>Thank you, John the article is most informative.
It's also an abridged version of a derivative overview article,
so I wouldn't put too much credence in it as any sort of authority.
>...
>The article also states that "Freemasons, of which the St Clairs were
>hereditary Grand Masters, " from list's discussions it would appear to be a
>speculation rather than a factual statement.
Well, I've been trying to stay out of that, but I can't resist posting this
paragraph from what may be a better source:
``In Scotland, it was very usual for influential gentlemen to be invited
to join a trade guild. It became so common for the Scottish masons to
invite the gentlemen of the St Clair family of Rosslyn to join their guild,
that the St Clairs wrongly claimed that they had a hereditary right to
exercise authority over the masons of Scotland. King James IV joined the
Edinburgh Guild of Merchants in 1505; and sixty years later the Earl of
Moray, the illegitimate half brother of Mary Queen of Scots, when Regent
for the infant King James VI, joined the Baker's Company in Glasgow.''
--Jasper Ridley, The Freeemasons, p. 18.
He cites Knopp and Jones, Genesis of Freemasonry, p. 97, and
Lane, The Outwith London Guilds of Great Britain, 27, 31.
The above passage is the only mention of St Clair or Sinclair cited
in the index of Ridley's book.
However, on page 4 he remarks that:
``In Scotland the mason's guilds were even older than in England.
The Mason's Company of Glasgow was granted a charter, and the power
and duty of regulating the trade, by King Malcolm Canmore in 1057,
the year in which he won the throne by defeating and killing Macbeth.
There was a guild of masons, or joint guilds which included masons,
in Edinburgh, Elgin, Irvine, Kirkcudbright, Rutherglen, and probably
also in Aberdeen and Dundee.''
He cites Lane as his source for the above passage.
John S. Quarterman <jsq@quarterman.org>
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