James Anderson (Freemason)

James Anderson (c. 1679/1680 – 1739) was a Scottish writer and minister born and educated in Aberdeen, Scotland. He was 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, to the Presbyterian church in Swallow Street until 1734, and at Lisle Street Chapel until his death. He is reported to have lost a large sum of money in the South Sea Company crash of 1720. Anderson is best known, however, for his association with Freemasonry.

He was the brother of Adam Anderson, (1692–1765); James was born about 1680, in Aberdeen, where he was educated, and probably took the degrees of M.A. and D.D. In 1710 he was appointed minister of the Presbyterian church in Swallow Street, London, whence he was transferred, in 1734, to a similar charge in Lisle Street, Leicester Fields. According to the Gentleman's Magazine, he is said to have been "well known among the people of that persuasion resident in London as Bishop Anderson", and he is described as "a learned but imprudent man, who lost a considerable part of his property in the fatal year 1720". Several of his sermons were printed. One of them, No King-Killers, preached in 1715, on the anniversary of the execution of Charles I, was a zealous defence of the conduct of the Presbyterians during the civil wars, and reached a second edition. Anderson was a freemason, and when, in 1721, on the revival of freemasonry in England, the grand lodge determined to produce an authoritative digest of the Constitutions of the fraternity, the task was assigned to him (Entick's edition (1747) of the Constitutions, p. 194 et seq.). It was as a grand warden of the lodge that he presented to it, on completing his task, The Constitutions of the Free-Masons; containing the History, Charges, Regulations, &c. of that Most Ancient and Right Worshipful Fraternity. For the Use of the Lodges. London. In the year of Masonry 5723, Anno Domini 1723. This work, which passed through several editions, was long recognised by the English freemasons to be the standard code on its subject, and was translated into German. An American facsimile of the first edition of 1723 was issued at New York City in 1855, and there are reprints of the same edition in Cox's Old Constitutions belonging to the Freemasons of England and Ireland (1871) and in the first volume of Kenning's Masonic Archæological Library (1878). Anderson also contributed to masonic literature A Defence of Masonry, occasioned by a pamphlet called “Masonry Dissected” (1738?), which was translated into German, and is reprinted in Golden Remains of the Early Masonic Writers by George Oliver (1847).

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