Note: This material was scanned into text files for the sole purpose of convenient electronic research. This material is NOT intended as a reproduction of the original volumes. However close the material is to becoming a reproduced work, it should ONLY be regarded as a textual reference. Scanned at Phoenixmasonry by Ralph W. Omholt, PM in May 2007.
THE GENESIS
OF FREEMASONRY
AN ACCOUNT OF THE RISE AND
DEVELOPMENT OF FREEMASONRY IN ITS
OPERATIVE, ACCEPTED, AND EARLY
SPECULATIVE PHASES
BY
DOUGLAS KNOOP,
M.A., HON.A.R.I.B.A.
Professor of Economics in the University of Sheffield P.M. Quatuor Coronati Lodge, No. 2076, London AND
G. P. JONES, M.A., LITT.D.
Reader in Economic History in the University of Sheffield
Published by Q.C. Correspondence Circle Ltd.
in association with Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 20'76
London 1978
ã 1978 Q.C. Correspondence Circle Ltd.
First published by Manchester University Press 1947,
reprinted 1978
PREFACE
WE make no apology for adding yet another book to the vast mass of Masonic literature; but we should like to offer two explanations.
In the first place, whereas it has been customary to think of Masonic history as something entirely apart from ordinary history, and as calling for, and justifying, special treatment, we think of it as a branch of social history, as the study of a particular social institution and of the ideas underlying that institution, to be investigated and written in exactly the same way as the history of other social institutions.
In the second place, it is now some sixty years since Gould's History of Freemasonry made its appearance, and more than thirty since Begemann's volumes on early English, Irish and Scottish masonry were published in Germany.
The ensuing years have seen not only much new material brought to light, and old material examined from new angles, but have revealed the existence of various unsolved problems, mostly concerning the practices prevailing among freemasons at different periods, which were formerly regarded as outside the scope of Masonic history.
We feel, therefore, that, as frequently happens in other branches of history, the time has come to endeavour to re‑write the history of freemasonry in its earlier phases.
We realise that such re‑writing cannot be definitive in character, but can see no reason why serious students of masonry should not have available, in one volume of reasonable size, a continuous and connected account of the rise and development of freemasonry, in place of the sectional studies at present scattered over a large number of separate publications.
Taking our Short History of Freemasonry to 1730, published in i 940, as a basis, we have greatly amplified it, made some necessary corrections, and provided detailed references. We have paved the way for this fuller approach to the subject by editing in 1943 and 1945, in conjunction with our colleague, Douglas Hamer, two volumes of documents
otherwise not easily available, The Early Masonic Catechisms and Early Masonic Pamphlets, thus doing away with the need for an appendix of illustrative documents. As there can be no question of printing a complete bibliography, we prefer to print none, and to allow the numerous references in text and footnotes to serve instead.
We do, however, append a bibliographical note on Masonic bibliographies and on collections of Masonic documents.
Some of the information incorporated in this volume was originally published in papers or articles contributed by us to firs Quatuor Coronatorum, Economic History, the Economic History Review, the Yournal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, the Transactions of the Anglesey Antiquarian Society and Miscellanea Latomorum, and we have to thank the editors of these publications for allowing us to make such use as we desired of those papers and articles.
We desire to record a deep obligation to our colleague Douglas Hamer, Lecturer in English Literature, for valuable advice and criticism on numerous points, and especially in connection with the legends of the Craft and the Enter'd 'Prentices Song. Without his present help and past collaboration many parts of this book, and especially Chapter IV, would have been very much poorer.
We desire also to thank our colleague A. G. Pool for reading the proofs and Mr. H. M. McKechnie, Secretary of the University Press, for his continued advice and assistance.
D. K.
G. P. J.
THE UNIVERSITY,
SHEFFIELD.
October, 1946
Vi
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
LIST OF ABBREVIATED REFERENCES …………………….ix
I THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF MASONIC HISTORY ……………………. I
II THE MEDIEVAL BUILDING INDUSTRY ……………………………………..17
III THE ORGANISATION OF MASONS IN THE MIDDLE AGES …………..36
IV THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS OF MASONRY ……………………………. 62
V THE MASON WORD …………………………………………………..……… 87
VI THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION ………………………………………….108
VII THE ERA OF ACCEPTED MASONRY …………………………………..129
VIII THE FORMATION OF GRAND LODGE ……………………………………159
IX THE EARLY DAYS OF GRAND LODGE …………………………………….. 186
X THE ORIGINS OF MASONIC CEREMONIES ……………………………………
204
XI THE DEVELOPMENT OF CRAFT WORKING ……………………………….
227
XII THE TRIGRADAL SYSTEM ………………………………………………..
259
XIII THE ROYAL ARCH ………………………………………………………….274
XIV EARLY EIGHTEENTH‑CENTURY MASONIC TRENDS …………………. 294
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE ………………………………………………………..325
INDEX ……………………………………………………. 327
LIST OF ABBREVIATED REFERENCES
A.Q.C. . . Ars Quatuor Coronatorum [Transactions of the
Quatuor Coronati Lodge, No. 2076, London].
B. and C. . . D. Knoop and G. P. Jones, "Castle Building at
Beaumaris and Caernarvon in the early fourteenth
century", A.Q.C., xlv (1932).
Bolsover . D. Knoop and G. P. Jones, "The Bolsover Castle Building Account, 1613", A.Q.C., xlix (1936).
Briggs M. S. Briggs, The Architect in History, 1927.
Caem. Hib. W. J. Chetwode Crawley, ed., Caementaria Hibernica, 1895‑1900.
Conder . E. Conder, The Hole Craft and Fellowship of Masons, 1894.
Contractor D. Knoop and G. P. Jones, "The Rise of the Mason Contractor", 7.R.I.B‑4., October x936.
Ec. Hist.. Economic History, a supplement to The Economic Yournal.
Ec. H. R. The Economic History Review.
E.M.C. . D. Knoop, G. P. Jones and D. Hamer, eds., The Early Masonic Catechisms, 1943
E.M.P. . D. Knoop, G. P. Jones and D. Hamer, eds., Early Masonic Pamphlets, 1945
Eton D. Knoop and G. P. Jones, "The Building of Eton College, 1442‑146o", A.Q.C., xlvi (1933).
Gotch J. A. Gotch, Inigo Tones, 1928.
Gould R. F. Gould, The History of Freemasonry, 1882‑7.
J.R.I.B.A. Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
L.B. D. Knoop and G. P. Jones, "London Bridge and its Builders", A.Q.C., xlvii (1934)
Leics. Reprints . Masonic Reprints [of the Lodge of Research, No. 2429, Leicester].
Lepper and Crossle . J. H. Lepper and P. Crossle, History of the Grand Lodge of Ireland, 1925.
L.M. D. Knoop and G. P. Jones, The London Mason in the Seventeenth Century, 193 5.
Lyon D. Murray Lyon, History of the Lodge of Edinburgh (Tercentenary Edition), igoo.
Manc. Trans. . Transactions of the Manchester Association for Masonic Research.
Miller A. L. Miller, Notes on ... The Lodge, Aberdeen, jeer [1920].
Misc. Lat. Miscellanea Latomorum.
M.M. D. Knoop and G. P. Jones, The Mediaeval Mason, 1933 LIST OF ABBREVIATED REFERENCES
O.E.D. . Oxford English Dictionary.
Poole and Worts H. Poole and F. R. Worts, eds., The "Yorkshire" Old Charges of Masons, 1935
Q.C.A. . Quatuor Coronatorum Xntigrapha [Masonic Reprints of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, No. 2076, London].
Quarry D. Knoop and G. P. Jones, "The English Medieval Quarry", Ec. H. R., November 1938.
Raine J. Raine, ed., Fabric Rolls of York Minster, Surtees SOc., Vol. 35, 1858.
Robbins . A. F. Robbins, "The Earliest Years of English Organized Freemasonry", 14.Q.C., xxii (1909).
Rutton W. L. Rutton, "Sandgate Castle, A.D. 1539‑1540", ‑4rchaeologia Cantiana, xx (1893).
Scott Hew Scott, Fasti Ecclesiae Scotianae, new ed.,1917.
S.M. D. Knoop and G. P. Jones, The Scottish Mason and the Mason Word, 1939,
Two MSS. D. Knoop, G. P. Jones and D. Hamer, eds., The Two Earliest Masonic MSS., 1938.
Willis and Clark R. Willis and J. W. Clark, Architectural History of the University of Cambridge, 1886.
V.R. D. Knoop and G. P. Jones, "The First Three Years of the Building of Vale Royal Abbey, 12781280",.I.Q.C., xliv (193x).
XYI C.M. D. Knoop and G. P. Jones, "The Sixteenth Century Mason ", 14.Q.C., 1 (1937).
Yevele D. Knoop and G. P. Jones, "Henry Yevele and his Associates", J.R.I.B..4., May 1935.
CHAPTER I
THE SCOPE AND METHOD OF
MASONIC HISTORY
SCHOOLS OF MASONIC HISTORY
IN the course of time the scope of Masonic history has undergone great changes. So far as we know, the first attempts to write Masonic history were made in the fourteenth century, and resulted in the accounts of the Craft which, in the Regius Poem, the Cooke MS., and in other versions of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry,' were passed on to freemasons of later times. The motives underlying these early versions of the history of freemasonry can only be conjectured. The purpose may have been to provide the masons with something resembling the charters, or records of privileges, possessed by craft gilds at that time. Or possibly some clergyman, or other relatively learned person connected with the building industry, out of interest in the mason's craft and a desire to show how ancient and honourable it was, may have compiled its history. The results, whatever the motive, cannot be taken very seriously to‑day; but the compilers probably did their best according to the standards of their time, basing their accounts mainly upon scriptural and such other received authorities as were directly or indirectly known to them.
In these accounts masonry was treated as equivalent to geometry, one of the seven liberal arts, and as a consequence Euclid was a leading character in the story.
The narratives bring the history of masonry down to the reign of Athelstan (925‑4o) and must, we believe, be regarded as myths.
' We refer to all Masonic manuscripts by their conventional Masonic names, the origin of which we discuss in our paper, "The Nomenclature of Masonic MSS.", fI.Q.C., liv (1941). The MS. Constitutions of Masonry form the subject of Chapter IV of this book.
In 1721, if we accept his own account, Grand Lodge ordered the Rev. James Anderson to `digest' the old `Gothic' Constitutions in a new and better method,' and he accordingly revised, elaborated and brought up to date the legendary matter of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry. Anderson may be presumed to have had much better opportunities to write Masonic history than his fourteenth‑century predecessors, but his performance, viewed in relation to those opportunities, is poorer than that of the despised medieval compilers. His anachronisms, e.g., in making Nebuchadnezzar `Grand Master Mason', and the Emperor Augustus 'Grand‑Master of the Lodge at Rome',2 are as absurd as anything in the MS. Constitutions of Masonry. The effect of the Renaissance is evident in Anderson's preference for the Palladian style in architecture, but he did not apparently bring much classical learning to bear on his subject, and as a humanist he does not shine in comparison, for instance, with the anonymous author of A Defence of Masonry, 1730.[3]
Despite his contempt for the `Gothic' Constitutions, he is himself very uncritical, and his picture of the development of building and architecture is a strange mixture of fact and fiction. It is certainly not a history of freemasonry in the sense of describing the organisation prevailing from time to time among freemasons. Although written in 1722, and published in 1723, it does not even mention the establishment of Grand Lodge in 1717, though it does imply the existence of Grand Lodge by referring in
[1] Constitutions of 1738, 113. The New Book of the Constitutions of the Antient and Honourable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons ... By James Asnderson, D.D. London ... 1738 is the second edition of the Book of Constitutions. It is reproduced in facsimile in Q.C.1?., vii (189o), with introduction by W. J. Hughan. It is commonly known as Anderson's Constitutions of 1738.
[2] The Constitutions of the Free‑Masons ... London ... 1723, 16, 25. The editor's name is not on the title page, but among the names appended to the Approbation (pp. 73‑ó) appears against Lodge XVII: "James Anderson, A.M. The Author of this Book. Master."
This is the first edition of the Book of Constitutions; it was reproduced in facsimile by Quaritch in 1923, with an introduction by Lionel Vibert. It is commonly known as Anderson's Constitutions of 1723.
[3] E.M.C., 16o.
one very lengthy sentence' to "Our Present Worthy Grand‑Master ... John Duke of Montague" [G.M. 1721‑2]. On the other hand, it deals with events as recent as 1721, such as the laying of the foundation stone of the Church of St. Martin's in the Fields.
Even in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the so‑called "history" of masonry embodied in the MS. Constitutions of Masonry and subsequently in Anderson's Constitutions of 1723, had its critics. Dr. Robert Plot, the antiquary, in his Natural History of Staffordshire, published in 1686, stigmatised the history of masonry, as contained in a version of the MS. Constitutions, as false and incoherent; 2 the Briscoe pamphlet of 1724,3 The Free‑Masons decusation and Defence, 1726,4 fln Ode to the Grand Khaibar, 1726,5 and a letter of `A. Z.' in The Daily journal of S September 1730,6 poked fun at contemporary versions of Masonic history and ridiculed the idea of any connection between modern freemasonry and King Solomon. The critics at that period, however, were greatly in the minority, and Anderson's version of Masonic history was accepted by the premier Grand Lodge and incorporated in all the eighteenth century editions of its Book of Constitutions.
It was followed 1 We quote the sentence (Constitutions of 1723, ó7‑8) as a specimen of Anderson's involved and verbose style: And now the Freeborn BRITISH NATIONS, disintangled from foreign and civil Wars, and enjoying the good Fruits of Peace and Liberty, having of late much indulg'd their happy Genius for Masonry of every sort, and reviv'd the drooping Lodges of London, this fair Metropolis flourisheth, as well as other Parts, with several worthy particular Lodges, that have a quarterly Communication, and an annual grand .4.ssemhly, wherein the Forms and Usages of the most ancient and worshipful Fraternity was wisely propagated, and the Royal flrt duly cultivated, and the Cement oú the Brotherhood preserv'd; so that the whole Body resembles a well built 14rch; several Noblemen and Gentlemen of the best Rank, with Clergymen and learned Scholars of most Professions and Denominations, having frankly join'd and submitted to take the Charges, and to wear the Badges of a Free and flccepted Mason, under our present worthy Grand‑Master, the most noble PRINCE John Duke of MONTAGUE.
s E.M.P., 33 s The Secret History of the Free‑Masons ... London: Printed for Sam Briscoe . . . (17241, commonly known as the Briscoe pamphlet.
E.M.P., I20.
4 E.M.P., 169‑70.
5 Ibid., 191.
6 Ibid., 233.
3
closely by William Preston (1742‑1818) in his Illustrations of Masonry, which ran through seventeen editions between 1772 and 1861, some of the later ones being edited by the Rev. George Oliver (1782‑1867), another disciple of Anderson. At a subsequent date, these writers were described as belonging to the imaginative or mythical school of Masonic historians.
It was against such writers as these and some of their opponents that Henry Hallam, more than a century ago, directed part of his well‑known gibe that "the curious subject of freemasonry" had been treated "only by panegyrists or calumniators, both equally mendacious".
The pioneer of a new and more scientific study of the subject was a German doctor, George Moss (1787‑1854), whose Geschichte der Freimaurerei in England, Irland and Schottland was published in 184'7. The work of another German Masonic student, J. G. Findel (i 828‑i 9o5), is much better known in England than that of Moss, because an English translation of Findel's History of Freemasonry, 1861, was published in 1865.
In the course of the next decade or two, A. F. A. Woodford (1821‑87), R. F. Gould (1836‑i 9 i 5), W. J. Hughan (1841‑1911) in England, D. Murray Lyon (1819‑1903) in Scotland, Albert G. Mackey (180'7‑81) in America, and William Begemann (1843‑1914) in Germany were working along similar lines. These writers are generally regarded as leaders of the socalled authentic or verified school, named in contrast with the former mythical or imaginative school. The two schools, however, are not as antithetical as is sometimes implied.
Actually, the imaginative school did not consist of writers utterly careless as to their facts; nor ought the verification of facts, which is characteristic of the authentic school, to be considered sufficient in itself, and as excluding all need of imagination.
Imagination as a substitute for facts is useless; as a guide to facts it may be invaluable. Unfortunately, the proper function of the imagination in the writing of history is not always understood by Masonic students. Even to‑day there are still some writers who, whilst claiming to submit themselves to the ordinary canons of historical research by taking no fact
4
for granted until proved, appear to have a secret hankering after the old imaginative treatment of Masonic history. The earlier history of practically all institutions of the last thousand years or so is more or less shrouded in uncertainty. This is true, for example, of the history of central and local government, of land tenure, and of the gild system. No one can reasonably expect a detailed or continuous treatment of the evolution of some particular institution in its earlier phases. Historians realise the lacunae and seek to fill them by searching for new facts. In Masonic history there are many gaps and obscurities, not only in medieval times, but in relatively modern times, such as the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, for which record material might well be found, if only diligent search were made.
Instead, however, of seeking new facts to help to fill the gaps, some present‑day Masonic writers draw upon their imaginations to paint a full picture of the development of freemasonry, of which only the bare outlines have a factual basis. These writers may best be described as belonging to a neo‑imaginative school. It was probably such writers that Mr. John Saltmarsh had in mind when, as recently as 1937, he described Masonic history as "a department of history which is not only obscure and highly controversial, but by ill luck the happiest of all hunting grounds for the light‑headed, the fanciful, the altogether unscholarly and the lunatic fringe of the British Museum Reading Room".' One weakness of the members of all these different schools is that they seldom, if ever, clearly define the subject‑matter of their studies; the reader is left to form his own opinion as to what any particular author has in mind by the term `masonry' or `freemasonry'. And there can be little or no question that different writers have not always the same thing in mind, and that this, partly at least, accounts for the very conflicting views held by Masonic students concerning the rise and development of freemasonry.
If the very common method of defining a subject by reference to its principal function or functions is applied to freemasonry, then it would almost necessarily 1 Ec. H. R., Nov. 1937, p. 103.
5
appear to follow that a definition will be adopted which is not universally true, i.e., one which does not apply at all periods and in all places, because in the course of time, and in the course of transmission from one country to another, the main motifs of freemasonry have changed.
THE MOTIFS OF FREEMASONRY
In the early eighteenth century, `conviviality' appears to have been a prominent characteristic of the lodges; there were many convivial societies at that period in this country, all inclined to convert the means of innocent refreshment into intemperance and excess. In the opinion of some Masonic students, e.g., G. W. Speth, first secretary of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, and a very sound writer, freemasons' lodges were probably not very different from the generality of contemporary convivial societies.' In 1722, freemasons had the doubtful honour of a special inclusion in an English version of a French book, The Praise of Drunkenness,2 in which the fifteenth chapter treats "Of Free Masons and other learned Men, that used to get drunk". There is some reason for thinking that the translator‑editor was a freemason, which suggests that drunkenness was regarded as but a venial sin. Francis Drake, the York antiquary, was certainly a freemason when, as junior Grand Warden of the Grand Lodge of All England at York, he delivered a speech in 1726, in which he drew attention to "the pernicious custom of drinking too deep which we of our nation too much indulge", and added "I wish I could not say, that I have frequently observed it in our own Most Amicable Brotherhood".$ Eighteenth‑century Masonic gatherings being associated with the drinking of many toasts, and no clear‑cut distinction between lodge ceremonies and after‑proceedings having as yet developed,a the convivial aspect of freemasonry probably continued very much to the fore until the end of the century or even later.
"Q.Q.C., vii, 173.
2 E.M.P., io8.
$ Ibid., Zoo‑1.
a Cf. H. Poole, "Masonic Song and Verse of the Eighteenth Century", Q.Q.C., xl, 7‑18, and G. Norman, "Notes on the Working of a Lodge about t76o", Maw. Tranr., xxvi, 27‑32.
6 SCOPE AND METHOD OF MASONIC HISTORY
Though Francis Drake drew attention to the excessive consumption of alcohol among freemasons, he also, like his contemporary, Edward Oakley,' another leading freemason of the 1720s, commended the giving of lectures in lodge, more particularly on architecture or geometry. So also a few years later did William Smith, editor of the first Pocket Companion and of The Book M.3 Drake goes so far as to state that he is credibly informed that in most lodges in London and several other parts of the Kingdom, a lecture on some point of geometry or architecture is given at every meeting;3 but according to William Smith such lectures were only occasional. This is confirmed by a Dutch official proclamation of 1735 relating to an English lodge of freemasons recently established at The Hague, which states that "it is in no way to be supposed that the study of architecture is the sole or principal object of their meetings".4 According to Martin Clare, a prominent freemason of the 1730s, the principal motive for first entering into, and then propagating, the Craft is `good conversation'.r, The Address in which his observations are contained was translated into French and German, and would doubtless make a strong appeal to German masons, who always showed a special interest in the philosophical side of freemasonry.
During the second half of the eighteenth century much attention was directed to Masonic symbolism. Wellins Calcott, in his Candid Disquisition of the Principles and Practices of... Free and f4ccepted Masons, 1769, was probably the first writer to endeavour to explain the symbols of the Craft, a subject more fully discussed by William Hutchinson in his Spirit of Masonry, 1775. Hutchinson has been termed by Woodford s the father of Masonic 1 See his Speech of 31 December 1728, E.M. P., 210.
a See p. 138 below.
For facilities to consult R Pocket Companion for Free‑Masons (London, 1735) and The Book M (Newcastle‑upon‑Tyne, 1736) we are indebted to the Hallamshire College S.R.I.A. and the Provincial G.L. of Yorkshire W.R.
3 E.M.P., 207.
Ibid., 3336 See his Address of 11 December 1735, Ibid., 327.
Kenning's Cyclopaedia of Freemasonry, 323 7 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY symbolism.
Dr. Oliver 1 describes Hutchinson's book as the first efficient attempt to explain the true philosophy of masonry, there represented as a Christian institution which should be open only to those who believe in the doctrine of the Holy Trinity.z Though many of Hutchinson's views cannot be accepted, his work undoubtedly did much to elevate freemasonry and to direct attention to, and probably to extend the use of, Masonic symbolism, which, to judge by the surviving documents, played little or no part in operative masonry in the Middle Ages, or in Accepted Masonry in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Though the Regius Poem of circa 1390 is full of moral precepts, and the Cooke MS. of circa 1 q. i o rather less so, in neither of these early manuscripts, nor in the later versions of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry, those peculiarly Masonic documents written about masons for masons, is there any sort of symbolism based on the mason's tools. Likewise, in the re‑arranged and greatly elaborated Masonic ritual which appears to have been associated with the first ten or twenty years following the establishment of Grand Lodge in 1717, only very slight traces of symbolism are to be found.$ So long as lodges were mainly convivial societies, or institutions for discussing architecture and geometry, there could be little scope for symbolism.
That would not arise until freemasonry had become primarily a system of morality.
Since the Middle Ages, the MS. Constitutions of Masonry had contained in the Articles and Points, or Charges General and Singular, a code of industrial and moral conduct. In so far as the accepted masons made use of versions of the MS. Constitutions in their ceremonies of admitting new members, as they almost certainly did, then presumably the Charges General and Singular were read or recited to 1 Preface to the 1843 edition of The Spirit of Masonry.
2 His views being what they were, and completely in conflict with the First Charge of all editions of the Book of Constitutions since it was first published in 1723, it is somewhat surprising to find that the book was issued with the official approbation of the Grand Master and Grand Officers of the year. Cf. pp. ISO‑i below.
3 See E.M.C., passim, and pp. 134‑5 below.
SCOPE AND METHOD OF MASONIC HISTORY
candidates, although most of the precepts contained in the MS. Constitutions were inapplicable to men who were not working masons, or seeking to become such. As during the eighteenth century a new ritual of admission was gradually evolved by the accepted' or by the early speculative masons, largely out of the somewhat crude usages and phrases associated before the end of the seventeenth century with the giving of the Mason Word in Scotland (a subject discussed in Chapter X below), there was elaborated a new and wider moral code, which gradually came to be taught largely by means of symbols. At the same time, the old moral precepts, embodied in the MS. Constitutions of Masonry, were mainly eliminated from the ceremonies and, in part at least, transferred, with or without modification, to the Book of Constitutions, where they still appear under the heading "The Charges of a Free‑Mason". It was almost certainly not until the second half of the eighteenth century that freemasonry had become so modified in character that it could justly be defined as a peculiar system of morality, veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols.
Of the motifs of freemasonry which have characterised the Craft at different periods, the only one apparently which has been associated with it for centuries, as far back, in fact, as the period when the earliest surviving versions of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry, the Regius and Cooke MSS. of circa 1400, were copied, is the inculcation of morality. The morality in question has never been in any sense a complete code of moral conduct, still less a religion, as being concerned with what is essential for salvation. In the course of generations, the moral precepts of freemasonry, and the relation of freemasonry to existing religions, have undergone very considerable changes.
Consequently, the subject is capable of being treated historically, but, in our opinion, a student of the rise and development of freemasonry, working on the basis of the definition that freemasonry is a system of morality, is almost certain to go astray, because of confusion with the fuller and more usual definition, which states that the morality is illustrated by symbols. As already indicated, symbolism is a comparatively late introduction into the Craft.
9 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY
Symbolism, per se, has undoubtedly had a very long history, but not, according to the surviving evidence, in connection with freemasonry. The mere fact that symbolism is of considerable antiquity, and that teachers at an early date made use of the mason's tools to inculcate moral lessons, is no evidence that masons themselves moralised upon their tools. A present‑day Masonic student who asserts that they did, is simply reading into sixteenth ‑ and seventeenth ‑ century masonry ideas which, at a later date, prevailed in the Craft. So far as we are aware, there is no evidence whatsoever that operative masons ever moralised upon their working tools, or that accepted or speculative masons did so prior to the eighteenth century.
DEFINITIONS OF FREEMASONRY
Were a writer who adopted the definition of freemasonry as a system of morality to adhere rigidly to his view, his study would consist mainly in tracing the changes in the moral truths inculcated and in the relation of freemasonry to existing religions. We touch upon some aspects of this subject in Chapter VIII, but it is only one relatively small problem in the rise and development of freemasonry.
A much more comprehensive and universally true definition of the subject is called for, if an adequate picture of the genesis of the Craft is to be given.
It is partly over the question of the definition of freemasonry that a new school of Masonic historians, which is now emerging, differs from the older authentic school. Members of the authentic school concerned themselves almost exclusively with the development of organisation among freemasons, an unduly narrow conception, in our opinion, of the scope of the subject.
They may further be criticised for their premature attempt at finality.
We are convinced that until much more evidence is available there can be no question of writing a definitive history of freemasonry, such as Begemann attempted.
