Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

them paying each one pound five shillings sterling but to have no vote nor
Benefits from this Lodge.” 91
Notwithstanding individual lodge regulations, further efforts were made
to accommodate operative freemasonry. The Grand Lodge of Scotland, from
1739 to 1740, instigated four new policies affecting operative masons which
included offering patronage to the son of a stonemason; lowering the cost of
admission fees for operatives; purchasing a set of stonemason tools; and
deciding that the “masters of the Lodge of Edinburgh and the Journeymen, along
with an additional master from another lodge, were to serve as examiners
for…visiting members as are Strangers to the Grand Lodge and who are
desirous to attend’ the meetings.” 92 Special dispensations were also made for
operative masons on the annual St Andrews Day Festival. Tickets for the
festival cost two shillings, but operatives were only required to pay half the sum,
or one shilling. 93
The Grand Lodge was also instrumental in setting up a hospital for
operative masons during the construction of the Royal Infirmary in Edinburgh.
The hospital, or “masons Cell,” was a room appropriated “in the Hospitall for
the Reception of one or more infirme Masons…into which Cell all Masons
belonging to such Lodges as have acknowledged the Grand Lodge, are to be
without definition receiv’d.” 94 Admission into the Cell was conditional on
acknowledgement of the Grand Lodge, again illustrating not only the
91
Ibid, 30 December 1787.
92
Kahler, “Grand Lodge of Scotland,” 108.
93
Grand Lodge of Scotland Minutes, 15 November 1749. This practice continued throughout
the eighteenth century.
94
No. 1(3) Aberdeen Lodge Minutes, 17 July 1737.
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