Organized Freemasonry in London had been established…

Organized Freemasonry in London had been established on June 24, 1717, when four London lodges had come together at the Goose and Gridiron Ale House in St. Paul’s Churchyard and formed the Premier Grand Lodge of England, which had been the first Grand Lodge of Freemasons to be publicly created.

Before this time, the facts and origins of Freemasonry are not absolutely known and are therefore frequently explained by theories or legends.

With the foundation of this first Grand Lodge, Freemasonry has shifted from being an obscure, relatively private, institution into the public eye.

The years following see new Grand Lodges open throughout Europe.

How much of this growth is the spreading of Freemasonry itself, and how much is due to the public organization of preexisting private Lodges, is uncertain.

James Anderson, born and educated in Aberdeen, Scotland, had been ordained a minister in the Church of Scotland in 1707 and moved to London, where he ministered to the Glass House Street congregation until 1710, then to the Presbyterian church in Swallow Street.

He is reported to have lost a large sum of money in the South Sea Company crash of 1720.

A Freemason, the Master of a Masonic lodge, and a Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge of London and Westminster, he had been commissioned in September of 1721 by the Grand Lodge to write a history of the Free-Masons, published in 1723 as "Constitutions of the Freemasons.”