The St Clair Charters

The St Clair Charters are two documents recording agreements by Scottish craftsmen to recognise members of the Sinclair, or St Clair, family of Roslin as patrons and protectors. The first is usually dated to 1600–1601 and the second to 1627–1628. Both originals are undated. Despite their conventional name, they were issued by craftsmen and were not themselves royal grants.^[1]

The first charter

The first document was made with the consent of William Schaw, the king's master of works. It supported William Sinclair of Roslin and his heirs as patrons and judges of the craft. Its authors complained about disorder within the trade and the expense and delay of taking disputes to the ordinary courts.^[2]

The wording proposed that Sinclair obtain authority from the sovereign. It therefore records an effort to secure royal jurisdiction, rather than proof that the king had already granted it. Schaw signed as master of works. Representatives associated with Edinburgh, Haddington, Aitchison's Haven, Dunfermline and St Andrews appear among the signatories; notaries assisted men unable to write.^[2] Stevenson dates the agreement through the office-holders named in it.^[1]

The second charter

The second document renewed the arrangement for Sir William Sinclair, son of the earlier beneficiary. It referred to masons and hammermen and claimed powers to appoint deputies, hold meetings and judge craft disputes. Its geographical support was wider, including Glasgow, Stirling and Dundee. The mixture of lodges and craft representatives cautions against treating it as the constitution of a modern national Grand Lodge.^[1]

The date 1630 sometimes attached to this charter comes from a later copy. Stevenson favours 1627–1628 on the evidence of the named officers and an Edinburgh lodge minute recording a meeting with Sinclair at Roslin in May 1628.^[1]

Claims about earlier patronage

Both documents appealed to established custom. The second additionally asserted that earlier royal grants had been destroyed in a fire at Roslin. These statements are evidence of the claims being made in the seventeenth century; they do not independently establish the contents or date of a lost medieval grant. Stevenson questions the account, noting that the first document does not mention those royal grants and that the second leaves the year of the fire blank.^[1]

The charters are useful sources for craft government, noble patronage and the distribution of early lodges. Their claims should be read alongside The Schaw Statutes and contemporary lodge minutes, rather than treated as proof of an unbroken hereditary Grand Mastership from the Middle Ages.

References

↑ ^1.0 ^1.1 ^1.2 ^1.3 ^1.4 David Stevenson, The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's Century, 1590–1710 (Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 52–60.
↑ ^2.0 ^2.1 Transcriptions of the two St Clair Charters, hosted by the Freemasonry Research Forum. The editorial headings give the dates 1601 and 1628; neither date forms part of the original text.