There were two conditions of the Craft in the period embraced between the 14th and 17th centuries which are peculiarly worth the notice of the student of Masonic history. These are the General Assembly of the Craft at stated periods, and their more customary meetings in Lodges. It is to be regretted that the early records of English Masonry furnish but the slightest and most unsatisfactory accounts of the transactions of either of these bodies, so that most of our information on this subject is merely conjectural. "We possess," says Mr. Halliwell, "no series of documents, nor even an approach to a series, sufficiently extensive to enable us to form any connected history of the ancient institutions of Masons and Freemasons. We have, in fact, no materials by which we can form any definite idea of the precise nature of those early societies."*

(* "Society of Antiquaries," April 18, 1839, p. 444.)

This is very true, and the historian finds himself impeded in every step of his labour in tracing the early progress of the institution. "We must therefore," as he continues to observe, "rest contented with the light which a few incidental notices and accidental accounts, far from being altogether capable of unsuspected reliance, afford us." In the forty years which have elapsed since this passage was written, the energetic industry of Masonic archaeologists has brought to light many old records which are "of unsuspected reliance," which, though still too few to form a complete series of historic stages, will enable us to understand better than we did a half century ago the real condition of the Masonic sodalities in the Middle Ages.

Had these records been in Mr. Halliwell's possession when he presented the first of them as a valuable contribution to Masonic history, he would hardly have erred as he did in his belief of the truth of the Prince Edwin story, or of the authenticity of the Leland MS. As the geologist has been enabled to trace the gradual changes in the earth's surface, and in the character of its living inhabitants at the remotest period, by the fossil which he finds embedded in its early strata, or as the anthropologist learns the true character of prehistoric man from the stone and bronze implements that he has discovered in ancient caves and mounds, so the archaeologist can form a very correct notion of the state of medieval Freemasonry form the scattered records of that period, which, long preserved in the obscurity of neglected archives or in the vast collections of the British Museum, have at length been published to the world, to form the authentic materials of a Masonic history. They confirm many statements hitherto supposed to be without authority, and enable us by their silence to reject much that has been fancifully presented as authentic. Thus in the manuscript which was discovered and published by Mr. Halliwell, and which he very correctly considered to be the earliest document yet brought forward connected with the progress of Freemasonry in Great Britain, we may learn that at least as early as toward the end of the 14th century the Masons met on specified occasions and under certain rules and regulations in a body which they called the "Congregation" or the "Assembly." Of this there can not be the slightest doubt, since the genuineness of the Halliwell poem is universally recognized as having been written between the years 1350 and 1400, and as containing an authentic account of the condition of the Craft at that period. In the second article of the Constitutions contained in this work it is said that "every Mason who is a Master, must be at the general congregation if he is informed in sufficient time where that assembly is to be holden, unless he should have a reasonable excuse."*

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

I have spared the reader the archaic and, to most persons, unintelligible language, but have given the true meaning in the translation, and append the original in a marginal note. From this law it would appear that in the 14th century it was the usage of Master Masons to assemble from various parts of the country for purposes connected with the business or interests of the Craft. In the Cooke MS., whose date is at least an hundred years later, the writer gives an account of the origin of this custom. It arose, he says, in the time of King Athelstan, who ordained that annually, or every three years, all Master Masons and Fellows should come up from every province and country to congregations, where the Masters should be examined in the laws of the Craft, and their skill and knowledge in their profession be investigated, and where they should receive charges for their future conduct. As this, however, is a mere tradition, founded on the legend of Athelstan's, or rather Prince Edwin's, Assembly of Masons at York, it can not be accepted as a foundation for any historical statement. But in the same manuscript we find the evidence that it was the custom of Masters coming from their Lodges or places where they worked with the Fellows under them, and their Apprentices, to some sort of gathering which was presided over by one of the Masters as the principal or chief of the meeting.

