⁶⁹Carew, Mairéad. Tara and the Ark of the Covenant: A Search for the Ark of the Covenant by British Israelites on the Hill of Tara (1899-1902). Dublin: Discovery Programme/Royal Irish Academy, 2003, p. 13.

The author explains, "The 'latter days' were the last days of history, in which the British Israelites believed themselves to be living as they awaited the 'millennium.'"

Carew discusses the role of Irish Freemasons in their support of the search for the Ark of the Covenant. After the decline of the traditional craft stonemasons’ leadership of the Freemasons, the groups were largely taken over by “speculative masons” who were not themselves craftsmen, but who were interested in architectural traditions. In England and Ireland, these Protestant Freemasons in the Victorian era had various belief systems “as diverse as numerology, astrology, the Tarot, the occult, Pyramidism, Celticism and Druidism.” With Druidism in particular, these Freemasons found a link with Israel, claiming in their publication that "ideas and customs in sacred and social matters" of the Druids "were similar to those of Israel."  This concept also linked the "descendants of Israel, the British-Israelites, with the ancient site of Tara.” (p. 31) However, most of the Irish Freemasons would not have regrded Tara in the same way as the British-Israelites. Their interest, rather, was only in the Ark of the Covenant due to its significance to them as a symbol. The British-Israelites, on the other hand, were interested in tracing their lineage through the rulers of Tara. (p. 36)

As the website "Bad Archaeology" put it, "...the British-Israelites had made their mark in the long and inglorious history of mad, bad and otherwise god-crazed archaeology." (Moshenska, Gabriel, and James Doeser. "The British Israelites." Bad Archaeology, 11 Sept. 2011, www.badarchaeology.com/religious-delusions/the-british-israelites/.)