Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

guide to the positive history of freemasonry, on the other hand, they are
valueless.” 24
Although the organization and development of the Scottish Grand Lodge
were both modelled after the Grand Lodge of England, 25 the actual formation of
each governing body, according to Gould, was “wholly dissimilar.” 26 The four
lodges that gathered in Edinburgh in 1736, having “taken into consideration the
great loss that Masonry has sustained thro the wont of a Grand Master,”
determined that a Grand Lodge was necessary in order to restore freemasonry to
“its antient lustre in this Kindgome.” 27
In theory, the lodges envisioned – as no doubt did the founding lodges in
England – the new Grand Lodge as a conduit for the gradual development and
progression of speculative freemasonry. In practice, however, the specific
motivations behind the creation of the Scottish Grand Lodge differed from its
English predecessor. Ostensibly, the main contributing factor to the
amalgamation of Scottish lodges into a national system of masonic governance
was envy over the success of the Grand Lodge of England. 28 Scottish masons
“envied the éclat” 29 given to English masons and were critical of their own
24
Roberts, Mythology, 19.
25
Kahler, “The Grand Lodge of Scotland,” 112.
26
Gould, History of Freemasonry Vol. 3 (New York, 1936), 243. Margaret Jacob echoes this
claim that modern, or speculative freemasonry, “may have indeed been invented in Scotland and
then exported south; but what returned to Scotland in the early eighteenth century, in a reverse
migration from England, was quite different.”
27
Kahler, “The Grand Lodge of Scotland,” 94. The four lodges were Mary’s Chapel, Canongate
Kilwinning, Kilwinning Scots Arms, and Leith Kilwinning, all located in Edinburgh.
28
See also Gould, History of Freemasonry Vol. 3, 249; Lyon, Mary’s Chapel, 189; Kahler, “The
Grand Lodge of Scotland,” 94.
29
J. Stewart Seggie, in Annals of the Lodge of Journeymen Masons No. 8 (Edinburgh, 1930), 71.
17