Note:  The following material is a scanned-in research resource; it is NOT intended as an exact reproduction of the original volume. Due to computer display variances, page numbers are approximate. Scanned at Phoenixmasonry by Ralph Omholt, PM - June 2007.

The History Of Freemasonry

By

Albert G. Mackey 33°

VOLUME THREE

 

CHAPTER IX

 

       THE EARLY ENGLISH MASONIC GUILDS

 

            TO Brother William James Hughan are we indebted, more than to any other person, for the collection and publication of all the Masonic Guild ordinances that have been preserved in the British Museum, in the archives of old Lodges, or in private hands.

 

            In the beginning of his work on The Old Charges of the British Freemasons (a book so valuable and so necessary that it should be in the library of every Masonic archaeologist), Brother Hughan says:

 

            "Believing as we do that the present Association of Freemasons is an outgrowth of the Building Corporations and Guilds of the Middle Ages, as also a lineal descendant and sole representative of the early, secret Masonic sodalities, it appears to us that their ancient Laws and Charges are specially worthy of preservation, study and reproduction. No collection of these having hitherto been published we have undertaken to introduce several of the most important to the notice of the Fraternity."

 

            As Brother Hughan is distinguished for the accuracy and fidelity with which he has himself made, or caused to be made by competent scribes, copies of these Constitutions from the originals, I shall select from one of the earliest of them the ordinances or regulations, which shall be collated with those of the early Saxon Guilds, specimens of which have been given in the preceding chapter.

 

            An account of these Old Records, as they are sometimes called, will be found in the first part of this work, where the subject of the Legend of the Craft, which they all contain, is treated.

 

            It will be unnecessary therefore to repeat here that account.

 

            I might have selected for collation the statutes contained in the poem published by Halliwell, or those in the Cooke manuscript, as both are of an older date than any in the collection of Hughan.

 

            But as they are all substantially the same in their provisions, and the latter have the advantage of greater brevity, I shall content myself with referring occasionally, when required, to the former.

 

            The manuscript which is selected for collation is that known as the Landsdowne, whose date is supposed to be 1560.

 

            The date of the manuscript is, however, no criterion of the date of the Guild whose ordinances it recites, for that was of course much older.

 

            It is thought to be next in point of antiquity to the poem published by Mr. Halliwell, to which the date of 1390 is assigned, and Hughan says that "the style of calligraphy and other considerations seem to warrant so early a date being ascribed to it." In copying the statutes from the copy published by Brother Hughan, I have made an exact transcript, except that I have numbered the statutes consecutively instead of dividing them, as is done in the original, into two series.

 

            This has been done for convenience of collation with the Guild ordinances inserted in the preceding chapter and which have been numbered in a similar method.

 

            The orthography, for a similar reason, has been modernized,

 

            CHARGES IN THE LANDSDOWNE MANUSCRIPT.

 

1. "You shall be true to God and Holy Church and to use no error or heresy, you understanding and by wise mens teaching, also that you shall be liege men to the King of England without treason or any falsehood and that you know no treason or treachery but that you amend and give knowledge thereof to the King and his Council; also that ye shall be true to one another (that is to say) every Mason of the Craft that is Mason allowed, you shall do to him as you would be done to yourself.

 

2. "Ye shall keep truly all the counsel of the Lodge or of the chamber and all the counsel of the Lodge that ought to be kept by the way of Masonhood, also that you be no thief nor thieves to your knowledge free; that you shall be true to the King, Lord or Master that you serve and truly to see and work for his advantage; also you shall call all Masons your Fellows or your Brethren and no other names.

 

3. "Also you shall not take your Fellow's wife in villainy, nor deflower his daughter or servant, nor put him to disworship; also you shall truly pay for your meat or drink wheresoever you go to table or board whereby the Craft or science may be slandered."

 

            These are called "the charges general that belong to every true Mason, both Masters and Fellows." Then follow sixteen others, that are called "charges single for Masons Allowed." The only difference that I can perceive between the two sets of charges is that the first set refer to the moral conduct of the members of the Guild, while the second refer to their conduct as Craftsmen in the pursuit of their trade.

 

            The former were laws common or general to all the Guilds, the latter were peculiar to the Masons as a Craft Guild.

 

            The second set is as follows:

 

4. "That no Mason take on him no Lord's work, nor other mens, but if he know himself well able to perform the work, so that the Craft have no slander.

 

5. "That no Master take work but that he take reasonable pay for it, so that the Lord may be truly served and the Master live honestly and pay his Fellows truly; also that no Master or Fellow supplant others of their work (that is to say) if he have taken a work or else stand Master of a work that he shall not put him out without he be unable of cunning to make an end of his work; also that no Master nor Fellow shall take no apprentice for less than seven years and that the apprentice be able of birth that is freeborn and of limbs whole as a man ought to be, and that no Mason or Fellow take no allowance to be made Mason without the assent of his Fellows at the least six or seven and that he be made able in all degrees that is freeborn and of a good kindred, true and no bondsman and that he have his right limbs as a man ought to have.

 

6. "Also that a Master take no apprentice without he have occupation sufficient to occupy two or three Fellows at least.

 

7. "Also that no Master or Fellow put away lords work to task that ought to be journey work.

 

8. "Also that every Master give pay to his Fellows and servants as they may deserve, so that he be not defamed with false working.

 

9. "Also that none slander another behind his back to make him lose his good name.

 

10. "That no Fellow in the house or abroad answer another ungodly or reprovably without cause.

 

11. "That every Master Mason reverence his elder; also that a Mason be no common player at the dice, cards or hazard nor at any other unlawful plays through the which the science and craft may be dishonoured.

 

12. "That no Mason use no lechery nor have been abroad whereby the Craft may be dishonoured or slandered.

 

13. "That no Fellow go into the town by night except he have a Fellow with him who may bear record that he was in an honest place.

 

14. "Also that every Master and Fellow shall come to the Assembly if it be within fifty miles of him if he have any warning and if he have trespassed against the Craft to abide the award of the Masters and Fellows.

 

15. "Also that every Master Mason and Fellow that have trespassed against the Craft shall stand in correction of other Masters and Fellows to make him accord and if they cannot accord to go to the common law.

 

16. "Also that a Master or Fellow make not a mould stone, square nor rule to no lowen nor set no lowen work within the lodge nor without to no mould stone. [1]

 

17. "Also that every Mason receive or cherish strange Fellows when they come over to the country and set them on work if they will work as the manner is (that is to say) if the Mason have any mould stone in his place on work and if he have none the Mason shall refresh him with money unto the next Lodge.

 

18. "Also that every Mason shall truly serve his Master for his pay.

 

19. "Also that every Master shall truly make an end of his work task or journey which soever it be."

 

            Now, in the collation of these "Charges" with the ordinances of the early Guilds we will find very many points of striking resemblance, showing the common prevalence of the Guild spirit of religion, charity, and brotherly love in each, and confirming the

 

[1] The Freemason must not make for one who is not a member of the Guild a mould or pattern stone as a guide for construction of mouldings or ornaments, whereby he would be imparting to him the secrets of the Craft.

 

            The word "lowen," which is found in no other manuscript, is supposed to be a clerical error for "cowan." It is just as probable that it is a mistake for "layer," a word used in other manuscripts and denoting a "rough mason." The stone‑mason and the bricklayer are at this day separate trades.

 

            But whether the correct word be "cowan" or "layer," the object of the law was the same, namely, that a member of the Guild should not work with one who was not.

 

           

 

opinion of Hughan, and the hypothesis which has been constantly advanced, that the one was an outgrowth of the other.

 

            The religious spirit which pervaded all the Guilds is here exhibited in number 1, which requires the Mason to be true to the Church and to use no error or heresy.

 

            The charge in number 2, to keep the counsel of the Lodge, is met with in nearly all the Guild ordinances.

 

            Thus in the ordinances of the Shipmen's Guild, of the date of 1368, it is said:

 

            "Whoso discovereth the counsel of the Guild of this fraternity to any strange man or woman and it may have been proved . . . shall pay to the light two stone of wax or shall lose (forfeit) the fraternity till he may have grace.

 

            That is he shall be suspended from the Guild until restored by a pardon."

 

            The same regulation is found in the ordinances of several other Guilds, whose charters have been copied by Toulmin Smith.

 

            In those of the Guild of St. George the Martyr, dated 1376, there is no option afforded of a pecuniary fine.

 

            The words of the statute are that "no brother nor sister shall discover the counsel of this fraternity to no stranger on the pain of forfeiture of the fraternity forevermore." Nothing short of absolute expulsion was meted out to the betrayer of Guild secrets.

 

            In the "Charges of a Free Mason," said to be "extracted from the ancient Records," published by Anderson in 1723, and adopted by the Grand Lodge, soon after the Revival, for the government of the Speculative Masons, this principle of the Guilds has been preserved.

 

            It is there said, in Charge VI., sec. 5, that the Mason is "not to let his family, friends, and neighbours know the concerns of the Lodge." It is at this day an almost unpardonable crime to disclose the secrets of the Lodge.

 

            The spirit of the Guild has been preserved in its successor, the modern Lodge.

 

            The prohibition in the fourth charge, to dishonour a brother, or "put him to disworship," is found in the earliest of the Guilds.

 

            That of Orky, for example, prescribes a punishment to any member who "misgretes," that is, insults, abuses, or injures another member.

 

            The Guild was always careful to preserve a feeling of brotherly love and harmony among its members, a disposition which is also the characteristic of the Masonic fraternity.

 

            Hence we find the tenth point of these Masonic charges declaring that "none shall slander another behind his back." But the very language of the fourth point of the charges would appear to have been borrowed from the ordinances of some of the Guilds.

 

            In those of the Guild of the Holy Trinity, whose date is 1377, we meet with these statutes:

 

            "No one of the Guild shall do anything to the loss or hurt of another, nor allow it to be done so far as he can hinder it, the laws and customs of the town of Lancaster being always saved.

 

            "No one of the Guild shall wrong the wife or daughter or sister of another, nor shall allow her to be wronged, so far as he can hinder it"

 

            From the fifth to the twentieth charge, the regulations principally relate to the government of the Craft in their work.

 

            There is some difficulty in comparing these with the early Craft Guilds, from the paucity of charters of the latter which have been preserved.

 

            But wherever there are any points common to both, the analogy and resemblance between the two is at once detected.

 

            Thus in the Charter of the Guild of Fullers at Lincoln, which Guild was begun in 1297, it is said that "none of the Craft shall work at the wooden bar (full cloth), with a woman, unless with the wife of a Master or his handmaid."

 

            Toulmin Smith says that he cannot explain this restriction.

 

            But it was in fact only an effort of the Guild spirit common to all the Craft Guilds, which forbade one who was a member or freeman of the Guild from working with one who was not a member.

 

            The Guild of the Tailors of Exeter had an ordinance that "no one shall have a board or shop of the Craft unless free of the city." And in the charter of the Guild of Tylers or Poyntours (pointers of walls) of Lincoln it is said that "no Tyler or Poyntour shall stay in the city unless he enters the Guild."

 

            The same spirit of exclusiveness is shown in the seventeenth point of the Masonic Constitutions, which forbids a Master or Fellow from working with a Cowan, or one who was not a "Mason Allowed," that is to say, one who has been admitted into the fraternity or Guild.

 

            This exclusion from a participation in labour of all who were not members of the sodality was a regulation common to all the Craft Guilds, but was perhaps more fully developed and more stringently urged in the Constitution of the Masonic Guild than in those of any of the others.

 

            It is from this principle of exclusiveness that the modern Lodges of Speculative Masonry have derived their strict regulation of holding no communication with Masons who have not been "duly initiated," or with Lodges which have not been "legally constituted."

 

            Contumacy, rebellion, or disobedience to the laws of the Craft or of the Guild was severely punished.

 

            The ordinances of the Smiths' Guild of Chesterfield prescribed that any brother who is "contumacious or sets himself against the brethren or gainsays any of these ordinances" shall be suspended, denounced, and excommunicated.

 

            A similar regulation is to be found in other Guilds.

 

            According to the Landsdowne Statutes, a Mason is required to be true to every member of the Craft, and to reverence his elder or superior, and in the points of the statutes of the Masonic Guild, as set forth in the Halliwell MS., it is said that the Mason must be "true and steadfast to all these ordinances wheresoever he goes."

 

            Suits at law between the members were discouraged and forbidden, except as a last resort, in all the Saxon Guilds.

 

            The Shipmen's Guild provided that the Alderman (or Master) and the other members should do their best to adjust a quarrel, but if they were unable, then the Alderman should give them leave "to make their suit at common law."

 

            In the Guild of the Holy Cross it was declared that no brother or sister of the Guild should go to law for a debt or a trespass until he had asked leave of the Alderman and of the men of the Guild.

 

            The Statutes of the Guild of St. John the Baptist, enacted in, 1374, are more explicit.

 

            There it is said that a member "cannot sue until he has shown his grievance to the Alderman and Guild brethren that are chief of the Council," and it adds that "the Alderman and the Guild brethren shall try their best to make them agree; and if they cannot agree they may make their complaint in what place they will."

 

            The same provision is met with in all the Constitutions of the Masonic Guild.

 

            The earliest of them, the Halliwell MS., prescribes in case of a dispute a "love‑day" or arbitration. The Landsdowne says that when a wrong is done by one of the members to another, the other Masters and Fellows must try to make them agree, and if they cannot agree they may then "go to the common law," which is the very expression used in the Shipmen's Guild above cited.

 

            It is a very strong proof of the connection between the early Guilds and the modern Lodges that this reluctance to permit the brethren to carry their personal disputes out of the Craft and into the publicity of the courts was fully developed in the "Charges of the Speculative Masons," adopted in 1723.

 

            In these it is said, in the true spirit of the old Guilds to which Speculative Masonry succeeded, that, "with respect to Brothers or Fellows at law, the Master and Brethren should kindly offer their mediation, which ought to be thankfully accepted by the contending brethren; but if that submission is impracticable, they must, however, carry on their process or law‑suit without wrath and rancour."

 

            It is needless to extend these comparisons.

 

            Sufficient has been done to show that there is a close resemblance in their mode of organization, method of action, constitution, and spirit between the Saxon Guilds and the modern Masonic Lodges, which actually are, under another name, only Masonic Guilds.

 

            This resemblance indicates an historical connection between the two, and this connection may be more closely traced through the civic companies of London and other cities of England.

 

            That these latter were the direct off‑shoot from the former is a fact generally admitted by writers on the subject, and of it there can be no doubt.

 

            " In the Trade Guilds," says Mr. Thorpe, "we may see the origin of our civic companies." [1]

 

            To these civic companies, and to one of them particularly, the Masons' Company in Basinghall Street, the reader's attention must be invited.

 

            [1] "Diplomatarium Anglicum Evi Saxonici," Preface, p. xvi.

 

            P. 588

 

CHAPTER X

 

       THE LONDON COMPANIES AND THE MASONS' COMPANY

 

            ABOUT the middle of the 14th century, perhaps a little earlier, and in the reign of Edward III., the various trades began to be reconstituted under the name of Livery Companies and to change their name from Guilds to Crafts and Mysteries.

 

            There was, however, very little real difference between their new and their old organization, and the Guild spirit of fraternity remained the same.

 

            There has been a difference of opinion as to the meaning of the word "Mystery," which was applied to these companies in such phrases as "the Mystery of the Tailors," or "the Mystery of the Saddlers."

 

            Herbert says that the preservation of their trade‑secrets was a primary ordination of all the fraternities, and continued their leading law as long as they remained actual "working companies," whence arose the names of "Mysteries" and "Crafts," by which they were for so many ages designated.[1]

 

            This derivation is a reasonable one, especially when we remember that the word "craft," which was always associated with the word "mystery" in its primitive usage, signified art, knowledge, or skill.

 

            But this explanation has not been universally accepted, and the word "Mystery," in its application to a trade or handicraft, has more generally been derived from the old or Norman French, where mestiere was used to denote a craft, art, or employment.

 

            There is no certainty, however, that the word was not employed to denote the trade‑secrets of a Guild or Company, as Herbert suggests.

 

            If mestiere denoted, in old French, a trade, mestre meant, in the same language, a mystery, and the former word may have been de‑

 

            [1] "History of the Twelve Great Livery Companies," vol. i., P. 45.

 

           

 

rived from the latter.

 

            But the modern Masons, in borrowing the word "Mystery" from the old companies, where they find their origin, undoubtedly use it in the sense of something hidden or concealed.

 

            The origin of the livery and other companies out of the earlier Guilds is a matter of historical record.

 

            Guilds, it has been already shown, existed in England from a very early period, but, as all tradesmen and artificers did not belong to Guilds, or, if they did, often acted irregularly in buying and selling a variety of wares or working in different handicrafts, a petition was presented to Parliament in the year 1355, in consequence of which it was enacted that all artificers and "people of mysteries" should choose forthwith each his own mystery, and, having chosen it, should thenceforth use no other.

 

            It is here that we may assign the origin of the chartered companies, many of which exist to the present day, and among whom we shall find at a lake period the Masons' Company, which was the direct predecessor of the Masons' Lodges, both of the Operative before and the Speculative after the beginning of the 18th century.

 

            In a document found in the records of the City of London, of the date of 1364, and which has been published by Mr. Herbert, [1] we find the names of the principal, if not the whole of the city companies, which were in existence in that year.

 

            This document is an account, in Latin, of the sums received by the city chamberlain from those companies as gifts to the King, to aid him in carrying on the war with France.

 

            The list records the names of thirty‑two companies.

 

            Though we find several Craft Guilds, such as the Tailors, the Glovers, the Armourers, and the Goldsmiths, there is no mention of a Guild or Company of Masons.

 

            Whether such a body did not then exist as a chartered company, or whether, if in existence, it was too poor to make a contribution, which seems to have been a voluntary act, are questions which the document gives us no means of deciding.

 

            Five years afterward, in 1369, a law was enacted by the municipal authorities of London, which must have tended to encourage the organization of these Companies.

 

            By this law the right of election of all city dignitaries, and all officers, including members of

 

            [1] "History of the Twelve Great Livery Companies," vol. i., p. 30.

