It has been the practice of at Masonic writers from the earliest period of its literature to a very recent day, to designate the transaction which resulted in the organization of the Grand Lodge of England in the year 1717 as the "Revival of Freemasonry."

Anderson, writing in 1723, in the first edition of the Constitutions, says that "the freeborn British nation had revived the drooping Lodges of London," and in the year 1738, in the second edition of the same work, he asserts that the old Brothers who met at the "Apple Tree Tavern" "forthwith revived the Quarterly Communication of the Officers of Lodges, called the Grand Lodge."

This statement has been repeated by Preston, Calcott, Oliver, and all the older Masonic authors who have written upon the subject, until it has become an almost universal belief among the larger portion of the Fraternity that from some unknown or indefinite era until the second decade of the 18th century the Grand Lodge had been in a state of profound slumber, and that the Quarterly Communications, once so common, had long been discontinued, through the inertness and indifference of the Craft, while the lodges were drooping like sickly plants.

But in the year 1717, owing to the successful efforts of a few learned scholars, such as Desaguliers, Anderson, and Payne, the Grand Lodge had been awakened from its sleep of years, the Quarterly Communications had been renewed as of old, and the lodges had sprung into fresh and vigorous existence. Such was for a long time and indeed still is, to a diminished extent, the orthodox Masonic creed respecting the Revival of Freemasonry in the 18th century.

But this creed, popular as it is, has within a few years past been ruthlessly attacked by some of our more advanced thinkers, who are skeptical where to doubt is wise, and who are not prepared to accept legends as facts, nor to confound trading with history.

And now it is argued that before the year 1717 there never was a Grand Lodge in England, and, of course, there could have been no Quarterly Communications. Therefore, as there had not been a previous life, there could have been no revival, but that the Grand Lodge established in June, 1717, was a new invention, and the introduction of a system or plan of Freemasonry never before heard of or seen.

Which of these two hypotheses is the correct one, or whether there is not a mezzo termine - a middle point or just mean between the two - are questions well worthy of examination.

Let us first inquire what was the character of the four Lodges, and indeed of all the lodges in England which were in existence at the time of the so-called "Revival," or had existed at any previous time. What was the authority under which they acted, what was their character, and how was this character affected by the establishment of a new Grand Lodge?

As to the authority under which the four old lodges, as well as all others that existed in England, acted, it must be admitted that they derived that authority from no power outside of themselves "The authority," says Bro. Hughan, "by which they worked prior to the advent of the Grand Lodge was their own. We know of no other prior to that period for England." *

(* See Voice of Masonry, vol. xiii., p. 571.)

Preston admits that previous to the year 1717 "a sufficient number of Masons met together within a certain district, with the consent of the sheriff or chief magistrate of the place, were empowered to make Masons and practice the rites of Masonry without Warrant of Constitution.'' *

(* Preston's "Illustrations," p. 191, note.)

Bro. Hughan substantially repeats this statement in the following language:

"A body of Masons in any district or town appears usually to have congregated and formed lodges, and they had the 'Ancient Charges' or Rolls to guide them as to the rules and regulations for Masons generally. There were no Grand Masters or Grand Lodges before 1716-17, and so there were no authorities excepting such as the annual assemblies and the 'Old Charges' furnished in England."

He admits that "there were laws for the government of the lodges apparently, though unwritten, which were duly observed by the brotherhood."

This view is confirmed, impliedly, at least, by all the Old Constitutions in manuscript, from the most ancient to the most recent. In none of these (and the last of them has a date which is only three years prior to the so-called "Revival") do we find any reference whatever to a Grand Lodge or to a Grand Master. But they repeatedly speak of lodges in which Masons were to be "accepted," and the counsels of which were to be kept secret by the Fellows.

The only allusion made to the manner of organizing a lodge is contained in the Harleian MS., which prescribes that it must consist of not less than five Freemasons, one of whom must be a master or warden of the limit or division wherein the lodge is held.

From this regulation we are authorized, I think, to conclude, that in 1670, which is the date of the Harleian MS., nothing more was necessary in forming a lodge in which "to make Masons or practice the rites of Masonry," as Preston gives the phrase, than that a requisite number should be present, with a Master or Warden working in that locality.

