Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

mass membership it sought to attract, and fearing that the Association would
soon abandon its moderation and adopt radical, even revolutionary, policies,
they withdrew their support.” 77
Sedition and the Unlawful Oaths Act
The masonic debate over Black Masonry had first been addressed by the
Modern Grand Lodge of England, almost fifty years before the Maybole case.
Grand Secretary Samuel Spencer openly expressed his disapproval of the new
degrees, stating that “Our Society is neither Arch, Royal Arch, or Ancient,” and
it is “a Society we do not acknowledge and which we hold to be an invention to
introduce innovation and to seduce the brethren.” 78
Opposition to the Royal Arch motivated several members of various
Modern lodges to form their own independent Supreme Grand Chapter. The
secretary of the rival Ancient Grand Lodge of England, according to Clarke,
“complained of flagrant abuses of ‘this most sacred part of Masonry’” and in
1788 an investigation was conducted to verify these charges. 79 Unlike the
Grand Lodge of Scotland, which condemned the degree outright, the Modern
Grand Lodge of England ruled that the “no Royal Arch Masons should be made
without the consent of Grand Lodge officers.” 80
The English debate over Black Masonry illustrates the early uncertainty
attached to the Royal Arch and Knights Templar degrees. One historian
77 Ibid.
78 United Grand Lodge of England, Grand Lodge, 281.
79 Clarke, “The Formation, 1717-1813,” 103-104.
80 Ibid.
208