\
\\\THE TEMPLE AND THE LODGE
MICHAEL BAIGENT AND RICHARD LEIGH
TWO
Scotland and a Hidden Tradition
7
The Scots Guard
Whoever David Seton was, and whatever became of the ‛Templar s’ alleged to have absconded with him, there was already, by that time, another repository for Scottish nobles claiming a Templar legacy. This repository may even have over lapped Seton’ s elusive cadre. But whether it did or not, it was still to preserve at least some Templar traditions and, albeit obliquely, carry them on into such later developments as Freemasonry. Although uniquely Scottish, this repository was to be based in France. It was thus to pave the way for the refuge which the last Stuar ts f ound in France, and for the kind of Jacobite Freemasonry — specifically Templar - oriented Freemasonry — which coalesced around them.
In the years immediately following Bannockburn in 1314, Scotland and France, united by their common hostility towards England, developed ever closer military connections. In 1326, Bruce and Charles IV of France signed a major treaty renewing the ‛auld alliance’ . This alliance was to be consolidated by the Hundred Year s War . At the nadir of his f or tunes, for example, the Dauphin, later Char les VII, planned to flee to Scotland, and would almost certainly have done so had not Jeanne d’ Arc appeared to turn the tide of events. Scottish soldiery played a key role in all Jeanne’ s campaigns, including the famous raising of the Siege of Orléans; and indeed, the Bishop of Orléans at the time was himself a Scot, John Kirkmichael. Jeanne’ s ‘ great standard’ — the celebrated white banner around which her army rallied — was in fact painted by a Scot, and her commander s at Or léans included Sir John Stewart and two Douglas brothers. 1
In the aftermath of Jeanne’ s dramatic series of victories, France, though triumphant, was exhausted and in a state of internal dissray. Domestic order was fur ther threatened by bands of demobilised mercenaries, trained soldiers without a war to fight. Lacking any other source of livelihood, many of these veterans turned brigand and ravaged the countryside, threatening to disrupt the newly established and still precar ious social order . In consequence, the former Dauphin, now Charles VII, proceeded to create a standing army. By this time, the Hospitaller s had transferred their resources to maritime operations in the Mediter ranean. Char les’ s army thus became the f ir st standing army in Europe since the Templar s, and the first since Imperial Rome to be attached to a specific state — or , more accurately, to a specific throne.
The new French army created by Char les VII in 1445 consisted of fifteen ‘ compagnies d’ ordonnance’ of 600 men each — a total of 9000 soldiers. Of these, the Scottish Company — the ‘ Compagnie des Gendarmes Ecossois’ — enjoyed pr ide of place. The Scottish Company was unchallenged in its status as the army’ s recognised elite. It was explicitly accorded premier rank over all other military units and formations, and would, for example, pass first in all parades. The commanding officer of the Scottish Company was also granted the rank of ‘ premier Master of Camp of French Cavalry’ . 2 This cumber some appellation was more than honorary. It conferred on him enormous authority and influence, in the field, in the court and in domestic politics.
But even bef ore the creation of the standing army and the Scottish Company, an even more elite, more exclusive military cadre of Scots had been established. At the bloody Battle of Verneuil in 1424, the Scottish contingents had acquitted themselves with particular bravery and self sacrifice. Indeed, they were virtually annihilated, along with their commander , John Stewart, Earl of Buchan, and other such nobles as Alexander Lindsay, Sir William Seton and the Earls of Douglas, Murray and Mar . A year later , in recognition of this action, a special unit of Scots was raised to serve as permanent personal bodyguard to the French king. Initially, it consisted of thirteen men- at- arms and twenty archers, a total of thirty- three. A detachment of this cadre was in constant attendance upon the monarch, even to the point of sleeping in his bedchamber . 3
The elite unit was divided into two sub- f ormations, the ‘ Garde du Roi’ and the ‘ Garde du Corps du Roi’ — the King’ s Guard and the King’ s Bodyguard. Collectively, they were known simply as the Scots Guard. In 1445, when the standing army was raised, the number of men in the Scots Guard was commensurately increased — significantly enough, by multiples of thir teen. In 1474, the number s were definitively fixed — seventy- seven men plus their commander in the King’ s Guard, and twenty- f ive men plus their commander in the King’ s Bodyguard. 4 With striking consistency, of f icer s and commander s of the Scots Guard were also made member s of the Order of St Michael, a branch of which was later established in Scotland.