 

           

 

Parliament, was transferred from the representatives of the wards, who had hitherto exercised this franchise, to the trading companies.

 

            A few members of each of these were selected by the Masters and Wardens, who were to repair to Guildhall for election purposes.

 

            This right has ever since remained, with some subsequent modifications in the twelve Livery Companies of London.

 

            The effect of this law in increasing the number of Companies very speedily showed itself.

 

            In a list in Norman French of the "number of persons chosen by the several mysteries to be the Common Council" in the year 1370, it appears that the Companies had increased from thirty‑two to forty‑eight.

 

            In this list we find the seventeenth to be the Company of Freemasons, and the thirty‑fourth the Company of Masons. The former appears to have been a more select, or at least a smaller, Company than the latter, for while the Masons sent four members to the Common Council the Freemasons sent only two.

 

            Afterward the two Companies were merged into one, that of the Masons, to which I shall hereafter again revert.

 

            The constitution and government of these Companies appear to have been framed very much after the model of the earlier Guilds.

 

            They had the power of making their own by‑laws or ordinances, and of enforcing their observance among their members.

 

            These ordinances were called "Points." The word is first used in the charters of Edward III., who wills that the said ordinances shall be kept and maintained en touz pointz, or "in all points." We find the same word in the Constituciones Geometric in the Halliwell MS., where the ordinances are divided into fifteen articles and fifteen points.

 

            It is also met with in all subsequent constitutions.

 

            As a technical term the word is preserved in the Speculative Masonry of to‑day, whose obligations of duty are to be obeyed by initiates into the fraternity in all their "arts, parts, and points." these little incidents serve to show the uninterrupted succession of our modern Lodges from the early Guilds and the later Companies which were formed out of them.

 

            They are therefore worthy of notice in a history of the rise and progress of Freemasonry.

 

            It has been seen that in the most of the Saxon Guilds the principal officer was called the Alderman.

 

            After the Guilds were chartered as Companies, the chief officers received the title of Masters and Wardens, titles still retained in the government of Masonic Lodges.

 

           

 

            The ordinances required that there should be held four meetings in every year to treat of the common business of the Company.

 

            These were the quarterly meetings to which reference is made by Dr. Anderson when, in his History of the Revival of Masonry, in the year 1717, he says that "the quarterly communication of the officers of the Lodges" was revived.

 

            The regulation of apprentices formed an important part of the system pursued by the Companies.

 

            No one was admitted to the freedom or livery of any Company unless he had first served an apprenticeship, which was generally for the period of seven years.

 

            And even then he could not be admitted into the fellowship except with the consent of the members.

 

            Masters were not permitted to take more than a certain number of apprentices, lest the trade or art should be overstocked with workmen and the journeymen or fellows find less opportunity for employment.

 

            Care was taken that one member should not undersell another member, or work for a less amount of pay or interfere with his contracts for labour.

 

            It was the duty of the Company to protect the interests of all alike.

 

            There were judicious regulations for the settlement of disputes between the members, so as to avoid the necessity of a resort to law.

 

            The spirit of the early Guild was in this exactly followed.

 

            "If any debate is between any of the fraternity," says an ordinance of one of these Companies, "for misgovernance of words or asking of debt or any other things, then anon the party plaintiff shall come to the Master and tell his grievance and the Master shall make an end thereof." [1]

 

            To speak disrespectfully of the Company; to strike or insult a brother member; to violate the regulations for clothing or dress; to employ or work with men who were not free of the Company, and who were generally designated as "foreigners," or to commit any kind of fraud in carrying on the trade or handicraft, were all offenses for which the ordinances provided ample punishment.

 

            The feeling of brotherly love exhibited in charity to an indigent or distressed member prevailed in all the Companies.

 

            When

 

            [1] "Ordinances of the Company of Grocers," anno 1463.

 

           

 

a member became poor from misfortune or sickness, he was to be assisted out of the common fund.

 

 

 

            All of these regulations will be found copied in the Old Constitutions of the Operative Masons a fact which conclusively proves that they were originally a Company following the general usage which had been adopted by the other Companies, whether Trade or Craft, such as the Grocers, the Mercers, the Goldsmiths, or the Tailors.

 

            The subject of "Liveries" is one that will be interesting to the Speculative Freemason, from the rule with which he is familiar, that a Mason, on entering his Lodge, must be "properly clothed." The word "clothing" here indicates the dress which he should wear, especially and imperatively including his "lambskin apron."

 

            We have the very important and very authentic evidence of the fact that secret societies existed in the 14th century, marked by all the peculiarities we have seen distinguishing the English Companies.

 

            In the year 1326 the Council of Avignon fulminated what has been caged the "Statute of Excommunications," its title being "Concerning the Societies, Unions and Confederacies called Confraternities, which are to be utterly extirpated."

 

            This statute is contained in Hardouin's immense collection of the arts of Councils. [1] The following is a part of the preamble, and it shows very clearly that the Church at that time recognized and condemned the existence of those Guilds, Companies, or Societies for mutual help, some of which were the precursors of the modern Masonic Lodges, against which the Romish Church exhibits the same hostility.

 

            The statute passed at Avignon commences as follows:

 

            "Whereas, in certain parts of our provinces, noblemen for the most part, and sometimes other persons have established unions, societies and confederacies, which are interdicted by the canon as well as by the municipal laws, who congregate in some place once a year, under the name of a confraternity, and there establish assemblies and unions and enter into a compact confirmed by an oath that they will mutually aid each other against all persons whomsoever, their own lords excepted, and in every case, that each one will

 

[1] "Acta Conciliorum et Epistolae Decretales ae Constitutiones Summorum Pontificum," Paris, 1714, tome vii, p. 1,507

 

give to another, help, counsel and favour; and sometimes all wearing a similar dress with certain curious signs or marks, they elect one of their number as chief to whom they swear obedience in all things."

 

            The decree then proceeds to denounce these confraternities, and to forbid all persons to have any connection with them under the penalty of excommunication.

 

            And here again is a pointed reference to the subject of livery:

 

            "They shall not institute confraternities of this kind; one shall not give obedience nor afford assistance or favour to another; nor shall they wear clothing which exhibits the signs or marks of the condemned thing."

 

            That the medieval Masons wore a particular dress when at work, which was the same in all countries, is evident from the plates in several illuminated manuscripts from the 10th to the 16th centuries, copies of which have been inserted by Mr. Wright in his essay on medieval architecture. [1] The dress of the Masons in all these plates, whether in England, in France, or in Italy, is similar.

 

            "In reviewing and comparing these various representations," says Mr. Wright, "of the same process at so widely distinct periods, we are struck much less with their diversity than with the close resemblance between both workmen and tools, which continues amid the continual, and sometimes rapid changes in the condition and manners of society.

 

            Whether this be in any measure to be attributed to the circumstance of the Masons forming a permanent society among themselves, which transmitted its doctrines and fashions unchanged from father to son, it is not very easy to determine." [2]

 

            The question is not, however, of so difficult a solution as Mr. Wright supposes, when we see that every Guild or Company of tradesmen or artificers had its form of dress peculiar to itself, which was called its "livery." The Masons, as a Company, followed the usage and adopted their own livery or clothing.

 

            The modern Speculative Masons preserve the memory of the usage by declaring that none shall enter a Lodge or join in its labours unless he is "property clothed;" that is, wears the livery of the fraternity.

 

            According to the authority of Stow, in his Survey of London, liveries are not mentioned as having been worn before the reign of

 

            [1] "Essays on Archaeological Subjects," vol. ii., pp. 129‑2 50.

 

            [2] Ibid., p. 136.

 

           

 

Edward I., or about the beginning of the 14th century.

 

            That is, they were then first licensed at that time or mentioned in the characters of the Companies, but he admits that they had assumed them before that time without such authority.

 

            And this is confirmed by the illuminated manuscripts to which allusion has been made above, which show that the Masons used a particular clothing as far back as the 10th century.

 

            In the "Statute of Excommunications," passed in the beginning of the 14th century by the Council of Avignon, societies or confraternities are denounced which had been established for mutual aid, and which are described as "all wearing a similar dress with certain curious signs or marks."

 

            About the middle of the 14th century there began a separation between the wealthier and the more indigent Companies, which ended after a long contention in the exclusion from the municipal government of all except what are now called "The Twelve Great Livery Companies," namely, the Companies of Mercers, Grocers, Drapers, Fishmongers, Goldsmiths, Skinners, Merchant Tailors, Haberdashers, Salters, Ironmongers, Vintners, and Clothworkers.

 

            These Companies, as distinguished by wealth, by political power and commercial importance from the minor Companies, which were often only voluntary associations of men of the same trade or craft, were called the "substantial companies," the "principal crafts," the "chief mysteries," and other similar titles which were intended to imply their superiority, though many of the so‑called " minor companies," as the weavers and bakers, were really of greater antiquity, of more public utility and importance.

 

            Among these "minor companies," the one of especial importance to the present inquiry is the "Masons' Company."

 

            Of this Company, Stow gives the following account in his Survey of London:

 

            "The Masons, otherwise termed free masons, were a society of ancient standing and good reckoning, by means of affable and kind meetings divers times and as a loving brotherhood should use to do, did frequent their mutual assemblies in the time of King Henry IV. in the 12th year of whose most gracious reign they were incorporated."

 

            A fuller account of the Company is given by Chiswell in the, New View of London, printed in 1708, in the following words:

 

            "Masons' Company was incorporated about the year 1410 having been called the Free Masons, a fraternity of great account, who have been honoured by several Kings, and very many of the Nobility and Gentry being of their Society.

 

            They are governed by a Master, 2 Wardens, 25 Assistants, and there are 65 on the Livery.

 

            "Their armorial ensigns are, Azure, on a Chevron Argent, between 3 Castles Argent, a pair of Compasses, somewhat extended, of the first Crest, a Castle of the 2nd." [1]

 

            The Hall of the Company, in which they held their meetings, was "situated in Masons Ally in Basinghall street as you pass to Coleman street." [2]

 

            Maitland, who published his London and its Environs in 1761, gives a later date for the charter.

 

            He says that "this Company had their arms granted by Clarencieux, King‑at‑Arms in 1477, though the members were not incorporated by letters patent till they obtained them from King Charles II. in 1677." [3]

 

            The conflict in dates between Stow, with whom Chiswell agrees, and Maitland, the former ascribing the charter of the Company to Henry IV., in 1410, and the latter to Charles II., in 1677, may be reconciled by supposing that the original charter of Henry was submitted to a review and confirmation, which was technically caged an "inspeximus," an act which we constantly meet with in old charters.

 

            In other words, the Masons first received a charter for their Company from Henry IV. in 1410, which charter was confirmed by Charles II. in 1677.

 

            These Companies of traders and craftsmen were not confined to London, but were to be found in other cities.

 

            The Masons, however, do not appear to have always maintained a separate organization, but seem sometimes to have united with other craftsmen.

 

            Thus among the thirteen Companies which were incorporated in the city of Exeter, the thirteenth consisted of the Painters, Joiners, Carpenters, Masons, and Glaziers, who were jointly incorporated into a Company in 1602.

 

            It may be remarked that all of these crafts were connected in the employment of building.

 

            Each, however, had its separate arms, that of the Masons being described by Izacke in

 

            [1] "New View of London," vol. ii., p. 611.

 

            [2] Ibid [3] "London and its Environs," vol. iv., p.304

 

his Antiquities of Exeter thus: "Sable, on a chevron between 3 towers argent, a pair of Compasses, dilated Sable." [1] This will be an appropriate place to examine this subject of the Masonic Arms as historically connecting the Operative Craft with the Speculative Grand Lodge.

 

            According to Stow, the Arms of the "Craft and Fellowship of Masons" of London were granted to them by William Hawkeslowe, Clarencieux King‑of‑Arms in the twelfth year of Edward IV., that is, in 1473, and were subsequently confirmed by Thomas Benott, Clarencieux King‑of‑Arms in the twelfth year of Henry VIII., or in 1521. These arms, which are blazoned in the original grant, now in the British Museum, are as follows: "Sable, on a chevron, engrailed argent between 3 castles of the second, with doors and windows of the field, a pair of compasses extended of the first." Translating the technical language of heraldry, the arms may be plainly described as a silver or white scalloped chevron, between three white castles with black doors and windows on a black field, and on the chevron a pair of compasses of a black colour.

 

            Woodford says that these arms are supposed to have been adopted by the Grand Lodge of Speculative Masons in 1717. Kloss gives the same arms, except that the chevron is not scalloped (engrailed), but plain, as the seal of the Grand Lodge of England in 1743 and in 1767.

 

            The arms adopted by the Grand Lodge of England at the union in 1813, and still used, consist of a combination of the old Operative arms (the colours being, however, changed) with those of the Athol Grand Lodge, which are impaled.

 

            But as the latter arms were most probably an invention of Dermott, they are of no historical value.

 

            From all this we see, so far as heraldry throws a light on history, that the English Speculative Masons have to the present day claimed to deduce their origin from the Operative Masons who were incorporated as a Company in the 15th century. They claimed to be their heirs, and according to the law of heraldry assumed their arms.

 

            To assume the subject of the Masons' Companies, we have no records of the existence of those organizations under that name in more than a few places in England.

 

[1] "Remarkable Antiquities of the City of Exeter." By Richard Izacke, heretofore chamberlain thereof. Second edition, London, 1724, p. 68.

 

            But the Masons seem often to combine with other Guilds for purposes of convenience.

 

            Several instances of this kind occur in old records, as in an appendix to the charter of the Guild of Carpenters of Norwich, begun in 1375, where it is stated that "Robert of Elfynghem, Masoun, and certeyn Masouns of Norwiche " had contributed two torches or lights for the altar of Christ's Church at Norwich.

 

            Now, as that church was the place where the Carpenters' Guild celebrated their mass, and as the fact of the contribution is noted in their charter, it is reasonable to suppose that the Masons, having no Guild or Company of their own in Norwich, had united in religious services with the carpenters.

 

            The impossibility of obtaining any continuous narrative of the transactions of the Masons' Company, which was one of the forty companies of London mentioned by Stow, must render many of the deductions which may be drawn from certain portions of the Harleian MS. altogether conjectural.

 

            The probability or correctness of the conjecture will have to be determined by the reason and judgment of the reader.

 

            The Masonic public has in its possession at this day, and easily accessible by any student, some twenty or thirty documents printed from manuscripts ranging in date from the end of the 14th to the beginning of the 18th century. These documents are usually denominated "Masonic Constitutions." A very few of them were known to Dr. Anderson, and he has given inaccurate quotations from them in both of his editions of the Book of Constitutions.

 

            But for the greater number, new until a recent period, to the world, we are indebted to the researches of Masonic archaeologists, by whose unpaid industry they have been unearthed, as we may say, from the shelves of the British Museum, from the archives of old Lodges, or from the libraries of private collectors.

 

            But though we possess transcripts of these Constitutions correctly made from the original manuscripts, there is nothing on record to tell us by whom they were written, nor under what authority.

 

            Internal evidence alone assures that they are all, except the first two, copies of some original not yet found, and that they contain the legend or traditionary history of Freemasonry which was believed and the laws and regulations which were obeyed by the Operative Masons who lived from the 15th to the 18th century, if not some centuries before.

 

            To make any conjecture as to the source whence they have emanated and for what purpose they were written, we must recapitulate what little we know of the history of the Masons' Company of London.

 

            The Masons' Company was incorporated, according to Chiswell, in the year 1410, or thereabouts, by King Henry IV., which charter was renewed by Charles II. in 1677, I suppose by an "inseximus" or confirmation of the original charter, as was usual.

 

            But we know from the list contained in the records of the city of London, and published by Herbert, which has already been referred to, that in the year 1379, in the reign of Edward III., there were in London a company of Freemasons and a company of Masons, the former of which sent two and the latter four members to the Common Council of the city.

 

            These two were wholly distinct from each other, but Stow tells us that at a subsequent period they united together and were merged into one Company.

 

            What was the difference between these two Companies, is a question that will naturally be asked, and which can not very easily be answered.

 

            My own conjecture, and it is merely a conjecture, though I think not an unplausible one, is that the Company of Freemasons was the representative in England of that body of Travelling Freemasons who had spread, under the auspices of the Church, over every country of Europe, and whose history will constitute hereafter an important portion of the present work; while the Company of Masons was the representative of the general body of the Craft in the kingdom, who had formed themselves into a Guild, Company, or Sodalily, just as the Mercers, the Grocers, the Tailors, the Painters, and other tradesmen and mechanics had done at the same period.

 

            The two companies were, however, afterward merged into one, which retained the title of "The Company of Masons."

 

            Each of the Trade and Craft Guilds or Companies kept a book in which was contained its ordinances and a record of its transactions. The language of these books was at first the Norman‑French; sometimes, says Herbert, intermixed with abbreviated Latin, or the old English of Chaucer's day.

 

            Afterward, during the reign of Henry V., and by his influence, the ordinances were translated into the vernacular language of the period, and the books of the Companies were thereafter kept in English.

 

            We find just such changes in the dialect of the old Masonic Constitutions from the archaic and, to unused ears, almost unintelligible style of the Halliwell poem to the modern English of the later manuscripts.

 

            If the Masonic Company had an historian like Herbert, who would have given a detailed history of its transactions from its origin, as he has done in respect to the twelve Livery Companies of London, we should, I think, have had no difficulty in defining the true character of the Old Constitutions.

 

            Many heroes have lived before Agamemnon, but they have died unwept because they had no divine poet to record their deeds. [1] So, too, we are left to dark conjecture in almost all that relates to the early history of the Masonic Craft in their primary Guild‑life, for want of an authentic chronicler.

 

            It may, however, be assumed, as a more than plausible conjecture, that there must have been for the Masons' Company a book of records and of their ordinances, just as there were for the other Trade and Craft Companies.

 

            Indeed, Dr. Anderson says, in his second edition, that "the Freemasons had always a book in manuscript called the Book of Constitutions (of which they had several very ancient copies remaining), containing not only their Charges and Regulations, but also the history of architecture from the beginning of time."

 

            Dr. Plot, also, in his Natural History of Staffordshire, tells us that the society of Freemasons "had a large parchment volume amongst them containing the history and rules of the craft of Masonry." And the contents of that volume, as he describes them, accord very accurately with what is contained in the Old Constitutions that are now extant.

