master, that it could be the informer and spy of its seer and, sitting
in their embraces kiss their ears in order that it might catch as closely
as possible what they said between them. It was even sent to the feet of
heroes and Military commanders, and was seen to bite their heels and
to withdraw at once, so that it might not perchance be violently pushed
back and get a wound that would deprive it of its life.101
Helander suggests that Swedenborg was influenced by the allegories of
Dryden, Swift, and Arbuthnot (who cleverly veiled their Restoration
and Jacobite themes).102 He had acquired in England Poems on Affairs
of State, from the Time of Oliver Cromwell, to the Abdication of
K. James II (London, 1703–07), which provided a virtual source book

98
Swedenborg, Festus, 158.
99
“Johan Palmquist,” SBL; Palmquist’s appointment began on 14 October 1714.
100
Swedenborg, Camena, 7, 224.
101
Ibid., 149.
102
Ibid., 18.
88 chapter three

for the various kinds of political allegory and literary codes which both
reveal and conceal risky identities and implications.103
But, particularly in the description of the little dog and the ladies,
Swedenborg seemed to draw on the sparkling wit and sense of frivol-
ity in Alexander Pope’s Rape of the Lock (1714), in which Belinda’s
flirtations concealed a serious message of “magical politics.” In this
second edition, Pope added the Rosicrucian “machinery,” which drew
on the Abbé de Villars’s Rosicrucian novella, Le Comte de Gabalis
(1670). Brooks-Davies argues that Pope’s use of “this strange work”
conceals “the Jacobite heart of the poem.”104 Carl Gyllenborg had
recently written Werwing about Pope’s political themes in the poem,
and Swedenborg would soon find the Rosicrucian allegories of Bignon,
Gabalis, and Pope useful for his own political coding.105
Even more provocative, however, is the concealment of a Rosi-
crucian motto from John Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica (1564), for
Swedenborg’s use of pingvissimo and rore seems a coded reference to
Dee’s “De rore caeloi, et pigvedine terrae, det tibi Deus.”106 Dee used
the line from Genesis XXVII—“God give thee of the dew of heaven
and the fatness of the land”—to illustrate the theme of “the descend-
ing dew (ros) uniting heaven and earth.”107 Susanna Åkerman traces
the influence of Dee’s concept of the alchemical dew in subsequent
Rosicrucian and Masonic texts.108 Benzelius was aware of Bureus’s
Rosicrucian use of Dee’s Monas symbolism, and Swedenborg himself
would later refer more explicitly to the motto, explaining that ros as
dew means “the influx of divine truth; the marriage of good and truth
and their fructification and multiplication.”109
Swedenborg had learned about Dee’s symbolic language in London,
when he made a careful study of Robert Hooke’s Posthumous Works

103
Swedenborg, Catalogus, 16.
104
Brooks-Davies, The Mercurian Monarch: Magical Politics from Spenser to Pope
(Manchester: Manchester UP, 1983), 181–96.
105
RA: Anglica 216. Gyllenborg to Werwing (28 July 1714).
106
Swedenborg, Camena, 161, 222. I am grateful to Professor Hans Helander for
sending me his work on the Dee reference and for help in interpreting Swedenborg’s
difficult poems.
107
Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London: Routledge, Kegan Paul,
1972), 45–46.
108
Åkerman, “Three Phases,” 168–75.
109
Emanuel Swedenborg, The Apocalypse Explained, trans. I. Tansley (London:
Swedenborg Society, 1919), I, #146, 278, 340.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 89

(1703).110 Hooke had delivered a Cutlerian Lecture to the Royal Society

in which he argued that Dee’s descriptions of conversations with angels
and spirits were an elaborate diplomatic code.111 Hooke had studied
Meric Casaubon’s A True and full Relation of what pass’d between
Dr. John Dee (a Mathematician of Great Fame in Queen Elizabeth and
King James, in their Reigns) and some Spirits, tending to a General
Alteration of most States and Kingdoms in the World (1659). He
included the account of Dee given by Ashmole in the latter’s Theatrum
Chemicum Brittanicum (1652), where the royalist Freemason praised
Dee as “an absolute and perfect Master” in mathematics and pointed
to Dee’s Monas Hieroglyphica and Cabbalae Hebraicae Compendiosa
Tabula as examples of his expertise in philosophy.112 That Swedenborg’s
friend John Woodward owned Casaubon’s book on Dee, Ashmole’s
account of Dee, and Hooke’s analysis of Dee’s cryptography means
that Swedenborg had access to all three while in London.113
Benzelius also owned several works by Meric Casaubon, and in
1710 Swedenborg expressed his reverence for Meric’s father Isaac.114
Thus, he must have been intrigued by Hooke’s analysis of the younger
Casaubon’s sensational book on Dee.115 Hooke argued that Dee had
learned from Trithemius’s Steganographia about the value of such a
“celestial” code for dangerous intelligence and diplomatic work. As
noted earlier, Benzelius had discussed Trithemius’s Kabbalistic system
and ciphering with F.M. Van Helmont, and he acquired the author’s
Polygraphie. According to Hooke, when Trithemius called certain
spirits “Dukes or Princes, others Captains, others ministring and
subservient,” he hinted at the political actors who were represented
by his population of spirits.116 In his “concealed history,” Trithemius
“designed to comprehend another Meaning than what is plainly leg-
ible in the Words of it.”

110
Acton, Letters, I, 25–26, 31. Swedenborg was investigating Hooke’s argument
against Hevelius and his theory of the longitude, which were both included in the The
Posthumous Works of Robert Hooke (1703), introd. Richard Westfall (facs. rpt. New
York: Johnson Reprint, 1969), 102, 510–17.
111
Hooke, Works, 203–10.
112
Ibid., 208.
113
Catalogue . . . Woodward, 15, 33, 126.
114
Acton, Letters, I, 13.
115
Ibid., I, 13; II, 769.
116
Hooke, Works, 204–05.
90 chapter three

Similarly, Dee was ordered by Queen Elizabeth to “inquire into and

discover the secret Designs or Actions” of the Polish and Bohemian
courts. Hooke concluded that Dee’s journal and correspondence,
which Causabon published, were written in a complex code:
I do conceive that the greatest part of the said Book, especially all
that which relates to the Spirits and Apparitions, together with their
Names, Speeches, Shews, Noises, Clothing, Actions, and the Prayers and
Doxologies, etc. are all Cryptography; and that some Parts also of that
which seems to be a Journal of his voyage and Travels into several Parts
of Germany, are also Cryptographical; that is, that under those feigned
Stories, which he there seems to relate as Matters of Fact, he hath con-
cealed Relations of quite another thing; and that he made use of this
way of absconding it, that he might the more securely escape discovery,
if he should fall under suspition as to the true Designs of his Travels, or
that the same should fall into the hands of any Spies, or such as might
be imployed to betray him or his Intentions; conceiving the Inquisition
that should be made, or Prosecution, if discovered would be more gentle
for a Pretended Enthusiast, than for a real Spy.117
Hooke argued further that Dee’s spiritualist partner Edward Kelly
remained at Prague, where he used his alchemical expertise to gain
the Emperor’s confidence in order to spy on the court: “Dr. Dee might
have sufficiently furnished him [Kelly] with Cryptography enough to
send what Intelligences he pleased, without suspicion, which was eas-
ily conceived under any other feigned Story.”
The clues to the diplomatic code lay in Dee’s “Cabalistical Learning”
and “that Book which he seems to have prized so much, and calls the
Book of Enoch, which I take to be of no other use, than for Cryptography
and Cabalisms.” The Book of Enoch contained the “Methods and
Keys of what was concealed” in Dee’s journal of conversations with
spirits and angels. Hooke suggested that Dee obtained the book in
Germany, “possibly when he presented his Monas Hieroglyphica to
the Emperor Maxilimilian.” Hooke described Dee’s mechanical inven-
tions (such as Astronomical Ring Dials, a Speculum Comburentibus,
and various Clockworks), which the spy utilized “to gain the freer and
more unsuspected Access to the Emperor.” Dee took advantage of his
great skill in “the business of Opticks, and Perspective and Mechanick
Contrivances” to build a “Holy Table” with a Chrystallum Sacratum
which “might contain the Apparatus to make Apparitions.”

117
Ibid., 206.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 91

While Swedenborg made a thorough study of Hooke’s writings, he

also read the great mechanist’s paper on An Ingenious Cryptographical
System which linked Dee’s method to Stuart political concerns. In a
passage with startling relevance to Swedenborg’s own political context,
Hooke revealed:
Mr. John Marr, an excellent mathematician and geometrician and ser-
vant to King James and Charles the First, examined the precepts of the
Enochian system and language as propounded and devised by John Dee
and gave it as his opinion that while unquestionably this was primarily a
magical system, used as such and interpreted as such, it also contained a
most ingenious cipher or series of ciphers containing secret information.
This system enabled a person to set out a secret message in what pur-
ported to be a confrontation between himself and spiritual creatures, or,
when necessary, by the moving of objects resembling pieces of a game
of chess so that each move gave an object of information.118
Hooke interpreted one of Dee’s visions—which included a female spirit
Galvah, a white castle, a celestial marriage, etc.—as a coded description
of political information on the change of plans by Mary Stuart, Queen
of Scots, concerning an invasion of England. He then acknowledged:
I may seem to write incredibilia, but while this allegory in itself might
seem obscure and so easily misinterpreted, the pentacle, if that be the
exact word, which was provided as a cunning Key to this Mystery made
all very simple and yet cleverlie concealed the fact that it was onlie
cryptography.119
When Swedenborg later used similar allegories of the marriages in
heaven of deceased political figures, few modern readers suspected
that it was “onlie cryptography.”120
We will return to Dee’s techniques of code-making and vision-
inducement when we examine Swedenborg’s strikingly similar activi-
ties in the 1740’s. But, it seems certain that the young Swedish student
had a valuable contribution to make to the Swedish and Jacobite dip-
lomats in Paris, The Hague, Hamburg, and Pomerania, as he utilized
his own cryptographic and espionage skills in 1713–15. Moreover, the
first hints of his work as a political intelligencer and Rosicrucian-style
allegorist emerged in the poems he published in April 1715.

118
Quoted in Richard Deacon, John Dee (London: Frederick Muller, 1968), 224.
119
Ibid., 225.
120
See ahead, Chapters 17 and 20.
92 chapter three

While still in Paris, Swedenborg had learned about Nicodemus Tessin’s

architectural plans for the Temple of Apollo at Versailles. Reinforcing
Tessin’s interest in Masonic and Hermetic themes was his reading
of Bacon’s New Atlantis and Comenius’s Via Lucis. He now hoped
that his “symbolic image of reconciliation of contraries in building
the Temple of Wisdom” would persuade Louis XIV to support the
Swedish-Jacobite cause of royalist restoration.121 Swedenborg con-
nected his own experiences at Versailles with similar Rosicrucian and
political themes, as revealed by his veiled allusions to the symbolic
architectural designs of Tessin.
Swedenborg’s description of the grove of “DEJODES, the Palladian
Hero,” points to Versailles, where Tessin proposed his pansophic
design of allegorical statues. Swedenborg wrote that at Versailles, “you
can see triple folding doors always open to their hero, and you can see
pyramids open in three directions in a hundred places.”122 The editor
Helander suggests that the strange and complex figure of Dejodes in the
groves of Versailles was connected with some Hermetic or Rosicrucian
ideas.123 Susanna Åkerman suggests that Dejodes was a code word for
Dee-Yod, thus linking the magus-intelligencer to the Hebrew letter
and Kabbalistic sephira.124
Helander is puzzled by the apparent linkage of Dejodes to Louis XIV,
who was often called “Heros Palladius,” for he places Swedenborg
more in sympathy with the English political position than the French.
However, Swedenborg’s current linking of the French king to his
yearning for military success and millenarial “restoration” was con-
sistent with the developing secret alliance between the Swedish and
French kings. In fact, Louis XIV signed a treaty with Charles XII in
March 1715, which promised the latter generous funding for as long as
the war lasted.125 Thus, when Swedenborg sent a final revised version
of Camena Borea to the printer in April, he would indeed have viewed
Louis XIV as a “Palladian Hero.”
Certainly, contemporaries of Swedenborg who read his Camena
would have identified the allegorical figure of Apollo as Louis XIV,

121
Ragnar Josephson, L’Architecte de Charles XII: Nicodéme Tessin à la Cour de
Louis XIV (Paris et Bruxelles, 1930), 115, 120–24.
122
Swedenborg, Camena, 45.
123
Ibid., 160–61.
124
Private communication from Dr. Äkerman (November 1993).
125
Hatton, Charles XII, 394.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 93

the Sun King. According to Swedenborg, Apollo should “lead his time
back through the centuries and drive his sun and his chariot from the
western waves to those of his own east, gradually returning, together
with all Heaven, to his golden age.”126 The fable was probably writ-
ten earlier in an appeal to the French king to drop his agreements
with Britain, as negotiated at Utrecht, and to resume the older and
more honorable Swedish alliance. In particular, Louis should uti-
lize his powers in Western Europe to bring Charles XII home from
the Middle East. Swedenborg was evidently aware that the Swedish
king had sent messages to Vienna in which he threatened to return
by sea in a French ship, unless the Austrian Emperor granted him
permission to travel incognito through Hapsburg lands.127 It was on
20 September 1714, just twelve days after Swedenborg wrote Benzelius
of his desire to “carry the eagles before her [endangered Sweden],”
that Charles XII set out from Turkey on his daring secret journey to
Swedish Pomerania—a journey made possible by the protective eyes
of Austrian “eagles” (spies).
The supporters of a Stuart restoration, who gathered at Versailles
and expressed sympathy for the Swedish king, contributed a third facet
to the merged “Rosicrucian” personality of Dejodes. The “triple folding
doors” and “pyramids open in three directions” were possibly an allu-
sion by Swedenborg to the developing Swedish-French-Jacobite alli-
ance and its Rosicrucian or Masonic methods of organization. Claude
Nordmann observes that the “curious” developing alliance between
France, Spain, and Sweden (which would soon include Russia) was
the outgrowth of Jacobite politics. He argues that the partisans of the
Stuarts, dispersed across all of Europe, formed a secret society “aux
multiples antennaes,” drawn or copied, without doubt, on that of
“Franc-maçonnerie.”128
Frances Yates suggests that John Dee was responsible for “the
idea of a kind of pre-masonry,” which merged English chivalric and
alchemical ideas with the Stuart dynasty, a theme that was carried
further by the Rosicrucian Freemason, Elias Ashmole.129 Hooke also
hinted throughout his works and diaries at his own participation in

126
Swedenborg, Camena, 45.
127
Hatton, Charles XII, 384.
128
Nordmann, Crise, 10.
129
Yates, Rosicrucian Enlightenment, 215.
94 chapter three

secretive meetings of operative masons and Rosicrucian chemists.130

Thus, Swedenborg’s mystical architectural themes seem relevant to the
emerging Swedish-Stuart political-military collaboration.
Swedenborg recounted to Benzelius a long list of mechanical inven-
tions, “which I have in hand,” which reveals that he had been working
on secret methods of communication and military projects.131 When
he also expressed his “great desire” to establish a “Society in Mathesis”
in Sweden, he had in mind the “Mathematical Magic” of John Wilkins,
whose book was the source for most of Swedenborg’s inventions.132 As
noted earlier, Wilkins discussed the value of Kabbalistic number-letter
manipulations in the development of diplomatic codes. Like Wilkins
and the vatic dog of Camena Borea, Swedenborg worked on “a method
of conjecturing the wills and affections of men’s minds by analysis,”
and in the Camena he referred to the “representation of the mind
in the face.”133 This kind of physiognomical espionage was consid-
ered valuable by diplomats and their secret agents, and Swedenborg
would continue to practice it for decades. On a more practical level,
Swedenborg worked on various inventions that would be useful to
Charles XII’s military campaign—i.e., a one-man submarine that
“could inflict much injury on enemy ships,” a new type of air gun that
could explode a thousand bullets, a drawbridge that could be opened
from within a fortress, and a “flying carriage.”
In October Swedenborg moved on to Griefswald, which was only
twenty miles from the Baltic port of Stralsund. From Sweden his father
sent letters in October and November to Charles XII, recommending
his son to the king’s service.134 Swedenborg was soon overjoyed to learn
that Charles XII, after a thrilling and exhausting horseback ride of over
two thousand kilometers, had arrived safely in the beleaguered city
on 10 November. The secret network of communication and support
had worked! Baron Görtz travelled immediately to Stralsund to meet
the king and to bring him alarming news. The new British monarch,
the Hanoverian George I, was already planning to join the siege of
Stralsund in order to seize the rest of Sweden’s territories in Germany.
Thus, Görtz convinced Charles XII, who now despised George I and

130
Schuchard, Restoring the Temple, 709–19.
131
Acton, Letters, I, 57.
132
Acton, “Life,” 68–69.
133
Swedenborg, Camena, 190; Acton, Letters, I, 57–58.
134
Ibid., I, 64.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 95

felt no obligations to England, to seriously pursue negotiations with

the Jacobites.
At Griefswald two of Charles’s officers from Turkey—Olof
Estenberg and Bernard Cederhielm—contacted Swedenborg and
informed him fully of the king’s experiences in Turkey and of his
secret journey to Stralsund.135 They may have put Swedenborg on the
diplomatic payroll, for five months later Swedenborg was able to pay
the substantial costs of printing his new political poems in Griefswald.
James Hyde suggests that Swedenborg omitted Fable IV from Camena
Borea while it was passing through the press, because “notable per-
sons were dealt with in a pseudononymous way.”136 Swedenborg also
published an earlier ode to General Stenbock, in which he “vents his
hopes that Charles XII will soon march against his enemies at the head
of a vast Turkish army,” and a panegyric to Ambassador Palmquist,
who was now actively involved in the Franco-Jacobite schemes of
Gyllenborg, Preis, Sparre, and Wellingck.137
But, most significant for the intensifying Jacobite context, was
Swedenborg’s eulogy to Charles XII, “the Phoenix of the Ancient Gothic
Race and the Monarch of our North.” Entitled Festivus Applausus,
the poem presented a kind of mystical apotheosis of the king as the
divinely appointed embodiment of his people and their land. Drawing
on the doctrines of metempsychosis espoused by Pythagoreans, neo-
Platonists, and F.M. Van Helmont, Swedenborg portrayed Charles as
the reincarnation of the great classical heroes.138 Just when Sweden
seemed to have degenerated hopelessly, “at that moment, because of
some hidden structure of Fate and the recurrent influence of Heaven,
CHARLES, the leader and hero of our North was ordered to be born
again in this very age in which we now live, ordered to rise . . . as
PHOENIX.”139
In a reference to the deceptive and dishonest political moves of
the Hanoverian-English government, Swedenborg showed that divine
inspiration helped Charles realize that “mere semblances and appear-
ances of peace and empty hopes rather than true had been so many

135
Ibid., I, 60; Acton, “Life,” 71–72.
136
James Hyde, A Bibliography of the Works of Emanuel Swedenborg (London:
Swedenborg Society, 1906), 14.
137
Malmström, Handlingar, X. 117–400; Swedenborg, Festivus Applausus, 125.
138
Ibid., 55–59.
139
Ibid., 59.
96 chapter three

times presented to him.”140 Now, taking up his true millenarian role,

Charles has returned to his lands and thus initiated the restoration of
the golden age. Supernatural portents of sun and moon greeted him.
“O, readers,” Swedenborg exhorted, “will you not then refuse to believe
that Heaven does not, by a secret flowing, influence our actions, our
lives, and the vicissitudes of fortune? I have myself no doubts about
this.” With the king’s return, the healing of land and people can begin,
that will ultimately bring man and God back into their harmonious
unity.141
Swedenborg’s poem would certainly have appealed to the more
mystically-inclined Jacobites and their French and Swedish sympa-
thizers, who used similar allegories in their writings. Helander notes
the similarity of Swedenborg’s royalist tribute to certain lines in John
Dryden’s Astrae redux. A Poem on the Happy Restoration of His Sacred
Majesty Charles the Second (1660).142 In London, Gyllenborg would
have welcomed Swedenborg’s eulogy to divinely “legitimate” kingship,
for he and his allies among the English Tories and Jacobites were wag-
ing a pamphlet war against the secular, mercenary, and cynical values
of the “usurping” Hanoverians.
Swedenborg dedicated Festivus Applausus to General Carl Gustaf
Düker, commander of the Swedish armies in Pomerania, who would
later lead Charles XII’s forces against Norway—in preparation for a
Swedish-Jacobite descent on Scotland.143 That Düker was already privy
to Jacobite affairs is suggested by the advanced stage of Swedish-Jacobite
planning achieved in early 1715. On 28 January, after consulting with
Charles XII and Eric Sparre in Stralsund, Görtz sent Sparre back to
Paris to head the secret project. He assured Sparre that he could be
the savior of his nation—an assurance that was perhaps echoed in
Swedenborg’s paean to royalist regeneration and national survival.144
By April 1715, Gyllenborg and his confidante Bolingbroke commit-
ted themselves fully to the Jacobite cause. Bolingbroke fled to Paris,
where he became secretary of state to the Pretender and oversaw the
negotiations with Charles XII.145 Gyllenborg sent the English Jacobite

140
Ibid., 71–79.
141
Ibid., 87.
142
Ibid., 157. Swedenborg had recommended Dryden to Benzelius as a poet worth
reading (August 1711).
143
Ibid., 90.
144
Murray, George I, 148.
145
HMC: Stuart Papers, I, 412–32, 493.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 97

proposals to high officials in Sweden, who stubbornly prevented their

delivery to Charles XII.146 Görtz and the visiting French ministers
briefed the king at Stralsund about the status of French-Jacobite plans.
According to the French diplomat Colbert de Croissy, Charles agreed
to send four thousand Swedish troops to Scotland, under General
Hugo Hamilton, who was himself of Scottish descent and a Jacobite.
Currently commander of Gothenburg, a city with a large Scottish pop-
ulation, Hamilton was an old friend of Benzelius.147
At The Hague, Swedenborg’s friend Preis cooperated fully in the
Jacobite initiative.148 In March 1715 Carl Gyllenborg sent word to the
Pretender that three Tories came to him and offered forty more to
send money to Charles XII to “deliver him from the oppression of
M. Horne (Elector of Hanover).”149 Robert Leslie, Benzelius’s old
friend, had visited James III at Nancy in October 1714 and urged him
to make an attempt on England.150 With the Pretender’s approval, in
April 1715 Leslie began his work as a courier between Bolingbroke,
Gyllenborg, and their agents.151 In that same month, Louis XIV
arranged for the French subsidy to Charles XII to be paid through
Sparre, Gyllenborg, and Palmquist.152
That Swedenborg was privy to Palmquist’s plans is revealed in a letter
to Benzelius, written from Griefeswald on 4 April. “If Court Chancellor
Palmquist comes home from The Hague,” Swedenborg expects him to
support his plans for scientific and mathematic advancement.153 Some
months earlier, Charles XII tried to send Palmquist back to Sweden in
order to replace Count Horn as chancellor, but Palmquist’s responsi-
bilities at The Hague and recurrent sea battles in the Baltic had delayed
his return.154 The Swedish diplomatic network was further frustrated
by interferences and obstacles in communication lines from Stralsund.
When the British sent a fleet to the Baltic in June, the populace in

146
Murray, George I, 207–08.
147
Linköping: Bref till Benzelius, II, #89.
148
Malmström, Handlingar, X, 117–400.
149
HMC: Stuart Papers, I, 351.
150
Bodleian: Carte MS. 231. f. 21.
151
HMC: Stuart Papers, I, 361, 407.
152
Murray, George I, 149.
153
Acton, Letters, I, 61.
154
Guillaume de Lamberty, Mémoires pour servir à histoire du XVIIIe siècle (La
Haye: Henri Scheurler, 1727–31, IX, 643. Swedenborg later acquired this work,
which revealed detailed information on the Swedish-Jacobite plot; see Swedenborg,
Catalogus, 9.
98 chapter three

Sweden was furious and was sure it would be used against Charles XII
at Stralsund and then against Sweden herself.
Robert Leslie later informed the Jacobite historian Thomas Carte
about the Swedish plans:
in June 1715, King of Sweden would have come to England with an
army, provided if K [James] would come to Stralsund, that he had a
scruple at first of leaving Stralsund which was threatened with a siege but
in case of K’s coming he would have waived that and set sail immedi-
ately. That Lord Bolingbroke was entirely for K’s going. Urged it in ear-
nest and offered to go with him. King of France was at the time ready to
advance any sum to enable King of Sweden to make that expedition.155
Swedenborg was possibly involved in the intensely secret communi-
cations network, for he moved on to Stralsund where he contacted
Casten Feif, who had planned the king’s journey from Turkey and
arranged the secret loans from Hamburg.156 Like Hamilton and so
many of Charles XII’s officers, Feif was of Scottish descent and sym-
pathetic to the Stuart cause.157 In June, as the Jacobites in Britain and
France planned the “Rising of 1715,” Swedenborg escorted Feif ’s wife
back to Sweden.158 On 22 June Charles officially recalled Palmquist to
Sweden, where the ambassador was expected to replace Arivd Horn
and build support for the king’s Jacobite military project.159
On 7 July in Paris, Eric Sparre reported to the Jacobite chief, the
Duke of Berwick, that Charles XII would put the plan into execution
immediately by shipping a Swedish army to England, but that he must
have funds to carry it out.160 However, Swedish help did not materialize
for James III because Charles XII was in a desperate military situation
at Stralsund, and delays in the promised French and Jacobite funds
frustrated all the parties. After Hanoverian troops siezed the Swedish
city of Bremen in July, Gyllenborg regretted bitterly that Sweden had
not sent troops to England to dethrone George I.161

155
Bodleian: Carte MS. 231. ff. 22–23. Notes of Leslie’s conversation with Carte
(19 April 1725).
156
La Motraye, Remarks, 72.
157
Jonas Berg and Bo Lagercrantz, Scots in Sweden (Stockholm: Swedish Insitute/
Nordiska Museet, 1962), 57; G.A. Sinclair, “The Scottish Officers of Charles XII,”
Scottish Historical Review (1924), 179.
158
Acton, Letters, I, 63.
159
Lamberty, Memoires, IX, 643.
160
Murray, George I, 149.
161
Ibid., 190.
 the rosicrucian ros and the jacobite rose, 1713–1715 99

When Swedenborg left Stralsund, he took with him copies of

Festivus Applausus, a work of which he was proud, and he planned to
distribute it in Sweden. On 9 August he promised a copy to Benzelius.162
However, his royalist panegyric was unable to work its magic to protect
his embattled king. In September 1715 Charles XII had to refuse the
Jacobite call for aid, because he was fighting for his life at Stralsund—
where the English fleet aided the siege against their former ally.163 Ten
years later, Robert Leslie would lament bitterly to Thomas Carte that
“Never was Prince worse treated than the King of Sweden in all that
affair.”164
After the death of Charles XII in November 1718 and the failure
of the Swedish-Jacobite plot, Swedenborg never mentioned Festivus
Applausus again; he fact, he must have destroyed his own copies.
Though Benzelius entered Swedenborg’s Camena Borea and Ludus
Heliconus in his library catalogue, he subsequently omitted the paean
to Charles XII. Alfred Acton notes that “the existence of this work was
unknown” until 1905, when two copies were discovered in the library
at Griefswald.165

162
Acton, Letters, I, 166.
163
Murray, George I, 146.
164
Bodleian: Carte MS. 231, f. 23.
165
Acton, “Life,” 78.
 CHAPTER FOUR

THE NORDIC TEMPLE OF SOLOMON:

ARCHITECTURE OF WISDOM OR WAR, 1715–1719

While Charles XII valiantly but hopelessly defended Stralsund,

Swedenborg lived quietly with his father at Brunsbo. During his absence
abroad, Bishop Swedberg and Benzelius despaired of the continuing
war policy of the king, and they worked with the Estates to try to
convince Charles XII to accept a peace mediation.1 At the same time,
they distrusted Count Horn’s efforts to undermine the king’s posi-
tion, for they believed Horn was mainly interested in consolidating his
personal power on the Council. Thus, though Swedberg and Benzelius
were considered “liberal” members of the peace party, they were not
anti-monarchical. The bishop maintained the same attitude towards the
king as God’s vicar on earth that the Jacobites held towards James III.2
This ambivalent attitude towards Charles XII—practical disapproval
of his war policy coupled with mystical reverence for his office—was
shared by Swedenborg, who was worried about his insecure political
and economic position on his return to his homeland.
After a five-year absence, Swedenborg was now twenty-seven years
old and unemployed. He learned from Casten Feif about Charles XII’s
proposal to bring Jewish merchants into Sweden, which gave him
hope for employment in some Jewish financial or diplomatic affair.
When the king left Turkey, many of his Jewish creditors set out for
the north, planning to join him in Sweden.3 Between February and
June 1715, Feif welcomed the first Jewish arrivals to Stralsund, and he
would later handle many of the king’s transactions with them. Informed
about these new developments, Bishop Swedberg wrote on 12 July to
Feif in Stralsund and recommended his son Emanuel as ready in the
“Oriental” and “European” languages.4 Feif and Swedenborg were

1
Lundquist, Council, 113–29, 162, 218.
2
R. Tafel, Documents, I, 234–37.
3
Westrin, “Anteckningar,” 1–53.
4
Acton, Letters, I, 64.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 101

probably aware of the role of Francia and his Jewish associates as fund
raisers for the Swedish-Jacobite project.5
Given the situation at besieged Stralsund, it is not surprising that
Feif was unable to respond to Swedberg’s letter. Swedenborg then
composed a poem in praise of Count Gustaf Cronhjelm, to whom he
had dedicated Camena Borea. Not having met Cronhjelm, Swedenborg
stressed the count’s long friendship with Bishop Swedberg, who still
collaborated with Cronhjelm on various projects.6 Swedenborg assumed
that his dedicatee understood the political allegories in the Camena,
and he once again portrayed himself as Vates, a Seer. In “To a Very
Prominent Man: An Epistolary Poem,” the poet’s muse urges him to
go to Stockholm, “the town of Mars,” where commanders and the two
princes hold court. Initially the seer resists, but his muse urges him:
But I know what you can do, if there is in you, who are so unwarlike,
such a strong desire now to be together with valiant men.
Assume a blue dress, take off the dress of a Parnassian girl.
You can imitate an Amazon or a Man . . .
Thus transformed you shall go; and in this attire you shall please.
This attire will be suitable for your time.7
Swedenborg’s willingness to assume a military uniform—the distinc-
tive blue uniform of the Carolinian army—would eventually open up
opportunities for him that were otherwise closed.
But, given his unwarlike temperament, he much preferred an aca-
demic appointment. Thus, while visiting Benzelius at Uppsala in
October, Swedenborg planned Sweden’s first scientific journal, Daedalus
Hyperboreus, which was influenced by John Wilkins’s Daedalus. From
the prefatory poems he wrote for the journal, it is clear that Swedenborg
expected Charles XII to serve as patron of the project. Referring to the
king’s embattled position within the fortified walls of Stralsund, he
portrayed Charles as Daedalus, the fabulous inventor and architect,
who will escape the traps set by King Minos (a conflated reference
to the English, Russian, and Danish monarchs whose troops besieged
Stralsund):

