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".
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.
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.
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.
The volume closes with a synopsis of the English peerage, and in the preface the author intimated his readiness, if adequately encouraged, "to delineate and dispose at full length the genealogies of all the peers and great gentry of the Britannic isles".
[5] Anderson's last work, which he was commissioned to undertake by the first Earl of Egmont and his son from materials furnished by them, bore the title, A Genealogical History of the House of Yvery, in its different branches of Yvery, Lovel, Perceval, and Gournay; but the first volume alone was completed when Anderson died on 25 May 1739, and a second volume, subsequently published, was due to another pen (see "To the Reader" in vol.
The work was soon withdrawn from circulation on account of some disparaging remarks in it on the condition of the English peerage and on the character of the Irish people.
[7] Another work of Anderson's, News from Elysium, or Dialogues of the Dead, between Leopold, Roman Emperor, and Louis XIV, King of France, was published shortly after his death in 1739.