In reviewing his work in I.Q.C., liii, we pointed out (1) that large fields of knowledge concerning masonry are but slightly explored ; (ii) that there is a possibility of new discoveries of important Masonic documents, such as the Edinburgh Register House
10 SCOPE AND METHOD OF MASONIC HISTORY
MS. and the Graham MS.; (iii) that opinions regarding the scope of the subject and the method of approach are apt to change. The evidence on most problems of Masonic history is incomplete, and consequently Masonic history is necessarily, in part at least, provisional in character. We endeavour, in the course of this volume, to formulate working hypotheses to relate the established facts, more especially regarding the origins and evolution of Masonic ceremonies, but we should be the first to admit and to stress that our conclusions are purely tentative, based on the evidence at present available.
The most satisfactory definition of freemasonry from the Masonic historian's point of view would appear to be the organisation and practices which have from time to time prevailed among medieval working masons and their `operative' and `speculative' successors, from the earliest date from which such organisation is traceable down to the present time. We have already drawn attention to some of the changes which have occurred in course of time in the ideas underlying freemasonry, but there remains to be emphasised the all‑important problem of continuity. In discussing the genesis of freemasonry, it is not sufficient to show that freemasons had an organisation in the Middle Ages and that they enjoy an organisation to‑day; it is essential to be able to show that such medieval institution and the modern are indissolubly connected in historical development.
In Europe in the Middle Ages and early modern times there was more than one organisation of masons.
Thus we find the corps de metiers and later the compagnonnages in France; a supposed company of mason-architects in Italy; the Steinmetzen in Germany and Austria; gilds in Flanders; lodges and incorporations in Scotland; `assemblies' and later craft gilds and companies in England.
Of these various organisations, it is only the early Scottish and English ones which can be shown to have a definite connection with modern freemasonry, and much of this book is devoted to tracing that connection. Chapter III, in which the organisation of masons in the Middle Ages is discussed, though primarily devoted to conditions in England and Scotland, contains brief accounts II THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY
of the continental organisations, from some, if not all, of which Masonic students have from time to time sought to derive modern freemasonry, though in each case the evidence of continuity is lacking.
A further problem connected with the scope of Masonic history is the exact meaning to be attached to the word `freemason'. In older records the terms commonly used were the Latin words cementarius and lathomus,l or occasionally lapicida,z and the Norman‑French word masoun.3 Cementarius was the word in almost universal use in the thirteenth and earlier centuries, and in frequent use at a later date. Latomus is found in the London municipal records as early as 1281,4 but was most widely used in the fifteenth century.
Masoun, in the form mazon, occurs as early as the twelfth century,' but was perhaps used most frequently in the fourteenth. In the York Minster Masons' ordinances of 1370,8 which were written in English, the word used is "masonn" [? Msoun].
The first occurrence known to us of the word `freemason' is in the City of London Letter‑Book H., under date of 9 August 1376,' when the Common Council was elected from the mysteries instead of from the wards: an entry showing Thos. Wrek and John Lesnes as "fre masons" is struck out and replaced by another showing Wrek, Lesnes and two others as "masons". From this time onwards the word `freemason' occurs in various documents,$ though never as frequently as `mason'. In the two earliest versions of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry, the Regius and Cooke MSS. of circa 1400, the word used is always `mason', the term `freemason' not occurring at all.
At Norwich in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, twelve freemen were admitted under the description "freemason", eleven under the description "roughmason", and 135 under the des 1 M.M., 82.
2 Bateson, Records of Leicester, ii, 158.
3 M.M., 82.
4 Cal. Letter‑Book B., 9.
' Pipe Roll, 1x65‑6.
e Raine, 18 r.
7 See photographic reproduction, f4.Q.C., li (1938), following p. 136.
8 See W. J. Williams, "The Use of the word `Freemason' before 1717", ,I.Q.C., xlviii (1935)ò
I2 SCOPE AND METHOD OF MASONIC HISTORY
cription "mason".'
Of thirty‑two sixteenth‑century building accounts which we have examined, twenty contain the word `mason' and twelve the word `freemason'.z The words `mason' and `freemason' appear to have been largely interchangeable. Thus in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we find the same men, e.g., John Marwe of Norwich, 3 John Croxton of London,4 and Gabriel Coldham of London,b sometimes described as `mason' and sometimes as `freemason'. It may further be noted that the London organisation of the trade is, in its own muniments, called a company sometimes of masons and sometimes of freemasons s Similar, though later, associations at Newcastle, Norwich, Lincoln, Kendal, Ludlow, Canterbury and Exeter were officially known as companies of masons; those at Oxford, Durham, Gateshead, Alnwick and Bristol were called companies of freemasons .7
In some cases, however, the word `mason' was used in a wider sense than `freemason' to include all stoneworkers,8 whereas the term `freemason' in early building documents would appear to be contrasted with `roughmason', or with `layer' (itself commonly equivalent to roughmason), or with `hardhewer' (concerned with the preparation of the hardstone of Kent).e In sixteenth‑century building accounts `freemason' signifies hewer or setter of freestone,1o a usage which in our opinion explains the adjective free in `freemason'.
In this matter we follow Wyatt Papworth, the well‑known architectural writer, Dr. G. G. Coulton and Prof. Hamilton Thompson, two distinguished scholars, and Dr. W. Begemann, the German philologist and Masonic historian, in believing that the freemason, like the marbler 1 J. L'Estrange, Calendar of Freemen of Norwich. z See our XYI C.M.
3 R. Howlett, "Fabric Roll of Norwich Guildhall x4xo‑x I", Norf. ‑4rch., xv, 176; G. W. Daynes, "A Masonic Contract of n.D. 1432", d.Q.C., xxxv (x922) 37.
4 Cal. Letter‑Book K., 250, 257, 276, 3x4. s XYI C.M., 199.
e See W. J. Williams, "Masons and the City of London", 14.Q.C., xlv (1932), passim.
? M.M., 229‑33; Misc. Lat., xix, 129.
8 XYI C.M., x98.
s M.M., 85.
1░ XYI C.M., 199.
13 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY
who worked in marble and the alabasterer who worked in alabaster, was so called as a rule from the material in which he worked, namely, freestone. Freestone' is any finegrained sandstone or limestone that can be freely worked in any direction and sawn with a toothed saw,2 as, for example, the tractable limestones found in a belt stretching from Dorset to the Yorkshire coast. This was the stone par excellence for carving and undercutting; and the freemason was one who carried out the finer work possible only in freestone.
It may be significant that in Scotland, where there is little or none of it,2 `freemason', as a trade name, does not appear to have been current.
This explanation of `freemason' is strengthened by the actual occurrence of the term `freestone mason'. In Latin we find sculptores lapidum liberorum mentioned in London in 1212,4 and a magister lathomus liberarum petrarum at Oxford s in 1391.
The Anglo‑French equivalent, mestre mason de franche peer, occurs in the Statute of Labourers of 1351.
In English, `freestone masons' alternates with 'freemasons' in the early seventeenth‑century Wadham College building accounts; e and both terms were used also in the Christ's College, Cambridge, accounts of the early eighteenth century, to describe the famous contractor, Robert Grumbold.7 The term `freestone mason' also occurs in Norwich church accounts of 1638 and 1652.8 Secondly as corroborative evidence of a trade appellation derived from the material used, we may cite `hardhewer', designating a worker in the hard and stubborn stone of Kent.
Thirdly, it may be pointed out ‑that `freemason' has its opposite in `roughmason' or `rowmason', used to describe layers (even bricklayers) who, when they shaped stone, did so only roughly with axe or scappling hammer.
1 Translation of Old French franche pore, where the adjective means "of excellent quality" (O.E.D.).
2 J. Watson, British and Foreign Building Stones, 9.
s SM., 73‑4‑
4 London Assize of Wages, x212. s H. E. Salter, Med. Zrch. of the Univ. of Oxford, 22.
e llrch. 7., viii, 390.
1 Willis and Clark, passim.
8 Records of the church of St. Peter, Mancroft, Norwich, Norf. Zntij. Misc., ii, pt. ii, quoted by Daynes,ll.Q.G., xliii, 223 14 SCOPE AND METHOD OF MASONIC HISTORY Mention may also be made of other explanations of the adjective free which have been advanced by various writers: it may indicate either status in a municipality or company (as in freeman of London) or freedom from feudal serfdom. The adjective may occasionally have been used in one or other of these senses. It should be noted, however, that a great number of masons could hardly be counted free of a company.
Also, though the Fourth Article of the Regius and Cooke MSS. of circa 1400 laid it down that an apprentice should not be of bond blood, and though the migratory character of the mason's trade meant by the fourteenth century that he could hardly be bound to the soil of the manor, yet his calling was in earlier times not incompatible with servile status.' Finally, if `freemason' in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries commonly referred to an operative mason engaged in hewing or setting freestone, nevertheless a new meaning of the term was creeping in during the seventeenth century. Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, wrote in 1646 that he had been made a "Free Mason", and in 1682 that he had attended a lodge at Masons' Hall, London, when certain persons, later referred to as new‑accepted masons, were admitted into the "Fellowship of Free Masons' '.2 In 1686, Dr. Robert Plot, the antiquary, wrote about the "Society of Free‑Masons", a fellow of which, he informs us, was called an "accepted mason".3 In 1686, John Aubrey, another antiquary, wrote about the "Fraternity of FreeMasons", whom he describes also as "adopted masons" and "accepted masons".4 In 1688, Randle Holme III, the Chester genealogist and antiquary, described himself as a member of that "Society called Free‑Masons".s
An anti‑Masonic leaflet of 1698, warning people against "those called Freed Masons", was probably directed against men who were not operative masons c ' M.M., 108.
2 E.M.P., 40‑1.
3Ibid., 3r, 32.
4 Bodl. Aubrey MS. 2, pt. ii, fo. 73, reproduced in facsimile in .4.Q.C., xi, facing page r o.
s E.M.P., 34 5 Ibid., 3 5; and I.Q.C., Iv, 15 2.
THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY THE METHODS OF MASONIC HISTORY We differ from members of the authentic school regarding not only the scope of Masonic history but also the method of approach. Present‑day students are disposed to employ both analytical and comparative methods, whereas the authentic school was mainly descriptive in its methods, and inclined to regard Masonic developments in each country in isolation. W. J. Songhurst's approach to the problem of the origin of the Royal Arch,' and R. J. Meekren's study of the Aitchison's Haven Lodge minutes, with a view to proving the early existence of two degrees,a may be quoted as good examples of the analytical method. The attempts we have made to trace the connection between Scottish operative and English accepted masonry,3 and to co‑ordinate English and Irish experience in order to throw light on Masonic development in the later seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries 4 are illustrations of the com parative method.
In this volume we make use of both the analytical and the comparative methods.
1 A.Q.C., xxxii, pp. 34‑5.
See also p. 292 below.
s A.Q.C., liii, p. 147.
See also p. 95 n. below.
3 A.Q.C., li, 2I I; lv, 296‑7, 3I6‑I8.
See also Chap. X below. 4 .4.Q‑C., Iv, 5‑7, 13‑1 5. See also Chap. XI below.
16 CHAPTER II THE MEDIEVAL BUILDING INDUSTRY THE BUILDING ARTS IN EARLY ENGLAND EARLY medieval building in this country differed greatly from that of to‑day.
The main materials were wood and clay; the artisans engaged were consequently carpenters and daubers, not masons and brick :
layers.
The Britons and Scots were apparently unfamiliar with stone building involving the use of squared stone and mortar.' This art was probably introduced by the Church, and at first presumably required the importation of craftsmen from the Continent. Certainly Benedict Biscop, soon after the founding of Wearmouth Abbey in 674, sought in Gaul for craftsmen to build a stone church ti
in the Roman style 2
St. Wilfred, too, who died in 709, '
is said by a twelfth‑century chronicler to have brought masons from Rome to build his church.3
Other instances of stone building in pre‑Norman England are recorded thus Bede 4 (675‑735) mentions stone churches at Lastingham and Lincoln; according to the Old English Chronicle, Towcester was provided with a stone wall in 92 I ; William of Malmesbury,b writing two centuries after the event, and without quoting his authority, states that Atbelstan (925‑40) fortified Exeter with towers and a wall of squared stone.
Probably once the arts of building and carving in stone had been introduced from abroad, some knowledge of them was acquired by native artisans, but the likelihood 'r
is that early building work was performed not by specialised masons, but by men whose main occupation was connected with agriculture, stone working in many cases still being a 'See Plummer, Baedae Opera Historica, II, for‑2.
2 Bede, Historia 14hbatum, 1 5 (Plummer, op. cit., I, 368).
s William of Malmesbury, De Gestis Pontificum, Rolls Series, 255.
4 Plummer, op. cit., I, 176, 117‑
s Gesta Regum, I, 148 17 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY by‑occupation of farming at a much later date (see page I 1 7 below).
To judge by the fewness of the records and the paucity of surviving remains, the number of English stone‑workers was very small until after the Norman Conquest, as even in France, architecturally much more advanced than this country, the substitution of stone for wood only began in the late tenth century? It was doubtless Norman influence and example which led to the development of stone building in this country, the main structures at first being abbeys, priories, cathedrals and castles. The rebuilding of Westminster Abbey by Edward the Confessor (1042‑66), and the erection of the Tower in the reigns of William I (Io66‑87) and William Rufus (1087‑1100) imply the presence in London of masons in considerable numbers in the second half of the eleventh century. It was not, however, until the last quarter of the twelfth century that London Bridge was first built of stone .2
In Scotland, the use of stone for building came even later; the motte, or earliest type of castle, was a timber stronghold,3 and these structures did not disappear until the fifteenth century.
The earliest record of stone being used for the walls of Stirling Castle relates to
12 8 8.4
Both north and South of the Tweed the use of stone and brick in domestic architecture was a still later development, these materials coming into use gradually for chimneys and floors, but it was not until the seventeenth century that they came to be commonly used in house building.
THE ORGANISATION OF BUILDING OPERATIONS The fact that the erection of abbeys, priories, cathedrals and castles provided most of the work for masons in this country in the later Middle Ages implies that the Church and the Crown were directly or indirectly the principal employers of masons.
Although the Crown was mainly 1 V. Mortet et P. Deschamps, Receuil de Textes relatifs a PHistoire de P‑4rchitecture, p. xxxiii.
2 C. Welch, History of the Tower Bridge, 29 seq.
3 W. Mackay Mackenzie, The Medieval Castle in Scotland, 3 r. 4 Ibid., 38.
18 THE MEDIEVAL BUILDING INDUSTRY interested in the erection and repair of castles for military purposes, the English kings also incurred vast expenditure on ecclesiastical works, such as Westminster Abbey, Vale Royal Abbey and Eton College. The nobility and landed gentry erected castles or houses for residential and, in some cases, for defensive purposes, but in England, though not in Scotland, the Crown ,was generally strong enough to prevent unlicensed private castle‑building. The municipalities were responsible for a certain amount of stone building, especially town walls, guildhalls and bridges.
The prevalence of large building enterprises had a very important influence on the organisation of the industry. Whereas the typical medieval artisan was a `little master' who owned his material, worked it up with the assistance of an apprentice or journeyman, and disposed of the finished article, the medieval mason, like the modern workman, was generally a wage‑earner. Commonly it was an agent of the party for whom the building was being erected who employed the mason; less frequently it was a contractor; occasionally it was an independent small‑scale employer who specialised in supplying rough‑dressed stone, ashlar, mouldings, or partly worked images and figures. This type of employer is sometimes described as a mason‑shopkeeper., The Direct Labour System.‑To judge by the surviving records, larger buildings in this country in the Middle Ages were generally executed by what we should now call the "direct labour" system, by which the employer appointed one or more officials, such as a master mason and a clerk of the works, who directed a complicated sequence of operations. These included the digging of stone and sand, their transport by land and water, the hewing and setting of stone, the making and laying of bricks, the felling and sawing of timber, and the various works of joiners, carvers, tilers, smiths, plumbers and glaziers.
This type of integration had certainly developed by the thirteenth century, and probably existed at an earlier date, though for want of surviving records this cannot be proved. Vale Royal Abbey in 12'78‑80, See L.M., 19 seg.
19 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY Beaumaris and Caernarvon Castles in the early fourteenth century, and Eton College in the fifteenth century, are examples of buildings erected by this method on a large scale. At Adderbury Chancel in the early fifteenth and at Kirby Muxloe Castle in the late fifteenth century the organisation was similar but on a smaller scale. 3‑ In connection with certain large structures, where maintenance, repairs, or additions were frequently involved, there commonly existed a more or less permanent works department, employing a regular staff of masons and other artisans, which was expanded or contracted according to requirements.
Most cathedrals, an abbey such as that at Westminster, as well as important bridges such as London Bridge and Rochester Bridge, had works departments of this kind associated with them.2 The Clerk of the Works.‑At all the larger medieval building operations, whether cathedrals, monasteries or castles, a dual system of management was established, the financial administration being separate from the technical. The former, in royal building works, was the concern of one of the king's clerks, or of an Exchequer official, known as clerk, or keeper, or‑in exceptional cases‑surveyor of the works. Two men who at one period occupied such positions, but are famous for other reasons, were William of Wykeham,3 the founder of New College and of Winchester College, and Geoffrey Chaucer 4 On monastic or cathedral buildings the care of the fabric was commonly the business of the sacrist, though in special cases some other monastic or chapter official might be appointed keeper (custos).
In the fifteenth century, the title "master of the works" was sometimes borne by the chief financial official. Thus Roger Keyes, sometime Warden of All Souls, was master of the works at Eton College in 1448‑so,a 1 See Y.R.; B. and C.; Eton; T. F. Hobson,.4dderbury Rectoria (Oxford Record Society); A. H. Thompson, "Building Accounts of Kirby Muxloe Castle, 1480‑1484", Leics. f4rch. Soc. Trans., xi.
2 See Raine; F. R. Chapman, 8acrist Rolls of Ely; G. G. Scott, Gleanings from Westminster Ibbey; R. B. Rackham, "Nave of Westminster", Proc. Br. 14cad., igog‑io; L.B.; M. J. Becker, Rochester Bridge, 1387‑1856.
3 M.M., 24.
4 Ibid., 23 n., 92 n.
s Eton, 75 20 THE MEDIEVAL BUILDING INDUSTRY and the same office at Windsor Castle in 1473 was held by the Bishop of Salisbury., At the Abbey of St. Albans, as early as 1429‑30, the obedientiary responsible for repairs within and without the church was described as "master of the works ".2
In Scotland, in the sixteenth century and earlier, the Crown, the Church, and municipalities appointed "masters of work" who discharged financial and administrative functions.3 The Master Mason.‑On the technical side, the chief official was the master mason. On very large works in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the master mason was sometimes called "master of the works". Walter of Hereford (l. 1278‑1315) bore that title at Vale Royal Abbey and later at Caernarvon Castle,4 and so did William Orchard at Magdalen College as late as 1479‑5 The same was the case at Aberdeen in 1484 when John Gray, mason, was received as Master of Work of St. Nicholas; it is recorded that he has taken upon him to be continually labouring and diligent ... and to do all care concerning the said work that accords to a master of work, both in labouring of his own person, in devising, and in supervising the masons and workmen under him .6 The surviving evidence enables us to draw a fairly detailed picture of this very important official.
So far as we can tell, he commonly rose from the ranks.
Richard Beke, master mason at Canterbury Cathedral from 143S to 1458, worked at London Bridge as an ordinary mason from 1409 to 1417, and as Chief Bridge Mason from 1417 to 1435.'
Robert Stowell, appointed master mason at Westminster Abbey in 1471, had worked there as a mason in 1468‑9.8 Christopher Horner, master mason , W. St. J. Hope, Windsor Castle, 1, 238 2 M.M., 31 n.
3 S.M., 20‑4.
4 Y.R., 6‑7; B. and C., 8‑9.
s Willis and Clark, i, 41o. s S.M., 23 7 L.B., I5‑16, and Oswald, "Canterbury Cathedral", Burlington Mag., December 1939, 222.
8 Rackham, op. cit., 34.
21 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY at York Minster from 1505 to 1523, worked on that fabric as an apprentice in the 147os and as a mason in the 1490s.1 The case of Richard Beke, who passed from lay to ecclesiastical work, and from one town to another, was by no means exceptional.
Henry Yevele, employed by the Black Prince in the 135os and by the Crown from 1360 onwards ,2 was later master mason at Westminster Abbey and, as recent investigations 3 show, was very possibly responsible for the design of the nave of Canterbury Cathedral in the 1390s.
William Wynford, overseer of the masons at Windsor Castle in the 136os, was some thirty years later master mason at the rebuilding of the nave of Winchester Cathedral. 4 Among the duties enumerated in the terms of John Gray's appointment at Aberdeen in 1484 was "devising". Until recently it was often too easily assumed that bishops and other ecclesiastics, who did much to further certain building operations, were in some sense the architects of their churches or monastic houses. It is by now clear enough that, though some bishops and abbots may have delighted in architecture, the medieval architect has to be looked for among medieval masons.5 In the Middle Ages, plans and designs do not appear to have played the same part as they do nowadays. In early building contracts or instructions, detailed directions concerning dimensions often appear to have taken the place of plans or `plots'. In all cases of this type the presumption is that the master mason or the mason‑contractor, as the case might be, prepared some kind of working drawings, though very possibly they were not done on parchment or paper.
It was doubtless for the purpose of drawing that tracing houses were provided at larger building operations.
Thus we find references to a tracing house at Windsor Castle in 1350 and 1397, at Exeter Cathedral in 13'74‑5, and at Westminster Abbey in 1460‑1. The inventory of the masons' lodge at York Minster in 1400 shows that 1 Knoop and Jones, I.Q.C., xliv, 234, and Raine, passim.
2 Yevele, 802, 804.
3 Oswald, loc. cit.
4 Yevele, 809.
5 A. Hamilton Thompson, "Mediaeval Building Documents", Trans. Somer. Zrch. Soc. (I93o), reprinted in Misc. Lat., xii.
22 THE MEDIEVAL BUILDING INDUSTRY the equipment included two tracing boards; this not only implies drawing, but strongly suggests that it was masons who drew. In 1531 there was a tracing house at Westminster Palace, the accounts recording the payment of 8s. for "two pairs of screws for tracery rods provided for the master mason to draw with in his tracery house", a reference which leaves no doubt as to who did the drawing. Some early building contracts contain reference to plans, e.g., in 1381 Nicholas Typerton, mason, undertook to erect for John, Lord Cobham, part of the Church of St. Dunstan in Tower Street, London, according to the design (devyse) of Henry Yevele, the most prominent mason of his period. In 1395 two masons undertook to do certain work at Westminster Hall "according to a form and mould" made by advice of Master Henry Zeveley.
In 1475 William Orchard, freemason, undertook to make a great window of seven lights in the West End of Magdalen College Chapel, Oxford, "according to the portraiture made by the said William".' The post of master mason was in some instances more or less a full‑time appointment. That was the case with William Hoton, master mason at York Minster from 1351 to 1368,2 and with Richard Beke at Canterbury.3
Even so, the terms of Hoton's appointment contemplated the possibility of his being employed elsewhere, and we know that Beke, on at least one occasion, did consultative work outside Canterbury .4
In other instances, the post was definitely a part‑time appointment, such as that of William Wynford at Wells Cathedral in 1364: he was to receive a retaining fee of 4os. a year and a wage of sixpence a day when in Wells working on the fabrics William Colchester held the post of master mason at Westminster Abbey and at York Minster simultaneously from 1407 to 14,2o.6 Henry Yevele, his predecessor at Westminster 'This paragraph is based on our paper, "The Decline oú the MasonArchitect in England", 7‑R.I.B.Z., September 1937.
2 Raine, 166‑7.
3 Hist. MSS. Com., 9th Report, r I4.
4 L.B., 16. s Hist. MSS. Com., Wells MSS., i, 267 6 Misc. Lat., xxii, 34‑6.
23 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY Abbey, was a pluralist on a much greater scale.' The surviving evidence shows that master masons were men of considerable standing, much more like architects than foremen‑masons; they were provided with new robes at Christmas and Whitsun; and, if King's master masons, they were members of the royal household, with the status of minor esquires. The services of William Wynford were recognised by placing his picture in the East Window of Winchester College Chapel which he had built.2 The Contract System.‑Smaller building jobs, and occasionally parts of larger ones, were not infrequently done by contract3 The oldest form of contracting was task work (opus ad tascam), of which an instance occurred at Windsor Castle in i 165‑6, and several at Westminster Abbey in 1'253, and elsewhere about the same period. After the Black Death in 1349, task work of the contract variety (as distinct from piece work) appears to have become more common, which may perhaps be accounted for by the scarcity of labour and the need for finding more economical methods of working. Task work or "bargains" probably offered the working mason in the Middle Ages the best opportunity of rising from the ranks of the wage‑earners to a position of greater economic independence. If he were paid by small instalments, as was commonly the case, the system would call for little or no capital on the part of the contractor, especially if he did not have to provide materials.
In this respect medieval contracts varied considerably; it is possible to distinguish four types of contract according to what the contractor undertook to provide: (i) workmanship only; (ii) workmanship and stone, but not carriage; (iii) workmanship and carriage, but not stone; (iv) workmanship, stone and carriage. Medieval contracts also varied in respect of the method of payment, which might be either by the great (in grosso as it was called in the Middle Ages) or by measure.
Work by the great meant a contract ' Yevele, passim.
2 G. H. Moberley, Life of William Wykeham, 261 n.
3 This paragraph is based on our paper, "The Rise of the Mason Contractor", 7S.I.B.Z., October 1936.
24 THE MEDIEVAL BUILDING INDUSTRY similar to that of the two freemasons, Symons and Wigge, who in 1598 for a sum of ~3,40o undertook in four years to build the second court of St. John's College, Cambridge. A fourteenth‑century example of work by measure is provided by John Lewyn's contract, according to which he was to receive i oos. per perch at Bolton Castle, Wensleydale, plus a payment of So marks.
In Scotland, the contract system appears to have been more widespread than in England. The erection of numerous small stone buildings over a wide area favoured the growth of small master tradesmen employing one or two servants. Thus the system of independent craftsmen or `little masters' appears to have flourished in Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but the surviving evidence suggests that these `little masters' were not always contractors; in some cases they worked with their servants on a job as wage‑earners.' In England also there were contractors who one month might be carrying out a piece of work with the assistance of a number of journeymen, and who next month might themselves be working as masons on salaries or wages.
