Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

ealm of historical inquiry. One has to distinguish between the legendary
history of Freemasonry and the problem of when it actually began as an
organized institution.” 4 At one time, David Murray Lyon’s History of the Lodge
of Edinburgh (1900) was accepted as the authoritative text on masonic history. 5
Like Anderson’s Constitutions, much of the content is vague and often based
purely on conjecture and speculation. Although unreliable, facts are hidden
among the fiction; for all its shortcomings, Lyon’s History contains sections and
chapters that are useful.
Other historians, such as Douglas Knoop and G. Jones, have made
concerted efforts to write both an accurate and objective history of freemasonry.
They published The Genesis of Freemasonry in 1947 and attempted to clearly
establish the organization’s operative roots. 6 David Stevenson notes that
although their study “may be criticized in some respects, their work provides a
strong and essential foundation for masonic history, vastly superior to what had
preceded it.” 7
The abundance of unsubstantiated material is problematic, leading
Stevenson to lament the “historical ghetto” into which freemasonry “has all too
often been consigned by the narrow historical outlook of many masons
combined with the unreasoning prejudice of professional historians.” 8 Knoop
and Jones, in no uncertain terms, assert that
4 Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment (London, 1972), 266.
5 David Murray Lyon, History of the Lodge of Edinburgh (Mary’s Chapel), No. 1,
Embracing An Account of the Rise and Progress of Freemasonry in Scotland (London, 1900).
6 D. Knoop and G.P. Jones, The Genesis of Freemasonry (Manchester, 1947).
7 Stevenson, Origins, 3.
8 Ibid, 2.
4