The Corporative Masonry of Great Britain 203In Scotland, the two lodges in Edinburgh, Mary's Chapel and
Kilwinning, held the privilege of forming new lodges. Kilwinning was
given the significant title of "mother lodge" and practiced a unique rite
that has become known as the Rite of Kilwinning.* There are a num-
ber of lodges in Scots Freemasonry that grew out of the Kilwinning
Mother Lodge and formed in various locales throughout the region,
even in Edinburgh. These daughter lodges added the name of
Kilwinning to the names of their own locations, becoming Canongate
Kilwinning, Torpichen Kilwinning, and so on.
The Schaw Statutes make mention of another lodge, that of Stirling,
which also held authority over a certain number of workshops. A
fourth very old Scottish lodge, one which the Schaw Statutes does not
mention but which can be found in city documents of 1483, is the
Lodge of Aberdeen.
The Scottish lodges had as their judges and hereditary patrons, who
would now be called grand masters, the Saint Clairs, the Barons of
Roslyn, and the Earls of Orkney and Caithness.^25 This hereditary priv-
ilege went back to the Scottish king James II who, in 1438, granted the
right of jurisdiction to the masters of the Scottish lodges. They were
authorized by him to establish personal tribunals in all the large cities,
using the proceeds from a four-pound tax levied on each mason gradu-
ating to the rank of master, so that the privileges of freemasons would
be protected. Furthermore, the lodge masters were authorized to
impose an admission fee on each new member. In 1439, James II named
William of Saint Clair, lord of a family of French origin who came to
England with William the Conqueror, to the dignity of master of the
Scottish lodges. A document delivered by the masons of Scotland in
1628 and signed by all the lodge representatives confirmed to William
Saint Clair's successor the dignity and hereditary rights of this same
position. Although the extent of these rights was subsequently con-
tested, the Saint Clair family invoked them until 1736.
We can still find a trace in Scotland of other officers exercising
- While discussing the Templars, we learned the legend of the creation of this rite as well
as that of the foundation of the Order of the Thistle of Saint Andrew. Whatever the valid-
ity of this Jegend, it does appear that a Kilwinning Rite definitely did exist, at least after