It having been satisfactorily shown, first, that during the existence of pure Operative Freemasonry there was but one degree, or ritual, of admission, or system of secret working in a lodge, which was accessible in common to all the members of the Craft, Apprentices as well as Fellows and Masters; secondly, that in the year 1717, when the Speculative element began to assume a hitherto unknown prominence, though it did not at once attempt to dissever the connection with the Operative, the Grand Lodge then formed, accepted, and practiced for some time this system of a single degree; and thirdly, that in the year 1723 we have the authentic documentary evidence of the "General Regulations " published in that year, that two degrees had been superimposed on this original one, and that at that time Speculative Freemasonry consisted of three degrees; it follows as a natural inference, that in the interval of six years, between 1717 and 1723, the two supplemental degrees must have been invented or fabricated.

It must be here remarked, parenthetically, that the word degree, in reference to the system practiced by the Operative Freemasons, is used only in a conventional sense, and for the sake of convenience. To say, as is sometimes carelessly said, that the Operative Freemasons possessed only the Apprentice's degree, is to speak incorrectly. The system practiced by the Operatives may be called a degree, if you choose, but it was not peculiar to Apprentices only, but belonged in common to all the ranks or classes of the Fraternity.

When the Speculative branch wholly separated from the Operative, and three divisions of the Order, then properly called degrees, were invented, this ritual of the latter became the basis of them all. Portions of it were greatly modified and much developed, and became what is now known as the First degree, though it continued for many years to receive increments by the invention of new symbols and new ceremonies, and by sometimes undergoing important changes. Other portions of it, but to a less extent, were incorporated into the two supplemental degrees, the Second and the Third.

Thus it was that by development of the old ritual, and by the invention of a new one, the ancient system, or, conventionally speaking, the original degree of the Operatives became the Entered Apprentice's degree of the Speculative, and two new degrees, one for the Fellow-Crafts and one for the Master Masons, were invented.

Then the important and most interesting question recurs, when and by whom were these two new degrees invented and introduced into the modern system of Speculative Freemasonry?

The answer to this question which, at this day, would probably be given by nearly all the Masonic scholars who have, without preconceived prejudices, devoted themselves to the investigation of the history of Freemasonry, as it is founded on and demonstrated by the evidence of authentic documents, combined with natural and logical inferences and not traditionary legends and naked assumptions, is that they were the invention of that recognized ritualist, Dr. John Theophilus Desaguliers, with the co-operation of Dr. James Anderson, and perhaps a few others, among whom it would not be fair to omit the name of George Payne. The time of this invention or fabrication would be placed after the formation of the Grand Lodge in 1717, and before the publication of the first edition of its Book of Constitutions in 1723.

To the time and manner of the fabrication of the Fellow-Craft's degree the writers who have adopted the theory here announced have not paid so much attention as they have to that of the Master Mason. Recognizing the fact that the two supplementary degrees were fabricated between the years 1717 and 1723, they have not sought to define the precise date, and seem to have been willing to believe them to have been of contemporaneous origin.

But after as careful an investigation as I was capable of making, I have been led to the conclusion that the fabrication of the degree of Fellow-Craft preceded that of Master Mason by three or four years, and that the system of Speculative Freemasonry had been augmented by the addition of a new degree to the original one in or about the year 1719.

There is documentary evidence of an authentic character which proves the existence of a "Fellow-Craft's part" in the year 1720, while it is not until the year 1723 that we find any record alluding to the fact that there was a "Master's part."

Hence, in a chronological point of view, it may be said that the single degree or ritual in which, and in the secrets of which, all classes of workmen, from the Apprentice to the Master, equally participated, constituted, under various modifications, a part of Operative Freemasonry from the earliest times. The possession of those secrets, simple as they were, distinguished the Freemasons from the Rough Layers in England, from the Cowans in Scotland, and from the Surer, or Wall Builders, in Germany.

