Did Charles keep the Grail's secret?

As the movie version of Dan Brown's best-selling book, The Da Vinci Code premieres, Tony Kearney goes on a quest to Northumberland.

TODAY, it is little more than a tumbledown ruin. But, if author Dan Brown is to be believed, the overgrown terraces and crumbling stonework of a North-East mansion once hid the greatest secret in human history.

For centuries, Dilston Hall, near Hexham, Northumberland, was the centre of enough plots and intrigue to baffle even the most dedicated conspiracy theorist.

The estate is the ancestral home of the Radcliffe family, while the chapel was said to have been built by the 1st Earl of Derwentwater with money left over from the Gunpowder Plot. It was the place where the 3rd Earl of Derwentwater planned the Jacobite Rising of 1715, and where his headless body was secretly returned after his execution on Tower Hill.

But according to The Da Vinci Code, the controversial best-selling novel, it also hid the centuries-old knowledge of the true nature of the Holy Grail.

For six brief years, Dilston was home to James and Charles Radcliffe - literal brothers-in-arms in the Jacobite struggle to return the Stuarts to the throne of England. The brothers led a swashbuckling life of armed rebellion, daring escapes and death on the scaffold, but, according to The Da Vinci Code, more important matters took place in private.

The central tenant of the book, hotly disputed by historians and theologians alike, is that the Holy Grail was not an object, it was a secret - the secret that Jesus Christ had married Mary Magdalene, had fathered a family and that their descendants walk among us today.

That secret was uncovered by the Knights Templar and entrusted to a shadowy organisation named the Priory of Sion. Although discredited as a hoax by many historians, secret documents discovered in the French National Archives and repeated in The Da Vinci Code, claim that Charles Radcliffe was the 20th Grand Master of the Priory of Sion from 1727 until his execution in 1746. Fellow grand masters are said to have included the artist Botticelli and, of course, Leonardo Da Vinci. By any standards, it is an extraordinary claim. Charles Radcliffe makes an unlikely leader of a pious secret society.

Born in 1693, his mother was an illegitimate daughter of Charles II and his father was the 2nd Earl of Derwentwater. It meant the Catholic Charles was born with Royal blood and was immersed in the intrigues to return the Stuarts to the throne.

Charles' eldest brother, James, was sent as a child to Paris as a companion to James Stuart, the Pretender to the English Crown, while Charles himself was raised by his relative, Sir Marmaduke Constable, at Everingham, about 10 miles from York.

When James Radcliffe inherited his father's title, he took up residence at the grand mansion of Dilston. Charles moved in with his brother, where the 16-year-old quickly earned a reputation as a young man with a taste for lavish living.

Wild and headstrong, James had to pay off his brother's debts on a number of occasions. Charles is also said to have fathered a number of illegitimate children among the farmers' daughters of Northumberland. In fact, the only secret which Charles appeared to be keeping at that time was a much more earthly one.

According to local legend he was forced into marriage with the pregnant Meg Snowdon, of Coquetdale - a union which was hushed up in polite society.

In 1715, James Radcliffe rode out with his brother and a handful of loyal friends and servants to seize the Crown of England. Charles was in command of an army 2,000 strong, with hopes of thousands of Catholics swelling their numbers as they marched on London.

It was a momentary dream. After a day of fighting, the Jacobites were forced to surrender. James was taken to the Tower and eventually executed, Charles to Newgate Prison, where, aged just 22, he was convicted of treason and condemned to be hung, drawn and quartered. Instead, Charles launched a daring escape from jail and was spirited out of England on a smugglers' vessel bound for Boulogne. He joined the exiled Stuart court in Paris and lived in poverty until 1724 when, after the death of his secret wife in Northumberland, he married the wealthy heiress, the Countess of Newburgh.

It is at this point that his life of open adventure appears to have taken a more secretive turn. Charles Radcliffe was a leading Freemason. His home at Dilston and the adjacent chapel were decorated with Masonic symbols built into the very fabric of the building and in 1726 he brought Freemasonry to France - opening the first of countless lodges on the Continent.

According to the book The Holy Blood and The Holy Grail - an acknowledged influence on The Da Vinci Code - Radcliffe was one of the most important figures in the history of the Masonic movement.

WITHIN a year, he was recognised as Grand Master of all Masonic lodges in France, a position he held until at least 1736. Radcliffe - and his mysterious protege Chevalier Andrew Ramsay - are said to have developed what became known as Scottish Rite Freemasonry.

This tradition of Freemasonry, which claimed a direct link with the Knights Templar, introduced the notion of higher degrees of The Craft, with initiates introduced to greater and more profound mysteries as they moved higher up the Masonic structure. According to Holy Blood and the Holy Grail: "It is probable that Scottish Rite Freemasonry was originally promulgated, if not devised, by Charles Radcliffe.

"The dissemination of 18th Century Freemasonry owes more, ultimately, to Radcliffe than to any other man."

It was at this time, in 1727, when Charles is reputed to have been appointed Grand Master of the Priory of Sion - and been entrusted with the secret of the Grail.

Frances Dickinson is the author of a number of books on the history of the Derwentwater family. She reserves judgement on Brown's claims about Charles Radcliffe, but she is aware of the Masonic influences to be found at Dilston and believes that perceptions of the alleged Grand Master should not be coloured by his wild days of youth."He was at the heart of all sorts of plots and was a very active Jacobite agent, " she says.

Mary Rose Ridley, treasurer of the Northumbrian Jacobite Society, believes there may be something to Brown's claims.

"The Catholic nobility were involved in a kind of secret society to restore the Stuarts and they would not have wanted the Government to know of their Catholic sympathies, so the Jacobites were a kind of forerunner of Freemasonry, " she says.

After allegedly being appointed keeper of the Grail secret, Radcliffe moved deeper into the shadows. He moved his family to Rome in 1738 although, insists Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, he remained the driving force in European Freemasonry, working through "intermediaries and mouthpieces".

Also, on at least two occasions and probably more, he made clandestine visits to England, travelling in disguise and using false names. In 1733, while travelling under the name Mr Thompson, he spent several weeks in Newcastle while involved in increasingly desperate attempts to buy back Dilston - it having been seized by the Crown following his treason conviction.

But the great adventurer could not resist one more escapade. In 1745, Bonnie Prince Charlie landed in Scotland at the start of the second Jacobite rebellion and Charles Radcliffe rushed to join the cause.

He was captured and in December 1746, was beheaded on Tower Hill. Charles Radcliffe's heart was secretly returned to Dilston, where it was interred in the chapel alongside the decapitated body of his brother James.

Above the vault stands a single window, its lead frame made up of secret Masonic symbols, through which is a perfect view of the ancestral home of the Radcliffes.