In addition to this type of contractor, there were probably in the later Middle Ages, and certainly in early modern times, masons who either in addition to, or instead of, undertaking contracts, set up yards or workshops and had stoneworkers more or less regularly in their employment. In some cases these `little masters' or mason‑shopkeepers sold stones of more or less standard sizes which they and their servants had dressed; in other cases, they undertook small contracts to erect a wall or repair a chimney; in yet others, they were primarily statuaries and tombmakers who supplied carvings, effigies, or complete tombs, the last in many cases being elaborate structures involving much general masonry. In the seventeenth century, if not earlier, these sculptors and tombmakers often entered into general masonry contracts. Thus William Stanton, Edward Pearce, Jaspar Latham and Joshua Marshall were seventeenth‑century monumental masons or tombmakers who executed substantial masonry contracts in London ' S.M., 9‑14. ZS THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY after the Great Fire. A different type of `little master' was the quarrymaster who in some cases not merely employed masons and supplied dressed stone, but undertook contracts for the erection of buildings.
Thomas Crump ul
of Maidstone in the fourteenth century, William Orchard of Oxford in the fifteenth, and four generations of the Strong family, originally of Little Barrington and Tayn ton, in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, are well‑known examples of quarrymasters acting as masoncontractors.) CLASSES OF STONE‑WORKERS Relatively few masons could hope to attain eminence as master masons, or to achieve success as mason‑contractors or as mason‑shopkeepers. The great majority could expect little or no reward beyond a daily wage. Although journeyman stoneworkers are described in medieval building documents by a good many different names, the masons, as distinct from quarriers, cowans, and hardhewers, appear to have fallen into two main classes: (a) Hewers or freemasons dressed stone with mallet and chisel, or more roughly with a stone‑axe. The superior craftsmen belonging to this category were sometimes described as "carvers". Hewers or freemasons who had cut the freestone required to build up a rose window or other elaborate tracery, or who had prepared the arch stones for a vault, appear frequently to have set their own work. When engaged as "setters" (Positores) they sometimes received higher wages than when engaged on their ordinary work of dressing stone.
(b) Layers (cubatores) or roughmasons laid ashlar and "rockies", rough hewn with a scappling hammer, for the preparation of which they themselves were frequently responsible. In some cases they roughly dressed stone with an axe.
1 This paragraph is based on our papers, "The Rise of the Mason Contractor", J.R.I.B.1?., October 1936, and "The English Medieval Quarry", Ec. H. R., November 1938 26 THE MEDIEVAL BUILDING INDUSTRY Although the main work of hewers or freemasons was to dress stone, and the main work of layers or of roughmasons was to erect stonework, yet even where a considerable degree of specialisation existed on big jobs, the former craftsmen did some setting or laying, and the latter did some preparing or dressing of stone.
On smaller jobs, there was often little or no specialisation.
Thus at London Bridge in the fifteenth century the masons appear to have done all varieties of mason work.
The same was true in Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries., To judge by the tools used, the work done by "quarriers" appears to have been of three kinds: (i) uncovering stone, for which shovels, spades, mattocks and trowels were used; (ii) breaking and splitting stones by means of picks, wedges, crows and various types of hammer; (iii) rough hewing or dressing stone by means of scappling hammers and broaching‑axes .2 Those quarriers who were competent to discharge this third function were obviously capable of doing work closely resembling, if not identical with, that done by roughmasons, and the dividing line between the higher type of quarrier and the lower type of mason must often have been very indeterminate. When in the same Caernarvon Castle building account of 13I6‑17 we find examples of hewers (cementarii) working in the quarry as cutters (taylatores) preparing "coynes et asshler", of layers (cubatores) working in the quarry as scapplers (batrarii), and of a quarrier "digging and breaking stone, each stone in length two feet, height one foot, breadth one foot and a half", we feel that the boundaries between one stoneworking occupation and another were by no means rigid and that the conversion of a skilled quarrier, who worked with axe and hammer, into a roughmason, who also worked with axe and hammer, could not have been very uncommon in the days before gilds (if such ever existed in country districts) with their definite ideas of industrial demarcation.3 Many examples, both English and Scottish, of masons working in quarries could be quoted .4
In some cases, to judge by the existence of , M.M., 83; L.B., passim; S.M., 30‑t.
2 Quarry, 3s‑6 3 M.M., 78‑
a Quarry, 33‑4; S.M., Z7‑827 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY lodges at quarries, masons were engaged there solely in dressing stone; in other cases, more particularly in Scotland, masons in quarries were paid for winning as well as for dressing stone.
The exact functions discharged by the stone‑worker known in Scotland as a `cowan' are not too clear. Jamieson's Scottish Dictionary defines `cowan' as "one who builds dry walls, otherwise denominated a drydiker", and the O.E.D. gives the same meaning‑"one who builds dry walls". Such evidence as we have been able to collect from seventeenth‑century documents does not entirely support this definition. At Canongate in 1636 a cowan was permitted to do "any work with stone and clay alone, without lime"; at Glasgow in 1623 John Shedden was received and booked as a cowan and authorised "to work stone and mortar and to build mortar walls, but not above one ell in height, and without power to work or lay hewn work, or to build with sand and lime". The Schaw Statutes Of 1598 and 1599 prohibited masons from working with cowns, which suggests a secondary and wider meaning of the word, which is given by both Jamieson and the O.E.D., viz., a man who does the work of a mason but has not been regularly apprenticed or bred to the trade., `Hardhewers' worked the hardstone of Kent, which they also sometimes set, in which case they were occasionally referred to as `hardlayers'.2 At Eton College in the 14405 three categories of mason were distinguished in the building accounts, viz., (a) jr' masons, (b) harde hewers, (c) row masons; these categories, however, were not absolutely rigid, as two of the hardhewers became freemasons, and two other hardhewers worked as roughmasons and stonelayers.3
On the other hand, we have traced no case of a freemason or of a roughmason becoming a hardhewer.
METHODS OF TRAINING MASONS As suggested above, quarries were very important recruiting grounds for masons.
In support of this pro position, we would quote two pieces of evidence.
First, in those early building accounts which we have studied 18‑M., 28‑30.
2 XVI C.M., 200.
3 Eton, passim. 28 THE MEDIEVAL BUILDING INDUSTRY more closely, Vale Royal (1278‑80), Caernarvon (1316‑17 and 1319) and Beaumaris (1316‑17, 1319‑2o and 1330), we find various masons bearing names of places where building stones were quarried, e.g., Leckhampton, Mount Sorrel, Norton, Stoke, Ross, Dorset, Lenton, Hope (Bowdler), Denbigh. Second, of the 51 layers named in the Beaumaris and Caernarvon building accounts, we know that four had worked as quarriers and one as a "portehache" in a quarry, before they became layers.
The heavy cost of transporting stone from quarry to building site was a strong reason why masons or potential masons should practise or learn the art of stone‑dressing in quarries, dressed stone being obviously less bulky to transport than rough‑hewn stone. Dressing stone in the quarry offered the further advantage that work spoilt by the masons or learners would involve no,transport charges at all.
A second method of recruiting masons was by promoting men who had served as servants or famuli to masons. Thus after William Warde had figured in the London Bridge accounts for some three years as famulus of the masons at 2s. a week (compared with their 3s. 9d.), we find the following entry on 1 st July 14 Paid to William Warde, famulus of the said masons, because he works well as a sufficient mason, 3s. od.
The following week the entry runs "Williame Warde, mason, 3s. od.". It was not for another six years, however, that he received a mason's full wage, which in London at that date was 8d. a day.
In the third place, to judge by the advances in wages accorded to some low‑paid masons at Vale Royal Abbey during the period 1278‑8o, and by the appointment in 1359 of John of Evesham, mason, to give instruction in masonry to labourers at Hereford Cathedral, we think that there were young men who, without being apprenticed, were learners receiving a certain amount of instruction, and that, as they gained in experience and the quality of their work improved, they were rewarded with higher wages. In the fourth place, a father might teach a son, an elder 29 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY brother might teach a younger brother, an uncle might teach a nephew, without any system of indentures. Finally, apprenticeship might serve as a method of training masons, but the available evidence suggests that the number of masons' apprentices in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries was very small.
In most early building accounts the word `apprentice' or its equivalent does not occur. The earliest case we have traced is recorded in the Exeter Cathedral fabric rolls in 1382.
As previously indicated, the great majority of masons at this period were journeymen with little or no security of tenure.
Prior to the sixteenth century, this type of journeyman does not appear to have had apprentices. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries such apprentices as there were appear to have been bound in one of three ways: (1) to master masons in charge of building operations; e.g., Stephen Lote, mason, disposer of the king's works at Westminster and the Tower, had two apprentices when he made his will in 1417; (ii) to a journeyman permanently in the service of Church or State; e.g., John Bell, who in 1488 held a life appointment as "special mason to the Prior and Chapter of Durham" was authorised to have an apprentice of his own; (iii) to a builder‑employer, such as an abbey, who could arrange for craftsmen to teach them.
Thus several cases of monastic apprentices are recorded at the Cistercian Abbey of Cupar Angus towards the end of the fifteenth century., If the craft in its heyday in the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had had to rely upon apprentices for its future supply of skilled journeymen, the stone‑building industry would never have expanded in the way in which it actually did.
It was to the alternative methods of training masons that the craft at that period had mainly to look for its future supplies of skilled labour.
CONDITIONS OF EMPLOYMENT The great majority of masons being wage‑earners, their probable earnings may next be considered. This raises three distinct problems: (1) the amount of the daily wage; 1 The paragraphs on the training of masons are based on our M.M., r 6o‑8.
30 THE MEDIEVAL BUILDING INDUSTRY (ii) the number of holidays observed, more especially holidays without pay; (iii) the length of the winter season during which building operations were suspended.
(1) In England from i280 to 1350 the general level of masons' wages was 4d. a day; from 1350 to 1370 money wages were rising, as a result, no doubt, of the Black Death. From 1370 to the beginning of the sixteenth century, 6d. a day appears to have been the commonest wage outside London. This rise in money wages was greater than the rise in food prices. In some cases the wage was paid partly in food, a practice apparently commoner in Scotland than in England. In winter, when the working day was shorter, wage rates were reduced, the commonest reduction being one‑sixth in England. In Scotland, where there would be even less daylight in winter, the reduction was as much as 25 or 30 per cent. At York Minster in 1370, winter rates applied from Michaelmas to the first Sunday in Lent, when the hours were fixed as from daylight to dark, with an hour for dinner and fifteen minutes for "drinking" in the afternoon.
The summer hours were from sunrise to thirty minutes before sunset, with an hour for dinner, half an hour for "sleeping", and half an hour for "drinking".
At the Kirk of Our Lady, Dundee, in 1537 the summer hours were from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., with half an hour for "disjune" at 8.30, one and a half hours for dinner at 11.30, and half an hour for "non‑shanks" at 4 p.m. In the season of the year when daylight hours were fewer, the masons were to start work as soon as they could see; between i st November and 2nd February the working day was to be broken only by a spell of one and a half hours at mid‑day; during the rest of the year the masons were to enjoy the normal three breaks.' (ii) Craftsmen engaged on medieval buildings, more especially those employed on ecclesiastical works, kept holiday on numerous saints' days and church festivals; but the extent to which these holidays were observed, and the practice of paying wages in respect of them, varied from one building operation to another. At Vale Royal ' Ibid., 236, x x 6‑x 8; S.M., 4o.
3I THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY Abbey, 27 were observed in 12'79 and 22 in i28o; the number observed at the repair of Beaumaris Castle in 1319‑2o was 2o. Neither at Vale Royal nor at Beaumaris did the masons receive any wages in respect of feast days or holidays.
It is not known how many feast days were observed by the masons at York Minster; but according to regulations made in 1352, if two feasts should fall in the same week the masons would work on neither and be paid for one; should three feasts occur in the same week, the masons would lose half a week's wage. A similar rule obtained at Westminster Abbey in 1253 and Exeter Cathedral in 138o.
During the erection of Eton College the masons observed 38 holidays in 1444‑5 and 43 in 1445‑6 The freemasons were paid for all holidays except nine; the hardhewers were paid for five and the layers for three in the first year and four in the second. In Scotland, according to a statute of 1469, masons and wrights were to keep as holidays only those laid down by the Church as great and solemn festivals. According to the same statute they were to work on Saturdays and other vigils until 4 o'clock; the same was true at the Kirk of Our Lady in Dundee, 1537, except that work was to cease at 12 o'clock for Christmas, Easter, Whitsun and the Assumption of Our Lady.
The York regulations of 1352 provided that work should stop at noon on the eves of feasts and on Saturdays., (iii) The close season in winter, during which building operations were stopped, was apparently fairly lengthy in the Middle Ages.
Building accounts frequently show the purchase of straw for covering the work in winter or for thatching the walls. The layers were more seriously affected than the hewers, because whereas frost would prevent all laying, only severe frost would interfere with hewing if it had been decided that the dressing of stone should continue during the winter in preparation for the resumption of active building operations in the spring. In some cases in winter, work was found for the layers as scapplers, but in other cases they were dismissed or suspended. Thus, at Rochester Castle in 1368 whilst the 1 M.M., I 18‑20; S.M., +1‑2.
32 THE MEDIEVAL BUILDING INDUSTRY majority of the masons were paid for 252 working days, no layer was paid for more than i 8o working days, the difference of 72 working days representing approximately three months during which presumably no laying was undertaken. At Kirby Muxloe Castle in 14 81 the roughmasons or layers commenced work at the beginning of May and finished at the end of October. At Dunkeld Bridge in i 5 i o a mason's year was apparently treated as approximately equivalent to 22 weeks of full‑time employment.) To convert a daily wage of q.d. or 6d. into annual earnings, allowance has to be made not only for reduced winter rates of pay, for numerous holidays without pay and for suspension of work in winter, but also very possibly for time lost on account of bad weather during the active building season. Where the wage was on a daily, and not on a weekly basis, the loss may quite well have fallen on the worker, though the surviving evidence is not very clear on the subject.
Without going into details, however, we feel some doubt about the adequacy of masons' earnings to support wives and families even in the fifteenth century, and are quite clear that they were very inadequate in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, because of the great rise in prices resulting from the importation of silver from the New World.
The solution of the difficulty appears to have been that many masons had agricultural holdings or other byoccupations at which they themselves worked during slack periods in the building trade, and at which their womenfolk and younger children, and very possibly their servants, worked at all times.
In the twelfth century, masons, as also smiths and carpenters, on the estates of the Bishop of Durham held land in virtue of their calling, and this was common elsewhere. There is other evidence to suggest that farming was the most usual by‑occupation, but others which we have traced were hiring out horses and carts, shipowning, innkeeping, brewing and dealing in stone.z By‑occupations, whatever they were, had not merely to supplement masons' wages, but had presumably to provide maintenance for wives and families when husbands and 1 M.M., 132; S.M., 35.
z M.M., 99, 107.
33 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY fathers had jobs away from home, either voluntarily, or as a result of impressment.
Impressment.‑The impressment of masons was only part of the much larger problem of purveyance and impressment in general, by which in the Middle Ages and early modern times goods were taken for the public service, horses and transport were requisitioned for royal use, artisans and labourers were forced to work in specified jobs, and in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries men were recruited for the army and navy. Three methods of operating the system can be distinguished. (i) The first was to issue orders to the sheriffs of particular counties instructing them to choose a stated number of masons and to send them to a particular building operation where they were needed. This method can be traced in use in connection with the erection of Welsh castles in the thirteenth century and, on a much larger scale, with works at Windsor Castle in the fourteenth. (ii) The second method was to issue a commission to the master mason, or to the clerk of the works, or to some other official, at some particular building operation, authorising him to take masons either wherever they could be found, or in certain specified areas.
To judge by the surviving records, this method appears to have been commoner than the first, and the great majority of the 356 orders and commissions of impressment which we have traced between 1344 and 1459 are of this character.
(iii) The third method was to place the responsibility on the London Masons' Company. Orders and commissions of impressment generally aimed at securing masons for some royal castle or other royal work where building was in progress. Occasionally, masons were taken to work in quarries.
In some cases, the royal prerogative of impressment was exercised in favour of some ecclesiastical foundation in which the Crown was interested, such as Westminster Abbey or York Minster, or of other foundations for which the King was responsible, such as Eton College, King's College, Cambridge, and Trinity College, Cambridge.
In other cases local authorities were granted powers of impressment for various purposes such as repairing the walls of Oxford and Newcastle‑upon 34 THE MEDIEVAL BUILDING INDUSTRY Tyne, building Rochester Bridge and erecting Norwich Guildhall. Very occasionally similar concessions can be traced in favour of great lords such as the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Earl of Rutland in 1396.1 The practice of impressment is also found in Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but apparently the system operated on a very much smaller scale than in England, unless it be that evidence of it is lost.2 On the other hand, numerous Scottish building accounts show that messengers or overseers were paid their expenses "seeking masons".
In some cases the expenses of masons coming from outside were repaid and in other cases their costs returning home in the autumn at the end of the building season.3
Where masons for a building job were secured from a distance, some would appear to have been master craftsmen or `little masters', accompanied by their servants and journeymen.4
Thus little group's of masons may have moved from one job to another. The extent to which this can have happened must have depended, to some extent at least, upon the organisation of masons in the Middle Ages, a subject discussed in the next chapter.
1 These two paragraphs are based on our paper, "The Impressment of Masons in the Middle Ages", Ec. H. R., November 1937 2 S.M., 49‑50.
3 Ibid., 48.
4 Ibid., 47 35 CHAPTER III THE ORGANISATION OF MASONS IN THE MIDDLE AGES MASONIC ORGANISATION IN ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND NO very definite evidence pointing to early organisation among masons in England and Scotland can be traced.
On the contrary, the great diversity of wage‑rates which characterised the industry before the Black Death in 1349 suggests individual bargains, and consequently the absence of much, if any, strong organisation. At Caernarvon Castle in 1304 there were 53 masons on the pay roll in receipt of 17 different rates of pay; in October I3I6 there were 24 masons in receipt Of 12 different rates of pay.
At Vale Royal Abbey and at Windsor Castle the diversity was nearly as great: at the former in the summer of I28o, 51 masons were employed at 13 different rates; at the latter in 1344, 76 masons were employed at 13 different rates., Nevertheless, we are satisfied that some organisation among masons existed before the middle of the fourteenth century, and we discuss in connection with each type of organisation examined below (a) the earliest date at which we have been able to trace its definite existence, and (b) the possibility, or even the probability, that it existed at an earlier date.
I. Lodges.‑The word `lodge' (logia, `lodge', `loygge', 'luge', 'ludge') appears to have been used in England and Scotland in three different senses, which perhaps represent three stages of development.
(i) In both countries it was used to designate a masons' workshop, such as was usually erected in connection with all building operations of any size.
The first mention of a lodge in England so far traced occurs in the Vale Royal Abbey building account of 1278, which shows that 45s. , M.M., Ioq; Hope, Windsor Castle, i, 1' 4.
36 ORGANISATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES were paid in wages to carpenters for making lodges (logias) and dwelling houses (mansiones) for the masons and other workmen. Information is available also about the erection of masons' lodges or workshops at Catterick Bridge in 1421, Kirby Muxloe Castle in 1481 and Dunkeld Bridge in 1513.
Instances of expenditure on repairs to lodges occur at Beaumaris Castle in 1330, at Westminster Abbey in 1413, and at Holyrood‑house in 1529‑3o and 1535‑6.1 '
There can, however, be no doubt that lodges existed much earlier than 1278, for without them it is difficult to see how a church, abbey or castle of any size or pretension to ornament could have been erected.
The lodge was, in fact, a workshop in which masons cut and dressed stone, but probably from a fairly early date it also served as a place where they could eat, drink and rest during the breaks permitted in the very long medieval working day.
That was certainly the case in the lodge at York Minster as '
early as 1370, and in the lodge at St. Giles, Edinburgh, in 1491 2
In so far as the lodge served as a kind of refectory and club, it is likely that questions affecting the masons' trade were discussed and grievances ventilated within its walls.
(ii) In both countries the word `lodge' was sometimes used to denote the group of masons working together on some particular building operation of a more or less permanent character. Thus we have the lodge at York Minster whose by‑laws or ordinances of 1352, 1370 and 1408‑9 (imposed in each case by the Dean and Chapter) have survived.3 The "masons of the lodge" (lathami de la loygge) at Canterbury Cathedral in 1429 and subsequent years doubtless formed a recognised group, though unfortunately no regulations governing such group have been discovered.'
The masons of the lodge at the Church of St. Nicholas, Aberdeen, appear to have been to some extent organised as early as 1483. At St. Giles, Edinburgh, a statute was made by the municipal authorities in 1 M.M., 56; S.M., 6o.
2 Raine, 181; S.M., 61. 3 Raine, 171, 181, 198.
4 Register of the Prior of Christchurch, Canterbury, Bodl. Lib. Tanner MS., 165, fos. 132, 133, 143, 154, 157 37 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY 1491 laying down the conditions of employment of the master mason, his colleagues and servants. In a contract of 1537, in which the municipal authorities appointed George Boiss mason for life to the Church of Our Lady, Dundee, reference is made to "the auld use and consuetude of Our Lady Luge of Dundee", and there can be little doubt that these, as well as other conditions of the contract, were but written statements of old‑established customs governing the masons at that church.
It may well be that at York Minster, Canterbury Cathedral, St. Nicholas, Aberdeen, and St. Giles, Edinburgh, the masons' lodges or organisations were older than the respective dates13S2, 1429, 1481 and 1491‑when record evidence of their existence can first be traced.
(iii) In Scotland the word `lodge' was also used to describe an organised body of masons associated with a particular town or district. The word appears to be used in this sense in the Schaw Statutes of 1598 and 1599 In the latter, it is provided "that Edinburgh shall be in all time coming as of before the first and principal ludge in Scotland and that Kilwinning be the second as before". From the St. Clair Charters of 16o1 and 1628 we know that there were similar `territorial lodges' in St. Andrews, Haddington, Aitchison's Haven, Dunfermline, Dundee, Glasgow, Stirling and Ayr.
The main functions of this type of lodge appear to have been to discharge certain official or semi‑official duties of a trade character, such as regulating the terms of apprenticeship, keeping records of the reception and entry of apprentices and the admission of fellow crafts, and assigning `marks' to members of the lodge.
Other rules concerned a master more particularly, such as not taking work over another master's head, not employing the apprentice or journeyman of another mason, and not employing cowans or causing his servants to work with them. The lodge also concerned itself with the settlement of disputes between masters and their servants. In addition, it collected funds, by way both of fees and fines, for pious uses and for the relief of distress among members, and indulged in a certain amount of feasting 1 S.M., 61‑2.
38 ORGANISATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES at the expense of candidates. Finally, it conferred the benefit of the Mason Word on qualified members., Since the Schaw Statutes of 1599 refer to the status of the lodges of Edinburgh and Kilwinning as of before, we may conclude that `territorial lodges' were certainly older than 1599, but how much older there is no definite evidence to show. As these lodges appear to have derived their authority from the Warden General and Principal Master of Work to the Crown of Scotland, they were perhaps not older than that royal office. Though the best‑known holders of the office were doubtless William Schaw in the 159os and Sir Anthony Alexander (of Falkland Statutes fame) in the 1630s, the office certainly existed at an earlier date; the first appointment that we have been able to trace was that of Sir James Hammyltoun in 1539. It is possible, therefore, that the `territorial lodge' existed as early as the middle of the sixteenth century.' 2. Incorporations.‑These bodies existed in certain Scottish burghs for ruling and governing particular crafts, and furthering divine service among their members. They were established by what are known as seals of cause, which, in some cases at least, were rules and statutes made by the craftsmen and approved by the municipality. Where the masons belonged to an incorporation or privileged company under seal of cause, they were generally associated with the wrights. The principal incorporations of masons were those at Edinburgh, where masons and wrights obtained a seal of cause‑from the municipality in 1475; at Aberdeen, where a seal of cause was granted by the burgh to the coopers, wrights and masons in 1527 and ratified in 1541; and at Glasgow, where the organisation dated from 1551, the wrights being separated from the masons in i 6oQ. Other incorporations, mostly of somewhat later date, which included masons, were established at Canongate, Lanark, Ayr, Perth, Dundee and Dumfries.3 Among the trade functions discharged by incorporations , Ibid., 62‑4.
2 Ibid., 54, 57ò 3 This and the following paragraphs are based on Ibid., 51‑2, 56, 64‑8. 39 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY of masons were some very similar to those discharged by `territorial lodges', e.g., the control of apprentices and servants, and the regulation of masters. In addition, the incorporations were also responsible for conducting periodic searches to see that the work done was "sufficient and good", or "loyally and truly done to all builders". The officers of the incorporations were also to examine, by an essay of craft, any person wishing to work at a trade, in order to ascertain if he was qualified.
Further, in some cases at least, it was provided that no craftsman was to be allowed to work on his own account until he had been admitted a burgess and freeman.
Thus an incorporation, like a craft gild, afforded some protection to the public, by seeing that work was properly done and that the craftsmen were properly qualified.
On the other hand, to some extent at least, it protected the master tradesmen from the competition of masters who were not free of the particular burgh. We say "to some extent" advisedly, because by a Scottish Act of Parliament of 154o anyone with buildings to erect was authorised to employ good craftsmen, freemen or others, because of the extortionate charges of craftsmen, especially in the burghs. There is little or no evidence to show how far the act, which was confirmed in 1607, was effective.
Further, by the Falkland Statutes of 1636, members of a privileged company, i.e., incorporation, and their servants might reside and work in any other company's bounds on payment of certain fees.
The available evidence relating to Edinburgh and Glasgow in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries suggests that non‑freemen did work in those burghs from time to time, but that the mason burgesses endeavoured to restrict, if not to prevent, the infringement of their monopoly of trade.
Information concerning the relationship between an incorporation of masons and a `territorial lodge' of masons in the same burgh is not sufficient to permit of generalisations. At Edinburgh, the Incorporation seems to have left the bulk of the business affecting masons to the Lodge, the government of which appears to have been invested in the master masons who were members of the Incorporation. In the seventeenth century, the deacon, or chief officer of 40 ORGANISATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES the masons in the Incorporation, appears largely to have directed the Lodge, so that no clash between Incorporation and Lodge was very likely to occur. At Glasgow, on the other hand, the Incorporation appears to have kept a firmer hand over the Lodge and to have dealt with various matters which at Edinburgh were managed by the Lodge.
In England, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, trade companies or fellowships were set up and incorporated in various places., They appear to have been organisations forced upon the various trades from above, schemes to facilitate municipal government at a time when Tudor monarchs were encouraging oligarchies and when, by the Statute of Apprentices of 1563, an attempt was being made to provide a national control of industry.
These new organisations appear to have been established for political rather than for industrial purposes.
In most, if not all, of these cases the masons were grouped in a company or fellowship with a variety of more or less associated trades.
Except in the few cases of masons' companies pure and simple, able to trace their descent from former masons' craft gilds, these sixteenth‑ and seventeenth‑century trade companies in England appear to have little or no interest for students of Masonic history. The problem of masons' craft gilds is discussed in the next section.
