The Grand Lodge of Antient Free and Accepted Masons of Scotland
THE FIRST SPECULATIVE FREEMASONS
Elias Ashmole (1617 – 1692) was not the first Speculative Freemason. Nor was he the second, third or even tenth! The first Speculative Freemasons were William, Lord Alexander his brother Anthony Alexander (the King’s Maister o’ Wark – Master of Works) and Sir Alexander Strachan of Thornton. They were Initiated on 3rd July 1634, in the Lodge of Edinburgh, that is more 12 years before Elias Ashmole. [1] To understand the importance of this and to set Ashmole’s ‘initiation’ in context some background information is necessary.
At the time of these events Scotland was a country entirely independent of England. The 1603 ‘Union of the Crowns’ (James I of Scotland became James VI of Great Britain) provided the Kingdoms of Scotland and England with single monarch but did not unite the two countries in other respects. For example, Scotland retained its’ own parliament, monetary system, laws, religion and, of course, Freemasonry. In 1534 Henry VIII of England instituted a religious reformation, by making himself the head of the church in place of the Pope in Rome. His motivation for doing so was his need to annul his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon and the Pope’s refusal to grant such an annulment. The motives were therefore legal, jurisdictional and political rather than religious. [2] Once set in motion Henry took the opportunity to confiscate most of the church’s money and property. Lay organisations which supported and encouraged pre-Reformation religious practices were swept away, their money and property were confiscated and this included English guilds. The situation in Scotland was quite different. The Protestant Reformation took place in Scotland in 1559 and was religious in nature. The Catholic Church and many of its’ practices were replaced by an entirely new system of religious observance based on Calvinism. Unlike England, Scottish Guilds (known as Incorporations), were not abolished but their religious support for the pre-Reformation Church simply ceased when the new Protestant faith was established. [3]
Scottish Incorporations (rather like the extinct English Guilds) therefore functioned in Scotland before and after the Reformation. [4] The main purpose of Incorporations was to advance the interests of their members. Considering them as a form of proto-Labour Union goes some way to understanding ‘what they were about’ but they did more than negotiate with employers. They were responsible for regulating their members to the extent that they tasked with controlling wages, supervising ‘quality control’, setting the terms for apprenticeships, burying deceased members, looking after their widows and orphans and even improving the morals of the members. All the major trades had an Incorporation including Baxters (bakers); Cordiners (shoemakers); Fleshers (butchers); Hammermen (iron workers); Wobsters (weavers) and of course Masons (stonemasons). When new members admitted to an Incorporation certain secrets were communicated to each new member. [5] However, and most importantly, only the Incorporation of Masons had an additional level to the incorporation – the Lodge. In this the Masons were unique. The reasons why an extra body was required was due to the fact that the Incorporation of Masons also included other trades such as Wrights (carpenters) and Coopers (barrel makers) and communicating stonemasons’ secrets could not be done in a body were non-stonemasons were present.
The Lodge was therefore a place where secrets were transmitted from stonemasons to stonemasons and no one else. Incorporations were an acknowledged and accepted part of Scottish society in other words they were the public face of stonemasons but the Lodge was secret – the private face of the craft. Incorporations kept written records of their activities whereas Lodges did not.
That changed in 1598 when the King’s Maister o’ Wark, William Schaw (c.1550 – 1602) wrote what are now known as the First Schaw Statutes and which were followed by the Second Schaw Statues in 1599. It is because of these documents that Schaw is known as the Father of modern Freemasonry. Without going into detail as to what these documents contain it is important to appreciate that they were instructions issued to all the Lodges in Scotland. They contain a large amount of interesting information regarding stonemason Lodges but it is sufficient here to state that they formalised an existing organisation. Schaw was a primarily a civil servant and one can understand his dismay at being in charge of a informal, perhaps disorganised, system of Lodges spread across Scotland. His statutes instituted a much more organised system including the keeping of written records and this is why the oldest Lodge records date from soon after his statutes. [6] The establishment of a national system of stonemasons Lodges was no doubt of benefit to Schaw, certainly from the point of view of efficiency, but it seems certain that the statutes were actually a subterfuge for esoteric matters which space does not allow for discussion here. Schaw died in 1602 leaving behind his national system of Lodges, as detailed in his statutes, which can be seen continuing to the present day. [7]
ENDNOTES:
[1] The Lodge is still in existence and is now known as The Lodge of Edinburgh Mary’s Chapel), No. 1. The Lodges Minutes commence on 31st July 1599 and are continuous to date. [2] The Act of Supremacy of 1534 ended Papal authority over the church in England and transferred to the crown. [3] Many of these Incorporations continue to exist in Scotland to this day including, for example, the Incorporation of Masons of Glasgow which has a recorded existence from 1475. They are now confined to being charitable bodies. [4] There are very few references to Lodges before the Reformation but the most important occurs in 1491 when the Masons of Edinburgh were permitted to use the Lodge for ‘recreational purposes.’ See Appendix 1, The Masonic Magician, p. 246. [5] For example a member of the Incorporation of Hammermen of Dundee was expelled in 1653 for revealing the Hammermen’s secrets to a non-member. See: The Burgh Laws of Dundee, p. 493. [6] The first are those of Lodge Aitcheson’s Haven which commence on 9th January 1599. [7] The statutes have most recently been reproduced in The Rosslyn Hoax?, Appendix 1 & 2. pp. 330 – 335. ..