5
Lipton, “Francia,” 192.
6
Swedenborg, Camena, 37–39.
7
Swedenborg, Ludus Heliconus, 115–18.
102 chapter four

My Daedalus! Travel this way through the air by your skill

And laugh at the traps that the multitude will set for you!
Since Minos confines you by means of so many walls, and so many
soldiers,
and your workmanship is regarded as cheap in your own country,
create wings for yourself, Daedalus! And make your way across
the Ocean!
There you shall not be confined, there you shall not be cheap.
Either previous times return, and old times are imitated,
or Daedalus himself returns to his own time.
For once upon a time he thus fled right through the bands of his
enemies,
as our Daedalus flees from our enemies.8
Despite his reluctance, Swedenborg made some kind of military com-
mitment, for on 21 November he wrote Benzelius from Stockholm and
referred to “the uncertainty of finding quarteer [quarters] for a person
in blue clothes.”9 The city was full of soldiers in blue uniforms, who
were stirred by rumors that the king would return soon.
On 15 December Benzelius urged Swedenborg to forego his planned
dedication of Daedalus Hyperboreus to a nobleman; instead, he should
dedicate it to the king, who was especially interested in mathematics
and mechanics. Swedenborg was determined to use the journal to pub-
lish the experiments of Christopher Polhem, who was currently work-
ing on military projects for Görtz and Charles XII.10 Polhem would be
interested in hearing about Swedenborg’s Rosicrucian readings and
experiences abroad, for his eclectic scientific interests included experi-
mental testing of older spiritualistic beliefs. While Swedenborg was
away, Polhem corresponded with Benzelius about theories of alchemy,
amulets, healing, and “living spirits,” as well as his unorthodox inter-
pretations of Genesis.11 However, they all feared that Sweden’s des-
perate economic and military situation meant their scientific projects
could not be implemented.
Meanwhile, in Scotland the Jacobite rebellion was launched on 16
September, when the Earl of Mar raised the standard of James VIII

8
Ibid., 135.
9
Acton, Letters, I, 69. Acton’s explanation that Swedenborg’s difficulty was because
he wore “a bright blue coat” rather than black mourning dress for the dying Queen
Dowager is implausible.
10
Ibid., I, 78; Nordmann, Grandeur, 194.
11
Lindroth, Polhem, 59–82.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 103

and III at Perth. Though no written record survives of Swedenborg’s

response to the Stuart rebellion of 1715, he must have shared the great
interest of the majority of Swedes, who enthusiastically backed the
rising against the Hanoverian “usurper.” Carl Gyllenborg followed
Mar’s campaign closely, and he sent such pro-Jacobite dispatches to
the Council in Sweden that Robert Jackson, British envoy at Stockholm,
complained that Gyllenborg’s “relations of late have savour’d strongly
of malice and party animosity.”12 However, Jackson was forced to admit
that “the very impertinent Swedish minister to London” was much
applauded at home, and that his anti-Hanoverian conduct would “be
justified by his master.” Bishop Swedberg, who was a great admirer
of Gyllenborg, shared his Stuart sympathies, and Eric Benzelius made
cautious notes on Gyllenborg’s Jacobite activities in London.13
On 15 September, the day before Mar’s declaration, the Jewish agent
Francia was arrested on charges of treason, which made Gyllenborg’s
position in London increasingly precarious.14 As the Whig decipher-
ers worked on Francia’s complex codes in his confiscated papers, they
learned more of the emerging Franco-Swedish-Jacobite plot. Whig
pamphleteers linked the Jacobites and Jews as seditious “Papists,” but
a defiant Francia wrote confidently from his cell in Newgate that over
three-fourths of the population sympathized with James III.15 On 12
October Gyllenborg wrote Görtz that he feared the activities of “a false
brother” within the English Jacobite party, but he was still confident
that throughout Britain, “nine out of ten are rebels.”16
On 18 October James III sent a ciphered letter via Eric Sparre
to the Swedish king to inform him of his planned expedition to
Scotland.17 However, Jacobite hopes received a blow when Stralsund
fell to the besiegers in December 1715, and Charles XII was forced
to flee in a small boat over icy seas back to his impoverished home-
land. When James Stuart landed in Scotland in January 1716, he made
an eloquent appeal from Scone to the Swedish king, but Charles was
unable to help him. On 4 February James fled Scotland, followed by
rumors that he visited Sweden on his way to France. Whig agents had

12
J. Murray, George I, 190–191.
13
Swedenborg, Camena, 155; Benzelius, Anecdota, 37–39, 52–55.
14
See Tryal of Francia.
15
Simon Browne, Jewish and Popish Zeal Described and Compared (London: John
Clark, 1715), 4–5, 43–47; Roth, Anglo-Jewish, 96.
16
BL: Add. MS. 32, 258. Intercepted letter.
17
Nordmann, Crise, 49–50.
104 chapter four

intercepted Gyllenborg’s correspondence with Lord Duffus in Scotland,

and George I now called for intense surveillance over the ambassador
and his Jacobite contacts. Against the advice of his English ministers,
George ordered the execution of the popular Jacobite leader, James
Radcliffe, 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, a grandson of Charles II. As we
shall see, Derwentwater’s “martyrdom” would inspire a theme of
mystical resistance in Jacobite and Swedish Freemasonry.
Meanwhile in Sweden, the return of Charles XII was greeted
with joy by the “Carolinians” but trepidation by his opponents. On
7 January 1716 Robert Jackson reported that the king “visibly shunned
Count Horn,” who in eight days has not had a word with him.18
He planned to replace Horn with Palmquist, his loyal and seasoned
diplomat. However, on 26 January Charles was shocked and saddened
by the death of Palmquist, who had courageously supported his poli-
cies during his imprisonment in Turkey. Swedenborg, who counted on
Palmquist’s backing for his proposed scientific society, now foresaw
further delays for his project. However, he would soon find another,
more militaristic outlet for his scientific expertise.
As he waited for news from Scotland, Charles XII was not idle in pre-
paring for new assaults on the Hanoverians. On 27 January he ordered
Polhem to Ystad to plan a dry dock for the war effort and to collaborate
with Görtz on a new money system to support it.19 Jackson reported
that Görtz, whom “some here have nicknamed the Philosopher’s
Stone,” is “the principal projector” of the fund-raising.20 Görtz called
on Nicodemus Tessin, president of the Chamber of Contributions,
and gave him “direction of the Mint.” Casten Feif joined them to
work on the “coinage of Mint Tokens.” On 4 February Polhem invited
Swedenborg to join him and Görtz’s team in the financial and military
planning, and he must have issued him an injunction of strict secrecy.
On 14 February Swedenborg wrote Benzelius to inform him about his
work with Polhem and then closed with an odd warning (written in
Latin): “I entrust this to you, my brother, as to a priest (Sacerdoti) and
at the same time as to a diplomatist (politico).”21
Despite the bad news from Scotland, on 16 February Charles XII
began a march to Norway, which he hoped to capture from the ruling

18
NA: SP 95/22, f. 3.
19
Nordmann, Crise, 483.
20
NA: SP 95/22, ff. 36, 41, 69.
21
R. Tafel, Documents, I, part II, 249.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 105

Danes. Benzelius received reports about the military campaign, which

he discussed with Swedenborg.22 Charles’s enemies and his Jacobite
supporters believed that he would launch from Norway a descent
on Scotland. On 26 February a French ship unloaded a large number
of Jacobite refugees at Gothenburg, and stories circulated again that
the Pretender was among them.23 Jackson protested vehemently that
Sweden welcomed the refugees, while Jacobites in Paris reported
that Charles XII received the Scots with kindness.24 When the Swedish
king crossed the Norwegian border in late February, rumors swirled
through Britain and Europe that he would soon invade Scotland, at the
head of a large Swedish-Jacobite force.
On 2 March James III met with Sparre in Paris and gave him a
letter to Charles XII in which he requested asylum in Sweden. Sparre
believed it was too risky to transmit the letter, but he did send a cou-
rier with an oral report to the king about the request.25 In June an
infuriated George I ordered Jackson to demand assurances from the
Swedish king that he would “never give assistance or refuge, directly
or indirectly, to the Pretender,” nor “any Protection to Lord Duffus,
and others, who are lately fled into Sweden from Scotland.”26 Ignoring
England’s protests, Charles XII and his soldiers battled on. But the
Norwegians and Danes proved stubborn foes, and the Swedish siege
bogged down that winter. Charles’s march north scored important
diplomatic points, however, for it proved that he could still mount an
aggressive campaign.
Determined to rebuild his army and to reinvigorate Sweden’s econ-
omy, the king returned to the university city of Lund in September
1716, where he gave Görtz full powers to reorganize Sweden’s gov-
ernment and to negotiate a more effective Jacobite plan. He also
sent credentials to Carl Gyllenborg as Envoy Extraordinary, without
notifying Horn and the Chancery.27 On 9 October the French agent
Aubrey de la Motraye discussed current military and financial affairs
with Benzelius, whom he planned to introduce to James Cooke, who
had earlier arranged the king’s Hamburg loans (as noted earlier, that

22
Linköping: Bref till Benzelius, V, #40–51.
23
J. Murray, George I, 210–12.
24
HMC: Stuart, II, 62, 269.
25
J. Murray, George I, 211–12.
26
Abel Boyer, The Political State of Great Britain (London, 1716), XII, 202–04.
27
NA: SP 95/22, f. 269.
106 chapter four

project possibly involved Swedenborg).28 On 19 October Gyllenborg

wrote Görtz that Cooke, while en route to Sweden, had to throw
his packets overboard to avoid confiscation by their enemies.29
Gyllenborg’s letter was intercepted by the British, who alerted Jackson
to keep an eye on Cooke’s contact with Benzelius. Görtz became
increasingly worried by the interceptions, and on 12 November he
wrote Sparre that “the odd fancy of the Pretender retiring to Sweden
surprizes me. It would be blazing abroad our intelligence by the sound
of trumpets.”30 This letter was also intercepted, which made Görtz’s
order to Sparre that “all information sent to Charles XII must be oral,
not written” even more critical.
After the disturbing arrest of Francia, Görtz recognized that the
Swedish and Stuart royalists needed to tighten security to protect their
new strategies. The failure of the Stuart rising of 1715 exposed dra-
matically the importance of secret communications and loyal agents
to the complex international coalition working against George I. On
22 January 1717 Francia was tried in London on capital charges of
treason, based on his correspondence with French, Swedish, and
Jacobite agents. The ease with which George I’s spies intercepted and
deciphered his letters sent alarm through the already worried Jacobite
network. In one confiscated letter, Francia was warned by the French
of “the base dealing” of “Robinson,” who could not be brought to
“reason”—a reference to John Robinson, the untrustworthy friend of
Gyllenborg and the Swedberg family.31
Francia’s lawyer mounted an eloquent defense in which he linked
Francia’s case with Sacheverell’s and warned Englishmen of the
high seriousness of irresponsible charges of treason. Francia himself
delighted the jury with his portrayal of a corrupt Lord Townshend,
who attempted to bribe him into false testimony against Harvey of
Combe, and a defense witness testified that she heard a government
agent pressure Francia to “swear Harvey’s life away.” The Jew’s clever
challenges of potential jurors resulted in a largely Tory body who
acquitted him—an act that stunned the government and provoked

28
Linköping: Bref till Benzelius, V, 51.
29
BL: Add. MS. 32, 258, f. 22. Intercepted letter.
30
Ibid., f. 43.
31
Tryal of Francia, 30, 57.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 107

“jollity in Fetter Lane and Jacobite resorts generally.”32 Francia sub-

sequently moved to Calais, from where he organized a “noble soci-
ety” and “royal club” of Jews to raise money for the Swedish-Jacobite
plot.33 This may have been a Jewish Masonic lodge, for Francia alleg-
edly became a Freemason.34

It was this deteriorating situation that reportedly led Görtz to turn to

Freemasonry to develop a safer means of communication and negotia-
tion.35 Leaving Charles XII in Norway, Görtz, and Poniatowski jour-
neyed to Gothenburg where the Scottish refugees gathered. While he
conferred about their organization in Britain and France, Görtz could
have learned about Mar’s affiliation with Freemasonry. A talented
and ambitious architect, Mar exercised great influence on operative
masons in Scotland, who welcomed noblemen to their lodges.36 He
also exploited his Masonic connections with his Scottish kinsmen in
Russia, who maintained fraternal bonds with Czar Peter I.37
After the failure of the 1715 rising, Mar escaped to France, where he
joined forces with Andrew Michael Ramsay and other Masonic exiles.
Ramsay may have discussed with Mar his belief that General Monk
had used Masonic networks to organize the first Stuart restoration,
or Mar may have informed Ramsay about that secret Scottish tradi-
tion.38 Now, as Mar’s Scottish veterans and his Swedish allies labored
to rebuild their forces at Gothenburg, “it was feasible to many that
General Hugo Hamilton, aided by Swedish soldiers, might be the

32
John Doran, London in the Jacobite Times (Boston: Nicholls, 1877), 270. Lipton
concluded that Francia was let off by the prosecution in order to play the double
agent; see his “Francia,” 204–05). However, evidence in the unpublished Stuart Papers
(191/149, 227/164, 247/178, 324/149) reveals Francia’s continuing Jacobite activities
and loyalty.
33
P. Fritz, English, 118 n. 32; HMC: Stuart, IV, 489, 496.
34
Shaftesley, “Jews,” 159.
35
Schröderheim, Anteckningar, 81; Claude Nordmann, Grandeur et Liberté de la
Suède, 1660–1782 (Paris: Beatrice-Neuwelaerts, 1971), 424; Önnerfors, “From Jacobite
Support,” 205–06.
36
For his architectural expertise, see Terry Friedman, “A ‘Palace worthy of
the Grandeur of the King’: Lord Mar’s Designs for the Old Pretender, 1718–30,”
Architectural History, 29 (1986), 102–13.
37
For Mar’s use of international Masonic networks in 1714, see Steve Murdoch,
“Soldiers, Sailors, Jacobite Spy: Russo-Jacobite Relations 1688–1750,” Slavonica, 3
(1996–97), 8; Collis, “Freemasonry,” 18–20.
38
For Ramsay’s account, given to Carl Gustaf Tessin in 1741, see Schuchard,
Restoring the Temple, 575.
108 chapter four

Monk of a second restoration.”39 Poniatowksi, who had Stuart as well

as Jewish blood in his veins, was especially sympathetic to the plight
of the Jacobite refugees, and he would be attracted to the mystical
Kabbalistic traditions of Scottish Masonry.40
Leaving Gothenburg, Görtz and his party sailed for Holland, where
they worked with Preis and Gustaf Gyllenborg to link up Jacobite and
Swedish partisans in a more secure and secret network. In April and
again in June 1716, Görtz complained to Preis and Feif that he would
defy a Richelieu or Mazarin to serve well a master (Charles XII) who
was not obeyed in anything in his own states.41 The oath of loyalty
exacted by Jacobite Freemasons and the emotional bonding achieved
by their mystical conception of kingship would thus appeal to Görtz,
the hard-headed diplomat, who was surrounded by spies and politi-
cal opportunists. His most trusted agent, Poniatowski, now employed
Masonic-style symbolism and mystical allegories in his political com-
munications.42 Poniatowski and his collaborators wrote, “It will be in
the wood and iron of Scandinavia that the Temple of Solomon will be
erected by the Alexander of the North.”43 At The Hague Ambassador
Preis allegedly became a Freemason and at Paris, Francia, Dillon,
and Sparre collaborated with the secretive Masonic network. Claude
Nordmann argues that Sparre developed a Jacobite lodge within the
Swedish regiment serving in France.44
Because the whole purpose of the Masonic network was secrecy
and loyalty, the enterprise remains almost impenetrable to scholars.45
But the shadowy Masonic links throw a startling light on Görtz’s
most ambitious design—the development of a secret alliance between
Sweden and Russia, which could deal a final blow to the Hanoverians.
The wily diplomat had already worked to bring France, Spain, and
Turkey into the Swedish-Jacobite camp, and he possibly heard from
his Scottish colleagues that Freemasonry had already penetrated those

39
J. Murray, George I, 204.
40
Pierre Boyé, Stanislaus Leszczynski et le troisième Traité de Vienne (Paris, 1898), 5.
41
Claude Nordmann, “Monnaies et Finances Suèdoise au XVIIIe siècle,” Revue du
Nord, 46 (1964), 486 n. 86.
42
Nordmann, Crise, 153 n. 48.
43
Mnemon, Conspiration, 62.
44
Nordmann, Grandeur, 199, 424.
45
Andreas Önnerfors, ed., Mystiskt brödraskap-mäktigt nätwerk (Lund: Lund UP,
2006), 35. He notes the possible Swedish contacts with French-Scottish-Jacobite
Freemasons in Charles XII’s time.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 109

countries. According to “A Narrative of the Freemasons Word and

Signes” (1659), seventeenth-century Stuart Masons had developed
contacts throughout their diaspora: “To discourse a Mason in France,
Spaine, or Turkey (say they) the sign is to kneel down on the left knee
and hole up his right hand to the sunn and the outlandish Brother will
perfectly take him up.”46
While Sweden braced for a Russian invasion and the Hanoverian
alliance prepared for the collapse of Charles XII, Görtz met secretly in
Holland with representatives of Czar Peter and persuaded Russia to
join the Swedish-Jacobite effort.47 The Czar called off his planned attack
on Sweden, a move which completely confused his late allies. It seems
certain that Görtz exploited the Russians’ Masonic connections to pull
off the diplomatic coup. He was probably informed by Mar about the
Czar’s Masonic affiliation, which had been confirmed in a letter to Mar
from George Mackenzie, who worked with Dr. Robert Erskine, the
Czar’s physician and Mar’s cousin, in St. Petersburg.48 Erskine, whose
“links to Jacobite Freemasonry were strong,” also amassed an “aston-
ishingly large” collection of alchemical and Rosicrucian works.49
In October 1714 Mackenzie wrote to Mar that Erskine was send-
ing the Czar’s trusted agent, Semen Grigorovich Naryshkin, to con-
vey some artifacts and information. Then, Mackenzie hinted at the
Russians’ Masonic bonds: “wtout breaking throw the Masson Word,
I hope, as to a Bror Mechanick of his Czarian Maty,” to carry a sea
compass and a box, both crafted by Peter, to “our King.” Mackenzie
seemed to use a Masonic code when he added:
What the other things may be? Are also Joyner’s work; but not being so
compleat a Carpenter as to let out all the cunning, without being seen,
your Lordp, having so long ago pass’t the Essay Master will enough be
apprised of it there, before the whole is come to a walding.50
In Scottish operative Masonry, the candidate had to present an
“Essay”—an architectural model—in order to become a Master Mason
and receive the Mason Word. But Mackenzie here suggests a political

46
British Library: Sloane MS. 3329 f. 142.
47
Nordmann, Crise, 10, 73 ff.; J. Murray, George I, 288–307.
48
On Erskine’s esoteric and Masonic interests, see Collis, Petrine Instauration,
107–86.
49
Collis, “Freemasonry,” 18–20.
50
Ibid., 19.
110 chapter four

meaning about the construction of the Jacobite-Russian alliance (in

Scottish dialect, “waldin” meant “tractable” or “easily controlled”).
Now, in 1716, as Mar corresponded with Gyllenborg in London and
Görtz in Holland, he took over the negotiations between the Pretender,
Russia, and Sweden.51 Working with Mar was General James Bruce, a
Scottish exile and Jacobite, whom Peter appointed as chief Russian
negotiator with the Swedes and Jacobites.52 Bruce had been a mem-
ber of Lefort’s Neptune Society, “variously described as masonic
and alchemical,” and he gained a reputation as “a necromancer.”53
According to Russian tradition, he served as Grand Master of the
first lodge in Moscow, where he was praised for having “penetrated
the mysteries of Freemasonry.”54 Peter also sent Dr. Erskine to The
Hague, where he garnered the support of various British naval offi-
cers and sailors. Swedenborg hinted at his own access to information
on the secret Swedish-Jacobite negotiations with the Russians, when
he wrote elliptically to Benzelius on 4 September 1716 that “some
think no guests [Russians] are expected in Scåne this year, that Sweden
may breathe more easiy.”55 Scåne was the location for the feared
Russian invasion.
In November Swedenborg was invited by Polhem to join Charles XII
at Lund, where he was instrumental in furthering Görtz’s Masonic design.
Unfortunately, there is much confusion concerning Swedenborg’s
alleged Masonic activities at this time. According to Beswick, he had
been initiated into Masonry during a visit to the University of Lund in
1706, and he subsequently visited lodges in the Baltic ports in 1714–15.56
Regnell claimed that Swedenborg was initiated in London in 1706 and
later “visited Charles XII at Altenstedt, in order to have the high order
of Masonry introduced into Sweden.”57 That Lund was often spelled
“Lunden” in Swedish documents adds to the confusion. Despite the
inaccurate dates and lack of documentation in both accounts, it is
possible that Swedenborg was initiated in London in 1710 and then
re-affiliated in Lund in 1716.

51
Stuart Erskine, “The Earl of Mar’s Legacy to Scotland, and to his Son, Lord
Erskine,” Publications of the Scottish Historical Society, 26 (1896), 241–42.
52
For Bruce’s esoteric and Masonic intersts, see Collis, Petrine Instauration, 45–106.
53
Cross, Banks of Neva, 28, 175, 226.
54
Bakounine, Répertoire, 84.
55
Acton, Letters, I, 114.
56
Beswick, Swedenborg, 9, 24, 29.
57
R. Tafel, “Swedenborg and Freemasonry,” 266–67.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 111

According to Elis Schröderheim, secretary and confidante of the

Masonic king Gustav III, the Holstein-born officer Georg Henning
Eckleff came to Sweden with Görtz in 1716 and brought with him
Masonic documents; moreover, Görtz also “intended to use Freema-
sonry in order to carry out his plans.”58 These documents (in French)
were later used by his son Carl Fredrik Eckleff, when he founded the
famous Chapitre Illuminé in Stockholm. Among documents recently
discovered in the Masonic archives in Stockholm is a hand-written
copy in English of James III’s eloquent protest in 1716 against
Archbishop Wake’s denunciation of his claim to the British throne.”59
The transcript was most likely sent by Gyllenborg, and it is suggestive
that it was preserved among “old Masonic writings.”
In 1716–18, while Swedenborg and Polhem became increasingly
involved in the king’s military and financial projects, they worked
closely with Eckleff père and Görtz.60 Beswick asserts that Polhem also
became a Mason, an undocumented claim that receives some plau-
sibility from a surviving portrait of Polhem which includes a com-
pass and the geometrical symbol for lodges.61 Though the relationship
of Charles XII to these secretive Masonic maneuverings remains a
mystery, a German initiate suggested in 1797 that the Swedish king
joined the fraternity.62 By 1924 that suggestion was enlarged into a
claim by Charles Weller, who added new details to Beswick’s account:
“Knowing that Swedenborg was intimate with King Charles XII, the
brethren in Great Britain solicited him to urge upon that monarch the
initiating of a similar change in the Order in Sweden.”63
Could Swedenborg’s portrayal of Charles XII as Daedalus, the fab-
ulous architect, have been a hint at the king’s Masonic association?
From the time of his accession in 1697, the precocious fourteen year-
old king began planning “a whole range of magnificent buildings to
make Stockholm the Paris of the north,” with a “military church on the

58
Schröderheim, Anteckningar, 81; Önnerfors, “From Jacobite Support,” 205.
59
Stockholm, Svenska Frimurare Orden, box “Aldre frimur. skrip, 1–10, JXXIII.
I am grateful to the archivist, Kjell Lekeby, for sending me a copy of this important
document.
60
Acton, Letters, I, 190.
61
See “Christopher Polhem,” Svensk Man och Kvinnor.
62
Jean Blum, J.A. Starck et la Querelle du Crypto-Catholicisme en Allemagne, 1785–
1789 (Paris: Felix Alcan, 1912), 36.
63
Charles Weller, “The Swedenborg Rite,” The New Age (June 1924), 341–43.
112 chapter four

scale of Les Invalides at Paris.”64 He worked closely with Nicodemus

Tessin, and he could have learned about Hans Ewald Tessin’s initia-
tion into a lodge in Scotland, Nicodemus Tessin’s pride in his role
as a “master mason,” and the late Stuart kings’ association with the
fraternity. However, when Charles XII marched his troops off to war
on the Continent in 1700, Tessin’s ambitious plans were put on hold
while the economy spiralled downward.
It is also possible that the Swedish king participated in a mobile mil-
itary lodge. The Masonic historian James Fairburn Smith argues that
ambulatory military lodges were directly responsible for the world-
wide spread of Masonry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.65
Since his childhood, Charles XII had been tutored by Scottish military
officers, whose roles as quartermaster general and master of gunnery
were considered part of the “craft” of operative masonry in seven-
teenth-century Scotland.66 Whether the king joined the fraternity or
not, he gave carte blanche to the schemes of Baron Görtz who, accord-
ing to Schröderheim, utilized Swedish-Jacobite Masonic networks to
further his diplomatic and military agenda.
While Swedenborg worked on the publication of Daedalus
Hyperboreus and fruitlessly sought an academic position, he waited for
a call from Polhem to enter the king’s service. Finally, in September
1716, Polhem received a royal command to join Charles XII at Lund,
to plan the building of a dam and dry dock at Karlscrona, and he rec-
ommended that Swedenborg be employed as his assistant. In prepara-
tion, Swedenborg printed a new title-page for Daedalus, to which he
added a poetic tribute to the architectural king, Charles XII:
Lo Daedalus did mount the winds, and from on high
Did scorn the snares King Minos laid on earth.
So mount the winds, my Daedalus, by thine own art
And scorn the snares the common herd may lay.67

64
Neil Kent, The Soul of the North: a Social, Architectural and Cultural History of
the Nordic Countries, 1700–1940 (London: Reaktion, 2000), 256.
65
James Fairburn Smith, The Rise of the Ecossais Degrees (Dayton: Ohio Lodge of
Research, 1965), 10.
66
David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland’s Century, 1590–1710
(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1988), 167.
67
Acton, Letters, I, 122.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 113

Swedenborg’s oblique hints at the snares laid for Charles XII by the
hostile George I and the obstacles placed by ignorant politicians before
his scientific projects would prove prophetic.
In November 1716, when Swedenborg and Polhem arrived at Lund,
they learned that the king had invited Nicodemus Tessin to join the
camp in order to discuss their long-delayed architectural plans. In a
rather dismissive statement, the historian Raghnild Hatton writes that
“the planning for future building, the hope of expressing himself in
architecture,” remained an “escape” for the king, while he was bur-
dened with the difficult economic situation.68 However, for both the
king and his royal architect, their visionary plans were more than mere
escapism. At this time, Tessin was at the zenith of his career, serving
not only as Superintendent of Public Works but as Court Marshal and
Privy Councillor. Martin Olin observes that
Seldom if ever has an architect, in any country, enjoyed such a combina-
tion of almost absolute authority in the arts with political influence and
administrative power . . . Tessin not only directed all royal building proj-
ects; the cultural policy of the Swedish realm was increasingly perceived
as his responsibility.69
The ambitious scope of the architectural agenda worried Swedenborg’s
friend Casten Feif, new chancellor of Lund University, who wrote
Tessin and advised him to keep the king’s architectural plans secret
in order to avoid resistance from critics of royal economic and mili-
tary policies. Though Tessin was unable to come to Lund (until spring
1718) because of pressing construction problems in Stockholm, he
corresponded energetically with the king from December 1716 about
theories and practices in architecture.
Within this context of secret “masonic” interests and communi-
cation, Swedenborg’s own participation in the king’s architectural
projects takes on a new significance. Swedenborg had already demon-
strated his familiarity with Tessin’s designs for the Temple of Apollo
at Versailles, and it was perhaps the royal architect (or Feif ) who rec-
ommended Swedenborg’s assistance to the king. Thus, Charles XII
ordered Swedenborg to assist Polhem “in the direction of buildings,

68
Hatton, Charles XII, 433.
69
Martin Olin, ed., Nicodemus Tessin the Younger: Sources, Works, Collections
(Stockholm: National Museum, 2004), 9.
114 chapter four

and mechanical works.”70 It was probably in connection with this

assignment that Swedenborg (in March 1717) asked Benzelius to send
to him “another pair of kid gloves,” for gifts of white kid-skin gloves
were traditionally required during lodge initiations.71 Swedenborg sub-
sequently undertook an examination of the Swedish guilds of crafts-
men. Given the king’s strong architectual interests, these obviously
included the guilds of operative masons.
Perhaps the confused tradition that Swedenborg joined a lodge at
Lund arose from this investigation. Lund was known for its Gothic
cathedral and fine stone masonry, and later Swedish Freemasons
claimed that ancient manuscripts were preserved which showed that
operative stonemasons’ guilds met in the city in the reign of Queen
Margaret, when many Gothic buildings were constructed.72 At this time,
Swedenborg read Hadriani Relandi’s Palaestina ex Monumentis (1716),
which drew on Josephus’s accounts of the building of the Temple and
included much Hebrew architectural and construction lore, material
which was assimilated into Scottish and English Freemasonry.73
While studying the guilds, Swedenborg also referred to the work
of Robert Fludd, whom Swedish Masons later credited with merg-
ing Rosicrucian interests into English masonic fraternities.74 When
Polhem recommended Swedenborg to the king’s service, he argued
that “mechanics is a study which demands much labor and brain-
work”; unfortunately, it has “come to be held as the art of a common
workman, which yet demands the best subjects and the quickest talents
that can be found in nature.”75 In the same way that Moray, Ashmole,
and the Tessins learned in the seventeenth century, Swedenborg and
Polhem concluded that the existing craftsmen’s guilds should be
infused with higher intellectual and spiritual aims. The guilds could

70
See “An Account of Emanuel Swedenborg,” European Magazine, 11 (April 1787),
230. This well-informed biography, which provides rare details on Swedenborg’s life,
was apparently written by someone who knew him (perhaps Husband Messiter or the
Nordenskjöld brothers).
71
Acton, Letters, I, 150–53; Kenneth Mackenzie, The Royal Masonic Cyclopedia
(1877; rpt. Wellingborough: Aquarian Press, 1987), 253.
72
J.G. Findel, History of Freemasonry, ed. Murray Lyon, 2nd. rev. ed. (1865;
London: Asher, 1869), 326.
73
Swedenborg, Catalogus, 2.
74
Acton, Letters, I, 155; and “Index”—Robert de Fluctibus; Christoph Gottlieb
von Murr, Über den wahren Ursprung der Rosenkreutzer und des Freymaurer-ordens
(Sulzbach: Seidel, 1803), 68–69.
75
Acton, Letters, I, 125.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 115

then contribute to the reinvigoration of the kingdom in economic,

military, and religious affairs. If Swedenborg was indeed initiated in
England, he would have observed the collaboration of educated gentle-
men with mechanics and artisans in the Masonic lodges, a collabora-
tion subsequently strengthened by Desaguliers.76
In Swedenborg’s report on the guilds, he discussed the first three
degrees of training—apprentice, journeyman, and master—which cor-
responded to those in British lodges.77 He advocated many practical
reforms as well as greater openness and mobility for craftsmen of
merit. In order to make the “royal arts” of masonry—geometry and
algebra—more available to Swedish workers, Swedenborg and Polhem
wrote basic text books of applied mathematics, and they collaborated
in drafting a dialogue between “Lady Theoria” and “Master Builder
Practicus.”78 The Master Builder, wearing his black leather apron,
pays court to the aristocratic Theoria, who is “not used to receiving
social calls” from such lowly craftsmen. As a practitioner of mechan-
ics and architecture, Practicus proposes marriage to her in order to
achieve greater “public utility.” At this time, there was a wide social
gap between a Fröken (woman of noble family) and a Master Builder
(master mason), which Polhem and Swedenborg hoped to eliminate.
In so doing, they would emulate the Scottish and British practice of
gentlemen joining operative masons in their lodges and architectural
enterprises. Moreover, in these mixed lodges, the brothers would wear
white, not black, leather aprons as a sign of the enhanced prestige of
their fraternity.
At Lund another concern of the Swedish king in 1716–18 may
have fueled his interest in or acceptance of Freemasonry. Voltaire
recounted the influence of Leibniz on Charles XII’s increasingly ecu-
menical attitude toward religion, a tolerance that was reinforced by his
experiences with a variety of beliefs in Turkey.79 On 21 May 1716