3. Craft Gilds.‑The expression `craft gild' was the invention of nineteenth‑century economic historians to distinguish a particular type of medieval municipal organisation, concerned with the industrial regulation of a particular trade or craft, from another medieval municipal organisation, the merchant gild, concerned with the trade of a whole town. In medieval documents the organisation in question is described as a fellowship or mystery, M.E. mistere = trade or craft, derived from O.F. mestier [Mod. F. metier]. The term has consequently nothing to do with secrets.
In this volume we use the expression `craft gild' in its technical sense.
Ever since the view came to prevail that speculative masonry is historically linked with the operative masonry of the Middle Ages, Masonic writers have devoted considerable , This paragraph is based on M.M., 232‑3. 41 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY space to the subject of masons' craft gilds.
Their statements, however, are mostly based on false analogy with what happened in other trades, and not on first‑hand examination of the facts, which strongly suggest that there were few, if any, masons' craft gilds.
Conder I is of opinion that the London Masons' Fellowship or Company was established in the early thirteenth century, at a time when London Bridge was being built, but produces no evidence whatsoever in support of his opinion.
Gilbert Daynes,2 referring to the London Regulations for the Trade of Masons, 1356, states that "prior to this date there must have been an organized gild of masons in London", for which statement, however, he too produces no evidence, contenting himself with a reference to Conder.
Actually, not only is evidence lacking to prove that a masons' craft gild existed in London in the thirteenth or early fourteenth century, but, on the contrary, there is definite evidence to suggest that such a craft gild did not exist.
The names of those elected and sworn in 1328 in divers mysteries of London, for the government and instruction of the same, have survived,3 but no masons are included.
In 1351, on the only occasion before 1376 when the Common Council was elected from the mysteries, instead of from the wards, the masons were unrepresented 4
In 1356, the preamble to the Regulations for the Trade of Masons states that, unlike other trades, the masons had not been regulated in due manner by the government of the folks of the trade, which implies that there was no craft gild amongst London masons at that date. The first explicit reference to a permanent organisation of masons in London does not occur until 1376, when four masons were elected to the Common Council to represent the mystery,5 and the probability is that the gild was established at some date between 1356 and 1376.
Vibert s assumes that masons' craft gilds existed in other towns because in such places as Coventry, Chester, York and Newcastle masons participated in the performance of 1 Hole Craft, 56.
2 r4.Q.C., xxxviii, 87 3 Cal. Letter‑Book E., 278.
4 Cal. Letter‑Book F., 237' Cal. Letter‑Book H., 43 6 Freemasonry before the Existence of Grand Lodges, 26.
42 ORGANISATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES miracle plays. This doubtless points to some kind of organisation, but in our opinion not necessarily to a craft gild. The gild regulations of more than forty trades are preserved in the York Memorandum Book,' but there are no t
regulations for the masons, nor are there any in the published records of Coventry?
For Chester, the evidence appears to consist of late sixteenth‑ or early seventeenth‑century transcripts of the actual plays.3
At Newcastle the Masons' Company was incorporated in 1581 with certain craft powers and with certain `social' duties, including the presentation of a Corpus Christi play.
There is nothing to indicate an earlier organisation of the masons, whereas the wallers, bricklayers and daubers claimed a charter granted in the reign of Henry VI, and the slaters an `ordinary' dating from 1451.4 In no town in England or Scotland, other than Londony have masons' craft ordinances been traced before 1450, or, '
with the exception of the Edinburgh seal of cause referred to on page 39 above, before i Soo, though indirect evidence points to some organisation at Norwich, where wardens of the masons were elected in 144o, and where there are references in 1469 to irregularities practised by the masons, and in 1491 to failure to swear masters to search for defects. Norwich masons' ordinances of i 512, 1572 and 1577 have survived.b
We cannot see any reason why masons' ordinances should have been lost, whilst others have been preserved, and we feel compelled to conclude that local gilds of masons were not strongly developed in medieval boroughs, a conclusion which an examination of the ‑conditions ' Surtees Society, Vols. r2o and 1252 Coventry Leet Book (E.E.T.S.).
3 Conder ("The Miracle Play", Y.Q.C., xiv, 66) states that the date of the undiscovered original MS. has been placed at the end of the fourteenth century; Vibert (loc. cit.) plumps for 1327 as the date when masons participated in the Chester miracle plays; according to R. H. Morris, Chester in the Plantagenet and Tudor Reigns, 3o6, 317, the earliest reference to the masons' participation in the Corpus Christi pageants appears to be 153 r.
4 Brand, History of Newcastle, ii, 346, 3 50, 3 51, 3 5 5 s J. C. Tingey, "Notes upon the Craft Gilds of Norwich with particular reference to the Masons", I.Q.C., xv, 197‑204; Walter Rye, "Extracts from the Records of the Corporation of Norwich", f4.Q.C., xv, 205‑12 43 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY prevailing in the stone‑building industry would lead one to expect. Masons were doubtless organised, but on a looser and less localised basis than most contemporary trades. Before discussing this looser type of organisation, however, this section on craft gilds may best be concluded by a brief review of the masons' regulations drawn up in London, the one municipality in England where a masons' craft gild is definitely known to have existed.
The London Masons' Regulations of 13561 closely resemble those approved by the municipality for other trades at that period; they require a seven‑years' apprenticeship; they prohibit one mason from taking the apprentice or journeyman of another before the expiry of his term; they declare that any man capable of it may both hew stones and lay them; and they stipulate for sureties if a mason should take a contract. As there was no masons' gild at that time, they naturally provide no machinery for the administration of a gild.
The regulations must be regarded as a statement of what was desirable, rather than as a statement of actual practice, for, as indicated on page 3o above, apprenticeship among masons was almost unknown before the fifteenth century, and even during that century most masons appear to have learnt their trade without serving a formal apprenticeship. Ordinances made in 1481 both imply that the Gild or Fellowship had been badly administered, and pro vide remedies.
Wardens are to be elected every two years, and outgoing wardens are to present accounts to their successors within one month, under heavy penalties for disobedience.
Admissions are not to occur without examination by the wardens and four or six honest persons of the craft. Members of the Fellowship are prohibited from enticing the workmen of another.
Finally, the powers of the Fellowship are extended to include the right of search, oversight and correction of all manner of work pertaining to the science of masons within the city and suburbs.
From the Ordinances of 1481 and the later ones of 1521, it is clear that we have in the London Masons' Company a medieval craft gild with an oligarchy formed or forming 1 This and the following paragraphs are based on our paper, "The London Masons' Company", Ec. Hitt., Ftbruary 1939 44 ORGANISATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES within it, as happened in other places and other trades. Persons made free of the Fellowship were, according to the 1481 ordinances, "once in every three years to be clad in one clothing [i.e., livery] convenient to their powers and degrees" and to wear it when attending mass every year on the Feast of the Quatuor Coronati (November 8). Every two years, also, they were to go to mass together on the octave of Holy Trinity and thereafter to "keep their dinner or honest recreation ...
And to have their wives with them if they will", each paying i 2d. for his own dinner and 8d. for that of his wife.
A shilling would then represent a quarter of a mason's weekly wage, and, bearing in mind the livery and the quarterages payable by members, we may suppose that the Fellowship was tending to become too expensive for the journeyman mason to join. The 1521 ordinances show a marked tendency towards the establishment of a local monopoly.
Foreigns, or non‑freemen, are neither to set up for themselves nor to be employed at all while a sufficient number of freemen is available. Restrictions are placed upon apprenticeship; no ordinary member is to have more than one apprentice, a liveryman only two, and men who have twice been wardens three at most.
A statute of 1548 made illegal the limitation upon foreigns, but in the following year the section was repealed at the instance of the London livery companies, and the Masons' Company kept on trying to set up a monopoly until the Great Fire of 1666, and even later.
One problem relating to the masons' trade on which the various municipal ordinances and the records of the London Company might be expected to throw light is the subject of masons' marks. Thousands of marks of one kind or another have been found on the stones of medieval buildings, and it appears to be generally accepted that the main purpose was to distinguish the handiwork of one man from that of another.
A similar need existed in many trades, and gild regulations not infrequently directed masters to set marks on their work, and prohibited the counterfeiting of marks.
The helmet makers, blacksmiths, bladesmiths and braziers of London and the cutlers of Hallamshire may be cited as instances of crafts for which regulations concerning 45 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY marks existed. In London, no provision regulating the use of marks has been traced in the Masons' Ordinances, nor has any book survived in the archives of the Company recording the marks assigned to members, such as the Masons' Mark Book at Aberdeen which dates from 1670. The only London evidence which has survived is quite unhelpful, viz., a score of marks, either in lieu of, or appended to, signatures in the seventeenth‑century books of the Company, more particularly in the Accounts.
4. Assemblies or Congregations.‑The uniformity of conditions prevailing at different building operations in various parts of the country, as shown by surviving building accounts, points not only to some kind of organisation, but to an organisation or organisations covering a relatively wide area, in contra‑distinction to craft gilds, the jurisdiction of which was limited in each case to the area of a particular municipality.
The nature of this organisation is somewhat a matter for conjecture.
In this connection we are disposed to rule out the congregations and confederacies of masons declared illegal by Statutes of 136o and 1425, on the ground that they, like the similar associations of carpenters and cordwainers, were associations which aimed solely at securing higher wages, in violation of the Statutes of Labourers.
These were clearly associations of wage earners.
In such official or semi‑official organisations of masons as existed, we should expect masters to predominate.
The existence of this type of organisation is supported by two references in the Fotheringhay Church Building Contract of 1434,1 according to which the mason contractor was required to `latlay' the groundwork 2 "by oversight of masters of the same craft", and the fitness of the setters employed, in case of doubt, was to be determined "by oversight of master masons of the country".
The probability that masons had some kind of organisation dealing with the government of their craft 3 is strengthened by the fact that the minstrels, who, to a considerable 1 M.M., 245‑8 2 See our Note on "Latlaying the Groundwork", Misc. Lat., xxii. 29‑313 These paragraphs are based on our MM., 178 seg., and our "Evolution of Masonic Organisation", Z.Q.G., xlv, 286.
46 ORGANISATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES extent, like the masons, had to wander about the country in search of work, were subject to annual courts enjoying wide territorial jurisdiction. Jurisdiction over minstrels and artisans in the Earldom of Chester is said to have been conferred by Ranulph, the last earl, on his constable, de Lacy, who transferred the governance of minstrels to his steward, Dutton, whose family had a recognised title thereto as late as 1597. The annual gathering of the minstrels being held at the time of the midsummer fair, a court was kept on that occasion by the heir of Dutton, at which laws and orders were made for the better government of the minstrels.
A similar jurisdiction is believed to have been acquired by John of Gaunt, in virtue of which he established in 13 81 a court at Tutbury in Staffordshire which was held annually on 16 August to enact laws for minstrels within five neighbouring counties and to determine controversies affecting them.
It is not impossible, therefore, that the masons had a somewhat similar system of government. That, in any case, is what the Regius and Cooke MSS. of circa 1400 indicate. The Cooke MS. (11. 701 seq.) refers to annual or triennial provincial or county congregations of masters and fellows, said to have been first established by Athelstan, which were to govern the craft (11. 904 seq.) and whose presiding master, if need be, was to be assisted by the sheriff of the county, or the mayor of the city, or the alderman of the town where the assembly was held.
The Regius MS. (Il. 75 seq. and 407 seq.) contemplates a somewhat similar assembly or congregation, also said to have been first established by Athelstan, but with this difference, that it was to be attended not only by masters and fellows, but by great lords, knights and squires, the sheriff of the county, and also the mayor of the city, and also the aldermen of the town where it was held.
The existence of an assembly of some kind may be admitted without accepting the account of its origin given in the Regius and Cooke MSS., there being very little historical probability that it dated from Athelstan's time. The part attributed to Athelstan in Masonic development as pictured in the MS. Constitutions of Masonry, is discussed in Chapter IV and need not be enlarged upon here.
Regarding the 47 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY constitution of the assembly,we think it not impossible that knights and esquires, for example, might attend as representatives of the authorities, but most unlikely that the sheriff of the county and also the mayor of the city should have been present as stated in the Regius MS. The statement of the Cooke MS. that the sheriff of the county or the mayor of the city attended, is much more nearly what we should expect, in view of the immunity from the sheriff's jurisdiction which it was the object of medieval towns to obtain and preserve.
In our opinion, the sheriff would ordinarily be present at the assembly only if it were held outside the limit of municipal jurisdiction, though both sheriff and mayor might be present if the assembly were held in one of the few municipalities which had sheriffs of their own. On this matter we incline to follow the account in the Cooke MS. rather than the more fanciful account in the Regius MS.
The object of the presence of such dignitaries as attended was no doubt, as stated in the Cooke MS. (11. 9 i o‑i 1), to help the master of the congregation against `rebels', or, in other words, to assist in the enforcement of discipline. The functions of the assembly, according to the Cooke MS. (11. 713 seq.) were to examine the masters' knowledge of the Articles and so ascertain that they were qualified to do satisfactory work for employers; according to the Regius MS. (11. 415 seq.) they were to make ordinances for the craft. The statements of the Regius and Cooke MSS. concerning the functions of the assembly are probably not so different as they appear at first sight.
In the Middle Ages `law' and `custom' were closely related, and laws were often declarations or statements of accepted custom. As customs gradually changed, owing to the appearance of new conditions, new declarations or statements of custom might be called for. The business of the assembly would thus seem to have been to interpret and enforce the customs of the industry.
Masons' Customs.‑On page 38 mention was made of "the auld use and consuetude of Our Lady Luge of Dundee". An almost contemporary reference to masons' customs in England occurs in the 1539 building account of Sandgate Castle, which records that a jurat of Folkestone 48 ORGANISATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES was paid his expenses while riding to communicate with the master controller "concerning the use and custom of freemasons and hardhewers".1
There is also evidence of local customs in an earlier period.
Thus at Vale Royal Abbey in 12'78 certain masons were paid for their tools, "because it is the custom that their tools, if they bring any, shall be bought"; ti the accounts for work done at Nottingham Castle in 1348 explain that one feast day in the week was not counted towards wages, ex antiqua consuetudine; 3 London Bridge masons in 14o6 were provided with drink on Shrove Tuesday prout mos est antiquus.4 If it is wellnigh certain that the masons' craft, like that of the lead‑miners and tin‑miners, who also carried on their occupations to a large extent outside the towns, was regulated by `customs', i.e., old‑established but by no means unchanging usages and practices, the content and form of those customs is a different problem. In the case of the miners the `customs' have survived; s unfortunately of "the use and custom of freemasons and hardhewers" no corresp,onding details have been traced. We are of opinion, however, that the Articles and Points of the Regius and Cooke MSS., which are a body of regulations with regard to masters, craftsmen, apprentices, wages and other matters, may be regarded as a statement of the masons' customs as they existed about the year 1400.
If we accept the Cooke MS. statement that the charges and manners were written in the so‑called Book of Charges, then the presumption is that the customs had been set down in writing before the date of the Regius and Cooke MSS.
That manuscript version of the customs probably dated from the third or fourth quarter of the fourteenth century.
The reference in the first Article to the rate of wages being "after the dearth of corn and victual in the country", suggests a date after the Black Death (1349) when prices rose sharply and scarcity of 1 B.M. Harl. MS. 1647, fo. 109 2 P.R.O. Exch. K.R. 485/22.
3 P.R.O. Exch. K.R. 544/354 London Bridge accounts, quoted in our L.B., 24 n.
s For those of the lead‑miners, see The Liberty and Customes of the Miners (1645), 1‑3; for those of the Cornish tin‑miners, see The Black Prince's Register, iii, 71‑3 49 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY labour caused wage questions to become acute, although it was not until 1389 that statutory recognition of the actual facts was accorded and justices were enabled to fix wages of masons, carpenters, etc., "according to the dearness of victuals".' The reference to a seven years' apprenticeship also suggests a date not earlier than the second half of the fourteenth century, apprenticeship being a relatively late development amongst masons, as indicated on page 30 above.
In the legendary section of the Regius and Cooke MSS. the charges or customs are ascribed to the time of Athelstan; if they do go back to the tenth century, which is exceedingly doubtful, we can be perfectly sure that in their original form they were very different from the form they take in the Articles and Points of the Regius and Cooke MSS.2 It is in the highest degree improbable that there could have been any mention of apprenticeship in any tenth‑, eleventh‑, twelfth‑ or thirteenth‑century masons' customs, or any reference to the fixing of wages according to the cost of victuals.
As the thirteenth century was a period of great building activity, the customs may well have existed then, and it is quite possible that they date from the late eleventh or early twelfth century.
This is the more likely, because a substantial period probably elapsed before the customs were set down in writing, as they were statements of usages and practices and not laws or orders enacted at some particular date and immediately recorded in writing. It may be, therefore, that the document or "book of charges" on which the author of the Cooke MS. based his Articles and Points was the oldest written version of the customs, and we are rather disposed to think this was so.
If, as appears to be the case, the Articles and Points represent practices which were national in their application, we doubt if they could have been formulated before the third quarter of the fourteenth century. In their early stages it is probable that masons' customs, like miners' customs and manorial customs, were local in character, and that they differed from 1 13 Richard II, c. 8.
2 For a possible earlier form, also embodied in the "Book of Charges", see pp. 77‑8 below.
5o ORGANISATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES district to district.
The only Masonic practices for which information is available before the middle of the fourteenth century, namely, the questions of payment for tools and payment for holidays, show very considerable diversity.
Uniformity of customs would tend to be brought about partly by the influence of the King's Master Masons, and the Office of Works established in 1256, but principally by mobility amongst masons, which had doubtless existed to some extent from the earliest times. The use of the system of impressment in connection with the erection of Welsh castles at the end of the thirteenth century could hardly fail to lead to some interchange of ideas and practices. The influence exerted, however, was probably slight compared with that exercised by the greatly increased use of impressment from 1344 onwards, and in particular by its wholesale adoption in 1360‑3, when masons from almost every county in England were assembled in such large numbers at Windsor Castle that the continuator of the Polychronicon could write that William Wykeham had gathered at Windsor almost all the masons and carpenters in England. I
Though the chronicler's statement was doubtless an exaggeration, the vast gathering of masons at Windsor in 1360‑3 must have marked an epoch in Masonic history and probably contributed more than any other single event to the unification and consolidation of the masons' customs, and very possibly led to their first being set down in writing.2 In connection with masons' customs, or with the MS. Constitutions of Masonry, in whose Articles and Points, or Charges General and Singular, they are embodied, there is a common misconception among Masonic students, namely, that the customs were the property of a distinct category of `church' or `cathedral' masons.
This is really a double misconception.
(1) The customs belonged to the general body of masons.
Apart from "the auld use and consuetude of Our Lady Luge of Dundee", the only 1 See our "Impressment of Masons for Windsor Castle, r 36o‑63", Ec. Hist., February 1937 2 This section is based on our M.M., 169 seq., and our "Evolution of Masonic Organisation", d.Q.C., xlv.
S1 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY independent evidence of customs, under that name, so far discovered occurs in documents relating to Crown or municipal building operations (Vale Royal Abbey in 12']8, Nottingham Castle in 1348, London Bridge in 14o6, and Sandgate Castle in 1539). Similarly, the only independent evidence of the ownership, or the use, of versions of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry by operative masons relates to the lodges of Stirling, Melrose, Kilwinning, Aberdeen, Dumfries, Aitchison's Haven, Alnwick and Swalwell, none of which would appear to have had church associations. (ii) We know of no record to suggest, let alone prove, that in the Middle Ages there existed two special kinds of mason, viz., `church', or `cathedral', or `mobile' masons on the one hand, and `town', or `gild', or `local' masons on the other.
A study of building accounts and of impressment orders makes it clear that the same masons, whether master masons or ordinary hewers or layers, were often employed on different kinds of building erected in stone, for castles, cathedrals, churches, colleges and bridges, and that masons normally resident in towns were just as likely to travel, either voluntarily or compulsorily, in order to take part in some new work, as masons normally resident in the country.
MASONIC ORGANISATION ON THE CONTINENT Although we are definitely of opinion that freemasonry had its genesis in Britain, we give a brief account of early Masonic Organisation on the Continent, first, because it may conceivably have had some influence upon English and Scottish developments, and second, because it may be that the nature of the organisations among English and Scottish operative masons can be better understood, if compared with the corresponding organisations on the Continent.
Gilds.‑In general it would appear that the continental associations of masons during the Middle Ages and early modern times fall into two categories: (a) local gilds, similar in many ways to the municipal gilds of this country, and (b) associations on a wider territorial basis, having some similarity to the organisation described in the Cooke S2 ORGANISATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES and Regius MSS.
As an instance of the former kind we may cite the maestri di pietra e legname in thirteenth‑century Florence. It will be noted that the masons would not appear to have been sufficient in number or wealth to constitute a gild of the first importance. Below the joint gild (of masons and wrights as it would be called in this country) there were nine minor gilds; on a level with it were four other gilds of the middle grade; and above it were seven major gilds.' In a city so eminent for its architecture, a gild so closely connected with building might have been expected to take a higher rank; but the policy of the city authorities was, at any rate at times, unfavourable to corporate exclusiveness in the building trades. Not only were prices of materials subject to control, but, in the interests both of private builders and the city's undertakings, `foreign' craftsmen were, by an early fourteenth‑century regulation, allowed to work within its boundaries without belonging to the gild or paying to it.a The masons and wrights, therefore, must have known difficulties similar to those which beset the London Masons' Company in the seventeenth century.$ It may be noted that in medieval Paris, also, masons could not have been in a position to exercise a monopoly, since any skilled person was free to follow the mason's craft in the city.
The trade was nevertheless to some extent organised, having customs and regulations of its own, and the craftsmen, of whom there were 123 in 1300, were associated in a fraternity whose patron was St. Blaise. Masons, plasterers, stone‑cutters and makers of mortar were subject to the jurisdiction of the King's Master Mason.4 How far the structure of the Florentine gild resembled that of others, such as the Gild of the Quatuor Coronati in Antwerp, we do not know. The Antwerp gild or incorporation embraced all the building trades‑masons, stone‑cutters, paviors and tilers; it is mentioned in the ' A. Doren, Die Florentiner Zunftwesen, ó1, 49 2 Doren, ibid., 122.
Doren quotes a similar regulation made in Cologne in 1335 a L.M., 1o seQ.
4 Franklin, Dictionnaire Historique des Yrts etc. (igo6).
53 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY city records as early as 1423, and its ordinances of 1458 have survived.,
Nor are we so far very well informed about the existence of gilds in other cities.
It is, however, not very likely that gilds in continental towns had any great or direct effect on those in England and Scotland.
The Steinmetzen.‑A hundred years ago it was believed that the organisation of stonemasons in Germany originated in the cloister and especially in the Benedictine house of Hirschau, in the Black Forest, where the famous Abbot William (1o69‑91) trained lay brethren to serve as artificers not only for the building and decoration of his own abbey but also for many others. These men and their followers were, it is said, subject to rules, acquired secrets and were formed into brotherhoods which were given privileges in papal bulls and secular charters.2
Search at the Vatican in 1773,3 however, failed to discover any such bulls and none, apparently, have come to light since. Moreover the main authority for the wonderful work of Abbot William in technical education appears to be the Hirschau Chronicle of John Trithemius (1462‑1518), a writer by no means restrained in his fancy.
There is, on the whole, little reason to believe that the organisation of the Steinmetzen was monastic in its origin.
It is of course true that the cathedrals of Strasburg, Regensburg, Vienna and Cologne could not have been built or maintained without lodges (Bauhutten) of masons, and that each of these lodges, like those of York and Canterbury, probably had its rules. It is also not improbable that the rules of the different lodges had something in common, and that the common element may well have become widespread through masons travelling from place to place.
The earliest known text of them, and the first document relating to the organisation of the Steinmetzen, 1 See Goblet d'Alviella, "The Quatuor Coronati in Belgium", .4.Q.C., xiii, where the ordinances of 1458 are printed in translation; and J. Wegg, llntwerp 1477‑1559, 87, 93, 100, 102, 116, 249.
2 Karl Heideloff, Die Bauhitte des Mittelalterr in Deutschland (Nurnberg, 1844) 3 F. Janner, Die Bauhutten de.c deutschen Mittelalterr (Leipsig, 1876). See also T. Pownall in.4rchaeologia, 1789, p. 123 54 ORGANISATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES certainly implies that a body of custom (gutte Gewohnheit and alt herkommen) had grown up, and states that certain masters and fellows, on behalf of the craft in German lands generally, had met in Regensburg in 1459 to renew the ancient customs and to unite amicably in a brotherhood to maintain them.' That a meeting of some kind did take place in the year and place named is evident from an independent entry in the cathedral accounts recording a gift of wine to the visiting master stonemasons, 2 but the entry does not make clear for what purpose they had gathered together; neither does it refer to fellows, who, according to the text of the ordinances, attended the legislating assembly. A document of 1462,$ however, refers to meetings at Regensburg and Strasburg, and records the acceptance, by masters assembled at Torgau from Magdeburg, Halberstadt, Hildesheim and other places, of the book of ordinances drawn up at the earlier meetings. It may, further, be noted that the regulations of the stonemasons were confirmed by imperial authority in 1498 4 and 1563.6 To discuss these ordinances in detail would be beyond our present scope, and we shall take space only to suggest that they arose naturally from the condition of the craft in the German lands and to state that we know of no evidence to show any direct connection between them and the form of the Old Charges. There are many resemblances between the two sets of rules; those of the Steinmetzen require members to be pious, charitable, and careful of the honour of the craft, and to avoid theft and adultery; they take for granted the three medieval grades of apprentice, journeyman or fellow, and master; they lay stress on apprenticeship (the ordinary term being five years); they prohibit the supersession of one master by another without cause; they demand the maintenance of work by the day wherever ' Gould, i, 117‑ 18; the ordinances renewed and revised at Regensburg in 1459 are printed in translation in Kenning'r Cyclopedia of Freemasonry, 529 ref.
2 Janner, op. cit., 5 5.
a German text in ibid., 294 ref.
English translation in Gould, i, 134 ref.
4 Janner, op. Cit., 266 ref.
6 Ibid., 27z .ref.; Gould, i, 119 ref.
55 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY possible. In short they show, as the Regius and Cooke MSS. do, a concern to harmonise the interests of the `lord', or person for whom building work is done, of the master mason (whether salaried or undertaking a contract), of the warden who is his second‑in‑command, and of the mass of wage‑earning fellows.
On the other hand, there are marked differences.
The ordinances of the Steinmetzen, for example, are clear as to the monetary contribution required from members and as to masons' marks, points on which the Regius and Cooke MSS. are silent.
It may further be noted that, according to the 1563 version of the ordinances, the Steinmetzen had a form of greeting and, perhaps, a grip,' which apprentices were forbidden to reveal.