It is the second article of the Constitutions, according to the Cooke MS., which is in the following words. I again translate the archaic language into modern English. "That every Master should be previously warned to come to his congregation, that he may come in due time unless excused for some reason. But those who had been disobedient at such congregations, or been false to their employers, or had acted so as to deserve reproof of the Craft, could be excused only by extreme sickness, of which notice was to be given to the Master that is principal of the assembly." *

(* "Cooke MS.," lines 740-755.)

I say that this is evidence that in the latter part of the 15th century, which is the date of the manuscript, the custom did exist of several Masters assembling, from different points for purposes of consultation, because a law would hardly be enacted for the due observance of a certain custom unless that custom had a substantial existence. This is not a tradition or legend, but the statement in a manuscript constitution of the existence of a law.

The manuscript is admitted to be genuine. That it tells us what were the regulations of the Craft that were in force when it was written is not denied. And therefore, as it gives us the rules that were to govern Masters in their attendance upon an assembly or congregation of Masters, we must recognize the historical fact that at that time such assemblies or congregations did exist among the Craft of Masons. These assemblies were probably extemporary, or called at uncertain times, as necessity required. If they were held at stated and regular periods, it would hardly have been required that a Master must have received previous notice to render him amenable to punishment for non-attendance. This would also lead us to presume that there was some person in whom, by general concurrence, was vested the authority to designate the time of meeting, and whose duty it was to give the necessary warning. And it would seem that this person must have been the one to whom excuses were to be rendered, and who is styled, in the quaint language of the manuscript, pryncipall of that gederyng."

What was the circuit within which the jurisdiction of such an assembly extended, or what was the distance from which Master Masons were expected to repair to it, we must learn from later manuscript Constitutions, for the Cooke MS. leaves us in ignorance on the subject. It tells us only that assemblies were occasionally held, but says nothing of the number of representatives who constituted them nor of the circuit of country which they governed. This is, however, determined by the later Constitutions.

In the Landsdowne MS., whose date is sixty years after that of the Cooke, it is said that "every Master and Fellow shall come to the Assembly if it be within fifty miles of him." This distance is repeated in the York MS., dated 1600, in the Grand Lodge MS. of 1632, in the Sloane MS. of 1646, in the Lodge of Antiquity MS. of 1686, and in the Alnwick M S. as late as 1701. There is, however, a discrepancy not to be explained in some of the Constitutions.

The Harleian MS., whose ascribed date is 1650, says that the Mason must come to the Assembly if it be within ten miles of his abode, and in the Constitutions in the Lodge of Hope MS., whose date is 1680, and those in the Papworth MS., whose date is as late as 1714, but must undoubtedly have been a mere copy of some older one, the distance is reduced to five miles. Those who, in this reference to what is called sometimes a congregation, sometimes a general assembly, and once, as in the Papworth MS., an association, have sought to discover the evidence of the existence before the 18th century of a Grand Lodge for England and a Grand Master presiding over all the Craft in the kingdom, will not find themselves supported by any expressions either in these Old Constitutions or in any other records of the times which will warrant such an interpretation of the nature of these meetings of the Craft.

The object of these Assemblies, as described with great uniformity in all the Constitutions, was to submit those who had trespassed against the rules of the Craft to the judgment and award of their brethren, and where there were disputes to endeavor to reconcile the difference by a brotherly arbitration. If we may rely on a statement made in what is caged the Roberts MS., from which we get the earliest printed book in Masonry, and which manuscript could not have been later than the latter part of the 17th century, these General Assemblies had also the power of making new regulations for the government of the Craft.

A book was printed in 1722 by J. Roberts, under the title of The Old Constitutions belonging to the Ancient and Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons. This book was, he says, "taken from a Manuscript wrote above five hundred years since," but the internal evidence shows that it could not have been written earlier than about the middle of the 17th century. It has indeed all the appearance of being a careless copy of the Harleian MS., with some additional matter which is not found in that document, the source of which is not known. In this book of Roberts are some new regulations which are said to be "additional orders and Constitutions made and agreed upon at a General Assembly held at....... on the eighth day of December, 1663."

