Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

egularly published pamphlets agitating for parliamentary reform and a return of
the British constitution to “its original purity.” 59
Robert Burns, freemason and member of St David’s Tarbolton and
Canongate Kilwinning, suffered from what McElroy calls “revolutionary
fever.” 60 During the 1790s, appetites increased among young Scottish men for
revolutionary literature, and often such curiosity placed them “in social and
political hot water.” 61 Burns admired Tom Paine, and briefly entertained the
idea of joining the Friends of the People although there is no clear evidence
linking him with the radical group. It seems as if the revolutionary fervour
aroused the political sentiments of Burns, not the masonic lodges of which he
was a member. 62
As we have seen, these few sympathisers, known radicals, and the
incident involving No. 8 Journeymen and the Friends of the People do not, of
course, definitively link Scottish freemasons with radical and subversive
societies. It does, however, suggest that the members of at least three lodges
were susceptible to the ideas of reformist groups, as they allowed the Friends to
use their premises in open defiance of the Grand Lodge. 63 Certainly the
members of No. 8 were familiar with the Friends, as that society had held
59
Ibid.
60
McElroy, Age of Improvement, 100-101.
61
Ibid.
62
Although not a known freemason, Colonel William Fullerton – member of the Ayrshire
Parliament and a key figure in the debate over Grand Lodge’s authority – joined the Whig Club
on 4 November 1788 and was also a member of the Friends of the People. However, “alarmed
at the excesses of the French Revolution, he became ‘heartily ashamed’ of the Friends and on 6
February 1793” severed ties with the association, Thorne, History of Parliament, 843-845.
63
Most strikingly, the Grand Lodge minute implicated several lodges in Edinburgh who were
apparently involved with the Friends of the People.
154