The Scots Guard were, in effect, a neo- Templar institution, much more so than such purely chivalric orders as the Garter , the Star and the Golden Fleece. Like the Templars, the Guard had a raison d’ être that was primarily military, political and diplomatic. Like the Templar s, the Guard offered both military training and a military hierarchy — as well as an opportunity to ‘ blood oneself ’ in battle, to win one’ s spurs and acquire both experience and expertise. Like the Templar s, the Guard functioned as a distinct military formation, in the way that an elite battalion would today. And though they held no lands of their own and never rivalled the Templars in number s, the Scots Guard were still numerous enough to play a decisive role in the kind of combat prevailing in Europe at the time. They differed from the Templar s primar ily in the absence of any explicit religious orientation, and in their allegiance not to the Pope but to the French crown. But the Templar s’ own religious allegiances had always been heterodox and their obedience to the Pope little more than nominal. And the loyalty of the Scots Guard to the French crown was also, as we shall see, rather less fervent than it might have been. Like the Templars, the Guard were to pursue their own policies, their own designs, on behalf of very different interests.
For the better part of a century and a half , the Scots Guard enjoyed a unique status in French affairs. They functioned not just on the battlefield, but in the political arena as well, acting as courtiers and advisor s in domestic af f airs, as emissaries and ambassador s in international relations. Commander s of the Guard usually doubled in the role of royal chamberlain and of ten held a number of other posts, both honorary and practical, as well. Not surprisingly, they drew immensely high salaries for the age. In 1461, a captain in the Guard received some 167 livres tournois per month, just over 2000 per year . 5 This was equivalent to nearly half the revenue of a noble estate. Officers of the Guard could thus maintain lif estyles of considerable affluence and prestige.
Just as the Templar s had recruited from the aristocracy of their age, so the Scots Guard drew their officers and commanders from the most august and distinguished families in Scotland, whose names had figured all through the country’ s history and are still resonant today — Cockburn, Cunningham, Hamilton, Hay, Montgomery, Seton, Sinclair and Stuart (or Stewart). Between 1531 and 1542, there were three Stuarts in the Guard, one of them the unit’ s captain. Between 1551 and 1553, there were no fewer than five member s of the ‘ Montgommery’ (sic) f amily in the Guard, one of them its captain, and four Sinclairs. In 1587, the time of the elusive David Seton, there were four other Setons, three Hamiltons, two Douglases and a Sinclair . It is clear that the Scots Guard served a special function not only f or the French throne, but also for the f amilies who provided their recruits. In effect, the cadre constituted a combination rite de passage and training ground for young Scottish nobles — a special vehicle whereby they were initiated into martial skills, politics, court affairs, f oreign manners and mores and, it would appear , some species of ritualistic rite as well. In a personal interview, a member of the present- day Montgomery family spoke to us of the pride that he and his relatives still took in their ancestor s’ affiliation with the Scots Guard. He also informed us that there was, in the family, a species of private order , semi-Masonic, semi- chivalric, to which all males of the Montgomery line were eligible for admission. This order , he said, which apparently dated from around the time of the Scots Guard, was called the Order of the Temple. 6
In theory, as we have seen, the Scots Guard owed their allegiance to the French throne — or , more specifically, to the Valois dynasty, which at that time occupied the French throne. But the legitimacy of the Valois was also being vigorously challenged at the time by a number of other powerful interests. Chief among these was the house of Lorraine and its cadet branch, the house of Guise. Indeed, much of French history during the sixteenth century revolved around the murderous feud between these rival dynasties. The houses of Guise and Lorraine were ruthlessly determined to depose the Valois — by political means if possible, by murder if necessary — and establish themselves on the throne. By 1610, no fewer than five French monarchs were to have died either by violent means or by suspected poisoning, and the factions of Guise and Lor raine were themselves to be depleted by assassination.