 

            We have, then, good reason to believe that the manuscript Constitutions, which consist of the Legend of the Craft and the statutes or Ordinances of the Guild, are all copies of an original contained in the archives of the Company, and which original Anderson says was called the Book of Constitutions.

 

            It is not necessary that we should contend that the title given by Anderson is the right one, or that he had authority for the statement.

 

            It is sufficient to believe that there was a book in the archives

 

            [1] Horace, Carm., lib. iv., 9.

 

           

 

of the Masons' Company, as there was a similar book in the archives of the other Companies, and that the manuscript Constitutions, as we now have them, were copied at various times and by different persons from that book.

 

            But it must be evident, to anyone who will carefully collate these manuscripts, that there must have been two originals at least.

 

            The Legend of the Craft and the set of ordinances differ so materially in the Halliwell poem from those in the later manuscript as to indicate very clearly that the latter could not have been copied from the former, but must have been derived from some other original.

 

            Now, in 1410 there were, according to the catalogue given by Herbert from the London records, two distinct Companies, that of the Freemasons and that of the Masons.

 

            It is very reasonable to conclude that each of these Companies had a Book of Constitutions of its own.

 

            If so, the Halliwell Constitutions may have found their original in the Company of Freemasons, and the later manuscripts, so unlike it in form and substance, may have had their original in the Company of Masons.

 

            If, as Findal and some others have supposed, the Halliwell Constitution was of German or Continental origin, the invocation to the Four Crowned Martyrs leading to that supposition, then the fact that this manuscript of Halliwell was copied from the Book of Constitutions of the Company of Freemasons would give colour to the hypothesis which I have advanced, that the Company of Freemasons, as distinguished from that of the Masons in the year 1410, was an offshoot from the sodality of Travelling Freemasons, who, at an earlier period, sprang from the school of Como in Lombardy.

 

            A new charter, or rather, as I suppose, a confirmation of the old one, was granted to the Masons' Company in 1677 by King Charles II.

 

            About this time we might look for some changes in the long‑used Book of Constitutions of the old Masons' Company, which had been incorporated in 1410, and of which the earlier manuscripts, from the Landsdowne to the Sloane, are exemplars.

 

            Now, just such changes are to be found in the Harleian MS., which has been conjecturally assigned to the approximate date of 1670.

 

            An examination of this manuscript will show that it materially differs in several important points from all those that preceded it.

 

            Besides the old ordinances, which are much like those in the preceding manuscripts, but couched in somewhat better language, there are in the Harleian MS. fifteen "new articles," as recognizing for the first time a distinction between the Company and the Lodges.

 

            Article 30, which is the fifth of the new articles, is in the following words:

 

            "That for the future the said Society, Company, and Fraternity of Free Masons shall be regulated and governed by one Master and Assembly and Wardens as the said Company shall think fit to choose at every yearly General Assembly."

 

            There are several points in this article which are worthy of attention as throwing light on the condition of the fraternity at that time.

 

1st. The words for the future imply that there was a change then made in the government of the Society, which must have been different in former times.

 

2d. The use of the word Company shows that these regulations, or "new articles," were not for the government of Lodges only, but for the whole Company of Masons. The existence of the Masons' Company is here for the first time recognized in actual words.

 

3d. The word "Assembly" is entirely without meaning in its present location, or if there is any meaning it is an absurd one.

 

            It can not be supposed that the Company at a General Assembly would choose an Assembly to govern it.

 

            Doubtless this is a careless transcription of the original by a copyist, who has written "Assembly" instead of "Assistants." In the charters of the other Companies we frequently see the provision that besides the Master and Warden a certain number of "Assistants" shall be appointed out of the Guild, to aid the former officers by their counsel and advice.

 

            For instance, in a charter of the Drapers' Company, after providing for the election of a Master and four Wardens, it is added that there may and shall be constituted and appointed certain others of the Guild "who shall be named assistants of the Guild or fraternity aforesaid, and from that time they shall be assisting and aiding to the Master and Wardens in the causes, matters, business, and things whatsoever touching or concerning the said Masters and Wardens."

 

            Now, as assistants formed no part of the government of a Lodge, but were common in the Livery Companies, it is evident

 

[1] See the Charter in Herbert's "Twelve Great Livery Companies," vol. i., p. 487.

 

           

 

that the article under consideration, and therefore that the Harleian MS., in which it is contained, were copied from the Book of the Masons' Company.

 

4th. This article decides the fact that there was at that day a "yearly assembly" of the Company.

 

            We are not, however, to infer that this "yearly assembly" of the Masons' Company constituted, as some of our earlier histories have supposed, a Grand Lodge.

 

            If so, as the Master of the Company must necessarily have presided over the General Assembly, he would have been its Grand Master, and as there were other Masons' Companies in other parts of England, there would have been several Grand Lodges as well as several Grand Masters, all of which is unsupported by any historical authority.

 

            Indeed, neither the words "Grand Master" nor "Grand Lodge" are to be met with in any of the Old Constitutions, from the Halliwell MS. onward to the latest.

 

            Both titles seem to have come into use at the time of what is called the Revival, in 1717, and not before.

 

            There are some other articles in this Harleian MS. that are worthy of attention, as showing the condition and the usages of the Craft in the 17th century, and which will be again referred to when that subject is under consideration in a subsequent chapter.

 

            P. 603

 

           
CHAPTER XI

 

       THE GENERAL ASSEMBLIES AND THE LODGES OF MEDIEVAL MASONS

 

            THERE were two conditions of the Craft in the period embraced between the 14th and 17th centuries which are peculiarly worth the notice of the student of Masonic history.

 

            These are the General Assembly of the Craft at stated periods, and their more customary meetings in Lodges.

 

            It is to be regretted that the early records of English Masonry furnish but the slightest and most unsatisfactory accounts of the transactions of either of these bodies, so that most of our information on this subject is merely conjectural.

 

            "We possess," says Mr. Halliwell, "no series of documents, nor even an approach to a series, sufficiently extensive to enable us to form any connected history of the ancient institutions of Masons and Freemasons.

 

            We have, in fact, no materials by which we can form any definite idea of the precise nature of those early societies." [1]

 

            This is very true, and the historian finds himself impeded in every step of his labour in tracing the early progress of the institution.

 

            "We must therefore," as he continues to observe, "rest contented with the light which a few incidental notices and accidental accounts, far from being altogether capable of unsuspected reliance, afford us."

 

            In the forty years which have elapsed since this passage was written, the energetic industry of Masonic archaeologists has brought to light many old records which are "of unsuspected reliance," which, though still too few to form a complete series of historic stages, will enable us to understand better than we did a half century ago the real condition of the Masonic sodalities in the Middle Ages.

 

            Had these records been in Mr. Halliwell's possession when he presented the first of them as a valuable contribution to Masonic

 

            [1] "Society of Antiquaries," April 18, 1839, p. 444.

 

history, he would hardly have erred as he did in his belief of the truth of the Prince Edwin story, or of the authenticity of the Leland MS.

 

            As the geologist has been enabled to trace the gradual changes in the earth's surface, and in the character of its living inhabitants at the remotest period, by the fossil which he finds embedded in its early strata, or as the anthropologist learns the true character of prehistoric man from the stone and bronze implements that he has discovered in ancient caves and mounds, so the archaeologist can form a very correct notion of the state of medieval Freemasonry form the scattered records of that period, which, long preserved in the obscurity of neglected archives or in the vast collections of the British Museum, have at length been published to the world, to form the authentic materials of a Masonic history.

 

            They confirm many statements hitherto supposed to be without authority, and enable us by their silence to reject much that has been fancifully presented as authentic.

 

            Thus in the manuscript which was discovered and published by Mr.

 

            Halliwell, and which he very correctly considered to be the earliest document yet brought forward connected with the progress of Freemasonry in Great Britain, we may learn that at least as early as toward the end of the 14th century the Masons met on specified occasions and under certain rules and regulations in a body which they called the "Congregation" or the "Assembly." Of this there can not be the slightest doubt, since the genuineness of the Halliwell poem is universally recognized as having been written between the years 1350 and 1400, and as containing an authentic account of the condition of the Craft at that period.

 

            In the second article of the Constitutions contained in this work it is said that "every Mason who is a Master, must be at the general congregation if he is informed in sufficient time where that assembly is to be holden, unless he should have a reasonable excuse."[1]

 

            [1] That every Mayster that ys a mason Most ben at the generale congregacyon, So that he hyt resonably y‑tolde Where that the semble schal be holde; And to that semble be most nede gon But he have a resenabul skwsacyon." Halliwell MS., lines 107‑112.

 

            I have spared the reader the archaic and, to most persons, unintelligible language, but have given the true meaning in the translation, and append the original in a marginal note.

 

            From this law it would appear that in the 14th century it was the usage of Master Masons to assemble from various parts of the country for purposes connected with the business or interests of the Craft.

 

            In the Cooke MS., whose date is at least an hundred years later, the writer gives an account of the origin of this custom.

 

            It arose, he says, in the time of King Athelstan, who ordained that annually, or every three years, all Master Masons and Fellows should come up from every province and country to congregations, where the Masters should be examined in the laws of the Craft, and their skill and knowledge in their profession be investigated, and where they should receive charges for their future conduct.

 

            As this, however, is a mere tradition, founded on the legend of Athelstan's, or rather Prince Edwin's, Assembly of Masons at York, it can not be accepted as a foundation for any historical statement.

 

            But in the same manuscript we find the evidence that it was the custom of Masters coming from their Lodges or places where they worked with the Fellows under them, and their Apprentices, to some sort of gathering which was presided over by one of the Masters as the principal or chief of the meeting.

 

            It is the second article of the Constitutions, according to the Cooke MS., which is in the following words.

 

            I again translate the archaic language into modern English.

 

            "That every Master should be previously warned to come to his congregation, that he may come in due time unless excused for some reason.

 

            But those who had been disobedient at such congregations, or been false to their employers, or had acted so as to deserve reproof of the Craft, could be excused only by extreme sickness, of which notice was to be given to the Master that is principal of the assembly." [1]

 

            I say that this is evidence that in the latter part of the 15th century, which is the date of the manuscript, the custom did exist of several Masters assembling, from different points for purposes of consultation, because a law would hardly be enacted for the due ob‑

 

            [1] "Cooke MS.," lines 740‑755.

 

servance of a certain custom unless that custom had a substantial existence.

 

            This is not a tradition or legend, but the statement in a manuscript constitution of the existence of a law.

 

            The manuscript is admitted to be genuine.

 

            That it tells us what were the regulations of the Craft that were in force when it was written is not denied.

 

            And therefore, as it gives us the rules that were to govern Masters in their attendance upon an assembly or congregation of Masters, we must recognize the historical fact that at that time such assemblies or congregations did exist among the Craft of Masons.

 

            These assemblies were probably extemporary, or called at uncertain times, as necessity required.

 

            If they were held at stated and regular periods, it would hardly have been required that a Master must have received previous notice to render him amenable to punishment for non‑attendance.

 

            This would also lead us to presume that there was some person in whom, by general concurrence, was vested the authority to designate the time of meeting, and whose duty it was to give the necessary warning.

 

            And it would seem that this person must have been the one to whom excuses were to be rendered, and who is styled, in the quaint language of the manuscript, pryncipall of that gederyng."

 

            What was the circuit within which the jurisdiction of such an assembly extended, or what was the distance from which Master Masons were expected to repair to it, we must learn from later manuscript Constitutions, for the Cooke MS. leaves us in ignorance on the subject.

 

            It tells us only that assemblies were occasionally held, but says nothing of the number of representatives who constituted them nor of the circuit of country which they governed.

 

            This is, however, determined by the later Constitutions.

 

            In the Landsdowne MS., whose date is sixty years after that of the Cooke, it is said that "every Master and Fellow shall come to the Assembly if it be within fifty miles of him." This distance is repeated in the York MS., dated 1600, in the Grand Lodge MS. of 1632, in the Sloane MS. of 1646, in the Lodge of Antiquity MS. of 1686, and in the Alnwick M S. as late as 1701.

 

            There is, however, a discrepancy not to be explained in some of the Constitutions.

 

            The Harleian MS., whose ascribed date is 1650, says that the Mason must come to the Assembly if it be within ten miles of his abode, and in the Constitutions in the Lodge of Hope MS., whose date is 1680, and those in the Papworth MS., whose date is as late as 1714, but must undoubtedly have been a mere copy of some older one, the distance is reduced to five miles.

 

            Those who, in this reference to what is called sometimes a congregation, sometimes a general assembly, and once, as in the Papworth MS., an association, have sought to discover the evidence of the existence before the 18th century of a Grand Lodge for England and a Grand Master presiding over all the Craft in the kingdom, will not find themselves supported by any expressions either in these Old Constitutions or in any other records of the times which will warrant such an interpretation of the nature of these meetings of the Craft.

 

            The object of these Assemblies, as described with great uniformity in all the Constitutions, was to submit those who had trespassed against the rules of the Craft to the judgment and award of their brethren, and where there were disputes to endeavour to reconcile the difference by a brotherly arbitration.

 

            If we may rely on a statement made in what is caged the Roberts MS., from which we get the earliest printed book in Masonry, and which manuscript could not have been later than the latter part of the 17th century, these General Assemblies had also the power of making new regulations for the government of the Craft.

 

            A book was printed in 1722 by J. Roberts, under the title of The Old Constitutions belonging to the Ancient and Honourable Society of Free and Accepted Masons.

 

            This book was, he says, "taken from a Manuscript wrote above five hundred years since," but the internal evidence shows that it could not have been written earlier than about the middle of the 17th century.

 

            It has indeed all the appearance of being a careless copy of the Harleian MS., with some additional matter which is not found in that document, the source of which is not known.

 

            In this book of Roberts are some new regulations which are said to be "additional orders and Constitutions made and agreed upon at a General Assembly held at....... on the eighth day of December, 1663."

 

            Dr. Anderson, who, it is very probable, had seen this statement in the work of Roberts, has with an unwarranted inaccuracy, of which the Masonic historians of the 18th century were too often guilty, materially altered the statement in the second edition of his Book of Constitutions, and says that "Henry Jermyn, Earl of St. Albans as their Grand Master held a General Assembly and Feast on St. John's Day 27 Dec. 1663."

 

            It will be seen that the Roberts Constitution says nothing of the Earl of St.

 

            Albans, nothing of his having exercised the functions or assumed the title of Grand Master, nothing of a feast, and nothing of the time of assembly being on St. John the Evangelist's day, which is an entirely modern Masonic festival.

 

            All that Anderson has here said is merely supposititious, and by this act of unfairness, Bro.

 

            Hughan very correctly says, his "character as an accurate historian is certainly not improved."

 

            It has been seen that the earlier manuscript Constitutions do not speak of any specific time when the Assembly was held, and it is possible, or perhaps probable, that at first they were called at extemporaneous periods and according to the needs of particular districts where there were Master Masons engaged.

 

            This is, however, altogether conjectural.

 

            But it would seem that about the middle of the 17th century, and indeed perhaps long before, there was instituted an annual assembly.

 

            The Harleian MS. leaves us no doubt upon the point, for it says, "that for the future the sayd Society, company and fraternity of Free Masons shal bee regulated and governed by one Master and Assembly and Wardens, as the said Company shall think fit to choose at every yearely general Assembly."

 

            That this was to be done "for the future" would seem to imply that it had not been done theretofore, or it might mean that what had formerly been an authorized usage was thereafter to be confirmed as a law by this new regulation, and this is probably the more correct interpretation.

 

            It is, however, very satisfactorily shown by this Harleian document that at the time when it was written, namely, in 1670, the Masons had begun to meet in an annual assembly, even if they did not do so before

 

            There is another feature in the medieval condition of Freemasonry, which we may discover from an examination of these old manuscript Constitutions.

 

            While it is very clear that the Masons were in the habit of assembling annually, or perhaps at more frequent periods, in congregations, for general consultation on the interests of the whole body of craftsmen, they also united in other associations of a local character, which, in the earliest records to which we have obtained access, were known by the name of "Lodges." This was an institution peculiar to the Masons.

 

            We hear of the Guilds, and afterward of the Company of Carpenters, the Company of Smiths, the Company of Tailors, and others belonging to various crafts, but we have no knowledge that there ever existed any lodges of Carpenters, Smiths, or Tailors.

 

            The Masons alone met in these local sodalities, which were of course in some way connected with the Company, after it had been chartered, and even before, when it existed as a Guild without incorporation.

 

            The existence of these Lodges is not conjectural, but capable of the most convincing historical proof derived from these old manuscripts, whose genuineness has never been and can not be doubted, as well as from the testimony of other writers, some of them not of Masonic character, and therefore less suspicious.

 

            The proofs of the existence of Lodges in which Masons in different parts of the kingdom met may be first presented as they are found in the Old Constitutions.

 

            The Halliwell poem, which is the earliest of these manuscript records, plainly refers to the fact.

 

            In the 4th Article of the Constitutions which it prescribes, the Master Mason is forbidden to take a bondman as an Apprentice.

 

            And the reason assigned why this prohibition is made is that the lord whose bondman he is has the right to bring him away from any place where he might go, and if he were to take him from the Lodge it would be a cause of great trouble.

 

            "For the lorde that he ys bonde to

 

            May fache the prentes whersever he go.

 

            Gef yn the logge he were y‑take Much desese hyt myght ther make." [1]

 

            And in the third point of the same Constitution it is forbidden to the Apprentice to tell anyone the private concerns of his Master's house or whatsoever is done in the Lodge.

 

            "The prevystye of the chamber telle he no man, Ny yn the logge whatsever they done." [2]

 

            The Cooke MS., [3] which is the next of these old records that have been brought to light by modern researches, repeats these two prohibitions.

 

            It goes more at length into the causes which should

 

            [1] "Halliwell MS." [2] Ibid.

 

            [3] "Cooke MS.," lines 769‑777.

