Freemason redux

[Will Repair]

This thread (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=246819) included this Straight Dope article (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=246819).

However this book (http://freemasonry.bcy.ca/Writings/reviews/born_in_blood.html) (of which the link is not favorable) seems to contradict Cecil's article.

Were there really medival stonemason guilds and the book's author completely wrong in saying there were guilds but no records of stonemason guilds? Does everyone, including Cecil, just quote others but only this author actually checking records?

And is the author correct in saying that guilds would not be secret societies? Have anyother gulids become secret societies?

[bonzer]

I haven't read Robinson's Born in Blood and so can't comment on it specifically, but the obvious case of a reputable historian who has been through the records is David Stevenson of the University of St. Andrews. His books, notably The Origins of Freemasonry: Scotland's century, 1590-1710 (Cambridge, 1988), set out his thesis that Freemasonry in its essential form emerges in 17th century Scotland.

Medieval stonemason guilds certainly existed. Stevenson details the ways in which the peripatetic nature of a medieval mason's career tended to make the masonic guilds different from those for other trades. A qualified stranger turning up on site would have to be identifiable as a member and accepted, whereas in other guilds people were dealing with familiar faces. Otherwise, all guilds were fairly similar.
The 17th century lodges in Scotland pick up on some of the traditions of the medieval masonic guilds, but they're more a pecularly Scottish reaction of the country's intelligensia to the renaissance ideas arriving from the Continent.

Stevenson would adjust some of the details of Cecil's column, but would agree with the thrust.