The Scots Guard played an ambiguous role in this internecine strife. In fact, they had been placed in an equivocal position. On the one hand, their nominal allegiance was to the Valois, for whom they constituted a personal bodyguard and the nucleus of an army. On the other hand, it would have been impossible for them not to have some ties with the houses of Guise and Lorraine. In 1538, as we have noted, Mar ie de Guise had been mar r ied to James V of Scotland, f orging a crucial dynastic bond between their respective houses. When Marie’ s daughter , Mary Queen of Scots, ascended the throne, Scotland’ s monarch was theref ore half Stuart, half Guise- Lorraine; and this was something to which the aristocrats of the Scots Guard could hardly have been indifferent. In 1547, Henr i II, the Valois king of France, increased their status and privileges. Notwithstanding this, however , they were often active — and not always secretly — on behalf of Henr i’ s Guise- Lorraine rivals. In 1548, for example, the young Mary Stuar t, then aged six, was brought to France under an escor t of the Scots Guard. Ten years later , a detachment of the Guard spearheaded the army of François, Duc de Guise, when, in an action that made him a national hero, he wrested the long- contested port of Calais from English hands.
Among the Scottish f amilies contr ibuting to the Guard were, as we have seen, the Montgomeries. In 1549, there were f ive Montgomeries serving in the unit simultaneously. Between 1543 and 1561, a period of nearly twenty years, the Guard were commanded first by James de Montgomery, then by Gabriel, then by James again. In June, 1559, there occurred one of the most famous and dramatic events of the sixteenth century, whereby Gabriel de Montgomery inscribed f or himself , his family and the Guard a permanent place in the history books — and, knowingly or otherwise, struck a major blow for the houses of Guise and Lorraine.
As part of the festivities attending the marriage of two of his daughter s, Henri II of France had scheduled a gala tournament, attended by nobles from all over Europe. The king himself was amous for his own love of jousting and was eager to par ticipate personally in the event. The assembled populace and dignitaries watched him enter the lists. He tilted f ir st against the Duc de Savoie, then against François, Duc de Guise. The third combat must have seemed, to the spectators, par ticularly safe. It pitted the king against his old friend and ostensibly loyal servitor , Gabriel de Montgomery, Captain of the Scots Guard. Because neither adver sary was unseated, Henri considered the first clash of lances to be unsatisfactory. Despite the protests of his entourage, he demanded a second combat, and Montgomery consented. The two men charged each other again, and this time the lances splintered as they were supposed to do. But Montgomery ‘ neglected to throw away the broken shaft’ , which struck the king’ s helm, burst open his visor and sent a jagged fragment of wood into his head above the right eye. 7
There was, of course, wholesale consternation. Half a dozen criminals were promptly decapitated and subjected to similar wounds, which physicians hastened to examine in an attempt to find the best method of treatment. These efforts proved futile, and Henri, after eleven days of agony, died. Many people were suspicious, but Montgomery’ s action could not be proved anything other than an accident, and he was not officially blamed for the king’ s death. Tact impelled him to retire from his captaincy of the Scots Guard, however , and he withdrew to his estates in Normandy. Later , in England, he converted to Protestantism .
When he returned to France, it was as one of the military leaders of the Protestant faction during the Wars of Religion. Taken prisoner , he was executed at Paris in 1574.
