The Royal Order of Scotland

Legend and tradition

The Order’s two degrees each carry a story of origin. The degree of Heredom of Kilwinning is traditionally placed in the reign of King David I of Scotland in the twelfth century. The Rosy Cross is said to have been founded by Robert the Bruce after his victory over the English at Bannockburn, fought around St John’s Day, 24 June 1314. In the Order’s telling, the king rewarded a band of Freemasons who had fought for him by making them knights, and those knights were the first members of the Royal Order, with the King of Scots reserved as their Grand Master for ever.

Over the centuries the legend gathered further layers. The Masonic writer George Oliver connected Bruce’s helpers with Knights Templar who had fled to Scotland after their order was suppressed, while the French Masonic historian Thory recorded a tradition that Bruce joined the Order to the Order of St Andrew of the Thistle and founded its Grand Lodge at Kilwinning. Mackey’s Encyclopedia sensibly observes that all such details still await proof, and even Oliver doubted that the Templars and the Royal Order were truly connected. The meaning of the word “Heredom” is just as uncertain: suggestions range from a Jacobite code word for the exiled Stuart court to a combination of Greek words meaning “holy house”.

Documented history

The paper trail begins in London, where the Order’s archives show it at work by the early 1740s (the Order cites 1741; some accounts give 1743). In 1750 a charter was issued to work the degrees at The Hague, and its holder, William Mitchell, moved to Edinburgh around 1752–1753 and used it to build up the Order there. By the Order’s own account, regulations of forty-three articles issued around 1750 turned the Edinburgh chapter and its inner council into the Grand Lodge, a position usually dated formally to 1767. Edinburgh has been the Order’s home ever since.

In the eighteenth century the Order spread to Holland, Virginia, France, Italy and Belgium, and grew especially quickly in France before declining just as fast amid the persecution of the Napoleonic era. By 1819 it was close to extinction in Scotland too, until it was revived in 1839 by an Edinburgh coachmaker, Houston Rigg Brown, and the botanist George Arnott Walker Arnott. From then on it grew steadily. The oldest surviving Province is the Provincial Grand Lodge of Sweden, chartered in 1852; a model tower used in one of the degrees, discovered in a Masonic building in Stockholm, is cited by the Order as evidence of that long connection. The Provincial Grand Lodge of the United States followed in 1878.

The two degrees

A new member is first advanced to the degree of Heredom of Kilwinning and then promoted to the Knighthood of the Rosy Cross; the two may be conferred on the same day or on separate occasions. The Heredom degree is valued for the light it sheds on the Craft, since its lectures revisit the symbolism and teaching of the three degrees of Craft Masonry. The Rosy Cross carries the chivalric story of Bannockburn. It should not be confused with the Rose Croix, the Eighteenth Degree of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite, which is a different degree with a different history.

The ceremonies are known for their rhyming, rhythmic verse, traditionally learnt by heart rather than read, and for drawing together elements found in many other Masonic degrees. Wherever the Order meets in the world the ritual is worked in English, with a single exception that may date back to the eighteenth-century charter at The Hague. The Provincial Grand Lodge of the United States describes the two degrees as among the earliest Masonic degrees still worked today.

Membership

The Royal Order recruits only from within Freemasonry and only by invitation. A prospective member is recommended by two members of the Order, who judge his suitability before inviting him to apply, and every application is then considered by the Grand Lodge’s Executive Committee or the relevant Provincial Grand Lodge. Three qualifications apply everywhere and cannot be varied by any Province: the candidate must hold the three Craft degrees, must have been a subscribing Master Mason continuously for at least five years in a lodge under a constitution recognised by the Grand Lodge of Scotland, and must profess the Trinitarian Christian faith.

Provinces may add their own conditions, and many do. The most common is membership of the Royal Arch; others ask for the Rose Croix or another Christian Masonic order such as the Red Cross of Constantine or the Knights Templar. In the United States a candidate is normally a 32nd degree Scottish Rite Mason or a York Rite Knight Templar who has already received a further honour, such as the 33rd degree, the KCCH, the Red Cross of Constantine or the KYCH, and who has a record of service to his church, community or youth organisations.

Organisation

Because the King of Scots is Grand Master, the active head of the Order chairs its Grand Lodge with the title of Deputy Grand Master and Governor, an office currently held by Ewan Rutherford, who succeeded Sir Archibald Orr-Ewing, a former Grand Master Mason of Scotland. Beneath the Grand Lodge sit the Provincial Grand Lodges, each led by a Provincial Grand Master appointed by Grand Lodge, usually for around five years. Every Province has the same power as Grand Lodge to admit new knights, using the same ritual. The Grand Lodge also admits around thirty members a year itself, usually from the Edinburgh area or from countries where no Province yet exists.

The Order’s offices are at St John Street in Edinburgh, beside the Chapel of St John, which was built in 1735 for Lodge Canongate Kilwinning and is widely regarded as the oldest purpose-built Masonic lodge room in the world. Robert Burns is recorded there in the lodge minutes of 1 February 1787. The Royal Order moved its administration to St John Street in 1992, though Grand Lodge meetings have since outgrown the chapel and are now held at Freemasons’ Hall in Edinburgh.

The Order today

The Order reports more than 95 Provincial Grand Lodges, including several in Scotland and more than thirty in England, with others across Europe, Canada, the United States, Australasia, Africa, East Asia and the Caribbean. The newest, the Provincial Grand Lodge of Côte d’Ivoire in Abidjan, was established on 24 April 2024. A Freemasonry Today profile written during Sir Archibald Orr-Ewing’s term put total membership at about 15,000 and growing. In 2025 the Order also introduced its own official tartan, based on the Bruce family tartan in crimson and thistle green.

Regalia

Members wear an apron, a garter, two sashes each bearing a jewel, and the star jewel of the Order. Green and red run through all of it, the same colours as the Order’s emblem and its tartan.

For more information or if you would like to join, please visit the following URLs:
– https://www.royalorderscotland.org/
– https://roosusa.org/
– https://www.doylestownmasons.org/the-masonic-family-the-royal-order-of-scotland/