Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

lodges and denying access to the grand charity, it maintained a constant
intercourse with the government and initiated legal battles that would test its
power over non-compliant lodges.
Despite the Grand Lodge’s less-than impressive performance during the
Maybole Trial of Sedition, the ordeal was a watershed event in the history of
freemasonry for two reasons. Primarily, it manifested the ability of the
freemasons to survive political conflicts, unlike other eighteenth-century clubs
and societies. And secondly, the relationship between the Grand Lodge and its
constituent lodges endured an irreversible change to the nature of their
relationship: freemasons, once governed by individual lodge laws, were now
held accountable to higher powers.
Clark accurately asserts that by the end of the eighteenth century, “the
formative age of freemasonry was surely over.” 151 Freemasonry, no longer an
independent and novel association, was increasingly shaped by outside
influences, for example noble patrons, the French Revolution, scepticism of
Continental freemasons, and most importantly the government. The Unlawful
Oaths and Secret Societies Acts forced masons to make politics a part of lodge
life, thus disrupting the balance between the public and private spheres.
151 Clark, British Clubs, 349.
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