(1) The Operative Craft
"There exists a collection of documents which has
been called up as evidence both for the operative and non-operative origins of
Freemasonry. Described by Anderson as the Gothic Constitutions, and now known
collectively as the Old Charges, some 127 versions have been
traced of which 113 are still in existence....All have a common form:
a. an opening prayer
b. a legendary history of the mason craft tracing
it from biblical origins to its establishment in England
c. a code of regulations for Masters, Fellows and
Apprentices covering both craft practices and morals
d. arrangement for large-scale 'territorial'
assemblies at which attendance was obligatory
e. procedures for the trial and punishment of
offenders
f. admission procedures 'for new men that were
never charged before', including an oath of fidelity."
"Historically, the Old Charges fall into three groups. The first comprises
the two earliest versions, the Regius MS of c.1390 and the Cook MS of
c.1420...The second, and largest, group begins with the Grand Lodge No. 1 MS,
dated 25 December 1583, and covers all the versions datable before the formation
of the premier Grand Lodge in 1717. The third group comprises manuscript and
printed versions produced after 1717, the majority of which appear to have been
produced as antiquarian curiosities."
- John Hamill, The Craft, A History of English
Freemasonry
The Wood manuscript, written in 1610 "traces the
history of the Order from two pillars that were found after Noah's Flood, none
made of a marble that would not burn with fire, the other made of a substance
known in Masonic legends as Laterus, which would not dissolve, sink or drown in
any water. One of these pillars was found and upon it were inscribed the secrets
of the sciences from which the Sumerians developed a moral code that passed to
the Egyptians through the Sumerian Abraham and his wife Sarah. The script goes
on to describe Euclid teaching geometry to the Egyptians, from whom the
Israelites took it to Jerusalem, which resulted in the building of King
Solomon's Temple."
- Christopher Knight & Robert Lomas, The
Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasons and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus
"A record of the society written in the reign of Edward IV, said to have been in the possession of the famous Elias Ashmole, founder of the Museum at Oxford, and which was unfortunately destroyed, with other papers on the subject of Masonry, at the Revolution, gives the following account of the state of Masonry at this period:
"That though the ancient records of the brotherhood
in England were many of them destroyed, or lost, in the wars of the Saxons and
Danes, yet king Athelitane, (the grandson of King Alfred the Great, a mighty
architect,) the first anointed king of England, and who translated the Holy
Bible into the Saxon tongue, (AD 930) when he had brought the land into rest and
peace, built many great works, and encouraged many Mason from France, who were
appointed overseers thereof, and brought with them the charges and regulations
of the lodges, preserved since the Roman times; who also prevailed with the king
to improve the constitution of the English lodges according to the foreign
model, and to increase the wages of working Masons."
- William Preston, Illustrations of Masonry
(1804)
Preston's accounts of the history of Masonry in England, beginning with the Druids and Romans, are based on the mythical history included in Anderson's Constitutions (1773) and his own 1776 Appendix.
"In the west of England there is a magnificent chain
of cathedrals without parallel elsewhere: Exeter, Wells, Gloucester,
Worcestershire and Hereford, as well asmany abbeys and castles, on which
building was carried out almost continuously during the five centuries before
A.D. 1500."
The Regius MS and the Cooke MS, based on a lost 1360 manuscript, are the only
pre-Reformation versions of the Old Charges still extant. Both "say that
Athelstan, grandson of Alfred the Great gave charges to masons for he was the
King of Wessex before he became King of All England [c.895-939], and he is
reputed to have been the founder in 932 of the monastic house which was the
fore-runner of the cathedral at Exeter."
According to the Cooke MS, Athalstan's youngest son "'loved well the
science of Geometry' and he became a mason himself. He, in turn, gave charges to
masons 'as it is now in England'. Moreover he obtained a patent from the king
that they should 'make assembly when they saw reasonable time to come
together'."