Finally, the German documents show that the Steinmetzen were organised on a regional basis, with a chief seat of jurisdiction in each district.
No such divisions are indicated in the Regius and Cooke MSS., possibly because the smaller extent of England, and its political unity, made them less necessary than they were in the vast and‑in practice‑disunited Holy Roman Empire.
The Compagnonnages.‑In France, though there were cathedrals and important churches in plenty, no organisation on exactly the same lines as the Steinmetzen is known to have arisen. Nevertheless France produced a form of association which, in some respects, was more akin to freemasonry than either the gilds of Florence and Antwerp or the Steinmetzen of Strasburg, namely, the bodies called compagnonnages. These bodies are of uncertain antiquity and obscure origin. The earliest documentary proof of their existence does not go further back than the early sixteenth century, and the earlier records relating to them throw comparatively little light on their exact character; but their judicious historian, Martin Saint‑Leon, considered, and with probability, that they existed long before i 5oo. He also thought it likely, though proof, as he frankly admitted, was absent, that they first developed in the twelfth or the thirteenth century among 1 Janner, op. Cit., 231, 289, equates the Schenk (possibly `gift') of the text with Handschenk (`grip').
See also Gould, i, 128, 1ó7.
56 ORGANISATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES the workers employed on French cathedrals in the great age of Gothic architecture.' For the economic historian the compagnonnage is important as marking a stage in the evolution of labour organisation. The compagnon was a worker for whom the chance of becoming an independent master was disap pearing, if not quite gone.
As gild organisation became more exclusive and oligarchic, the status of journeymen tended to become not temporary but permanent, and those who, by apprenticeship, had attained it had an increasing motive to stand by one another in defence of their interests against the patrons, or employers. Association for that purpose was disliked by the gild authorities (who might, however, decide to regulate and control associations whose existence they could not prevent), and was generally prohibited by law. Partly, no doubt, as camouflage and partly through simple piety, the compagnonnages assumed a religious aspect, and, perhaps by imitation of the gilds and their liveries, the compagnons adopted peculiarities of dress, were it only the wearing of ribbons.
Not a few of the trades in which this organisation was found were connected with the tour de France, i.e., the journeymen were accustomed to wander, in search of wider experience or of employment, from town to town along a more or less well‑defined route. Consequently measures were taken for the reception of travelling craftsmen, so that they might be provided with work in the town to which they came, or helped on their way to another. In much the same way in England the masons were bidden to "receive and cherish strange masons ... and set them to work" or to refresh them "with money to the next lodge' '.2
Given such an organisation, it would be prudent to confine its benefits to those who were really compagnons, and who might be proved by passwords or in other ways. As societies opposed to the masters and obnoxious to the police, the compagnonnages required secrecy of their ' E. Martin Saint‑L6on, Le Compagnonnage, Paris, rgor, p. 15 See 2
Thomas W. Tew MS., printed in Poole and Worts.
For an account of a similar practice among trade unions see W. Kiddier, The Old Trade Unions, Chapter I.
57 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY members.
According to the theological faculty of Paris, in 16SS: "les compagnons font jurer sur les evangiles a ceux qu'ils re~oivent de ne reveler ni a pere, ni a mere, femme ni enfants, ni confesseur ce qu'ils feront ou verront faire",' and the same causes which brought this about in the seventeenth century may well have had the effect in earlier times of compelling the compagnon to "hele the councelle of his felows in logge and in chambre".z
Within the association a moral discipline was enforced without the help of external authorities, so that bad payers, thieves, and forsworn men were punished. Finally, it may be noted, the compagnonnages developed rituals for admissions and other occasions, such as the burial of a member, and ceremonies for their convivial meetings. They also possessed legends giving what were no doubt edifying, if utterly impossible, accounts of their origins.
There were in fact three legends, one for each of the competing branches into which the compagnonnages were divided. One claimed to have been founded by Hiram, Solomon's master mason, said to have been slain by three wicked apprentices; a second traced its origin to Hiram's colleague, Maitre Jacques, maker of two columns with pictures; and the third professed to be derived from Father Soubise, also one of Solomon's master‑workmen, who later quarrelled with Maitre Jacques after both had landed in France.3 Two of these legends, it will be observed, have the motif of the slain master mason and one refers to two pillars. All three refer to Solomon's Temple, but there may, in the Soubise story, have been some confusion with the Knights Templar.
Unfortunately, it seems impossible to assign dates to these legends or to trace their evolution. Saint‑Leon takes it that they were orally transmitted from age to age from a comparatively early period and that below their surface absurdity they contain vestiges, at least, of history: the stories of the life and death of Hiram, Maitre Jacques and Soubise, the repeated allusions to the rebuilding of 1 Saint‑Uon, óo.
s Cookr MS., ll. 8ó2‑3 (Two MSS., 1at). a Saint‑Leon, io.
58 ORGANISATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES Solomon's Temple are but an allegory, a weakened and deformed memory of the works undertaken at Chartres, Paris, Noyon, Rheims and Orleans in order to build new temples for the Lord., On the other hand, the remarkable similarity between the compagnonnage rituals of initiation and English Masonic catechisms,2 and Saint‑Leon's conclusion that the former c
were almost certainly modelled on the latter,3 suggest that the compagnons may have borrowed legends as well as catechisms from eighteenth‑century freemasons. This, however, though it might explain Hiram Abif, can hardly apply to Maitre Jacques,4 or Father Soubise. It seems reasonable, therefore, to conclude that it is at least possible that the compagnonnages and English and Scottish operative masonry had some common element in their traditions as well as resemblances in their organisation and objects. Viewed in perspective, the operative lodges of Scotland, having the Mason Word and the practices connected with it, are not very different, with one important exception, from the compagnonnages, with their headquarters at a boutique of Angers, Chartres or Orleans. The exception is that the operative lodges of Scotland embraced masters as well as journeymen, whereas the compagnonnages consisted solely of journeymen.
The two bodies were, however, very different in their subsequent development. Operative masonry in England and Scotland, we believe, lost its ritual and organisation, which were taken over, modified and elaborated into modern freemasonry first by the accepted masons and then by the `speculatives'. The compagnonnages, on the other hand, retained them, and, though influenced by Masonic ritual, kept quite apart from French speculative masonry. In short, the compagnonnages remained throughout the nineteenth century a form of labour organisation, with economic and charitable objects and with essentially religious traditions. They could not fuse with the , Ibid., zó.
2 Ibid., a r9 seg.
a Ibid., 223 IL Unless Maitre _7acgues was the original whence Naymus Grecus and the like were derived.
See p. 75 below.
59 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY freemasons (men who had acquired their knowledge of masonry either directly or indirectly from England in the 172os and 173os, as explained on page 32o below) because in the first place, the French freemasons were not concerned with the journeymen's interests as such and, in the second place, they gradually became sceptical in religion.' On the other hand, the compagnonnages could not easily find a place among trade unions, because they belonged essentially to the ancien regime in industry. Even in their heyday they were a minority and a kind of aristocracy among workmen; and neither their ideas nor their practices were well suited to an age of factories and railways.
The Comacine Legend.‑Apart from local gilds of masons, the Steinmetzen, and the compagnonnages, for the existence of each of which there is record evidence, there is supposed to have been another Masonic organisation. As reported by his fellow seventeenth‑century antiquary, John Aubrey,2 Sir William Dugdale believed that the Fraternity of Freemasons or Adopted Masons was derived from a company of Italian architects or freemasons to whom, according to his statement, the Pope gave a bull or patent about the time of Henry III (1216‑'72) to travel up and down Europe building churches.
The granting of the papal bull is not established, but there is no question that continental master masons did travel long distances to execute their work .3 The evidence showing that architects of repute were not hindered by frontiers must not be regarded, however, as lending support to the legend of the Comacine brethren, who are supposed to have travelled together from place to place to build churches.
Not a scrap of record evidence has been found to establish the existence of this migrant fraternity, belief in which seems to be based on widespread architectural similarities between different churches, and a r See Saint‑LÇon, 325 seq.
2 Bodl. Lib. Aubrey MS. 2, pt. ii, fo. 73, reproduced in 14.Q‑C‑, xi, facing p. ro. Aubrey's MS. was printed in r8ó7 as The Natural History of Wiltshire.
3 See Fagniez, Documents relatifs d 1'Histoire de 1'Industrie et du Commerce en France, i, 305; and Henri Stein, Les drchitectes des Cathldrales Gothiyues, r o 3 sef.
6o ORGANISATION IN THE MIDDLE AGES mistaken etymology.
The word comacinus cannot be taken to mean a mason of Como or Comacina, the supposed district of the Comacini; it probably meant "fellow mason" (as comonachus meant "fellow monk"), without reference to Como or any other place.' 1 See A. Hamilton Thompson, "Medieval Building Documents", Misc. Lat., sii, 50, 5 1.
CHAPTER IV THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS OF M,4SONRY THE OLD CHARGES HE MS. Constitutions of Masonry, or more familiarly the Old Charges, of which the Regius and Cooke MSS. of circa rq.oo are the oldest known versions, consist of a body of regulations relating to masters, craftsmen, and apprentices, and to wages and other matters affecting masons. These regulations, described in the documents either as Articles and Points, or as Charges General and Singular, are prefaced by a legendary narrative of how the building craft and the regulations came into being. About r 15 versions of the Old Charges have been traced: of these, some ninety exist in manuscript; ten have survived only in print, whether in extenso, or in summary form; some fifteen are missing; and two are known to have been destroyed.'
They present a wide field for investigation, and the texts have been studied in considerable detail.2 In this volume we treat the subject only in broad outline, devoting ourselves to five main problems: (1) the origins of the legends or "history"; (ii) the evolution of the "history" between circa r39o and circa 1725; (iii) the regulations and their evolution; (iv) changes in the form of the MS. Constitutions; (v) the part played by the MS. Constitutions 1 They are all recorded in our Handlist of Masonic Documents (1942) with various particulars, including an indication as to where the originals, and facsimiles, prints or reprints are to be found.
2 See, e.g., Hughan, Old Charges of British Freemasons, 1st ed., 1872; rev. 2nd ed., 1895; Gould, Commentary on the Regius Poem, Q.C.,I., i (1889); Speth, Commentary on the Cooke MS., Q.C.14., ii (189o); Begemann, Freimaurerei in England (19o9), i, 1o6‑3o9; Begemann, Freimaurerei in Schottland (1914), i, 1 ro‑8o; Poole, The Old Charges, 1924; Poole, The Old Charges in Eighteenth Century Masonry, the Prestonian Lecture for 1933 Poole and Worts, The "Yorkshire" Old Charges of Masons, 1935; Knoop, Jones and Hamer, The Two Earliest Masonic MSS. (the Regius and Cooke MSS.), 1938.
62 THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS OF MfISONR r in Masonic ceremonies. We accept the conventional nomenclature of the documents;,. also the following classification (based on textual similarities and differences), as originally devised by Hughan and Begemann:z (A.) Regius, (B.) Cooke family, (C.) Plot family, (T.) Tew family, (D.) Grand Lodge family, (E.) Sloane family, (F.) Roberts family, (G.) Spencer family, (H.) Sundry versions.
THE LEGENDS OF THE CRAFT Masonry and Geometry.‑The equating of `masonry' and `architecture' with `geometry', which alone helps to explain much of the early portion of the legendary history of masonry, as portrayed in the MS. Constitutions of Masonry, does occur occasionally in non‑Masonic works of late medieval writers, e.g., in Lydgate's Falls of Princes of circa 1435 and Henry Bradshaw's Life of St. Werberge of Chester of circa 15oo,$ but the short history of masonry, which precedes the Articles and Points in the Regius MS. of circa 1390, is the earliest English instance known to us of the word `geometry' being used to describe `masonry' and 'architecture' .4 Originally, geometry was a liberal art, even though it may have grown out of the practical problems of land mensuration.
It was one of the circle of arts and sciences through which every free‑born Greek youth passed before proceeding to professional studies.
It was included in the Roman artes liberates. Like other liberal arts, it was a pure science or academic study, which might be pursued apart from its practical applications, and was in no way associated with masonry.
"All mechanics", Cicero declared, are engaged in vulgar trades, for no workshop can have anything liberal about it." 6
Seneca excluded painting, sculpture and marble‑working from the liberal arts .6
That such was the attitude in ancient times was not 1 See our "Nomenclature of Masonic MSS.", I.Q.C., liv, 69‑772 For Key to the Classification, see Poole and Worts, 30‑2, 39‑413 Two MSS., 156.
The famous sketch‑book, dating from the middle of the thirteenth century, of Villard de Honnecourt, who was probably the master mason of Notre Dame at Cambrai, claims to show "the method of portraiture and draughtsmanship according to the laws and principles of geometry".
6 De Officiis, 1, xlii.
6 Epistolae Morales, lxxxviii. 63 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY unknown in the Middle Ages, as is clearly indicated in Caxton's Mirrour of the World., The Roman artes liberales covered a wide field and included gymnastics, politics, jurisprudence and medicine. It was not until Martianus Capella of Carthage wrote his Septem fortes Liberales (c. A.D. 420), that the number of liberal arts was, for the first time known to history, set down as seven. In the flrithmetica of Boethius (c. 4'7052S) we find the first attempt to divide the seven liberal arts into two groups, the trivium, containing the three literary arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic or dialectic, and the quadrivium, containing the four mathematical sciences, arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy.
By the time of Isidore, Bishop of Seville from 6oo to 636, the seven liberal arts had taken their place as the introduction to all knowledge.
His Originum sive Etymologiarum libri xx commences with a summary of the knowledge of the day in each subject, before proceeding to medicine, law, religion and other sciences. His definition of the seven liberal arts became the model for later encyclopaedists, and is closely followed in the MS. Constitutions of Masonry: There are seven liberal arts. First, grammar, that is, skill in speaking. Second, rhetoric, which on account of the grace and fluency of its eloquence is considered most necessary in the problems of civil life. Third, dialectic, also called logic, which by subtle discussion divides the true from the false. Fourth, arithmetic, which contains the causes and divisions_ of numbers. Fifth, music, which consists of songs and music.
Sixth, geometry, which comprehends the measures and dimensions of the earth.
Seventh, astronomy, which contains the law of the stars. 2 There was some rivalry between the exponents of the various branches of the seven liberal arts as to which was the most fundamental.
Usually grammar was accorded the first place since it was studied first and by it there were acquired the writing, speaking and reading of Latin, the 1 E.E.T. S., Extra Series, CX (1913), 41ò s Etymologiarum, I, ii. 64 THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS OF Mf1SONRr language both of ecclesiastics and of other learned persons. At one place even the Cooke MS. (11. 48‑52) refers to grammar as the fundament of science, i.e., the foundation of knowledge, but previously (1. 45) and subsequently (11. 85‑6) the Cooke MS. emphasises that geometry is the foundation of all knowledge, "the causer of all", an idea stressed also by the Regius MS., and by all later versions of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry. This is hardly surprising, as the people for whom the manuscripts were written had a professional interest in claiming geometry as the basis of all knowledge.
The authors of the Regius and Cooke MSS. knew that by its etymology geometry was originally concerned with the mensuration of land, but they thought of it chiefly as the science of masonry.
The explanations offered by the MS. Constitutions of Masonry regarding the origin or `invention' of geometry or masonry hand on a confused tradition, and really give three different accounts. (1) The first is derived from the Bible; in this account we are told that geometry or masonry was discovered before the Flood by Jabal, who invented tents, which the Cooke MS., following Bede, interprets as "dwellying howsis". From this the Cooke MS. develops the tradition that Jabal was Cain's master mason at the building of Enoch, the first city recorded in the Bible. (ii) The second account is derived from Josephus and from the Hebrew apocrypha which tell very similar stories. Josephus says that Abraham taught the Egyptians arithmetic and astronomy, but he does not mention geometry. Yet before the close of the Middle Ages he is cited as one of the authorities for the belief that Abraham taught geometry to the Egyptians. Thus Honorius Augustodunensis states 1 that Abraham taught the Egyptians geometry but neither he, nor Peter Comestor,s to both of whom the Cooke MS. refers, mentions Euclid. Consequently, the tradition used by the Cooke MS. dates back to the early twelfth century, but that manuscript and later versions of the MS. Constitutions modify the story by 1 De Imagine Mundi, written 1122‑5, Migne. Pat. Lat., clxii, col. 168.
Historia ScAolastica.
Peter Comestor died circa 1185. 65 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY claiming that Euclid founded geometry, which he had been taught by Abraham. By sacrificing chronology and ignoring the contradiction, Euclid, the most famous classical exponent of geometry, and Abraham, its inventor according to late medieval tradition, are brought into the same picture, whereas Abraham probably died some fifteen hundred years before Euclid was born. (iii) The third account is based on the classical tradition.
The story of the invention of geometry through the flooding of the Nile is recounted by Diodorus Siculus, a contemporary of Julius Caesar, and probably became widespread in the Middle Ages through Isidore of Seville: "The art of geometry is said to have been invented first by the Egyptians, because through the covering of the land with mud by the inundations of the Nile, they first divided the land by lines and measures and gave its name." Here the discovery of geometry is attributed to the Egyptians without the assistance of Abraham; Hermes, identified with the Egyptian god Thoth and the Roman god Mercury, is the hero of the story.
It is very probable that in the Hermes who was counsellor to Isis and invented geometry we have the original of the Euclid who according to the Regius and Cooke MSS. invented geometry through the flooding of the Nile.
Further, the statement of Diodorus that in ancient Egypt education, especially in geometry and arithmetic, was given only to the sons of priests (apparently to provide them with a livelihood) may be the origin of the statement in Masonic legend that education in geometry was sought by the `lords' for their children: How Hermes of the classical tradition became the `Euclid' of Masonic legend can only be surmised. Once the importance of the seven liberal arts in general, and of geometry in particular, had been stressed, it was almost inevitable that Euclid, the representative figure of that science in all schemes of the seven liberal arts, should be brought into the picture.
No other exponent of geometry was recognised, not even Pythagoras, a geometrician as great as Euclid but allotted in the seven liberal arts to music on account of his researches into the theory of the musical scale. Thus medieval tradition, which associated 66 THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS OF M.4SONRY the name of geometry exclusively with Euclid, practically necessitated the replacement of Hermes by Euclid.' The Two Pillars.2‑The two pillars which play such an important part in Masonic legend in the Cooke MS. and the subsequent versions of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry must not be confused with those erected in the porch of the Temple. The two pillars of Masonic legend are reputed to have been the medium by which certain knowledge was saved from destruction by flood or fire, and transmitted to posterity. They occur in the Hebrew apocrypha, but in origin the story is Babylonian. It has been traced by Bro. W. J. Williams in the writings of Berosus, a Babylonian priest (c. 330 to c. 250 B.C.) who apparently drew his information from ancient Assyrian cuneiform inscriptions dating from before the time of the Jewish captivity in Babylon, and the investigation has been carried further by Douglas Hamer. Berosus wrote in Greek a history of Babylon, which is now extant only in extracts by early writers. The following passage is a translation of one of these extracts: The deity Chronos appeared to him in a vision, and warned him that upon the fifteenth day of the month Daesius there would be a flood, by which mankind would be destroyed. He therefore enjoined him to write a history of the beginning, procedure, and conclusion of all things and bury it in the city of the Sun at Sippara; and to build a vessel ... [p. q.5] and when they returned to Babylon and had found the writings at Sippara they built cities and erected temples, and Babylon was thus inhabited again.$ It will be noted that the pillars were originally tablets of clay, which had to be burnt hard after being inscribed, 1 The paragraphs on geometry and masonry are based on Two MSS., 24‑38 2 See Two MSS., 39‑44; Williams, "The Antediluvian Pillars in Prose and Verse", 11.Q.C., li, ioo, and the joint comments of Douglas Hamer and ourselves on that paper,
li, 120‑2.
s Cary's translation, printed in Geo. Smith, The Chaldaean Jccount of Genesis, 1876, p. 43.
67 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY and that the writing on them had nothing to do with the seven liberal arts. Nor had it in the earliest Hebrew version, the apocryphal Vita fldae et Evae, in which Eve ordered Seth and his brothers and sisters to record on tables of stone and baked tile the words of the archangel Michael, when he brought the order for their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Whereas the Babylonian version contemplated destruction only by flood, Eve also had fire in mind; hence the need for stone and clay: "If by water the Lord judge our race, the tables of clay will be dissolved and the tables of stone will remain; but if by fire, the tables of stone will be broken up and the tables of clay will be baked." 1 As the legend developed in pre‑Christian times, attempts were made to state more precisely what actually was set down in writing. In this development, Adam is made responsible for a general prophecy of ultimate destruction, the tables become pillars, and what was carved on them becomes a discovery or discoveries made by the children or descendants of Adam and Eve.
A new element in the story is that the astronomical discoveries of Seth were carved on the pillars. Josephus is the commonest source, and his account became the basis of both Byzantine and Western European versions of the story. The latter are affected by yet another account which comes from a separate Jewish tradition. In the second account it is Lamech's children who carve their discoveries on the pillars, discoveries useful for the service of man. According to the version embodied in The Chronicles of 7erahmeel only music was carved by Jubal upon the two pillars, one of white marble and the other of brick.2 We have now, therefore, from the stories of Josephus and Jerahmeel the suggestion that two liberal arts, astronomy and music, were carved on the two pillars. From very early times we have the development of this idea in the story that Zoroaster, the traditional founder of 114pocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, ed. R. H. Charles, Oxford, 1913, ii, 152.
2 The Chronicles of ,7erahmeel, ed. M. Gaster, Oriental Translations Fund (1899), P. 5o.
68 THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS OF Mf4SONRY i the Magian religion, inscribed the whole of the seven liberal arts on fourteen pillars or columns, seven of brass and seven of baked brick, against a threatened judgment of God., This version probably cannot be older than early Christian times since, as we have seen, the earliest known Latin record of the seven liberal arts dates from the early fifth century. The Zoroastrian pillars, as well as Jubal's pillars, are mentioned in Jerahmeel. Both i
pillar stories, that relating to the children of Lamech and that relating to Zoroaster, are also recorded by Peter Comestor in his Historia Scholastica, dating from about the third quarter of the twelfth century.
The story told in the Cooke MS. is an attempt to reconcile these various versions. It mentions the prophecy foretelling destruction by water and fire, but omits the name of Adam in connection with it. It records the manifold discoveries of the children of Lamech. It assumes that these were the seven liberal arts, and that it was these which were carved on the two pillars. In telling the story, the Cooke MS. introduces two elements, the one deliberately, the other unintentionally, for which there appears to be no authority. The former is a statement, on the supposed authority of the Polychronicon, that many years after the Flood, both pillars were found, one by Pythagoras and one by Hermes, who each taught the secrets they found written thereon. Actually, there is no such story in Higden's Polychronicon, and we have not found a parallel story elsewhere. This finding of both pillars by Pythagoras and Hermes is repeated in some of the later versions of the MS. Constitutions, e.g., the Watson and the Tew. The other peculiarity of the pillar story in the Cooke MS. is the belief that both pillars were made of stone, one of "marble", and the other of "lacerus".
The second stone only came '
into existence because the writer or the copyist failed to recognise the Latin word lateres [= burnt bricks or tiles], through a not unusual difficulty of distinguishing between t and c in medieval manuscripts.
Having made this initial blunder, the writer piles one misconception upon another. Marble was used for one pillar, he says, because it will not 1 Ibid., p. 70.
Cf. Peter Comestot, Hist. Schol., "Genesis", xxxix. 69 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY burn, whereas every medieval mason probably knew that it was burnt for making lime. His "lacerus" was used for the other pillar, he says, because it will not sink in water, which is obviously another misconception.
Both misconceptions are repeated in subsequent versions of the MS. Constitutions; the word "lacerus" not unnaturally puzzled later Masonic scribes, and it appears in such forms as `lathea' `letera' `lacerus' `laternes' `latres' `lather' and `saturns'.
Although we have endeavoured to trace the development of those legends of the craft for which biblical, apocryphal, classical, or medieval sources can be found, the mere discovery of the writings on which reliance was apparently placed, does not convert the legendary matter of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry into authoritative history. It merely proves that a good deal of the story related in the Regius and Cooke MSS. was not fabricated by the authors of those manuscripts; but for all that it must be regarded more or less as a myth. There are, however, other features of the Cooke "history" for which no sources have ever been discovered, e.g., the statements that Charles II organised masonry in France, that St. Alban organised masonry in England, and that Athelstan and his son gave English masons their charges.
So far as we can ascertain, parallel statements find no place either in the early chronicles or in the recognised history books of the period, such as Higden's Polychronicon and John of Salisbury's Polycraticus. They are either inventions, pure and simple, of the author, or based on oral traditions current among contemporary masons, comparable doubtless with the tradition that King Alfred .
was the founder of Oxford University, or that King Athelstan first gave a constitution to the minstrels of Beverley, or that Robert the Bruce, after the Battle of Bannockburn (1314), instituted the Royal Order of Scotland with its headquarters at Kilwinning. Alfred, Athelstan and Bruce were doubtless in the stories to give ancient and royal sanction to institutions of later date and different origin.
Actually, the legend that Athelstan, or an assembly convened by him, laid down charges for the masons accords ill with the weight of the available evidence, which shows 70 THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS OF M4SONRY (a) that there was comparatively little building in stone in tenth‑century England, and (b) that the regulation of industry, when first imposed by external authority, was local and not national in character.
The Four Crowned Martyrs.‑There is still one legend of the craft to which reference must be made, viz., that of the Four Crowned Martyrs,' which does not occur in the historical section of any version of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry, but only in the later part of the Regius MS., 11, 49'7‑534, under the heading 14rs Quatuor Coronatorum. It was probably taken direct from the original Latin version in the Golden Legend.
The oldest English account of the Quatuor Coronati, or Four Crowned Martyrs, a manuscript attributed to the second half of the tenth century, states that they were four Roman stone‑workers named Claudius, Castorius, Symphorianus and Nichostratus. They, together with their fellow‑worker and convert, Simplicius, because of their refusal to forsake Christianity, were by order of the Emperor [Diocletian] locked alive in leaden coffers and thrown into a river.
According to a previous Latin account, written by Bede early in the eighth century, the first Quatuor Coronati were not the five craftsmen, but four men, named Severus, Severianus, Carpophorus and Victorinus, said by other medieval writers to be soldiers, who were put to death by Diocletian's orders for refusing to sacrifice to idols.
The various writers agree that the commemoration of both groups of martyrs on the same day, November 8, was instituted by Melchiades or Miltiades, Bishop of Rome (31 z‑14).