The death of Henri II attracted more attention and commentary than it might otherwise have done, primar ily because it had been forecast. It had been forecast twice, in f act — seven year s before by Luca Gaurico, a prestigious astrologer , 8 and four years before by Nostradamus, who in 1555 had published the first of his celebrated compilations of prophecy, called The Centuries, which contained the ambiguous but suggestive quatrain:
Le lyon ie une le vie ux surmonte ra;
En champ be llique par sing ulie r due lle ;
Dans cayg e d’ or le s ye ux luy cre ve ra,
De ux classe s une puis mourir mort crue lle .9
The young lion will master the old
On the mar tial f ield by single combat;
In a golden cage [casque] his eyes will be burst open,
Two divisions in one, then a cruel death.
These lines had resonated in many people’ s minds and hung over the entire tournament. Henri’ s death in the lists seemed to be vindicating proof of Nostradamus’ s capacity to ‘ foresee the future’ , and established him as Europe’ s leading prophet, not only for his own age, but in the eyes of posterity as well. Yet we our selves, along with a number of other recent commentator s, have argued that the French king’ s death at the hands of Gabriel de Montgomery was not an accident at all, but part of an elaborately contrived plan. 10 In the light of such evidence as is now available, Nostradamus’ s ‛prophecy’ seems not to have been a ‘ prophecy’ at all, but a species of blueprint for action, perhaps some sort of coded instruction or signal. To or from whom? To or from the houses of Guise and Lorraine, on whose behalf Nostradamus now appear s to have been acting as a clandestine agent. And if this is so, Gabriel de Montgomery would have been his co- conspirator — or , at any rate, the instrument chosen by the Guise- Lor raine f action to execute their design, in such a fashion that no one could be charged with criminal intent.
Certainly Henri’ s death could not have been more opportune for Guise- Lor raine interests. Despite increasingly brazen efforts to turn it to account, however , they failed to capitalise on it as effectively as they desired. For the next decade, vir tual anarchy prevailed in France as the war r ing f actions — Valois and Guise- Lorraine – conspired and jockeyed for the throne. In 1563, François, Duc de Guise, was assassinated. The Scots Guard became increasingly public in their support f or Stuart interests, which coincided with Guise- Lorraine interests; and they therefore incurred a growing mistrust from the Valois monarchy until Henri II’ s grandson, Henri III, refused to provide maintenance for them. Although they were eventually reconstituted, they were never to attain anything approaching their former status.
In Scotland and in France, everything was to come to a head at once. In 1587, Mary Queen of Scots was executed by her relative, Elizabeth I. In 1588, the year of the Spanish Armada, François de Guise’ s son, the new Duc de Guise, along with his brother , the Cardinal de Guise, were both, on the orders of Henri III, assassinated at Blois. A year later , Henri was assassinated in turn by vindictive Guise- Lor raine adherents. Only under Henri IV, a monarch acceptable to all factions, was a semblance of order restored to France.
By that time, however , the houses of Guise and Lor raine had lost two generations of dynamic, charismatic but ruthless young men. The Valois dynasty had fared even worse: it had been extinguished completely and was never again to occupy the French throne. For the next two centur ies, France was to be ruled by the Bourbons.
As f or the Scots Guard, even when reconstituted, they were greatly reduced in number and, by 1610, had lost virtually all their privileges, becoming simply another regiment in the French army. During the seventeenth century, two- thirds of their per sonnel were Frenchmen, not Scots. Never theless, a vestige of their former prestige still clung to them. In 1612, they were commanded by the Duke of York, subsequently Charles I of England. Interestingly enough, the Guard’ s rolls for 1624 show three Setons, one of whom is named David. 11 By 1679, he had become a brigadier . The Guard themselves were last to see service in 1747, during the War of the Austrian Succession, at the Battle of Lauffeld.
The Scots Guard, although sadly diminished by events, constituted, as we have seen, something akin to a neo- Templar institution. It also served as a crucial conduit of transmission. The nobles comprising the Guard were heir s to original Templar traditions. They were the means by which these traditions were returned to France and planted there, to bear fruit some two centuries later . At the same time, their contact with the houses of Guise and Lorraine exposed them in France to another corpus of ‘ esoter ic’ tradition. Some of this corpus had already f ound its way back to Scotland through Marie de Guise’ s marriage to James V; but some of it was also to be brought back by the f amilies constituting the Scots Guard. The resulting amalgam was to provide the true nucleus for a later order — the Freemasons.
