Post by Tamrin on Aug 19, 2013 10:03:36 GMT 10
The Rev. James Anderson, D.D., is well known to all Freemasons as the compiler of the celebrated Book of Constitutions. The date and place of his birth have not yet been discovered with certainty, but the date was probably 1680, and the place, Aberdeen, in Scotland, where he was educated and where he probably took the degrees of Master of Arts and Doctor of Divinity. At some unascertained period he migrated to London, and our first precise knowledge of him, derived from a document in the State Records, is that on February 15, 1709-10, he, as a Presbyterian minister, took over the lease of a chapel in Swallow Street, Piccadilly, from a congregation of French Protestants which desired to dispose of it because of their decreasing property. During the following decade he published several sermons, and is said to have lost a considerable sum of money dabbling in the South Sea scheme. Where and when his connection with Freemasonry commenced has not yet been discovered, but he must have been a fairly prominent member of the Craft, because, on September 29, 1721, he was ordered by the Grand Lodge, which had been established in London in 1717, to "digest the old Gothic Constitutions in a new and better method." On the 27th of December following, his work was finished, and the Grand Lodge appointed a committee of fourteen learned Brethren to examine and report upon it. Their report was made on the 25th of March, 1722; and, after a few amendments, Anderson's work was formally approved. and ordered to be printed for the benefit of the Lodges, which was done in 1723. This is now the well-known Book of Constitutions, which contains the History of Freemasonry or, more correctly, architecture, the Ancient Charges, and the General Regulations, as the same were in use in many old Lodges. In 1738 a second edition was published. Both editions have become exceedingly rare, and copies of them bring fancy prices among collectors of old Masonic Books. Its intrinsic value is derived only from the fact that it contains the first printed copy of the Old Charges and also the General Regulations. Anderson died on May 28, 1739, and was buried in Bunhill Fields with a Masonic funeral, which is thus reported in The Daily Post of June 2nd: "Last night was interr'd the corpse of Dr. Anderson, a Dissenting Teacher, in a very remarkable deep Grave. His pall was supported by Five Dissenting Teachers, and the Rev. Dr. Desaguliers: It was followed by about a Dozen of Free-masons, who encircled the Grave; and after Dr. Earl had harangued on the Uncertainty of Life, etc. without one word of the deceased, the Brethren, in a most solemn dismal Posture, lifted up their Hands, sigh'd, and struck their aprons three times in Honour of the Deceased."