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

It will be seen that the Roberts Constitution says nothing of the Earl of St. Albans, nothing of his having exercised the functions or assumed the title of Grand Master, nothing of a feast, and nothing of the time of assembly being on St. John the Evangelist's day, which is an entirely modern Masonic festival. All that Anderson has here said is merely supposititious, and by this act of unfairness, Bro. Hughan very correctly says, his "character as an accurate historian is certainly not improved." It has been seen that the earlier manuscript Constitutions do not speak of any specific time when the Assembly was held, and it is possible, or perhaps probable, that at first they were called at extemporaneous periods and according to the needs of particular districts where there were Master Masons engaged. This is, however, altogether conjectural. But it would seem that about the middle of the 17th century, and indeed perhaps long before, there was instituted an annual assembly.

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

That this was to be done "for the future" would seem to imply that it had not been done theretofore, or it might mean that what had formerly been an authorized usage was thereafter to be confirmed as a law by this new regulation, and this is probably the more correct interpretation. It is, however, very satisfactorily shown by this Harleian document that at the time when it was written, namely, in 1670, the Masons had begun to meet in an annual assembly, even if they did not do so before there is another feature in the medieval condition of Freemasonry, which we may discover from an examination of these old manuscript Constitutions.

While it is very clear that the Masons were in the habit of assembling annually, or perhaps at more frequent periods, in congregations, for general consultation on the interests of the whole body of craftsmen, they also united in other associations of a local character, which, in the earliest records to which we have obtained access, were known by the name of "Lodges." This was an institution peculiar to the Masons. We hear of the Guilds, and afterward of the Company of Carpenters, the Company of Smiths, the Company of Tailors, and others belonging to various crafts, but we have no knowledge that there ever existed any lodges of Carpenters, Smiths, or Tailors.

The Masons alone met in these local sodalities, which were of course in some way connected with the Company, after it had been chartered, and even before, when it existed as a Guild without incorporation. The existence of these Lodges is not conjectural, but capable of the most convincing historical proof derived from these old manuscripts, whose genuineness has never been and can not be doubted, as well as from the testimony of other writers, some of them not of Masonic character, and therefore less suspicious. The proofs of the existence of Lodges in which Masons in different parts of the kingdom met may be first presented as they are found in the Old Constitutions.

The Halliwell poem, which is the earliest of these manuscript records, plainly refers to the fact. In the 4th Article of the Constitutions which it prescribes, the Master Mason is forbidden to take a bondman as an Apprentice. And the reason assigned why this prohibition is made is that the lord whose bondman he is has the right to bring him away from any place where he might go, and if he were to take him from the Lodge it would be a cause of great trouble. "For the lorde that he ys bonde to May fache the prentes whersever he go. Gef yn the logge he were y-take Much desese hyt myght ther make." *

(* "Halliwell MS.")

And in the third point of the same Constitution it is forbidden to the Apprentice to tell anyone the private concerns of his Master's house or whatsoever is done in the Lodge. "The prevystye of the chamber telle he no man, Ny yn the logge whatsever they done." * The Cooke MS., ** which is the next of these old records that have been brought to light by modern researches, repeats these two prohibitions. It goes more at length into the causes which should prevent a bondman from being made a Mason, and explains the nature of the trouble, briefly alluded to in the former manuscript which might arise if the lord should seek to seize his bondman in the lodge. The bondman it says, should not be received as an Apprentice, because his lord to whom he is bound might take him, as he had the right to do, from his business, and lead him "out of his logge or out of the place where he is working, and the trouble that might then be apprehended, would be that his fellows would peradventure help him and dispute for him and therefrom manslaughter might arise." And in the third point of these Constitutions it is said that the Mason "can hele (must conceal) the counsel of his fellows in logge and in chamber." ***

(* Ibid.)

(** "Cooke MS.," lines 769-777.)

(*** "Cooke MS.," lines 441 - 453.)