76
M. Jacob, Radical, 123–25.
77
Acton, Letters, I, 89, 155–56, 169–70.
78
Svante Lindquist, Technology on Trial (Uppsala: Almquist & Wiksell, 1984),
177–78. James Hyde notes that Swedenborg often copied and revised Polhem’s drafts
of articles, including “A Dialogue between Mechanica and Chymia, on the Essence
of Nature,” which they intended to publish in part VII of Daedalus. Thus, it seems
certain that Swedenborg also worked on Polhem’s “Masonic” dialogue. See Hyde,
Bibliography, 27.
79
Voltaire, François Marie Arouet, Lion of the North: Charles XII of Sweden, trans.
M.F.O. Jenkins (London: Associated University Presses, 1981), 250.
116 chapter four

the French traveller La Motraye wrote Benzelius that he had good

news about the king in Norway, for “he has given liberty of conscience
in his lands to all kinds of nationalities.”80 In this policy, Charles XII
followed the precedents of the last two Stuart kings, whose cause he
now supported. Was he aware that Stuart-style Freemasonry advocated
religious tolerance—including Jews and Moslems as well as Catholics
and Dissenters? By establishing good relations with Turkish rulers,
Charles XII initiated a long-lasting Swedish diplomatic tradition.
Even more pressing, however, was the need to improve Sweden’s
economic position. Like his earlier and current financial advisers,
Silfverkrantz and Feif, the king believed that Sweden needed Jewish
enterprise and expertise to improve its banking and trade capacity.
Silfverkrantz had corresponded with Polhem about these new financial
proposals. Moreover, Jews such as Fonseca and Francia had served
Sweden well in diplomatic as well as financial roles. The half-Jewish
Poniatowski represented the eclectic and mystical synthesis of Polish-
Jewish Orientalism, and he was beloved and respected by Charles.
As Poniatowski worked with the Swedish-Jacobite plotters in France,
he was assured by Dumont that “Le confident du grand Sacrificateur
que veut relever le sang de David . . . qu’ils resteront fermes.”81 Claude
Nordmann observes that certain expressions in Poniatowski’s cor-
respondence with the Jacobites have “une resonnance maçonnique.”
Stanislaus Mnemon further suggests that Poniatowski later played a
lead role in merging “Oriental” (Jewish) mysticism into the developing
higher degrees of Jacobite Freemasonry.82
The king had recently welcomed to Sweden a party of thirty Jews and
their families, who had helped him in Adrianople.83 Now encamped
around Lund, they perhaps revealed to their Swedish comrades the
mystical messianism that flourished in the Sabbatian communities
of Turkey and Greece. Swedenborg, whose knowledge of Hebrew
had been recommended to Casten Feif, knew about the king’s own
Hebrew studies and his plan to uitilize Jewish financial and diplomatic
expertise. Bishop Swedberg viewed these overtures from an enthusi-
astically millenarian standpoint, for they bore out his conviction that

80
Linköping: Bref till Benzelius, V, 40.
81
Nordmann, Crise, 153 n. 48.
82
Mnemon, Conspiration, 30–34, 60–67.
83
Valentin, Judarnas, 97.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 117

Charles XII’s mission in Turkey was a spiritual crusade that would

usher in the mass conversion of Jews and Moslems.84
Eric Benzelius, the patron of Rabbi Kemper’s Judaeo-Christian syn-
thesis, also responded to the king’s philo-Semitism and ecumenical
tolerance. It was perhaps in response to the king’s plans that Benzelius
sent his protégé Anders Norrelius to Amsterdam, in order to check out
the “correctness” of the Zoharic interpretations of Kemper, who had
recently died.85 According to Elliot Wolfson, Kemper did not make
“a clean break” with his Sabbatian past, for he continued to teach
crypto-Sabbatian material to his students.86 While in Amsterdam,
Norrelius became fascinated by the writings of Rabbi Nehemiah
Hayon, a crypto-Sabbatian, whose Oz l’elohim (Berlin, 1713) reinforced
Kemper’s Christian-Kabbalistic messianism. Norrelius contacted
Jews in Amsterdam who were sympathetic to the excommunicated
Hayon.87 He was especially impressed that Hayon’s theory of three
persons within the Godhead reinforced the esoteric trinity espoused
by Kemper. Concluding that Hayon was a true Kabbalist, Norrelius
affirmed that his only heresy was his closeness to Christianity. Many
of Hayon’s and Kemper’s Christian-Kabbalistic themes would later
emerge in Swedenborg’s theosophic works.
Benzelius felt confident enough in the king’s philo-Semitism to
introduce his students to Kabbalistic literature. Susanna Åkerman
has discovered that Benzelius wrote an important treatise in which he
revealed his thorough studies of theoretical and practical Kabbalah,
drawing on the Zohar and the Christian-Kabbalistic commentaries of
Reuchlin, Pico, Riccius, Rittangelius, Carpzov, Franckenberg, Wächter,
and Buddeus.88 He also described Bureus’s “Hermetic-Kabbalistic”
works, including Bureus’s positive reply to the Rosicrucian Fama
Fraternitatis. Praising Henry More and Knorr von Rosenroth, author
of the Kabbala Denudata, Benzelius revealed that their collaborator
F.M. van Helmont had given him a copy of Historiae Evangelica in
Hamburg in 1697. Stressing the importance of the late Rabbi Kemper’s

84
R. Tafel, Documents, I, 130.
85
Schoeps, Barocke Juden, 69–74.
86
Wolfson, “Messianism.”
87
Roth, “Haham David Nieto,” Essays and Portraits in Anglo-Jewish History
(Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1962), 125–27.
88
I am grateful to Dr. Åkerman for sending me a copy of Eric Benzelius praeses
Phil. Diss. Notitiae literariae . . . exhibens res Judeorum (Uppsala, 1718).
118 chapter four

teaching on the Christian interpretation of the Zohar, he listed the

titles of Kemper’s manuscripts now held in the university library.
Like Leibniz, Benzelius believed that Hebrew and Kabbalistic stud-
ies stimulated creative mathematical thinking (the arte combinatoria),
and he encouraged Swedenborg to not only present copies of Daedalus
to the king but to discuss mathematics with him. As Swedenborg later
recalled,
I was struck with amazement at the force of his majesty’s genius, . . . as
obliged me to esteem this eminent personage, not as my rival, but by far
my superior in my own art . . . [I will show] with what discerning skill he
was endowed, and how deeply he penetrated into the obscurest recesses
of the arithmetical science.
Besides, his eminent talents in calculation further appear, by his fre-
quent working and solving most difficult numerical problems, barely by
thought and memory, in which others are obliged to take great pains
and tedious labour.
Having duly weighed the vast advantages arising from mathematical
and arithmetical knowledge to the inmost conditions of human life, he
subsequently used as an adage, that he who is ignorant of numbers is
scarce half a man.
While he was at Bender, he completed a compleat volume of military
exercises, highly esteemed by those who are skilled in the art of war.89
In their proposal for a Society of Mathesis, Benzelius and Swedenborg
hoped to convince the king of its usefulness for his military campaigns,
for it would include studies in artillery, the art of shooting, shipbuild-
ing, field mills, and mining.90 Swedenborg also hoped to interest him
in the military and intelligence projects which he had written about
while abroad. At Polhem’s urging, the king appointed Swedenborg as
an “Assessor Extraordinary” in the College of Mines, but he was soon
involved in major military projects. These took on a new urgency, for
Baron Görtz’s fertile mind had produced a complete reversal of the
king’s diplomatic fortunes.
At Lund Charles presided over a revitalized army of twenty thou-
sand men; at Hamburg funds poured into the banks to support his pro-
jected conquest of Norway and expedition to Scotland; at Gothenburg

89
Extract from J.A. Nordberg’s Konung Carl den XIIes Historia (Stockholm,
1740); translated as “A Curious Memoir of M. Emanuel Swedenborg, concerning
Charles XII of Sweden,” Gemtleman’s Magazine, 24 (1754), 423–24. For Swedenborg’s
full account, see Acton, Letters, I, 458–64.
90
Acton, Letters, I, 123.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 119

his fleet was replenished with Scottish and French volunteers; at The
Hague his ministers reported that Czar Peter hates George I mortally
and supports the just cause of the Pretender.91 In London his ambas-
sador rejoiced at what seemed certain victory for the Swedish-Jacobite
campaign. “In short,” wrote Gyllenborg to Görtz on 23 October 1716,
“it will be a glorious enterprise, which will put an end to all our
Misfortunes, by ruining those that are the Authors of them.”92
In November Gyllenborg informed Charles XII of the revived
Jacobite plan, but in keeping with Görtz’s admonishments for abso-
lute secrecy, he put nothing in writing to the king and relied on oral
transmission.93 Görtz, who was not burdened with the Swedish king’s
absolute refusal to lie, blithely denied in public all connections between
Charles XII and the Jacobites. In fact, Görtz was so successful that, as
Nordmann observes, “the diplomatic fiction of Charles XII’s ignorance
of these intrigues” survives today.94 Swedenborg’s silence on these
affairs suggests his own oath-bound secrecy rather than ignorance of
the plot. Polhem’s correspondence reveals his close collaboration with
the king, Gyllenborg, Görtz, Benzelius, and Swedenborg at this time.95
Benzelius followed the Jacobite project closely and kept a cautious
notebook record which somehow survived the burning of his political
papers in 1743.96 Moreover, his old friend Robert Leslie was corre-
sponding with Charles XII about the proposed Swedish expedition to
Scotland. As Leslie later told Thomas Carte,
The King of Sweden was from 1715 to 1718 ready to come with what
forces he could bring. Mr. L [Leslie] in his first letter proposed 6 or 7000
men . . . K [King] of Sweden desired Mr. L be sent to him, but it was not
allowed at Avignon. Baron Sparre would have him gone without the
knowledge of the people there but he would not thrust himself into an

91
Nordmann, Grandeur, 193–205; Carl Gyllenborg, Letters which Passed between
the Count Carl Gyllenborg, the Barons Görtz, Sparre, and Others Relating to the Design
of Raising a Rebellion in his Majesty’s Dominions to be Supported by a Force from
Sweden (London, 1717), 9.
92
Gyllenborg, Letters, 4.
93
J. Murray, George I, 307.
94
Nordmann, Grandeur, 200. Nordmann refers to the surprisingly short shrift
given by Hatton to Charles XII’s sympathy for James Stuart, for the Swedish king’s
support of the Jacobites is extensively reported in contemporary documents.
95
Axel Liljencrantz, Christopher Polhems Brev. Lychnos-Bibliothek 6 (Uppsala:
Almquist and Wiksells, 1941–46).
96
Benzelius, Anecdota, 52, 87.
120 chapter four

important negotiation without orders. Letters however passed between

him and K of Sw.97
While Swedenborg worked on military projects—designing transport
for heavy guns to Norway, mechanical rollers for moving warships
from inland to seaports, salt-making projects like those in Scotland—
Gyllenborg, Preis, and Samuel Triewald launched a pamphlet campaign
to gain popular support for the anti-Hanoverian coalition. Despite
furious counter-blasts from Hanoverian polemicists, by November
1716 Gyllenborg could confidently report to Görtz that his argument
that the Swedes and Jacobites would maintain English liberties against
Germanic oppression was shifting the sympathies of the people: “The
greatest part of the Nation being at present inflamed with Jacobitism.”98
In early January Gyllenborg boasted of winning over many Whigs
to the cause, and he even hoped to gain the Prince of Wales, who
hated his father, George I.99 Görtz was both reassured and worried by
Gyllenborg’s boastings; he replied that you may assure your friends in
England that “our Prince will certainly be of the party, but I conjure
you to put nothing in writing.”100
During this critical period, in early January 1717, Charles XII sent
Swedenborg and Polhem to Gothenburg, where Polhem was to advise
the city officials on the establishment of a mint—a project connected
with Görtz’s proposals for a new coinage and financial reforms.
Benzelius had earlier asked Swedenborg to join his family at Brunsbo,
but Swedenborg replied on 22 January that to leave Polhem “in a place
where weighty desseiner are in hand, is as contrary to his Majesty’s
intention and pleasure as it is in the long run to my own advantage.”101
Swedenborg and Polhem may have been privy to the Jacobites’ message
to Görtz that they wanted the Pretender himself to go to Gothenburg
in January to command the invading force.102 As we shall see, soon
after this letter was sent, the agents in Gothenburg learned that the
Swedish-Jacobite plot had been exposed in London; Swedenborg and
Polhem then left Gothenburg, and the mint was never built.

97
Bodleian: Carte MS. 231, f. 23 (19 April 1725).
98
Gyllenborg, Letters, 10.
99
BL: Add. MS. 32, 258, f. 124. Intercepted letter.
100
Ibid., f. 141. Intercepted letter.
101
Acton, Letters, I, 139.
102
Göran Behre, “Gothenburg in Stuart War Strategy, 1649–1760,” in Grant Simpson,
ed., Scotland and Scandinavia, 800–1800 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1990), 110.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 121

After a year of intercepting and deciphering Gyllenborg’s correspon-

dence, George I’s government was seriously alarmed. On 29 January,
seven days after Francia’s trial, Gyllenborg was arrested, his house
searched, and his papers confiscated—in a clear violation of interna-
tional laws of diplomatic immunity. To the frustration of the British
government, he had already destroyed the most incriminating docu-
ments and burned the complicated cipher.103 Arrested with Gyllenborg
were Sir Jacob Bancks, now functioning as a Jacobite financier, and
Charles Caesar, Tory M.P. and a close friend of Pope and Swift. An
angry George I put heavy pressure on the Dutch government to arrest
Görtz, which they reluctantly agreed to do. Görtz and Poniatowski
had been meeting secretly in Amsterdam with Dr. Erskine, the Czar’s
agent, and with Henry Jerningham, the Pretender’s agent, to finalize
Russian support for the projected invasion of Scotland. But Preis was
able to warn Görtz of the impending arrest, and he too was able to
hide or destroy the cipher to his correspondence. At The Hague the
Dutch police arrested Gustaf Gyllenborg but honored Preis’s diplo-
matic immunity. The police eventually caught Görtz at Arnheim, but
they refused to compound their violation of international law by con-
fiscating his papers.
The arrest of his diplomats infuriated Charles XII, who ordered the
counter-arrest of Robert Jackson in Stockholm, but Jackson was able
to report to London, “I’ve removed my letters and papers to the Dutch
embassy, so I’ve no pain.”104 Benzelius knew Jackson’s son, a student
at Uppsala, and he followed the developments with alarmed fascina-
tion.105 When the British government published Letters which passed
between Count Gyllenborg, Barons Goertz, Sparre, and Others, relating
to raising a Rebellion in his Majesty’s Dominion to be Supported by a
Force from Sweden (1717), the act of publication itself and the con-
tents caused an international sensation. Benzelius acquired a copy, and
Swedenborg must have been relieved that his name did not appear in
the published correspondence of his friends.106
According to Robert Leslie, Gyllenborg had been warned four days
before the arrest, and the searchers did not find a scrap of paper about

103
Nordmann, Crise, 91–105.
104
NA: SP 95/22, f. 376.
105
Benzelius, Anecdota, 52–54.
106
Ibid., 53.
122 chapter four

him—“All the letters printed being only letters intercepted by post.”107

The published letters, however, made clear that many of the concerns
of Swedenborg and Polhem—about shipments of corn and iron, salt-
making, passports and privileges to merchants, etc.—were part of an
elaborate cover-up of the clandestine work of the conspirators. Bishop
Swedberg was greatly depressed by news of Gyllenborg’s arrest, for
their effort to unify the Swedish and Anglican churches was now pub-
licized as part of the Jacobite conspiracy.108
The Hanoverian ploy was temporarily successful in forcing the
postponement of the Swedish-Jacobite invasion, which had been
planned for March 1717. At the Russian camp, Czar Peter was furi-
ous that Dr. Erskine’s name came out in the correspondence, and
he cavalierly denied any involvement in the plot.109 At Paris, the Abbé
Dubois—anti-Jacobite minister to the Regent Orleans—stopped the
naval preparations which had been subsidized by Baron Hogguer, who
supported Görtz’s plan and apparently joined the Masonic network.110
In London, the Sicilian and Spanish ambassadors protested the arrest
of Gyllenborg, while at The Hague Preis sent out a steady stream of
protests about the arrest of Görtz. Diplomatic Europe was seriously
shocked, because all diplomats would now be at the mercy of spies,
informers, and police.
To justify its action, the British government mounted a propa-
ganda campaign against Sweden, led by Daniel Defoe’s Account of
the Swedish and Jacobite Plot . . . Occasioned by the Publishing of Count
Gyllenborg’s Letters (1717). Defoe outlined Sweden’s negotiations with
Russia and various bankers, and he condemned the English Tories who
collaborated with Gyllenborg. In an unholy alliance, the Jacobites are
“bringing in the Pretender by Goths and Vandals, Muscovites, Turks,
Tartars, Italian and French Papists.”111 Charles XII treats his subjects
“like brute beasts,” while the Swedes are “slavish and barbarous.” In
conclusion, he ranted that “no Man who has any bowels of compas-
sion, can think of seeing his native Country become a prey to Swedes,
Laplanders, Finlanders, and the rest of the Northern Mohocks.”

107
Bodleian: Carte MS: 231. f. 23.
108
Gyllenborg, Letters, 16; Wetterberg, Swedberg, 265–66.
109
Lamberty, Mémoires, X, 41–42; Nordmann, Crise, 92.
110
F. Pouy, Mémoire de Baron Hogguer (Amiens, 1890), 1–21. On the Hogguer
family and Masonry, see André Kervella, La Passion Écossaise (Paris: Dervy, 2002),
159–60, 167.
111
[Defoe], Account, 21, 32.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 123

Aware of the overtures made to Non-Juring Anglicans by Gyllenborg,

Bishop Swedberg, and other Swedish churchmen, Defoe lashed out at
the Swedes as “intolerant High Church Lutherans,” whom the gull-
ible Anglicans pitched upon “to bring in the Popish Pretender.” In a
follow-up pamphlet, What if the Swedes Should Come? (1717), Defoe
warned that English virgins would be ravished and invoked the threat
of “Iron-Fac’d Swedes” to argue for a standing army (to be made up
largely of Germans) in England.112 Defoe’s vilification of the Swedish
king and people, which was echoed by other Whig propagandists, was
so intense that it contributed to a poisoning of Anglo-Swedish rela-
tions that festered for the next fifty years.
In April 1717, with Gyllenborg under house arrest, Defoe himself
admitted that “things growing ripe now for a breach with Sweden,
everything was done both publick and private that might provoke
the people against the King of Sweden.” But the Hanoverian policy
towards Sweden was so unpopular that it split the Whigs in 1717, for
many agreed with Gyllenborg’s exposure of the Hanoverians’ aggres-
sive terrirtorial aims abroad. When George I pressured Parliament to
prohibit all trade with Sweden, in an attempt to starve the Swedes
into submission, many of his British subjects were disgusted.
While the pamphlet war raged in England, with translations published
in Europe, the French government finally persuaded both parties to
release their diplomatic prisoners. In July Gyllenborg learned of his
impending freedom (and exile from England), which greatly relieved
his many friends.
Gyllenborg left London convinced that the majority of the English
population was dishonest, untrustworthy, and mercenary—native
traits made worse by the corrupt rule of the Hanoverians. They were
hardly worthy of their great Stuart heritage, but a Jacobite restoration
was the only hope for British national redemption. His view would
eventually be shared by Eric Benzelius, who came to grief in his deal-
ings with English academics, whom he believed to have cheated him
out of his scholarly work on Philo.113 Gyllenborg’s arrest and the
propaganda campaign did not discourage his Jacobitism; instead, he

112
[Daniel Defoe], What if the Swedes Should Come? (London, 1717), 8, 10, 31.
113
Ryman, Benzelius, 227.
124 chapter four

arrived in Sweden determined to complete the bold enterprise against

George I.114
In August and September, Görtz and Gustaf Gyllenborg were freed
in Holland, and they renewed their Jacobite contacts. Preis remained
at The Hague, where he carried out the principal negotiations with the
Russians and Jacobites.115 From the time of Carl Gyllenborg’s release
in July, Francia worked with Sparre and Dillon in France, where he
played a critical role in handling the secret passage of money from the
Pretender to the assorted allies.116 Francia was also privy to the devel-
oping cooperation between Görtz and the Czar.
From autumn 1717 through November 1718, Swedenborg was
called upon by the king, Görtz, and presumably Carl Gyllenborg to
work on top secret projects for the resumed Jacobite plot. Gyllenborg
asked Bishop Swedberg and Benzelius to help him in his continuing
church unification project.117 Throughout Gyllenborg’s political work,
he continued to correspond with Swedberg.118
Having learned so painfully about the remorseless efficiency of
British postal espionage, the Swedish plotters and their allies imple-
mented a system of non-traceable and largely non-written com-
munication that utilized all the “Masonic” tricks of secrecy—oaths,
finger signs, body postures, symbolic language, disappearing inks, trick
papers, etc. In France, according to some French Masonic historians,
the first French lodges were established in 1718—as auxiliaries of the
Jacobite field lodges.119 Nordmann argues that many Swedes serving
in the French army, especially in Sparre’s regiment, were initiated
into Franco-Jacobite lodges in 1718–19.120

This expansion and refinement of the Jacobite Masonic system was

triggered not only by the security needs of the plotters but by the
development in London in 1716–19 of a counter-Masonic system
to support the Hanoverian cause. Gyllenborg could have learned
about these developments from Mårten Triewald, a Swedish friend

114
Nordmann, Crise, 109–10.
115
Stig Jägersköld, Sverige och Europa, 1716–1718 (Ekenäs, 1937), 278, 287.
116
HMC: Stuart Papers, IV, 428, 454, 489, 496, 516, 519.
117
Hilding Pleijel, Svenska Kyrkans Historia (Stockholm, 1941), 239–42.
118
Jägerskiöld, Sverige, 386.
119
Pierre Chevallier, Les Ducs sous l’Acacia (Paris: J. Vrin, 1964), 15–16, and
Histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie Française (Paris: Fayard, 1974), I, 5.
120
Nordmann, Grandeur, 424.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 125

who had come to London in 1716 and who was currently studying
mechanics under Desaguliers, a prime mover in the “new” Hanoverian
Masonry.121 Svante Lindquist notes that Mårten was thus “in touch
with Freemasonry circles” and may have become an initiate, which
“might provide an explanation of how he was able to establish himself
so quickly in England.”122 However, Mårten had another mission in
London, arranged by his brother Samuel Triewald, who had offered
his services to Görtz and who helped Gyllenborg with anti-Hanoverian
propaganda.
Görtz and Gyllenborg utilized Mårten as a spy on Desaguliers (and
other Whigs), and the young Swedish scientist moved into the resi-
dence of Friedrich Ernst von Fabrice, the Holstein minister, who was
currently undertaking a secret intelligence mission for Görtz.123 Fabrice
engaged Mårten as a private secretary, with “the privilege of assisting
him in his affairs and important correspondence.” Lindquist notes that
Mårten, who was “something of an adventurer,” now “found himself
caught up in international power politics,” in which he was employed
as a diplomatic assistant and courier, including at least one journey
to Paris.124 His activities, which continue to puzzle historians, bear
a striking similarity to Swedenborg’s—especially during the latter’s
earlier “missions” for Gyllenborg, Palmquist, and Preis.
While studying mechanical and industrial projects in London, Mårten
Triewald was in a perfect position to counter the espionage work of the
Hanoverian spies who had recently been sent to the Karlscrona dock-
works by the British admiral, John Norris.125 Swedenborg and Polhem
met these spies, and they composed a satirical account of their encoun-
ter with them. Swedenborg claimed that the English spies opposed his
efforts to reform and modernize the guilds, for they urged that “Guilds

121
Rydberg, Svenska, 202–05.
122
Lindquist, Technology, 198.
123
Are Waerland, “Marten Triewald and the First Steam Engine in Sweden,”
Newcomen Society. Transactions, VII (1926–27), 27–31. Lindquist acknowledges that
“the chronology of Triewald’s first years in England is uncertain”; see Technology, 196.
Though he dates Fabrice’s arrival in London to August 1717, the diplomat had made
earlier visits while carrying out missions for Görtz. From Triewald’s own comment
that he moved on to Newcastle in 1717, it seems certain that he arrived in London
in 1716.
124
Ibid., 152, 196–97. Unfortunately, in his important study, Lindquist does not
place Triewald and Fabrice in the context of the Jacobite-Hanoverian rivalries which
influenced their conduct in Britain.
125
Chance, BDI: Sweden, I, 92.
126 chapter four

must be supported in power, so as to make the term of apprenticeship

longer and harder, and so discourage promising apprentices.”126 He
viewed the Hanoverian espionage and bribery as an attempt to suffo-
cate all Swedish efforts at economic recovery. Mårten Triewald, who
was a friend and correspondent of Polhem, was probably informed of
this Hanoverian intrusion into Swedish technological affairs.
In the meantime in London, Desaguliers and Triewald were at the
center of mechanical and political developments that had significant
Masonic ramifications. In both England and Sweden, economic rival-
ries based on mechanical inventions and manufacturing reinforced the
political rivalries. In the wake of the Jacobite rising of 1715 and the
revelation of Gyllenborg’s correspondence with the Jacobites, George
I imposed a stringent ban on all trade with Sweden in March 1717.
British businessmen involved in the steel manufactories protested the
ban, for they relied on imports of Swedish iron to make steel. Moreover,
most of them—centered in the Northeast and Scotland—sympathized
with the Jacobites and actively supported the rebels.
John Crowley, a Jacobite Mason and head of the large steelworks
near Newcastle, was arrested in London in 1715 but continued to raise
money for the Swedish-Jacobite plot after his release.127 It was no coin-
cidence that when Fabrice concluded his secret negotiations for Görtz
and returned to Sweden, Mårten Triewald left London and moved on
to Newcastle—the entry port recommended by Mar and Ormonde for
Charles XII’s invasion force.128
Triewald then called on Crowley, whom the Swedes and Jacobites
counted on for further support. The historian Leo Gooch argues that
the Jacobites in Newcastle and the Northeast—home territory of the
Earls of Derwentwater—utilized Masonic networks to link up with
collaborators in Scotland, England, and abroad.129 Lindquist suggests
that it was at this time that Triewald began to “finish his signature
with a little cross stroke, the stylized cross which Freemasons used
to indicate their solidarity with the order.”130 These crosses would be

126
Acton explains that Swedenborg composed the satire under the name of Polhem;
see his “Life,” I, 157–59.
127
M.W. Flinn, Men of Iron: The Crowleys in the Early Iron Industry (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh UP, 1962), 67–69; Leo Gooch, The Desperate Faction?: Jacobites of North-
East England, 1688–1745 (Hull: Hull UP, 1995), 44, 202.
128
Gooch, Desperate Faction, 34–35.
129
Ibid., 39.
130
Lindquist, Technology, 348 n. 93.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 127

used by Jacobite and (later Templar) Masons but not by Hanoverian

“modern” Masons.
Desaguliers and those Masons in London who were supporters of
the Hanoverian government worried increasingly that the Masonic
lodges were dominated by Jacobites. Moreover, rumors of the spread
of the order into France and Sweden would only reinforce their fears.
In the wake of the Jacobite rising and reports of Scottish-Swedish col-
laboration, the Masters of several London lodges met to plan a regu-
larizing of festival days. Douglas Vieler argues that “the emphasis in
organizing Grand Lodge on the Annual Feast with a public proces-
sion” was a response to the perceived linkage of Freemasonry to the
Jacobite rebellion: “In an atmosphere of divided loyalty, . . . masons in
London, which was the center of much of the diplomatic intrigue of
the time, felt the need . . . to demonstrate semi-publicly their loyalty.”131
J.R. Clarke goes further and states that the Jacobite agitation, especially
the Gyllenborg plot, provoked the Hanoverian Masons to attempt a
take-over of the fraternity.132 On 4 June 1717 Desaguliers attended
a meeting of four London lodges which joined together to form the
Grand Lodge of England, a new organization that was clearly dedi-
cated to the Hanoverian succession and Whig ministry.
Margaret Jacob sums up this attempted transformation of English
Freemasonry: “In Hanoverian England, Whiggery provided the belief
and values, while Freemasonry supplied one temple wherein some
of its most devoted followers worshipped the God of Newtonian
science.”133 However, these Hanoverian moves would not go unchal-
lenged, and the Jacobites continued to mount counter-moves.134 In
persecuted pockets in Britain and in clandestine lodges abroad, the
“ancient” Masons’ Royal Art of divinely sanctioned kings would strug-
gle against the “modern” Masons’ “God of Newtonian science.” While
the Jacobite-Hanoverian rivalries ramified into the political affairs of
many countries, it would be Charles XII’s admirers in Sweden, more

131
Douglas Veiler, “As It Was Seen—and As It Was,” AQC, 96 (1983), 83.
132
J.R. Clarke, “The Establishment of the Premier Grand Lodge: Why in London
and Why in 1717?”, AQC, 76 (1963), 5.
133
M. Jacob, Radical, 121.
134
I cover these developments in “The Post Man Newspaper and the Roberts
Constitution (1722): Jacobite versus Hanoverian Claims for Masonic ‘Antiquity’ and
‘Authenticity,’ ” Heredom: Transactions of the Scottish Rite Research Society, 18 (2010),
121–86; and in French translation in La Régle d’Abraham: Revue semestrielle
d’herméneutique, 30 (January 2011), 3–62.
128 chapter four

than any other initiated “brothers,” who maintained their loyalty to

the Stuart traditions of Freemasonry.