Now the Master, as the word is here used, meant a Freemason of the highest rank, who was engaged in building with workmen under him, and a Warden was one who having passed out of his apprenticeship, had become a Fellow and was invested with an authority over the other Fellows, inferior only to that of the Master. The word and the office are recognized in the early English Charters as pertaining to the ancient guilds. Thus the Charters granted in 1354 by Edward III gave the London Companies the privilege to elect annually for their government "a certain number of Wardens." In 1377 an oath was prescribed called the "Oath of the Wardens of the Crafts," which contained these words:

"Ye shall swere that ye shall wele and treuly oversee the Craft of ____ whereof ye be
chosen Wardeyns for the year." In the reign of Elizabeth the presiding officer began to be called the Master, and in the reign of James I., between 1603 and 1625, the guilds were generally governed by a Master and Wardens. The government of lodges by a Master and Wardens must have been introduced into the guilds of Masons in the 17th century, and this is rendered probable by the fact that in the Harleian MS. just quoted, and whose coniectural date is 1670, it is provided "that for the future the said Society, Company and Fraternity of Free Masons shall be regulated and governed by One Master & Assembly & Wardens as the said Company shall think to choose, at every yearly General Assembly."

A similar officer in the Sullen or Lodges of the old German Freemasons was called the Parlirer.

We arrive, then, at the conclusion that in the 17th century, while there were permanent lodges in various places which were presided over by a Master and Wardens, any five Freemasons might open a temporary or "occasional" lodge for the admission of members of the Craft, provided one of these five was either the Master or a Warden of a permanent lodge in the neighborhood.

I know of no other way of reasonably interpreting the 26th article contained in the Harleian Constitutions.

But nowhere, in any of the Old Constitutions, before or after the Harleian, even as late as 1714, which is the date of the Papworth MS., do we find the slightest allusion to any exterior authority which was required to constitute either permanent or temporary lodges.

The statement of Preston is thus fully sustained by the concurrent testimony of the old manuscripts. Therefore, when Anderson in his first edition gives the form of constituting a new lodge and says that it is "according to the ancient usages of Masonry," * he indulges in a rhetorical flourish that has no foundation in truth. There is no evidence of the slightest historical value that any such usage existed before the second decade of the 18th century.

(* Anderson's "Constitutions," 1st edition, p. 71.)

But immediately after what is called the Revival the system of forming lodges which had been practiced was entirely changed. Preston says that among a variety of regulations which were proposed and agreed to at the meeting in 1717, was the following:

"That the privilege of assembling as Masons, which had been hitherto unlimited, should be vested in certain lodges or assemblies of Masons convened in certain places; and that every lodge to be hereafter convened, except the four old lodges at this time existing, should be legally authorized to act by a warrant from the Grand Master for the time being granted to certain individuals by petition, with the consent and approbation of the Grand Lodge in communication; and that without such warrant no lodge should be hereafter deemed regular or constitutional." *

(* Preston, "Illustrations," p. 191.)

We have this regulation on the evidence of Preston alone, for according to the unfortunate usage of our early Masonic writers, he cites no authority. It is not mentioned by Anderson, and the preserved minutes of the Grand Lodge of England extend no farther than the 25th of November, 1723.

Still, as Preston gives it within quotation marks, and as it bears internal evidence in its phraseology of having been a formal regulation adopted at or very near the period to which Preston assigns it, we may accept it as authentic and suppose that he had access to sources of information no longer extant. As the Grand Lodge was organized in 1717 in the rooms of the lodge of which Preston afterward became a member, it is very possible that that lodge may have had in its possession the full records of that meeting, which were in existence when Preston wrote, but have since been lost. *

(* Findel ("History," p. 140), says the regulation was adopted at a later period, in 1723 This he had no right to do. Preston is our only authority for the regulation, and his statement must be taken without qualification or wholly rejected. Findel was probably led into his error by seeing the General Regulation above quoted, which was very similar This was published in 1723, but it had been adopted by the Grand Lodge in 1721.)

At all events the "General Regulations," compiled by Grand Master Payne in 1720, and approved the next year by the Grand Lodge, contain a similar provision in the following words:

"If any set or number of Masons shall take upon themselves to form a lodge without the Grand Master's warrant, the regular lodges are not to countenance them, nor own them as fair Brethren and duly formed, nor approve of their acts and deeds; but must treat them as rebels, until they humble themselves, as the Grand Master shall, in his prudence, direct; and until he approve of them by his warrant." *

(* "General Regulations," art. viii. Anderson, 1st edition, p. 60.)

If we compare the usage by which lodges were brought into existence under the wholly Operative rules, and that adopted by the Speculative Freemasons after the organization of the Grand Lodge in 1717, we will very clearly see that there was here no revival of an old system which had fallen into decay and disuse, but the invention of one that was entirely new and never before heard of.

The next point to be examined in discussing the question whether or not the transactions of 1717 constituted a Revival will be the character of the lodges before and after those transactions as compared with each other.