The commemoration of the Four Crowned Martyrs was fairly widespread on the continent in the Middle Ages, one church at Rome being dedicated to them at least as early as A.D. SqS. They were the patron saints of various medieval gilds; the Antwerp gild of that name, embracing all the building trades, was mentioned on page 53 above.
They were also held in honour in many other cities of the Low Countries. Furthermore, they were the patron saints of ' These two paragraphs on the Quatuor Coronati are based on Two MSS., 44‑51 71 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY the German Steinmetzen. It is far from clear, however, by what route and at what time the Quatuor Coronati came to mean anything to medieval operative masons in England. That their memory was preserved by the Church is shown both by the dedication of a church to them at Canterbury in the seventh century, and by their inclusion in various medieval English and Scottish martyrologies. We know, however, of no English evidence before the fifteenth century to show that English masons held the Four Crowned Martyrs in special honour, and even then the evidence is but very slight.
So far as we know, the gilds and fraternities to which English and Scottish masons belonged had other patron saints; thus the London masons honoured St. Thomas of Acon, and the Edinburgh masons St. John. The Quatuor Coronati were apparently not held in special honour by English masons before 145o, and their feast day, November 8, was not kept as a holiday at a time when saints' days and church festivals were very freely recognised. The first occasion on which we find it observed was in 1453 at the building of Eton College; it was then kept as a holiday by the freemasons, but unlike other feast days, it was a holiday without pay. The same somewhat grudging recognition of November 8 occurred at Eton College in 1456, 1458 and 1459 We have not been able to trace November 8 as a holiday at any subsequent building operations, except possibly at the Tower of London in 1535, when three out of the four masons absented themselves from work that day.
The reason for this may have been, as mentioned on page 45 above, that the London Masons' Ordinances of 1481 required each member to attend mass on that day. It was not, however, the gild's great day; that, once every two years, was "the Day of Oeptas [Utas, octave] of the holy Trinitee", when after mass the members and their wives feasted together.
It thus appears probable that such recognition as was accorded to the Quatuor Coronati by English masons commenced only in the fifteenth century, and the existing evidence hardly justifies us in saying that at any period in England were they venerated as patron saints of the masons.
The association, such as it was, of the Four Crowned Martyrs with freemasonry is com 72 THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS OF M,48 ONR 2'.
memorated in the name of the oldest Masonic lodge of research, the Quatuor Coronati Lodge, No. 2076, London.
THE EVOLUTION OF THE CRAFT LEGENDS, 3
CIRCA 1390 TO CIRCA 1725 The legendary portion of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry is in essence a "history" of the building craft from biblical times onwards. This "history", like others, was from time to time revised and altered. How often that happened between the late fourteenth and the early eighteenth century is not known, but the "history" has come down to us in five main forms, apart from the version prepared by the Rev. James Anderson for The Constitutions of the FreeMasons (1723) (i) The earliest form of the "history" is that contained in the Regius MS., 11. 1‑86, and the Cooke MS., 11. 643‑726. It is impossible to determine by internal evidence exactly when either manuscript was written, but examination of the handwriting suggests to the paleographical experts of the British Museum that the Regius MS. was written about 1390 and the Cooke MS. about 1400 or 141 o.2 These texts are descended from a common ancestor, which was probably in existence by circa 1360.2
According to this version, which may be styled the Old Short History, and can be regarded as the ancestor or common original of all the surviving versions, geometry (= masonry) was founded by Euclid in Egypt, as a means for the children of Egyptian nobles to make a living. Euclid taught the children geometry, ordained the rank of master mason, and provided that the less skilled were to be called fellows.
Thereafter, geometry was taught in many lands and came to England in the reign of Athelstan, who ordained congregations and articles.
No descendant of the Regius MS., the only known version of the Old Charges in verse, has been traced.
(ii) The second version is that given at the beginning of the Cooke MS., 11. 1‑642. This version, which may be styled the New Long History, after dealing with the seven liberal arts (cf. Regius MS., 11. 551‑76), the biblical 1 Two MSS., 3.
21bid., 59. 73 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY invention of geometry and other sciences, with the Two Pillars and the Tower of Babel (cf. Regius MS., 11. 535‑50), explains how Abraham taught geometry to Euclid, who founded the craft of masonry. It then refers to the Israelites learning masonry in Egypt and to Solomon building the Temple in Jerusalem. It goes on to explain how masonry was organised by Charles II in France and by St. Alban in England. Finally, it states that Athelstan and his son gave English masons their charges. It was probably written after 135o, but before circa 139o.
The descendants of the Cooke MS., and the modifications they introduce into the "history", are discussed in the next paragraph.
(iii) The third is the version appearing in the Henery Heade MS. (16'75) and the William Watson MS. (1681), and more briefly in abstracts known as the Ralph Poole MS. (1665) and the Plot MS. (1686). This version, which is descended from the Cooke MS. Original (in which the Old Short History and the New Long History were first brought together) differs from the New Long History of the Cooke MS., which it follows closely for the first 596 lines, in its amplification of the English portion of the history, and in particular by the addition of the statement that the charges had been seen and approved by "our late sovereign lord, King Henry VI" and his Council, a statement for which as yet no confirmation has been found.
It possibly has reference to a statute of 1437, 15 Henry VI, c. 6, which provided that no gild, fraternity, or company should make any new ordinance without first submitting it to the authorities for approval.
The biblical names in these manuscripts appear in post‑Reformation spellings, but it is possible that this represents a second revision, and that the main changes had been made in an earlier pre‑Reformation revision. The reference to "our late sovereign lord, King Henry VI" is generally assumed to date the first revision as falling in the reign of his successor, Edward IV (1461‑83), but this does not necessarily follow.
Had Henry VI been the previous sovereign, he would probably have been described as "our late sovereign lord, King Henry".
The fact that "VI" was added seems to imply that Henry VII was dead.
Thus in 74 THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS OF M4SONRr our opinion the first revision (the Watson MS. Original) probably dates from the first half of the reign of Henry VIII (1509‑47).
(iv) A fourth version of the "history" is presented in the Grand Lodge No. z MS. Of 1583 and most of the later manuscripts, including those of the Sloane and Roberts families. Strictly speaking, we are here concerned with several versions differing slightly from one another, but nevertheless sufficiently alike in their main features to be regarded for our present purpose as constituting one version of the "history". They all apparently spring either from an expansion of the Old Short History, an expansion very similar to that of the New Long History of the Cooke MS., though freer from ambiguities and contradictions, or from a revision of the New Long History.
The most important modifications are those introduced into the French legend: first, Charles II is replaced by Charles Martel; second, it introduces "a curious [= skilful] mason called Naymus Grecus", who is said to have been present at the building of the Temple at Jerusalem and to have brought the craft to France.
He thus corresponds to the Maitre Jacques of the compagnonnage legend.' Who "Naymus Grecus" was is uncertain; E. H. Dring's identification of him with Alcuin, the teacher of Charlemagne,2 has recently been contested by Douglas Hamer, who identifies him, much more probably, with Nehemiah.'
The name "Naymus Grecus" has come down to us in nearly as many forms and spellings as there are surviving texts, which shows that it has been copied and mis‑copied many times, the presumption being that the form "Naymus Grecus" is itself an erroneous transcription.
This makes it possible that the particular expansion of the Old Short History, or the revision of the New Long History, as the case may be, from which these versions are descended, was made about the same time as the Cooke MS. Original was prepared, that is, towards the end of the fourteenth century.
How many intermediates there are between the expansion, or the revision, on the one hand, and the Grand Lodge No. 1 MS. of 1583 on the other, it is 1 See pp. 58‑9 above; cf. Misc. Lat., x, 128; and xi, 62.
211.Q.C., xviii, 179‑95; xix, 45‑62.
$ Ibid., xlvi, 63‑7. 75 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY impossible to say. Obviously, the Grand Lodge MS. Original, from which the Grand Lodge No. i MS. was copied in 1583, must be older than i56o, the date of the manuscript from which the Levander‑York MS., a member of the Grand Lodge family, was copied circa 1740; the language and style hardly suggest a date before the first half of the sixteenth century.
A variant of this fourth version of the "history" appears in the Thomas IV. Tew MS. and in other members of the Tew family. In this version the historical account of masonry, including the French legend, is in the revised form which we find in the Grand Lodge family, but in two respects it differs from Grand Lodge No. i MS., and bears a marked affinity to the Watson and Heade MSS. In the first place, it relates that the two pillars, on which the seven liberal arts were carved to keep them from perishing, were both found after the Deluge, whereas the Grand Lodge texts speak of the finding of one pillar only.
In the second place, the charges are prefaced by a brief summary of the "history". Further, the charges of the Tew MS. itself (as distinct from the other members of the family) closely resemble those of the Watson, Heade and Dauntesey MSS., in being intermediate between those of the Regius MS. and the ordinary seventeenth‑century version. It seems likely, either that the Tew family derives from the Cooke MS. Original by a line other than the Grand Lodge family, or that the Tew MS. Original, from which the Tew MS. was copied early in the eighteenth century, was built up from two different sources. In any case, the Tew MS. Original appears to be older than the other versions containing the Grand Lodge account of the "history", but that does not necessarily imply that it is the ancestor of those versions.
(v) The fifth version is that occurring in the Spencer family.
This form appears to be a revision of the Grand Lodge version, through an intermediate which combines the characteristics of both the Spencer and the Grand Lodge versions, such as the Cama MS.' The principal changes are the omission of Naymus Grecus and Charles Martel (Augustine being substituted in the line of transmission), 1 Poole, Two Yersims of the Old Charger, 3.
76 THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS OF Mf4SONRY' the introduction of the Second and Third Temples and other prominent building operations, and the expansion of the narrative leading to Athelstan and Edwin. Other modifications are the naming of King Solomon's master mason as Hiram Abif, the description of Edwin as brother of AthelStan, and the fixing of the year 932 as the date of Edwin's assembly at York.
All the texts of this family appear to date from 1'725 or shortly afterwards.
In some respects, the Spencer "history" resembles that in Anderson's Constitutions of 1723, but in Vibert's opinion the Spencer texts owe nothing to Anderson.'
On the other hand, Bro. Poole inclines to the view that the compiler of the Spencer texts may have been acquainted with Anderson's Constitutions, and have deliberately avoided using new material included by Anderson'2 THE REGULATIONS AND THEIR EVOLUTION The Regulations are statements of masons' customs; though on some points, such as apprenticeship and payment of wages for holidays, they must be taken as indicating what was considered desirable, rather than what was the common practice in the late fourteenth century. It is likely that the customs were originally preserved and transmitted orally, and that they were not set down in writing, in anything like the comprehensive form in which they are embodied in the Articles and Points of the Regius and Cooke MSS., until the third quarter of the fourteenth century. It is possible, however, that they were committed to writing in a much more rudimentary form before 135o. In the Cooke MS., 11. 418‑24, there is the twofold statement (1) that there were charges in earlier [medieval] times, and (ii) that contemporary masons also had charges, both written a
in Latin and French, and both telling the story of Euclid. If we accept this twofold statement, as we are inclined to do, provided that by "earlier [medieval] times" no very remote antiquity is implied, the presumption is that these written versions‑a contemporary one, and an earlier onewere contained in what the Cooke MS. describes as the "book ' Vibert, ed., The Constitutions of the Free‑Masons 1723 (1923), gx. z Poole, op. cit., ó.
77 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY of charges".
As the contemporary, i.e., late fourteenthcentury, version is fathered by the Cooke MS., 11. 696‑'726, on Athelstan (A.D. 925‑40), it is possible that the earlier written version is that fathered by the Cooke MS., 11. 365 4I7, on Nimrod (c. 2350 B.c.).
That charge, said to have been given by Nimrod to the masons whom he sent to build Nineveh for Assur, provided that they were to be true to their lord, to discharge their work truly, and not to take more reward in respect of it than they deserved; that they were to love one another, and finally, that he who had the most cunning (= skill) was to teach his fellows.
If what we may call the `Nimrod' charge was based on the earliest written version of the Regulations contained in the Book of Charges, as seems not unlikely, the second earliest surviving version, likewise based on the Book of Charges, is that embodied in the nine Articles and Points of the later part of the Cooke MS., 11. 727‑959, and there attributed to Athelstan and his council. Actually, it represented the contemporary practice at the time it was set down in writing, in the third quarter of the fourteenth century. This second version is an amplification of the first or `Nimrod' version (which possibly dates from the first half of the fourteenth century). The Articles, mainly addressed to masters, provide that the master shall not pay a higher wage than is warranted by the cost of victuals, that every master mason shall attend the general congregation; that no master shall take an apprentice for less than seven years, or take as apprentice a bondman or one not whole of limb, or take more wages from his employer for his apprentice than the latter's work deserves; that no master shall harbour a mason who is a thief or robber; that a less‑skilled journeyman shall be replaced by a better‑skilled man; and that no master shall supplant another who has already begun his work.
The Points, mainly addressed to journeymen, require the mason to love God and uphold the Church, his master and his fellows; to do an honest day's work for the wages paid; to be true to the craft and to take his pay without dispute; to postpone the investigation of quarrels until the next holiday; not to covet his master's wife or daughter; if appointed warden, to be true to his master and to mediate fairly between 78 THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS OF MdSONR r the master and the fellows.
Further, a skilled mason is to assist a less skilled one, and an apprentice is not to disclose his master's secrets or whatever he may hear or see in the lodge. In addition, there are some unnumbered points in 11. go r‑5 r, which deal with the constitution of the Assembly, the forswearing of thieving, the loyalty of masons to master, king and craft, and the punishment of false masons.
Although the Cooke MS. dates from about 1410, its version of the Regulations, as embodied in the Articles and Points, is undoubtedly older than the more elaborate Regulations contained in the Articles and Points of the Regius MS. of circa 1390, so that the compiler of the Cooke MS. must have used an older text of the Book of Charges than did the author of the Regius MS. As the latter cannot have used a text later than circa 1390, the Articles and Points of the Cooke MS. must be based on a text written before circa 13 90, though internal evidence shows that it was written after r3so.
The third oldest surviving version of the Regulations is that contained in the Articles and Points of the Regius MS. of circa 139o. These Regulations bear evidence of further revision and amplification, but like the Articles and Points of the Cooke MS., are also fathered on Athelstan (Regius MS.) 11. 67‑86).
The Articles and Points of the Regius MS. repeat the substance of those contained in the Cooke MS., though they amplify the admonition to do an honest day's work for the wages paid, by the statement that the mason will then be paid for his holidays.
They supplement those of the Cooke MS. by six further Articles and Points, though the last four Points really correspond to the four unnumbered Points of the Cooke MS. The new Articles provide that the master is to be certain of being able to carry through any work which he undertakes; that no mason shall work at night except in study; that no mason shall disparage another's work; that the master shall be responsible for the instruction of the apprentice; that no master shall take an apprentice unless he can be certain of giving him full instruction; that no master shall claim to maintain more masons than he actually does. The new 79 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY Points provide that the steward of the hall shall charge each man alike, pay for all food, and keep accounts; further, that if a mason leads a bad life or is a bad workman, he shall be ordered to appear before the next assembly.
The fourth version of the Regulations, in chronological order, is that contained in the William Watson, Thomas W. Tew, Dauntesey, and Henery Heade MSS. These manuscripts date from the late seventeenth or early eighteenth century, but their charges are probably based on a late fifteenth‑ or early sixteenth‑century document, and possess more affinity to the Articles and Points of the Regius MS. than do those of the remaining modern texts. These Regulations, whilst continuing most of the older provisions, with their close resemblance to gild rules," omit certain provisions, e.g., the prohibition of night work, the fixing of the apprentice's wage, the substitution of a more perfect for a less perfect craftsman, and the fixing of wages according to the cost of victuals. On the other hand, they introduce several new provisions, e.g., that task work is not to be substituted for day work; that masons are not to play cards or dice; that no fellow shall go into town at night without another fellow to bear witness that he has been in honest company; that no master shall make a mould or square for a layer, or set a layer to work in the lodge. The most striking new provision is one permitting fellows, as well as masters, to take apprentices.
The fifth and last version of the Regulations is that which appears in the Charges General and Singular of the Grand Lodge No. z MS. of IS83 and the remaining modern texts of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry. They follow the fourth version closely, the main differences being that they omit the provisions relating to holidays, serving as warden, being a mediator between master and fellows, acting as steward, and helping a fellow who is less skilful.
CHANGES IN THE FORM OF THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS In an endeavour to trace changes in the form of the MS. Constitutions, we propose to leave aside the Regius MS., " See Knoop, "Gild Resemblances in the Old MS. Charges", d.Q.C., zlii (1929).
80 THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS OF MfISONRT which is in a class by itself.
It is a poem giving the Old Short History, and the Articles and Points, together with directions regarding an assembly, an account of the Four Crowned Martyrs, a description of the building of the Tower of Babel, an account of the seven liberal arts, portions of John Mirk's Instructions for Parish Priests, and the whole of Urbanitatis, a metrical treatise on manners.
Instead, we treat the Cooke MS. as the oldest version.
This consists of five elements: (i) a statement of man's debt to God; (ii) the New Long History; (iii) the Old Short History; (iv) the Articles and Points; (v) a brief Closing Prayer.
The first element is replaced in most of the later versions by an Invocation to the Trinity. The second element, the New Long History, in one or other of its revised forms, is found in nearly all versions.' The third element, the Old Short History, tends to disappear in the course of revisions, and can be traced, in a very abbreviated form, in only a few of the later versions, e.g., the William Watson and the Thomas W. Tew MSS. Between the History and the Regulations, most of the later versions have two new elements, an Instruction regarding the administration of the oath to observe the Regulations, and an exhortation to take heed of the Charges.
The fourth element, the Articles and Points, in their new guise as Charges General and Singular, constitute the second principal portion of most of _the later versions.2
The fifth element, the brief Closing Prayer, is preceded in those later versions which contain the Charges, by a brief Admonition to keep well and truly the Charges which have been rehearsed.
Thus the commonest form of the later versions of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry is as follows (i) an Invocation to the Trinity; (ii) the "History" of Masonry; I An exception is the Drinkwater No. 2 MS., which consists of charges only.
2 An exception is the Taylor MS., which is a remnant having no charges. 81 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY (iii) an Instruction regarding the administration of the oath to observe the Charges; (iv) an Exhortation to take heed of the Charges; (v) the Charges General and Singular; (vi) a brief Admonition to keep the Charges; (vii) a brief Closing Prayer.
Certain important further additions, however, appear in some versions. First, there are nearly a score which contain an Apprentice Charge of a definitely operative character, similar in content to the conditions of an apprentice's indentures. Secondly, of the versions which contain an Apprentice Charge, there are four or five, belonging to the Roberts family, which also contain a code of New Articles, of a definitely speculative character, laying down the conditions on which a person can be accepted as a freemason., Thirdly, at least nine versions contain a special reference to Masonic secrets.
Thus, the Harris No. i MS. (second half seventeenth century), Dumfries No. 3 MS. (late seventeenth century) and Thos. Carmick MS. (1'727) provide for the appointment of a tutor to instruct the candidate in secrets which must never be committed to writing.
The Drinkwater No. 2 MS. (c. 1710) contains an oath, in terms which resemble those of certain Masonic catechisms, to keep secret the signs and tokens to be declared to the candidate, and the Buchanan MS. (c. 1670) contains a somewhat similar oath. The Grand Lodge No. 2 MS. (second half of the seventeenth century), the Harleian MS. 1942 (of about the same date) and the Roberts Print (1722) give the oath of secrecy to be taken by a person before he can be accepted as a freemason.
Bound up with Harleian MS. 2054 (second half of the seventeenth century), and in the same handwriting, is a scrap of paper referring to the "severall words and signes of a free Mason" to be revealed to the candidate and kept secret by him.
Finally, three versions‑the Gateshead MS., which includes an Apprentice Charge, the Xnwick MS., and the Taylor MS.‑have Orders appended, of a definitely operative character, fixing the fines to be paid for various offences. Thus the MS. Constitutions of Masonry, in their most com 1 The Apprentice Charge and the New Articles will be found in the Roberts printed version of the MS. Constitutions, reprinted in E.M.P., 7,‑83. 82 THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS OF MzyS01VRr plete form, consist of the previously enumerated seven elements together with (viii) the New Articles; (ix) an Oath of Secrecy; (x) an Apprentice Charge.
The Harleian MS. 1942 and the Grand Lodge No. 2 MS., for example, each contain these ten elements. The remaining element‑the Orders‑does not appear in versions which have the New Articles or an Oath of Secrecy, and there is, consequently, no single version which contains all eleven elements.
Practically all versions of the MS. Constitutions contain a provision regarding secrecy. According to the third Point of the Regius MS. the apprentice shall swear to keep secret the master's teaching, and whatever he sees or hears done in lodge; according to the third Point of the Cooke MS., the prospective mason shall "hele" the counsel of his fellows in lodge and in chamber.
The fourth General Charge of most of the later versions requires every mason to keep true counsel both of lodge and chamber and all other counsels that ought to be kept by way of masonry.
As the mason swore to observe the charges, secrecy might be deemed to have been covered in his general oath; we are disposed to think, however, that these secrets of the apprentice, the prospective mason, and the mason were trade or technical secrets.
That is possibly the meaning of the fourth Charge in versions belonging to the Roberts family: "you shall keep secret the obscure and intricate parts of the science, not disclosing them to any but such as study and use the same". The Oath of Secrecy, which we describe as the ninth element in our analysis, related, in our opinion, mainly, if not entirely, to any esoteric knowledge imparted to the candidate.
Thus Harleian MS. 1942 appears to contemplate two Oaths: one, taken immediately after the reading of the Charges, to observe and keep those Charges; the other, taken immediately after the reading of the last of the New Articles, which states that no person shall be accepted a freemason, or know the secrets of the said society, until he has first taken the oath of secrecy hereafter following. In the Masonic catechism, Sloane MS. 3329, of circa 1700, the two Oaths 83 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY are combined in one,' and the candidate swore to keep secret "the mason word and everything therein contained" and truly to observe "the charges in the constitution". This distinction clearly implied that the Mason Word or esoteric knowledge was not included in the provision in the charges regarding secrecy.
THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS AND MASONIC CEREMONIES The general problem of the origin of Masonic ceremonies, including the part played by the MS. Constitutions in such ceremonies, is examined in Chapter X. Here we are concerned only with the original purpose served by the MS. Constitutions in the early days, when they were used by operative masons.
Although the charges were statements of the `customs' of the trade, they undoubtedly corresponded to the ordinances, regulations, or articles of ordinary munici pal craft gilds.
Amongst these it is possible to distinguish two types of rule, the one concerned primarily with the social or religious activities of the gild, the other with the trade activities. The former are sometimes described as `fraternity' regulations, the latter as `mistery' regulations. Not infrequently `fraternity' regulations and `mistery' regulations were embodied in one set of gild ordinances. Similarly, the masons' charges combine both kinds of regulation: the Charges General roughly correspond to the `fraternity' regulations of a craft gild and the Charges Singular to the `mistery' regulations. The common practice among the gilds was that the gild ordinances should be read (or recited) to newcomers; who had then to swear to observe the ordinances.
As an example, the oath of the Gild of St. Katherine at Stamford may be set out in full in modern spelling: I shall be a true man to God Almighty, to Saint Mary and to St. Katherine, in whose honour and worship this Gild is founded; and shall be obedient to the Alderman of this Gild and to his successors, and come to him and to his Brethren when I have warning and not absent myself without reasonable cause.
I shall be ready to pay scot ' E.M.C., 42‑384 THE MS. CONSTITUTIONS OF Mf4SONRr and bear lot and all my duties truly to pay and do; the ordinances, constitutions and rules of the Gild to keep, obey, perform, and to my power maintain, to my life's end, so help me God and holydom and by this Book.' In this matter, masons no doubt followed ordinary gild practice. Many versions of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry, at the end of the historical section, contain an instruction, usually in Latin, that the person to be made a mason should lay his hand on the Book (= the Bible), held by one of the oldest masons, whilst the Charges were read out, the Charges being introduced by an Exhortation that every mason should take heed of the Charges which he had sworn to keep. As the instruction in various versions begins "Then shall one of the elders . . .", or words to that effect, the presumption is that the "History", introduced by the Opening Prayer or Invocation, had previously been read to the candidate.
This presumption is greatly strengthened by an entry of 1670 in the Mark Book of the Lodge of Aberdeen, where the Mason Charter, or version of the MS. Constitutions now known as the lIberdeen MS., is written. The statement by the then members, described as "the authors of this Book" runs: "We ordain likewise that the Mason Charter be read at the entering of every entered prentice." 2
There is nothing in the Cooke MS. of the early fifteenth century to show whether the "History" and Regulations were read or recited to the candidate, and whether he had to swear to keep the Articles and Points, but it is quite possible that this practice was followed at that date, just as the masons at York Minster had to swear "upon ye boke" to keep the Ordinances laid down by the Cathedral Chapter in 1370.3
The earliest versions of the MS. Constitutions to contain the instruction are the LevanderYork MS. Original4 of is6o, the Melrose MS. Original ,5 of r S 81, and the Grand Lodge No. 1 MS. of i s 8 3. Although there is no definite evidence before the second i Toulmin Smith, English Gilds (E.E.T.S., xl), 188.
2 Miller, 21.
s Raine, 18 r.
4 From which the Levander‑York MS. was copied, circa 17405 From which the Melrose No. 2 MS. was copied in 167485 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY half of the sixteenth century that a version of the MS. Constitutions was read or recited to the person about to be made a mason, yet the probability that this did occur in late medieval times among operative masons is strong. On the other hand, there is no evidence to suggest that at this early period masons had a ceremony of admission differing from that of contemporary gilds.
Subsequent modifications of the ceremonial, associated with the development of accepted masonry, and influenced, in our opinion, by Scottish practices connected with the giving of the Mason Word, are reflected in certain seventeenth‑century versions of the MS. Constitutions.
These modifications will be discussed in Chapter X, where we examine more fully the origins of Masonic ceremonies.
CHAPTER V THE MASON WORD BESIDES the MS. Constitutions of Masonry, embodying the legends and the regulations of the craft, which constitute one link between present‑day speculative and medieval operative masonry, there is another link, namely, the Mason Word and the practices associated with its communication.
Two important differences, however, between the MS. Constitutions and the Mason Word must be noted.
First, whereas versions of the former were in existence as early as the late fourteenth century, the latter has not been traced before the sixteenth century. Second, whereas the former would almost certainly appear to be of English origin (the few surviving Scottish versions being direct or indirect copies of English originals), the Mason Word, as an operative institution, is almost certainly of Scottish origin.
No traces of the Mason Word, or of any other secret means of recognition, have been found among English operative masons in the Middle Ages; nor, so far as we know, is there any evidence even to suggest it.
The system of recruitment by impressment, so common in England in the Middle Ages, implies that the `pressed' man, if reasonably efficient, would be retained on the work, whether in possession of secret methods of recognition or not.
