To arrive at a correct estimate of the commencement of Freemasonry; there must be taken into account the conditions surrounding the fraternity during the period of its slow evolution from an operative society of Craft guilds into a speculative or fraternal organization.

It will, therefore, be interesting to go back two or three hundred years and consider the manners and customs of the English people as well as to know something of the conditions which cast their horoscope not only over the nation, but the lives of individuals as well.

The Elizabethan Era has been in a general sense called one of culture and of fighting, which gave to England a commercial and political greatness in both the Old World and the New; a greatness which she has never surrendered even to this clay. Following the Elizabethan Era, various political parties waged an earnest contest for temporal power. It is worthy of note that the religions spirit of the times entered largely into political and social affairs, and finally after much persecution and bloodshed, ran its course in the defeat of the Stuart party, near the close of the Seventeenth Century. At this time, Queen Anne, the last of that regime, ascended the throne of England. She in turn was succeeded in 1714 by the German Prince, George of Hanover, who became King George I of England.

He knew nothing of the English language, was unsympathetic, and failed to reconcile himself to the ideas and emotions of the people whom he governed. He seldom concerned himself in their interest beyond the consideration of those questions of state which the members of his court brought to his attention. It must be said to his credit, however, that in spite of his comparative lack of interest in the English people, he gave the Nation thirty years of peace.

At the time when the Grand Lodge of England came into existence, the population of the country was about the same as that of Australia today.

The accession of George I. and the utter failure of the rebellion instituted by the Old Pretender in favor of the Scots in a vain hope of restoring the exiled house of Stuart, were events which affected more or less the political life of the Nation. The South Sea bubble was in a high state of inflation. It had not yet reached the bursting point. Walpole was credited with ruling the land, not honestly, but firmly. Carlyle, who had a very plain, blunt way of stating facts, declared the period to be an age of prose, of lying and of sham. On the other hand, it is said to have been the Golden Age of English Literature, for Addison and Steele were at the very height of their literary fame while Pope charmed the ears of his enthusiasts with the rythmic lines of his delightful compositions. But whatever may have been the glory of the period from a literary standpoint, the product of these distinguished writers appealed to and influenced but a very few.

The manners of the age were coarse and vulgar. King Henry VIII ordered his Master cooks not to employ scullions who go about naked or sleep at nights before the kitchen fire.

During his time, the Queen's maids of honor were allowed a gallon of ale, a small loaf, and a chine of beef for their breakfast. Just how rude was the behavior of the people some two hundred years ago may be judged from the fact that the finest gentlemen, the most learned clerk, lived as plainly, spoke as coarsely and treated each other as roughly as the average habitues of the levee districts of our great cities. Queen Elizabeth lardered her conversation with vulgarity and profanity and delighted in bull baiting and bear-baiting. It is related that on a particular Sunday she went to church with two white bears following in a cart for her amusement after the services. The period was one of drunkenness, cock-fighting, dueling, gambling. Intemperance appeared not only in public houses and in public places, but among private families and individuals of each sex. Refinement was a veneer laid over natures coarse and repulsive. Gambling, betting, and other games of chance were regarded just as legitimate as bridge, whist, chess, and golf of today. Murders in London were frequent and often unpunished.

No efficient police force existed, and the streets at night were infested with ruffians who amused themselves by overturning sedan chairs, rolling women down hill in barrels, and compelling men to dance jigs at the point of a sword. So numerous were highwaymen that it was dangerous to travel any distance even in the day time without an armed guard.

Many of the streets were kept in the total darkness of night and a large number of the homes received little daylight because windows were taxed. Language was coarse and vulgar. Polite society assembled to indulge in ribald jests and suggestive stories. The man who shovels coal into the cellar of the modern residence of today uses better language than did the doubletted dandy of the Court of Queen Elizabeth. An unexpurgated edition of Shakespeare is not permitted in refined households at the present time. Profanity characterized the every day speech of men and women and even children were better schooled in the art of swearing than in the catechisms of the church.

People believed in witches, ghosts, and all sorts of supernatural things. They charged their misfortunes to some evil influence, and when it was not convenient to trace them to some phantom, they then were laid at the door of an innocent person who was charged with witchcraft. Even religion used this bogey to cover many of its shortcomings. One shudders to read of the inhuman cruelties which were visited upon men and women simply because they were suspected of being in league with the devil. Hundreds of miserable women were burned alive after being first compelled by torture to confess that they had ridden through the clouds accompanied by devils and lightning. If sickness or plague visited a community, no one ever thought of looking up the water supply or inquiring into sanitary conditions, but a committee went out, found some half-witted, miserable woman, charged her with witchcraft, and ordered her put to death.

King James I, was a firm believer in witchcraft and wrote a book on demonology. He was to marry a Princess from Denmark. A great storm with lightning and heavy wind came up and the Princess was obliged to turn back. The King immediately charged the storm to demons and declared that witches had been in league with them. He ordered that they should be discovered and brought to light, and in due course, a miserable human being by the name of Fiam was dragged into the torture room. While his legs were crushed in iron hoots and wedges were driven under his finger nails, his tottering mind confessed that several hundred witches had gone to sea in a sieve from a near-by port and had raised storms and tempests to drive back the princess.

