Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

journeymen masons, or itinerant masons who travelled from place to place in
search of labour. Beginning in 1737, St Andrews No. 25 made provisions to
exact immediate payment from any “jurneman that is imployed out of the loge
in the amount of one shilen Scotts money.” 85 Admission to the lodge was
granted to the journeyman only after the lodge gave the “first offer [of
employment] to the members of the said Loge” and the journeymen made
payment of one shilling. 86
The creation of a Grand Lodge and the introduction of a new era of
freemasonry relying almost entirely on symbolic representation of the
stonemason craft initiated a growing awareness among operative masons of the
imminent changes to the structure and nature of the fraternity. Consequently,
lodge policies were amended to safeguard their status. For example, the Master
of No. 6 Old Inverness St John’s Kilwinning observed that
all or most of the operative Brethren were either working in the Country
or employed in the publick Worke at the Point of Ardeneir, and for that
Reason, he thought it unnecessary to Conveen the few Geometrical
Brethren who live in the Burgh, as no Business could be conducted or
Settled in the absence of the operative Brethren, and more particularly
that he thought it a hardship that any of them should be called from their
Work at any Time. 87
As the majority of operative records were concerned with the regulation
of work and trade, any business was strictly handled by the operative members.
Speculative – or in the case of No. 6 Inverness, Geometrical – masons were
excluded from business decisions for practical reasons because they were
85
No. 25 St Andrews Lodge Minutes, 28 December 1737
86
Ibid.
87
No. 6 Old Inverness St John’s Kilwinning Lodge Minutes, 1 November 1752.
33