Moreover it was provided by the eighth Article of the Regius and Cooke MSS. that a less skilled journeyman was to be replaced by a better skilled man as soon as practicable, which strongly suggests that, according to the masons' customs, skill, and not a password, was the recognised test leading to employment.
No doubt English medieval operative masons had secrets, but as indicated on page 8 3 above, it may be presumed that the secrets referred to in the third Point of the Regius and Cooke MSS. and the fourth General Charge were trade or technical secrets, relating, for example, to the designing of an arch, or to the way in which a stone should 87 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY be laid so that its grain ran, so far as possible, as it did in its native bed in the rock. The Mason Word, as an operative institution, would appear to have been a Scottish practice (though its influence possibly extended to the two northern counties of Northumberland and Durham) and consequently in this chapter we are concerned almost entirely with Scottish conditions. The influence which this Scottish operative institution had on English accepted masonry in the seventeenth century, and subsequently on English speculative masonry, is discussed in Chapter X.
Here we endeavour to describe the setting or background in which the Mason Word, as an operative institution, existed.
We shall call attention to four points of importance, namely, (1) the scope, (ii) the purpose, (iii) the Organisation, and (iv) the antiquity of the Mason Word.
THE SCOPE OF THE MASON WORD In Scotland there developed in early modern times a system of recognition to which, by the later part of the seventeenth century at the latest, there had been joined other elements. According to the Rev. Robert Kirk, Minister of Aberfoyle, writing in 1691, the Mason Word is like a Rabbinical Tradition, in way of comment on Jachin and Boaz, the two Pillars erected in Solomon's Temple (i Kings, vii, 21) with one Addition of some secret Signe delyvered from Hand to Hand, by which they know and become familiar one with another., A letter of 1697, written from Scotland, and preserved among the Portland MSS., states that The Laird[s] of Roslin ... are obliged to receive the mason's word which is a secret signall masons have thro' ,The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies (3rd ed., 1933),108An earlier, though briefer, reference to the Mason Word occurs in Kirk's "London in 1689‑9o" (Trans. Lond. and Mid. drch. Soc., N.S., vii [19331, 139), where he recounts that when, in October 1689, he dined with Dr. Stillingfleet, Bishop‑elect of Worcester, the conversation turned on second sight. In the midst of the record of that conversation occurs the sentence: "The Dr. called the Mason Word a Rabbinical mystery, where I discovered somewhat of it." 88 THE MASON WORD out the world to know one another by.
They alledge 'tis as old as since Babel, when they could not understand one another and they conversed by signs.
Others would have it no older than Solomon.
However it is, he that hath it will bring his brother mason to him without calling to him or your perceiving of the signe.l Unfortunately, we have too little documentary evidence to enable us to trace, with any certainty, changes in the scope of the Mason Word, or to ascertain from what sources the esoteric knowledge connected with it was introduced. The Edinburgh Register House MS.,2 written in 1696, suggests that the essence of the matter lay in words, signs, a grip, and postures, which, together with "the five points of the fellowship", were communicated to members, either upon their admission as entered apprentices, or subsequently when they became fellow crafts. The "five points" are not explained, but simply listed as follows: foot to foot, knee to knee, heart to heart, hand to hand, and ear to ear. An explanation of a slightly different set of "five points" is given in the recently discovered Graham MS.,3 written in 1726, by means of a gruesome story relating to Noah.
His three sons, desirous of finding something about him to lead them to the valuable secret which their father had possessed ‑for all things needful for the new world were in the Ark with Noah‑went to Noah's grave, agreeing beforehand that if they did not find the very thing itself, the first thing they found was to be to them as a secret. They found nothing in the grave except the dead body; when the finger was gripped it came away, and so with the wrist and elbow. The sons then reared up the dead body, supporting it by setting foot to foot, knee to knee, breast to breast, cheek to cheek and hand to back.
Thereupon "one said here is yet mar[r]ow in this bone and the second said but a dry bone t Hist. MSS. Com., Portland MSS., ii,
56.
For particulars of the Lairds of Roslin, a branch of the St. Clair family, and their claim to be protectors and patrons of the Craft in Scotland, see Lyon, 64‑72.
Cf. PP‑ 97‑8 below.
2 E.M.C., 3 r.
3 Ibid., 84 89 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY and the third said it stinketh 1 so they agreed for to give it a name as is known to free masonry to this day".
Another possible explanation of the "five points" is provided by a story relating to Hiram, of which the oldest known form is that in Prichard's Masonry Dissected, first published in 1'730.2 An advertisement of 1726, quoted by Sadler,3 which refers to "the whole History of the Widow's Son killed by the Blow of a Beetle", strongly suggests that a version of the story was known in 1726.
Anderson's long footnote on Hiram, in the Constitutions of 1723, makes it not impossible that masons were acquainted with a version of the story as early as 1723.
The story may even have been known in 1721, if Anderson's description (Constitutions of 1738, p. 113) of the Deputy Grand Master's Chair in June 1721, as that of "Hiram Abbiff", correctly represents the usage of that year, when Dr. Beal was installed in that Chair, and not merely the practice of 1738, at the time when the description was written.
According to this story, which is also connected with a search for a secret, three masons murdered Hiram, King Solomon's master of the works at the building of the Temple, in an attempt to extort from him the secrets of a master mason.
On his being missed, fifteen fellow crafts were ordered to search for him, and they agreed that if they did not find the word in or about him the first word should be the master's word.
Ultimately his body was found under a covering of green moss, and King Solomon ordered that it should be taken up and decently buried. When they took him by the forefinger the skin came off, whereupon they took a firmer grip of his hand and raised him by the five points of fellowship, viz., hand to hand, foot to foot, cheek to cheek, knee to knee, and hand to back.
The marked similarity between the Noah story and the Hiram story in its oldest‑known form is very striking; both have the same main motif‑the attempt to obtain a secret from a dead body, and both have the same subsidiary motif 1 The remark may be reminiscent of medieval and sixteenth‑century satires on relics.
2 E.M.C., ro8.
3
xxiii, 325, reprinted in E.M.P., 193. 9o THE MASON WORD the intention to provide a substituted secret, failing the discovery of a genuine one. Where either story originally came from, or how it became associated with masonry, is unknown.
It is possible, however, that the Noah story had some connection with the narrative in Genesis ix. 21‑7 of the shaming of Noah, to which it is in some respects parallel. The stories of Noah and Hiram call to mind the fact that in Biblical instances of the miraculous restoration of life, the prophet or apostle lay full length upon the body and breathed into its face.
In the case of Elisha, who raised the son of the Shunammite woman (2 Kings iv. 34‑5) the process is described in detail: 34. And he [Elisha] went up, and lay upon the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands: and he stretched himself upon the child; and the flesh of the child waxed warm.
35. Then he returned, and walked in the house to and fro; and went up, and stretched himself upon him: and the child sneezed seven times, and the child opened his eyes.
Here complete coincidence between living and dead was established twice, first by placing mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes and hands to hands, and secondly,by stretching at full length upon the body. It is thus not impossible that the original stories of Noah and Hiram may have been those of attempts to restore these men to life, because their secrets had died with them.
The Biblical examples show that the idea of complete coincidence of living and dead was associated with the restoration of the dead to life. This might develop into necromantic practices, and in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries the idea would survive only as necromancy.
It would seem not inconceivable that one story was modelled on the other, and that the original story rested on an old tradition connecting Ham, son of Noah, with magic and the black arts.
The disinterment of Noah was clearly an act of necromancy, and it is therefore pertinent to note i i Kings xvii. 17‑23; 2 Kings iv. 3ó‑5; Acts xx. 9‑r2. 91 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY that Ham, son of Noah, is connected in medieval tradition, if not with necromancy in its narrower sense, at any rate with the black arts. The tradition is recorded in Reginald Scot's Discoverie of Witchcraft (iS86),, and the connection is asserted in the thirteenth‑century Speculum Historiale of Vincent de Beauvais.2 In the later part of the seventeenth century a connection between magic and the Mason Word was suspected in at least one part of Scotland. It would appear that in 1695 the household of Andrew Mackie, a mason living in Kircudbrightshire, was troubled by happenings of an apparently diabolic origin. The minister of the parish, the Rev. Alexander Telfair, who tried to exorcise the agent, and also published an account of the matter in 1696,3 recorded that "The said Andrew Mackie being a meason to his employment, 'tis given out, that when he took the meason‑word, he devouted his first child to the Devil; but I am certainly informed he never took the same, and knows not what that word is".
The word itself is as obscure in origin as the story.
The bone, being the first thing found according to the Noah story, must presumably have some significance.
Whether the phrase "mar[r]ow in this bone" is significant is not so certain.
It may be noted that the word marrow, in addition to its ordinary meaning, has certainly another, and possibly a symbolical meaning, for Scottish masons.
It was used in Northern Middle English, and in Scotland down to the nineteenth century, to denote `partner', `fellow', `mate', and it is not uncommon in that sense in sixteenth‑ and seven teenth‑century Scottish building accounts.4
"Here is yet mar[r]ow in this bone" may thus have been a reminder that fellowship was of the essence of masonry. It is also possible that "mar[r]ow in this bone" may have been intended to serve as a mnemonic. In that case, it was conceivably to call to memory the word mahabyn, which, according to the Masonic catechism Sloane MS. 3329 5 of circa 1700, was the master's word, or the somewhat similar 1 Ed. Montague Summers, 222.
2 Book ii, chap. ci.
$ For Telfair's Tract, see 11.Q.C., xiv, 56; also C. K. Sharpe, .4 historical account of the belief in Witchcraft in Scotland, 1884, 234 4 S.M., 95, n. 2.
5 E.M.C., 42. 92 THE MASON WORD form matchpin, given as the master's word in another Masonic catechism, the Trinity College, Dublin, MS‑1 Of 1'711. Whether the master's word should be regarded as the Mason Word is very uncertain, and the same is true of its meaning. That, for our purpose, is less important than the fact of its existence, and the obvious usefulness of the word and the five points of fellowship for ceremonial purposes, a subject more fully discussed in Chapter X below.
THE PURPOSE OF THE MASON WORD The obscurity of the Mason Word and the strangeness of the stories connected with it, by inviting the inquirer to seek an explanation of such unusual things, tend to distract attention from one important point, namely, that the Mason Word came into existence because it was useful. Its form may have been decided by other factors, and, once adopted, it may have become the nucleus of accretions of various kinds; but the thing itself, as distinct from its form and later associations, arose directly, like political society itself, out of necessity and utility.
It may thus be compared with the aprons and gloves of Masonic ceremony, which, however decorative and symbolical they became, were at first practical things made to meet an everyday need. Our business, therefore, is to inquire into the conditions in which the Mason Word‑considered generally as a system of secret methods of recognition used among operative masonswas useful and necessary.
Little reflection is required in order to realise that the Mason Word could have had little or no use merely as a means of distinguishing skilled masons from others. That could have been better done by a practical test, by requiring the man who claimed to be skilled to prove his ability on the spot by hewing or laying stones. That, indeed, was the reasonable practice at York Minster in 13'70: "no mason shall be received at work ... but he be first proved a week or more upon his well working' '.2
The same thing seems to be implied by the eighth Article of the Regius and Cooke MSS. of circa 1400, which provided that a less skilled journeyman was to be replaced by a better‑skilled man as soon as 1 Ibid., 64.
2 Raine, 181‑2. 93 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY practicable. As early as 1356, Gilbert de Whitele had been appointed to survey the king's castles and manors with power, inter alia, to "remove any workmen found to be unskilful and to replace them by others more skilful". When, therefore, we find masons providing themselves with the Word, we may presume that they intended thereby to enable a man to demonstrate, not his possession of skill, but his membership of a group or trade organisation. A greater or lesser degree of skill was, indeed, necessary in order to qualify for membership, but it was not the only qualification. Possession of the Mason Word was an indication that the man to whom it had been communicated accepted the rules and shared in the privileges of the body, legalised or other, which guarded it. The Mason Word, in short, was evidence not simply of a technical, but of a social or corporate qualification, enabling the man who possessed it to claim, at need, benefits in the way of employment and possibly of relief.2 The need for some secret method of recognition arose from two conditions peculiar to Scotland, namely, the possibility of employment as masons open to the stoneworkers known as `cowans', and the existence of an industrial grade, without exact parallel south of the border, that of the entered apprentice. Reference has already been made to `cowans', a term originally used to describe builders of drystone walls, but later applied derogatorily to men who did the work of masons, without having been regularly apprenticed or bred to the trade. It was _partly at least to prevent cowans from doing the work of qualified masons that the latter were entrusted with the Mason Word as a means of proving themselves.
This explains a minute of Mother Kilwinning Lodge in 1'707, "that no meason shall imploy no cowan, which is to say [one] without the word to work".3 The system of entered apprenticeship, by creating a distinct class of semi‑qualified ex‑apprentices, further threatened the position of the fellow craft or fully qualified mason. In Scotland in the seventeenth century, and 1 Cal. Pat. Rolls, 1354‑58, 413. 2 Lyon, 28; Miller, 30.
s See O.E.D. under `cowan'; and Lyon, 23‑4. 94 THE MASON WORD possibly earlier, apprentices and entered apprentices formed two distinct classes or grades.' The Schaw Statutes of i598 provided that an apprentice must be bound for at least seven years, and that, except by special permission, a further period of seven years must elapse before he could be made a fellow craft. At Lanark, where a new seal of cause was granted to the masons and wrights in 1674, it was provided that no craftsman was to take an apprentice for a shorter period than three years, and that no apprentice was to be admitted a freeman without serving as a journeyman to a freeman for two years after the expiration of his appren ticeship.2
The Laws and Statutes of the Lodge of Aberdeen, 1670,3 show that three years had to elapse between the termination of an apprenticeship and reception into the fellowship. At Glasgow in the early seventeenth century an apprentice apparently served for seven years and a further two years "for meat and fee' '.4
During his second term the ex‑apprentice was an entered apprentice, and normally worked as a journeyman for a master, though the Schaw Statutes did permit an entered apprentice to undertake a limited amount of work on his own account.
That this general ordinance applied locally is shown by the Mutual Agreement of 1658, which regulated the affairs of the Lodge of Perth .5
This provided that no entered apprentice should leave his master, or masters, to take any work or task work above 40s. Scots.
Further, it was expressly provided that he was not to take an apprentice.
Lodge records show that the entered apprentice had a real, if subordinate, share in the government of the craft and in its privileges. Thus at Kilwinning in 1659 two fellow crafts and one entered apprentice out of each quarter, together with the Deacon and Warden, were appointed to ' The evidence supporting this view was examined by Douglas Knoop in The Mason Word in 1938 (S.M., 86‑9o), and by R. J. Meekren in "The Aitchison's Haven Minutes", I.Q.C., 'iii (19ó1), and is not repeated here. Prior to 1938 Masonic writers assumed that the words "apprentice" and "entered apprentice" were equivalent.
2 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Lanark, 196. 3 Miller, 57f0/9 4 J. Cruickshank, Lodge of Glasgow St. _7ohn, 63.
5 D. Crawford Smith, Lodge of Scoon and Perth, Chap. V.
95 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY meet each year at Ayr to deal with transgressors., At Melrose the entered apprentices were parties to the Mutual Agreement of 1675, which regulated the affairs of the Lodge.2 At Aberdeen in 167o, as the Laws and Statutes of the Lodge show, the entered apprentices received the benefit of the Mason Word at their entry; 3 further, each entered apprentice had his mark,4 the same being the case at Dumfries in 1687.5
The Schaw Statutes of 1598 provided that no master or fellow craft should be received except in the presence of six masters and two entered apprentices, and the early minutes of the Lodge of Edinburgh prove that this requirement was observed .s An entered apprentice, having been properly trained, though officially but semi‑qualified, might well be as competent as many fellow crafts, and consequently able, in a district where his status was unknown, to compete successfully with the fellow crafts for employment. To prevent this, the fellow craft was entrusted with secret methods of recognition distinct from those of the entered apprentice.
THE ORGANISATION OF THE MASON WORD Since the object for which the Mason Word was instituted would be defeated if the secrets were communicated irregularly or by unauthorised persons, it follows that the control of the process was an important function of the existing organist.tions of masons in Scotland. To that end there were required local organisations capable of co‑operating with each other and some supervising authority with a wide jurisdiction.
The Local Organisations.‑The local organisation which conferred the benefit of the Mason Word was a certain type of lodge consisting of an organised body of masons associated , Minute of the Lodge, dated 29 December 1659, quoted in R. Wylie, History of Mother Lodge, Kilwinning, 2nd ed., 6o.
2 Printed in W. F. Vernon, Freemasonry in Roxburghshire and Selkirkshire, 13.
3 Miller, 57.
4 See page from Mark Book reproduced in Miller, facing p. 28.
s See regulation of Lodge of Dumfries printed in J. Smith, Old Lodge of Dumfries, 9.
Lyon, 79 96 THE MASON WORD with a particular town or district.
This body we describe as a "territorial lodge" to distinguish it from the temporary or permanent workshop or lodge associated with a particular building operation.
These "territorial lodges" enjoyed an official or semi‑official position and were fairly widespread in Scotland.
In England, so far as we are aware, there were no official or semi‑official organisations bearing the name of "lodge". The only bodies of masons discharging official or semi‑official functions were described as "companies" or "fellowships", which roughly corresponded to the Scottish "incorporations". At the beginning of the eighteenth century, however, there do appear to have been in the North of England lodges of a "territorial" type, but with no official status, such as those at Alnwick 1 in Northumberland, and Swalwell 2 in County Durham.
Co‑operation among "Territorial Lodges''" 3‑By the end of the sixteenth or the beginning of the seventeenth century, there are various indications of co‑operation among Scottish lodges. The chief examples of voluntary co‑operation are afforded by the documents known as the St. Clair Charters of r6oi and 1628.
By the first, representatives of the Lodges of Edinburgh, St. Andrews, Haddington, Aitchison's Haven and Dunfermline, on behalf of the deacons, masters and freemen of the masons within the realm of Scotland, and with the assent of William Schaw, King's Master of Work, agreed that William St. Clair of Roslin should purchase from the King, for himself and his heirs, "Liberty, Freedom and jurisdiction" over all the masons of Scotland.
The second charter, signed by representatives of the Lodges of Edinburgh, Dundee, Glasgow, Stirling, Dunfermline, Ayr and St. Andrews, on behalf of the deacons, masters and freemen of the masons and hammer‑men within the kingdom of Scotland, is a confirmation and elaboration of the first charter. The 1 See W. H. Rylands, "The Alnwick Lodge Minutes", I.Q.C., xiv, 4‑13, and the reproduction of the Minute Book printed by the Province of Northumberland and Durham, S.R.I.A., in 1895.
z See "The Minute Book of the Lodge of Industry [Swalwell], Gateshead", The Masonic Mag., Vol. iii (1875‑6), 72‑6, 82‑5, 125‑7, 348‑9 8 This section is based on S.M., 52‑6.
97 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY interest of these charters lies not only in the claims of the St. Clairs of Roslin to exercise an hereditary right of supervision over the masons of Scotland, a claim which appears to have been disallowed by the Court of the Exchequer in 1635, but in the uniting of no fewer than five lodges in 16o1 and of seven lodges in 1628, or of nine different lodges in all, from places more than 8o miles apart, to support that claim.
Of compulsory or semi‑compulsory collaboration more illustrations can be given. They mostly centre in the office of Master of Work to the Crown of Scotland, which we describe more fully in the next section.
Three pieces of evidence, dated during the period when William Schaw held that office, point to some kind of widespread collective activity amongst masons. (1) On 28 December 1598, there was promulgated by William Schaw, "with the consent of the masters after specified", what are known as the Schaw Statutes of 1598.1
Unfortunately, the names of the masters who consented do not appear to have been preserved in the copies which have survived, and thus we do not know from what lodges representatives attended. (ii) A year later, on 28 December 1599, a further set of Statutes and Ordinances was issued by William Schaw,2 directed more particularly to the Lodge of Kilwinning. It gave to that lodge certain supervisory powers over other lodges in the Nether Ward of Clydesdale, Glasgow, Ayr and Carrick. From the last clause it would seem that the Statutes were issued on the authority of the Warden General and Principal Master of Work, at the request of the Lodge of Kilwinning, but that certain privileges and powers which the lodge desired could not be granted at the time, because of the absence of the King from Edinburgh, and because no masters, other than the masters of the Lodge of Edinburgh, were present at the meeting in Edinburgh on 2'7 and 2 8 December.
This implies that for certain purposes an assembly of masters from one lodge only was insufficient. Both on account of this implication, and because of the powers which the Lodge of Kilwinning exercised over other lodges in the 1 Printed in Lyon, 9.
$ Ibid., 12. 98 THE MASON WORD West of Scotland, these statutes throw an interesting light on Masonic organisation. (iii) An entry in the Minute Book of the Lodge of Edinburgh, under date 2'7 November 1599,1 records that a general meeting was to be held at St. Andrews on 13 January 16oo, "for settling and taking order with the affairs of the Lodge of St. Andrews". The meeting was to be attended by (a) two commissioners from "everie pircular [? particular] ludge", (b) by the whole of the masters and others within the jurisdiction of the Lodge of St. Andrews, and (c) by the masters of Dundee and Perth, the penalty for failure to attend being Rio Scots in each case.
To judge by the context, "pircular" lodges were probably subordinate lodges under the jurisdiction of the Lodge of St. Andrews, which in that case very possibly exercised some kind of supervision over Fifeshire lodges, corresponding to that exercised by the Lodge of Kilwinning over West of Scotland lodges.
The '
"others within the jurisdiction of the Lodge of St. Andrews" were presumably the fellow crafts and entered apprentices. As Dundee and Perth were mentioned separately and were to be represented in a different manner from the other lodges, the presumption is that the Lodges of Dundee and Perth were somewhat of the standing of the Lodge of St. Andrews.
Another and earlier example of jurisdiction exercised over masons resident in a fairly wide area is afforded by the election of Patrick Copeland of Udaught, by choice of a majority of the master masons of the district, to the office of Warden and justice over the masons within the counties of Aberdeen, Banff and Kincardine.z This particular election was ratified by the King in 159o.
The most definite evidence of co‑operation or collaboration to secure freedom of movement amongst masons is afforded by what are known as the Falkland Statutes of 1636,3 which provided for the better regulation of masons, 1 Extract printed in Lyon, 4o.
2 Ibid., 4, 5.
3 Promulgated at Falkland on 26 October 1636 by Sir Anthony Alexander, General Warden and King's Master of Work; printed in Laurie, History of Freemasonry, 2nd ed., 1859, 445 sey., and in D. B. Morris, The Incorporation of Mechanics of Stirling, 31 sey.
99 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY wrights and other artificers engaged in the building industry, by the foundation of unprivileged companies outside those places where the trades in question were organised as privileged companies or incorporations, under seals of cause. The Statutes contemplated three sorts of conditions in which masons might be working away from home: (a) masters and servants associated with a particular unprivileged company might work in the area of another unprivileged company on payment of certain fees; (b) artificers residing near a free burgh in which a privileged company was established by seal of cause might be examined by that company and, if found proficient, admitted to the craft; they could then work outside their own area, in any unprivileged place, on payment of certain fees; (c) members of a privileged company and their servants might reside and work in any other company's bounds on payment of certain fees.
The Supervising luthority.‑The long series of volumes of Master of Work Accounts preserved in the Edinburgh Register House is a clear indication that the King's Master of Work was an administrative and financial officer, whatever other functions he might discharge. The various writs of appointment' throw some light upon the duties of the officer. He was to superintend the appointment of workmen and to agree with them about rates and prices and other conditions.
In at least one case he was given power to hold courts by himself or his deputies, and to punish transgressors at the works under his charge.2 Originally an appointment related to a particular work, such as Stirling Castle or Linlithgow Palace, but at a later date the authority of the official extended to all royal works, in which case the holder was usually described as Principal Master of Work. The earliest of these wide appointments which we have been able to trace are those of Sir James Hammyltoun in 1539, of John Hammyltoun in 1543, and of Sir Robert Drummond in 1579 1 A score of these, preserved in the Registers of the Privy Seal, are printed in R. S. Mylne, "Masters of Work to the Crown of Scotland", Proc. Soc. f?ntif. Scot., 1895‑6, 49‑68.
2 Mylne, op. cit., 6o.
100 THE MASON WORD The writs of appointment as Principal Master of Work make no reference to the closely associated office of Warden General of the Masons, likewise a royal appointment. In more than one case, e.g., those of William Schaw and Sir Anthony Alexander, the two offices were held simultaneously by the same man, but we are unable to say whether that was always the case.
Murray Lyon (p. 91) refers to Sir Anthony Alexander presiding at the Falkland Meeting on 26 October 1636 "in the double capacity of General Warden and Master of Work to his Majesty", which seems to imply that the two offices were distinct. We are disposed to think that it was as General Warden that he exercised a supervisory authority over the "territorial lodges" and the craft in general, the Principal Master of Work being apparently concerned primarily, if not entirely, with masons employed on royal works.
The existence in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries of a considerable measure of co‑operation and collaboration among masons in different parts of Scotland, such as is clearly indicated by the various cases to which we have drawn attention, provided the widespread association among masons without which the institution of the Mason Word could not have existed. That the various lodges scattered over Scotland should have communicated to qualified masons the same secret methods of recognition, and that they should have kept in touch with the changes and developments in those secrets, is really very remarkable. It would certainly not have been possible without close association among the interested parties, and probably not without some overriding authority, such as that of the Warden General and King's Principal Master of Work, to control the whole institution.
The kinds of worker comprised in the organisation we have described are clearly indicated in the Laws and Statutes of the Lodge of Aberdeen, 1670; and some light on their respective shares in the secrets associated with the Mason Word may be gained from the Schaw Statutes of 1598, the Edinburgh Register House MS. of 1696, and the Chetwode Crawley MS. of circa 17oo.
The lowest grade of organised workers, the handicraft apprentices, were 101 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY bound by their indentures to keep secret their masters' concerns, but had no share in the government of the lodge, and were not given the Mason Word. The entered apprentices, on the other hand, were effective members of the organisation and, according to the Statutes of this Lodge, received the benefit of the Mason Word "at their entry". What additional esoteric knowledge, if any, was imparted to the fellow crafts or master masons in 167o is not clear from the Lodge Statutes. The Schaw Statutes of 1598 required the selection of intenders or instructors by each new fellow craft on his admission, a provision which was effective, as is shown by minutes of the Lodge of Edinburgh for the first decade of the seven teenth century.'