In July 1717 Görtz, Poniatowki, and their agent, Theodore von Neuhof,
arrived in Sweden and reported to the king on their negotiations with
the Russians and Jacobites. Poniatowki particularly interpreted these
new developments in millenarian and Masonic terms.135 The efforts to
restore or maintain the “legitimate” kings of Europe—Philip V in Spain
and France, James III in England, Stanislaus Leszczynzki in Poland—
would establish government according to “the maxims of the reign of
Solomon.”136 The necessary restoration of the Jews to Palestine would
follow in due course. Poniatowski fervently believed that Charles XII
would be the chivalric leader of this mystical crusade.
That Poniatowski and Görtz persuaded Czar Peter of his role in the
“Masonic” effort is suggested by the Russians’ participation in new
negotiations on the Åland Islands (off the Swedish coast). After meet-
ing with Görtz in Holland, the Czar sent to Åland two representatives
who were allegedly Freemasons. The principle Russian negotiator was
General James Bruce, whose Jacobite and Masonic ties have already
been noted. The second negotiator was Prince Andrei Ivanovich
Osterman, whose family maintained shadowy ties with Masonry over
the next decades.137 His son Ivan Andreievich Osterman would later
join an Écossais lodge in Stockholm and become (temporarily) a politi-
cal collaborator of Swedenborg. Representing Charles XII were Görtz
and Gyllenborg, who were reinforced by Fabrice after he arrived from
London in 1718.138
The intense secrecy maintained by the negotiators at Åland set a
new standard in clandestine diplomacy. Defoe, who infiltrated Masonic
lodges in Scotland and England, concluded that Russia signed a treaty
to support the Swedish-Jacobite plan:
That this Treaty [with Russia] was carry’d farther than has ever yet been
made publick, will not be doubted . . . There was nothing of this nature
ever carried on with more art, or concealed with more care, than the
negotiations at this place; the whole world, and the most penetrating
people in it, were at a loss about it, all the public accounts proved empty

135
Nordmann, Crise, 152–53.
136
Mnemon, Conspiration, 62.
137
Bakounine, Répertoire, 384–85.
138
Nordmann, Crise, 155.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 129

and frivolous . . . so exactly did the Czar and the King of Sweden preserve
the Secret among themselves, and amuse the world.139
Schröderheim and Nordmann argue that Jacobite Freemasonry pro-
vided the critical secret network of communication and effective oaths
of loyalty that allowed Görtz and his collaborators to outsmart the
Hanoverian intelligence system.140 Provocatively, Swedenborg’s access
to secret information about the Swedish-Russian negotiations is sug-
gestive of his own participation in the Masonic network.
Throughout 1718, Swedenborg worked closely and secretly with
Charles XII’s most trusted army officers. In the summer at the
Karlskrona dry-dock project, he worked directly under Görtz, with
whom he talked and corresponded.141 Unfortunately, those letters
have disappeared. When the diplomat travelled to and from the
Åland meetings, he called on Swedenborg.142 In September Görtz’s
right-hand man, Georg Eckleff, delivered the king’s letter of support
to Swedenborg for his projects. The king evidently took Swedenborg
into full confidence on his plans and expected him to accompany the
army to Norway. Did this confidence include a Masonic ceremony
that stressed oaths of secrecy and loyalty? Swedenborg later recorded
in the mystically veiled language of his Journal of Dreams: “I dreamed
of my youth and the Gustavian family . . . Of the king that gave away
so precious a thing in a peasant’s cabin.”143 He further described
Charles XII sitting in a dark room, whispering a message, shutting
the window, and using Swedenborg’s help to draw the curtains.
Swedenborg’s dream memory occurred in the same period (1744)
when he recorded his own initiation into a secret, mystical Jacobite
society.144 In that year, Swedenborg and his Masonic friends were once
again working towards a Stuart restoration.
Not only was Swedenborg privy to secret information on the
Åland negotiations, but he had contacts with the Russians who served
the Czar.145 He shared many interests and probably met with General
Bruce, an ingenious mathematician, who was named by the Czar to serve

139
Defoe, Some Account . . . Goertz, 34–35.
140
Schröderheim, Anteckningar, 81; Nordmann, Crise, 10, and Grandeur, 424.
141
Acton, “Life,” I, 182.
142
Acton, Letters, I, 185–92.
143
Swedenborg, Journal of Dreams, #11, 31, 43.
144
See ahead, Chapter Eleven.
145
Acton, Letters, I, 187.
130 chapter four

as President of the Russian College of Mines in 1717.146 Swedenborg

was similarly appointed by Charles XII (in December 1716) to serve
as an Extraordinary Assessor on the Swedish Board of Mines.147 Bruce
had accompanied Peter to London in 1698, where he met Newton
and Halley (Swedenborg’s friend), and collected the latest scientific
instruments.148 On his return to Russia, Bruce set up an observatory,
where the Masonic-style School of Navigation and Mathematics was
housed. With the Czar’s support, Bruce carried out the same kind
of scientific agenda that Swedenborg hoped to implement under
Charles XII’s patronage. Curiously, Bruce’s experimental program was
infused with his Hermetic and Rosicrucian interests, as revealed in the
astonishing collection of esoteric works in his library.149
Despite the friendly atmosphere of the Åland negotiations,
Swedenborg distrusted the Russians and feared they were spying on
Sweden’s new mining and manufacturing enterprises. In fact, the Czar
had sent spies into the country in 1715 to study the system of colleges
which Görtz revamped in his economic reforms. The activities of these
spies may explain Swedenborg’s oddly veiled warning to Benzelius that
the Russian agreement covers over situations dangerous for Sweden.
Writing in Latin, Swedenborg hinted at the peace proposals and then
warned, “If only under the honey there lies not concealed—” (left
blank).150 Benzelius continued to make cautious notes on the Åland
affair and about the projected expedition to Scotland.151
During this period of secret work for the king and
Görtz, Swedenborg resumed his studies in alchemi-
cal literature. He read about the experiments of Borri and
Fludd in Sammlung von Natur-und Medicine . . . Geschichte
(September 1717). His investigations were stimulated by
the arrival in Lund of Captain Johan Stenflycht, an army officer
who possessed some rare alchemical manuscripts.152 Stenflycht was a

146
Bakounine, Répertoire, 84. For their similar careers and probable meeting, see
Collis, Petrine Instauration, 89–90.
147
Acton, Letters, I, 187.
148
Cross, Banks of Neva, 226.
149
Collis, “Freemasonry,” 10–15.
150
Acton, Letters, I, 187.
151
Benzelius, Anecdota, 54–58.
152
Lekeby, Gustaviansk Mystik, 430–31.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 131

favorite of Charles XII, and he and Swedenborg would remain friends and
political collaborators for many years.153 Swedenborg’s quasi-mystical
attitude to metals was reflected in his strange theories of tremulations,
vapors emanating from mines, divining rods, etc. He would soon
apply these observations to theories concerning mental telepathy and
mind-reading.
Bishop Swedberg added his own quasi-mystical theories to his belief
in the divine right of kings. Swedberg had earlier assured the king’s
mother that the visionary prophecies about the Northern Lion were
coming true in the great accomplishments of her son.154 In early 1718
he visited Charles XII at Lund, where he preached a sermon before
the king that was fraught with astrological portents. Carl Gyllenborg,
who was in the king’s entourage, renewed his solicitation of Swedberg’s
assistance for their mutual project of “the ecclesiastical union and
fraternity between the national churches of England and Sweden.”155
Swedberg understood the Jacobite significance of the effort, and
Benzelius was definitely aware of the place of this religious union
within Gyllenborg’s diplomatic and military plans.156
While visiting Charles XII, Swedberg also recounted his story of the
visionary maid of Skara, which piqued the king’s interest. According to
La Motraye, the bishop claimed that during her “syncopes” (trances)
the maid saw God and angels; even more intriguing, she saw “a fine
White Temple.”157 For the king, the proposed restorer of the Solomonic
Temple, the vision must have been intriguing. He subsequently visited
the girl, now cured of her anorexia and married, and he questioned
her carefully. Swedberg believed that she received spiritual nourish-
ment from the Word of God, but his rival Dr. Block claimed that she
received influx from the Spiritu Universi. Whether Charles hoped to
see the visionary Temple or to simply learn how to survive a military
campaign on short rations, he fasted for seven days as he began his
campaign in Norway. Over the next decades, Emanuel Swedenborg
would make extensive studies of the effects of anorexia or fasting on
psychic states.158

153
Inga Jonsson, “Kopenhamn-Amsterdam-Paris: Swedenborgs resa 1737–1738,”
Lychnos (1967–68), 58.
154
R. Tafel, Documents, I, 130–35.
155
Benzelius, Anecdota, 54–58.
156
Wetterberg, Swedberg, 265–66.
157
La Motraye, History, 271–72.
158
See ahead, Chapter Ten.
132 chapter four

Though the king enjoyed Bishop Swedberg’s blunt talk and moral
injunctions, he became irritated by his complaints about taxes and con-
scriptions made necessary by the continuing war policy. On another
visit, the bishop warned Charles that he had recently witnessed “sad
and fearful sins” in a certain parish, but that to reveal them to the
king would cost him his head.159 He further complained that the dis-
tress of the people was growing because all available food was going
to the army. Hoping to alert Charles to the danger he faced from
civil unrest, he recounted a story told to him by Charles XI not long
before his death: “I have now reigned in Sweden twenty-three years;
when I first became King, I had faith in all men, now I have faith
in none.” Swedberg admonished him that there were still honest and
well-disposed men left, but Charles XI said it was too late. The story
was told as a warning to Charles XII that he must be careful about
his counselors, some of whom would do him harm. It was apparently
Swedberg’s distrust of Görtz that annoyed the king, for the bishop
argued that Görtz’s new system of coinage was causing great confu-
sion.160 He seemed unaware of his own son’s secret involvement with
Görtz’s economic agenda.
Despite Jesper Swedberg’s annoying criticisms, the king asked Emanuel
Swedenborg to join the Norwegian campaign in September 1718.
Swedenborg wrote Benzelius about his ardent desire to go to Norway,
but there is some confusion about his actual presence in the Norwegian
camp. Though Acton argues that Swedenborg did not go to Norway,
Sigstedt describes him as the companion of Charles XII, while they
observed the fighting between Swedish and Danish squadrons, after
Swedenborg’s successful transport of ships overland made possible an
attack on the Norwegian fortress at Fredrikshall.161 Bergquist affirms
that he was with Charles XII “during the last days of the king’s life.”162
Bergquist and Olle Hjern report further that, according to local tradi-
tion, Swedenborg accompanied Charles and his nephew, Duke Charles
Frederick of Holstein, as they watched the early battles.163 What is clear
is that something happened in November to make Swedenborg leave
the king’s party.

159
R. Tafel, Documents, I, 133–35.
160
Acton, Letters, I, 192–200.
161
Ibid., I, 199–201; Sigstedt, Swedenborg Epic, 44–45.
162
L. Bergquist, Swedenborg’s Secret, 71–72.
163
Personal communication from Lars Bergquist and Olle Hjern (February 1988).
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 133

Acton claims, without evidence, that he turned down the king’s

invitation to become a permanent military engineer.164 Beswick argues,
also without evidence, that Swedenborg and Polhem were present
when the Masonic friends of Charles XII—Mörner, Schwerin, and
Posse—warned him of intrigues by certain nobles.165 They believed
that Maigret, the French military engineer, was delaying the siege,
while the king’s enemies were using Frenchmen as tools to watch his
movements. Maigret and Siquier, the French aide-de-camp to Prince
Frederick of Hesse, collaborated with the opponents, and Siquier con-
fided the plot to kill the king to Johan von Kaulbars. However, he
was unaware that Kaulbars was “a member of the Masonic encamp-
ment.” Though there is later evidence of Kaulbar’s Masonic affiliation,
Beswick’s claims seem woven out of the maelstrom of conspiracy theo-
ries and superstitious rumors that erupted after the death of the “Lion
of the North.”166 As usual, his account is a perplexing mix of valuable
fact and unverifiable speculation.
There are other possible reasons for Swedenborg’s withdrawal from
the king’s entourage. In an unpublished “Memoir,” Swedenborg’s
friend Johan Stenflycht recounted his experiences with Charles XII and
presumably Swedenborg during the Norwegian campaign.167 Stenflycht
had met Swedenborg and his father at Lund, and they would maintain
contact over the next decades. At Lund Charles XII asked Stenflycht
to educate his beloved nephew, Duke Charles Frederick of Holstein,
in military matters and to inspire him with “sentiments guerriers.” In
Norway the king ordered him to keep close to the young duke, for he
was aware of secret machinations concerning the succession. He con-
fided to Stenflycht that he planned to remove certain generals from the
army and to place them as governors in the more remote provinces.
Stenflycht scorned the arrogance of Prince Frederick of Hesse,
who celebrated Easter with a lavish feast, while he and the king ate
bread alone with the Duke of Holstein. Many officers became jeal-
ous of Stenflycht’s closeness to the king, and he sensed some threat to
his master. He possibly confided to Swedenborg his concerns about

164
Acton, Letters, I, 199–201.
165
Beswick, Swedenborg, 188–92.
166
On the controversy, see Michael Roberts’ essay, “The Dubious Hand: the History
of a Controversy,” in his From Oxenstierna to Charles XII (Cambridge: Cambridge
UP, 1991), 144–203.
167
RA: E5659, f. 125. “General Stenflycht’s Memoirs (1701–1718).”
134 chapter four

the “secret machinations,” which may have influenced Swedenborg’s

withdrawal from the Norwegian campaign in early November. A few
weeks later, while Stenflycht was on his way to join Charles XII in the
trenches, he had a terrifying premonition (“sudden fear and extraordi-
nary trembling of the heart”) that something had happened to him. He
then learned that Charles XII had been killed (on 30 November).
Swedenborg may also have taken seriously General Cronstedt’s
warning that Charles XII would die before the end of November.168 In
later years, Swedenborg’s cousin Linnaeus recounted that Cronstedt
used geomancy to make the death prediction, which he revealed only
to his intimates among the officers.169 Perhaps Swedenborg, who was
interested in geomancy and chiromancy, took the prophecy as a true
forecast.170 Frederick Axel von Fersen claimed that Cronstedt later
told him that three weeks before Charles’s death he had predicted that
the king would not outlive the year.171 In this version, Cronstedt had
received the prophecy at the end of October, when he was preparing
by prayer and meditation to take communion and then experienced
a revelation.
Did Swedenborg learn that Cronstedt opposed Görtz’s plans and
supported Prince Frederick of Hesse as successor to the Swedish
throne? By Frederick’s marriage to the king’s sister, Ulrika Eleonora,
in 1715, the prince had dashed Horn’s ambition and now nursed
his own monarchical dreams. As early as May 1718, the Hessian
Councillor Hein had drawn up a memorandum for Ulrika Eleonora
that included a detailed plan for immediate action should the throne
become vacant.172 Hein acted on the orders of Frederick, who was
determined to displace the Duke of Holstein as the heir apparent.
Significantly, Bishop Swedberg believed that Duke Charles was
the “Crown Prince,” the rightful successor.173 Though the king was
troubled by these rivalries, he still refused to name a successor; his

168
Hatton, Charles XII, 495–99.
169
Carl von Linné, Nemesis Divina, ed. and trans. M.J. Petry (Dordrecht: Kluwer
Academic, 2001), 114, 263; A. Geffroy, “La Nemesis Divina: Ecrit inédit de Linné,”
Revue des Deux Mondes, 32 (1861), 178–95.
170
Swedenborg autographed his copy of M.S. Cimdarsi’s Opusculum Chiromanticum
(Greifswald, 1625). Now in Bryn Athyn archives.
171
M. Roberts, “Dubious Hand,” 156.
172
Ibid., 148.
173
R. Tafel, Documents, I, 132.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 135

intimates, however, knew that he preferred his late sister’s son, rather
than his upstart brother-in-law.
In 1736 Swedenborg’s friend, the historian Göran Nordberg, included
an account of Cronstedt’s vision in the draft of his biography of
Charles XII.174 According to this version, the generals entreated
the king to take some rest and stay way from the trenches. But
Charles refused to listen to them and departed, provoking Cronstedt
to observe to the others: “He who wishes to see the king alive sees
him now for the last time.” Swedenborg, who contributed information
on Charles XII’s mathematical expertise to Nordberg’s biography, was
privy to this account (which was suppressed in the 1740 published
version). These conflicting stories shed some light on Swedenborg’s
puzzling withdrawal from the campaign. Was Swedenborg one of the
officers who warned an irritated king about the premonitory vision
and possible treachery?
Given the confusion about Swedenborg’s collaboration with
Charles XII in his last days, Sigstedt asks: “What remains of all this?
Merely a few papers in the archives, and a dim tradition on the lips
of the people.”175 According to Swedenborg’s own troubled dream
memory, he said something to the king that provoked a show of regal
anger—a rare effect in the even-tempered monarch. In his Spiritual
Diary, Swedenborg later recorded:
Many transactions between me and Charles XII were recounted, and it
was clearly shown that the Lord’s providence had been in the smallest
details . . . also, that unless the state of Charles XII had turned from good
to anger, one person would surely have perished.176
On 8 December 1718 Swedenborg wrote to Benzelius: “Praise God,
I have escaped the campaign in Norway which had very nearly caught
me, if I had not used plots to withdraw myself.”177 Soon after post-
ing this letter, Swedenborg learned that the king had been killed in
Norway on 30 November.
Immediately after Charles XII’s death, Swedenborg’s friend General
Düker urged the Duke of Holstein to appear before the troops, where

174
M. Roberts, “Dubious Hand,” 156.
175
Sigstedt, Swedenborg Epic, 45–46.
176
Swedenborg, Spiritual Diary, #4704.
177
Acton, Letters, I, 202.
136 chapter four

Düker would proclaim him king “upon the spot.”178 But the young
duke, who revered his uncle, was too emotionally devastated to take
the bold action. In the meantime, the Hessian officers moved quickly
to name Ulrika Eleonora as queen, with her husband Frederick as des-
ignated successor in the event of her abdication (which they secretly
planned). Controversy over the king’s death—whether it was mur-
der by the Hessian faction, by Franco-Hanoverian agents, or by “an
honest enemy bullet”—continues to this day.179 Düker believed that
Charles was murdered by a Hessian partisan, while supporters of the
Jacobites believed that he was killed by an agent of Cardinal Dubois
and George I in order to forestall a Stuart restoration. As controversy
swirled, a powerful aura of reverence, superstition, and guilt devel-
oped around the king’s death—an aura that would emerge in troubled
memories in Swedenborg’s diaries in the years ahead.
Immediately after the fatal shot in Norway, Frederick of Hesse
ordered the arrest of Görtz, Eckleff, and their Holstein colleagues.
The new Swedish rulers confiscated Görtz’s papers at Stockholm, and
they sent orders to Gyllenborg at Åland to arrest Stambke (Görtz’s
secretary) and to confiscate all papers. Benzelius’s French friend La
Motraye reported that Gyllenborg secured Stambke and the papers
at the residence of the Russian negotiators—“and some would have
it, the Count [Gyllenborg] had underhand favoured his [Stambke’s]
flight.”180 To the relief of Görtz’s allies, at home and abroad, almost
nothing incriminating was found.
As Defoe recounted, Görtz had insisted that there be no written
records of the secret conferences; everything was viva voce on the
negotiations between Charles XII and Czar Peter.181 So successful
was the secret method of communication that “not the least Bit of
Paper ever fell into their [Görtz’s enemies] hands, that could give them
any light.” Nevertheless, Görtz was tried on a series of trumped-up
charges, sentenced to death on 11 February, and executed on 2 March
1719. Defoe noted that the charge and evidence “would not be enough
to hang a dog” in England: “So ended a Life, the most fear’d of his

178
William Coxe, Travels into Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Denmark, 3rd. rev. ed.
(London: T. Cadell, 1787), 66–67.
179
M. Roberts, “Dubious Hand,” 144–203. Also, Hatton, Charles XII, 495–99;
Nordmann, Crise, 192–99, and Grandeur, 207.
180
La Motraye, History, II, 349.
181
Daniel Defoe, Some Account of the Life and Most Remarkable Actions of George
Henry, Baron de Goertz (London, 1719), 36, 42, 46.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 137

enemies, and the most valued by those who knew and employed him,
of any Statesman of this Age.”
During the three months between the king’s death and Görtz’s
execution, Swedenborg sensed the danger of his own position. As he
recorded later, if the king had not become angry at him and if he
had not left the royal camp, he would have been dead. Swedenborg
would clearly have been viewed by the Hessians as a Görtz man, for he
had worked closely with the Holstein party on war and economic
projects. Moreover, his mentor Polhem was viewed as the inventor of
the “money of necessity,” the new coinage that was so distrusted by
the populace.182 Count Horn, who had been rebuffed by Charles XII
when the king returned to Sweden, was now allied with the Hessians
and determined to crush the Holstein partisans.183 Horn wanted to
charge Görtz with “peculation,” but a careful examination of the dip-
lomat’s papers revealed that the state was actually in his debt by a very
large amount.184
Benzelius had repeatedly warned Swedenborg not to publish his
“New System of Reckoning,” which included suggestions for a revised
calculation of Swedish money.185 Benzelius feared that Swedenborg
would be publicly linked with the Görtzean financial reforms, which
were made a scapegoat for Sweden’s general distress. As vilification of
Görtz and persecution of his adherents mounted, Swedenborg appar-
ently hid his manuscript on the coinage; it disappeared for a hundred
years before turning up in a private collection. Swedenborg left no
written record of his reactions to these traumatic events but Benzelius,
who visited him in December, continued to keep his cautious record
of the arrests, persecution, and charges.186 Then, Benzelius’s journal
abruptly breaks off at the point when Görtz was brought to trial.
Swedenborg’s friend Gustaf Cronhjelm, to whom he had dedicated
Camena Borea, pleaded courageously for a more fair judicial process;
it was not right to “treat so shamefully the man whom his late Majesty
had honoured with his closest confidence.”187 Many of Cronhjelm’s

182
Geffroy, “Nemesis,” 189.
183
Bain, Charles XII, 290.
184
Ibid., 300.
185
Acton, Letters, I, 173, 200.
186
Benzelius, Anecdota, 64–73.
187
Bain, Charles XII, 300.
138 chapter four

fellow senators agreed, but Horn and the new queen pressed for a swift
execution.
During this period and for months afterwards, Horn and the Hessian
party instigated a widespread search for incriminating papers against
the negotiators at Åland and participants in Görtz’s projects. As Defoe
recorded in 1719,
it is one of the greatest mortifications of the Swedish court at this time
that all the papers relating to the negotiations that were with Monsieur
Stambke, Baron Goertz’s secretary, escaped out of their hands, and put
into the custody of the Czar; so whatever length the Czar went in that
affair, it is now in his own breast to conceal it from the rest of the world
and make it an entire secret, as long as he thinks fit; nor can we doubt,
but that this was the principal reason why so severe a sentence was
passed upon Monsieur Stambke, as to be broke alive upon the wheel,
whenever he should fall into the hands of the Swedes, no other crime
being laid to his charge.188
No wonder that Swedenborg, forty-five years later, would still be pre-
occupied with his own relation to Charles XII and with his dangerous
position in the months after the king’s death.
When Görtz mounted the scaffold, he was heard to mutter, “Ye
bloodthirsty Swedes, take then the blood you have thirsted for so long.”189
Linnaeus would later record with grim satisfaction that all the judi-
cial accusers of Görtz, a loyal servant of his king, met their deserved
“Nemesis” in severe blows of fortune.190 In 1773 King Gustav III—
a descendant of the Holstein candidate—would chivalrously pay to
Görtz’s heirs the financial debt (with interest) that Sweden owed to
the diplomat. Writing to Görtz’s daughter, Gustav asserted that the
murder of Görtz had brought a blood curse on Sweden, for his inno-
cent blood has for too long cried for vengeance: “La Suède a pendant
50 ans de malheurs, de devastations et de troubles paié cherement le
tribut, que la colère divine a exigé pour le crime, commis contre un
grand homme innocent.”191
In the wake of Charles XII’s death, Poniatowski’s prophecy that
the Temple of Wisdom would be built in Sweden took on increasing
poignancy. Poniatowski claimed that the king had told him that he

188
Defoe, Some Account . . . Goertz, 34.
189
Bain, Charles XII, 300.
190
Linné, Nemesis, 183, 352–54; Geffroy, “Nemesis,” 189.
191
Coxe, Travels, IV, 68–69.
 architecture of wisdom or war, 1715–1719 139

intended to marry and planned a life of tranquility in his own king-

dom, “when he would pay greater attention to the interior adminis-
tration of affairs, and endeavour to promote the real interests of his
subjects.”192 He also believed that the king would have succeeded in
restoring James Stuart to the English throne and Stanislaus Leszczynski
to the Polish throne. Then through the reign of Solomonic wisdom, the
golden age would return. Though Swedenborg had withdrawn from
the Norwegian campaign, he seemed to share the millenarian dreams
of the more mystical campaigners.
Drawing upon his studies in geology, astronomy, and mineralogy,
Swedenborg had dedicated his Rudbeckian treatise “The Stoppage of
the Earth” to Charles XII. Between 11 and 15 December, Swedenborg
added statements of his grief over the king’s death, but the plate
on which these words were written subsequently disappeared.193 On
16 December he changed the dedication, now addressing it to Frederick
of Hesse, as “prince heir apparent.”194 The change may have been self-
protective, as Swedenborg tried to distance himself from Görtz, or it
may have reflected his real feelings of ambivalence about Charles XII’s
war policy.
Over the next two decades, Swedenborg, Polhem, Benzelius, and their
friends would suffer political persecution that prevented them from
fulfilling their pansophic dreams of the Carolinian Age. According to
Beswick, supporters of Frederick of Hesse broke up the Masonic lodges
and encampments in the Swedish army, for the prince knew that the
brotherhood was aware of his villainy.195 Beswick concludes, “Had
King Charles been less a warrior than he was, Freemasonry would
have flourished under his rule.” Though Beswick provided no docu-
mentation for this claim, the Jacobite-Masonic enterprises that Görtz,
Eckleff, and Gyllenborg set in motion did not disappear. Constant
fear of their revival would plague British domestic and foreign poli-
tics throughout Swedenborg’s lifetime. During the next twenty years,
the battle between Jacobites and Hanoverians—and between Hermetic
and Newtonian “enlighteners”—would continue within the darkened
lodges of Freemasonry.

192
Ibid., 40.
193
Hyde, Bibliography, 28.
194
Acton, Letters, I, 204.
195
Beswick, Swedenborg Rite, 194.
 CHAPTER FIVE

SWEDENBORG AND THE JACOBITE DIASPORA:

DEFEAT AND DEPRESSION, 1719–1727

For two years after Charles XII’s death, the Jacobite-Carolinian cru-
sade was relegated to the realm of wishful thinking, while a bitter
struggle for political power erupted in Sweden. Bishop Swedberg
and Eric Benzelius were leaders of the reformist party which hoped
to return Sweden to the constitution of 1634, a form of government
closer to a British constitutional monarchy than a French absolutist
model.1 The reformers believed their proposed constitution would rep-
resent “a restoration” rather than a revolution.2 Though the Swedberg
and Benzelius families were supporters of the late king’s nephew and
favorite—Duke Charles Frederick of Holstein—they were willing to
work with the new queen, Ulrika Eleonora, for an agenda of peace and
reform. To their great disappointment, Count Arvid Horn sought to
exploit the reformers’ plan to moderate the role of the monarchy in
order to enlarge his personal power.
As the emerging power struggle in Sweden paralyzed Swedish
foreign policy, Bishop Swedberg soon realized that Horn’s wooing of
the Estates was not aimed at real reform. In the election document
of 21 February 1719, the Estates declared their desire to “dismantle,
suffocate, dismiss, and destroy completely” the absolutist regime of
Charles XI and Charles XII.3 Though Swedberg had long been an out-
spoken advocate of peace, he opposed Horn’s party because they dras-
tically weakened the royal power. Like the Jacobites, Swedberg argued
on theocratic principles for the necessity of a strong monarchy.
In the name of the peasants and clergy, who represented the major-
ity of ordinary Swedes, the bishop “defied the prevailing faction”:

1
Michael Metcalf, ed., The Riksdag: a History of the Swedish Parliament (New York:
St. Martin’s, 1987), 113–26; Ryman, Benzelius, 230–37.
2
Michael Roberts, Swedish and English Parliamentarianism in the Eighteenth
Century (Belfast: Queen’s UP, 1973), 5.
3
Metcalf, Riksdag, 113–14.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 141

I stood up and declared . . . we have no permit to take from the ruler the
power that God in His Word has ascribed to him . . . the King stands in
God’s place on earth. His power is of God. If he abuses it, so he shall
answer before God, and not before his subjects. Here we have no Polish
republic, or some kind of English government. We have the power of
a King, set out in the Royal Chapter of our old Law Book . . . We must
believe and adhere to what the Spirit of God says: in the word of a king
is power, and who shall say to him, what is it you are doing?4
Swedberg further warned, “We ought to be very careful not to tie the
hands of royalty so tightly that it will one day break the bonds, and
restore a despotism.” In 1772, when Gustav III carried out an absolut-
ist coup, Swedberg’s words would be remembered as prophetic.
Emanuel Swedenborg shared his father’s growing worry about the
direction of Swedish political changes. As Charles Upton notes, Horn’s
agenda was actually a mockery of reform:
An elite minority of noblemen, bureaucrats and burghers contrived to
establish their own oligarchic hegemony over the less advantaged major-
ity of the common people, trampling on their expectations and opening
the way for their unscrupulous manipulation and exploitation by the
oligarchy. And in a bitter mockery of reality, they and the historians
after them called the result an Age of Freedom.5
Though Swedenborg had received directly from Charles XII an appoint-
ment as Assessor Extraordinary to the Board of Mines, he was shocked
to learn that the new Board refused to recognize him.6
In February he tried to attend meetings, but he was not even
allowed to sign the proceedings. Like his mentor Polhem, Emanuel
was considered a “Görtz-man,” and the newly powerful members were
determined to humiliate both of them. After this February impasse,
Swedenborg spent the next nine months trying to develop his scien-
tific credentials in order to gain acceptance by the Board. Though he
got the support of the aging Vice President, Urban Hjärne, his par-
ticipation on the Board was still resisted by other members.7 As Horn
and the Hessian party became stronger, Emanuel joined in his father’s
efforts to strengthen the power of the queen. In March he prepared
for the press a work on the Height of Waters, which he planned to

4
Upton, Charles XI, 261.
5
Ibid., 261.
6
Sigstedt, Swedenborg, 55.
7
S. Lindquist, Technology, 160–61.
142 chapter five

present to Ulrika Eleonora at her coronation.8 In the dedication he

made clear his political intention: “My fervent prayer is that the royal
crown, which to-day . . . will be placed upon the head of your Majesty,
may be firm and permanent.”9
In April 1719 Horn’s party issued so many threats against Bishop
Swedberg that he wrote a defensive letter to Ulrika Eleonora in which
he proclaimed that his angels would protect him from “the great and
powerful nobles” who sought his destruction. On 17 May he journeyed
to Uppsala to attend her coronation, and he urgently requested a pri-
vate interview with her. He repeated to the queen the warning given
him by Charles XI that one must be careful in listening to counsel-
ors (the same warning that Swedberg had passed on to Charles XII).10
Despite his attempt at confidentiality, rumors soon spread that the
bishop was trying to sow discord between the queen and the recently
assembled Diet. The British ambassador in Copenhagen received a
report that Swedberg advised the queen that she should make friends
with the clergy, “who were able to control a good part of the towns-
people and the whole of the country people, whereas the nobles would
seek to confine the royal authority within very narrow limits.”11 But
the bishop was overheard, which led to an effort by Horn’s party to
prosecute him for giving “pernicious counsels to the Queen” which
were “dangerous to the public peace.”
However, Ulrika Eleonora took Swedberg’s warnings seriously, and
on 23 May she raised his sons to noble status as part of an effort to
gain more support in the House of Nobles for a strong monarchy.12
Emanuel’s name-change from Swedberg to Swedenborg was the result
of this political move. The appointment of Eric Benzelius as professor
of theology on 20 May was similarly aimed at building clerical support
for the embattled throne. Despite the queen’s protection, Swedberg
sensed so much danger in Stockholm that he secretly fled the city. His
opponents were then able to deny him a role in the Diet, where they
successfully maneuvered to build a strong party around Horn and the
Hessians.

