In the matter of the Stuarts we are, however, on firm ground with regard to Freemasonry. That the lodges at the end of the seventeenth century were Royalist is certain, and there seems good reason to believe that, when the revolution of 1688 divided the Royalist cause, the Jacobites who fled to France with James II took Freemasonry with them.[343] With the help of the French they established lodges in which, it is said, masonic rites and symbols were used to promote the cause of the Stuarts. Thus the land of promise signified Great Britain, Jerusalem stood for London, and the murder of Hiram represented the execution of Charles I.[344] Meanwhile Freemasonry in England did not continue to adhere to the Stuart cause as it had done under the ægis of Elias Ashmole, and by 1717 is said to have become Hanoverian. From this important date the official history of the present system may be said to begin; hitherto everything rests on stray documents, of which the authenticity is frequently doubtful, and which provide no continuous history of the Order. In 1717 for the first time Freemasonry was established on a settled basis and in the process underwent a fundamental change. So far it would seem to have retained an operative element, but in the transformation that now took place this was entirely eliminated, and the whole Order was transformed into a middle-and upper-class speculative body. This _coup d'état_, already suggested in 1703, took place in 1716, when four London lodges of Freemasons met together at the Apple Tree Tavern in Charles Street, Covent Garden, "and having put into the chair the oldest Master Mason (now the Master of a lodge), they constituted themselves a Grand Lodge, _pro tempore_, in due form." On St. John the Baptist's Day, June 24 of the next year, the annual assembly and banquet were held at the Goose and Gridiron in St. Paul's Churchyard, when Mr. Antony Sayer was elected Grand Master and invested with all the badges of office.[345] It is evident from the above account that already in 1717 the speculative elements must have predominated in the lodges, otherwise we might expect to find the operative masons taking some part in these proceedings and expressing their opinion as to whether their association should pass under the control of men entirely unconnected with the Craft. But no, the leaders of the new movement all appear to have belonged to the middle class, nor from this moment do either masons or architects seem to have played any prominent part in Freemasonry.