From inside the book: Free Masonry being a benevolent institution, and entirely unsectarian, it is hardly credible that its votaries have for centuries been objects of a bitter persecution, and that large numbers of them have suffered death in defence of their principles....With the exception of the most recent occurrences, the only knowledge heretofore accessible of this warfare against Free Masonry, has been the disconnected accounts furnished by history, and the narratives of a few of the sufferers who escaped with their lives. Therefore the aim of the Author in this work is to present, in a convenient form, a connected and complete account of the persecutions and martyrdoms of Free Masons and Knights Templars....The information concerning the persecutions of Masons and Knight Templars has been collected from the most authentic works of the periods in which the persecutions took place, and from the forced admissions of popish writers themselves. This book published in 1893 has been reformatted for the Kindle and may contain an occasional defect from the original publication or from the reformatting.