Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

esolved. It was much less a reactive body and became much more proactive
during the years of the French Revolution, demanding compliance from lodges
in all matters relating to the legislation passed by the government and imposing
strict fines and penalties for non-compliant lodges. Although it initially made
no concerted effort to take complete control of Scottish freemasonry, by the end
of the eighteenth century the Grand Lodge attempted to solidify its status as the
sole governing masonic body in Scotland. Such designs met with strong
resistance from lodges and ultimately caused the Masonic Secession of 1808.
It has been claimed that the Grand Lodge’s formation “stripped the self-
sufficient lodges of a great deal of autonomy,” as it “endeavoured, with
mounting success, to impose a centralist regime on local lodges through the
return of membership lists and rising dues to grand lodge.” 151 Whether or not
the Grand Lodge imposed a centralist regime on constituent lodges is a matter of
historical interpretation; as we have seen, though, the Grand Lodge of Scotland
did require membership lists and the prompt return of annual fees, threatening
non-compliant lodges with expulsion. 152
Although Bullock remarks that the Grand Lodge of England sought to
remove all sovereignty from individual lodges, other historians have noted that
the four lodges who founded the Grand Lodge of England in 1717 “were not
prompted by ambitious motives. They were not seeking to promote their own
151 Bullock, Revolutionary Brotherhood, 339; 15. Contrary to Bullock’s assertions that the
Grand Lodge of England claimed authority over all British lodges, it never had any power over
Scottish lodges.
152 James Heckthorn writes that “…in the third and fourth decades of the [eighteenth] century,
its authority was more widely accepted…By 1740 it was an accepted and well-known feature of
English life,” Secret Societies, 21-22.
153 Carr, “Grand Lodge of Scotland and the Significance,” 291.
183