The minutes of the Lodge of Aitchison's Haven for 1598 2 show not merely that a new fellow craft on being admitted chose two fellow crafts as his intenders and instructors, but that a new entered apprentice on his admission chose two entered apprentices as his intenders and instructors. As candidates had to give satisfactory proofs of their technical qualifications before admission, it is difficult to understand what function these intenders discharged, unless it were to instruct the candidates in the esoteric knowledge associated with their particular grade. Assuming, as seems probable, that these intenders corresponded to the "youngest mason" and the "youngest master" of the Chetwode Crawley MS.,3 who taught the candidates the signs and postures, then it may well be that there were two sets of secrets in 1598, those of the entered apprentice and those of the fellow craft, and that it was these which the intenders imparted to the newly admitted entered apprentices and fellow crafts respectively.
The fact that the Schaw Statutes required two entered apprentices, together with six masters, to be present when a fellow craft or master was admitted would not neces ' Lyon, 17.
2 Wallace‑James, ‑4.Q.C., xxiv, 34 3 E.M.C., 36.
According to the closely related Edinburgh Register House MS. of 1696, the candidate for admission as fellow craft (as well as the candidate for admission as entered apprentice) went out of the company with the "youngest mason" to learn the signs and postures. Presumably, this is a misscript of the copyist and should read "youngest master".
102 THE MASON WORD sarily prevent secrets being communicated to fellow crafts. One possibility is that the entered apprentices retired for a time when this stage of the proceedings was reached; another is that the candidate retired with his intenders and received the esoteric knowledge outside the lodge, as was to some extent the method portrayed in the Edinburgh Register House and Chetwode Crawley MSS.; the third possibility is that about I6oo the fellow craft secrets were such as could be communicated in the presence of entered apprentices, as, for example, a word communicated in a whisper, and possibly a grip. By 1696 there were undoubtedly two sets of secrets, one for entered apprentices, and another for fellow crafts or masters, and the entered apprentices had to leave the company before fellow crafts were admitted. This problem is discussed more fully in Chapter X, where the influence on early Masonic ceremonies of the Mason Word, and the practices associated with its communication, are examined.
THE ANTIQUITY OF THE MASON WORD It may be presumed that the Mason Word, like other institutions, was not fully formed at its beginning, and that the various elements of which it was composed in the early eighteenth century were not all equally ancient. If, as is probable, the main line of development was from the relatively simple to the more elaborate, it may be supposed that the process started with a bare word or_ words, together, very possibly, with test questions and answers. '
This would explain why the institution, however elaborate it may ultimately have become, was apparently always referred to as the Mason Word, tout court.
In course of time accretions would occur, possibly because of the general adoption of local variations introduced by way of additional safeguard or explanation, or arising from modifications of phrases or gestures, which would take place relatively easily in the days of oral transmission.
Gradually the signs and postures of the entered apprentice and the grip of the fellow craft may have been added, to be followed at a later date by the postures and five points of fellowship 103 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY of the fellow craft, the explanatory story being a still later introduction. However that may be, the Mason Word as an institution may be approximately dated with reference to the circumstances which made it useful and its working possible.
There are at least five indications which may help to date the institution. (1) As the purpose of the Mason Word was to enable a man to demonstrate his membership of a trade organisation, viz., what we have described as the "territorial lodge", it cannot have come into existence until that type of lodge was established. From the Schaw Statutes of 1599 we learn that Edinburgh shall be in all time coming "as of before" the first and principal lodge in Scotland, and that Kilwinning shall be the second lodge "as of before". The phrase, "as of before", shows that the Lodges of Edinburgh and Kilwinning existed prior to 1599, but how much earlier there is no evidence to show. (ii) As in our opinion it would have been very difficult to operate the institution without the existence of a supervisory authority, which at the end of the sixteenth century was the Warden General and King's Principal Master of Work, it would seem unlikely to have existed before the establishment of those offices.
The earliest appointment of King's Principal Master of Work that we have been able to trace was that of Sir James Hammyltoun in 1539.
(iii) As the Mason Word was a privilege associated with the termination of an apprenticeship or the admission to a fellowship, it might be as old as the system of apprenticeship which can be traced at Cupar Angus 1 in 14o6 and at Edinburgh a in 1475.
(iv) In so far as the Mason Word was connected with the admission to the grade of entered apprentice, it could have existed in 1598, by which time that grade was well established. As entered apprenticeship was connected with limitation of the number of entrants to full membership of the trade, it might have originated earlier than 1598, for a tendency to exclusiveness in craft organisation was by no means new at the close of the sixteenth 3 1 Rental Book of the Cistercian dUey of Cupar‑dngut, i, 3oq..
2 Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, r403‑r 538, 1‑2.
104 THE MASON WORD century. On the other hand, entered apprenticeship did not exist as early as 1475, as, according to the Edinburgh seal of cause of that year,' each apprentice at the termination of his seven years' term was to be examined and, if found proficient, admitted a fellow of the craft. The institution of that part of the Mason Word which enabled fellow crafts to prove their superiority to entered apprentices was presum ably older than 1599 and newer than 1475.
(v) In so far as the object of the Mason Word was to protect qualified masons from the menace of unqualified masons, the problem is to decide when that menace became so serious as to stimulate the establishment of the institution.
We know that the Schaw Statutes of 1598 prohibited masters and fellow crafts from employing cowans, or sending their servants to work with cowans, under penalty of X20 Scots for each offence, which implies that the menace existed in a fairly acute form by 1598, but how much earlier it existed in a form which called for action we do not know.
Among unqualified masons, there might be not only (a) drystone wallers, or `cowans' in the original sense of the word, but (b) masons who had not served a lawful apprenticeship, and (c) men who had served apprenticeships as masons, but had not been admitted afterwards "according to the manner and custom of making masons". 2 Men of the second class are described as "loses" in Melrose MS. No. 2 (1674), where the conditions are defined which make an apprenticeship lawful, conditions approximating very closely indeed to those regulating apprenticeship in the Schaw Statutes of 1598.
Masons were not to employ "loses" if freemen were available, and if "loses" were employed, they were not to be allowed to know "the privilege of the compass, square, level and plumbrule". A mason of the third class is described as a "lewis" in the late seventeenth‑century Dumfries MS. No. 3, where 1 Ibid.
2 To judge by London experience in the seventeenth century, exapprentices who did not take their freedom were by no means uncommon. Of 1,302 mason‑apprentices presented in London during the 70 years from 1619‑20 to 1688‑9, only 579, or 44 per cent. of the apprentices bound, ultimately took up their freedom (L.M., 63) 105 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY it is laid down that a master or fellow "shall not make any mould, square or rule for any who is but a lewis".1 By the end of the sixteenth century, the Mason Word would appear to be serving two distinct purposes, (a) to protect entered apprentices and fellow crafts from the competition of cowans or other unqualified masons, and (b) to protect fellow crafts from the competition of entered apprentices. There would seem to be three possibilities regarding the antiquity of this double‑barrelled weapon. (1) The danger from unqualified masons and the establishment of the grade of entered apprentice may have arisen simultaneously, leading to the setting up in one operation of the Mason Word in its twofold form. (ii) The menace may have been older than the establishment of the grade of entered apprentice.
In that case, fellow crafts or masters presumably possessed a single Mason Word as a protection against cowans, etc., a Mason Word in which entered apprentices, when that category was subsequently established, were permitted to share. (iii) The establishment of the grade of entered apprentice may have been older than the competition of unqualified masons.
In that case, fellow crafts or masters presumably possessed a single Mason Word as a defence against entered apprentices, a weapon to which a second element, shared by entered apprentices, was subsequently added as a protection against the menace of unqualified masons.
We feel that there is not sufficient evidence to enable us to decide in which of these ways the Mason Word, as an institution, came into being, or to fix the exact date or dates when it was established.
A review of the possibilities examined in this section suggests that it was not established before about 155o.
This conclusion harmonises with one of the earliest references to the Mason Word, namely, that contained in a report of the Presbytery of Kelso, dated 24 February 1652‑3, to the effect that "in the purest times of this Kirk" masons had that word.' To a Presbytery, the expression "in the purest times of this 1 For a discussion of the term lewis see Knoop, Jones and Hamer, The Wilkinson Manuscript, pp. 40‑5 2 Scott, ii, 132.
1o6 r
THE MASON WORD Kirk" would almost certainly relate to a period beginning in i S6o, when John Knox and his colleagues produced the Confession of Faith, and ending either in 1s84, when the so‑called "Black Acts" provided for the appointment of bishops and weakened the position of the Presbyteries, or in 161 o, when the Episcopacy was definitely established.) Although we do not think that the Mason Word, as an institution, was established before circa i sso, we do not wish to suggest that it was suddenly and deliberately invented in Scotland about the middle of the sixteenth century. The use by masons of passwords, with which very possibly test questions and answers were associated, may have sprung up at an earlier period more or less spontaneously in various parts of Scotland. This might be at a time when the system of apprenticeship was developing there in the second half of the fifteenth century; before some recognised system of training existed, it is difficult to conceive what purpose passwords could serve. Such local passwords, if they did exist, would be comparable with the local customs relating to tools and holidays which were found in England in the second half of the thirteenth and the first half of the fourteenth centuries. Just as these and other local customs were more or less unified and reduced to writing in the second half of the fourteenth century, so divergent Scottish practices in the matter of masons' passwords, assuming such existed, may, with the growth of district and central organisations, have become sufficiently unified and systematised about 1 S5o to be regarded as an institution.
However informal and local in character masons' secret methods of recognition may have been originally, there can be little question that by the seventeenth century the Mason Word, as an operative institution, had acquired an official or semi‑official recognition; that this was so in the early eighteenth century is clearly shown by the fact that one lodge actually went to law in 171 S to secure the right to give the Mason Word .2 1 R. S. Rait, History of Scotland, 139, ró6, r 5 r.
2 Seggie and Turnbull, dnnals of the Lodge of Yourneymen Masons No. S, Chap. 1.
107 CHAPTER VI THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION THE RENAISSANCE, THE REFORMATION, AND THE OPENING UP OF THE NEW WORLD UNTIL fairly recently, the industrial developments of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were relatively neglected by English economic historians, whose attention was largely concentrated on the great changes in industrial processes and organisation which occurred during the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth centuries.
It has been realised for a considerable time that the transition from small‑ to large‑scale production began long before 175o, and that the improvement of technique was not a new process beginning more or less suddenly about 1 733 with Kay's fly‑shuttle.
Indeed, a recent writer' says that "there have been at least two `industrial revolutions' in Great Britain.
The first occurred in the century preceding the Civil War", and it is mainly with that period that we are concerned in this chapter.
By that time largescale production and the simultaneous employment of vast numbers of workers in one enterprise were an old story in the building industry, as we have endeavoured to show in Chapter II.
It follows that the transition from medieval to modern conditions in the building industry did not occur in the way, or at the time, with which the student of the later `industrial revolution' is familiar.
The sixteenth century was a period of outstanding importance in the history of the building industry in this country, not because it marked any sudden break in continuity, but because it saw the speeding up of certain changes which had commenced in the fifteenth century or earlier, and the beginning of other changes which did not reach their full development until the seventeenth century or later.
It would be a great mistake to think that 1,J. U. Nef, J`. Of Po1. ECOn., Xliv, 289. 108 THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION the changes in the building industry were entirely independent of the much greater and more far‑reaching developments which were taking place in other spheres of social activity at the same period. The Renaissance, the Reformation, and the opening up of the New World, each exercised a considerable direct or indirect influence on the building industry. Of these three great movements, it was probably the Renaissance, with its stimulus to planning and designing by gentlemen and scholars, which ultimately led to the transformation of operative into accepted masonry.
Its more immediate effect on the building industry was seen in the great change in architectural styles which took place about this time.
The influence of the Reformation was also considerable, though not in the way that Gould has suggested: "The Reformation; no more churches built; the builders die out." '. The decline in the relative importance of the Church as an employer of masons had begun in the fifteenth century, or even earlier; the Reformation merely accelerated that decline. The place of the Church was taken by other employers and it is a complete misconception to suggest that the builders died out.
Plenty of buildings were erected during the sixteenth century; the mere fact that the classical style was gradually substituted for the Gothic in no way affected the operative masons who dressed and laid the stones.
Two indirect effects of the Reformation were of considerable importance to the development of the building industry.
First, the gifts of land and buildings to supporters of Henry VIII, following the Dissolution of the Monasteries, led to much building or rebuilding to house the new owners of the monastic estates.
Second, the replacement of Roman Catholicism by Protestantism exercised a considerable influence on masons' working conditions, by causing a great reduction in, if not the entire disappearance of, the many holidays associated with saints' days and church festivals.
The effects on the building industry of the opening up of the New World were indirect.
The great influx of the 1.d.Q.C., iii, 11.
io9 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY precious metals from Mexico and South America led both to an increase and to a redistribution of the existing wealth. The new resources of the gentry and of the trading community caused a considerable expansion of private building; the increasing wealth of the more prosperous masons and quarry‑owners enabled them to develop the contracting side of their activities, thus accelerating the gradual displacement of the `direct labour' system by the contract system. The great rise in prices, unaccompanied by a proportionate rise in money wages, brought about a fall in real wages. This not only impoverished the majority of masons, but stimulated building activity by lowering real building costs, in so far as these consisted of wages.
CHANGES IN EMPLOYERS To present a comprehensive picture of building activity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and of the changes in employers during that period would require the examination of far more building accounts and studies based upon building accounts than it has been possible for us to undertake. Consequently, we deal with the subject only in very general terms. So far as we can tell, there was very little ecclesiastical building for a good many years before the Reformation; the completion of the nave of Westminster Abbey, I the erection of King Henry VII's Chapel at Westminster,2 the finishing of St. George's Chapel, Windsor,3 and of King's College Chapel, Cambridge,4 all of which took place in the first quarter of the sixteenth century, were financed by the Crown, in part or in whole, and should probably be regarded as representing royal, rather than ecclesiastical, building activity.
Henry VIII (1509‑49) was a great patron of the building crafts, both for residential and for military purposes. At York Place,b Westminster Palace,e Nonsuch 1 Rackham, Nave of Westminster, 46.
2 G. G. Scott, Gleaning from Westminster 1lbbey, 69.
a Hope, Windsor Castle, ii, 384.
░ Willis and Clark, 1, 481. s P.R.O. Exch. K.R., 474/7 e P.R.O. T.R. MiSC., 251, 252; Bodl. Rawl. D. 775; B.M. MS. IOIo9. 110 THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION Palace,' Bridewell Palace,2 Eltham,3 Grafton,4 Dartford,‑, and Greenwich,e Henry VIII spent greater or smaller sums, and after the death of Wolsey in 1530 provided himself with yet another residence by completing the vast palace which the Cardinal had commenced at Hampton Court .7 Another building enterprise of Wolsey's, the accounts for which are preserved among the State Papers, was Cardinal College [Christ Church], Oxford.3
Among military works undertaken by Henry VIII, those at the Tower of London,9 Sandgate Castle, 10 Calais," Dover 12 and Beaumaris 13 may be mentioned.
Under Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth some royal building still took place, though most of these royal operations were on a small scale. On the other hand, we find a big expansion of private and corporate building in the second half of the sixteenth century, in part at least stimulated by royal gifts of land and buildings formerly belonging to monastic houses, such buildings being pulled down and the stone used for other purposes. 14
This new activity can be illustrated by what took place at Cambridge,'‑, where substantial work was undertaken at King's in 1562, Trinity Hall in 1562‑3, Caius in 1565‑'75, Corpus Christi in 1579, Emmanuel in 158q.‑6, Peterhouse in 1590‑5, Trinity in 1593 and 1598‑9, Sidney Sussex in 1596‑8, and at St. John's in 1598‑I6o2. Other private enterprises of this period for which building accounts are available are Lincoln's Inn (1567‑8),16 Loseley Hall 1 P.R.O. Exch. K.R., 477/12; L. & P. Henry VIII, 13, ii, 1302 Bodl. Rawl. D. 776, 777.
3 Bodl. Rawl. D. 777 4 Bodl. Rawl. D. 780.
‑, Bodl. Rawl. D. 783, 7846 Bodl. Rawl. D. 775, 776, 777, 780 7 E. Law, Hampton Court Palace, passim. 3 L. & P. Henry VIII, 4, ii, 1129.
e Bodl. Rawl. D. 775, 778 10 B.M. Harl. MSS. 1647, 1651; Rutton, 228. 11 L. & P. Henry VIII, 14, ii, 8o.
12 P.R.O. Exch. K.R., 462/29 and 30 13 P.R.O. Exch. K.R., 489/12 and 15; Knoop and Jones, Trans. l4nglesey flntiq. Soc., 1935, 59 14 M.M., 189, r go.
1‑, Willis and Clark, passim. 16 Black Books of Lincoln's Inn, i, 445 THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY (1561‑9)1 and various works of Bess of Hardwick z and of Sir Thomas Tresham.s The change in employers naturally led to a change in the type of work. Churches, palaces and castles tended to be replaced by private residences and collegiate buildings. Public works also appear to have become more common, and increasing attention appears to have been given to bridges and harbour works .4 In Scotland, also, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the importance of the Crown and Church as employers in the building industry appears to have declined, whilst that of the municipalities and of the nobility and landed gentry grew. The municipalities were responsible not only for the erection of markets, prisons and other buildings required for administrative purposes, but also for the building and maintenance of urban churches, such as St. Giles, Edinburgh, the Tron Church, Edinburgh, Our Lady Church, Dundee, and St. Nicholas, Aberdeen. The nobility and landed gentry were mostly concerned with the erection of castles and houses for defensive or residential purposes.5 CHANGES IN THE ORGANISATION OF BUILDING OPERATIONS The change in employers had its repercussions on the Organisation of building operations. The operations undertaken by municipalities and by private employers were usually much smaller than those formerly undertaken by the Church or the Crown.
Being more limited in extent and of more manageable size, these new works offered greater scope for contractors than did the huge and almost interminable royal and ecclesiastical building operations of earlier centuries.
Thus the tendency for the use of the contract system to expand at the expense of the `direct labour' system was accentuated.
The growing wealth of the community, brought about by the influx of precious metals from the New World, tended to have the same effect.
On larger operations the direct labour system was still used in 1 S. Evans, 11rch., xxxvi, 28ó.
2 Stallybrass, f4rch., lxiv. a Hist. MSS. Com., Various Collections, iii, pp. xxxiii folg.
4 XYl C.M., 10.
s S.M., 6‑8. 112 THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION the first half of the sixteenth century, e.g., on important works at Hampton Court,' Westminster Palace,2 Nonsuch Palace 3 and Sandgate Castle .4 It continued to be used in the second half of the sixteenth and early part of the seventeentb centuries as, for example, at Berwick in 1557,, at Hardwick Hall about 15906 and at Bolsover Castle in 1613,' but with more parts of the work done by task or by 'bargain' than had formerly been the case.e
The erection of more substantial works by contract appears to have become commoner in the sixteenth century.
St. George's Chapel, Windsor,9 and King's College Chapel, Cambridge,19 in which the main work had been done on the direct labour system in the fifteenth century, were finished by contract in the early sixteenth century. Trinity College, Cambridge, let its first masonry contract in 1528‑9,11 having previously relied upon the direct labour system, and St. John's College, Cambridge, introduced the new system in 1598‑1602,12 when the second court was erected by contractors.
At Caius College,13 the Perse building was erected by contract in 1617 and the Legge building in 1619. In the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Robert Grumbold's services as mason‑contractor and mason‑architect were in great demand at Cambridge. 114 At Edinburgh the erection of the Tron Church in 1635‑8 and that of the Parliament House in 1632‑q.o are relatively late examples of important municipal works under taken on the direct labour system.
In many more cases surviving accounts show that during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries much mason‑work was given out by task, and numerous surviving masons' contracts bear wit ness to the wide use of the contract system.',
It is difficult to generalise as the change was only gradual; thus Sir Thomas Tresham, who did a good deal of building in 1 E. Law, op. cit., passim.
2 P.R.O. T.R. Misc., 251, 252.
3 P.R.O. Exch. K.R., 477/12.
4 Rutton, passim.
, P.R.O. Exch. K.R., 483/16.
6 Stallybrass, op. cit.
7 Bolsover.
8 XYI C.M., 10.
9 Hope, op. cit., ii, 384.
1░ Willis and Clark, i, 479 " Ibid., ii, 454‑
12 Ibid., ii, 249.
18 Ibid., i, 186‑7.
14 Contractor, 1069.
1, S.M., 11.
THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY Northamptonshire in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, sometimes employed contractors and at other times made use of the direct labour system.' At Oxford in 16 i o, Wadham College was being erected on the direct labour system z and Merton College was being extended by mason‑con tractors .3 How widespread the contract system was amongst masons in London in the first part of the seventeenth century we cannot say with certainty; the direct labour
I system still prevailed to some extent. The Banqueting House at Whitehall was partly erected on that system in 16 i g‑22, and substantial repair work at Old St. Paul's in the 163os and minor repair work at various palaces in 1662 were also apparently organised on the old system. On the other hand, the available evidence suggests that the building of Lincoln's Inn Chapel in 1619‑24, the rebuilding of the Goldsmiths' Hall in the 163os, and the erection of Clarendon House in the early r 66os were done by contractors. After the Great Fire, building activity enormously increased and much more information is available. From this time onwards, in any case, the direct labour system appears to have been almost universally displaced by the contract system. We find the masonry work in connection with royal, ecclesiastical and municipal building being let to contractors almost without exception. In all probability private jobs were conducted in the same way. The rebuilding of Masons' Hall in 166g‑'7o is an example of a private job done by contract.4 With the growth of the contract system, though the building operations might sometimes be as large as they had been formerly, or even larger, there occurred a decline in the scale of production, in the sense that a number of relatively small firms took the place of the large `integrated' and centrally controlled undertakings which had characterised the building industry in the Middle Ages.
' Hist. MSS. Com., Various, iii, pp. xxxiii folg. z T. G. Jackson, Wadham College, 29.
3 T. W. Hanson, "Halifax Builders at Oxford", Trams. Halifax Zmtiq. Soc., 1928.
4 This paragraph is based on L.M., 39 folg.
THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION CHANGES IN MASONS' WORKING CONDITIONS Wages.‑Though the number of mason‑contractors and mason‑shopkeepers undoubtedly grew in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most masons do not appear to have had the capital, or possibly the initiative, necessary to set up for themselves as `little masters', and most workers in the trade continued to be, as they had been for centuries, wage‑earners for the greater part, if not all, of their working lives. The position of the wage‑earner during. this period was one of much difficulty, as the outstanding feature of stone‑masons' wages in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was their marked increase in terms of money and their great decline in terms of purchasing power.
It was doubtless the rise in prices, primarily brought about by the vast influx of silver from Mexico and South America, and in a lesser degree by the debasement of the coinage, which led to the increase in money wages, the extent of which can be illustrated by the experience of the masons employed at London Bridge: about I Soo they received 8d. a day; about I6oo, I6d. a day; and about 1700, 32d. a day. Whilst money wages were thus doubling and redoubling themselves, prices were roughly quadrupling and then doubling themselves, so that the purchasing power of the mason's wage both in 16oo and in 1700 was approxi mately only half what it had been in I Soo.
We summarise the changes in masons' daily money wages in the following table,' money wages in ISoi‑io being treated as equal to i oo.
For purposes of comparison, the corresponding figures for (1) wholesale food prices, (ii) daily real wages,2 and (iii) weekly real earnings 3 are set out in parallel columns I M.M., Appendix I, "Statistics of Masons' Wages and of Prices".
2 Obtained by dividing the index‑numbers of money wages by the corresponding index‑numbers of prices.
3 In calculating the weekly real earnings, we assume (i) that between 1501 and 1540, on account of holidays, they were equivalent to five days' wages; and (ii) that between 1541 and 1702, in view of the relative absence of holidays and the prevalence of overtime referred to in some detail on pages 119‑2o below, they were equivalent to six days' wages.
IIS THE GENESIS OF FREEMASONRY Years.
Masons' money wages. 1501‑10= 100.
Wholesale food prices. 1501 Masons' daily real wages. 1501‑10= 100.
Masons' weekly real earnings. 1501‑10= 100.
1501‑1510 1511‑1520 1521‑1530 1531‑1540 1541‑1550 1551‑156o 1561‑1570 1571‑1582 1583‑1592 1593‑1602 1603‑1612 1613‑1622 1623‑1632 1633‑1642 1643‑1652 1653‑1662 1663‑1672 1673‑1682 1683‑1692 1693‑1702 100 Too 100 103 108 163 172 192 196 196 200 223 232 251 293 320 325 325 329 346 1o=100‑Too 101 132 131 18o 290 26o 298 318 437 470 5o6 520 519 557 541 554596 585 682 TOO 99 76 79 6o 56 66 64 62 45 43 44 45 48 54 59 59 55 56 51 TOO 99 76 79 72 67 79 77 74 5452 53 54 58 65 71 7 1 66 67 61 The articles selected for the purpose of calculating these index‑numbers of wholesale prices do not include either bread or beer, in those days two of the most important items of diet among the labouring classes, though they do include the various grains from which bread and beer were made. There is, however, some ground for thinking that the prices of bread and beer did not rise as much as the prices of the grains from which they were produced.' Thus the index‑numbers of prices quoted may exaggerate the rise in the cost of living. It should also be noted that wage‑earners, where they were paid partly in food, as was certainly to some extent the case in Scotland, 2 may not have borne the whole burden of rising prices. In England official wage assessments made by justices of the 1 J. U. Nef, "Prices and Industrial Capitalisation in France and England, 154o‑1640", Ec. H. R., May 1937, 166.
2 S.M., 11‑12, 39.
THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION Peace under the Statute of Artificers, 1563, commonly laid down two scales of pay, one with food and drink, and one without, and building accounts show that provision of board for masons was not unknown.‑ Our information is not sufficient for us to be able to say that, as a set‑off to the fall in the purchasing power of money wages, the system of paying wages partly in kind came to be more extensively used in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, than had formerly been the case. The system almost certainly existed at an earlier date, just as at an earlier date masons had agricultural holdings and other by‑occupations at which they themselves worked during slack periods in the building industry, and at which their womenfolk and younger children worked at all times. We think it not unlikely, however, that both these systems were adopted more extensively during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as a means of supplementing inadequate money wages during a period of rising prices.
There was one new sixteenth‑ and seventeenth‑century device which, in certain cases at least, tended to make the position of the more responsible journeyman masons rather less intolerable, in the face of the fall in real wages, than would otherwise have been the case. That was the extended use of the system of apprenticeship, as a result of which not merely master masons and mason‑contractors but also journeyman masons took apprentices. We drew attention on page 8 o above to the fact that the regulations of the newer versions of the MS. Constitutions of Masonry permitted fellows, as well as masters; to take apprentices, but we did not stress the implications of this innovation. It was not the apprentice who received the relatively high wage paid in respect