- Bro. J. R. Clarke, "The Old Charges (A New
Look at the Oldest of Them)"
"During the reign of Henry II, the Grand Master of
the Knights Templars superintended the Masons, and employed them in building
their Temple in Fleet-street, A.D. 1155. Masonry continued under the patronage
of this Order till the year 1199, when John succeeded his brother Richard in the
crown of England."
- William Preston, Illustrations of Masonry
(1804)
"The term freemason appears as early as
1375 in the records of the city of London. It referred to working masons who
were permitted to travel the country at a time when the feudal system shackled
most peasants closely to the land. Unlike the members of other crafts of the
time - smiths or tanners for example - the masons gathered in large groups to
work on majestic, glorious projects, moving from one finished castle or
cathedral to the planning and building of the next. For mutual protection,
education, and training, the masons bound themselves together into a local lodge
- the building, put up at a construction site, where workmen could eat and rest.
Eventually, a lodge came to signify a group of masons based in a particular
locality."
- "Freemasons; Mortar and Mysticism", Ancient
Wisdom and Secret Sects
"At the beginning of the reign of Henry VI, in 1425,
a ban was placed on holding them [annual assemblies of masons] on the ground
that they contravened the Statutes of Labourers. The masons protested that they
were as loyal and law-abiding as other trades and objected to being singled out
for attack. Condor (The Hole Craft and Fellowship of Masons, p.77)
observes that 'we do not hear of this Act being put into force' and he gives
high legal opinion that it was repealed in 1562. It may be a coincidence but it
was about this time that the earliest extant post-reformation versions of the
Old Charges appeared."
- Bro. J. R. Clarke, "The Old Charges (A New
Look at the Oldest of Them)"
"A record in the reign of Edward IV runs thus:
"The company of Masons, being otherwise termed
Free-Masons, of auntient staunding and good reckonings, by means of affable and
kind meetyngs dyverse tymes, and as a lovinge brotherhode use to doe, did
frequent this mutual assembly in the tyme of Henry VI in the twelfth yeare of
his most gracious reign, A.D. 1434'."
- William Preston, Illustrations of Masonry
(1804)
"It has been demonstrated that freemason - in an
operative context - is a contraction of 'freestone mason'....The earliest
printed use so far traced comes in The Pilgrimage of Perfection -
usually attributed to William Bonde - printed in 1536 by Wynkyn de Worde."
- John Hamill, The Craft, A History of English
Freemasonry
"The freemason setteth his pretyss first long tyme to
learn to hewe stones and whan he can do that perfectly he admytteth him to be a
freemason and choseth hym as a conynge man to be master of the Craft."
- The Pilgrimage of Perfection
"Guilds of mason were common, and can be found
emerging in Scotland (where guilds were generally known as incorporations) in
the late Middle Ages."
- David Stevenson, The First Freemasons
"...The Masons were countenanced and protected in
Scotland by King James I. After his return from captivity, he became the patron
of the learned, and a zealous encourager of Masonry. The Scottish records
relate, that he honored the lodges with his royal presence; that he settled a
yearly revenue of four pounds Scots, (an English noble,) to be paid by every
Master-Mason in Scotland, to a Grand Master, chosen by the Grand Lodge, and
approved by the crown, one nobly born, or an eminent clergyman, who had his
deputies in cities and counties, and every new brother at entrance paid him also
a fee. His office empowered him to regulate in the fraternity what should not
come under the cognizance of law-courts."
- William Preston, Illustrations of Masonry
(1804)
"In Scotland such lodges [established for long-term
site building activity], under burgh control, can be traced in Aberdeen and
Dundee in the late fifteenth and early sixteen centuries. But they appear to
have declined or disappeared entirely shortly before or after the Reformation of
1560 brought a new protestant church to Scotland."
"The legacy of the Medieval masons obviously contains much that is later
found in freemasonry; the mythical history of the craft, the identification of
masonry with mathematics; organization in 'lodges'; secret signs and words; and
rituals of initiation."
- David Stevenson, The First Freemasons