 

prevent a bondman from being made a Mason, and explains the nature of the trouble, briefly alluded to in the former manuscript which might arise if the lord should seek to seize his bondman in the lodge. The bondman it says, should not be received as an Apprentice, because his lord to whom he is bound might take him, as he had the right to do, from his business, and lead him "out of his logge or out of the place where he is working, and the trouble that might then be apprehended, would be that his fellows would peradventure help him and dispute for him and therefrom manslaughter might arise."

 

            And in the third point of these Constitutions it is said that the Mason "can hele (must conceal) the counsel of his fellows in logge and in chamber." [1]

 

            In the later manuscripts we find the same recognition of the lodge as in these first two.

 

            In the Landsdowne MS. it is said that Masons must "keep truely all the councell of the lodge or of the chamber." This is repeated in substantially similar words in all the subsequent Constitutions. The lodge is also recognized as a place where the work of Operative Masonry was pursued, for the Freemason is forbidden to set the cowan to work within the lodge or without it.

 

            We see, also, that there were many lodges as distinct organizations, but all connected by one bond of fellowship, scattered over the country.

 

            One of the regulations in all these Constitutions was that strange Fellows were to be cherished and put to work, if there were any work for them, and if not, they were "to be refreshed with money and sent unto the next lodge."

 

            These Operative Lodges were as exclusive in relation to any connection with cowans, rough layers, or Masons who were not accepted as free of the Guild, as the modern Speculative Lodges are in relation to any connection with the uninitiated, or, as they are often called, "the profane."

 

            Thus we find in all the Constitutions up to the year 1701 a regulation which forbade the giving of employment to "rough layers," or Masons of an inferior class, who had not been admitted into the society.

 

            "Noe Mason," says the latest of these Constitutions, [2] shall make moulds, square or Rule to any Rough Layers, alsoe

 

            [1] "Cooke MS.," lines 441 ‑ 453.

 

            [2] "Alnwick MS.," anno 1701.

 

that noe Mason sett any Layer within a Lodge or without to hew or mould stones with noe mould of his own makeing." In brief words, he was to give such an intruder no work that was connected with the higher principles of the art, for the mould was the model or pattern constructed by the geometrical rules that were the most important secrets of the medieval builders.

 

            It is probable that these unfreemen were sometimes employed in the more menial occupations of the craft.

 

            The Papworth MS., whose date is 1714, is the only one which omits this prohibition.

 

            Whether this omission arose from the growth at that late period of a more liberal spirit, or whether it was the clerical error of a careless copyist, are questions not easily determined.

 

            It is, however, probable that the latter was the case, as the spirit of exclusiveness adhered to the Masonic Guilds as it did to all the guilds of other crafts, and is continued to the present day by the Livery Companies, which are the successors of the early guilds, where the same spirit of exclusiveness prevailed.

 

            The system of apprenticeship, which was common to all the guilds, was maintained with very strict regulations by the Masons.

 

            No Master or Fellow was to take an Apprentice for less than seven years, nor was any Master to take an Apprentice unless his business was so extensive as to authorize the employment of at least two or three Journeymen.

 

            The spirit of monopoly is plainly perceptible in this regulation.

 

            The Fellows or journeymen were unwilling to give to Masters of moderate means the opportunity, by the employment of Apprentices who might soon learn the trade, to add to the number of craftsmen and thus to diminish the value of their labour.

 

            Great regard was paid to the physical condition of the Apprentice.

 

            In all the constitutions, from the very earliest to the latest, care is taken to declare that the Apprentice must be able‑bodied.

 

            "The Master," says the Halliwell MS., "shall for no consideration of profit or emolument make an Apprentice who is imperfect, that is whose limbs are not altogether sound.

 

            It would be a great disgrace to the craft to make a halt and lame

 

            man. An imperfect man of this kind would do but little good to the craft.

 

            So every one may know that the craft wishes to have a strong man." And the compiler of the Constitutions quaintly adds the warning that "a maimed man has no strength, as will be known long before night;" that is, he will show his weakness by failing in his work.

 

            ".... maymed mon, he hath no might,

 

            Ye mowe hyt knowe long yer night."

 

            This was written about the end of the 14th century.

 

            A hundred years afterward the Cooke MS. repeats the admonition in these words: "The sixth article is this, that no Master for no covetousness nor no profit take no Apprentice to teach that is imperfect, that is to say, having any maim for the which he may not truly work as he ought to do."

 

            The same rigid rule of physical perfection in the Apprentice is perpetuated in all the subsequent constitutions.

 

            Thus the Landsdowne MS. (1560) says he "of limbs whole as a man;" the York MS. (1600), he must be "able of body and sound of limbs;" the Grand Lodge MS.

 

(1632), he must be "of limbs as a man ought to be;" the Harleian MS.

 

            (1670), he must have "his right and perfect limbs and personal of body to attend the said science," and the Alnwick MS. (1701), that he must have "his right limbs as he ought to have."

 

            When, in 1717, the Speculative superseded the Operative order, this regulation, which had been enforced for at least three centuries, was abandoned, and in the charges adopted by the Grand Lodge in 1722, Masons were requited to be only good and true men, freeborn, and of mature age.

 

            Sixteen years afterward, when Anderson compiled and published the second edition of the Book of Constitutions, he, apparently without authority, restored the original rule of the guild, for in the same charge the words in that edition were altered by the insertion of the regulation that the men made Masons must be "hail and sound, not deformed or dismembered at the time of their making."

 

            I say that this change was apparently made without authority, for in the subsequent editions of the Book of Constitutions, published after the death of Anderson, the language of the first edition was restored.

 

            Hence the present Grand Lodge of England does not require bodily perfection as a preliminary qualification for initiation.

 

            But as Dermott in compiling his Ahiman Rezon for the use of the Grand Lodge of Ancients or the Schismatic Grand Lodge, adopted Anderson's second edition as the basis of his work, all the lodges emanating from that Grand Lodge exacted the rigid guild law of corporeal perfection.

 

            As a very large number of the lodges in the United States had been chartered by the Grand Lodge of Ancients, it has happened that the old rule of the guild has been retained sometimes in its full extent and sometimes with slight modifications in the Constitutions of the American Grand Lodges, all of which forbid the initiation into Masonry of one who is deficient in any of his limbs or members.

 

            The American usage, however much it may be objected to because it sometimes closes the door of the lodges to worthy men on certain occasions, has certainly maintained more perfectly than the English the connection between the old Operative and the more modern Speculative branch, a connection whose preservation is important because it constitutes a part of the history of the Order.

 

            Another fact in the character of the medieval Guild or Company of Masons that shows the connection with that association and the Speculative Masonry that grew out of it is the system of secrecy that was practiced.

 

            It has been hitherto shown that all the early guilds, whether Masonic or otherwise, required their members to keep the secret counsels of the body.

 

            And this regulation has been very correctly supposed to allude to the secrets of the trade, in their transaction of business if it were a Commercial Guild, or if it were a Craft Guild the methods of work.

 

            These secrets could only be acquired by a long apprenticeship to the trade or art, and it was unlawful to impart them to any persons who were not members of the guild.

 

            The evidence of this has already been shown by extracts from various guild ordinances, and from the old Masonic Constitutions. But the secrets of the Guild or Company of Masons seems to have been maintained more rigidly by their statutes than were those of any other guild.

 

            What the secrets of medieval Freemasonry were will be discussed when we come to treat of the Travelling Freemasons, who spread in the 11th and 12th centuries from Lombardy over Europe, and established themselves in all the countries which they visited; that their arcana consisted of a secret system adopted by the Freemasons in building.

 

            Of this, as Mr. Paley [1] has observed,

 

            [1] "Manual of Gothic Architecture," chap. vi., p. 208.

 

little or nothing has ever transpired, and we may reasonably attribute our ignorance on the subject to the conscientious observance by the members of the fraternity of the oath of secrecy administered to them on their admission into the society.

 

            The earlier Masonic Constitutions do not give the form of the oath, or indeed refer to an oath at all.

 

            They simply direct that the counsels of the Lodge and of Masonry shall be kept inviolate.

 

            It is not until 1670 that we find, in the Harleian MS., supposed to have been written in that year, the very words of the obligation that was to be administered.

 

            The constitutions or ordinances of that Constitution prescribe "That no person shall be accepted a Freemason or know the secrets of the said society until he hath first taken the oath of secrecy hereafter following."

 

            The "oath of secrecy" thus prescribed is given in the following words, which will on comparison be found to be much more precise and solemn than the oath which was administered in the other guilds or companies:

 

            "I, A. B., do, in the presence of Almighty God and my Fellows and Brethren here present, promise and declare, that I will not at any time hereafter, by any act or circumstance whatsoever, directly or indirectly, publish, discover, reveal or make known any of the secrets, privileges, or counsels of the fraternity or fellowship of Free Masonry, which at this time, or at any other time hereafter, shall be made known unto me.

 

            So help me God and the holy contents of this book."

 

            The last words indicate that this was a corporeal oath administered on the Gospels, as was the form always used at that period in administering oaths.

 

            As to the language, the intelligent Mason will readily perceive how closely the spirit of this old Masonic obligation has been preserved by the modern Speculative fraternity.

 

            It is another indirect mark pointing out the close connection and uninterrupted succession of the old and the new systems.

 

            It is unnecessary to dilate further on the ordinances which are contained in these Constitutions.

 

            The object has been sufficiently attained, of proving the correctness of the hypothesis that the modern Lodges are the direct successors of these bodies whose laws and customs are so plainly exhibited in the old Masonic manuscripts.

 

            P. 615

 

CHAPTER XII

 

       THE HARLEIAN MANUSCRIPT AS A GERM OF HISTORY ‑ USAGES OF THE CRAFT IN THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY

 

            IT has been seen in the preceding chapter how much information as to the usages of the craft in medieval times may be derived from the statutes and regulations contained in the manuscript Constitutions, and more especially in that most valuable and interesting one, the Harleian MS.

 

            This document differs very materially from all the others that preceded it, and suggests to us that there were important changes which about that time took place in the usages of the craft.

 

            Of this manuscript, the date of which is supposed to be 1670, Bro. Hughan has said that it "contains the fullest information of any that we are aware of and is of great value and importance in consequence." [1]

 

            An analysis of this manuscript will sustain the statement of this indefatigable explorer of old records and to whom we are indebted for a correct transcription from the original which is deposited in the British Museum.

 

            No analysis, so far as I know, has ever been attempted of this important manuscript, so as to deduce its true character from the internal evidence which it contains.

 

            It has been already shown that the Masons' Company received a new charter or act of incorporation from Charles II. just about the time that the Harleian MS. appears to have been written.

 

            It has also been suggested that the granting of the new charter would probably be considered as a very opportune period for the Masons' Company to make some changes in its Book of Constitutions by the adoption of new regulations.

 

            [1] "Old Charges of the British Freemasons," p. 11.

 

            Now, I have supposed that the Harleian MS., differing so much, as it does, from all preceding manuscripts, is a copy or transcript of the Book of Constitutions of the Masons' Company as it was modified in the reign of Charles II.

 

            In presenting us with the laws of the Craft which were at that day in force, it supplies us with a very accurate and authentic exposition of the usages and customs of the fraternity as they then prevailed.

 

            A brief analysis therefore of some of the most important articles will certainly advance us very considerably in our knowledge of the progress of Freemasonry in the 17th century, about a hundred years before the Operative element of Freemasonry was absolutely extinguished by the Speculative.

 

            Hence it is that I call the Harleian MS. a germ of Masonic history.

 

            We may profitably commence our analysis of the historical points developed in this manuscript by directing our attention to the origin and meaning of the words "Accepted Mason," which are so familiar at the present day in the title given to the Order as that of "The Free and Accepted Masons."

 

            The 26th Article of the Harleian Constitutions directs that "no person shall be accepted a Mason, unless he shall have a lodge of five free Masons;" and the next article says that "no person shall be accepted a Free Mason but such as are of able body, honest parentage," etc.

 

            The word "accepted" here used is of some importance as having been one of the titles afterward adopted by the Speculative Masons, who called themselves "Free and Accepted," in allusion to this very article.

 

            The word is first employed in the Harleian MS.

 

            In the older manuscripts we find the expression "Masons allowed," which, however, evidently means the same thing.

 

            In the two articles cited above it is very plain that an "Accepted Mason" is one who has been admitted into the fraternity by some ceremony, which is called his "acception," or acceptation.

 

            It is equivalent to the modern word initiation."

 

            But in the 28th Article we find the same word used in a double sense, of both "initiation" and "affiliation." It prescribes that "no person shall be accepted a Free Mason nor shall be admitted into any lodge or assembly until he hath brought a certificate of the time of acception from the lodge that accepted him unto the Master of that Limit and Division where such lodge was kept which said Master shall enroll the same in parchment in a roll to be kept for that purpose to give an account of all such acceptions at every General Assembly."

 

            There is a very large and interesting amount of knowledge of the character of the Masonic organization and of its usages in the 17th century to be derived from this article, if understandingly interpreted.

 

            No one was to be accepted a Freemason, that is, admitted into the fellowship or made free of the Guild or Company, or, as we would say in modern phrase, "affiliated," in contradistinction to a "cowan" or "rough layer," one who was not permitted to work or mingle with the Freemasons, unless he had brought to the Master of the limit or division in which a certain lodge was situated a certificate that he had been accepted (the word here signifying initiated or admitted by some ceremony into the craft) in that lodge.

 

            The Master of that division or limit must have been possessed of an authority or jurisdiction over several lodges, something like the Provincial Grand Masters in England or the District Deputy Grand Masters in the United States.

 

            This Master kept a list of the Masons thus made whose making had been certified to him and made a return of the same to the General Assembly at the annual meeting.

 

            This is much the same as is done at the present day, when the lodges make a return to the Grand Lodge at its annual communication of the number and names of the candidates that have been initiated by it during the year.

 

            So there were two kinds of acceptation.

 

            The acceptation into the lodge, which was also called "making a Mason," and the acceptation afterward into the full fellowship of the Society or Company, which was to be done only on the production of a certificate of the time and place when the first acceptance or initiation occurred.

 

            We find an analogous case in the modern usage.

 

            A man is first initiated in a lodge, and then he is made a member of it.

 

            The one usually follows the other, but not necessarily.

 

            A candidate may be initiated in a lodge and yet not claim or receive membership in it Such cases sometimes occur.

 

            The candidate has been accepted in the old sense of initialed, in the lodge, but if he goes away and desires to be accepted into the full fellowship of the fraternity, which act in modern language is called "affiliation," by uniting with another lodge, he can not be so accepted or affiliated into its fellowship unless he brings a certificate of his previous acceptation or initiation in the lodge in which he was made.

 

            There is an apparent confusion in the double sense in which the word acceptation or acception is used, which can only be removed by this interpretation, which explains the two kinds of acceptance referred to in the same article.

 

            This will hereafter be applied to an explanation of some interesting Masonic circumstances that occurred in the life of the celebrated antiquary Elias Ashmole.

 

            One more point, however, in this important article must be first referred to.

 

            It is prescribed that when a Mason is to be made or accepted, it must be in a lodge of at least five Free Masons, one of whom must be a Master or Warden, of the limit or division where the said lodge shall be kept.

 

            Masters and Wardens were therefore ranks (it does not follow that they were degrees) in whom alone was invested the prerogative of presiding at the making of Masons.

 

            It was not necessary that he should be the Master or Warden of the lodge where the initiation or acceptation was made.

 

            The lodge might, indeed, be a mere extemporary affair, consisting of five Free Masons called together for the especial purpose of accepting a new brother of the craft.

 

            But it was essential that a Free Mason, not a stranger brought from some other section of the country, but one residing or working in the vicinity, and who was not a mere Fellow, but who had reached the rank of a Master or a Warden, should be present and, of course, preside at the meeting.

 

            Preston confirms this in a note in his Illustrations of Masonry, where he says:

 

            "A sufficient number of Masons met together within a certain district, with the consent of the sheriff or chief magistrate of the place, were empowered, at this time, to make masons and practice the rites of Masonry without warrant of Constitution." [1]

 

            The consent of the sheriff or chief magistrate which Preston supposes to be necessary to the making of a Mason is not required by the Harleian or any subsequent regulations which represent the Constitutions of the Masons' Company.

 

            The Halliwell poem and the

 

            [1] Preston, "Illustrations," Oliver's edition, p. 182, note.

 

Cooke MS., which closely follow it, do say that the sheriff of the county, the mayor of the city, and many knights and nobles are to be at the General Assembly.

 

            But I have endeavored to show that the Halliwell statutes belonged to a different organization of the craft.

 

            Another expression in this 28th Harleian regulation elucidates an important point in the organization of the Masonic sodality at that time.

 

            Of the five Free‑Masons who were required to be present at the acceptance of a candidate, one was to be a Master and Warden "and another of the trade of Free Masonry." Hence it follows that the other three might be non‑Masons, or persons not belonging to the craft.

 

            This is the very best legal evidence that we could have that in the middle of the 17th century non‑professional persons were admitted as honorary members into the fraternity.

 

            The Speculative element, as we now have it, was of course not yet introduced, but the craft did not consist exclusively of working Masons.

 

            These explanations will enable us to understand the often ‑ quoted passages from the Diary of Elias Ashmole, which without them would seem to bear contradictory meanings.

 

            Mr. Ashmole says, under the date of October 16, 1646, at half past four in the afternoon:

 

            "I was made a Free Mason at Warrington in Lancashire with Colonel Henry Mainwaring of Karticham in Cheshire, the names, of those that then were at the lodge, Mr. Richard Penket Warden, Mr. James Collier, Mr. Richard Sankey, Henry Littler, John Ellam and Hugh Brewer."

 

            The circumstances of the ceremony here detailed are strictly in accord with the regulations which were then in force and which were not long afterward incorporated in the Constitutions as these are preserved in the Harleian MS.

 

            That manuscript says that at the acceptance of a Free‑Mason there shall be "a Lodge of five Free Masons." The Landsdowne MS. says there should be "at least six or seven." The "new regulations" in the Harleian MS. reduced the number to five, which is the exact quorum required at the present day in Speculative Masonry for the admission of a Fellow Craft.

 

            Of these five, one was to be a Master or Warden. And here we find Mr. Richard Penket acting as Warden.

