Mark Coleman Wallace PhD Thesis - University of St Andrews

According to Ferrone, “the Great Lodge of London, inaugurated in 1717, from
its inception carried out this task quite well.” 147
Scottish lodges did possess individual constitutions or rules and
regulations that addressed the particular needs of lodge members. Anderson’s
Constitutions, however, were rarely mentioned. For example, No. 3 Scoon &
Perth recorded on 2 September 1735 that the lodge “Borrowed up a large quarto
book Intitled the Constitutions of the free masons Dedicated to the Duke of
Montague.” 148 Although there was no immediate need for self-promotion or
advertisement, “there was a need for standardization and up-dating if
freemasonry was to be a coherent product attractive to new – and socially
superior – members.” 149 However, as the Scottish Grand Lodge attempted to
circulate and publicize such ideas to an operative-dominated society, it is not
surprising that Newtonian ideas and Anderson’s Constitutions – which were so
popular among the speculative lodges in England – were not as prominent in
Scotland.
Eighteenth-Century Scottish Lodges as Models for Improvement
Certainly, Scottish freemasonry was similar and different to its English
counterpart. As we have seen, each exhibited certain qualities, more specifically
the encouragement of social harmony, unity, and of course conviviality.
Contextualising freemasonry in terms of the wider evolution of associations in
147 Vincenzo Ferrone, The Intellectual Roots of the Italian Enlightenment. Newtonian Science,
Religion, and Politics in the Early Eighteenth Century (New Jersey, 1995), 74. See also Jacob,
Radical Enlightenment, 111-137.
148 No. 3 Scoon & Perth Lodge Minutes, 2 September 1735.
149 Stevenson, Origins, 206.
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