Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

58 ANDERSON
ANDRE
but the date was probably 1680, and the place
Aberdeen in Scotland, ere he was educated
and where he probably took the degrees of
M .A. and D.D . At some unascertained
period he migrated to London, and our first
precise knowledge of him, derived from a document
in the State Records, is that on February
15, 1709-10, he as a Presbyterian minister,
took over the ease of a chapel in Swallow
Street, Piccadilly, from a congregation of
French Protestants which desired to dispose
of it because of their decreasing prosperity .
During the following decade he published several
sermons, and is said to have lost a considerable
sum of money dabbling in the South
Sea scheme.
Where and when his connection with Freemasonry
commenced has not yet been discovered,
but he must have been a fairly prominent
member of the Craft, because on September
29, 1721, he was ordered by the Grand Lodge,
which had been established in London in 1717,
to " digest the old Gothic Constitutions in a
new and better method ." On the 27th of
December following, his work was finished,
and the Grand Lodge appointed a committee
of fourteen learned brethren to examine and
report upon it. Their report was made on the
25th of March, 1722 ; and, after a few amendments,
Anderson's work was formally approved,
and ordered to be printed for the
benefit of the Lodges, which was done in 1723 .
This is now the well-known Book of Constitutions,
which contains the history of Masonry
(or, more correctly architecture), the
Ancient Charges, and the General Regulations,
as the same were in use in many old Lodges .
In 1738 a second edition was published. Both
editions have become exceedingly rare, and
copies of them bring fancy prices among the
collectors of old Masonic books . Its intrinsic
value is derived only from the fact that it contains
the first printed copy of the Old Charges
and also the General Regulations. The history
of Masonry which precedes these, and
constitutes the body of the work, is fanciful,
unreliable, and pretentious to a de*ree that
often leads to absurdity. The Craft is greatly
indebted to Anderson for his labors in reorganizing
the Institution, but doubtless it
would have been better if he had contented
himself with giving the records of the Grand
Lodge from 1717 to 1738, which are contained
in his second edition, and with pr
for
us the Charges and Regulations, whieh out
his industry, might have been lost . No Mar
sonic writer would now venture to quote Anderson
as authority for the history of the
Order anterior to the eighteenth century . It
must also be added that in the republication
of the Old Charges in the edition of 1738, he
made several important alterations and interpolations,
which justly gave some offense
to the Grand Lodge, and which render the
second edition of no authority in this respect .
In the year 1723, when his first edition of
the Constitutions appeared, he was Master
of Lodge 17 and he was appointed Grand
Warden, and also became Chaplain to the
Earl of Buchan ; in 1732 he published a voluminous
work entitled Royal , or the
Genealogical Tables of Emperors, Kings and
Princes, from Adam to these times ; in 1733 he
issued a theological pamphlet on Unity in
Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; in 1734 he removed
with a part of his congregation from
his chapel in Swallow Street to one in Lisle
Street, Leicester Fields, in consequence of
some difference with his people, the nature of
which is unknown ; in 1735 he represented to
Grand Lodge that a new edition of the Book of
Constitutions was become necessary, and he
was ordered to lay his materials before the
present and former Grand Officers ; in 1738 the
new Book of Constitutions was approved of
by Grand Lodge and ordered to be printed .
Anderson died on May 28, 1739, and was
buried in Bunhill Fields with a Masonic funeral,
which is thus reported in The Daily Post
of June 2d : "Last night was interr d the
corpse of Dr . Anderson, a Dissenting Teacher,
in a very remarkable deep Grave. His Pall
was supported by five Dissenting Teachers
and the Rev. Dr . Desaguliers : It was followed
by about a Dozen of Free-Masons who encircled
the Grave ; and after Dr. Earle had
harangued on the Uncertainty of Life, &c .,
without one word of the Deceased, the Brethren
in a most solemn dismal Posture, lifted up
their Hands, sigh'd, and struck their aprons
three times in Honour to the Deceased."
Soon after his death another of his works,
entitled News from Elysium or Dialogues of
the Dead, was issued, and in 1742 there appeared
the first volume of a Genealogical History
of the House of Yvery, also from his pen.
[E . L . H .)
Anderson Manuscript . In the first edition
of the Constitutions of the Freemasons,
published by Dr . Anderson in 1723, the author
quotes on pp . 32, 33 from "a certain record of
Freemasons, written in the reign of King Edward
IV." Preston also cites it in his Illustrations,
(p .182, ed . 1788), but states that it is said
to havebeen in the possessionof EliasAshmole,
but was unfortunately destroyed, with other
papers on the subject of Masonry, at the Revolution.
Anderson makes no reference to
Ashmole as the owner of the MS., nor to the
fact of its destruction . If the statement of
Preston was confirmed by other evidence its
title would properly be the " Ashmole MS ." ;
but as it was first mentioned by Anderson, Bro .
Hughan has very properly called it the " Anderson
Manuscript." It contains the Prince
Edwin legend .
Andre, Christopher Karl . An active
Mason, who resided at Briinn, in Moravia,
where, in 1798, he was the Director of the
Evangelical Academy. He was very zealously
employed, about the end of the last
century, in connection with other distinguished
Masons, in the propagation of the
Order in Germany. He was the editor and
author of a valuable periodical work, which
was published in 5 numbers, 8vo, from 1793 to
1796, at Gotha and Halle under the title of
Der Freimaurer oder eompendiose Bibliothek