 

            Another one of the five was to be "of the trade of Free Masonry." We know what respect was in those days paid to the distinction of ranks, so that the titles of Esquire and Gentleman were carefully observed, the former having the magic letters "Esq." affixed and the latter the letters "Mr." prefixed to his name, while the yeoman, merchant, or tradesman was entitled to neither, but was designated only by his simple name.

 

            "He who can live without manual labor," says an old heraldic authority, [1] "or can support himself as a gentleman without interfering in any mechanic employment, is called Mr. and may write himself Gentleman."

 

            As Ashmole was a distinguished herald and careful in observing the rules of precedency, we may safely conclude that "Mr. James Collier" and "Mr. Richard Sankey" were gentlemen and not professional Masons, while plain "Henry Littler, John Ellam and Hugh Brewer," who are recorded without the honorable prefix,, were only workmen "of the trade of Free Masonry."

 

            So far Ashmole had only been made a Free‑Mason; that is, been received as a member of the Craft.

 

            According to the regulations another step was necessary before he could be accepted into the freedom and fellowship of the Company.

 

            "No person shall hereafter be accepted a Free Mason," says the.

 

            New Articles, "until he hath brought a certificate of the time of his acceptance from the lodge that accepted him;" and further, that "every person who is now a Free Mason shall bring to the Master a note of his acception, to the end the same may be enrolled in such priority of place as the person shall deserve and to the end the whole Company and Fellows may the better know each other."

 

            And here is the way in which Ashmole obeyed this regulation, which was then in full force.

 

            He writes in his Diary, under the date of March 10, 1682, about five o'clock in the afternoon, as follows:

 

            "I received a summons to appear at a lodge to be held the next day at Masons Hall in London."

 

            On the next day, or March 11th, he writes as follows:

 

            "Accordingly I went and about noon was admitted into the fellowship of Free‑Masons by Sir William Wilson, Knight, Captain. Richard Borthwick, Mr. William Wodman, Mr. William Grey Mr. Samuel Taylor and Mr.       William Wise.

 

           

 

            [1] "Laws of Honour," P. 286.

 

            "I was the senior fellow among them (it being thirty‑five years since I was admitted) there was present besides myself the fellows afternamed. Mr.           Thomas Wise, Master of the Masons‑company this present year; Mr. Thomas Shorthose, Mr. Thomas Shadbolt, ‑ Waidsfford, Esq. Mr. Nicholas Young, Mr. John Shorthose, Mr. William Hamon, Mr. John Thompson, and Mr. William Stanton.

 

            "We all dined at the Half‑Moon Tavern in Cheapside, at a noble dinner prepared at the charge of the new‑accepted Masons."

 

            To many who have read these two extracts from Ashmole's Diary, the eminent antiquary has appeared to involve himself in a contradiction by first stating that he was made a Mason at Warrington in the year 1646, and aaerward that he was admitted into the fellowship of Free Masons in 1682.

 

            But there is really no contradiction in these statements.

 

            The New Articles in the Harleian MS. afford the true explanation, which is entirely satisfactory.

 

            In 1646, while Ashmole was on a visit to Lancashire, he was induced to become a Free Mason; that is, as a non‑professional member to unite himself with the Craft.

 

            This had been frequently done before by other distinguished men, and the regulations, which are not necessarily of the date of the manuscript, had provided for the admission or initiation of persons who were not workmen or professional Masons.

 

            A lodge for the purpose had been called at Warrington.

 

            Whether this was a permanent lodge that was there existing or whether it was only a temporary one called together and presided over by a Warden of that district is immaterial.

 

            The passage in the Diary throws no light on the question.

 

            It was, however, most probably a temporary lodge, called together by Warden Penket for the sole purpose of admitting Ashmole and Mainwaring, or making them Free Masons.

 

            The regulations authorized this act.

 

            The only restrictions were that there should be five Free Masons present, one of whom was to be a Master or Warden and another a workman of the Craft or Operative Mason.

 

            All these restrictions were duly observed in the admission of Ashmole and his companion.

 

            But this act, though it made him a Free Mason, did not admit him to a full fellowship in the Society.

 

            To accomplish this another step was necessary.

 

            As persons were often made in temporary or occasional lodge, which were dissolvect after they had performed the act of admitting new‑comers, for which sole purpose they had been organized, it was necessary that the person so admitted should present a certificate of the time when and the place where he had been admitted or accepted, to some superior officer, who is called in the regulations "the Master of that limit and division where such lodge was kept;" and who was probably the Master Mason who presided over the Craft, who lived and worked in that section of the kingdom, or perhaps also the Master of the permanent lodge, composed of all the Craft in that division which assembled at stated periods.

 

            This permanent lodge, to which all the Craft repaired, might have been called an "Assembly." If so that would account for the frequent use of the word "Assembly" in all the old manuscripts, to which every Mason was required to repair on due notice if it was within five or ten, or, as some say, within fifty miles of him.

 

            And this surmise will also explain the meaning of the regulation which says that no one, unless he produced a certificate of his previous acception, could be "admitted into any lodge or assembly," where the words "Lodge" and "Assembly" would seem to indicate two different kinds of Masonic congregation, the former referring to the lodges tenmporarily organized for special purposes, and the latter to the regular assemblage of Masons in a permanent body upon stated occasions and for the transaction of the general business of the Craft there congregated, and to which body the certificates were to be presented of those who had been accepted or initiated in the temporary lodge.

 

            But Ashmole did not at the time, or at any time soon after, present such a certificate to the Master of that limit in Lancashire that he had been made a Free Mason in a lodge at Warrington on October 16, 1646.

 

            If he had done so we may be sure that he would have mentioned the fact in his Diary, which is so excessively minute in its details as to frequently make a record of matters absurdly unimportant.

 

            Accordingly, though a Free Mason by virtue of his acceptance or making at Warrington, he was not admitted to the fellowship of the Craft, he was not "free of the Company," was not entitled to an entrance into any of its lodges or assemblies, nor could he take part in any of the proceedings of the sodality.

 

            He was a regularly made Free Mason, and that was all; he was in fact very much in the isolated position of those who are called "unaffiliated Masons" in the present day.

 

            He had received initiation but had not applied for membership.

 

            Thirty‑five years afterward Ashmole did what he had neglected to do before and perfected his relationship to the Craft.

 

            On March 11, 1682, he attended the meeting of a lodge held in Masons' Hall the place of meeting of the Masons' Company.

 

            The lodge was thus held under the sanction of that Company.

 

            Mr. William Wise, the Master of the Company, was present, but is not spoken of as one of the members of the lodge.

 

            The lodge consisted of Sir William Wilson and six others.

 

            As Wilson is mentioned first, we may presume that he was the Master.

 

            By these seven Ashmole and some others (who it seems paid the scot for a dinner eaten on the occasion) were "admitted into the fellowship of Free Masons."

 

            In 1646 he was made a Free Mason; in 1682 he was admitted to the fellowship of the Society.

 

            Thenceforth be became not only a Free Mason but an Accepted Mason; he was, in other words, by the ceremony performed at Masons' Hall, a "Free and Accepted Mason," and his name was enrolled in the parchment roll "kept for that purpose," that he and the company might "the better know each other."

 

            The account of the acceptance of Elias Ashmole, recorded by himself and therefore of the most undoubted authenticity, when thus interpreted, supplies us with nearly all the details which are necessary to understand the usages of the Craft in respect to initiations and admissions in the 17th century.

 

            They will be more fully analyzed at the close of the present chapter.

 

            But it will be necessary first to refer to another authority of great importance on the same subject.

 

            Robert Plott, who was the keeper of the Museum presented by Elias Ashmole to the University of Oxford, wrote, and in 1686 published, The Natural History of Staffordshire, in which work he gives an account of the Masonic customs prevailing at that time in the country.

 

            Plott was not a Free Mason.

 

            "The evidence of Dr. Plott is extremely valuable," says Oliver, "because it shows the existence of Lodges of Masons in Staffordshire and the practice of certain ceremonies of initiation in the 17th century in accordance with the regulations laid down in the manuscript Constitution whose authenticity is thus confirmed."

 

            Dr. Plott says that they had in Staffordshire a custom "of admitting men into the Society of Free Masons, that in the moorlands of this country seems to be of greater request than anywhere else, though I find the custom spread more or less all over the nation, for here I found persons of the most eminent quality, that did not disdain to be of this fellowship."

 

 

He then proceeds to relate and unfavorably to criticise the Legend of the Craft, which it is not necessary to quote.

 

            He afterward continues his account of the customs of the Masonic Society, in the following words:

 

            "Into which Society, when they are admitted, they call a meeting (or Lodg, as they term it in some places), which must consist at least, of five or six of the Ancients of the Order, whom the candidates present with gloves, and so likewise to their wives, and entertain with a collation, according to the custom of the place.

 

            This ended they proceed to the admission of them, which chiefly consists in the communication of certain secret signs, whereby they are known to one another all over the nation, by which means they have maintainance whither ever they travel; for if any man appear, though altogether unknown, that can show any of these signs to a fellow of the society, whom they othervise call an Accepted Mason, he is obliged, presently to come to him, from what company or place soever he be in; nay, though from the top of a steeple, what hazard or inconvenience soever he run, to know his pleasure and assist him; viz., if he want work he is bound to find him some; or if he can not do that to give him money or otherwise support him till work can be had, which is one of their articles; and it is another that they advise the Masters they work for, according to the best of their skill acquainting them with the goodness or badness of their materials; and if they be anyway out in the contrivance of the buildings, modestly to rectify them in it, that Masonry be not dishonoured; and many such like that are commonly known; but some others they have (to which they are sworn after their fashion) that none know but themselves."[1]

 

            There is another document of far more importance than those which have been cited, and which gives a more complete description of the usages of the Craft in the 17th century.

 

            I refer to the old record which has been designated as the Sloane MS. NO. 3329.

 

            [1] Plott, "Natural History of Staffordshire," chap. viii., p. 316.

 

            Of the three copies of the Constitutions which are preserved in the British Museum and known as the Sloane MS. the one numbered 3329 is by far the most valuable and interesting.

 

            A part of it was inserted by Mr. Findel in the Appendix to his History of Freemasonry.

 

            But the complete text was published by Bro. Hughan in the Voice of Masonry for October, 1872, and in the National Freemason for April, 1873.

 

            There has been some doubt about the exact date of the manuscript.

 

            Hughan thinks it was written between 1640 and 1700.

 

            Messrs. Bond and Sims, of the British Museum, experts in old manuscripts, suppose that its date is "probably of the beginning of the 18th century." Bro.

 

            Woodford mentions a great authority in manuscripts, but he does not give the name, who declares it to be previous to the middle of the 17th century.

 

            Finally, Findel thinks it originated at the end of the 17th century, and that "it was found among the papers which Dr. Plott left behind him on his death, and was one of the sources whence his communications on Freemasonry were derived."

 

            But if Plott used this manuscript in writing his article on Freemasonry, of which there is certainly very strong internal evidence, then the date of the manuscipt could not have been later than 1685, for he published his book in 1686, and it was most probably written some time before.

 

            We are safe then, I think, in assuming the middle of the 17th century as the approximate date of the Sloane MS.

 

            It differs from all the other manuscripts in containing neither the Ordinances nor the Legend of the Craft.

 

            It is simply a description of the Ritual of the Society of Operative Masons as practiced at the period when it was written, namely, as is conjectured, about the middle of the 17th century.

 

            From all these important documents ‑ the Harleian Constitutions, the Diary of Ashmole, the narrative of Dr. Plott, and the Sloane MS. ‑ collated with each other and confirming each other, we are enabled to form a very accurate notion of wilat were the usages of the Craft in the 17th century, and approximately in the 10th and 15th centuries.

 

            A careful analysis will lead to the following results:

 

            There was an incorporated Company of Masons, just as there were incorporated companies of other trades and crafts, such as the Mercers, the Drapers, the Carpenters, the Smiths, etc.

 

            As this Company had been originally chartered in 1410, it must have exercised its influence over the Craft from that carly period, and the early manuscript Constitutions were doubtless copies of its Guild Book of Laws and Records; but it is not mentioned by name in any of the manuscripts anterior to the middle of the 17th century.

 

            There is a frequent allusion to lodges as the place where Masters and Fellows worked, and there are references to an Assembly, which, from the language used, must have been a congregation of several Masters and Fellows.

 

            But there is no express recognition of the Company in any manuscript before the Harleian.

 

            From that time forth the Masons' Company seems to have constituted the head of the Craft in a certain district.

 

            There were several of these companies in different cities but the principal one was that at London.

 

            However or wherever a person was admitted as a Free Mason, he could only be considered as "Accepted" when he had reported the fact to some superior authority in the district where he had been made, whereupon his name was enrolled in a parchment book or roll.

 

            There were, besides these companies, lodges in various parts of the country.

 

            Some of these lodges, at least toward the close of the century, were permanent bodies.

 

            But many were merely extemporaneously organized for the purpose of initiating a candidate, who was afterward reported to the Master of the limit or division in which the lodge had been held.

 

            There was some ceremony, though a very brief one, at the time of admitting a newly made brother.

 

            There were secret signs and words, and an oath of secrecy and fidelity, but there are no documents extant to enable us to determine the nature of the ceremony of initiation.

 

            We have no evidence of the existence of any degrees of initiation.

 

            Indeed, Masonic scholars have now come very generally to the conclusion that what are called in the modern rituals the First, Second, and Third Degrees were the later invention of the Speculative Free Masons of the 18th century.

 

            But this subject will hereafter be discussed at length in a chapter exclusively devoted to its consideration.

 

            On the whole it will be readily seen that the sodalities of the Operative Masons of the 17th and preceding centuries were the germ which afterward was developed in the 18th century into the full fruit of Speculative Masonry.

 

            The Harleian Constitutions present us with the basis of the laws which still govern the institution, the Diary which details Ashmole's reception and Plott's narrative prove that many usages of the present day were in exitence at that period, and from the Sloane MS. we learn that certain points of esoteric instruction which prevailed in the 17th century have been incorporated, with necessary modifications of course, into the modern rituals.

 

            By comparing the Sloane document with the rituals that were published soon after the Revival, in 1717, and these again with those of the present day, we will be able to see how the later and perfected system has been gradually developed out of the primitive one of the middle of the 17th century, and we will be justified in believing that the same system was in existence at a much earlier period.

 

            Not only, then, is there no difficulty in tracing the connection between the lodges of Operative Masons which were existing before the year 1717 with those of the non‑operative Free Masons who, in that year, established the Grand Lodge of England, but it is absolutely impossible to exclude from our minds the conviction that there has been a regular and distinct progression by which the one became merged in the other.

 

            We have now arrived at that period in the history of English Freemasonry which brings us into direct contact with the events that immediately preceded and accompanied the organization of the Grand Lodge of England, or as it has been also called, the Revival of Masonry, in 1717.

 

            But before that subject can be discussed it will be necessary for us to return, in our historical inquiries, to the events connected with the transmission of Masonry in the sister kingdom of Scotland and afterward on the Continent of Europe, and more especially to the Traveling Freemasons, who came from Lombardy in the 10th century, and to the later organization of the Stonemasons of Germany, interesting and prolific subjects which will require several chapters for their treatment.

 

            P. 628

 

           
CHAPTER XIII

 

       EARLY MASONRY IN SCOTLAND

 

            WHAT the tradition of York is to the Freemasons of England, that of Kilwinning is to the Masons of Scotland.

 

            The story which traces the birth of the Order to the celebrated Abbey of Kilwinning was for many years accepted as the authentic history of Scottish Masonry.

 

            Thus Sir John Sinclair, in his Stalistical Account of Scotland, states that "a number of Freemasons came from the continent to build a monastery at Kilwinning and with them an architect or Master Mason to superintend and carry on the work.

 

            This architect resided at Kilwinning, and being a gude and true Mason, intimately acquainted with all the arts and parts of Masonry, known on the continent, was chosen Master of the meetings of the brethren all over Scotland.

 

            He gave rules for the conduct of the brethren at these meetings, and decided finally in appeals from all the other meetings or lodges in Scotland." [1]

 

            This tradition has been accepted by the author of Laurie's History, who says that "Freemasonry was introduced into Scotland by those architects who built the Abbey of Kilwinning." [2] He connects those architects with the trading association of artists who were engaged in the construction of religious buildings on the Continent, under the patronage of the Pope, and who provided builders for both England and Scotland.

 

            And he suggests as an evidence that Masonry was introduced into Scotland by these foreign workmen the fact that in a town in Scotland where there is an elegant abbey, he had "often heard that it was erected by a company of industrious men who spoke in a foreign langiiage and lived separately from the town's people."

 

            [1] Vol. xi., art. "Kilwinning."

 

            [2] "History of Freemasonry" p. 89.

 

            The Abbey of Kilwinning, which has been claimed as the birthplace of Masonry in Scotland, was situated in the town of the same name, and in the county of Ayr, on the southwestern coast of Scotland.

 

            It was founded by Hugh de Morville, High Constable of Scotland, in the year 1157. The abbey is now and bas long been in ruins, though what now remains of it attests, says Mr. Robert Wylie, who has written a History of the Mother Lodge, Kilwinning, "the zeal and opulence of its founder, and furnishes indubitable evidence, fragmentary as it is, of its having been one of the most splendid examples of Gothic art in Scotland."

 

            It is only very recently that anyone has attempted to deny the authenticity of the Legend which traces the introduction of Freemasonry into Scotland to the workmen who came over in the 12th century to construct the Abbey of Kilwinning.

 

            Bro. D. Murray Lyon has attacked the tradition, together with some others connected with Scottish Masonry, all of which he deems destitute of historical support.

 

            The tradition, however, like that of York among the English Masons, has not wanted its zealous supporters among the Scottish brethren, and more especially among the members of the Kilwinning, which claims to have a legitimate descent from the primitive lodge which was established in the 12th century by the foreign architect who settled in the town of Kilwinning.

 

            It has, however, been attempted to trace the introduction of the Order into Scotland to a much earlier period, and one writer, cited by Wylie with apparent approval says that Scotland can boast of many noble remains of the ancient Roman buildings which plainly evince that the Romans when they entered the country brought along with them some of their best designers and operative masons, who were employed in rearing those noble fabrics of which we can at this day trace the remains.