The forefathers of Freemasonry, who assembled at the Goose and Gridiron tavern in the early part of the Seventeenth Century, didn't find the world as pleasant to live in as do their successors of the Twentieth Century, for the poorest home of today is furnished with comforts and conveniences which the kings of two hundred years ago never dreamed of. The most modern cottage in comparison with their imagined sumptuous abodes, is a veritable heaven. The housewife of two hundred years ago knew nothing of the telephone, the dumbwaiter, the vacuum cleaner, and the host of appliances which reduce the number of servants and make housekeeping a delight. Louis XVI of France, draped his chamber with gorgeous tapestries but knew nothing of the luxury of a modern bathroom. Marie Antoinette rode through the streets of Paris in a golden coach, but its iron tires jolted over rough cobble stones. As she passed in splendor, she held her dainty nose to escape the stench arising from the gutters, because modern sanitation was unknown and garbage inspectors unheard of. The ladies of her court decorated themselves in costly laces but their teeth were ugly because there were no dentists to keep them in condition. Queen Anne spent the summer months railing at the weather man because there was no ice to cool the drinking water. The calling of the farmer was little more than slavery for the riding plow, the patent seeder, the mower, the threshing machine, the gasoline tractor had not yet been conceived by the brain of man. Good roads were unknown. Merchandise was carried on the backs of horses and so great was the expense of transportation that farmers often allowed their, produce to rot on the ground rather than attempt to move it to market. The people of those days lived in a large world because there were no agencies to annihilate either time or distance. There was no locomotive to speed across the country with its burden of humanity. There was no automobile to unite the people. Instead, there was the sedan chair and the stage coach and an average journey of twenty-three miles per day was regarded as an unusual achievement. The telephone, the telegraph, the newspaper, were unknown, and time was measured not in hours and minutes but in months and years. A journey from London to Boston required several months of anxious travel in a slow going sailing vessel.

There was an absence of humanity. The poorer class of English women were little more than slaves, and children were looked upon as chattels and legitimate objects of abuse and ill treatment. The whipping post on land, the catonine tails on the seas, were favored instruments of punishment. It was considered perfectly legal to torture animals for it was asserted that they had no souls. Before the French Revolution, it was a common occurrence to torture witnesses. Slaves were often abused in order to make them tell what they knew of their masters. Laws were severe and a man could be hanged for an offense which now passes with a slight fine. Common people had few rights, and, while the nobleman slept in his palace on a bed of ease, his poor and helpless peasants were compelled to be at the nearby ponds with flails, in order that the frogs might not make a noise and disturb his slumber.

Such were the good old days which people delight to refer to. Particularly those who are always talking about "when I was a boy." "Why, when I was a boy, the men were larger, lived longer, and were more healthy than now: Why, when I was a boy, the apples were sweeter, the cherries larger, and more potatoes grew in a hill." But this halcyon condition which is so often pictured to the present generation is all due to a trick of the memory which sheds the softening hue of the imagination over a past that was never present.

Whatever the past two or three hundred years may possess in the way of poetry, music, art, and painting, it must be said that these arts in no way overshadow those conditions which surrounded the people of the period. It was tinder conditions such as these that Freemasonry was fostered and maintained an existerce, however precarious it may have been. It seems indeed strange that an age such as has been described. could have in any way been responsible for the organization of a society which, in the Twentieth Century, has grown to such magnificent proportions and which gives evidence of such a high degree of enlightenment and culture. It must not be forgotten, however, that Masonry of two hundred years ago in its practices and in the conduct of its members, compared favorably with the habits of those who lived contemporaneously with it. Masonry, as it is presented to us today, is in no sense the Masonry of two hundred years ago.

A minute of an extraordinary proceeding which took place in Bolton Lodge, England, on December 17th, 1786 notes that "at a meeting of emergency, Bro. attended, and inquired for what purpose it was called. On being informed that it was to pass Bro. Secretary, he swore that he would be passed likewise, and on the Worshipful informing him that he should not until his behaviour better deserved it, he then took up the poker and swore he would be passed before he left the room, or if any brother offered to put him out till he had been passed, he would knock out his brains." What followed this night is not recorded, but at a subsequent date, the delinquent "asked pardon for his misconduct," and he was admitted. No doubt "John Barleycorn" had something to do with this affair, which, had it occurred in the Twentieth Century, would have resulted in a call for the police.

But Masonry has undergone a long process of evolution and development in which the coarser and rougher elements of human nature have been eliminated and with the upward advance of the race, it has moved steadily forward gradually casting off that rude conduct which distinguished it in its early days and has slowly adjusted itself to the age and environment through which it progressed. Much of the refinement of Freemasonry of today is traceable to the evolution of its ritual as will be noted in a later chapter.

The earliest meetings of lodges partook very largely of the nature and character of the assemblages of the period in which they existed. The meager ritual which was employed and the great haste with which the early Masons discharged the initiation of their candidates shows that so far as the intellectual and cultured part of the society was concerned, it was to them a means to an end and that in their assemblages they hastily disposed of these features in order that they might have time for the flowing bowl, the smoking pipe, the ribald jest, and the vulgar bit of gossip. It is indeed a remarkable thing that Freemasonry survived the times and conditions in which it was born and should have started on that evolution which has brought it to the highly perfected state of the Twentieth Century. All this goes to prove that there was in the profession, a germ of culture, which was destined to survive coarser natures and the rough environment concerned in its inception, and later on to evolve into the intellectual and cultured society of the Twentieth Century.

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