8
Rosslyn
Some three miles south of Edinburgh lies the village of Roslin. It consists of a single street with a parade of shops and houses and, at the end, two pubs. The village begins at the edge of a steep wooded gorge, the valley of the North Esk. Seven miles away, near where the North Esk joins the South, lies the f ormer Templar preceptory of Balantrodoch, now simply called Temple.
The valley of the North Esk is a myster ious, seemingly haunted place. Carved into a large, moss- covered rock, a wild pagan head gazes at the passer - by. Further downstream, in a cave behind a water fall, there is what appears to be another huge head with cavernous eyes — perhaps a weathered carving, perhaps a natural product of the elements. The path leading through the valley is crossed by numerous ruined stone buildings and passes by a cliff face with a dressed stone window. Behind this window is a veritable warren of tunnels, sufficient to conceal a substantial number of men and accessible only by a secret entrance: one had to be lowered down a well. According to legend, Bruce found refuge here during one of the many crises that beset his campaigns.
Perched on the very edge of the gorge is an eerily strange edifice, Rosslyn Chapel. One’ s first impression is that it appears to be a cathedral in miniature. Not that it is particularly small. But it is so over loaded, so dripping with Gothic carvings and floridly intricate embellishments, that it seems somehow to be a truncated part of something greater — like a fragment of Chartres, transplanted to the top of a Scottish hill. It conveys a sense of amputated lushness, as if the builders, after lavishing their most dazzling skills and costly materials upon the structure, simply stopped abruptly.
In fact, they did. They ran short of money. Rosslyn Chapel was originally intended to be part of something much greater , the ‘ Lady Chapel’ of a vast collegiate church, a full- sized cathedral on the French scale. In the absence of funds, the project was never realised. From the existing west wall, massive blocks of stone jut forth, awaiting others which never arrived.
The interior of the chapel is a fevered hallucination in stone, a riotous explosion of carved images and geometrical configurations piled on top of one another , flowing into one another , over lapping one another . Motifs that anticipate those of Freemasonry abound. One finds oneself in what appears to be a petrified compendium of ‛esoterica’ . As one would expect of such a place, Rosslyn Chapel is a focus for secrets and f or legends. The most famous of these pertains to the extraordinary pillar at the east end of the structure, now called ‘ the Apprentice Pillar ’ . An account pr inted in 1774 speaks of :
. . . a tradition that has prevailed in the family of Roslin from father to son, which is,—that a model of this beautiful pillar having been sent from Rome, or some foreign place; the master -mason, upon viewing it, would by no means consent to work off such a pillar , til he should go to Rome, or some foreign part, to take exact inspection of the pillar from which the model had been taken; that, in his absence, whatever might be the occasion of it, an apprentice finished the pillar as it now stands; and that the master , upon his return, seeing the pillar so exquisitely well f inished, made enquiry who had done it; band, being stung with envy, slew the apprentice.1
Above the west door of the chapel, there is the carved head of a young man with a gash on his right temple. This is said to be the head of the murdered apprentice. Opposite him is the head of a bearded man, the master who killed him. To his right, there is another head, that of a woman, called ‘ the Widowed Mother ’ . It is thus made clear that the unnamed precocious youth was — to use a phrase familiar to all Freemasons — a ‘ Son of the Widow’ . As we have noted, the same phrase was used to designate Perceval or Parzival in the Grail Romances.
The Masonic connotations of the chapel and its symbolism can hardly be coincidental, for Rosslyn was built by the f amily which, perhaps more than any other in Br itain, became associated with later Freemasonry — the Saint- Clairs or , as they are now known, the Sinclairs.
