THE ORIGINS OF FREEMASONRY - Scotland’s Century 1590-1710 David Stevenson. Cambridge University Press (fifth edition, 1998). 246pp. £14.95

David Stevenson is Professor in the Department of Scottish History at the University of St Andrews, so we should expect quality. And quality is what we get. Stevenson’s magnificently detailed survey of, principally, Scottish evidence for the existence of Freemasonry long before the establishment of England’s Grand Lodge in 1717, has rightly been accepted as the standard work on the subject. I can hardly recommend it too highly for people with a serious interest in masonic origins. However, the plural word ‘origins’ is most appropriate, for it becomes clearer with every passing year that the $64,000 question ‘how did Freemasonry begin?’ cannot be solved at a stroke. There are a number of points of origin for what we now call Freemasonry, and some of these are in themselves mysterious, but mysterious rather for lack of evidence than for any particularly esoteric reason. Stevenson has found ample evidence for Scottish lodges from the time of what Englishmen call the late Elizabethan period and on throughout the 17th century (when there is evidence for two degrees: ‘interprintice’ and fellow craft). Insofar as the vast bulk of evidence is to be found in Scotland (copious lodge records), Stevenson feels justified in thinking that a Scottish origin for ‘speculative’ Masonry is appropriate. In this regard, his treatments of William Schaw (d.1602), Master of Works to King James VI and author of the famous Statutes for re-organising Scottish masons, and of Sir Robert Moray, the covenanting general who was initiated into a Scottish operative lodge in Newcastle in 1641, are critical for establishing a union of operative masonry and symbolic ideas as determinative to the later development of the craft. We are left in no doubt that in Scotland, non-operative, symbolic or ‘speculative’ Masonry grew in lodges which were first exclusive homes to stonemasons. Kilwinning Lodge No 0, for example, exists today as a speculative lodge of Freemasons outside of the building trade, but 400 years ago the ‘same’ lodge gave fraternal shelter to stonemasons. Stevenson’s account of Scottish gentlemen and others joining operative lodges is fascinating, showing the intermittent enthusiasm of some Renaissance-educated persons who saw in masonic traditions vital fragments of ancient philosophical interest: to join oneself to the secrets of the masons was at least hoped to link one up with the primal figures of a supposed antediluvian science, in particular, the venerated figure of Hermes Trismegistus, a patron and ‘progenitor’ of the masons’ craft, beloved of ‘operatives’ from at least the time of the middle ages. Dr Plot records what appear to be similar ‘acceptations’ of non-operative gentlemen going on in the Staffordshire of the 1680s (Natural History of Staffordshire, 1686). However, Plot refers to “Free-masons” whereas in Scotland, the bulk of Stevenson’s evidence, refers to “masons” and it is the ‘missing’ word ‘Free’ in much of the Scottish evidence which still makes some English masonic scholars doubt whether an identical thing is necessarily being described. (One may of course ask, why should Masonry have been uniform throughout the British Isles, especially as there was no Grand Lodge in this period to enforce it?) Elias Ashmole, initiated into a non-operative Cheshire lodge in 1646, calls himself a ‘Free Mason’, whereas elsewhere in his diary he refers to a pair of sculptors working at Windsor as ‘fre-masons’ (note the lower-case ‘f’). However, at a lodge meeting at Masons’ Hall, Basinghall Street, London in 1682, attended by Ashmole as “Senior Fellow”, a large number of those present were senior members of the Masons Company, an operative institution. These apparent distinctions may make one question ‘what’s in a name?’ Does not ‘Freemason’ simply derive from ‘freestone mason’, shortened to ‘freemason’? Some might hold that the dividing line (presuming there is one) between ‘operative’ and ‘speculative’ rests in the presence of esoteric ideas in the latter. But Stevenson reveals that William Schaw sought to test the members of the Kilwinning Lodge on ‘the art of memory’ which Dame Frances Yates long ago revealed to be an esoteric discipline, linked to theology and philosophy and, however you look at it, hardly the kind of thing one would expect one’s local builder to have under his apron. Architecture is a philosophical as well as a practical discipline. Stevenson’s interest in what he calls ‘Scotland’s century’ appears to make him go further than the evidence might necessarily support. Regarding the origin of Ashmole’s lodge at Warrington, he speculates that “it may be that the activities of masons (operative or non-operative) in the Scottish armies which occupied the north of England in 1640-1 and 1644-7 had spread knowledge of, and aroused interest in, masonry in the area, with some locals becoming initiated and calling their meetings lodges in the Scottish fashion.” He is free to speculate, but effectively to erase the English significance of the Ashmole initiation for what appears to be the sake of a desire to assert a Scottish origin for Freemasonry is somewhat cheeky, if one may pluck a word from over the walls of academe. There are certainly more compelling theories regarding the origin of Ashmole’s lodge of initiation. The close connections of some of the members of the Warrington lodge to church restoration and patronage in the area seem to me to represent a more fruitful avenue of research (see my Elias Ashmole: A Mighty Good Man, 1997). It might be considered that I am making a special plea here, given my known interest in Ashmole, but the issue is axiomatic as regards Stevenson’s interest in making a special case for Scottish primacy in masonic development in the period described. Besides, ideas are international things and generally cross borders at will. I do not find the relative lack of English evidence (so far) to be a compelling basis for following Stevenson’s thesis as regards country of origin. Did we not have Ashmole’s diaries, and had Plot not written his Natural History of Staffordshire, we should have very little contemporary evidence left to go on as regards English Freemasonry in the 17th century - but the evidence is there, whether one likes it or not. And even if we did not have the evidence, then the truth would be there, whether we knew it or not. It would be a matter of seeking it - and I suspect there is much more to be found yet. The best we can truthfully say for now is that Freemasonry developed in England, Scotland and Ireland at roughly the same time.
    Having said all that - and fresh researches are taking place constantly - I commend Professor Stevenson’s book to the serious attention of readers because it is by far the best book on early Scottish Masonry and one of the greatest published contributions to masonic knowledge written this century. We can only hope that more scholars of Stevenson’s determined calibre overcome the prejudices of many academics and enter the fascinating field that is masonic history. They will have to work very hard indeed to top Stevenson’s remarkable book.
    Tobias Churton