238 FROM THE ART OF BUILDING TO THE ART OF THINKINGIn 1670, more than three quarters of the members of the Aberdeen
Lodge were not professional masons and the Laws and Statutes speci-
fied that this speculative membership was exempt from the collecting
box, the mark, the banquet, and the pint of wine. They paid no fees.*
The cohabiting cultural and social differences and differing objec-
tives of the two groups did not fail to cause problems at times. The free-
dom and independence of the lodges as a whole led to the formation of
certain lodges composed solely of nonoperative members. The first such
case cited is the lodge constructed in 1702 by eight land owners in the
village of Haugfool, near Galashiels.^6
In England, the situation began to change noticeably after 1607, the
year in which James I named Inigo Jones the General Intendent of the
Buildings of the Crown, a title that gave him authority over the entire
corporation of masons. Just like Lord Sinclair, Inigo Jones had been
smitten in Italy by the style of Andrea Palladio and had taken to heart
the desire to transplant it to England. To achieve this, he organized
lodges on the model of the Italian academies, where skilled instructors
could give lessons in architecture based on the principles of the school
he championed.
These novel events produced two noteworthy results: First, the
number of unschooled masons gradually diminished. Second, presti-
gious figures seeking culture requested admission into the corporation.
This was how the doors of the lodges began opening wider and wider
to people who were not professional masons—but their admission
rested on the express condition that they use their social influence and
knowledge to benefit the masonic community without receiving in
return the privileges of working masons. It then became fashionable for
nobles and the rich to be received as masons. In 1620, a group of
accepted masons gathered in London under the auspices of the Company
of Masons. At this time, seven individuals who were not part of the com-
pany were confirmed as accepted masons in return for a special tax.^7
When the large embellishment projects that had been undertaken to
- Nonoperative members, generally gentlemen of higher birth, who were accepted in the
seventeenth-century Scottish Lodges were customarily referred to as Geomatics, while
professional masons were known as Domatics. (See Gould, A Concise History of
Freemasonry.)