 

            And it is asserted that these Roman builders communicated to the natives and left behind them a predilection for and a knowledge of Masonry which have descended from them to the present generation. [1]

 

            It is very probable that more is here claimed than can be authenticated by history. The influences exerted upon English architecture by the Roman colleges of Masons is very patent, as has

 

            [1] Wylie, "History of the Mother Lodge, Kilwinning," P. 47.

 

been already shown.

 

            The Romans had been enabled to make for centuries a home in England, had introduced into it their arts of civilization, and made it in every respect a Roman colony.

 

            But Scotland had never been completely subjugated by the Roman arms; the incursions of the legions were altogether of a predatory nature, nor are there many evidences from Roman remains that the Roman artists had been enabled to make, or had even attempted to make, the same impression on the warlike Scots and Picts that they had been enabled to produce in the more docile and more easily civilized inhabitants of the southern part of the island.

 

            The theory which assigns the introduction of Freemasonry into Scotland to the workmen who came over from England or from the Continent in the 12th century, and erected the religious buildings at Kilwinning, Melrose, Glasgow, and other places, is a much more plausible one.

 

            The bodies of Traveling Freemasons were at that time in existence, and we know that they were perambulating the Continent and erecting ecclesiastical edifices; we know too that it that period there were corporations or guilds of Masons in England; and it is a very fair deduction from historical reasoning, though there be no historical records to confirm it, that the churches and abbeys which were erected in Scotland in the 12th and 13th centuries must have been the work of Freemasons who came partly from England and partly from the Continent.

 

            Bro. D. Murray Lyon, the Historian of the Lodge of Edinburgh, has said that "not the slightest vestige of authentic evidence has ever been adduced in support of the legends in regard to the time and place of the institution of the first Scotch Masonic Lodge." [1] This is, however, a merely local question affecting the claims to precedency on the roll of the Grand Lodge, and must not be mixed up with the question of the introduction of the Freemasons into Scotland as an organized society of builders.

 

            I can not consider it as quite aprocryphal to assign this to the time when religious establishments were patronized by King David I., which was toward the close of the 11th and the beginning of the 12th century.

 

            The Mother Kilwinning Lodge, at Kilwinning, the St. Mary's Chapel Lodge, at Edinburgh, and the Freemen St. John's, at Glasgow, have each preferred the claim that it is the oldest lodge in

 

            [1] "History of the Lodge of Edinburgh," p. 2.

 

Scotland. Each has its proofs and each has its adherents, and the controversy has at times waxed warm among the Scottish Masons.

 

            Yet, as I have already said, it is, as a matter of general history, of but little importance.

 

           

 

            We have seen that we are almost compelled to suppose that the institution of Masonry was introduced into Scotland by the builders who were encraged in the erection of religious houses from the 11th to the 13th centuries.

 

            We can not get over the belief that these builders formed a part of the fraternity which already existed in the Continent of Europe and in England, and who were then engaged in the same occupation of constructing cathedrals and monasteries.

 

            Knowing from other evidence what was the usage of these Traveling Freemasons, and that wherever they were engaged in the labors of their Craft they established lodges, we are again forced to the belief that in Scotland they followed the usages they had adopted elsewhere, and erected their lodges there also.

 

            Doubtless there is no authentic evidence that the modern lodges at Glasgow, at Kilwinning, and at Edinburgh were the legitimate and uninterrupted successors of those which were established by the Masons who were engaged in the construction of the Cathedral, the Abbey, and Holyrood; indeed it is very probable that they are not.

 

            Nor is there any historical material which will enable us to determine which of these primitive lodges was first established by the mediaeval builders.

 

            The probability is, as Bro. Lyon has suggested, that the erection of the earliest Scottish lodges was a nearlv simultaneous occurrence, as wherever a body of mediveval Masons were employed there also were the elements to constitute a lodge. [1]

 

            The facts, therefore, would appear to be that lodges must have existed in Scotland from the time when those edifices were being erected, and that the Freemasons who came over from the Continent to erect those edifices brought with them the Freemasonry of the Continent.

 

            We can not indeed prove these facts by historical records of undoubted authenticity, but we can advance no reason for denying or doubting their probability.

 

            Ascribing the first introduction of Freemasonry into Scotland

 

            [1] "History of the Lodge of Edinburgh," p. 242.

 

to the continental Masons, we have some evidence that at a later period there was a considerable influence exercised by England on Scottish Masonry.

 

            This is apparent from the fact that the Constitutions used in the Kilwinning Lodge, and in others established by it in the middle of the 17th century, and known as the "Edinburgh Kilwinning MS.," is a nearly exact copy of an English manuscript, and contains a charge to be "liegemen to the King of England, without treason or other falsehood."

 

            This manuscript, which was kept in the archives of the Kilwinning Lodge, and known, says Lyon, as "the old buck," was frequently copied, and the copies sold by the Lodge of Kilwinning to those lodges which had received charters from it.

 

            The fact that these Constitutions require allegiance to the King of England, that the legend which refers to the introduction of Masonry into Scotland and in subsequent expansion, dwells on the patronage extended to the Craft by the English Kings, and finally that the narrative contains no allusion to the Kilwinning or another Scottish legend, induce Brothers Hughan and Lyon to come to the conclusion that the manuscript was brought from England into Scotland, and that its adoption by the Kilwinning Lodge, and by those which were chartered by it, proves that the Masonry of England exercised in the middle of the 17th century a very great influence over that of Scotland, an influence which, as it will be seen, was still further exerted in after times in assimilating the rituals and ceremonial usages of the two countries.

 

            This English influence on Scotch lodges at so early a period is a fact of great importance in the history of Masonry.

 

            From it is to be presumed that there was a great intimacy and frequent communication between the Freemasons of the two countries.

 

            It is to be presumed also that there was a great similarity ‑ indeed, in many respects, an identity ‑ of usages in Scotland and England.

 

            Therefore we may with great safety apply what we know of the Masonry of one country to that of another, where we have no other knowledge but that which is derived from such a collation.

 

            Now, it is a well‑known fact that while the literature of English Masonry is exceedingly deficient in any authentic records of lodges which existed anterior to the Revival of 1717, the Scottish lodges have preserved original minutes or records of their proceedings as far back as the end of the 16th century.

 

            Lyon, in his History of the Lodge of Edinburgh, has torn away, with an unsparing and relentless hand, the meretricious garments which the imaginations of Anderson and Brewster (Lawrie's edition) had cast around the statute of Scottish Masonic history.

 

            It will not be safe in writing such a history to lose sight of the incisive criticism of Lyon and trust to the deceptive and fallacious authority of earlier historians.

 

            At the beginning of the 12th century, Masons had been imported into Scotland from Strasburg, in Germany, for the purpose of building Holyrood House; in the middle of the same century other Masons were engaged in erecting Kilwinning Abbey.

 

            From these epochs historians have been wont to date the origin of Scottish Masonry.

 

            We have no documents referring to that early period, but we know that King David I., who then reigned, was what Anderson would call a "great patron of Masonry," and that he nearly beggared the kingdom by the prodigality with which he invested its resources in the construction of religious edifices.

 

            But it is not until we reach the commencement of the 15th century that we begin to find any records which seem to indicate the existence of a craft or guild like that which we know at the same time existed in England.

 

            It is not asserted here that there were no lodges or guild meetings in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries. Judging from the condition of things in England at that time, we may conclude that guilds or lodges of Masons were in existence also in Scotland, but we have no documentary evidence of any authentic value to sustain the supposition.

 

            The first period in which Freemasonry in Scotland begins to assume an historic form is the beginning of the 15th century.

 

            James I. had been confined as prisoner in England from the year 1406 to 1424.

 

            During those eighteen years of his enforced absence, the kingdom had been greatly harassed by the contentions of what were called "leagues" or "bands" among the craftsmen of the different trades, including the Masons, and which might be compared to the modern trades‑unions and strikes.

 

            When James I. returned to Scotland, in 1424, he at once began to reform the abuses which had resulted from these illegal confederacies.

 

            He suppressed the "leagues," and instituted the office of "Deacon" or "Master‑man," as a method of preserving the community from the frauds of the crafts.

 

            For this purpose the "Deacons" were authorized, by act of Parliament, to regulate the works of all the crafts, to establish the rate of wages, and to punish any who should transgress the law.

 

            But these powers having been found to be in many instances oppressive to the people and an encroachment on the prerogatives of the municipal authorities, were, after a year's trial, abrogated, and a new class of officials was instituted, called "Wardens," one of whom was selected from each trade.

 

            These Wardens were not the representatives of the crafts, but had a greater affinity with the town‑councils of each burgh, whose prerogatives in regulating work and wages they exercised.

 

            Now the Masons who originally came to Scotland in the 12th century from the Continent and from England had enjoyed the privilege from the Pope of regulating their own concerns and prescribing their own wages.

 

            This privilege they must of course have communicated to their successors in Scotland, and it was there apparently exercised, up to and including the time of the institution of Deacons, under whom the trade and craft unions exercised the same prerogative.

 

           

 

           

 

            But when the Deaconship was abolished, and Wardens established as representatives of the municipal authorities, this right of regulating their own concerns was taken from the craft.

 

            To this there was naturally resistance, and Lyon tells us that "the Deacons continued holding meetings of their respective crafts, for the purpose doubtless of keeping alive the embers of discontent at their degraded portion and organizing the means for carrying on the struggle, not only to regain independence of action in trade affairs but also to acquire a political status in the country." [1]

 

            There is nothing in the history of the reigns of the two succeeding kings, James II. and III., that connects them with the Masonic fraternity.

 

            None of the acts of the Scottish Parliament, during these two reigns, has any special reference to the Craft of Masons.

 

            James III is said indeed to have had "a passionate attachment for magnificent buildings." Beyond this, says Lyon, "his name can not in any special degree be associated with Masons." But in truth, though documentary evidence of particular facts may be wanting, this attachment to magnificent edifices must have led the monarch

 

            [1] "History of the Lodge of Edinburgh," p. 3.

 

to have bestowed his patronage upon that fraternity whose duty it was to erect thern.

 

            Brewster (Lawrie's edition) has sought to give an importance to the reign of James II., by the statement that that monarch had invested the Earl of Orkney and Caithness with the dignity of "Grand Master" of the Masons of Scotland, and subsequently made the office hereditary in his heirs and successors in the barony of Roslin.

 

            This statement, long accepted by Masonic writers and by all the Masons of Scotland as a veritable fact, has been proved by more recent researches to be wholly unsupported by historic evidence and even to be contradicted by those authentic documents which are known as the "St. Clair Charters."

 

            There are two Charters bearing this name, which were once the property of Mr. Alexander Deuchar, and were purchased at the sale of his library by Dr. David Laing of the Signet Library, and exchanged by him for other documents with Professor Aytoun of the University of Edinburgh, who presented them to the Grand Lodge of Scotland, in whose archives they are still preserved.

 

            The manuscipts have been carefully examined, and their authenticity is without doubt.

 

            The date of the first of these Manuscripts is not given, but from internal and other evidence it seems presumable that it was written between the years 1600 and 1601.

 

            It is signed by William Schaw as "Master of Work" and by several Masons of Edinburgh and various towns in Scotland.

 

            It is unnecessary to give the text of the manuscript, as it has been printed by Lawrie, by Lyon, and by some others, but its substance may be cited as follows:

 

            It begins by stating that the Lords of Roslin have from "age to age" been patrons and protectors of the Masons of Scotland and of their privileges, and as such have been obeyed and acknowledged.

 

            That within a few years past this position has from sloth and negligence been allowed to go out of use, whereby the Lord of Roslin has been lying out of his just rights and the Craft been destitute of a patron and protector, and other evils have arisen; wherefore it goes on to say that, not being able to wait on the tedious and expensive courses of the ordinary courts, the signers, in behalf of all the Craft and with their consent, agree that William Sinclair of Roslin and his heirs shall obtain at the hands of the King liberty, freedom, and jurisdiction upon them and their successors, in all times to come, so that he shall be acknowledged by the Craft as their patron and judge under the King.

 

            The second charter, which purports to be issued by the Deacons, Masters, and Freemen of the Masons and Hammermen of Scotland, is supposed by Lyon, with good reason, to have been written in the year 1628.

 

            This document is confirmatory of the other, making the same statement of the recogniion of the Sinclairs of Roslin as patrons and protectors of the Scottish Craft, but adding an additional fact, which will hereafter be referred to.

 

            Upon this authority Brewster has said, in Lawrie's History, that King James II. had granted to William St. Clair, Earl of Orkney and Caithness, Baron of Roslin, the office of Grand Master, and made it hereditary to his heirs and successors in the barony of Roslin; and he adds that "the Barons of Roslyn, as hereditary Grand Masters of Scotland, held their principal annual meetings at Kilwinning."

 

            Anderson had previously asserted that James I. had instituted the office of Grand Master, who was to be chosen by the Grand Lodge, and this, he says, "is the tradition of the old Scottish Masons and found in their records."

 

            The language of Anderson shows that he was not acquainted with the St. Clair Charters, as they are called, because if he had seen them it is not likely that he would have omitted to take notice of the important point of hereditary occupation.

 

            But the authority of Anderson as an authentic historian is of so little value that we need not discuss the question whether any such tradition ever existed.

 

            The statement made in Lawrie's History is, however, professedly based on the authority of the St. Clair Charters.

 

            This statement has been impugned by James Maidment in his Genealogie of the Saint Clairs of Rosslyn, by Lyon in his History of the Lodge of Edinburgh, and by several other writers.

 

            As the statement made in Lawrie's work depends for its verity or its fallacy on the question whether these charters have been faithfully interpreted or not, it will be necessary in making the issue to investigate more particularly the express language which is used in these documents.

 

            The words of the first charter, literally translated from the Scottish dialect of the original, are as follows:

 

            "We, Deacons, Masters, and Freemen of the Masons within the realm of Scotland, with express consent and assent of William Schaw, Master of Work to our Sovereign Lord, forasmuch as from age to age it has been observed among us that the Lords of Roslin have ever been patrons and protectors of us and our privileges, likewise our predecessors have obeyed and acknowledged them as patrons and protectors, while through negligence and sloth the same has past out of use. . . . We, for ourselves and in the name of all our brethren and craftsmen, consent to the aforesaid agreement and consent that William St. Clair, now of Roslin, for himself and his heirs, shall purchase and obtain, at the hands of our Sovereign Lord, liberty, freedom, and jurisdiction upon us and our successors, in all times coming, as patrons and judges to us and all the professors of our craft within this realm, . . . so that hereafter we may acknowledge him and his heirs as our patron and judge under our Sovereign Lord, without appeal or declination from his judgment, and with power to the said William to deputize one or more judges under him, and to use such ample and large jurisdiction upon us and our successors, in town and in country, as it shall please our Sovereign Lord to grant to him and his heirs."

 

            The second charter is but a repetition of the statements of the first, with a few additional details which make it a longer document. It approves and confirms the former "letter of jurisdiction and liberty made and subscribed by our brethren and his highness,[1] formerly Master of Work for the time to the said William St. Clair of Roslin."

 

            There is, however, one statement not to be found in the first charter, and which is of much importance.

 

            It is stated that the St. Clairs of Roslin had letters of protection and of other rights which were "granted to them by his majesty's most noble progenitors of worthy memory, which, with sundry others of the Lord of Roslin's writings, were consumed and burnt in a flame of fire within the castle of Roslin in the year    .”

 

[1] Mr. Lyon objects to the opinion that Schaw was an Operative Mason and thinks that he was of higher social position and merely an honorary member of the Craft.

 

            If there were no other evidence to sustain Bro. Lyon in this view, the fact that the appellation of "highness," as here applied to him, would be sufficient to prove its accuracy.

 

            The last two words are "in an," evidently meaning "in anno," but being at the end of the line, the two last letters with the date have been apparently torn or worn off from the manuscript.

 

            We can from this only gather the fact that there was a tradition among the Scottish Masons that some one of the Kings of Scotland, previous to James VI., in whose reign the manuscript was undoubtedly written, had by letters patent granted to the Lords of Roslin the patronage and protection of the Craft in Scotland.

 

            Now, it is very evident that Brewster had no authority from these charters to make the statement that James II. had appointed the Barons of Roslin hereditary Grand Masters of Scotland.

 

            There is not the remotest allusion in either of these documents to the use of such a title.

 

            One of William Schaw's titles was "Chief Master of Masons," but that of "Grand Master" was never recognized in Scotland until one was elected in 1731 by the Grand Lodge of Edinburgh.

 

            But the charters do not themselves declare that the Sinclairs of Roslin had received any such appointment from the King.

 

            It is true that the second charter does refer to the fact that letters of protection had been granted by the predecessors of James VI., which letters were burnt in a fire that took place at Roslin Castle at a time the date of which has been lost.

 

            On this subject it has very properly been asked why was the fact of the burning of these papers not stated in the first charter; how is it that there is no certain knowledge of the year when this fire took place; and how was it that while all the other charters belonging to the house of Roslyn were preserved these alone were consumed by this fatal fire?

 

            When the last Roslin resigned in the year 1736 his hereditary rights as patron, he certainly did allude to the possibility that some King of Scotland may have granted a charter to his predecessors.

 

            But he expressly deignates those predecessors as William St. Clair and his son, Sir William, the very persons who are mentioned in the two charters as deriving their rights from the Masons in the beginning of the 17th century.

 

            But there is no evidence in his letter of resignation that he was at all acquainted with any charter granted by James II. to the Earls of Orkney and Barons of Roslin.

 

            On the whole, I think we may explain this story of the St. Clair Charters in the following way:

 

            At the beginning of the 17th century there was possibly a tradition, unsupported, however, by any historical evidence, that the St. Clairs of Roslin had been the hereditary patrons and protectors of the Craft of Masons in Scotland.

 

            In the year 1601, when William Schaw was the "Chief Mason" and "Master of the Work," the St. Clairs, if they had ever exercised their patronage and protection, had ceased to do so.

 

            The Masons needing at that time such a patron, designated William St. Clair as such, and to give a greater prestige to the position, either invented a tradition that the office had been hereditary in the family of the St. Clairs or repeated one that already existed.