Sir William Sinclair and Rosslyn Chapel
As we have seen, noble f amilies such as the Hamiltons, the Montgomeries, the Setons and the Stuarts contributed successive generations of their sons to the Scots Guard. So, too, did the Sinclairs. In the late f if teenth century, three Sinclair s were serving in the Guard at the same time. In the mid sixteenth century — the period of Gabriel de Montgomery — there were no fewer than four Sinclairs in the unit. Altogether , between 1473 and the death of Mary Stuart in 1587, the rolls of the Scots Guard testify to the enrolment of ten members of the family f rom Scotland. And, of course, there was also the French branch of the family, the Norman Saint- Clair - sur - Epte, which was particularly active in the French politics of the age.
While certain members of the Sinclair family were pur suing military and diplomatic careers on the Continent, others were equally busy at home — as, indeed, they had been since Bruce’ s time. In the early years of the f our teenth century, William Sinclair had been Bishop of Dunkeld. Along with Bishops Wisha t of Glasgow, Lamberton of St Andrews, Mark of the Isles and David of Moray, William Sinclair had been one of the five leading Scottish ecclesiastics to rally around Bruce and his cause. The bishop’ s nephew, also named William, had been one of Bruce’ s closest friends and retainer s. On Bruce’ s death in 1329, it was Sir William Sinclair , along with Sir James Douglas, who embarked with his heart for the Holy Land, only to die in Spain.
In the late fourteenth century, a hundred year s before Columbus, another Sinclair was to embark on an even more audacious exploit. Around 1395, Sir Henry Sinclair , Earl (or ‘ Prince’ , as he is sometimes styled) of Orkney, together with the Venetian explorer Antonio Zeno, attempted to cross the Atlantic. Certainly he reached Greenland, where Zeno’ s brother , also an explorer , claimed to have discovered a monastery in 1391; recent studies suggest he may even have reached what was later to be called the New World. 2 According to certain accounts, there is some intriguing evidence to indicate that he intended making for Mexico. 3 If this is true, it would explain why, when Cortés arrived in 1520, he was identif ied by the Aztecs not only with the god Quetzalcoatl, but also with a blond- haired blue- eyed white man who had allegedly preceded him long in the past.
‘ Pr ince’ Henry’ s grandson, Sir William Sinclair , was also active at sea. The husband of Sir James Douglas’ s niece, and brother - in- law to Sir James himself , he had been appointed Grand Admiral of Scotland in 1436, and was subsequently to become Chancellor as well. But his greatest renown, which was to link him ever af ter with Masonic and other esoteric traditions, lay in the sphere of architecture. It was under Sir William’ s auspices that, in 1446, the f oundations for a large collegiate church were laid at Rosslyn. 4 In 1450, the structure was f ormally dedicated to St Matthew and work proper began. While it proceeded, another William Sinclair—probably the nephew of Rosslyn’ s builder—became the first member of his family to enrol in the Scots Guard and rose to prominence in the unit.
The building of Rosslyn Chapel was to take forty years. It was finally completed in the 1480s by Sir William’ s son, Oliver Sinclair , a close associate of Lord George Seton, who swore fealty to Oliver Sinclair f or life at this time. Oliver Sinclair never proceeded with the rest of the church, probably because, by now, as it appears, Sinclair energies were being diver ted elsewhere. Sir William’ s grandson, also named Oliver , was a military officer , close conf idant and Master of the Royal Household to James V. In 1542, he commanded the Scottish army at Solway Moss, where he was captured. On giving his parole to aid the English cause, he was released, but seems not to have held to his oath. In 1545, he was ordered to return to prison in England — whereupon he proceeded to disappear f rom history, presumably going to ground in the Scottish hinter lands or perhaps abroad.
Oliver ’ s brother , Henry Sinclair , was Bishop of Ross. In 1541, he was appointed Abbot of Kilwinning — a name which was later to figure crucially in Freemasonry. In 1561, he was appointed to the Privy Council of Mary Queen of Scots. Not surprisingly, he maintained intimate contacts with the Guise and Lorraine factions in France, spending much of his time in Paris. His and Oliver ’ s younger brother , John, also became a bishop. John, too, was a counsellor to Mary Queen of Scots and in 1565 performed her marriage to Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, at Holyrood.
