Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

The overall links between freemasonry and radicals are tenuous at best.
No membership roles for the Friends of the People exist; thus it is highly
problematic to argue that freemasons were actively involved with the radical
association. However, there is evidence which suggests that at least some
members of masonic lodges were affiliated with other revolutionary groups. In
Dundee, three members of St David’s Lodge were involved with the Dundee
Friends of Liberty and the Perth and Dundee Radical Society. Among the most
famous members of the Friends of Liberty was George Mealmaker, also a leader
of the United Scotsmen; Mealmaker was arrested in 1797 and tried for
sedition. 54 Among Mealmaker’s colleagues in the Friends of Liberty were
James Yeoman, baker, and a member of St David’s. 55 Members of both the
Perth and Dundee Radical Club and St David’s masonic lodges included
William Bisset, a “rich” founder, and one Mr. Crichton, who is listed as Patrick
Crichton. 56 And in Edinburgh, James Thomason Callender – member of the
Canongate and Leith, Leith and Canongate Lodge, is listed as a member of the
radical Canongate No. 1 Society of the Friends of the People. 57 An outspoken
critic of what he perceived as Britain’s “imperialist foreign policy,” 58 Callender
153
54
See Ferguson, Scotland, 1689 to the Present: The Edinburgh History of Scotland Volume 4,
(Edinburgh, 1965), 261.
55
See Richard G. Gallin, “Scottish Radicalism 1792-1794,” Unpublished Thesis (New York,
1979), 249.
56
Ibid. See also Corey Andrew Edwards, “Paradox and Improvement: Literary Nationalism and
Eighteenth Century Scotland Club Poetry,” Unpublished Thesis (Ohio, 2000), 97.
57
Gallin, “Scottish Radicalism,” 248.
58
John Brims, “Scottish Radicalism and the United Irishmen,” in The United Irishmen:
Republicanism, Radicalism and Rebellion, ed. Kevin Whelan (Dublin, 1993), 152.