258 FROM THE ART OF BUILDING TO THE ART OF THINKING
Harnouester. But because this name could never be found listed in the
Bristish peerage, the grand mastery of this lord ceased to be mentioned.
The figure was either identified as Lord Derwentwater, his name being
considered merely a corrupted form, or was simply labeled "Clodion of
the Masonry."* In 1934, during a conference held by the English
research lodge Quatour Coronati, W. E. Moss offered the opinion that
the name Lord Harnouester could be a deformation of Count Charles
Arran Wester of the Butler Family of Ormond, a title that appears in
Scottish nobility and the Irish peerage and was held by zealous Stuart
partisans.^13
A letter dated August 2, 1737, from Ramsay to the Jacobite Carte^14
seems to confirm this opinion. Speaking of his Discourse of the previ-
ous year, Ramsay writes: "I sent the discourse I wrote for the various
receptions of eight dukes and peers and two hundred officers of top
rank and the highest nobility, to his Grace, the Duke of Ormond." Is it
possible that this figure to whom Ramsay submitted his text was the
grand master of the Scottish lodges of France?
Scottish InnovationsIt has been claimed that the Scots, who allegedly created the grade of
master, used it for political ends and instituted the high grades for the
same purpose. It has also been argued that English Freemasonry origi-
nally recognized only the grades of apprentice and journeymen. The
term master was used by English Freemasons only to designate the
patron or elder of the lodge. Things were different in Scotland , how-
ever, where the grade of master was pan of the craft hierarchy. This had
been true for a long time as is demonstrated by the Schaw Statutes.
During this era of religious and dynastic struggles, it is said that the
Scots tried to use this distinctive feature as a means of dominating the
lodges. At this same time they were developing the symbolism of the
master grade. In particular, the legend of Hiram, the brilliant builder of
the Temple who was murdered by three evil journeymen and was res-
- [Clodion refers to the Merovingian king whose brother, Fredemundus, was claimed
an ancestor by the Stuarts. —Trans.]