The Sinclair s were thus at the heart of Scottish affairs in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. They moved in the same circles as families like the Setons and the Montgomer ies. Like the Setons and the Montgomeries, they were close to the Stuart monarchy, contr ibuted per sonnel to the Scots Guard and maintained intimate links with the Guise and Lor raine f actions in France. Indeed, their links with the Guise and Lorraine factions would probably have been even closer by virtue of the French branch of the family. At the same time, and more even than the other Scottish houses, the Sinclair s were already becoming associated with what subsequent Freemasonry would come to regard as its pedigree.
As we have noted, the foundations for Rosslyn Chapel were laid in 1446 and the actual work commenced four years later . These are among the few definitive and confirmed facts. Our information concerning almost everything else, though not implausible and certainly not disproved, we owe to later tradition — later in some cases by a century and a half , in other cases by three or more.
According to this later tradition, Sir William Sinclair , in preparation for the building of his chapel, imported stonemasons and other artisans from the Continent. 5
The town of Roslin itself was supposedly built to house and accommodate the new ar r ivals. Tradition also has it:
. . . that in 1441 James II, King of Scotland, appointed St
Clair Patron and protector of Scottish Masons; that the
Of f ice was hereditary; that af ter his death, circa 1480, his
descendants held annual meetings at Kilwinning, . . . the
nomination of Craf t Of f ice- Bearer s remained a prerogative
of the Kings of Scotland; that it was neglected by James VI
when he became King of England . . . 6
It is impor tant to note that ‘ Masonry’ in this context does not imply Freemasonry as we know it today. On the contrary, it refers to the guild or guilds of professional worker s and builder s in stone. As we shall see, these men were not all just simple artisans, unlettered and untutored manual labourers. But neither were they mystical philosopher s who, in between construction projects, met in secret conclaves, conducted clandestine initiations with passwords and meaningful handshakes, and discussed the mysteries of the cosmos. In the terminology that was later to arise, these men were held to be practitioner s of ‘ operative Masonry’— in other words, the practical application of mathematics and geometry to the art of architecture.
Sir William Sinclair ’ s appointment in 1441, then, attests simply to his involvement in the art of building — and perhaps in the mathematical and geometric pr inciples associated with architecture. But this in itself is unusual. Ordinarily, a lord, a monarch, a municipality or some other patron would commission an entire team of architects and masons, who undertook the whole of the work themselves. The head of this team, called ‘ the Master of the Work’ , would base his plan on a particular geometry, and all subsequent construction would be made to harmonise with that basic pattern. The ‘ Master ’ would arrange for wooden templates to be cut to his design, and the stonemasons would proceed in accordance with the templates.
