Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

essentially a speculative organization. 33 Such a severance with the operative
element of the craft inevitably permitted a smooth – if not unopposed – creation
of a Grand Lodge system. Any fears of a resulting clash between old customs
and traditions with modern progressiveness and a new vision of freemasonry
were soon dispelled. As the new Grand Lodge had little or no connection with
working masons, and “no operative influences played any part in its creation,”
there were “no operative objectives in its programme. It came into being at a
time when the operative craft lodges had virtually disappeared and when the
transition from operative to speculative masonry had almost run its full
course.” 34
Scotland, however, attempted to consolidate an already active and varied
group of forty-nine lodges. 35 According to Seggie, the new Scottish Grand
Lodge had to simultaneously “embrace and be acceptable to every existing type
of Lodge” and consider the “jealousies rife amongst the old Operative Lodges
and their offshoots.” 36 Indeed, as Kahler has noted, the Grand Lodge
recognised the existence of operative lodges and was keen to attract
them, and keep them, in the masonic community. It also indicates that
the Grand Lodge recognized the operative roots of the organization, and
was willing to acknowledge these origins…Its establishment provided
the impetus for the transition from operative to accepted lodges, but did
not require a fundamental change in what the operative lodges had been
doing all along…there is no evidence to suggest that the Grand Lodge
discriminated against operative lodges. It attempted to create a
33 Harry Carr, “Grand Lodge and the Significance of 1717,” AQC, 79(1966), 290. Bullock
further explains that “the new grand lodge took on powers quite different from previous trade
practice. New genealogies stressed the speculative group’s continuity with the past. The rituals
themselves, the ultimate evidence for connection with antiquity, changed dramatically by
severing the vital link with the actual trade of masonry,” Revolutionary Brotherhood, 15.
34 Ibid.
35 Clark, British Clubs, 310.
36 Seggie, Journeymen Masons, 46.
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