Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

discourse of Hanoverian freemasonry.” 154 For the freemasons, much like
Scottish literary clubs and societies, a “rigid and immutable definition of
subject-matter was not a feature of the eighteenth-century literary society. On
the contrary, there was a decided tendency to include an ever increasing range of
subjects.” 155
Critical to this analysis is the issue of vails, or giving drink-money to
servants, which gripped the country in 1760. This seemingly insignificant issue
of social reform sparked a debate that pitted master and servant against one
another, and divided Edinburgh along class and cultural lines. As McElroy
contends, “the class which was to be deprived of an accustomed and cherished
source of income was far from meek in their resentment at the attack on their
privileges.” 156 Championing the cause of the abolition of this alleged pernicious
custom was the Edinburgh Society for Encouraging Arts, Sciences,
Manufactures, and Agriculture. During a meeting in 1759, the society debated
the following questions: “What is the best and most equal way of hiring and
conducting servants? and, what is the most proper method to abolish the practice
of giving of vails?” 157 The conflict soon reached epic proportions, with dramas
being staged ridiculing the servant class, the Edinburgh Magazine condemning
the plays, and finally the Select Society entering the dispute on 29 January 1760.
By 5 February 1760, its members adopted the following binding resolution:
The Select Society having taken into consideration the practice of giving
vails, or drink-money to servants, and being convinced that this custom,
154 Clark, British Clubs, 336.
155 McElroy, Age of Improvement, 73.
156 Ibid, 161.
157 Ibid.
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