During the 17th century, to go no farther back, and up to the second decade of the 18th, all the lodges of Freemasons in England were Operative lodges, that is to say, the larger portion of their members were working Masons, engaged in building according to certain principles of architecture with which they alone were acquainted.

They had admitted among their members' persons of rank or learning who were not Operative Masons or builders by profession, but all their laws and regulations were applicable to a society of mechanics or workingmen.

There are no minutes in England, as there are in Scotland, of lodges prior to the beginning of the 18th century. They have all been lost, and the only one remaining is that of the Alnwick Lodge, the records of which begin in the year 1701.

But the "Old Charges" contained in the manuscript Constitutions which extend from 1390 to 1714, of which more than twenty have been preserved, supply us (especially the later ones of the 17th century) with the regulations by which the Craft was governed during the ante-revival period.

It is unnecessary to quote in extenso any one of these Old Constitutions. It is sufficient to say that they bear the strongest internal evidence that they were compiled for the use of purely Operative Masons.

They were wholly inapplicable to any merely moral or speculative association. Excepting those clauses which directed how the craftsmen were to conduct themselves both in the lodge and out of it, so that the reputation of the Brotherhood should not be injured, they were mainly engaged in prescribing how the Masons should labor in their art of building, so that the employer might be "truly served." The same regulations would be just as applicable, mutatis mutandis, to a Guild of Carpenters, of Smiths, or any other mechanical trade, as to one of Masons.

But while these lodges were wholly Operative in their character and design, there is abundant evidence, as I have heretofore shown, that they admitted into their companionship persons who were not Masons by profession. The article in the Harleian Constitutions, to which reference has just been made, while stating that a lodge called to make a Mason must consist of five Free Masons, adds that one of them at least shall be "of the trade of Free Masonry." The other four, of course, might be non-operatives, that is to say, persons of rank, wealth, or learning who were sometimes called Theoretic and sometimes Gentlemen Masons.

But in the laws enacted for the government of the Craft, no exceptional provision was made in them, by which any difference was created in the privileges of the two classes.

The admission of these Theoretic Masons into the Fraternity did not, therefore, in the slightest degree affect the Operative character of the Craft, except in so far as that the friendly collision with men of education must have given to the less educated members a portion of refinement that could not fail to elevate them above the other Craft Guilds.

Yet so intimate was the connection between these Operative Freemasons and their successors, the Speculatives, that the code of laws prepared in 1721 by Anderson at the direction of the Grand Lodge, and published in 1723, under the title of The Charges of a Free-Mason, for the use of the Lodges in London, was a transcript with no important variations from these Old Constitutions, or as Anderson calls them, the "Old Gothic Constitutions."

As these "Charges" have now been accepted by the modern Fraternity of English-speaking Freemasons as the basis of what are called the Landmarks of the Order, to make them of any use it has been found absolutely necessary to give them a symbolic or figurative sense.

Thus, "to work," which in the Operative Constitution signifies "to build," is interpreted in the Speculative system as meaning "to confer degrees;" the clause which prescribes that "all the tools used in working shall be approved by the Grand Lodge" is interpreted as denoting that the ritual, ceremonies, and by-laws of every lodge must be subjected to the supervision of the Grand Lodge. Thus every regulation which clearly referred to a fraternity of builders has, in the course of the modifications which were necessary to render it applicable to a moral association, been made to adopt a figurative sense.

Yet the significant fact that while in the government of Speculative Freemasonry the spirit and meaning of these "Old Charges" have been entirely altered, the words have been carefully retained is an important and irrefutable proof that the Speculative system is the direct successor of the Operative.

So when the Theoretic or Gentleman Masons had, in the close of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century, acquired such a preponderance in numbers and in influence in the London lodges that they were able so to affect the character of those lodges as to divert them from the practice of an Operative art to the pursuit of a Speculative science, such change could not be called a Revival, if we respected the meaning of that word. Nothing of the kind had been known before; and when the members of the lodges ceased to pay any attention to the craft or mystery of practical stonemasonry, and resolved to treat it thenceforth in a purely symbolic sense, this act could be deemed nothing else but a new departure in the career of Freemasonry.

The ship was still there, but the object of the voyage had been changed.

Again: we find a third change in the character of the Masonic society when we compare the general government of the Craft as it appears before and after the year 1717.

This change is particularly striking in respect to the way in which the Craft were ruled in their Operative days, compared with the system which was adopted by the Speculative Freemasons.

It has already been said that prior to the year 1717, there never were Grand Masters or a Grand Lodge except such as were mythically constructed by the romantic genius of Dr. Anderson.

