Laurence Dermott

Thomas and his brother Anthony traded in a variety of goods, and were also wine merchants and ship owners.

[2] At the next meeting, it was Dermott who examined the "Leg of Mutton Masons", Thomas Phealon and John Mackey.

He probably finished them two years earlier, but delayed publication until the society should find a noble patron to act as Grand Master.

At the beginning, in place of Anderson's incredible history of the craft, is a humorous account of his own attempt to write a better one, the vision that halted him, and the puppy that ate the manuscript.

In the following three editions published during Dermott's lifetime, there is a reasoned argument that a man contemplating becoming a Freemason should not join the Moderns, because the changes in their ritual meant that he could not be recognised in any other jurisdiction.

There is also an increasing amount of sarcasm, parody, and outright scorn directed at the Moderns, whose greatest masonic symbols are the knife and fork.

[4][5] A curious entry in the minutes of July 1753 reads, "The Grand Secretary humbly begged that the lodge would please to appoint some certain person to deliver the summons's for the future, that he the said secretary was under the necessity of delivering or paying for delivery for some months past, as he was obliged to work twelve hours in the day for the Master Painter who employed him.

The "Master Painter" may have been James Hagarty, who presided over the lodge meeting that employed Dermott as Grand Secretary.

In October, Dermott was delegated to "attend and regulate all processions, and at Funerals take particular care that all persons walk in proper rotation".

He was also an accomplished writer, orator, and teacher of masonry, as well as being the administrator who is credited with preserving and leading the Ancients through most of their history as an independent Grand Lodge.

[3][6] It is thanks to him that the United Grand Lodge, as it currently stands, inherits the infrastructure of the Moderns, but takes its ritual from the Ancients.