The Constitutions of the Free-masons. Containing the History, Charges, Regulations,…

4to (235 × 185 mm), pp. [6], 91, [1] (adverts to final page), plus engraved frontispiece by John Pine (closely cut at foremargin), bound without half-title. Woodcut title ornament, initials, head- and tailpieces, engraved headpiece to dedication, typographical music to pp. 85-90. Recent eighteenth-century style half calf, spine lettered in gilt. Blindstamps of the library of the Earls of Macclesfield to frontispiece and title, engraved armorial bookplate to front pastedown.

First edition of the first standard code of the order of Freemasons in England. It was to become the basis of Masonic constitutions on both sides of the Atlantic, being the edition from which Franklin printed the Philadelphia constitutions the following year.

Anderson, born at Aberdeen, and educated as a Minister of the Church of Scotland moved to London in 1707, where he continued preaching and is reputed to have lost money in an unwise investment in the South Sea Company. ‘He was commissioned to write a history of freemasonry on behalf of the grand lodge of England, which had been founded in London in 1717. A freemason himself, Anderson was grand warden of the lodge when he published the work as The constitutions of the free-masons; containing the history, charges, regulations, &c. of that fraternity (1723). A second edition followed in 1738 that provided a fuller account of the speculative origins and early history of English masonry. Intended primarily as an ‘apologia’ that would give “a relatively new institution an honourable descent”... Anderson’s Constitutions was long accepted as the standard code of the craft and was translated into German in 1741’ (Oxford DNB).

The printing of the Constitutions was an enterprise which drew together several prominent British Freemasons. Anderson was assisted by Newtonian natural scientist John Theophilus Desaguliers, member of the Royal Society, named in the approbation here as Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge. Publisher John Senex also reveals himself as a mason, while the fine frontispiece is by John Pine. It was this image which elevated Pine to the status of principal engraver to the Grand Lodge and he subsequently executed many works on their behalf. The final section contains masonic songs (with music) including ‘The Enter’d Prentices Song’ in six verses. Vibert, The Rare Books of Freemasonry, II, (1).