The only historical records that we have of the condition of Freemasonry in England and of the usages of the Craft during the three centuries which preceded the 18th, are to be found in the old manuscript Constitutions.

A thoroughly careful examination of these documents will show that neither in the Legend of the Craft, which constitutes the introductory portion of each Constitution, nor in the "Charges" which follow, is there the slightest allusion, either in direct language or by implication, to the office of Grand Master or to the body now called a Grand Lodge.

But it can not be denied that there was an annual convocation of the Craft, which was called sometimes the "Congregations" sometimes the "Assembly," and sometimes the "General Assembly." We must accept this as an historical fact, or we must repudiate all the manuscript Constitutions from the 14th to the 18th century. In all of them there is an unmistakable allusion to this annual convocation of the Craft, and regulations are made concerning attendance on it.

Thus the Halliwell MS. says that "every Master who is a Mason must be present at the general congregation if he is duly informed where the assembly is to be holden; and to that assembly he must go unless he have a reasonable excuse."

The precise words of this most ancient of all the Old Masonic Constitutions, dating, as it does, not later than toward the close of the 14th century, are as follows:

That every mayster, that ys a mason,
Must ben at the generate congregracyon,
So that he hyt reasonably y-tolde
Where that the semble' schal be holde;
And to that semble' he must nede gon,
But he have a resonabul skwsacyon.

The Cooke MS., which is about a century later, has a similar provision. This manuscript is important, inasmuch as it describes the character of the Assembly and defines the purposes for which it was to be convoked.

It states that the Assembly, or, as it is there called, the Congregation, shall assemble once a year, or at least once in three years, for the examination of Master Masons, to see that they possessed sufficient skill and knowledge in their art.

An important admission in this manuscript is that the regulation for the government of this Assembly "is written and taught in our book of charges."

All the subsequent Constitutions make a similar statement in words that do not substantially vary.

The Harleian MS., whose date is about the last quarter of the 17th century, says that Euclid gave the admonition that the Masons were to assemble once a year to take counsel how the Craft could best work so as to serve their Lord and Master for his profit and their credit, and to correct such as had offended. And in another MS., much earlier than the Harleian, it is said that the Freemasons should attend the Assembly, and if any had trespassed against the Craft, he should there abide the award of the Masters and Fellows.

This Assembly met that statutes or regulations might be enacted for the government of the Craft, and that controversies between the craftsmen might be determined.

It was both a legislative and a judicial body, and in these respects resembled the Grand Lodge of the present day, but in no other way was there any similitude between the two.

Now, leaving out of the question the legendary parts which ascribe the origin of this annual assembly to Euclid or Athelstan or Prince Edwin, which, of course, are of no historical authority, it is impossible to believe that all these Constitutions should speak of the existence of such an Assembly at the time of writing, and lay down a regulation in the most positive terms, that every Mason should attend it, if the whole were a mere figment of the imagination.

We can account for the mythical character of a legend, but we cannot for the mythical character of a law which has been enacted at a specified time for the government of an association, which law continues to be repeated in all the copies of the statutes written or published for more than three centuries continuously.

In the establishment of a Grand Lodge with quarterly meetings and an annual one in which a Grand Master and other Grand Officers were elected for the following year, we find no analogy to anything that had existed previous to the year 1717. We cannot, therefore, in these points call the organization which took place in. that year a "Revival." It was, rather, a radical change in the construction of the system.

Another change, and a very important one, too, which occurred a short time after the establishment of the Grand Lodge of England in 1717, was that which had reference to the ritual or forms of initiation. During the purely Operative period of Freemasonry it is now well known that there was but one esoteric system of admission to the brotherhood of the Craft. This we also know was common to the three classes of Masters, Fellows, and Apprentices. There was, in fact, if we may use the technical language of modern Freemasonry, but one degree practiced by the Operative Craft.

When the Theoretic members of the London lodges dissociated from the Operatives in the year 1717 and formed the Speculative system, they, of course, at first accepted the old method of admission. But in the course of two or three years they adopted another system and fabricated what are now called the three degrees of ancient Craft Masonry, each one of which was exclusively appropriated as a form of initiation to one of the three classes and to that one only. What had formerly been a division of the Fraternity into three classes or ranks became now a division into three degrees. *

(* it is not necessary to enter at this time into an examination and defense of this hypothesis, as the history of the fabrication of the three degrees will be made the subject of a future chapter.)

This was a most important change, and as nothing of the kind was known to the Craft in the years prior to the establishment of the Grand Lodge, it certainly can not be considered a correct use of the word to call an entire change of a system and the adoption of a new one a revival of the old.