8
Acton, Letters, I, 212.
9
Emanuel Swedenborg, Scientific and Philosophical Treatises, ed. Alfred Stroh
(Bryn Athyn, PA: Swedenborg Scientific Association, 1908), [26].
10
R. Tafel, Documents, I, 135.
11
HMC: Report on the Manuscripts of Lord Polwarth (London, 1911), II, 155.
12
The ennoblement led to the name change from Swedberg to Swedenborg for the
bishop’s sons.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 143

In the meantime, the British looked upon the situation in Sweden

with growing alarm. They knew that the Jacobites still counted on
Swedish support, especially when Cardinal Alberoni sent a Jacobite
fleet to the north in March 1719.13 Despite a violent storm that forced
the main fleet back to Spain, a smaller force sailed on to Scotland.
George I learned in late April that the new Swedish queen had sent
letters of negotiation to Lord Mar, which provoked George on 6 May
to urge Baron John Carteret, who was preparing to leave as envoy
to Sweden, to “use your utmost endeavours to defeat and discourage
anything” that supports the Jacobites.14
On 15 May British agents reported that Poniatowski had been par-
doned by the king of Poland and now talked of going back to Sweden;
they warned that “he is a dangerous person, and will do us all the
mischief that he is capable of.”15 Three weeks later, the smaller Jacobite
fleet arrived in Scotland, where it was defeated by the British on
10 June. Two Swedish-owned ships were in the expedition, which
exacerbated George I’s determination to pressure Sweden’s new gov-
ernment into a Hanoverian alliance.16 Thus, when Carteret arrived in
Sweden in July, he came with orders to freely bribe the Swedish sena-
tors, whose “pressing poverty made the inducement irresistible.”17
The continuing hopes of the Jacobites and Holsteiners were dealt
another blow when Carteret, after only eleven days in Stockholm,
managed to push through a preliminary convention by which Sweden
ceded Verden and Bremen to Hanover for the price of one mil-
lion crowns. As the British ministers pressured Sweden to give up
more and more territory, Carteret promised in return that their fleet
would defend Sweden against any Russian aggression. However, as
J.F. Chance observes, “the Swedes were woefully deceived,” for George
I had no influence on the Czar, and the British fleet could not (or
would not) inflict any damage on the Russians, who were now ravag-
ing Sweden’s most vulnerable coast.18

13
W.K. Dickson, The Jacobite Attempt of 1719. Scottish History Society, 19
(Edinburgh, 1895), 52–53.
14
Chance, BDI: Sweden, I, 106.
15
HMC: Polwarth, II, 144.
16
Chance, BDI: Sweden, I, 106.
17
J.F. Chance, “The Northern Treaties of 1719–1720,” Transactions of the Royal
Historical Society, 3rd. series (1907), I, 120.
18
Chance, BDI: Sweden, xxx, xxxiii.
144 chapter five

Benzelius followed these negotiations with disillusioned fascina-

tion, and he resumed his cautious notebook record of British and
Russian intrigues.19 Swedenborg shared his disappointment and, on
3 November 1719, when he wrote Benzelius about his current scien-
tific researches, he wearily complained that he would probably stop
writing:
since all such speculations and arts are unprofitable in Sweden and are
esteemed by a lot of political blockheads as a scholasticum which stands
far in the background while their supposed finesse and intrigues push
to the front.20
Despite the hostile political environment, Benzelius was determined
to implement his reformist plans. With a handful of professors at
Uppsala, he organized on 26 November the “Bokswet Gille,” a liter-
ary society devoted to the discussion of all discoveries relating to the
advancement of learning and the publication of quarterly journal,
Acta Literaria Suecia.
Swedenborg was encouraged enough by Benzelius’s achievement
to revive his hopes for a scientific reform which would accompany
the political change from absolutism. In a treatise on “New Ways of
Discovering Mines . . . and Treasures Deeply Hidden in the Earth,” he
mingled his metallurgical theories with caustic remarks on the new oli-
garchs’ “extravagances which render our rich country poor.” Scorning
the “gold-glittering fop” and the “imbecile coxcomb,” he noted their
damaging effects on metallurgical studies and the mining industry:
Still it is to be expected that some change in this state of affairs will take
place, now that we can think more freely and possess better judgment,
and are permitted to see for ourselves, no more fettered by a sovereign’s
caprice which one out of politeness must submit to, thus producing only
an imitation and counterfeit, and not a product of one’s own enlight-
ened understanding.21
Though Swedenborg reported to Benzelius that the treatise “won the
good opinion of those concerned,” it was rejected by those members
of the Board of Mines, who did not appreciate the references to aristo-
cratic fops and coxcombs. Swedenborg soon realized that Horn’s oppo-
sition meant there would be no royal or governmental support for the

19
Benzelius, Anecdota, 72–87.
20
Acton, Letters, I, 215.
21
Swedenborg, Scientific and Philosophical Treatises, 72–73.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 145

scientific agenda of himself and Benzelius. Sensing that his career was
being deliberately blocked, he wrote Benzelius on 1 December:
My mind is toying with the idea of going abroad and seeking my fortune
in my craft, which consists of all that has to do with the advancement
of mining, and with mines, etc. For he may be regarded as a fool who is
a free and independent fellow, and has his name in foreign lands, and
yet remains here in darkness . . . where the Erynnider [furies], Invidiae
[envies]and Pluto have set their abode, and are those who dispose of
all rewards; and such labors as I have taken on me are rewarded with
wretchedness. Until that time comes, my only joy now will bene latere.
I think I could finally obtinera an angulum for this in Starbo or
Skinskatteberg. But since that time will likely arrive after four or five
years delay, I well see beforehand that long laid desseiner are like long
insurrections, which do not carry far, and some circumstantier, both in
the community and individual, may break them off and make a change:
thus homo proponit, Deus disponit.22
Susanna Åkerman notes that Swedenborg’s phrase, bene latere, referred
to the motto Bene dixit qui bene latere—“he lives well who lives
hidden”—which appeared in a 1617 Rosicrucian work and in a 1619
note by Descartes.23 Descartes was provoked to make the statement by
the furore that arose concerning the Rosicrucians. Swedenborg always
used the French word dessein (design, scheme) with deliberately vague
political connotations. He seemed to refer to the recurrent Jacobite
rebellions when he alluded to “long insurrections” which were con-
stantly broken off.
As the power struggle continued within the Diet, a strong opposi-
tion party—led by Gustaf Cronhjelm, a Holstein loyalist and friend of
Benzelius and Swedenborg—argued for the continuance of Gyllenborg’s
negotiations with the Russians and for the maintenance of Görtz’s alli-
ance with the Czar.24 In England the Hanoverian government deter-
mined to crush the Holstein-Jacobite-Russian party and, at the urgent
but secret request of Frederick of Hesse and Count Horn, Admiral
Norris kept his fleet in a threatening position off the coast of Sweden.25
Using British money and intense pressure, Horn convinced the queen
to appoint her husband as co-ruler, despite a critic’s protest that such

22
Acton, Letters, I, 224.
23
Åkerman, Rose Cross, 144 n. 36; plus personal communication.
24
Chance, “Northern Treaties,” 107, 137.
25
BL: Carteret Papers, MS. 22, 512 ff. 58, 113.
146 chapter five

a move was treasonous.26 A later British ambassador admitted that the

queen was “pressed to resign the crown to her husband, and she was
threatened that he would desert her and retire,” if she did not.27
George I spent £100,000 in his attempt to bribe the Estates “to
settle the succession in the family of Hesse-Cassel.”28 Though he did
not succeed in gaining the desired hereditary succession, he did win
the more immediate goal. Despite the opposition of most Swedes, the
Prince of Hesse became King Frederick I of Sweden in April 1720.
Horn’s party of oligarchic nobles went further than George I desired,
for they abolished hereditary succession. They also wrote into the new
Constitution a chilling threat to all who should attempt to reintroduce
“sovereignty,” for they would be punished “as a lopped-off limb of the
fatherland and a traitor to the realm.”29 Frederick I would soon learn
that his own limbs had been “lopped-off ” by the anti-absolutist con-
stitution. With Chancellor Horn now the real power in the confused
and fragmented government, George I pressed the British Parliament
to vote larger subsidies for Horn’s party. But the Jacobites and Tories
strongly opposed George’s measure, for they viewed Sweden’s new
ministry as collaborating in the aggrandizement of Hanover.
Despite Horn’s aggressive moves, the Holstein party was not pow-
erless, and many Swedes sympathized with Nicodemus Tessin’s plea
to the Senate that something must be done for the king’s nephew:
“regard should be shown to the last remains of the race of Gustavus
Vasa.”30 Supporters of the Duke of Holstein were also able to influence
the appointment of emissaries to foreign courts. Thus, Carl Gustaf
Tessin was sent to George I to announce the succession of Frederick I.
Carteret, who recognized the unpopularity of the new Hessian regime,
wrote from Stockholm that George I should bestow a gift on young
Tessin, because his father and relations here “have a great weight.”31
Carl Gyllenborg took advantage of Tessin’s visit to recommend him to
Hans Sloane at the Royal Society.32 Enclosed in the letter (20 March)
were greetings from Gyllenborg’s notoriously Jacobite wife to Sloane
and his family, which again suggests Sloane’s private sympathy (or

26
NA: SP 95/23, f. 21.
27
NA: SP 95/62, f. 57 (Finch to Harrington, 1 November 1732).
28
NA: SP 95/29, f. 44.
29
M. Roberts, Swedish Parliamentarianism, 5.
30
NA: SP 95/29, f. 44.
31
BL: Carteret Papers, MS. 22, 512, f. 93.
32
Sloane MSS. 4045. f. 308.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 147

at least neutrality) concerning Swedish-Jacobite projects. Gyllenborg

then left for Brunswick, where the queen had named him fourth pleni-
potentiary for the proposed international peace conference.33
The Holstein party also secured the appointment of Carl Gustaf Sparre
as ambassador to England. For the sensitive post of embassy secretary,
Sparre employed Anders Skutenhjelm, who earlier held the same posi-
tion under Gyllenborg in London (where he met Swedenborg).34 After
the new ambassador and his secretary assumed their posts, Mårten
Triewald would periodically travel from Newcastle to London, where
he could inform the ambassador and Skutenhjelm about Jacobite and
Masonic activities in the northeast. From his first arrival in London,
Carl Gustaf Sparre cooperated with the opposition, which led George
I’s secretary to report angrily on 28 March 1720 that “Sparre is all for
the Pretender.”35 At the same time, Eric Sparre returned to the Paris
embassy, where he secretly pursued Gyllenborg’s grand design with
the Jacobites and their French and Russian sympathizers.
By August, however, English bribery had succeeded in gaining the
mercenary Frederick I’s collaboration not only in anti-Holstein but
anti-Jacobite maneuvers. He ordered the recall of Gyllenborg from
Brunswick and the transfer of Mauritz Wellingck, a Holstein parti-
san, from Brunswick to Bremen.36 Wellingck had worked closely with
Gyllenborg and Görtz on the 1717 Jacobite plot, and he fled Sweden
after the execution of Görtz. However, given his long service, he was
able to continue his Swedish diplomatic position. Gyllenborg and
Wellingck managed to stall their departure for some months, which
led the British to fear that they might still assist at the peace nego-
tiations. In the meantime, the Swedish king reported to his new
Hanoverian allies that Ambassador Preis was carrying out secret
negotiations with the Russian diplomat Kourakin, in support of Eric
Sparre’s efforts at Paris.37

Throughout this confused and troubled period, Swedenborg, his

father, and Benzelius struggled to implement the progressive reforms
that were supposed to follow in the wake of Sweden’s dramatic move

33
NA: SP 95/23, f. 41.
34
Lindquist, Technology, 205.
35
Nordmann, Crise, 218; “Carl Gustaf Sparre,” Svensk Man och Kvinnor.
36
NA: SP 95/23, ff. 182, 234.
37
Chance, BDI: Sweden, I, 145.
148 chapter five

to anti-absolutist government. As Horn’s power grew, supporters of

the Duke of Holstein were steadily cut out of public life. Swedenborg
and Polhem did not publish part VII of Daedalus, written before
Charles XII’s death, which included their “Dialogue between
Mechanica and Chymia, on the Essence of Nature.” The draft added a
Hermetic resonance to the Masonic themes of the “Dialogue between
Lady Theoria and Master Builder Practicus”.38 Benzelius feared that
the important engineering and scientific work carried out by the two
scientists for Charles XII would be buried and forgotten. Thus, he
urged Swedenborg to publish an anonymous account of his projects
with Polhem on the Carlscrona drydock.39 Against Benzelius’s advice,
Swedenborg tried to present a memorial in the Senate on the redemp-
tion of the coinage, but it was not approved. It apparently reeked of
“Görtzian” economics.
Benzelius’s spirits were soon lifted by the return of Anders
Norrelius, who brought the fruits of his Hebrew and Kabbalistic stud-
ies in Holland, Germany, and England.40 Norrelius had left with the
printers in Amsterdam his manuscript Phosphorus Orthodoxae Fidei
Veterum Cabbalistiarum: seu testimonia de Sacrosancto Trinitate et
Messia Deo et Homine, ex. pervetusto libro Sohar, which was pub-
lished in early 1720. In this unusual treatise, he included extracts from
Kemper’s “Maqqel Ya’aqov,” along with Latin translations and expli-
catory notes. He also defended the Kabbalistic theories of Nehemiah
Hayon, the crypto-Sabbatian whose trinitarian notions were similar to
Kemper’s, and he praised the work of F.M. Van Helmont and Knorr
von Rosenroth in the Kabbala Denudata.41 Benzelius was delighted
with his findings, which would later influence Swedenborg’s Christian-
Kabbalistic interpretations of the Hebrew Bible.
Unfortunately, Charles XII’s plan to declare full religious toleration
was suppressed by the new regime; it disappeared from the historical
record, with the only surviving evidence the unpublished letter from
La Motraye to Benzelius.42 The Carolinians’ plan to open Sweden to
Jewish immigration was also ignored. The Jews who accompanied the

38
Hyde, Bibliography, 27.
39
Acton, Letters, I, 211.
40
Linköping: Bref til Benzelius, X, 132, 156, 169.
41
Anders Norrelius, Phosphorus Orthodoxae (Amsterdam, 1720), 7, 15, 23, dedica-
tion to Surenhuys.
42
The king’s declaration of “liberty of conscience” is virtually unknown in Sweden
today.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 149

late king to Sweden repeatedly appealed for payment of their loans, but
Frederick I was not receptive to their petitions.43 The Jews soon real-
ized that the ruling party was opposed to their presence in Sweden—a
position that became official when anti-Jewish ordinances were
enacted in 1723. Under difficult circumstances, Benzelius, Norrelius,
and their Orientalist colleagues would struggle over the next decades
to open Sweden to Jewish scholarship and financial expertise. When
Bishop Swedberg made passionate appeals for greater religious free-
dom, especially for the Pietists, he was opposed by the Hessian-allied
Archbishop, and increasingly harsh measures were enacted against
the dissenters.44
During these dark days, Swedberg, Benzelius, and Swedenborg con-
tinued their friendship with Carl Gyllenborg who, with almost Görtzian
versatility and resilience, managed to play a significant political role
even under Horn’s inimical regime.45 At the same time, Gyllenborg’s
admirers in England still hoped he would succeed in carrying out the
grand dessein of Charles XII. These hopes were shared by Jonathan
Swift, now the leading satirist on Hanoverian corruption.46 The admi-
ration of Swift for the Swedish diplomat has long puzzled scholars, for
it suggests a much greater sympathy for the Jacobites than the cautious
Swift is usually granted.47
Swift had been deeply disturbed by Gyllenborg’s arrest, and he later
satirized the paranoid and pervasive government spying that led to the
Swede’s exposure.48 When he learned of the death of Charles XII, Swift
wrote to Charles Ford, a Jacobite friend, on 6 January 1719:
I am personally concerned for the death of the King of Sweden, because
I intended to have begged my Bread at his Court, whenever our good
Friends in Power thought fit to put me and my Brethren under the neces-
sity of begging. Besides I intended him an honour and a compliment, which

43
Westrin, “Anteckningar,” 32–35.
44
Ryman, Benzelius, 227.
45
Wetterberg, Swedbergs, I, 265–67; Benzelius, Anecdota, 72–87.
46
F.P. Lock, Swift’s Tory Politics (Delaware UP, 1983), 125–27.
47
F.P. Lock, The Politics of “Gulliver’s Travels” (Oxford: Clarendon, 1980), 57–58,
135; Higgins, Swift’s Politics, 79, 86, 89.
48
Lock, Politics, 56–65. Swift was further disturbed by the deciphering of the letters
of Bishop Atterbury, who had participated in the Swedish-Jacobite plot. Atterbury was
arrested, tried, and banished for life.
150 chapter five

I never yet thought a Crowned head worth, I mean dedicating a Book to

him. Pray let me know how I can write to the Count of Gyllenborg.49
On 2 November 1719 Swift drafted a dedication to Gyllenborg that
suggested his continuing approval of the count’s actions. Given the
predominantly hostile portrayals of Charles XII and his ambassador in
English publications, Swift’s dedication is worth quoting at length:
It is now ten years since I first entertained the design of writing a his-
tory of England . . . My intention was to inscribe it to the king your late
master, for whose great virtues I had ever the highest veneration, as
I shall continue to bear to his memory . . . when I looked round on all the
princes of Europe, I could think of none who might deserve that distinc-
tion from me, besides the king your master; (for I can say nothing of his
present Brittanick majesty, to whose person and character I am An utter
stranger, and like to continue so) . . . I publish them [papers] now . . . to
have an opportunity of declaring the . . . sincere regard and friendship I
bear to yourself; for I must bring to your mind how proud I was to
distinguish you among all the foreign ministers, with whom I had the
honour to be acquainted. I am a witness of the zeal you shewed not only
for the honour and interest of your master, but for the advantage of the
Protestant religion in Germany, and how knowingly and feelingly you
spoke to me upon that subject. We all loved you, as possessed of every
quality that could adorn an English gentleman, and esteemed you as a
faithful subject of your prince, and an able negotiator; neither shall any
reverse of fortune have power to lessen you either in my friendship or
esteem . . . my affection towards persons hath not been at all diminished
by the frown of Power upon them. Those whom you and I once thought
great and good men, continue still so in my eyes and my heart . . .50
This was fulsome praise indeed from the embittered Swift, who
would again try to contact Gyllenborg in 1725, “if he has not lost
his head.”51
Given Swedenborg’s frustration with the political and scientific situ-
ation in Sweden, he was susceptible to recruitment for a secret diplo-
matic initiative which required him to make another foreign journey.
Since 1717 Carl Gyllenborg, his secretary Captain Nils Mandell, and
other Swedish agents had been negotiating with a group of Jacobite

49
Jonathan Swift, The Correspondence of Jonathan Swift, ed. Harold Williams
(Oxford: Oxford UP, 1965–72), II, 311.
50
Jonathan Swift, Prose Writings, ed. Harold Williams (Oxford, 1939–68), V, 11–12.
51
Swift, Correspondence, III, 63.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 151

pirates, who had been ejected from the British navy.52 Now numbering
over a thousand, they operated from St. Mary’s Island off the coast of
Madagascar. Captains Jaspar Morgan and John Monnery, represent-
ing the pirates, travelled to Sweden in summer 1718 and promised
Charles XII great sums of money if he would provide them with pro-
tection and sponsorship in their attacks on Hanoverian shipping. The
king agreed in writing and sent his agents Wrangel and Klinckowström
off to The Hague and Paris to alert the Swedish diplomats there.
In autumn 1718 Klinckowström and Morgan travelled to Madrid,
where “staying one month, they were daily entertained by the Duke
of Ormonde.”53
After Klinckowström learned of Charles XII’s death, he travelled
to Sweden and persuaded Ulrika Eleonora to renew the commissions
to Morgan and the pirates in spring 1719. Returning to the Jacobite
enclave in Paris, he informed Eric Sparre about the resumed proj-
ect. Shortly after this, he learned of Ulrika Eleonora’s abdication and
thus journeyed back to Sweden to gain the approval of Frederick I.
Klinckowström was now opposed by Joachim Nerés, who had worked
on the Madagascar project under Charles XII but who changed
his mind after Charles’s death.54 In a letter to Frederick I, Nerés
expressed strong criticism of Klinckowström’s leadership in the affair.
Swedenborg would later portray Nerés (in the spirit world) as a venge-
ful and mercenary deceiver.55
Johan Osthoff, an anti-Jacobite who worked as a commissary on one
of the Madagascar ships, later claimed that the new Swedish king was
deceived about the secret purpose of the project.56 Whether Frederick
I was “blinded” by Klinckowström or just desperate for money, he
renewed the secret Swedish commission to the pirates. According to
Osthoff, the Swedish secretary of state, Daniel Niklas von Höpken,
received a yearly pension from the Pretender, and he agreed to
deliver to Morgan a large cache of arms at Gothenburg. Gyllenborg’s

52
See Francis Steuart, “Sweden and the Jacobites, 1719–1720,” Scottish Historical
Review, 23 (1926), 119–27; Tancred Borenius, “Sweden and the Jacobites,” Scottish
Historical Review, 23 (1926), 238–40; Nordmann, Crise, 187–89.
53
National Library of Scotland: Advocates MS. 21.2.15. “Osthoff ’s Memorandum.”
Osthoff ’s hand-written account of Swedish-Jacobite intrigues provides rare and valu-
able information on the Madagascar affair and Charles XII’s collusion with Gyllenborg
and Görtz in support of the Pretender.
54
“Joachim Nerés,” SBL; Nordmann, Crise, 189.
55
Swedenborg, Spiritual Diary, #4995–99.
56
F. Steuart, “Sweden,” 122, 126.
152 chapter five

representative Mandell worked with the Jacobites in Paris, while Preis’s

agent, Pierre Balguerie, managed the affair in Amsterdam. Their main
liaison in Sweden was Count Gustaf Bonde, who had been assigned by
Charles XII to secretly deal with the pirates and who now continued
his clandestine work.
Thus, it is provocative that Swedenborg now became friendly
with Bonde, who assumed the presidency of the Board of Mines in
January 1721.57 Despite Swedenborg’s failure to secure a full position
in the College of Mines, he hoped to take advantage of his new rela-
tionship with Bonde. Though an anti-absolutist and strong critic of
Charles XII’s war policy, Bonde was non-partisan in his friendships.
Soon after Charles’s death, Bonde had been shocked when troops from
the Hessian party barged into his house to arrest Count von Dernath,
one of Görtz’s officials, who was dining with Bonde.58 Trusted enough
by Frederick I to be given a royal appointment, Bonde maintained
his friendships with the Swedberg family and other members of the
Holstein party. Swedenborg would soon become associated with
Bonde’s piratical and mercantile projects.
According to Osthoff, the Madagascar pirates proposed “under
divers Pretences the Establishing of an East India Company, etc. and
such like Practices detrimental to the Crown of Great Britain.”59 This
proposal would become important to Swedenborg, who would later
be closely associated with the Jacobite-dominated Swedish East India
Company, when it was finally established a decade later. Bonde was
greatly interested in the proposed company, as well as the piratical
profits, and he evidently encouraged Swedenborg to undertake a secret
mission to Balguerie, Preis, and other participants in the Madagascar
and related Jacobite enterprises.
Like Mårten Triewald’s, Swedenborg’s scientific studies could pro-
vide a convenient cover for his intelligence work. On 28 May 1721
Swedenborg set out on his journey, and on 30 June he posted a letter
from Copenhagen to the Board of Mines. The letter was rather odd,
for Swedenborg’s application for a full position with the Board had
been passed over in 1720, and his proposed journey was not officially
sponsored by them. However, if he intended to travel to England,

57
Sigstedt, Swedenborg, 73.
58
HMC: Polwarth, I, 669.
59
“Osthoff ’s Memorandum.”
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 153

France, Austria, Italy, and Hungary—as stated in the letter—he would

need some kind of official sanction. Certainly, Swedenborg seemed to
address the officials’ suspicions of the political nature of his trip by
stressing that “my only object therein is to inform myself with respect
to foreign mines, their conditions and methods, and . . . trade, so far as
it concerns metals.”60
Swedenborg was accompanied by his cousin Johan Hesselius,
brother of Andreas who had earlier shared his experiences in London.
Johan was on his way to medical school in Holland. The cousins trav-
elled first to Hamburg, where a cache of Swedish arms destined for
the pirates soon arrived.61 The Jacobite banker James Cooke, who had
served as a courier between Görtz and Gyllenborg and then befriended
Benzelius, had moved from Sweden to Hamburg in 1720. Hamburg
was also the residence of Wellingck and Salomon von Otter, a friend
of Swedenborg, who had joined Wellingck in his flight from Sweden.62
At this time, Carl Gyllenborg and his wife were also in Hamburg, and
they were greatly worried about the situation at Nystadt (in Finland),
where the Swedes were negotiating with the Russians to end the
Northern War.63
Gyllenborg and Wellingck would be most interested in hearing from
Swedenborg about a letter that Bishop Swedberg received from General
Stenflycht, who was currently in Russia with the Duke of Holstein.64
On 29 July 1721 Stenflycht wrote Swedberg that he was warmly wel-
comed by Czar Peter, who assured him that he would support Charles
Frederick’s claim to the Swedish throne, if the negotiations at Nystadt
led to peace. The two diplomats knew that Erik Sparre was arguing
at Vienna for a Swedish-Russian-Jacobite coalition, and they believed
that a transfer of the peace negotiations from Nystadt to Brunswick
would provide time to gain the Hapsburg emperor’s support for their
position.65 It is possible that Swedenborg planned to reinforce that case
during his projected visit to Vienna.66

60
Acton, Letters, I, 255.
61
F. Steuart, “Sweden,” 122.
62
“Salomon von Otter” and “Mauritz Vellingk,” Svensk Man och Kvinnor.
63
NA: SP 95/23, f. 356; Chance, BDI: Sweden, I, 155, 161–62.
64
Bertil Häggman, “The Russian Manhunt for Mazepists Coming from Sweden
from 1720—,” <http://www.karlxii.se/?ibegin_share_action=get_content&id=1021>, page 5.
65
Nordmann, Crise, 217–21.
66
Acton, Letters, I, 255.
154 chapter five

Unknown to Swedenborg and the diplomats, Stenflycht’s letter to

Bishop Swedberg was intercepted and a copy sent to the Hessian min-
isters in Stockholm. The letter would later be used to charge Stenflycht
with treason against the Swedish crown. The surveillance over such
contacts between the Holstein-Jacobite partisans and their Russian
sympathizers was so intense that Robert Jackson could report hap-
pily to London: “the Swedes at Neustadt are so narrowly observed
that they can scarcely have any intelligence beyond that place.”67
After Swedenborg left Hamburg, Wellingck travelled to Brunswick,
still hoping for a change of venue for the negotiations (Swedenborg
would later join him in Brunswick). Under increasing pressure from
George I, the Swedish king and Count Horn were on the verge of a
humiliating capitulation to the Russians, whose negotiators at Nystadt
demanded a huge loss of Swedish territory on the Baltic.
When Swedenborg arrived in Amsterdam on 23 August 1721, he
made a large deposit in a bank, and he used part of it to pay for the
printing of several scientific treatises. His insistence on anonymity
was connected with his clandestine political mission. In expectation
of his projected visit to France, he planned to dedicate the com-
pleted Prodromus principiorum rerum naturalium (“Forerunner of
the Principles of Natural Things”) to the Abbé Bignon, but he subse-
quently gave that up.68 He also made a French translation of his trea-
tise on Ferrum et igneum (“Iron and Fire”), but he decided against
publication. Aware of the standing offer by the British for a substantial
prize to whoever solved the longitude problem, Swedenborg sent to
the printer Methodus nova inveniendi longitudines (“New Method of
Finding the Longitude”).
In the meantime, it seems certain that the rest of his deposited
money was associated with the Madagascar project, which received a
covert sanction from the Swedish king on 26 August.69 According to
Lars Bergquist, Swedenborg “had money on deposit in the Balguerie
Bank in Amsterdam,” and Balguerie was handling the Madagasgar
financial transactions.70 Swedenborg also contacted a Dutch-Swedish
merchant, Van Tietzen, who had earlier worked with Görtz and Preis

67
NA: SP 95/23, f. 332.
68
Hyde, Bibliography, 34, 36.
69
Stuart Papers: 65/14.
70
Bergquist, Swedenborg’s Secret, 355.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 155

in the Jacobite plot.71 In 1717, while the Dutch police were search-
ing for Görtz, he hid at Tietzen’s house. When the police entered the
house, Görtz had escaped but they seized a big box of papers, includ-
ing twelve large packets of letters (which they eventually returned).
Tietzen continued to work closely with Preis on clandestine political
and banking matters, and Swedenborg now utilized Tietzen as well as
Balguerie for his financial transactions in Amsterdam.
In mid-September Swedenborg received news that Frederick I and
Horn had succumbed to Hanoverian pressure and signed the Treaty
of Nystadt, which was a complete victory for the Czar and imposed
humiliating conditions on Sweden.72 This dispiriting news made Arthur
Dillon, the Pretender’s chief agent in Paris, despair of any help from
the Swedish king. On 30 September 1721 Dillon wrote to Frederick I
(with a copy to the Pretender) and requested repayment of the 175,000
livres sent to Sweden for Görtz and Charles XII.73 Dillon explained that
he gave the money “into the hands of Count Sparre, who will vouch
for the justice of my request,” and “there is now a pressing need for it.”
The request came as a shock to Frederick I, who did not answer until
25 June 1722, after consulting with Sparre and Klinckowström.74 As we
shall see, the issue of the “Debt of Görtz” would play a significant role
in Swedish-Jacobite negotiations over the next decades.
Meanwhile in Amsterdam, Swedenborg had resumed his friend-
ship with Balguerie, who continued to praise his former employer,
“Charles XII of glorious memory.”75 Serving as Swedish consul,
Balguerie remained loyal to the goals of the Swedish-Jacobite plot, and
he served as a mediator for correspondence between Preis, Gyllenborg,
Sparre, and Wellingck about current political and military news. On
21 October 1721 Swedenborg sent his anonymously published works
to Ambassador Preis at The Hague. Since he planned to soon visit
Preis, it is odd that he mailed the works. Perhaps he wanted to test the
security of such postal transfers.

