The North Carolina Mason

Office in St Martin's Lane, part of the Taxes Office, a position he obtained through family connections. Payne's name and address feature in classified advertisements as one of several locations where tickets to Desaguliers' lectures and copies of his "catalogue of experiments" could be obtained. The dates confirm that Desaguliers and Payne knew each other before Desaguliers moved to London. Payne worked in the Taxes Office for forty years, eventually being promoted to Secretary to the Commissioners, a senior administrative role. He also became a senior magistrate and held several profitable sinecures, some obtained through the patronage of the Duke of Richmond, Master of the Horn Tavern Lodge and later Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England. Masonically, Payne preceded and followed Desaguliers as Grand Master of Grand Lodge (in 1718 and 1720) and subsequently held other senior roles. He was also the Duke of Richmond's deputy at the Horn Tavern and, later, Master of the influential King's Arms Lodge in the Strand. Credited as having compiled Freemasonry' Regulations, Payne's commitment to Freemasonry is evident throughout his Masonic career both outside and inside Grand Lodge, where he sat on the key committees and was a valued elder stateman. The third member of the 1723 Constitutions' triumvirate was James Anderson (c.1679–1739). Born and educated in Aberdeen, Anderson was ordained into the Church of Scotland in 1707 before travelling to London to take up a ministry at the Glasshouse Street congregation at the eastern end of Piccadilly, and in 1710, at the Presbyterian church in nearby Swallow Street where Desaguliers' father had served. Anderson is regarded by many as pivotal to the birth of Modern Freemasonry; however, he was not the fulcrum on which Freemasonry turned. Although often described as the author of the 1723 Constitutions, he was not its instigator nor was he responsible for its most important components – the Charges and Regulations, authored by Desaguliers and Payne, respectively. Anderson's role was to compose the faux traditional history of Freemasonry and to serve as a "hired pen" under Desaguliers' direction and that of the publishers, John Senex and John Hooke. The preamble to the 1723 Constitutions underlines this. Dedicated to the Duke of Montagu, it is written by Desaguliers, not Anderson. Indeed, within the Dedication, Desaguliers refers to "the author" as having "compared and made everything agreeable to History and Chronology." The absence of any reference to the Charges and Regulations is significant, emphasising that these were not produced by Anderson. Indeed, Anderson is identified as "the author of this book" almost as an afterthought on page 74 of the 1723 Constitutions in a line almost hidden in the middle of the second page of the Approbations. This stands in contrast to Senex and Hooke, the publishers, whose names appear prominently on the front page; to Desaguliers, who signs the Dedication personally; and to Payne, who is acknowledged in the General Regulations. Had Anderson undertaken a more substantive role, it would have been conventional for him to have received recognition with his name on the frontispiece and an acknowledgement in the Introduction. In fact, according to Anderson's own record, he was instructed by "His Grace and Grand Lodge" to "digest the Gothic Constitutions" on 29 September 1721, with a committee afterwards appointed to examine the manuscript. On 22 March 1722, after "perusal and corrections" by the past and current Deputy Grand Masters, most notably Desaguliers, "and of other learned brethren," the Constitutions was presented to Montagu and received formal endorsement. S P R I N G 2 0 2 3 | 23

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