At Rosslyn, however , Sir William Sinclair appears to have designed his own chapel and acted as ‛Master of the Work’ himself . In the early eighteenth century, the stepson of a later Sinclair — who had access to all the f amily’ s char ter s and archives before they were destroyed by firez
in 1722 — wr ites that:
. . . it came into his [Sir William Sinclair’ s] minde to build
a house for Gods service, of most cur ious worke, the
which, that it might be done with greater glory and
splendor , he caused ar tif icer s to be brought f rom other
regions and f or raigne kingdomes . . . and to the end the
worke might be the more rare; f ir st he caused the draughts
to be drawn upon Eastland boards, and made the
carpenter s to carve them according to the draughts
thereon, and then gave them f or patterns to the masons,
that they might thereby cut the like in stone. 7
Sir William would thus appear to have been considerably more knowledgeable and technically exper t than the typical noble of his time; and his appointment as ‘ Patron and protector of Scottish Masons’ would appear to have been more than just honorary. And thus, as subsequent charter s attest, the appointment may have been conferred by the king, but it was also conf er red — or , at any rate, ratified — by the masons themselves. As one such char ter states: ‘ The lairds of Roslin has ever been patrons and protector s of us and our privileges.’ 8 And a letter dating f rom the late seventeenth century declares:
The Lairds of Roslin have been great architects and patrons
of building f or many generations. They are obliged to
receive the Mason’ s word which is a secret signal masons
have throughout the wor ld to know one another by . . . 9
In 1475, while Rosslyn was still under construction, the stonemasons or Edinburgh were granted a char ter of incorporation as a guild and proceeded to draw up trade regulations. Taking its name from the place where the char ter was ratified, this seemingly routine medieval transaction later became known as the ‘ Incorporation of Mary’ s Chapel’ . 10
But routine though it may have been, it came to enjoy considerable significance f or later Freemasonry. When such Freemasonry sur f aced in Scotland, it revolved initially around a lodge known as ‘ Lodge No. 1’ , also referred to as ‘ Mary’ s Chapel’ . Subsequent char ter s of incorporation f ollowed, but the next relevant document does not appear until more than a century later . In 1583, William Schaw, a confidant of James VI (later James I of England), received from the king the post of Master of Work and ‘ General Warden of the Masons’ . A copy of his statutes, dating from 1598 and inscribed in his own hand, survives today in the oldest minute book of Mary’ s Chapel Lodge No. 1 in Edinburgh. 11 Schaw’ s appointment, of course, did not imply any challenge to, or usurpation of , the status of the Sinclair s. That was an internal matter among masons themselves and had already become one of their accepted principles. Schaw’ s appointment, on the other hand, was a wholly external matter , establishing him as an of f icial in the royal administrative apparatus, rather like a Permanent Secretary today. He would have acted, in effect, as a kind of liaison or ombudsman between masons and the crown.
Schaw’ s tenure terminated in 1602. Shortly before or shortly after that date, another impor tant document was issued, known as the ‘ Saint Clair Char ter ’ . The text laments that: ‘ . . . our hail craft has been destitute of ane patron and protector and over seer , which has gendr id many false corruptions and imperfections’ . 12 From this, it would seem that the Sinclair s, whatever their hereditary status, had been lax, negligent or worse. And yet the charter proceeds to reaffirm the old allegiance by acknowledging the William Sinclair of the time, and his heirs, as over seers, patrons and judges of the craf t and its member s. The signatures appended to this statement come from lodges already in existence at Edinburgh, Dunfermline, St Andrews and Haddington.
In 1630, a second ‛Saint Clair Char ter ’ was drawn up. It repeated the tenets of the previous char ter and elaborated on them. The attached signatures bear witness to new lodges in Dundee, Glasgow, Ayr and Stirling. 13 There are thus palpable indications of a growing dissemination of lodges and, at the same time, of a process of increasing centralisation. And there is also, of cour se, something significant in the reaffirmation of the long- standing link between masonry and the Sinclairs, whatever the latter ’ s past negligence may have been. One can only conclude from this that the f amily’ s association with the craft derived either from what was then common knowledge or from a tradition so firmly established and deeply rooted it could not be altered. One can also conclude that both masonry and the Sinclairs, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, found it desirable to promulgate their affiliation. Masonry had, by then, acquired a certain prestige which — as any observer at the time could have divined — was destined to increase. Association with it, for reasons soon to be made clear , was conferring ever more prestige. And yet nobody, not even the other prominent Scottish f amilies, ever presumed to challenge the Sinclair claim or tried to arrogate it for themselves. The Setons, the Hamiltons, the Montgomeries and other such families, including the Stuarts, were all to become deeply involved in what was already emerging as Freemasonry. Indeed, according to a manuscript dating from 1658, one John Mylne, ‘ Master of the Lodge at Scone, and at his Majesty’ s own desire, entered James VI as “frieman, meason and fellow craft” ’ . 14 Pr ide of place, however , continued to be accorded to the Sinclairs.
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