71
Acton, Letters, I, 279; RA: Hollandica, #808. Correspondence of the firm of Van
Tietzen and Schröder with Preis (1704–18); N. Tindal, The Continuation of Mr. Rapin
de Thoyras’s History of England, 2nd ed. (London: John and Paul Knapton, 1751), II
[IV], 507.
72
Nordmann, Grandeur, 225.
73
Stuart Papers: 55/25.
74
Ibid., 60/86.
75
RA: Hollandica #771. Balguerie to Preis (21 January–10 December 1721).
156 chapter five

Shortly after sending this package, Swedenborg travelled to The

Hague where he stayed with Preis, and they discussed the problem
of the Swedish debt to the Jacobites. Preis then sent inquiries to
Balguerie, who responded with information on the role of Tietzen
and Christoffer in handling “les affaires du Baron de Görtz.” He
also reported on the arrogant behavior of the English and Russian
ambassadors, as they gloated over the new treaty. In this previously
unknown letter, Balguerie replied that he was honored that Preis
and Swedenborg drank his health.76 He planned to send Preis some
packets of tobacco and other goods, which were often used to conceal
their private communications. In Ormonde’s code, tobacco stood for
money, while Swedenborg’s French colleagues would later use double-
bottomed tobacco boxes and even jars of preserved fruits to hide their
secret papers and ciphers.77
Preis held long conversations with his guest about Sweden’s current
economic and political difficulties. Swedenborg had acquired an eight-
volume German work, Ausfürlich Legens-Beschreibung Carl des XII,
Konung in Schweden (Leipzig, 1703–17), which described the astro-
logical conjunctions at Charles XII’s birth, his reverent coronation cer-
emony, his sensational military campaign, and—most relevantly—his
progressive economic and political policies.78 Thus, he had much to
discuss with Preis about past and current Swedish conditions. Moving
on to Leiden, Swedenborg wrote Preis to express thanks for the ambas-
sador’s hospitality and to offer his services to him. He referred to their
analyses of “our economic situation in Sweden,” which show so well
that Preis is “a good patriot who has penetration into that in which our
land is lacking for its recovery.”79 Swedenborg referred to their shared
perception that Sweden needed a strong, legitimate king—in the per-
son of the Duke of Holstein—who could guide Sweden to greater eco-
nomic and scientific development.
Swedenborg’s five-week visit to Leiden combined scientific and
political purposes. He met the famous scientist Hermann Boerhaave
and attended his chemistry lectures at the university. On 21 October

76
Ibid., Balguerie to Preis (10 November 1721).
77
BL: Ormonde, Add. MS. 33, 950, Jacobite codes; Jay Oliva, Misalliance: A Study
of French Policy in Russia During the Seven Years War (New York: New York UP,
1964), 14, 25.
78
Swedenborg, Catalogus, 11.
79
Acton, Letters, I, 258.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 157

Swedenborg inscribed to Boerhaave, “in friendship,” a copy of his

chemical treatise, Forerunner of the Principles of Natural Things.80
Preis would also be interested in Swedenborg’s political observations
in Leiden. According to the British ambassador Horatio Walpole, who
earlier reported to London on Preis’s participation in the Swedish-
Jacobite plot, Leiden at this time was full of Jacobite refugees who
often used assumed names and pretended to be students at the univer-
sity.81 Many of Boerhaave’s students were exiled Scots, and he main-
tained close ties with the University of Edinburgh. Though the date of
his initiation is unknown, Boerhaave became a “brother” Freemason,
probably through his many Scottish friends.82
While Swedenborg was in Leiden (and for several years afterward),
Colonel Clepham, an enthusiastic Jacobite, looked after the Scottish
students who attended Boerhaave’s lectures, and he always enter-
tained them on St. Andrew’s Day. He proudly wrote to the Stuart
court about the gathering of “so many pretty young gent. of our
country,” including “one Mr. Mackenzie,” who appeared in “very
handsome Highland clothes with a Highland sword with an inscrip-
tion on one side ‘God bless King James VIII,’ on the reverse
St. Andrew and ‘No Union with England.’ ”83 Clepham scorned “ the
Whig students” who went to Hanover to “kiss the arse” of George I
and praised the “honest lads” who remained with him in Leiden. It
was possibly the same “Scottish youth named Mackenzie,” who arrived
in Gothenburg four years later, seeking employment under the exiled
Jacobite, Lord Duffus.84 Swedenborg himself would later use the Stuart
cant word “honest” (loyal, discreet) in the context of his secret Jacobite
initiation.85 Unfortunately, Clepham did not know that his correspon-
dence was steadily intercepted by the British, and the Jacobites later
complained that agents of George I boldly entered Boerhaave’s lecture
hall and took away suspected students.
Ambassador Preis was fully aware of the Jacobite presence at Leiden,
for throughout the first half of 1721 he worked with the Stuart sup-
porters in Holland and Eric Sparre in Paris to convince the Russian

80
Hyde, Bibliography, 35.
81
John Murray, An Honest Diplomat at The Hague: The Private Letters of Horatio
Walpole, 1715–1716 (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1953), 335, 339 n. 2.
82
E.E. Stolper, “The Initiation of the Duke of Lorraine,” AQC, 95 (1982) 170–79.
83
NA: SP 107/1C. Intercepted Correspondence (1716–1725).
84
NA: SP 95/42, f. 295.
85
Swedenborg, Journal of Dreams, 43.
158 chapter five

ambassador Kourakin that Görtz’s dessein was still feasible. A British

diplomat would later claim that, during those months, “Kourakin had
orders to solicit France in favour of the Pretender, and a full power
from the Pretender at the very time when our reconciliation was
negotiating.”86 However, Preis would be bitterly disappointed when
the Czar changed course and refused to take up Charles XII’s role in
the anti-Hanoverian coalition.
In the wake of the demoralizing results of the Treaty of Nystadt, the
project of the Jacobite pirates of Madagascar took on renewed appeal—
especially when coupled with the request by Dillon that the debt of
Görtz be repaid. According to Osthoff, Balguerie continued to handle
the main negotiations. On 7 December Balguerie wrote Preis about
“Captain Lawson,” whom Osthoff would later identify as “Anders
Lauson,” a Swedish captain who sailed under English colors while act-
ing as a pirate for the Madagascar scheme.87 Balguerie also referred
to Osthoff ’s employment at Cadix; at this time, he was unaware of
Osthoff ’s anti-Jacobite sentiments or his intention to betray the proj-
ect to the British government.
Having completed his studies in Leiden, Swedenborg returned
to The Hague, where he and Preis shared Balguerie’s disgust at
the Russians’ gloating over the diplomatic victory at Nystadt. On
8 December Kourakin put on an elaborate public fireworks display to
celebrate the new treaty. While Peter the Great was hailed as “Emperor
of All the Russias,” Swedenborg and Preis watched the celebration
together. Their frustration and bitterness at the dismemberment
of Sweden’s Baltic empire made the event a painful occasion. The
next day, Swedenborg returned to Amsterdam, where he consulted
with Tietzen and Balguerie.88 He also posted to Benzelius the scien-
tific articles he had written in Leiden, but the accompanying letter “is
now lost.”89
As Swedenborg prepared to leave Amsterdam, he was joined by his
cousin Hesselius, who travelled with him to Aix-la-Chapelle and Liège,
where they carried out geological and technological investigations.
On 23 December Swedenborg sent Benzelius a new article on geol-
ogy, and he included his description of Kourakin’s victory celebrations

86
NA: SP 95/45, f. 297.
87
“Osthoff ’s Memorandum.”
88
Acton, Letters, I, 279.
89
Ibid., I, 259.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 159

at The Hague and his own re-wording of a poem then circulating in

praise of the Czar. In his angry revision, Swedenborg asserted that the
Czar’s new war-mongering power is possible only because the great
King Charles XII is dead.90 He cancelled his plans to travel to London
and Paris, an itinerary originally connected with the diplomatic agenda
of Preis, Balguerie, and Sparre—an agenda now in disarray because of
the Treaty of Nystadt.
When Hesselius returned to Sweden, Swedenborg moved on to
Leipzig, where he arranged for the publication of Miscellanea observata
circa res naturales (“Miscellaneous Observations Concerning Natural
Things”) in spring 1722. Despite his negative treatment by the Board
of Mines, he dedicated the book to Count Bonde and optimistically
signed himself “Assessor” of the College.
Though this publication was not anonymous, Swedenborg remained
“for the most part incognito,” according to Professor Clodius, who met
him in Leipzig.91 Swedenborg planned to visit Wellingck in Brunswick,
which suggests that his secrecy had some political purpose. But he
also hoped to explore the mines in the Hartz mountains, which were
located in territories controlled by the Hanoverian king of England.
His caution and secrecy thus had a dual purpose—diplomatic and
technological—for mining secrets were carefully guarded by their
owners.

While in Leipzig, Swedenborg also studied alchemical writings and

began to explore the psychological elements of the Hermetic art. His
interest had been stimulated by Boerhaave, who was a diligent but crit-
ical student of alchemy. In his chemical lectures, which Swedenborg
attended, the professor discussed his own experiments in alchemy,
which he claimed were often successful, though he had not “yet”
achieved transmutation. He drew upon his large collection of alchemi-
cal texts, which he often identified in his discussions. Admitting that
he had a high veneration for the ancient alchemists, Boerhaave also
cautioned his students that “it is necessary to check the flight of the
imagination by the weight of experiments.”92

90
Ibid., I, 260.
91
Acton, “Life,” 246, 262.
92
James Partington, A History of Chemistry (London: Macmillan, 1962), II, 140,
701, 742–47.
160 chapter five

After leaving Leiden, Swedenborg read the alchemical works of

J.C. Barchusen and Andreas Rüdiger, which provoked him to criti-
cize Boerhaave’s conclusions.93 Adding a chapter to Miscellaneous
Observations, he referred to the flood of writings which issued from the
alchemists and noted that the idea of transmutation is “deep-seated in
many minds.”94 However, as yet no transmutation into the less noble
metals has been performed; how then can we expect to make gold?
He concluded that real alchemy will consist of better methods of sepa-
rating copper, silver, and gold out of other metals. Nevertheless, the
spiritualistic aspects of alchemy intrigued him, for they were relevant
to his own belief in vapors, rays, and tremulations which formed the
essence of various metallurgical and psychological processes.
In his unpublished treatise on “New Ways of Discovering Mines”
(1719), Swedenborg argued that minerals give off a distinct vapor,
which a man can perceive if he enhances his sensual perception.95
These aura or effluvia, rather than “magic,” explain the action of the
divining rod, which Swedenborg read about in Pierre de Vallemont’s
Physique occulte, ou traité de la baguette divinatore (Amsterdam,
1693).96 Vallemont was convinced that magnetic forces made the
divining rod and sympathetic powders effective. Swedenborg believed
that these vapors also explained the production of the “arbor philo-
sophica,” which J.B. Van Helmont and other alchemists produced.
That his interest was moving into the visionary psychology of the
alchemists is suggested by his attempt to write a treatise on physical
and psychic sensations. Observing that “our native and living essence
depends on tremulations,” he argued that sensation is correlated with
the tension of the membranes, which is stimulated or relaxed by “flu-
ids within and without the body.”97 He had long connected this theory
with political and military concerns, and he had included “a method
of conjecturing the wills and affections of men’s minds by means of
analysis” among the military inventions on which he earlier worked
in Rostock.98

93
Swedenborg, Catalogus, 2–3.
94
Emanuel Swedenborg, Miscellaneous Observations Concerning the Physical
Sciences, trans. C.E. Strutt (London, 1847), 75–77.
95
Swedenborg, Scientific and Philosophical Treatises, 73–75, 81.
96
Swedenborg, Catalogus, 8.
97
Acton, “Life,” 215–17.
98
Acton, Letters, I, 59.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 161

In 1717 he had shared his belief in mind-reading or thought-

transfer with Polhem, who applied Descartes’s theory of animal spirits
to the process of telepathy. According to Polhem, these sprits func-
tioned as bearers and mediating agencies of power, and their energy
consisted of tremulations or vibrations that could go beyond their
bodily centre. In “The Being of Spirits,” Polhem argued that thought
is material and functions mechanically:
And just as hearing can go through a wall, and sight through the hard-
est diamond, it can also be stated with certainty that nothing can hinder
the passage of thoughts . . . It is a result of this activity that two very good
friends can know about each other many thousands of miles away . . . Yes,
what can we say about dreams other than that the fine particles which
have been set in motion linger as does light after one has seen the sun
and come into darkness . . . Yes, what can we say of the phantoms of the
deceased, ghosts, and similar things other than that between the best of
friends the finest materials of thought are in motion, producing their
effect.99
In Camena Borea, Swedenborg had hinted at his use of mind-reading
to decipher the inner intentions of the diplomats and magnates at the
court of Louis XIV. Encouraged by Polhem, he wrote an article for
Daedalus Hyperboreus on the role that tremulations play in mental
telepathy:
It often happens that one person comes to think about another, and that
he then knows what the other is doing and thinking. This [involves the
fact that] his membranes are vibrating from the motions in membranes
in the other person’s brain, in the same way that one string [on a musi-
cal instrument] affects another when they are both tuned to the same
note.100
He further described the experience of “thought transfer”:
It also frequently happens that a person falls into the thought of another
person, that he perceives what another is doing and thinking, that
is, that his membrane trembles from the other person’s cerebral
membranes . . .101
His theory that a “power” flows through the nerve, which “runs from
the brain to the surface of the body” was an up-dated version of the

99
L. Bergquist, Swedenborg’s Secret, 78.
100
Ibid., 79–80.
101
Ibid., 6.
162 chapter five

ancient science of physiognomy, which was still considered a valu-

able skill in intelligence work.102 Recognizing that this kind of thinking
would cause trouble from their political enemies, Swedenborg wrote
Benzelius that he would be cautious about publishing any of these
ideas—“I do not wish to leave anything to sinister judgments.”103
By late 1721, when he was pursuing scientific studies in Flanders
and Germany, Swedenborg seemed to look on telepathy, physiog-
nomy, chiromancy, and geomancy as useful skills for diplomatic and
political work—something akin to the modern techniques of face and
body “profiling” and the prognostications of “think-tanks.” Thus, in
March 1722, when Swedenborg moved on to Brunswick, he was well
equipped both scientifically and diplomatically to offer his services
to Count Wellingck. In the previous years, Wellingck had labored to
gain the support of the reigning dukes of Brunswick for the Swedish-
Holstein plan of alliance with Russia and the Jacobites. But the project
had been sabotaged by the signing of the Treaty of Nystadt.104 His
efforts nevertheless gained the respect of Ludwig Rudolph, Duke of
Brunswick-Luneberg, who asked Wellingck to stay on at court.
When Swedenborg arrived, he hoped to gain employment with
Wellingck and thus dedicated to him a poetic panegyric, Fabulae
Amore & Metamorphosi Uranies in Virum, which was printed in
April 1722. The poem was dedicated “To a Gentleman in the greatest
Confidence of the King’s Sacred Majesty, a Senator of the Kingdom
of Sweden, the most high Count, Count de Wellingck, patron of the
Muses.”105 Swedenborg knew that Wellingck would view Charles XII,
not Frederick I, as the “Sacred Majesty.” While he utilized the flow-
ery allegorical style of his earlier political poems, he was almost indis-
cretely explicit about his own political frustrations.
Swedenborg portrayed himself as the Muse Urania, who sought in
vain at the court and senate of Sweden for a worthy Apollo.106 He then
travelled in Europe, seeking a mentor to serve and finding him, finally,
at Brunswick. Significantly, Swedenborg also took on the responsibility
of announcing Wellingck’s plan to return to Sweden. As we shall see,
Wellingck’s determined effort to counter the pro-Hanoverian policies

102
ACSD #211. Dr. Roberg’s query to Swedenborg (4 March 1720).
103
Acton, Letters, I, 231.
104
Nordmann, Crise, 217–18.
105
Hyde, Bibliography, 40.
106
Acton, “Life,” 249–50.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 163

of Count Horn would eventually bring great danger to himself and his
political allies (who included the Swedberg and Benzelius families). In
his ode, Swedenborg’s allegorical style was strikingly similar to that
employed in the Jacobite correspondence of the time, which utilized a
“machinery” of nymphs and goddesses to cover names and locations.
The increasingly frivolous style was a defense against the expansion of
Hanoverian intelligence, which now controlled the major postal cen-
ters of Europe—especially in Germany.107
Swedenborg wrote Benzelius about his experiences with Wellingck
in Brunswick, but the letter has disappeared. Through the count’s
friendship with Ludwig Rudolph, he could help Swedenborg gain his
support for exploring the mines in the Hartz mountains. Swedenborg
discussed his thoughts about chemistry and alchemy with the duke, to
whom he dedicated volume IV of Miscellaneous Observations. Ludwig
Rudolph and his brother Augustus William were notorious for their
traditional fascination with the Hermetic and Rosicrucian sciences, but
“they were also haunted by apprehensions of being swindled.”108 The
brothers must have appreciated Swedenborg’s relatively skeptical and
pragmatic estimation of alchemy, for they treated him generously. At
the same time, to please his noble patrons, Swedenborg added a eulogy
to King Charles XII, who had penetrated deeply “into the most secret
mysteries of the science of numbers.”109 Swedenborg then travelled
to Hamburg, where he published volume IV and probably contacted
Wellingck’s diplomatic supporters in the city.

While Swedenborg was in Germany, the Jacobites and their Swedish

supporters continued their multi-leveled plotting. Working with
Balguerie and Preis in Holland, Klinckowström corresponded with
Daniel O’Brien about the Madagascar project, using an increasingly
elliptical and encoded language.110 At the same time, the Jacobites
were planning an expedition led by Ormonde, which was to strike at
England during the General Election in spring 1722. But on 8 May the

107
Fritz, English Ministers, 114.
108
Karl Huffbauer, The Foundation of the German Chemical Community, 1720–
1795 (Berkeley: California UP, 1982), 7.
109
Acton, “Life,” 249.
110
Stuart Papers: 58/96, 97, 130, 139; 59/102, 103.
164 chapter five

vigilant prime minister, Robert Walpole, made public the news of “a

horrid conspiracy” and began rounding up suspects.111
Swedenborg had planned to travel from Germany to Vienna
and Rome, apparently to carry out a political mission for Preis and
Wellingck at the Hapsburg and Jacobite courts. Despite Walpole’s
exposure of the plot in England, the Jacobites renewed their appeals
to the Swedish king to support their invasion plans. In late May 1722 a
Jacobite “Mémoire pour sa majesté suédoise” was sent to Stockholm.112
The writer held out the bait of Sweden’s gaining back Bremen and
Verden and then asked for troops to be sent under Count Hamilton
(or whomever the king would prefer). The embarkation from Swedish
ports must be totally secret, but Frederick I would have the choice
to disembark the troops in Scotland or England. He further assured
Frederick that a great number of nobles and the majority of the English
people would support the enterprise, which would bring together the
ancient alliance of the two crowns. If the king concurs, he should act
without delay for this grand and glorious project. However, when the
chief conspirator in England, Gyllenborg’s old friend Bishop Atterbury,
was arrested, the news reached Sweden, where it was viewed by his
supporters as “le catastrophe inattendue.”113
Despite the Swedish king’s public acquiescence in the pro-Hanover-
ian policies of Count Horn, he was still privately interested in the
Madagascar project; moreover, he became more willing to turn a blind
eye to the Jacobite implications of the enterprise. In late May 1722
Klinckowström returned to Sweden, carrying letters and money from
George Waters, the Jacobite banker in Paris.114 In June Klinckowström
met with the king and queen at Medevi, the fashionable Swedish spa,
where they secretly discussed the Madagascar project.115 According to
Osthoff, a small group of Swedish nobles—including Count Bonde—
joined with Klinckowström in persuading the king to accept the
Jacobite proposals:
Clincostrom having then taken his Leave of the King at Medevi,
who drank the waters there, he set out Directly for Paris, where he

111
See Eveline Cruickshanks and Howard Erskine-Hill, The Atterbury Plot (New
York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004).
112
Stuart Papers: 65/32.
113
Ibid., 59/124; Cruickshanks, Atterbury Plot, 160–62.
114
Stuart Papers: 59/102.
115
Steuart, “Sweden,” 126–27.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 165

negotiated an accomodation between the Lord Seaford and the rest of

the Pretender’s adherents on one side, and the above mentioned Swedish
Lords on the other,—Vid’t. That the Swedes would ingage themselves
to send to Dunkirk for the Pretenders use and Service three more Men
of War . . . which said ships with their whole Crew should be entirely
left to the Disposal of Morgan, but the Swedish officers then there-
unto belonging should be sent back to Sweden; with Proviso that the
Pretender’s Party would give sufficient Security to the Agent Balguerie
in Amsterdam for the Payment of 30000 Rixdalers Banco for each of the
three mentioned Ships.116
Tied in with the Madagascar agreement was the problem of the out-
standing Swedish debt to the Jacobites. On 25 June Frederick finally
replied to Dillon’s request for repayment of the Jacobite funds sent to
Charles XII.117 He revealed that he had given Dillon’s two letters to the
Council to investigate the debts contracted by Görtz. Klinckowström
assured Frederick that Eric Sparre had full knowledge of the affair, and
the king assured Dillon that Sparre would make the required explana-
tions. The king concluded, “We will then make the necessary arrange-
ments for the repayment. But we cannot do it promptly because of the
sad state of our affairs.” In fact, it would take decades for the “Debt of
Görtz” to be repaid, and questions about its resolution would emerge
repeatedly in future diplomatic and military schemes; moreover, some
of these would involve Swedenborg.118
In June, while Swedenborg was still with Wellingck at Brunswick, he
received an urgent letter from his father, who was at Medevi with the
king and queen. Bishop Swedberg insisted that Emanuel come home
immediately, because his presence was needed during a complicated
inheritance dispute. However, Swedberg had an additional political
motive for recalling his son. Disgusted with the arrogance and corrup-
tion of the ruling oligarchy, the Swedish clergy and peasants pressed
for enlargement of the royal power “at the expense of the nobles.”119
Encouraged by Swedberg, Frederick I and Ulrika Eleonora began
a public progress through the country in order to drum up popular

116
“Osthoff ’s Memorandum.”
117
Stuart Papers: 60/86.
118
Cruickshanks and Erskine-Hill, Atterbury Plot, 151–52, 279 n. 67–70. Sweden
was unable to pay the remainder of what became known as “the debt of Görtz,” and
French-Jacobite negotiations for Swedish repayment in troops and weapons continued
over the next decades; see ahead, Chapters Six, Seven, and Twelve.
119
NA: SP 95/30, f. 11.
166 chapter five

support for their royalist agenda. At Medevi they invited Benzelius to

join his father-in-law in their planning. They also persuaded the reluc-
tant Bishop Swedberg to participate in the upcoming Diet, where he
should work to rebuild royal power and expand religious tolerance.
When Swedenborg arrived in Sweden in July, he went immediately
to Medevi to join the ongoing discussions of his family with the royal
couple.120 Given Klinckowström’s recent visit to Medevi, where he
informed Frederick about the on-going Madagascar negotiations, the
king would be eager to hear from Swedenborg what he had learned
from Balguerie and Preis about that project. Swedenborg also hoped to
gain the king’s patronage for his proposed copper-smelting project,
and he thus wrote a fulsome ode to the royal couple on 18 July, in
which he implied his support for the effort to enlarge their power.121
After leaving Medevi, Swedenborg attempted to launch various metal-
lurgical and coinage projects, which would meet resistance from his
family’s political opponents. We will return to those projects after
examining the fall-out from the Madagascar “conspiracy” over the
next few months.
After Klinckowström left Medevi and returned to France and then
England, the anti-Jacobite Osthoff revealed the plot to George I, who
then sent him as a British secret agent to Sweden. Osthoff contacted
various pro-Hanoverian officials in Sweden and promised to expose
the affair. An alarmed Klinckowström returned to Sweden to “take
measures concerning the Interest of his Party”—i.e., to protect Gustaf
Bonde, D.N. von Höpken, and the other clandestine participants. This
need for increased secrecy may have prompted Swedenborg’s odd
action of publishing a scientific paper under the assumed authorship of
“A Friendly Answer . . . given by a friend in the absence of the author.”
In the paper Swedenborg referred to “the author’s absence,” and, as
Acton notes, he “wished to conceal the fact that he had returned from
abroad.”122 Over the next months, he continued to publish anony-
mously various controversial works.
Then, in the autumn, Bonde and his Madagascar collaborators took
desperate measures to prevent the exposure of their scheme. According
to Osthoff, they arranged the arrest and trial of Commodore Ulrich,

120
Acton, Letters, I, 263–65.
121
Ibid., I, 266.
122
Ibid., I, 269–70.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 167

a ship-captain in their employ, in order “to strengthen or to blind the

King in his former opinion”:
but as his Confinement and Process were only pro forma, he found
friends to get his Pardon of the States of the Kingdom: But my lot was
otherwise, I was, by Instigation of Clincowström, underhand closely
pursued, and at last, under some pretence or other, brought into safe
custody, they being unanimously resolved to proceed against me with
the utmost rigour.123
Osthoff was particularly worried because Count Bonde was appointed
to oversee his pending trial.
The pressure to protect the collaborators’ secret activities explains
Swedenborg’s determination to distance himself from the financial
dealings of Tietzen and Balguerie, for the latter was still corresponding
with the Madagascar agents.124 On 6 November Swedenborg received a
letter from Zacharias Strömberg, a Swedish merchant in Amsterdam,
who asked for instructions concerning a trunk that Swedenborg had
left in his care. Swedenborg still had a great deal of money banked
in Amsterdam (on deposit with Balguerie), and Strömberg enclosed
a draft for 300 Dutch guilders. On 7 November Swedenborg replied
with information that certain Swedish officials, including Cameen
in the Commerce College and Lilliencreutz on the Court of Appeal,
have received some kind of payments.125 Was this connected with
the “friends” who would procure a pardon for Commodore Ulrich?
Swedenborg then asked Strömberg to handle his future financial trans-
actions, “concerning an ironwork,” instead of “Agent Balguerie, or
von Titzen.” As we shall see, two years later Swedenborg would renew
his contact with Balguerie, in a context of revived Swedish-Jacobite
intrigues.126
The actions of Swedenborg, his family, and their supporters pro-
voked the anger of Count Horn, who took measures to “depress” the
“new nobility.”127 As noted earlier, Swedenborg had been ennobled by
the queen in 1719 as part of an effort to increase the royal power. In
response to an official’s questioning about the legitimacy of his noble

123
“Osthoff ’s Memorandum.”
124
RA: Hollandica, #772. Balguerie to Preis (1722).
125
Acton, Letters, I, 279–80.
126
Ibid., I, 427.
127
J.F. Chance, The Alliance of Hanover (London: John Murray, 1923), 260, 373,
530–54.
168 chapter five

status, Swedenborg sent his cousin Peter Schönström a copy of his

family’s genealogical table which had been prepared for the House of
Nobles, and Schönström then advised him on where to find more doc-
uments to support his case.128 Horn’s political suppression, designed to
keep the new nobility out of the Diet, was matched by the rejection of
Swedenborg by Horn’s political supporters on the Board of Mines.
Throughout these months, Benzelius worried about the risks involved
in Swedenborg’s attempt to implement and publicize his scientific and
financial proposals. He especially warned about Swedenborg’s attempt
to replicate and update the experiments of the late alchemist, Johan
von Kunckel.129 Swedenborg’s former patron Polhem, whose scientific
career was also thwarted by political opponents, was currently pursu-
ing similar projects that combined alchemical theory with mathemat-
ics and mechanics.130 Much of Polhem’s “disgrace” was caused by his
identification with Görtz’s financial system, especially the copper coin-
age or “money of necessity.” Despite the political risk, Swedenborg
determined to tackle the monetary problem, for Horn’s government
planned to devalue the coinage. In November he published anony-
mously a treatise, Inoffensive Thoughts on the Rise and Fall of Money
(1722), which—despite its cautious tone—generated much contro-
versy.131 When the Chancery College refused to allow any discussion
of Swedenborg’s work, Carl Gyllenborg rose to the author’s defense,
arguing the need for free expression.
Swedenborg’s friendship with Gyllenborg soon improved his politi-
cal and economic position, while they both participated in the Diet of
1722–23. Swedenborg had learned in Brunswick that Wellingck would
return to Sweden in order to fight against the proposed Hanoverian
alliance. Now, Gyllenborg and Wellingck used their eloquence, pas-
sion, and manipulation to revitalize the opposition to Horn, and they
brought many of its members back into public life, at least temporarily.
Ambassador Preis, staunch supporter of Görtz’s policies, was named a
court councillor while keeping his diplomatic position at The Hague.
Gyllenborg and Preis maintained their bitter distrust of the English
king, and they soon gained popular support for their campaign against
George I’s betrayal of Sweden’s interests.

