SCOTTISH FREEMASONRY 1725-1810 ... - Lodge Prudentia

extensively with them, David Stevenson, to argue that the freemasonry
bequeathed to the eighteenth century was a Scottish invention.” 13 A critical
problem, however, is the varied quality and completeness of lodge archives, as
some are much more detailed and carefully preserved than others. Despite such
inconsistencies, Stevenson’s research has played an important role in illustrating
the significance of Scottish freemasonry as a form of association during the
seventeenth and early-eighteenth centuries. 14
The motivations behind the formation of popular societies were much
more than just the opportunity to debate issues, discuss topics of interests, or
engage in convivial celebrations. The un-stated purpose of most eighteenth-
century Scottish clubs was the verbalization of “a Scottish viewpoint” and the
improvement of Scottish society. 15 Roger Emerson has suggested that during
the beginning of the eighteenth century – amidst the growing realization of the
need for professional education – the new population of the learned and
educated “became numerous enough to change the institutional mix in the
country.” 16 Although intellectual clubs had existed since the 1680s, a new
emphasis was placed upon the structure and objectives of such societies.
13 Margaret Jacob, Living the Enlightenment, 35-38.
14 For additional masonic historiography, see Mary Ann Clawson, Constructing Brotherhood:
Class, Gender, And Fraternalism (Princeton, 1989), esp. 53-83; Steven C. Bullock,
Revolutionary Brotherhood: Freemasonry and the Transformation of the American Social
Order, 1730-1840 (Chapel Hill, 1996), esp. 9-49; Robert Freke Gould, Gould’s History of
Freemasonry Throughout The World, Vols. 1-6 (New York, 1936), esp. Vol. 2, 295-408;
Freemasonry On Both Sides of the Atlantic, ed. William Weisberger, (New York, 2002), esp. 3-
278; Bernard E. Jones, Freemason’s Guide And Compendium (New York, 1950); Knoop and
Jones, The Scottish Mason and the Mason Word (Manchester, 1939), and A Short History of
Freemasonry to 1730 (Manchester, 1940).
15 Roger Emerson, “The Enlightenment and Social Structures,” in City and Society in the 18 th
Century, eds. Paul Fritz and David Williams, (Toronto, 1973), 121.
16 Roger Emerson, “The contexts of the Scottish Enlightenment,” in The Cambridge Companion
to the Scottish Enlightenment, ed. Alexander Broadie, (Cambridge, 2003), 19.
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