In the later manuscripts we find the same recognition of the lodge as in these first two. In the Landsdowne MS. it is said that Masons must "keep truely all the councell of the lodge or of the chamber." This is repeated in substantially similar words in all the subsequent Constitutions. The lodge is also recognized as a place where the work of Operative Masonry was pursued, for the Freemason is forbidden to set the cowan to work within the lodge or without it. We see, also, that there were many lodges as distinct organizations, but all connected by one bond of fellowship, scattered over the country.

One of the regulations in all these Constitutions was that strange Fellows were to be cherished and put to work, if there were any work for them, and if not, they were "to be refreshed with money and sent unto the next lodge." These Operative Lodges were as exclusive in relation to any connection with cowans, rough layers, or Masons who were not accepted as free of the Guild, as the modern Speculative Lodges are in relation to any connection with the uninitiated, or, as they are often called, "the profane." Thus we find in all the Constitutions up to the year 1701 a regulation which forbade the giving of employment to "rough layers," or Masons of an inferior class, who had not been admitted into the society. "Noe Mason," says the latest of these Constitutions, * shall make moulds, square or Rule to any Rough Layers, alsoe that noe Mason sett any Layer within a Lodge or without to hew or mould stones with noe mould of his own makeing." In brief words, he was to give such an intruder no work that was connected with the higher principles of the art, for the mould was the model or pattern constructed by the geometrical rules that were the most important secrets of the medieval builders. It is probable that these unfreemen were sometimes employed in the more menial occupations of the craft.

(* "Alnwick MS.," anno 1701.)

The Papworth MS., whose date is 1714, is the only one which omits this prohibition. Whether this omission arose from the growth at that late period of a more liberal spirit, or whether it was the clerical error of a careless copyist, are questions not easily determined. It is, however, probable that the latter was the case, as the spirit of exclusiveness adhered to the Masonic Guilds as it did to all the guilds of other crafts, and is continued to the present day by the Livery Companies, which are the successors of the early guilds, where the same spirit of exclusiveness prevailed. The system of apprenticeship, which was common to all the guilds, was maintained with very strict regulations by the Masons.

No Master or Fellow was to take an Apprentice for less than seven years, nor was any Master to take an Apprentice unless his business was so extensive as to authorize the employment of at least two or three Journeymen. The spirit of monopoly is plainly perceptible in this regulation. The Fellows or journeymen were unwilling to give to Masters of moderate means the opportunity, by the employment of Apprentices who might soon learn the trade, to add to the number of craftsmen and thus to diminish the value of their labor. Great regard was paid to the physical condition of the Apprentice. In all the constitutions, from the very earliest to the latest, care is taken to declare that the Apprentice must be able-bodied.

"The Master," says the Halliwell MS., "shall for no consideration of profit or emolument make an Apprentice who is imperfect, that is whose limbs are not altogether sound. It would be a great disgrace to the craft to make a halt and lame man. An imperfect man of this kind would do but little good to the craft. So every one may know that the craft wishes to have a strong man." And the compiler of the Constitutions quaintly adds the warning that "a maimed man has no strength, as will be known long before night;" that is, he will show his weakness by failing in his work. ".... maymed mon, he hath no might, Ye mowe hyt knowe long yer night." This was written about the end of the 14th century.

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

Thus the Landsdowne MS. (*560) says he "of limbs whole as a man;" the York MS. (*600), he must be "able of body and sound of limbs;" the Grand Lodge MS. (*632), he must be "of limbs as a man ought to be;" the Harleian MS. (*670), he must have "his right and perfect limbs and personal of body to attend the said science," and the Alnwick MS. (*701), that he must have "his right limbs as he ought to have."