128
Acton, Letters, I, 270–75.
129
Ibid., I, 269–70.
130
Lindroth, Polhem, 85–86.
131
Hyde, Bibliography, 44.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 169

On 30 November 1722 the British envoy in Sweden, William Finch,

reported to London that “several senators threw the blame of the bad
peace with the Czar upon his Majesty [George I], and talk as if his
[Whig] ministers were the chief occasion that Sweden submitted to
such hard terms.”132 By 5 February 1723 George I was indignant that
not only Wellingck but Horn supported the same accusation. Horn’s
ploy was a desperate attempt to shift blame off his own shoulders for
the disastrous Treaty of Nystadt.
In the Diet, whose participants were confused and demoralized,
Gyllenborg and Wellingck led a renaissance of the Holstein party,
assisted by the return of thousands of Carolinian military officers from
Russian prison camps.133 These officers distrusted the new constitution,
which seemed the cynical product of Hessian intrigues. The revitalized
party was able to secure the recognition of Duke Charles of Holstein
as a Swedish prince, thus strengthening his candidacy for the throne.
By July 1724 an exhausted King Frederick I—cynically manipulated by
his Hanoverian allies and excluded from power by Horn—threatened
to abdicate, leaving the door open to the Duke of Holstein. The British,
who considered Duke Charles a puppet of the Russians, stepped up
their campaign of bribery and espionage in Sweden. What fueled their
worry was the fact that the Czar, despite his humiliation of Sweden,
still hoped for a victory over the Hanoverians.
Their suspicions of renewed Swedish-Russian-Jacobite collusion
were sharpened by the investigation of Osthoff from 11 October 1723
to 18 January 1724, with Bonde presiding. After Osthoff managed to
escape, he revealed to the British government “several intrigues of the
Jacobites in the last conspiracy against the king” (i.e., the Atterbury
plot).134 During this period, the deaths of the French Regent Orleans
in December 1723 and Cardinal Dubois in August 1724—both col-
laborators in Hanoverian policies—seemed to announce new oppor-
tunities for a Swedish-Russian-Jacobite campaign. In Oxford a jubilant
Thomas Hearne noted that by the death of “two rogues” (Orleans and
Dubois), “King James hath lost his two greatest enemies.”135
In Sweden Josias Cederhielm (a friend of Swedenborg) gained a dip-
lomatic appointment to Russia, where he secretly negotiated with the

132
Chance, BDI: Sweden, I, 164.
133
Nordmann, Grandeur, 240–47.
134
Chance, Alliance, 144.
135
Hearne, Remarks, VIII, 140.
170 chapter five

Czar and Jacobites. On 24 April 1724 the British ambassador at Paris,

Horatio Walpole, reported that Cederhielm had deceived Horn and
Frederik I, for “he was zealously addicted to the contrary faction” of
the Holstein party. Even worse, his nephew Carl Gustaf Cederhielm,
Holstein representative at Paris, “kept no other company than that of
sharpers and Jacobites.”136 In London an alarmed Robert Walpole was
sure that “the Jacobites at Stockholm . . . and at other places in Sweden”
were planning an expedition against England.137

A thick veil of secrecy covered these projects in Sweden, and there is

almost no archival evidence—except in Jacobite correspondence on the
Continent, British diplomatic reports, and recently discovered Russian
documents. Throughout 1724 Stephen Poyntz, new British ambassa-
dor in Sweden, reported to Walpole on the increasing disaffection of
King Frederick I from the “arbitrary government” of Count Horn.138
Horn’s personal power-plays were alienating so many Swedes that the
claim of the Holstein “Pretender” was taking on the aura of dynas-
tic and moral legitimacy maintained by the Stuart Pretender.139 Thus,
Walpole alerted his spies and decipherers to increase their surveillance
over Sweden’s politicians and diplomats to forestall any replay of the
Swedish-Russian-Jacobite plot.
Under the vigorous leadership of Gyllenborg, Wellingck, and the
Tessins, the Holstein party gained increasing support in Sweden. It
was through their influence that Swedenborg finally gained a position
as full assessor on the Board of Mines in July 1724. He then rented
a room in Gyllenborg’s house in Stockholm and took an active part
in politics.140 He also resumed his correspondence with Balguerie,
who had regained his role as Swedish consul, through the influence
of Ambassador Preis.141 Swedenborg was pleased by the return from
England of the energetic entrepreneur Jonas Alströmer, who had

136
HMC: Polwarth, IV, 291–92.
137
Chance, BDI: Sweden, I, 200; William Coxe, Memoirs of the Life and
Administration of Sir Robert Walpole (London: Cadell and Davies, 1798), II, 480–83.
138
Chance, Alliance, 260, 373.
139
“En förklaring af grefve Carl Gyllenborg angäende hans förhällande till
Pretendenten,” Historisk Tidskrift (1903), 285–88.
140
Olle Hjern, “Swedenborg in Stockholm,” in Robin Larsen, ed., Emanuel
Swedenborg: the Continuing Vision (New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1988), 320–22.
141
Acton, Letters, I, 427.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 171

worked with Görtz and Preis in 1718.142 Alströmer wanted Swedenborg

to return with him to London in order to study technological innova-
tions there (and probably to assist in political matters).143 The British
would soon investigate Alströmer as a suspected collaborator with
the Jacobites.144
Alerted by British agents in Paris, St. Petersburg, and Stockholm,
Prime Minister Walpole was sure that a new Swedish-Jacobite plot was
brewing in 1724–25. Their fears were intensified when Duke Charles
of Holstein married Anna Petrovna, the Czar’s daughter, in November
1724. Angered by the current alliance between England and France,
Peter I was now willing to support the Holstein party in Sweden,
which meant re-engagement in the related Jacobite cause. He thus
ordered Vassily Tatischev, a former agent in the Görtz-Gyllenborg
negotiations, to travel to Sweden as an intelligence agent and technol-
ogy consultant.145 During the Åland conference in 1718, Tatischev had
served as a courier for General James Bruce, who possibly initiated him
into Freemasonry (Tatischev’s family would later be active in Russian
lodges).146 As a protégé of Bruce, Tatischev was trained in mathemat-
ics, fortifications, artillery, and architecture—skills his Scottish mentor
associated with operative Masonry.
He also shared Bruce’s Jacobite sympathies, and he became privy
to the secret negotiations underway between Holstein, Stuart, and
Russian diplomats. While carrying out his intelligence mission,
Tatischev also studied current Swedish scientific, technological, and
literary efforts. In the process, he became friendly with Swedenborg,
Benzelius, Gyllenborg, and Nicodemus Tessin—who shared the Czar’s
desire to develop a new defensive alliance against England and France.
Tatischev’s role in bringing to Sweden rare information on the esoteric
lore of Tartary and Tibet will be discussed later, when it becomes a
factor in Swedenborg’s theosophical development.
Ambassador Poyntz kept a vigilant eye on Tatischev’s activities in
Sweden, which he accurately interpreted as anti-Hanoverian. Walpole
soon learned from Poyntz that “a certain St. Leger,” a bold Jacobite

142
Gösta Lindeberg, Svensk Ekonomisk Politik under den Görtzka Perioden (Lund,
1941), 359.
143
Acton, Letters, I, 341, 371.
144
NA: SP 95/46, f. 37.
145
Juri Küttner, “Tatiscevs Mission i Sverige, 1724–1726,” Lychnos (1990), 109–64.
146
Bakounine, Répertoire, 546.
172 chapter five

privateer, was working with the Swedish minister Niklas von Höpken
to gather an arsenal of guns to be shipped to Ireland and Scotland.147
Walpole also instructed Poyntz to locate Osthoff, who had fled Sweden,
in order to learn the names of all Swedes who had collaborated with
the Jacobite pirates of Madagascar. Walpole praised the services of Per
Niklas Gedda, who now used the Swedish embassy in Paris to help the
Hessian-Hanoverian cause, but he was furious that Carl Gustaf Tessin
utilized the Swedish embassy in Vienna to help the Holstein-Jacobite
cause. Tessin later recalled that in 1725 Poyntz offered him a bribe in
order to seduce him into spying on the Jacobites at Vienna—an offer
that Tessin indignantly rejected.148
In February 1725 the Jacobite agent John Hay wrote to Admiral
Gordon in Russia about a proposed embarkation from Gothenburg or
Bergen, in which the Duke of Holstein would lead the Czar’s troops,
conquer Norway, and invade Scotland.149 Soon after this ambitious let-
ter was sent, the death of Czar Peter sent shock waves through the
Jacobite network, for it was viewed as a loss second only to that of
Charles XII. However, they were soon reassured by the sympathy of
his successor, Empress Catherine I, for the Holstein-Jacobite cause.
In Sweden Tatischev continued to gather intelligence from the
Holstein partisans, who hoped the new Empress would restore Sweden’s
provinces on the Baltic which had earlier been conquered by Czar Peter.
He also publicly charged that Admiral Norris had accepted a large
bribe from the Russian ambassador Golovin in 1719, in order to keep
his British fleet from defending Sweden’s unprotected coastal popula-
tion from the Russians, who “ravaged it with excessive inhumanity.”150
Poyntz reacted furiously to this charge, and as Tatischev prepared to
leave Sweden, the ambassador urged Horn “to sift him and his papers
on board, which will certainly make discoveries and disconcert the
plans he probably takes with him.” Such a sifting would be worrisome
for Benzelius and Swedenborg, who had been in close communica-

147
Chance, Alliance, 139–50.
148
Sigrid Leijonhufvud, ed., Carl Gustaf Tessins Dagbok, 1748–1752 (Stockholm,
1915), 58.
149
HMC: Reports on the Manuscripts of the Earl of Eglinton. 10th Report. Appendix A
(London, 1885), 174–75.
150
NA: SP 95/42, ff. 296, 312, 325.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 173

tion with the Russian throughout his Swedish residence. Moreover,

Tatischev carried with him some of Swedenborg’s writings.151
Poyntz hoped to use the Tatischev controversy against Wellingck,
but by April 1726, he realized that the Holstein cause was gaining
ground. He complained to London about Count Horn’s jealousy, cau-
tion, and fear of losing power:
Those who follow him in the Senate are men of honest minds, but mostly
mutes and of little weight in a Diet. The best tongues and pens, next to
his, are against us; and being generally from the new nobility, whom he
had always depressed, will have numerous followers.152
Among that new nobility was Swedenborg, who joined with Benzelius
and Gyllenborg to support Wellingck’s campaign against Horn’s
attempt to officially sign Sweden into the “Hanoverian Alliance” with
Britain and France, the latter now governed by the anti-Jacobite poli-
cies of Cardinal Fleury, chief minister to the sixteen year-old Louis
XV. As the Holsteiners gained ground, Benzelius won appointment as
Bishop of Gothenburg—a center of support for the cause.
But the British became increasingly alarmed at the influence of the
Jacobite Duke of Wharton, former Grand Master of the Grand Lodge
of England, and of Carl Gustaf Tessin on diplomats in Vienna, and
their fears grew that the Swedish Holsteiners had secretly signed a
treaty with Russia.153 As Walpole pressed Poyntz to use Horn’s power
to push through the British alliance, Poyntz warned them that this
would be harder than George I expected. Horn’s “tricking and incon-
sistency,” “his insincerity and obstinacy” would so disgust you within
a quarter of an hour, that you would never want to speak to him
again: “I have long palliated his failings in my dispatches,” but even
the King of Sweden has “rebell’d against his arbitrary government.”154
Nevertheless, he reported that “a Swedish Diet is always corruptible.”

151
J. Küttner, “Tatischev,” 115–118, 130–31. David Dunér recently discovered in the
archives of the Russian Academy of Sciences that when Tatischev received a work on
the decimal system from Swedenborg, he immediately had it translated into Russian.
In January 1725 he sent the translation to the Imperial Cabinet in Saint Petersburg,
and he subsequently carried other Swedenborgian works to Russia; see Dunér’s article,
“On the Decimal: the First Russian Translation of Swedenborg,” pages 933–44. <www
.the new philosophyonline.org> (July–December 2009).
152
NA: SP 95/42, f. 325.
153
J.F. Chance, “The Treaty of Hanover,” English Historical Review, 29 (1914), 662,
679, 687–88.
154
NA: SP 95/43, f. 317.
174 chapter five

Thus, Walpole ordered Poyntz to mount an aggressive campaign of

bribery in Sweden. Rumors began to swirl that Britain secretly paid
King Frederick £50,000 to ensure a Hessian succession and Swedish
accession to the Hanoverian treaty—rumors which gained credibility
when the king suddenly cooperated with Horn in his campaign.
In October 1726 Frederick I and Horn ordered the arrest of Wellingck
and confiscated his papers. Supported by British money and informa-
tion, they charged Wellingck with treasonable financial transactions
when he served in Brunswick in 1722. In London the government
rejoiced at reports of the imprisonment of Wellingck, the Holsteiners’
“mighty oracle and chief director with all his papers,” and they awaited
egerly news about “the springs and secret management of this arrest.”155
Poyntz, who had received intelligence reports “in a chymical ink, not
legible to interceptors,” was triumphant. However, the persecution of
the venerable seventy-five year old diplomat caused a storm of contro-
versy. Wellingck protested that the high-handed procedures were like
“the Spanish Inquisition,” and Benzelius denounced the trial in fiery
speeches, leading Poyntz to report to George I that Benzelius is “our
great enemy.”156
Swedenborg delivered a more cautious protest in the Diet, prob-
ably out of fear for his own safety, since he had worked closely with
Wellingck in Brunswick in 1722. He must have been shocked when
his friend and employer, Gustaf Bonde, agreed to serve as judge over
the trial of Wellingck, for Bonde was aware of Swedenborg’s earlier
service to the count. Thus, Swedenborg characterized his address to
the Nobles as “my inoffensive thought,” while he argued that the pub-
lication of Wellingck’s papers would violate the common practice of
nations.157 Even worse, Wellingck’s correspondence would include the
names of “ministers and high persons in foreign lands”; therefore, it
should be examined only by a select committee bound by oaths of
secrecy.
By November the arguments of Swedenborg and other supporters
of Wellingck convinced the Secret Committee that they should omit
the opening of letters of foreign ministers, but Horn’s party insisted
on “detecting and exposing” the correspondence and activities of “all

155
NA: SP 95/45, ff. 1–2.
156
Ibid., f. 70; L.G.W. Legg, ed., BDI, IV: France (1721–1727), 129.
157
Acton, Letters, I, 407–08.
 defeat and depression, 1719–1727 175

others” associated with the count.158 Poyntz especially hoped that

Nicodemus Tessin, Carl Gyllenborg, and Nicklas von Höpken would
be ruined.159 Josias Cederhielm, a friend of Swedenborg and Benzelius,
was implicated and became so terrified that he transferred all his papers
to the Russian embassy.
Using the threat of further arrests to intimidate the Holsteiners,
Horn and Poyntz bullied the Secret Committee into acceptance of the
Hanoverian Alliance in March 1727. The terms of the Alliance were
not divulged, and there was a sharp protest by many members of the
Diet. Swedenborg opposed the clandestine intrigues and argued in
the House of Nobles that the full details of the treaty should be pub-
licly read at the next plenum (joint meeting of the four houses), so that
“a better understanding may be had as to the caution which has been
observed therewith, the Estates of the Realm being so much the more
entitled to hear that read to them which concerns the whole kingdom,
both private individuals and public.”160
Swedenborg’s plea was ignored, while British pressure intimidated
and bribery seduced a majority of the Diet. A jubilant Poyntz reported
that all twelve members of the secret Sub-Committee of Alliances
signed the treaty, except Burgomaster Stobaeus and Eric Benzelius,
“whom Count Horn, according to his usual policy, hoped to gain by
placing them in the deputation.”161 However, Benzelius eventually suc-
cumbed to the unanimous vote of the clerical order and accepted the
report, on condition that an article “be insisted on in favour of the
Duke of Holstein.”162
The victory of Horn and Frederick I, which seemed so triumphant,
was poignantly pyrrhic, as even the British admitted in top secret
memorandums. One month after Sweden’s accession to the treaty, the
English ambassador in Paris blithely acknowledged that George I had
no intention of honoring the promises made to Sweden.163 In the same
month, Horn’s Secret Committee recommended the death penalty
for Wellingck. Though popular resentment at such harshness forced

158
NA: SP 95/45, ff. 67, 278.
159
Ibid., f. 300.
160
Acton, Letters, I, 418.
161
Chance, Alliance, 554.
162
NA: SP 95/46, ff. 123, 128.
163
Chance, BDI: Sweden, I, 244–45.
176 chapter five

the committee to commute his sentence to life imprisonment, the

exhausted count died on 10 July while being conducted to prison.
With their party collapsing around them, Swedenborg and Benzelius
knew that their wanderings in the political wilderness would continue.
It was small solace to the Holstein party—who considered themselves
the legitimate heirs of Charles XII’s mystical royalism—that the hated
British king, George I, had died a month earlier (11 June) while travel-
ing to his beloved Hanover.
As the British intercepted the Jacobite and Swedish correspondence
from Russia and Europe, the Masonic network of communication
was temporarily disrupted. But the bitter memories and nationalis-
tic resentment at the degrading Alliance of Hanover would eventu-
ally fuel a renaissance not only of the Holstein party but of Jacobite
Freemasonry in Sweden.
 CHAPTER SIX

THE INTERNATIONAL MASONIC CHESS BOARD:

NEW PLAYERS IN THE EXPANDING GLOBAL GAME,
1727–1734

While the Holstein party went down to defeat, the frustrated Russian
ambassador reported that the Diet had become a fair, with “every one
trafficking and telling what moneys others had received, while for
themselves protesting innocence, since punishment for the offence was
capital.”1 For the next seven years, Horn would implement Walpole’s
policy of governing by bribery and corruption. Even more frustrating
to the Carolinians was the deceptive and cautious policy of Cardinal
Fleury, who was so intimidated by Walpole that he subordinated
French foreign policy to England’s Whig agenda. As the Walpolean
dictum that “every man has his price” dominated Swedish political
life, the Holstein party dreamed of national regeneration. Reflecting
an increasing sympathy for Jacobite ideals, Count Frederick Axel von
Fersen—a descendant of the Scottish MacPhersons—scorned Horn as
the first Swedish chancellor to use systematic corruption, all in the
service of the Hanoverian Alliance.2
In January 1726 Walpole’s skills at “financial diplomacy” were also
displayed when he suppressed a Jewish-Jacobite financial plot that
was complementary to the Swedish-Russian plot.3 His action was
mirrored by Horn’s suppression of Jewish rights in Sweden. Because
Benzelius was so visibly linked with philo-Semitic efforts, the setbacks
to Jewish settlement in Sweden seemed deliberately targeted at his
political efforts. Since the death of Rabbi Kemper in 1716, Benzelius
and his new son-in-law Norrelius had labored to publish Kemper’s
works and to gain governmental support for further Hebrew studies.4

1
Chance, Alliance, 553.
2
Roberts, Swedish Parliament, 30.
3
Alistair and Henrietta Tayler, The Stuart Papers at Windsor Castle (London,
1939), 76–77; HMC: Report on the Manuscripts of His Grace the Duke of Portland
(London, 1901), VII, 416.
4
Norrelius married Margareta (Greta) Benzelius in 1726, but they divorced in
1733. The publication of lurid details about Greta’s promiscuous behavior would cause
political problems for her father and great pain to her uncle, Swedenborg.
178 chapter six

In 1723 the liberalization advocated by Charles XII was reversed,

when Horn’s party (allied with the orthodox clergy) pushed through
an ordinance against the Jews. Undeterred, Benzelius continued to
press for Hebrew studies and Jewish contacts. In 1724 he welcomed
to Uppsala another baptized Jew from Poland, Christian Petter Loewe,
and helped him gain an appointment as Semitic language instructor
in 1727. Swedenborg was interested in Loewe’s work, and he later
acquired his book, Speculum religionis Judaicae (1732).5
Benzelius’s academic efforts were complemented by a highly secre-
tive effort to bring Jewish economic expertise to Sweden. In February
1727 the Swedish economist Anders Bachmansson (later called
Nordencrantz) sent a secret memorial to the Diet, in which he argued
that Jews had brought great prosperity to England, where he had
observed their economic activities.6 But the profitability of Jews to the
state depends upon the free and secure position they are given. When
the conservative clergy clamored for expulsion of the “Carolinian”
Jews, Bachmansson countered that those who would take out per-
manent residence should be allowed to stay. Swedenborg, who knew
Bachmansson, must have been aware of his efforts.7 At the eleventh
hour, the Diet committee voted against Bachmansson, and stringent
anti-Jewish ordinances were passed and enforced.
While Benzelius continued his struggle, Swedenborg took ref-
uge from his political frustration in Hermetic and Pietist studies. In
June 1726 his somewhat skeptical interest in alchemy was revitalized
by the arrival in Sweden of the charismatic Johann Conrad Dippel,
who espoused a radical Pietism composed of rationalized alchemy,
Paracelsan medicine, and Christian Kabbalism.8 Swedenborg attended
Dippel’s lectures and demonstrations at the home of Elias von Walcker.
He later recorded in his diary that he had been among those who
adhered to Dippel.9 He noted further,
When Dippel was in Sweden, he preached his process as a sure argument
for the transmutation of gold from metals; for he promised by this art

5
Swedenborg, Catalogus, 6.
6
Valentin, Judarnas, 106–08.
7
Acton, Letters, I, 390; II, 545.
8
See Karl-Ludwig Voss, Christianus Democritus: das Menschenbild bei Johann
Conrad Dippel (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1970).
9
Swedenborg, Spiritual Diary, #3486.
 new players in the expanding global game, 1727–1734 179

and process to extract more gold from copper than can be done by any
common way.10
Swedenborg then gave the alchemical recipe but noted, “I fear I have
been too prolix.” He also wrote a large treatise on gold and silver,
which included references to Dippel’s alchemical techniques, but it
was subsequently lost or destroyed.11
Swedenborg and his Hermetic colleagues at the College of Mines
(especially Bonde and Hjärne) were evidently behind the effort to
appoint Dippel to a position at the College.12 But Dippel’s fate in
Sweden became entangled in the bitter political power struggle and
controversy over the Jews. His teachings on the Ur-Mensch, the
Kabbalistic Grand Man, made him a target for the anti-Jewish ordi-
nances passed in 1727. His advocacy of a purely personal religion of
mystical illumination, which required neither theological learning nor
clerical instruction, caused further alarm. His caustic wit and free-
thinking soon frightened even the Pietists, many of whom withdrew
from his gatherings. He was ordered out of Stockholm in December
and left Sweden in March 1728.
Though Eric Benzelius objected to Dippel’s extreme anti-clericalism,
Swedenborg remained interested in his theosophy. He now studied
the Boehmenistic works of Pierre Poiret and Johann Petersen, whom
Dippel knew and admired.13 Like Dippel, who sought out Count
Zinzendorf and the Moravian Brotherhood, Swedenborg contacted
Moravian sympathizers in Sweden who felt the need for a secret net-
work of spiritual questers.14 Dippel hoped to gain Zinzendorf ’s sup-
port for a fraternity that would carry on the theosophical traditions
of Zoroaster, Trismegistus, “the oldest Cabalists of the Jews,” Plato,
Origen, Paracelsus, Boehme, More, and Fludd (whom Dippel called
“a Wonder of his Time in England”).15
With the Jews, Pietists, and Dippelians forcefully suppressed by the
turbulent Diets of 1726–28, Benzelius and his allies tried to salvage at

10
Swedenborg, De Cupro; in Acton, “Life,” 328.
11
Acton, “Life,” 338.
12
On Bonde and Dippel, see Carl-Michael Edenborg, Gull och Mull: den Monströse
Gustaf Bonde (Ellerström, 1997), 32–33.
13
Emanuel Swedenborg, A Philosopher’s Notebook, ed. Alfred Acton (Philadelphia:
Swedenborg Association, 1931), 30, 508.
14
L. Bergquist, Swedenborg’s Secret, 199–202.
15
Voss, Christianus, 68.
180 chapter six

least some of their pansophic dreams by establishing a public society

of sciences. In their efforts, they were galvanized by Mårten Triewald,
who brought to Sweden the fruits of his long residence in England and
Scotland.16 Though he benefited from Desaguliers’s training in scien-
tific methodology, he shared with Swedenborg the belief that scientific
enlightenment was created by spiritual influx—i.e., that great techno-
logical inventions, such as the Newcomen steam engine, were “effec-
tively bestowed by God” and “caused by a special act of providence.”17
Despite the political setbacks to the Holstein cause, Mårten Triewald
was driven by a deep religious impulse to establish a spiritually-oriented
scientific society in Sweden. He launched the initiative in 1728 by giving
a series of lectures in the House of Nobles, where Swedenborg was in
the audience. Encouraged by Carl Gyllenborg and Benzelius, he hoped
to re-organize the scientific society at Uppsala along the non-partisan
lines of the original Royal Society in England. This de-politicalization
became critical when his brother Samuel Triewald was accused of trea-
son at the Diet of 1728 and subsequently fled to Holstein.
As Swedenborg hovered uneasily between mechanism and mys-
ticism, his frustration mounted at the increasing political repres-
sion in Sweden. In April 1727 Ambassador Poyntz had reported to
London that Colonel Filip Bogislaw Schwerin was collaborating with
the Russians and Jacobites in Sweden. At Ambassador Golovin’s din-
ner party, Schwerin “in the heat of liquor” boasted of their planned
attack on Britain.18 In July Schwerin caused an uproar in the House
of Nobles when he said that he had great esteem for Chancellor
Horn, but “he did not crouch or creep to him as others did.” In
February 1728 Robert Jackson reported that Schwerin gave a great
entertainment for the Holstein partisans before setting out for
St. Petersburg.19 Especially worrying was his Scottish travelling com-
panion, Captain Innes, “a famous Jacobite,” for they planned to meet
with the Duc de Liria, the Pretender’s agent, at the Russian court.20
Alarmed by this news, Walpole pressured Horn to demand a state-
ment from Schwerin about the plans of Charles XII, whom he had
served in the Norwegian campaign of 1718. From the safety of Russia,

16
Lindroth, Swedish Men, 205; S. Lindquist, Technology, 256, 269, 366.
17
L. Stewart, Rise, 57, 365.
18
NA: SP 95/47, ff. 57–58, 255.
19
NA: SP 95/49. Robert Jackson to Walpole (Stockholm, 31 January 1728).
20
NA: SP 95/50, ff. 44–45.
 new players in the expanding global game, 1727–1734 181

Schwerin reported that the king had indeed planned to invade Scotland
and restore James III to the British throne.
Swedenborg, who knew Schwerin, was motivated to read further
about Charles XII’s grand design. He now studied Ivan Nestesuranoi’s
Memoires de le Règne de Pierre le Grand (1726), which contained
detailed information on the earlier Swedish-Jacobite plot and the sub-
sequent negotiations at Åland.21 Of greatest interest to Swedenborg was
Nestesuranoi’s description of the Hanoverian spies sent to Sweden and
Russia, who were “personnes capables de pénétrer les secrèts mouve-
ments de ces Cours.”22 As noted earlier, Swedenborg and Polhem were
annoyed and alarmed at the actitivies of these spies. Affirming that
the whole world knows that the Czar protected and encouraged the
Jacobite refugees in Russia, Nestesuranoi concluded that Peter agreed
to join Sweden in support of James III and that after Charles XII con-
quered Norway, their joint forces would invade Scotland.23 Moreover,
central to the Swedish-Russian plans was the strategic networking car-
ried out by the Scottish Earl of Mar (whose Russian-Masonic contacts
have already been noted).
Swedenborg and Benzelius also acquired Guillaume de Lamberty’s
Memoires pour servir à histoire de XVIIIe siècle (1724–1728), which
provided even more detailed coverage of the negotiations at Utrecht,
the Görtz-Gyllenborg plot, the Jacobite sympathies of Charles XII,
and the actions of Palmquist, Preis, and their diplomatic network.
Both Russian and French authors made clear that Görtz’s plans were
nearly successful and would have regained Sweden’s position as a
leading world power. The two books were published at a sensitive
time in Sweden, for a growing sense of national humiliation at the
hands of Britain provoked a revival of Carolinian nationalism among
the defeated Holsteiners. It was reinforced by the widespread belief
that Charles XII had been murdered by agents of the Hanoverian
Alliance.24
The Holsteiners’ interest in reviving Charles XII’s foreign policy was
reinforced by the visit of Carl Gustaf Tessin to Paris in summer 1728.
Accompanied by his new bride, Ulla Sparre, Tessin fils was welcomed

21
Swedenborg, Catalogus, 11.
22
B. Ivan Nestesuranoi, Mémoires du Regne de Pierre le Grand (La Haye et
Amsterdam, 1726–), IV, 247.
23
Ibid., IV, 384–86.
24
Roberts, Oxenstierna, 150–52.
182 chapter six

by the Jacobite friends of the late Eric Sparre, Ulla’s father. Several
months earlier, Tessin had received from Daniel O’Brien a reminder
of the debt of Görtz and the Jacobite request for repayment.25 Tessin
now reported that a majority of the Swedish senators agreed with the
justice of the case, and they hoped to begin repayment. Tessin then met
secretly with Madame de Mézières, daughter of the English Jacobite
Theophilus Oglethorpe; she was constantly plotting new Jacobite
enterprises.26 Tessin left Paris with renewed sympathy for the Stuart
cause, and he left London, after a brief visit, with renewed antipathy
for the British fleet.
In September 1728, the growing Swedish opposition to Horn’s col-
laboration with Walpole led George I to send orders to Ambassador
Edward Finch in Stockholm that he must “cultivate intimately” Horn
and the Hessian party but avoid all relations with the Holsteiners.27 The
activities of the energetic French diplomats, Germain Louis Chauvelin
in London and Comte de Casteja in Stockholm, aroused fears that
they were not under Fleury’s control.28 Moreover, they seemed to be
developing a plot to restore Stanislaus Lesczyznski, the protegé of
Charles XII, to the Polish throne. By June 1729 Finch was so worried
that he reported to London:
Count Vellingck’s ghost is still stalking about and his evil spirit still ani-
mating the opposite party to take all opportunities of breeding a dissen-
tion and coolness between the two courts in less matters which would
soon have an influence upon greater.29
Finch’s fears were reinforced when General Stenflycht arrived in
Sweden, for he was known as a strong supporter of not only the Duke
of Holstein but of Stanislaus. Determined to crush Stenflycht, Horn
had him arrested on 1 September 1730, on the grounds of treason as
revealed in his intercepted letter to Bishop Swedberg in 1721.30 Over
the next three months, the investigation of Stenflycht caused much
worry for the Swedenborg and Benzelius families, until the general was
released and deported in January 1731.

25
Stuart Papers: 234/128.
26
Walfrid Holst, Carl Gustaf Tessin in der Rese-, Riksdagmann-och de Tidigare
Beskiksningåren (Lund, 1931), 112–14.
27
NA: SP 95/21, f. 6.
28
Ibid., ff. 25, 69.
29
NA: SP 95/22, f. 31 (Finch to Walpole, 18 June 1729).
30
Häggman, “Russian Manhunt,” 5.
 new players in the expanding global game, 1727–1734 183

Since the death of Nicodemus Tessin in April 1728, his son Carl
Gustaf had taken up the Holstein-Jacobite cause with new determi-
nation. He despised Count Horn, whom he believed had ruined his
father’s architectural and political career. He knew that his father had
been a “master mason,” and from the Jacobite Masons in Paris, he
could have learned of their revived networks, led by their Scottish
Grand Master, the Jacobite exile Sir Hector Maclean. Since the sev-
enteenth-century, the Macleans of Scotland had maintained close ties
with their Maclean kinsmen in Gothenburg. Moreover, the latter were
evidently the founders of the seventeenth-century lodge reportedly
founded in the port city.31 Thus, it was no coincidence that two of
Carl Gustaf ’s relatives-by-marriage joined the Jacobite lodge in Paris
in winter 1729–30.32
Count Johan Sack was the son of Eric Sparre, allegedly a member
of Görtz’s Masonic network, and Johan now served in the Swedish
regiment in France. Count Nils Bielke was the son of Carl Gustaf
Bielke, who earlier worked with Eric Sparre in the Paris embassy. Nils
Bielke had married Eric Sparre’s step-daughter Hedwig Sack and thus
became the brother-in-law of Johan Sack and Carl Gustaf Tessin. They
were joined in their initiation by Count Gustaf Horn, who initially col-
laborated with their Masonic and political endeavors.
These Swedish initiations were especially important at this time,
for the Grand Lodge in London was currently headed by a crypto-
Jacobite, Thomas Howard, 8th Duke of Norfolk, who worked secretly
with Andrew Michael Ramsay to move the English system away from
Whig-Hanoverian domination.33 Their collaborator, Charles Radcliffe,
brother of the executed 3rd Earl of Derwentwater, was delighted
to initiate another Swede, Count Axel Wrede Sparre, into the Paris
lodge in May 1731. As the half-brother of Ulla Sparre Tessin, Wrede
Sparre cemented the close Masonic links between these politically
active families.
In July 1731 the reviving links between the Jacobites, the Swedish
opposition, and the anti-Fleury French diplomats worried Thomas

31
For this early Gothenburg lodge, see Schuchard, Restoring the Temple, 542.
32
Ekman, Highlights, 27–29; Roger Robelin, “Die Johannis-Freimaurerei in
Schweden während des 18. Jahrhunderts,” in Gold und Himmelblau: Die Freimauererei,
Zeitloses Ideal (Turku Regionalmuseum, Austellungskatalog 15 (1993), 32–35.
33
Marsha Keith Schuchard, “Les rivalités maçonniques et la Bulle in Eminente,”
trad. Isabelle Candat et Monique Paquier, La Règle d’Abraham, 25 (June 2008), 3–48.
To be published in English in Ars Quatuor Coronatorum (2011).
184 chapter six

Pelham, British ambassador in Paris, who reported to George II

that Chauvelin, now Garde de Sceaux, “has all creatures at work in
the Northern Courts trying to supplant any friendship or good cor-
respondence that His Majesty may have with them.”34 Pressured by
Walpole and Fleury, Horn’s party determined to thwart these endeav-
ors at the Diet of 1731. They especially targeted the efforts of Polhem,
Alströmer, Benzelius, and Swedenborg to utilize foreign expertise
to improve Sweden’s economic and technological standards. Thus,
Horn’s party pushed through ordinances banning foreign workmen,
which reinforced not only the exclusion of Jewish merchants but also
non-Lutheran Christians (which would effect the French, English and
Scottish Jacobites in Sweden).