 

            About thirty years afterward, the Masons of Scotland renewed and confirmed the appointment of Sir William St. Clair, the son of the one who had received the appointment in 1601.

 

            And now, in accordance with the unhappy method of treating Masonic documents which seems always to have prevailed whenever it was necessary to make a point, the writers of the second charter changed the tradition which in the first charter was to the effect that the Masons had always appointed the St. Clairs as their patrons, and asserted that the appointment had been given at an early period by one of the Scottish Kings.

 

            This was a falsification of the original tradition and must be rejected.

 

            It was, however, accepted by Sir David Brewster and bas until recently been recognized as a part of the authentic history of Scottish Masonry.

 

            I think there can be no doubt that the St. Clairs accepted the honorable position of patrons of Scotch Masonry which had been bestowed upon them in 1601 and retained the office until it was finally vacated in 1736 by William St. Clair, who resigned all claim or pretense that he had to any hereditary right to be "patron, protector, judge or Master of the Masons in Scotland." Upon this the Grand Lodge of Scotland, which had then been duly formed, first adopted for their presiding officer, under the influence of the example of the Grand Lodge of England, the title of " Grand Master" and elected St. Clair to the office.

 

            Looking back to the 12th century, when Kilwinning Abbey, Glasgow Cathedral, and Holyrood and other religious houses were built by Freemasons brought over from England and from the Continent, we are to suppose, for we are without documentary information, that the Masons of that and the succeeding centuries up to the end of the 16th century must have observed the usages and customs of the English and Continental Masons.

 

            In the reigns of James IV. and V., the statutes of Parliament show that there were continual controversies between the Masons and the public authorities, the former seeking to enlarge their privileges and the latter to restrict them.

 

            When Mary ascended the throne she found the Masons suffering under an act passed during the regency which suppressed the Deaconry, and which with previous ones that forbade their meetings in "private conventions" or framing statutes, seemed to have deprived the Masons of almost all their prerogatives.

 

            All these laws Queen Mary abolished, and granted letters under the Great Seal, which restored the office of Deacon, confirmed the Craft in the privilege of self‑government, in the observance of the customs and the exercise of the prerogatives which they had formerly enjoyed. [1]

 

            During the reign of James VI. we find a recognized connection between the Sovereign and the Craft; the office of Warden and that of Master of the Works, being made by the King's authority.

 

            It is at this period that we begin to find records or minutes of lodges and statutes well authenticated, by which we are enabled to form a correct judgment of the condition and the customs of the Craft in Scotland at that early period.

 

            In this respect Scotland has the advantage of England, where we find no authentic records of any lodge until the 18th century, while the first minutes of the Lodge of Edinburgh date back to the year 1598.

 

            A very fair analysis of the early minutes of the Scottish lodges, and especially of the Lodge of Edinburgh, has been given by Bro. D. Murray Lyon in his valuable history of that Lodge.

 

            Whoever expects to write a faithful history of Freemasonry in Scotland must depend on that work as almost the only source of authentic facts.

 

            As histories of the early period the imaginative illustrations of Anderson's, and of Lawrie's edition, are almost utterly valueless.

 

            The minutes of the Lodge of Edinburgh, or St. Mary's Chapel, extend from December 28, 1598, to November 29, 1869.

 

            They are

 

            [1] Lyon, "History of the Lodge of Edinburgh," p. 5.

 

           

 

contained in six volumes, which are in an excellent state of preservation, with comparatively very few omissions.

 

            The first and second volumes, which include the space of one hundred and sixty‑three years, that is, from 1598 to 1761, with a hiatus of only thirteen years, supply an ample store of authentic materials for early Scotch Masonic history.

 

            The first volume contains a copy of what are called "The Schaw Statutes," the earliest Constitutions extant of Scotch Freemasonry.

 

            The date of this document is December 28, 1598.

 

            They are entitled "The Statutes and Ordinances to be observed by all the Master Masons within this realm; set down by William Schaw, Master of Work to his Majesty and General Warden of the said Craft with the consent of the Masters hereafter specified." [1]

 

            Of these statutes, the most important for understanding the true condition and usages of the Masonic Craft of Scotland in the 17th century are the following:

 

            The first point intimates that the ordinances thereafter prescribed are but a continuation of those which had previously prevailed, but of these no copy is in existence.

 

            The second point requires them "to be true to one another, and to live charitably together." This is in exact accord with the guild spirit, to be found in all the old English Constitutions.

 

            The third enjoins obedience "to their Wardens, Deacons, and Masters in all things concerning their Craft."

 

            The fourth directs them to be honest, faithful, and diligent, and to deal uprightly with the Masters or owners of the work in whatsoever they shall take in hand.

 

            This is evidently a transcript from the English Constitutions.

 

            The fifth point prescribes that no one shall take in hand any work which he is not able duly to perform.

 

            This is the same as the regulation in the English Constitution, but the Schaw statutes direct the compensation that is to be made for an infraction of the rule.

 

            The sixth provides that no Master shall take another one's work from him, after the latter has made a contract with the owner

 

[1] In quoting from these statutes, from the minutes of lodges or any other documents, for the convenience of the English reader, the Scottish dialect of the originals has been translated into the vernacular, but with literal exactness. The object has been to impart the meaning, and not merely to preserve the original phraseology.

 

           

 

of the work (who in the English Constitutions is called "the lord") under a penalty of forty pounds.

 

            The seventh point is that none shall finish any work begun, and not completed by another, until the latter has received his pay for what he has done.

 

            The eighth point provides for the election by the Masters of every lodge of a Warden to take charge of the lodge, whose election is to be approved by the Warden‑General.

 

            The ninth point directs that no Master shall take more than three apprentices unless with the consent of the Wardens, Deacons, and Masters of the shriffalty (district) where the apprentice dwells.

 

            The tenth point is that no apprentice shall be taken for less than seven years, nor shall that apprentice be made a brother and fellow of the Craft until he has served seven years more after the expiration of his term of apprenticeship, unless by the special license of the Wardens, Deacons, and Masters assembled for that purpose, nor without a sufficient trial of his worthiness, qualifications, and skill.

 

            The eleventh point makes it unlawful for a Master to sell his apprentice to any other Master or to dispense with the years of his apprenticeship by selling them to the apprentice himself.

 

            The apprentice was to fulfil the full term of his servitude with his original Master.

 

            By the twelfth point the Master, when he received an apprentice, was to notify the fact to the Warden of the lodge, so that his name and the day of hs reception might be properly enrolled in the book of the lodge.

 

            The thirteenth point prescribed that the names of the apprentices should be enrolled in the order of the time of their reception.

 

            By the fourteenth point a Master or Fellow was to be received or admitted only in the presence of six Masters and two Entered Apprentices, the Warden of the lodge being one of the six; the time of the reception and the name and mark of the Master or Fellow were to be enrolled in the lodge book, together with the names of the six Masters and two apprentices who received him and the names of the "intendars" or persons chosen to give him instruction.

 

            Nor was he to be admitted without an "assay" or specimen of his work and a sufficient trial of his skill and worthiness.

 

            By the fifteenth no Master was to do any work under the charge or command of any other craftsman.

 

            The sixteenth strictly prohibited all work with cowans.

 

            The seventeenth forbade an apprentice to accept any work beyond a certain amount without the license of the Masters or Warden.

 

            By the eighteenth all disputes were to be referred for reconciliation to the Wardens or Deacons of the lodge.

 

            The nineteenth provided for the careful erection of scaffolds and footways so as to prevent any danger or injury to the workmen.

 

            By the twentieth apprentices who had ran away from their Masters were not to be received or employed by other Masters.

 

            The twenty‑first commended all the craftsmen to come to the meeting when duly warned of the time and place.

 

            The twenty‑second point required all Masters who were summoned to the Assembly to swear under "a great oath" not to conceal the wrongs or faults done to each other nor to the owners of the works on which they were employed.

 

            The twenty‑third and last point prescribed that all the fines and penalties inflicted for a violation of these ordinances should be collected by the Wardens, Deacons, and Masters of the lodges and distributed according to their judgment for pious uses.

 

            Bro. Lyon very properly suggests that this code of laws was applicable only to Operative Masons.

 

            This is certainly true, but so also were all the Constitutions of the English Craft and the Ordinances of the German and French Masons.

 

            Originally Freemasonry was an exclusively operative institution. But out of it grew the present Speculative system, in all these countries.

 

            To understand, then, the growth of the one out of the other, it is necessary to examine these constitutions and the minutes of the Operative lodges, of which lauer Scotland only supplies us with authentic mateials.

 

            The great resemblance between the statutes of Schaw and the early English Constitutions indicates very clearly the close connection that existed between the two bodies of craftsmen in these countries, and leaves us in no doubt that both derived their laws and their customs from a common source, namely, that body of architects and builders who sprang up out of the Roman Colleges of Artificers and in time passed over into the Traveling Freemasons of Lombardy, who disseminated their skill and the principles of their profession over all Europe and to its remotest islands.

 

            Having thus traced the rise of Masonry in Scotland to the builders who came over in the 12th century from the Continent, and perhaps from England, to be employed in the construction of religious houses at Kilwinning, at Glasgow, at Edinburgh, and other places, and having shown the condition of the Craft, so far as the great dearth of materials would permit, between that period and the year 1598, when the Schaw Statutes were enacted, we are next to inquire into the customs and usages of the Scottish Craft in the 17th century and until the organization of the Speculative Grand Lodge of Scotland in the year 1736.

 

            In performing a similar task in reference to the Masons of England, we were restricted for our sources of information to the manuscript Constitutions which could supply us only with logical deductions and suggestions, which made our narrative more a plausible conjecture than an absolute certainty.

 

            But in tracing the customs and usages of the Scottish Craft in the 17th century, we are enabled to take as guides the minutes of the Operative lodges which, unlike those of England, have been preserved from the early date of the last years of the 16th century, and which have been collected and published by Bro. D. Murray Lyon in his most valuable History of the Lodge of Edinburgh, a work to which, in the following chapter, I shall almost wholly confine myself for facts, though not always concurring in his views and deductions. The facts are incontrovertible and authentic ‑ the deductions, whether they be his or mine, may be erroneous, and their acceptance must be left to the reader's judgment.

 

            P. 645

 

           

 

           
CHAPTER XIV

 

       CUSTOMS OF THE SCOTTISH MASONS IN THE 17TH CENTURY

 

            THE Masons of the 10th century in Scotland appear to have been divided into two classes, the Incorporations and the Lodges.

 

            These, although not exactly similar to the Masons' Company and the lodges of England, may be considered as in some degree analogous.

 

            In 1475 the Mayor and Town Council of Edinburgh chartered the Incorporation of Masons and Wrights.

 

            In this body two Masons and two Wrights were selected and sworn to see that all work was properly done, to examine all new‑comers into the town who were seeking employment, to make the necessary regulations for the reception and govemment of apprentices, to settle disputes between the craftsmen, to bury the dead, and generally to make laws for the two trades of Masons and Wrights.

 

            Incorporations were also invested in Glasgow and other cities with the same prerogatives.

 

            Controversies repeatedly and naturally arose between these Incorporations and the Lodges with whose privileges and regulations they sought to interfere.

 

            But early in the 17th century the former ceased to exercise some of their offensive prerogatives, and especially that of receiving and admitting Fellows of the Mason's Craft.

 

            But as Lyon justly observes, the fact that Wrights were present with Masons at the passing of apprentices to the rank of Fellow, favors the opinion that the ceremony of passing was simply a testing of the candidate's fitness for employment as a journeyman.

 

            But the Incorporations were really extraneous bodies having their origin in the municipal spirit of interference.

 

            In investigating the Masonic usages and customs of the 17th century we must look really to the lodges and to what is suggested or developed of them in the Schaw and other statutes, and in the early minutes of the lodges that have been preserved.

 

            The assertion of Anderson, Preston, and other writers of the 18th century, as well as some of a later date, that there was from the earliest period a government of the Craft in England by a Grand Master has been proved to be wholly untenable.

 

            Something of the kind appears, however, to have prevailed in Scotland at least from the end of the 16th century.

 

            William Schaw, in his signature subscribed to the Statutes enacted by him, and in various records going back as far as 1583, calls himself, and is called, "the King's Master of Work." This is a very common title in the Middle Ages, but by no means indicated that the possessor of it was a Mason. The Majester Operis, or "Master of the Work," sometimes called the Majister Operum, or "Master of the Works," was an officer to whom was entrusted the superintendence of the public works.

 

            Sometimes, but not necessarily, he was an architect, and hence Anderson always calls these Masters of the Works Grand Masters, an error which has a very unfortunate effect in confusing true Masonic history.

 

            The office was a monastic one also, and in early times the monk who was made the Master of the Work superintended the Masons employed by the monastery in conducting repairs or erecting buildings.

 

            It does not, therefore, follow that Schaw was, from being called by this title, an Operative Mason.

 

            The evidence, though circumstantial, is the other way.

 

            Indeed, the office of King's Master of the Work was an old one in Scotland, and Schaw himself, in 1583, succeeded Sir Robert Drummond in the office.

 

            But, in 1600, as it appears from a minute of the Lodge of Edinburgh, he presided over a Masonic trial, and to do this he must have been a member of the Craft.

 

            He was, therefore, it is to be supposed, a non‑professional who was admitted to honorary membership, and he is only one instance among many of the adoption into the brotherhood of persons who were not Masons.

 

            But, in that minute, Schaw is described as "the principal Warden and Chief Master of Masons."

 

            Now, this title of "Principal Warden" is the same as that called in the Statutes of 1599 the "Lord Warden‑General." This office of Warden‑General, or General Warden, as it is also called, approaches nearer to the idea of a Grand Master than anything that we can find in Anderson's Constitutions in respect to the English Masons.

 

            The General Warden appears, according to the Scottish Statutes, to have been possessed of several important prerogatives. He had the power of calling the representatives of the lodges to a General Assembly; he enacted the statutes for the government of the Craft‑the election of Wardens in the particular lodges was to be submitted to him for his approval ‑ and he exercised a general supervision over all the lodges; in short, the General Warden was, in fact, though not in name, the Grand Master of the Masons in Scotland.

 

            There is some confusion about the names of the officers of the private lodges.

 

            In some instances we find the presiding officer called the Deacon, and in others the Warden.

 

            But it has been explained that the Warden was recognized as the head of the lodge in its relations with the General Warden, while the Deacon was the chief of the Masons in their incorporate capacity and also the head of the lodge.

 

            Sometimes both offices were united in the same person, who was then called "the Deacon of the Masons and the Warden of the lodge." As a general rule, however, the Warden appears to have been the presiding officer of the lodge, the custodian of its funds, and the dispenser of its charities.

 

            That he held a precedence over the Deacon is evident from the fact that when both are spoken of in a minute or in a regulation, the Warden is named before the Deacon.

 

            It is always "the Warden and Deacon," and never "the Deacon and Warden."

 

            Both officers were elected by the suffrages of the Master Masons of the lodge, and the election was held annually.

 

            In every lodge there were three classes of members: Masters, Fellows, and Apprentices; but it must be remarked that these were only three ranks, and that they do not by any means indicate that there were three degrees, in the sense in which that word is now understood.

 

            The Masters were those who undertook contracts for building and were responsible to their employers for the fidelity of the work; the Fellows were the journeymen who were employed by these Master‑builders; and the apprentices were those youths who were engaged, under the Masters, in acquiring a knowledge of their Craft.

 

            If there was a ceremonial of initiation or reception and an esoteric knowledge of certain arcana, that ceremony and that knowledge must have been common to and participated in by each of the three classes.

 

            Whatever was the Mason's secret the Apprentice knew it as well as the Master, for one of Schaw's regulations required that at the admission or reception of a Master or Fellow, there should be present besides six Masters, two Entered Apprentices, whence it is evident that nothing could have been imparted to the newly accepted Master that the Apprentice was not already in possession of.

 

            That the ceremony of initiation was in the 17th century a very simple one is very evident from the slight references to it in the minutes of the lodges.

 

            The Statutes of 1598 required it to be performed in the presence alike of Masters and Apprentices, which shows, as has already beeh said, that it was a ceremony common to both.

 

            It appears to have consisted principally of the impartation of what was called the "Mason Word," and a few secrets connected with it, which are called in one of the old minute books, "the secrets of the Mason Word." What these "secrets" were, it is now impossible to discover, but as it has been seen that the Scottish Craft customs were originally derived from the English and the Continental Freemasons it is most probable that the secrets of the Word and the ceremonies of initiation were much the same as those described in the Sloane MS., heretofore quoted as practiced by the English Masons, and those described by Findel as used by the German Masons in the 12th century.

 

            The Squaremen were companies of Wrights and Slaters in Scotland who were very intimately connected with the Masons, and who appear to have had, in many respects, a similarity, if not an identity, of customs.

 

            Now these Squareamen had a ceremony of initiation, a word which was called the "Squaremen's word" and secret methods of recognition.

 

            In the ceremony of initiation, which was called the "brithering," [1] the candidate was blindfolded and prepared in other ways; an oath of secrecy was administered, and after the performances, which were in a guarded chamber, were finished, a banquet was goven, the expenses of which were paid by the fee of initiation.

 

            The banquet was in fact so important a part of the ceremony of initiation among the Masons that special provision for it was made by Schaw, the Warden General, in the Statutes of 1598.

 

            Apprentices

 

[1] Jamieson defines the word to brither thus: "To unite into a society or Corporation sometimes by a very ludicrous process." ‑ "Dictionary of the Scottish Language " in voc.

 

           

 

were to pay on their admission six pounds to the "common banquet," and Fellow Crafts ten pounds.

 

            The Fellow Craft was also required to provide the lodge with ten shillings' worth of gloves.

 

            Nothing more conclusively proves the connection of the Scottish with the Continental Masons than this reference in the Statutes of the former to the article of gloves to be provided for the lodge. The use of gloves as a portion of the dress of an Operative Mason, is shown in early records to have been very common from early times on the Continent.

 

            M. Didron gives, in the Annales Archeologiques, several examples from old documents of the presentation to Masons and Stonecutters of gloves.

