Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

e bigger and better than those of other associations.” 99 Following the laying of
the foundation stone for the New City Exchange in Edinburgh on 17 September
1753, for example, The Ladies Magazine of Edinburgh published an account of
the procession, recounting the splendour and circumstance surrounding the
event. Upon completion of the ceremony, no fewer than six hundred and
seventy two Masons, consisting mainly of the city’s academic, legal, and
ecclesiastical establishments, proceeded through a “very magnificent triumphal
Arch, in the true Augustine Stile,” and
109
marched to the Palace of Holy-Rood House, in the Manner as from the
Chapel, amidst such immense Crowds of People, and innumerable
Multitudes of Spectators from the Windows and Tops of Houses, as
never were known in this City on any Occasion; and notwithstanding the
hazardous Situation which the Curiosity of many led them to, the Whole
concluded without the least Accident happening to any. 100
Masons also processed on feast days and civic occasions – such as the
laying of the Foundation Stone for the New College in Edinburgh on 16
November 1789 – and these events often served as a conduit for publicity,
attesting to the solidarity and mutuality of freemasons with each other and the
general public.
Processions may have displayed the orthodoxy and authority of
freemasonry, but they also exhibited the individuality and, in some cases, the
sheer eccentricity of many lodges. At the laying of the Foundation Stone for the
New Criminal Jail in September 1815, for example, Roman Eagle Lodge No.160
in Edinburgh recorded the following description of the ceremony:
99 Clark, British Clubs, 327.
100 No. 1 Mary’s Chapel Lodge Minutes, 17 September 1753.