When, in 1717, the Speculative superseded the Operative order, this regulation, which had been enforced for at least three centuries, was abandoned, and in the charges adopted by the Grand Lodge in 1722, Masons were requited to be only good and true men, freeborn, and of mature age. Sixteen years afterward, when Anderson compiled and published the second edition of the Book of Constitutions, he, apparently without authority, restored the original rule of the guild, for in the same charge the words in that edition were altered by the insertion of the regulation that the men made Masons must be "hail and sound, not deformed or dismembered at the time of their making." I say that this change was apparently made without authority, for in the subsequent editions of the Book of Constitutions, published after the death of Anderson, the language of the first edition was restored. Hence the present Grand Lodge of England does not require bodily perfection as a preliminary qualification for initiation. But as Dermott in compiling his Ahiman Rezon for the use of the Grand Lodge of Ancients or the Schismatic Grand Lodge, adopted Anderson's second edition as the basis of his work, all the lodges emanating from that Grand Lodge exacted the rigid guild law of corporeal perfection.

As a very large number of the lodges in the United States had been chartered by the Grand Lodge of Ancients, it has happened that the old rule of the guild has been retained sometimes in its full extent and sometimes with slight modifications in the Constitutions of the American Grand Lodges, all of which forbid the initiation into Masonry of one who is deficient in any of his limbs or members. The American usage, however much it may be objected to because it sometimes closes the door of the lodges to worthy men on certain occasions, has certainly maintained more perfectly than the English the connection between the old Operative and the more modern Speculative branch, a connection whose preservation is important because it constitutes a part of the history of the Order.

Another fact in the character of the medieval Guild or Company of Masons that shows the connection with that association and the Speculative Masonry that grew out of it is the system of secrecy that was practiced. It has been hitherto shown that all the early guilds, whether Masonic or otherwise, required their members to keep the secret counsels of the body. And this regulation has been very correctly supposed to allude to the secrets of the trade, in their transaction of business if it were a Commercial Guild, or if it were a Craft Guild the methods of work. These secrets could only be acquired by a long apprenticeship to the trade or art, and it was unlawful to impart them to any persons who were not members of the guild. The evidence of this has already been shown by extracts from various guild ordinances, and from the old Masonic Constitutions. But the secrets of the Guild or Company of Masons seems to have been maintained more rigidly by their statutes than were those of any other guild. What the secrets of medieval Freemasonry were will be discussed when we come to treat of the Traveling Freemasons, who spread in the 11th and 12th centuries from Lombardy over Europe, and established themselves in all the countries which they visited; that their arcana consisted of a secret system adopted by the Freemasons in building.

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

(* "Manual of Gothic Architecture," chap. vi., p. 208.)

The earlier Masonic Constitutions do not give the form of the oath, or indeed refer to an oath at all. They simply direct that the counsels of the Lodge and of Masonry shall be kept inviolate. It is not until 1670 that we find, in the Harleian MS., supposed to have been written in that year, the very words of the obligation that was to be administered. The constitutions or ordinances of that Constitution prescribe "That no person shall be accepted a Freemason or know the secrets of the said society until he hath first taken the oath of secrecy hereafter following." The "oath of secrecy" thus prescribed is given in the following words, which will on comparison be found to be much more precise and solemn than the oath which was administered in the other guilds or companies: "I, A. B., do, in the presence of Almighty God and my Fellows and Brethren here present, promise and declare, that I will not at any time hereafter, by any act or circumstance whatsoever, directly or indirectly, publish, discover, reveal or make known any of the secrets, privileges, or counsels of the fraternity or fellowship of Free Masonry, which at this time, or at any other time hereafter, shall be made known unto me. So help me God and the holy contents of this book."

The last words indicate that this was a corporeal oath administered on the Gospels, as was the form always used at that period in administering oaths. As to the language, the intelligent Mason will readily perceive how closely the spirit of this old Masonic obligation has been preserved by the modern Speculative fraternity. It is another indirect mark pointing out the close connection and uninterrupted succession of the old and the new systems. It is unnecessary to dilate further on the ordinances which are contained in these Constitutions. The object has been sufficiently attained, of proving the correctness of the hypothesis that the modern Lodges are the direct successors of these bodies whose laws and customs are so plainly exhibited in the old Masonic manuscripts.

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