Despite the on-going suppression and xenophobia, the more enterpris-

ing Swedes determined to find new ways to improve the nation’s domes-
tic economy and international business. In 1729, while Swedenborg
worked with Bonde at the Board of Mines, one of the count’s clan-
destine projects re-emerged. Since the days of the Madagascar pirates,
Bonde longed for Sweden to expand its overseas trade. Henrik König,
who had earlier worked with Balguerie on the Madagascar project,
now presented to the Board of Trade, “very cautiously and with great
secrecy,” a plan for a Swedish East Indies Company.35 But Horn’s
ministry feared retaliation by the British and Dutch governments and
rejected it. König then took advantage of the continuing ties between
the Holstein party and the Jacobites to collaborate on a new approach
to the Swedish king.
In 1730 Colin Campbell, a Scottish merchant in Gothenburg, wrote
to Preis at The Hague to propose the founding of the new company.36
Campbell, who was assisted by the Scotsman Charles Irvine and the
Gothenburg merchant Thomas Sahlgren, knew of Preis’s earlier work
in Swedish-Jacobite enterprises. By 1731 König was able to convince
King Frederick I of the feasibility and profitability of the project, and
the Swedish East India Company received a charter as a “private com-

34
NA: SP 78/198, f. 67.
35
RA: Hollandica, #772 (11 February 1722); Michael Metcalf, Goods, Ideas, and
Values: the East Indies Trade as an Agent of Change in Eighteenth-Century Sweden
(Minneapolis: Minnesota UP, 1988), 6, 12, 15, 25–26.
36
Sven Kjellberg, Svenska Ostindiska Compagnierna, 1731–1813 (Malmö: Allhems,
1974), 41, 126.
 new players in the expanding global game, 1727–1734 185

pany of commerce.” Among its leading officers and stockholders were

a host of Irish and Scottish Jacobites resident in Gothenburg.
Because it was a violation of British law for British subjects to par-
ticipate in this type of Swedish trading venture, the company adopted
a policy of extraordinary secrecy. All books were to be kept secret and
then destroyed after auditing, and names of stockholders were not
divulged. Michael Metcalfe laments that historians of the company’s
history in 1731–46 are hampered by this lack of records.37 This docu-
mentary void is particularly relevant to Swedenborg’s biography, for
he occasionally acted as an agent for the company. Soon alerted to
the Jacobite involvement, the British government was furious at the
new interlopers in their eastern trade, and they pressured Horn to
block the company’s development. However, the prospect of profits
bolstered King Frederick’s backing of the Company, and it was soon
launched on its dramatic career.
Supported by the Gyllenborg family and the Holstein party, the
ambitious company planned to establish a factory (mercantile center)
at Porto Novo, on the Indian coast of Coromandel. They soon ran into
stiff opposition from Britain and France, who were still bound in the
Hanoverian Alliance and who viewed the colonial enterprise as “un
prolongment des projets suédos-jacobites de Görtz vers Madagascar.”38
Their efforts to destroy the Swedish company, which included mili-
tary attacks, strengthened the belief of the Swedish opposition that the
Hanoverian Alliance was detrimental to Sweden’s economic interests.
By organizing the Swedish East India Company—a defiant Swedish-
Jacobite project—the opposition planted the seeds of the revitalization
of the nationalist ambitions of Charles XII, Görtz, and Gyllenborg.
It was no coincidence that Horn’s government transferred Bishop
Eric Benzelius, a supporter of the Holstein party’s economic enter-
prise, away from Gothenburg to Linköping. Despite the air of sur-
face tranquility maintained adroitly by the Swedish chancellor Horn,
the French foreign minister Fleury, and the British prime minister
Walpole, the Hanoverian Alliance was beginning to crumble in 1731.
The conventional image of the era as one of “peace and freedom” belies
the continuing turbulence and polarization within the three kingdoms.

37
Metcalf, Goods, 12.
38
Nordmann, Grandeur, 243.
186 chapter six

The Holsteiners in Sweden, the Jacobites in France, and the Tories in

England all sensed the beginning of the end of the despised treaty.

As the Hanoverian Alliance unraveled, the opponents of Fleury,

Walpole, and Horn undertook clandestine Masonic activities to sup-
port their political agendas. According to Eero Ekman, after their
Parisian initiations, Bielke and Sack returned to Sweden and began
Masonic activities, “first in the form of irregular lodges.”39 The claim
about Bielke is problematic, because Alfred Acton states that after
spending 1729 in Paris, Bielke parted from his wife at Hamburg and
never returned to Sweden.40 Back in Paris, Bielke secretly converted to
Catholicism and continued his contacts with Jacobite circles. Perhaps
he acted as a liaison between the Parisian Masons and Sack, while
the latter carried out secret organizing efforts. It is unknown whether
Benzelius and Swedenborg were associated with these underground
Masonic efforts, but they did become friends and political allies of
the three Swedes who were initiated in Paris. Moreover, Swedenborg
became the confidante of Bielke’s politically-active wife, who remained
on good terms with her husband, despite their separation.
With Jacobite Masons gaining ground in London, Paris, Madrid,
Stockholm, and Italy, Walpole mounted a diplomatic countermove. In
late September 1731 the London Grand Lodge sent Desaguliers to The
Hague, where he participated in a special Masonic meeting arranged
by the British ambassador, Lord Chesterfield. The purpose was the ini-
tiation of Francis, Duke of Lorraine (future husband of the Hapsburg
heiress, Maria Theresa), whose support Walpole sought to counter the
disarray in the Hanoverian Alliance. George II hoped to strengthen
England’s ties with Austria, the arch-enemy of France. After the Duke
of Lorraine received the first two degrees at The Hague, he visited “the
famous Brother Boerhaave” at Leiden.41 Moving on to England, the
duke was given the third Master’s degree in a special lodge meeting
arranged by “Brother” Walpole at his own residence, Houghton-Hall in
Norfolk. At the same meeting, the foreign minister, Thomas Pelham-
Holles, Duke of Newcastle, was initiated into Walpolean Masonry.

39
Ekman, Highlights, 27.
40
Alfred Acton, “Swedenborgiana: Some New Information,” New Church Life
(March 1948), 111–12.
41
Jacob, Radical Enlightenment, 111; Stolper, “Initiation of . . . Lorraine,” 170–79.
 new players in the expanding global game, 1727–1734 187

On 3 April 1732 the London Grand Lodge granted a constitution

to a Parisian lodge, St. Thomas. It was probably under orders from
the prime minister that on 24 June the Duke of Montagu, former
Whig Grand Master, sent a “loyalist” Masonic delegation to Paris. On
20 November they carried out a ceremony of installation at the hôtel
of Landelle, rue de Bussy.42 From 1732 on, the political and diplo-
matic rivalries of Walpole’s ministry were acted out within rival lodges
of Freemasonry in France. “Brother” Walpole adroitly used his own
Masons at home and abroad to gather intelligence and to mount coun-
ter-offensives against the Jacobite Masons. The complex chess game
of Jacobite check and Hanoverian checkmate soon took on interna-
tional ramifications which effected Swedenborg and his colleagues
in Sweden.
According to J.G. Findel, after Wrede Sparre’s initiation in Paris,
he visited lodges in Italy, where Andrew Michael Ramsay had ear-
lier tried to interest James III in his mystical Masonic philosophy.43
Though Ramsay was unsuccessful and James remained distrustful of
Freemasonry (which had been penetrated by the Hanoverians), Wrede
Sparre could have learned about a quasi-Masonic fraternity—the Order
of Toboso—brought from Spain to Italy by George Keith, the exiled
Earl Marischal of Scotland.44 George and his brother James Keith had
earlier collaborated in the Swedish-Jacobite plot, and in 1717 James
planned to travel to Sweden to join Charles XII for the invasion of
Scotland. After the plot “was discovered and prevented,” he joined his
brother in Spain.45 In 1726 Marischal merged his love of Don Quixote
and Spanish romances with his knowledge of Masonic rituals in order
to organize the mock-chivalric Order of Toboso.46
In 1728 James Keith moved to Russia, where he rose to high rank
in the army, while nursing a nostalgic view of the foreign policy of

42
Chevallier, Ducs, 34.
43
Findel, History, 327. In 1724 Ramsay served as tutor to the young Prince Charles
Edward Stuart, but his heterodox religious notions—which formed the core of his
mystical Masonic system—did not appeal to James III, and he returned to Paris in
1725, when an Écossais lodge was established in the city.
44
The Swedes often referred to George Keith as Marischal Keith, which I will
occasionally use in this study, though the term was not used by British and French
Jacobites.
45
James Keith, A Fragment of a Memoir of Field Marshall James Keith, Written by
Himself, 1714–1734. Spalding Club, 8 (Eidnburgh, 1843), 33, 104.
46
Andrew Lang, The Companions of Pickle (New York: Longman’s, Grau, 1898),
26–27.
188 chapter six

Peter the Great. He soon took up the late Czar’s role as leader of
Freemasonry, for which he was immortalized in a Russian Masonic
song:
After him [Peter the Great], Keith, full of light, came to the Russians;
and, exalted by zeal, lit up the sacred fire. He erected the temple of
wisdom, corrected our thoughts and hearts, and confirmed us in
brotherhood.47
James Billington observes that General Keith had “all the flamboyant
qualities of a medieval knight in search of a cause.” In 1730, when
Marischal moved to the Stuart court in Rome, he utilized the chivalric
oaths and symbols of Toboso in order to link up with his brother in
Russia and Jacobites in other countries.48 Given James III’s negative
reaction to Ramsay’s mystical philosophy, perhaps Marischal hoped
to disguise their Masonic strategies under the façade of the seemingly
light-hearted Order of Toboso.
The strategy worked so well that by February 1732 William Hay
could write to Admiral Gordon in Russia that “our two young Princes
are protectors of the order and wear the rings . . . They are the two
most lively and engaging two boys this day on earth.”49 The initia-
tion of the twelve year-old Charles Edward and seven year-old Henry
was consistent with the initiations of children and adolescents in the
Jacobite lodge in Paris in 1725.50 The Order of Toboso served as a
kind of pre-Masonic training camp for the princes—one that would
not alarm their father. The adult knights gathered for festive drinking
bouts, where they toasted the royal family and held “fair meetings” on
the green.
The revitalization of Jacobite-Russian-Masonic links did not go
unnoticed in Sweden. Moreover, it seems likely that Wrede Sparre
reported from Italy on the activities of the Knights of Toboso. On
25 January 1732 his friends in Stockholm organized a similar secret

47
James Billington, The Icon and the Axe (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1966), 245.
48
According to Steve Murdoch, Toboso eventually included “knights” in Spain,
Russia, Prussia, the Dutch Republic, Flanders, France, England, and Rome; see his
article, “Tilting at Windmills: The Order del Toboso as a Jacobite Social Network,” in
Monod, Pittock, and Szechi, Loyalty and Identity, 243–64.
49
HMC: Eglinton, 178–79.
50
On such “precocious” initiations, see Edward Corp, ed., Lord Burlington: The
Man and His Politics (Lewiston: Edwin Mellen, 1998), 10–12, 20–21. Also, Kervella,
Maçonnerie, 321, and Passion Écossaise, 247.
 new players in the expanding global game, 1727–1734 189

fraternity called the Awazu och Wallasis.51 Olof von Dalin, a commoner
who published an opposition journal, The Swedish Argus, gathered
a group of his aristocratic friends and political allies in this secret soci-
ety. Among the known members were Johan Sack, Carl Gustaf Tessin,
Claes Ekeblad, and Karl Piper, who supported the political agenda of
Carl Gyllenborg.52 Tessin also recruited his friends Bonde, Cedercreutz,
and Didron, whom he hoped to detach from Horn’s agenda.53 Like the
Knights of Toboso, the Awazu brethren called themselves chevaliers
and yearned for the return of the Jacobite-Carolinian golden age. They
celebrated as festival days the deaths of kings Gustavus Adolphus and
Charles XII, whom they almost worshipped.
The Knights of Awazu maintained rules that were strikingly simi-
lar to those of Freemasonry. The initiates must follow the fraternity’s
regulations to the letter and maintain unalterable friendship with each
other. The slogan was “Faith and Honesty,” which drew on the Jacobite
code-word “honest,” and the members were bound to absolute silence
about the secrets of the order. Dalin hinted at some mystical teach-
ings and revealed that the strange name contained the arcanum of
the fraternity, while the “holy number three” contained a secret the
knights had learned to revere from their fathers. The triune symbolism
possibly related to Swedenborg’s mysterious description of the “triple
folding doors” and “pyramids open in three directions” in the gar-
dens of Versailles, symbolism familiar to the late Nicodemus Tessin
and Eric Sparre, fathers of the new knights. Initially, the members
gathered mainly for boisterous drinking and bantering verse, as Dalin
expressed in a song: “Fresh hearts, mild pranks / Gay tongues, pure
amusements / Active courage in the way of knights / Will always deco-
rate our Order.”54
Under the frolicsome façade of the Awazu meetings, however, a
more serious political operation was underway. At the Diet of 1732,
Gyllenborg, Tessin, and the brethren utilized the order to develop a
support system for their anti-Horn policies. Eric Benzelius, who was a
friend and political ally of Dalin, Tessin, and Wrede Sparre, must have
been aware of the activities of the Awazu brothers. Certainly, Benzelius

51
J. Bergquist, St. Johanneslogen, 35.
52
Martin Lamm, Olof von Dalin (Uppsala, 1908), 124–45; Robelin, “Johannis-
Freimaurerei,” 35.
53
Holst, Tessin, 124; “Fredrik Didron,” SBL.
54
Lamm, Dalin, 35–36.
190 chapter six

shared their disgust with Hanoverian England and their desire for a
revitalized French alliance. Swedenborg may have participated, for he
later described Awazu-type gatherings that featured gay banter and
festive drinking.55
After years of struggling against Frederick I’s collaboration with
Chancellor Horn, Gyllenborg discovered a wedge to crack their union;
it was the king’s all-consuming passion for a sixteen year old maid
at court, Hedvig Taube. In summer 1732 a worried Finch reported
to London that Gyllenborg now has the king’s ear “only for telling it
that all great Princes have had Mistresses.”56 Even worse, his “Cabal
engrosses entirely the King,” for they portray Horn as “his inveterate
enemy.”57 Finch believed that the people sympathized with the child-
less Ulrika Eleonora, for she had given the crown to Frederick.
When Count Gustaf Sparre returned from his embassy post in
London, he initially sided with Horn and warned Gyllenborg that
Sweden was a “serious” country and “not having been used for two
ages to declared mistresses, was shocked with the present one, particu-
larly under the very nose of the Queen.”58 The situation became more
scandalous in May 1733, when Frederick claimed to have a fit of colic
and left Ulrika Eleonora and the assembled company to retire to his
room. She later went to check on him “and found Miss Taube in bed
with him, with chocolate and biscuits by them,” which led the queen
to shriek loudly and run out.59 A disgusted Finch reported that the
“Cabal,” which now included Bishop Eric Benzelius, “keeps the King’s
favour by flattering and countenancing this passion.” Lars Bergquist
notes that Swedenborg “appears to have accepted his concubinage
with Hedvig Taube,” while he too sought the king’s support.60
In the meantime, at the turbulent Diet meetings, Gyllenborg’s party
was strong enough to gain the approval of the Duke of Holstein as
crown prince, thus making him eligible for the Swedish succession.61
Horn, who feared the Holsteiners’ ties with Russia, backed the House
of Hesse and continued ties with England. The emerging split over

55
Emanuel Swedenborg, Arcana Caelestia, trans. J.F. Potts (1937; London:
Swedenborg Society, 1967), #4804.
56
NA: SP 95/61, f. 119.
57
Ibid., f. 95.
58
NA: SP 95/62, ff. 6–10.
59
NA: SP 95/63, ff. 136–37.
60
Bergquist, Swedenborg’s Secret, 391.
61
Nordmann, Grandeur, 247.
 new players in the expanding global game, 1727–1734 191

Sweden’s foreign policy was brought to a head when Augustus II,

the Saxon king of Poland, died on 1 February 1733, thus setting off
an international struggle for the Polish succession. Some Frenchmen
proposed the Stuart Pretender, who was married to a Sobieski prin-
cess, as a candidate for the vacant throne, and rumors circulated that
James III was already in Poland.62 However, the British were deter-
mined to keep the Pretender out of contention for the throne, and
they exerted strong pressure on their ally Fleury to squelch any Jacobite
stirrings.
Louis XV backed the candidacy of his own father-in-law, Stanislaus
Leszczynski, who had earlier been king of Poland through the support
of Charles XII. Louis believed that Stanislaus could regain the emi-
nence lost by France at the Treaty of Utrecht.63 Acting with unusual
enthusiasm and vigour, the French king called upon the veterans
of earlier Franco-Swedish-Jacobite enterprises to join the campaign
for Stanislaus. His major agent was the Marquis de Monti, who had
worked as a secret agent for Charles XII and Alberoni and who now
served as French ambassador in Warsaw.64 Stanislaus was a beloved
hero to the Swedes, who earlier gave him refuge and who grieved for
his misfortunes during his long exile.
As a favorite of Charles XII, Stanislaus shared in the aura of mystical
nationalism that flourished during the Carolinian era. Tessin had vis-
ited Stanislaus and his daughter in France in 1728, and he was thrilled
at the prospect of the restoration of the “legitimate” king of Poland.65
Finch complained to London that “Everyone here is for Stanislaus.”66
As Louis XV pushed Sweden to send troops to support Stanislaus’s
claim to the throne, he held out the tempting vision that Sweden could
reclaim her lost Baltic provinces. He also offered such a large mon-
etary subsidy for the Swedish troops that a majority in the Diet voted
to accept the French offer. Gyllenborg and Tessin argued vigorously
for an all-out Swedish effort, and even Horn was initially tempted to
join the campaign. As the Polish crisis seemed to waken Sweden from

62
John L. Sutton, The King’s Honor and the King’s Cardinal: the War of the Polish
Succession (Lexington: Kentucky UP, 1980), 216–19.
63
R.N. Bain, “Poland Under the Saxon Kings,” The Cambridge Modern History, ed.
A.W. Ward, et al. (New York: Macmillan, 1909), VI, 193–200.
64
Jacques Levron, Stanislaus Leszczynski (Paris: Librairie Academique Perrin,
1984), 172.
65
Holst, Tessin, 113.
66
Chance, B.D.I.: Sweden, I, ix.
192 chapter six

her military lethargy, Tessin proclaimed, “J’aime cette crise comme

l’oeuvre posthume de Charles XII.”67 But the British government,
which publicly vowed neutrality on the Polish issue, feared that a
Franco-Swedish campaign for Stanislaus would be complemented by
a Franco-Jacobite invasion of England.68
Thus, in spring 1733 Horatio Walpole called on the Swedish ambas-
sador Gedda in Paris to learn about Fleury’s attitude to the Jacobite
intrigues carried out in England by Chauvelin.69 Horatio flattered
Gedda as “so good a friend” to British interests, and the Swede revealed
that Fleury prohibited Chauvelin from further activity in England,
where the ambitious French diplomat hoped to foment a civil war.
Learning that the French ministry rejected the proposed Jacobite
invasion, Britain moved to crush Swedish support of Stanislaus. Once
again, they would rely on Gedda for clandestine information. Though
Gedda reported Frederick I’s sympathy for the Polish candidate, he
also revealed the latent opposition of Horn. Thus, the British pressured
Horn to withdraw Swedish support. Ambassador Finch reported to
Walpole from Stockholm in April 1733:
[Horn] believed that the true design of the French ministers was only to
amuse; that in order to content Stanislaus and the queen of France with
specious outward appearances they sent special messengers to make a
noise, without having the succession so much at the heart as the saving
their money; that France seems desirous to yield to Sweden the first
part in this scene, who was not ambitious of it, and also the expenses
too, which it could not bear; that in case of failure it might saddle this
crown with the blame.70
Horn’s position was vastly unpopular in Sweden, and Carl Gyllenborg
skillfully exploited the Polish issue to enlarge the opposition in the Diet.
The Awazu brethren also labored for the cause of Polish nationalism.
However, there was genuine worry—even among the strongest admir-
ers of Stanislaus—about Sweden’s military and economic capacity to
sustain a war against the Saxon, Hapsburg, and Russian opponents of
the “Polish Pretender.” The need for first-hand intelligence from the

67
Holst, Tessin, 130.
68
Jeremy Black, British Foreign Policy in the Age of Walpole (Edinburgh: John
Donald, 1985), 148–51.
69
Coxe, Walpole, III, 137.
70
Hilding Danielson, Sverige och Frankrike, 1727–1735 (Lund: Gleerupska Univ.
Bok, 1920), 162 n. 31.
 new players in the expanding global game, 1727–1734 193

projected diplomatic and military theater was critical, requiring that

Swedish agents slip secretly into the relevant territories. It was perhaps
Gyllenborg, who knew of Swedenborg’s earlier intelligence work, who
suggested that he be sent to the area to gather information.
Swedenborg’s previous military experience, especially in naval
transport and advanced gunnery, as well as his former association with
Generals Poniatowski and Stenflycht (important backers of Stanislaus),
would be invaluable. Moreover, he would have a perfect cover, for he
planned to complete his scientific treatise, the Principia, at Dresden,
the Saxon capitol of Stanislaus’s rival claimant, Augustus, Duke of
Saxony. Count Ribbing, who replaced Gustaf Bonde as president of
the Board of Mines, had opposed Sweden’s accession to the Alliance
of Hanover, and he could help Swedenborg gain a neutral passport
as inspector of mines and laboratories.71 Moreover, Bonde himself, a
former supporter of the Alliance, had become disaffected from Horn
and more sympathetic to Stanislaus’s cause. Finch reported to London
that “even Count Bonde” hints that Sweden can no longer count on
George II, “because England does not help them recover the provinces
lost to Russia, after assuring them he would.”72 Even worse, Bonde
had become “a partisan of France and wholly gained to support their
measures.”73 Through his continued influence on the Board of Mines,
Bonde could also support Swedenborg’s mission to eastern Europe.
In preparation for his journey, Swedenborg acquired the 1733 edi-
tion of Spanheim’s Le Soldat Suedois (1634), which provided valuable
background information for his mission to Saxony and the Empire.74
Filled with technical military knowledge, as well as caveats about such
Continental campaigns, Le Soldat Suedois also stressed the contribu-
tion of Scottish troops to Gustavus Adolphus’s initial success and
the importance of Sweden’s alliance with France. It was thus a timely
volume to study.
If Swedenborg was involved in the ecumenical Freemasonry that
united Poniatowski, Sparre, Gyllenborg, and Görtz in their earlier
enterprise, then he would have a specially valuable network of secret
communication on the Continent. According to Richard Butterwick,
“The first ephemeral lodges in Poland were set up as early as 1720

71
NA: SP 95/52, f. 174.
72
NA: SP 95/64, f. 90.
73
Chance, B.D.I.: Sweden, I, 120.
74
Swedenborg, Catalogus, 10.
194 chapter six

by Polish aristocrats initiated abroad, in Franco-Jacobite lodges, nei-

ther subject to London nor much influenced by English rules.”75 These
early Masons were influenced by Poniatowski and returning veterans
of the Swedish-Jacobite effort.76 Poniatowski was a strong backer of
Stanislaus Leszczynski, who also had Masonic ties.77
Meanwhile in Paris, Axel Wrede Sparre, whose father had been a
close friend of Stanislaus, progressed into the inner circle of Jacobite
Masonry. In early 1733 he was given the third Master’s degree
and began making plans to carry the Écossais system from Paris to
Sweden.78 According to an account written by Carl Frederick Scheffer,
who in 1737 joined the lodge headed by Charles Radcliffe (5th Earl of
Derwentwater), Wrede Sparre worked to re-unite the scattered Swedish
initiates of the earlier military lodges. Writing in 1760, while serving
as Grand Master, Scheffer wrote about the early history of the fraterity
in Sweden, noting that it has been many years since the “vrais frères,”
who, though dispersed over the face of the earth, were nevertheless
enlightened and authorized to communicate “la lumière à des pro-
fanes,” whom they judged worthy of their confidence.79 However, their
prudence did not permit them to proceed except with “une extreme
circonspection,” and “le Frère Comte Wrede Sparre” was the first to
“réunit nos Frères dispersé.” Was Swedenborg one of the “dispersed
Brethren” who was now “reunited” by Wrede Sparre? French Masons
would later affirm positively that “Schwedenborg en Suéde” was a
Freemason.80

The diplomatic intrigue engendered by the Polish War of Succession

would soon provide a dramatic stage on which Swedenborg emerged
from the shadows as a diplomatic actor. But, given the high secrecy
required for his mission, his emergence was only partial, and much
remains unknown about his experiences during this dangerous adven-

75
Richard Butterwick, Poland’s Last King and English Culture: Stanislaw August
Poniatowski, 1732–1798 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 69.
76
Walenty Wilkoszewski, Rys Historyczno-chronologiczny Towarzystiva Wolnego
Mularstaw w Polsce (London: Oficyna Poetow i Marlarzy, 1968), 14; Boris Telepneff,
“A Few Leaves from the History of Polish Freemasonry,” AQC, 44 (1934), 179–80;
Ludwik Hass, Wolnomularstwo w Europie Srodkowo-Wschodniej w XVIII i XIX wieku
(Wroclaw, 1982), 63, 506–07.
77
Chevallier, Ducs, 163–68.
78
J. Bergquist, St. Johanneslogen, 2.
79
Ibid., 6.
80
Statement made in 1785; see Porset, Philalèthes, 379.
 new players in the expanding global game, 1727–1734 195

ture. On 13 April 1733 Swedenborg applied to King Frederick for per-

mission “to make a journey to Dresden, to be present at the printing of
a work I have written,” which will cover the smelting of ores and other
useful matters.81 The king granted him a nine-month leave of absence
at full salary, with a letter of “safe pass.” Frederick must have charged
him to bring back information on the political and military situation
in Prussia, Saxony, and Poland, for Swedenborg would present a full
intelligence report to the Secret Committee on Foreign Affairs after
he returned. Now alienated from Chancellor Horn and supported by
Gyllenborg and his party, the Swedish king was determined to back
Stanislaus.
During these months of debate in Sweden, the British ambassador
in Paris continued to pump Gedda for information on Sweden’s pos-
sible military support to the Polish Pretender. As Waldegrave reported
to Fleury 18 June 1733,
Your Excellency does extremely well in getting all the information you
can from Mo’r Gedda. Whatever may be the inclination of his Court, or
his own, for King Stanislaus, it is plain by their answers that they will
not espouse his cause so as to encourage France to strike a blow upon
this occasion.82
As Swedenborg prepared to leave for Dresden, the Saxon center of
diplomatic activity, his family and friends worried that he faced great
dangers on his proposed journey.83 That he was charged with a secret
political-military mission, in addition to his public scientific one, is fur-
ther suggested by his travelling companions, Frederick Gyllenborg and
David Stjerncrona (Gyllenborg’s brother-in-law), whom he described
as “my friends.”84 Frederick was a strong supporter of his brother
Carl Gyllenborg’s pro-French and pro-Stanislaus foreign policy, and
he led the opposition to Horn’s stonewalling position.85 Stjarncrona
and his wife were vocal opponents of Horn and advocates of a new
French alliance.86
Swedenborg was joined by his other brother-in-law, Lars Benzelstierna,
who shared these views, and the two visited Eric Benzelius at

81
Acton, Letters, I, 451.
82
Legg, B.D.I.: France, VI, 114.
83
R. Tafel, Documents, I, 357.
84
Ibid., II, 7.
85
“Frederik Gyllenborg,” SBL.
86
Lindh, “Swedenborgs Ekonomi” (Sep.–Oct. 1929), 86.
196 chapter six

Linköping. An ardent supporter of the French alliance and an admirer

of Stanislaus, Benzelius advocated strongly that Sweden send troops to
support his cause. The family party then made a special visit to the field
where in 1598 Sigismund, King of Poland, lost the battle against Duke
Charles IX, which prevented Sweden from remaining in the Catholic
religion. The scene was a reminder of the closely intertwined but tur-
bulent historical relations between Poland and Sweden.
On 25 May 1733 Swedenborg arrived in Stralsund, which was
rumored to be the site of Stanislaus’s projected arrival with a French
fleet. Swedenborg recorded that he was “in company with Count
Issendorf and an Italian music teacher of the name of Keller.”87
Accompanied by Johan Christopher von Issendorf, a German-born
officer in the Swedish army, Swedenborg inspected the military ram-
parts and earthworks that protected Charles XII through the fate-
ful siege of 1715. Swedenborg noted that “the hostile squadrons and
armies of three kings” could not destroy Charles XII and “for a long
time wasted all their labour and toil.” He also observed the construc-
tion of new fortifications. As we shall see, his Italian companion may
also have had a secret diplomatic agenda.
Arriving in Brandenburg, Swedenborg observed the Prussian sol-
diers executing their precise maneuvers.88 He praised the Prussian king,
Frederick William I, for restraining luxury and developing tough sol-
diers—in sad contrast to the situation in Sweden. Though Prussia was
treaty-bound to support Austria’s position on the Polish succession,
Frederick William I was related to the Swedish queen Ulrika Eleonora,
and Stanislaus hoped to win him over to the Swedish-Polish cause.89
Moreover, there were growing signs of animosity between Prussia and
the House of Hanover, which led Louis XV to hope to engage the
Prussian king in a neutrality agreement, by which he would hold “all
the troops he can on the borders of Brandenburg and Magdeburg.”90
Journeying on to Berlin, the Prussian capitol, Swedenborg again
observed troop maneuvers, noting in his journal—“If they displayed
the same unanimity and uniformity in battle as in drill, they would
conquer Alexander’s army, and would subject a great part of Europe to

87
R. Tafel, Documents, II, 9.
88
Ibid., II, 11.
89
Bain, “Poland,” VI, 197; Levron, Stanislas, 216.
90
Sutton, King’s Honor, 19–20.
 new players in the expanding global game, 1727–1734 197

Prussia, but—.”91 At this point, his journal broke off abruptly, as though
he did not want someone to see these military notes. Swedenborg
probably called on Count Ehrencrona, current Swedish ambassador
in Berlin, who worked to gain King Frederick William’s support for
the Swedish-Polish ca