 

            Thus in 1381 the Chatelan of Vallaines bought a considerable quantity of gloves to be given to the workmen, and the reason assigned for the gift is that they might "Shield their hands from the stone and lime." In 1383 three dozen gloves were distributed to the Masons when they began the buildings at the Chartreuse of Dijon.

 

            At Amiens twenty‑two pairs of gloves were given to the Masons.

 

            The use of gloves seems to have been, among the different crafts, peculiar to the Masons, and their use is well explained as being intended for protection against the corrosive nature of the mortar which they were compelled to handle.

 

            When Operative was superseded by Speculative Masonry the use of this article of dress was not abandoned, and in the Continental lodges to this day, the candidate is required to present two pair of gloves to the lodge on the night of his initiation.

 

            But the explanation now made of their use is, of course, altogether symbolical.

 

            Another important ceremony connected with advancement to a higher rank in the fraternity was the production of the Essay or Trial piece.

 

            It was a very common custom among the early continental guilds to require of eveqr apprentice to any trade before he could be admitted to his freedom and the prerogatives of a journeyman, that he should present to the guild into which he sought membership, a piece of finished work as a specimen and a proof of his skill in the art in which hc had bccn instructed.

 

            This custom was adopted among the Scottish Masons, and when an apprentice had served his time of probation and was desirous of being advanced to the rank of a fellow or journeyman, he was required by the statutes to present an Essay or piece of work to prove his skill and competent knowledge of the trade.

 

            At first the privilege of inspecting and judging the character of this trial piece was intrusted to the lodge, but afterward it seems to have been taken from them and given to the Incorporations, who, however, resigned it early in the 17th century.

 

            When an Apprentice wished to become a Fellow, he applied to his lodge, which, in Edinburgh, referred him to the Incorporation of Masons and Wrights of St. Mary's Chapel.

 

            By that body the piece of work to be done was prescribed; Essay masters were appointed to attend the candidate and see that he did the work himself, and when it was done, it was submitted to the brethren, who by an open vote admitted or rejected the piece of work.

 

            Lyon very correctly finds a parallel to these Essay pieces of the Scottish Operative Masons, in the examinations for advancement from a lower to a higher degree, in the Speculative Lodges, but he is wrong in supposing that these tests for advancement were, in the "inflated language of the Masonic diplomas of the last century characterized as the 'wonderful trials' which the neophyte had had the 'fortitude to sustain' before attaining to the sublime degree of Master Mason."

 

            The "wonderful trials" thus referred to were not the examinations to which the neophyte had been subjected to test his proficiency in the preceding degrees, but were the actual ceremonies of initiation through which he had passed, and considering their severity in the continental lodges, it is hardly an "inflation of language," to speak of some fortitude being needed to sustain them.

 

            Annually both the Masters and the Fellows were required to renew their oath of fidelity and obedience to the brotherhood, and especially to take the obligation that they would not work with cowans.

 

            It was also provided by the statutes that yearly the Fellows and Apprentices should submit to an examination which should test their memory and knowledge of the principles of the art.

 

            Now as it would not have been fair to expect an Apprentice or Fellow to remember what he had never been taught, this regulation led to the introduction of a particular class of persons in the lodges who were called "intendars" or instructors, whose duty it was to instruct the newly admitted persons in the principles of the art.

 

            This custom, according to Lyon, still prevails in some of the Scottish lodges. In the United States, it is a very general usage at the present day to provide an Apprentice as soon as he has been initiated and a Fellow Craft when he has passed, with an instructor whose duty it is to drill him accurately in the lecture of the degree into which he has just been admitted, so that when he applies for advancement he may be enabled to answer the questions that will be asked, and thus prove that he has made "due proficiency."

 

            The transition of Operative into Speculative Masonry which took place soon after the beginning of the 18th century, is the most important portion of the history of the Institution.

 

            The gradual approaches to that condition in which the Operative element was wholly superseded by the Speculative, must therefore be regarded with great interest.

 

            These approaches are marked by the introduction of persons who were not professional Masons into the Operative lodges.

 

            Occasion has been had heretofore to speak of the reception by a lodge of Operative Masons at Warrington in England, of two gentlemen who certainly were not Operative Masons, namely, Colonel Mainwaring and Elias Ashmole.

 

            This event occurred in the year 1646, and it is the earliest record in England of the acceptance of a non‑professional member by a lodge of Operative Masons.

 

            It does not, however, follow because this reception is the first recorded that it was therefore the first that took place.

 

            On the contrary it is most probable that the custom of receiving non‑operative members was a very old one.

 

            It had, as we have seen, been practiced by the Roman Colleges of Artificers, and was by them propagated into the early Craft and Trade Guilds, and eventually imitated by the more modern Operative lodges.

 

            The practice still prevails in the London Livery Companies, which we know are the successors of the Trade Guilds of the Middle Ages.

 

            In Scotland the custom of admitting non‑operatives into the lodges has a much older record than that of England just referred to.

 

            A minute of the Lodge of Edinburgh of the date of June 8th, in the year 1600, a facsimile of which is given by Lyon, records the presence at the meeting of the lodge of William Boswell, Laird of Auchinlech.

 

            The meeting was called for the purpose of considering a penalty that had been imposed upon the Warden.

 

            The Laird of Auchinlech took a part in the deliberations, acquiesced in the decision at which the lodge arrived, and signed his name and affixed his mark to the minutes just as the Operative Masons did.

 

            There are abundance of other instances of the admission of noblemen and gentlemen as honorary members.

 

            The case already cited of Boswell proves conclusively that the practice existed before the close of the 16th century.

 

            If we had the records we might, I think, find many cases still earlier.

 

            In the admission of these "gentlemen masons," as they were sometimes called, the ceremonies of initiation, whatever they were, appear to have been the same as those practiced in the reception of operative members.

 

            As in the present day, and in Speculative Masonry, rank or condition secures no exemption.

 

            Several instances are recorded during the 17th century of brethren who were not operative Masons being elected to preside over lodges.

 

            Thus Elphingston, who was tutor of Airth and collector of the King's Customs, was in 1670 one of the Masters or Past Masters of the Lodge of Aberdeen.

 

            The Earl of Cassilis was, in 1672, chosen as Deacon or head of the Lodge of Kilwinning.

 

            He had been preceded in the same office by Sir Alexander Cunningham, in 1671, and by the Earl of Eglinton in 1670.

 

            In 1678 Lord William Cochrane, the son of the Earl of Dundonald, was elected Warden of the same lodge.

 

            All these appointments were merely honorary, and intended, it is to be presumed, to secure the patronage and influence of the noblemen or men of wealth and rank who were thus honored.

 

            They were not expected to perform any of the laborious duties of the office, for which task it is most probable that they were unfit.

 

            This, as Bro. Lyon observes, "may be inferred from the fact that when a nobleman or a laird was chosen to fill any of the offices named, deputies were elected from the operative members of the Kilwinning Lodge." [1]

 

            The relation of females to Freemasonry in Scotland during the 17th century is worthy of attention.

 

            It has already been seen that in one of the English Constitutions, when referring to the Charges, it is written that "one of the Elders taking the Booke and that he or shee that is to be made

 

            [1] "History of the Lodge of Edinburgh," p. 52.

 

a Mason shall lay their hands thereon and the charge shall be given."

 

            From this passage some persons have drawn the apparently natural inference that females were admitted.

 

            Bro. Hughan, in commenting on it, thinks that the manuscript being a copy from a much older one, the word "shee" was carelessly retained, and that it is only an evidence that females were admitted in the early Guilds, an historical fact that can not be denied.

 

            But he is not prepared to advocate the opinion that women were admitted into the Mysteries of Masonry.

 

            And he admits that the custom of the Guilds to admit women was gradually discontinued.

 

            As the passage quoted is found only in the York MS. of 1693, it is more reasonable to suppose that the word "shee" was a clerical error for "they." Hence we have no satisfactory evidence that women were connected with the Masonic lodges in England.

 

            But Bro. Lyon contends that the obligation of the apprentice to protect the interests of his "dame," which is mentioned in the same manuscript, would indicate that it was lawful at that time in England for females, as employers, to execute the work of Masons.

 

            This statement derives probability from the fact that at that time, in Scotland, the widows and daughters of freemen Masons were, under certain restrictions, permitted to exercise the privilege of burgesses in executing Mason's work.

 

            Lyon cites a minute of the Ayr Squaremen Incorporation of the date of 1628, which enacts that every freeman's daughter shall pay for her freedom the sum of eight pounds.

 

            But it is clear that if a fine was imposed for the freedom, there must have been a privilege accompanying it, which could have been nothing other than the right to do a freeman's work.

 

            The Lodge of Edinburgh, in 1683, recognized this privilege and qualified it by certain restrictions.

 

            It was then enacted that a widow should not undertake work or employ journeymen herself, but might have the benefit of the work under the favor of some freeman "by whose advice and concurrence the work shall be undertaken and the journeymen agreed with."

 

            It is apparent from these two minutes that, from 1628 to 1683 women, the widows or daughters of masons, were in the habit of employing journeymen to do work given to them by the patrons of their husbands or fathers.

 

            But this custom, growing into an evil, in time the females acting independently and assuming the position and exercising the prerogatives of Master Masons, the Lodge of Edinburgh found it necessary at length to correct the abuse and to restrict the privilege by compelling the females to undertake the work and employ the journeymen under the direction of a Master Mason, who, acting for the widow, discharged the duties without receiving compensation (which was strictly prohibited) and gave her the profits.

 

            Another usage of the Scottish Masons in the 17th century was that of opening the lodge with prayer.

 

            There is no record of the existence of such a usage in England, although it is highly probable that the same practice prevailed in both countries, since Freemasonry being a later institution in Scotland, we have seen that it derived many of its customs from the sister kingdom.

 

            The use of prayer as an introductory ceremony has always been practiced in the English speculative lodges, and combining this with the fact now known that it was observed by the Scottish operatives, we have an additional reason for believing that it was a usage among the English operative masons of the 17th and earlier centuries.

 

            Bro. Lyon says that in opening with prayer, the Lodge of Edinburgh "followed an example which had been set in the ancient Constitutions of the English Masons which open and close with prayer." Here our generally accurate historian appears to have fallen into an error in confounding the form of composition adopted in writing a manuscript with that of opening a lodge, two things evidently very distinct.

 

            It is of course admitted that all of the old English Constitutions commence with a religious invocation, and that they end either with a prayer for help or an imprecatory formula like the condition of an oath to keep the statutes.

 

            But in a careful examination of all these Constitutions from the Halliwell MS. to the Papworth MS., that is from the first to the last, I have failed to find any regulation or article which prescribes that the business of a lodge shall be preceded by prayer.

 

            The only regulation that has a religious bearing is the one that prescribes a reverence for God and Holy Church and the avoidance of heresy or error.

 

            That it was the practice of the early English operative lodges to open and closc with prayer, is an opinion founded wholly on conjecture, but for the reasons already assigned, the conjecture appears to be a plausible one.

 

            But the use of prayer in the Scottish lodges of the 17th century is not conjectural, but is proved by actual records, and Bro. Lyon, in his invaluable work, to which I have been almost wholly indebted for the facts in the present and the preceding chapter, supplies us with two forms of prayers, one "to be said at the convening," and the other "to be said before dismissing." Both are extracted from the minute‑books of Mary's Chapel Incorporation for the year 1699, and it will be interesting to compare them with the oldest English formula, namely, that given by Preston.

 

            The first of these, or the prayer at the opening of the lodge, is in the following words:

 

            "O Lord, we most humblie beseech thee to be present with us in mercy, and to bless our meeting and haill (whole) exercise which wee now have in hand. O Lord, enlighten our understandings and direct our hearts and mynds, so with thy good Spirit, that wee may frame all our purposes and conclusions to the glory of thy name and the welfare of our Brethren; and therefore O Lord, let no partiall respect, neither of freed (enmity) nor favour, draw us out of the right way.

 

            But grant that we may ever so frame all our purposes and conclusions to the glory of thy name and the welfare of our Brethren.

 

            Grant these things, O Lord, unto us, and what else thou sees more necessarie for us, and that only for the love of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, our alone Lord and Saviour; To whom, with thee, O Father, and the blessed Spirit of Grace, wee render all praise, honor and glory, for ever and ever, Amen."

 

            The second prayer, or that used at the dismission or closing of the lodge, is as follows:

 

            "O Lord, wee most humbly acknowledge thy goodnesse in meeting with us together at this tyme, to confer upon a present condition of this world. O Lord, make us also study heaven and heavenly myndednesse, that we may get our souls for a prey.

 

            And O Lord, be with us and accompany us the rest of this day, now and forever, Amen."

 

            The importance of this record of prayers at opening and closing in the Scottish lodges, is that it adds great force to the conjecture that a similar custom prevailed in the English lodges at the same period.

 

 

            The statement made by the biographer of Wrenn and quoted by Findel, that the mediaeval Masons of England commenced their labor each day at sunise by a prayer, the Master taking his station in the East and the Brethren forming in a half circle around him, is a mere tradition.

 

            There is the want of a contemporary record.

 

            But the fact that there is such a record, absolutely authentic in the minutes of a Scottish lodge of the period, throws necessarily an air of great probability upon the tradition.

 

            That the record of the Scottish lodge is a minute made in the last year but one of the 17th century does not necessarily lead to the inference that the custom had just then begun.

 

            The record is more likely, when there is no evidence to the contrary, to have been that of a custom long previously in existence than of one that has just then been adopted.

 

            So we may fairly conclude that it was the usage of the Scottish lodges of the 17th century to open and close their meetings with prayer, a usage that we have reason to infer was also practiced by the English lodges of the same period.

 

            The last of the Scottish Masonic customs to which it is necessary to refer is that of the use of Marks, instead of, or sometimes as supplemented to, the written signature.

 

            This is an interesting subject and claims a very careful and thorough consideration.

 

            The presence of certain figures chiselled on the stones of a building has been remarked by travelers as occurring in almost all countries where architecture had made any progress and at very early epochs.

 

            It has been remarked by Mr. Ainsworth, an oriental traveler, that he found among some ruins in Mesopotamia that "every stone, not only in the chief building but in the walls and bastions and other public monuments, when not defaced by time, is marked with a character which is for the most part either a Chaldean letter or numeral."

 

            On the floor of a tomb at Agra, in India, it was found that every stone was inscribed with a peculiar mark chiseled upon it by the workman.

 

            Copies of over sixty of these marks were given in 1865 by a writer in the London Freemasons' Quarterly Review.

 

            In an interesting work on Architecture by Mr. George Godwin, [1] the author, referring to the Freemasons of the Middle Ages, makes the following remarks:

 

            "Several years ago my attention was led to the fact that many of our ancient buildings exhibited on the face of the walls, both inside and outside, marks of a peculiar character on the face of the Stones which were evidently the work of the original builders; and it occurred to me that if examined and compared they might serve to throw light upon these bands of operatives. I made a large collection of them in England, France, Belgium and Germany, some of which were published in the Archaeologia.

 

            These are simply the marks made by the Masons to identify their work; but it is curious to find them exactly the same in different countries and descending from early times to the present day; for in parts of Germany and Scotland tables of marks are still preserved in the lodges, and one is given to the (practical) mason on taking up his freedom.

 

            He cuts it, however, on the bed of the stone now instead of on its face.

 

            The marks are usually two or three inches long."

 

            These marks were, it is evident, prescribed by the Masters or Superintendents of the buildings in process of construction to be used by the workmen, so that each one's work might be identified when censure or approval was to be awarded.

 

            It was a measure of precaution, and the employment of marks is no evidence, unless the mark itself is of a purely Masonic character, that the workmen who used them were Freemasons.

 

            At first, it seems from the observations of Mr. Ainsworth, they were merely letters or numbers.

 

            Afterward those found at Agra were principally astronomical or mathematical. But when used by organized bands of Freemasons we find among these marks such symbols as the hour‑glass, the pentalpha, and the square and compasses.

 

            When the Freemasons followed the precautionary system of the ordinary stonecutters and adopted the use of marks, they gave, most generally, a symbolic character to them, though sometimes they made use of monograms of their names.

 

            M. Didron, who discovered these marks at Spire, Worms, Strasburg, Rheims, Basle, and several other places, and who made a report of his investigations to the Historical Committee of Arts and

 

[1] "History in Ruins; a Handbook of Architecture for the Unlearned." By George Godwin, F.R.S., London, 1858.

 

           

 

Sciences of Paris, believed that he could discover in them reference to distinct schools or lodges of Masons.

 

            He divides them into two classes, those of the overseers and those of the men who worked the stones.

 

            The marks of the first class consist of monogrammatic characters, while those of the second are of the nature of symbols, such as shoes, trowels, and mallets.

 

            It is possible that something like this distinction is to be found in the old Scottish marks.

 

            Of the 91 marks, copies of which are given infacsimile by Bro. Lyon as taken from the minute‑book of the Lodge of Edinburgh, 16 are evidently monograms, such as GI, ME, AL, VH, NI, etc., while the remaining 75 are symbols, principally the cross in various forms, the triangle, the hour‑glass, represented by two triangles joined at their apices, the pentalpha, etc.

 

            In one instance the monogram and the symbol are combined, where David Salmon adopts as his mark a fish or salmon, with the head in the form of the Delta or Greek letter equivalent to D.

 

            There was undoubtedly a distinction of monogrammatic and symbolic marks, but whether Didron's idea that they belonged to two different classes of workmen is correct or not, it is impossible positively to ascertain.

 

            Bro. Lyon, however, affirms that "in regard to the arrangement of Marks into distinctive classes, one for Apprentices, one for Fellow Crafts, and a third for Foremen ‑ the practice of the Lodge of Edinburgh, or that of Kilwinning, as far as can be learned from their records, was never in harmony with the teachings of tradition on that point."

 

            It has been supposed the degree now called the "Mark Master's Degree" was originally manufactured by some ritual mongers toward the close of the last century and attached as a supernumerary degree to the Ancient and Accepted or Scottish Rite.

 

            I have in my possession the original charter granted in 1802 by the Grand Council of Princes of Jerusalem, of Charleston, S.C., to American Eagle Mark Lodge No. 1. [1] When Thomas Smith Webb was establishing his new system he incorporated the Mark degree in his ritual