Bro. W.P. Buchan, in numerous articles published in the London Freemason, about 1870, attacked what has been called the Revival theory with much vigor but with exaggerated views. He contends that "our system of degrees, words, grips, signs, etc., was not in existence until about A.D. 1717, and he attributes the present system to the inventive genius of Anderson and Desaguliers. Hence he contends that modern Freemasonry was simply a reconstruction of an ancient society, viz., of some old Pagan philosophy. This he more fully explains in these words:

"Before the 18th century we had a renaissance of Pagan architecture; then to follow suit in the 18th century we had a renaissance in a new dress of Pagan mysticism; but for neither are we indebted to the Operative Masons, although the Operative Masons were made use of in both cases." *

(* London Freemason, September 29, 1871.)

There is in this statement a mixture of truth and error. It is undoubtedly true that the three degrees into which the system is now divided were unknown to the Freemasons of the 17th century, and that they were an invention of those scholars who organized the Grand Lodge of Speculative Freemasonry, mainly of Dr. Desaguliers, assisted perhaps by Anderson and Payne. But there were signs of recognition, methods of government, legends, and some form, though a simple one of initiation, which were in existence prior to the 18th century, which formed the kernel of the more elaborate system of the modern Freemasons.

Bro. Hughan calls attention to the fact, if there were need of proofs, in addition to what has been found in the authentic accounts of the mediaeval Freemasons, that in the Tatler, published in 1709, is a passage in which the writer, speaking of a class of men called the "Pretty Fellows," says that "they have their signs and tokens like the Freemasons." *

(* Voice of Masonry, April, 1873.)

In fact, Bro. Buchan admits that the "elements or ground work" of the system existed before the year 1717.

This is in fact the only hypothesis that can be successfully maintained on the subject.

The Grand Lodge of Speculative Freemasons, which was organized at the "Goose and Gridiron Tavern" in London in the year 1717, was a new system, founded on the older one which had existed in England years before, and which had been derived from the Operative Freemasons of the Middle Ages.

It was not, as Hyneman * has called it, a Revolution, for that would indicate a violent disruption, and a sudden and entire change of principles.

(* In a work abounding in errors, entitled "Ancient York and London Grand Lodges," by Lem Hyneman, Philadelphia, 1872. Its fallacies as a contribution to Masonic history have been shown by the incisive but courteous criticism of Bro. Hughan.)

It was not a Revival, as most of the earlier writers have entitled it, for we should thus infer that the new system was only a renewal without change of the old one.

But it was a gradual transition from an old into a new system - of Operative into Speculative Freemasonry - in which Transition the later system has been built upon the earlier, and the practical art of building has been spiritualized into a theoretic science of morality, illustrated by a symbolism drawn principally from architecture.

We thus recognize the regular descent of the modern Speculative Freemasons from their older Operative predecessors, and we answer the question which forms the heading of the present chapter.

But it has been said that in one sense at least we may with propriety apply the word "Revival" to the transactions of the early part of the 18th century. Operative Freemasonry, and what very little of the Speculative element that had been engrafted on it, had, we are told, begun to decline in England in the latter part of the 17th century.

If we may rely on the authority of Preston, the fraternity at the time of the revolution in 1688 was so much reduced in the south of England, that no more than seven regular lodges met in London and its suburbs, of which two only were worthy of notice. * Anderson mentions seven by their locality, and says that there were "some more that assembled statedly." **

(* Preston, "Illustrations.)

(** Anderson, "Constitutions," 2d edition, p. 107.)

These were, of course, all purely Operative lodges. Thus one of them, Anderson tells us, was called upon to give architectural counsel as to the best design of rebuilding St. Thomas's Hospital, * a clear evidence that its members were practical builders.

(* Ibid., p. 106.)

But this decline in the number of the lodges may possibly be attributed to local and temporary causes. It was certainly not accompanied, as might have been expected, with a corresponding decline in the popularity of the institution, for if we may believe the same authority, "at a general assembly and feast of the Masons in 1697, many noble and eminent brethren were present." *

(* Preston, " Illustrations," p. 189.)

But admitting that there was a decline, it was simply a decline of the Operative lodges. And the act of 1717 was not to revive them, but eventually to extinguish them and to establish Speculative lodges in their place; nor was it to revive Operative Freemasonry, but to establish for it another and an entirely different institution.

We arrive, therefore, again at the legitimate conclusion that the establishment of the Grand Lodge of England in June, 1717, was not a revival of the old system of Freemasonry, which soon after became extinct, but its change into a new system.

What remained of the Operative Freemasons who did go into the new association were merged in the Masons' Company, or acted thence forward as individual craftsmen unconnected with a guild.

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