This degree, in its English form, was the only one known or practiced in London in the year 1717, at the era which has incorrectly been called the "Revival." The degree of Fellow-Craft, in the modern signification of the word degree, was incorporated into the system, probably a very few years after the organization of the Grand Lodge, and was fully recognized as a degree in the year 1719, or perhaps early in 1720.

Finally, the Third or Master's degree was added, so as to make the full complement of degrees as they now exist, between the years 1720 and 1723 - certainly not before the former nor after the latter period.

Of this theory we have, I think, documentary evidence of so authentic a character, that we must be irresistibly led to the conclusion that the theory is correct.

Bro. Lyon, in his History of the Lodge of Edinburgh, cites a record which has a distinct relevancy to the question of the time when the Second degree originated. It is contained in the minutes of the Lodge of Dunblane, under the date of December 27, 1720, which is about sixteen years prior to the establishment of the Grand Lodge of Scotland.

The minute records that a lawyer, and therefore a Theoretic Mason, who had formerly been entered, had, after a due examination, been "duly passed from the Square to the Compass and from an Entered Prentiss to a Fellow of Craft." In commenting on this minute, Bro. Lyon says:

"It would appear from this that what under the modern ritual of the Fraternity is a symbol peculiar to the Second Degree, was, under the system which obtained in Scotland prior to the introduction of the Third Degree, the distinctive emblem of the Entered Apprentice step - and what is now a leading symbol in the degree of Master Mason, was then indicative of the Fellow-Craft, or highest grade of Lodge membership.'' *

(* No reference is here made to the subsequent disseverment of the Third degree which resulted in the composition of the Royal arch degree, as that subject will be here- after fully discussed.)

This authentic record surely corroborates the theory just advanced that the Fellow-Craft's degree was formulated in London after the year 1717 and before the close of the year 1720. Here, I think, we are warranted in pursuing the following method of deduction.

If the first notice of the degree of Fellow-Craft being conferred in Scotland, as a degree, occurs in the record of a lodge in the last days of the year 1720; and if, as we know from other sources, that Scotland derived the expanded system of degrees from the sister kingdom; then it is reasonable to suppose that the degree must have been given in Scotland at as early a period after its fabrication in England as was compatible with a due allowance of time for its transmission from the lodges of the latter kingdom to those of the former, and for the necessary preparation for its legal adoption.

The degree must, of course, have been practiced in London for some time before it would be transmitted to other places, and hence we may accept the hypothesis, as something more than a mere presumption, that the Second degree had been invented by Desaguliers and his collaborators on the ritual of the new Grand Lodge in the course of the year 1719, certainly not later than the beginning of the year 1720.

Between the 24th of June, 1717, when the Grand Lodge was established, and the end of the year 1718, the period of less than eighteen months which had elapsed was too brief to permit the overthrow of a long-existing system, endeared to the Craft by its comparative antiquity. Time and opportunity were required for the removal of opposition, the conciliation of prejudices, and the preparation of rituals, all of which would bring us to the year 1719 as the conjectural date of the fabrication of the Second degree.

It is highly probable that the degree was not thoroughly formulated and legally introduced into the ritual until after the 24th of June, 1719, when Desaguliers, who was then Grand Master, and the Proto-Grand Master, Sayer, who was then one of the Grand Wardens, had, from their official positions, sufficient influence to cause the acceptance of the new degree by the Grand Lodge.

We can gather very little, except inferentially, from the meager records of Anderson, and yet he shows us that there was certainly an impetus given to the Order in 1719, which might very well have been derived from the invention of a new and more attractive ritual.

Anderson says, referring to the year 1719, that "now several old brothers, that had neglected the Craft, visited the lodges; some noblemen were also made brothers, and more new lodges were constituted."

The record of the preceding year tells us that the Grand Master Payne had desired the brethren to bring to the Grand Lodge any old writings concerning Masonry "in order to shew the usages of ancient times."

Northouck, a later but not a discreditable authority, expanding the language of his predecessor, says that "the wish expressed at the Grand Lodge for collecting old manuscripts, appears to have been preparatory to the compiling and publishing a body of Masonical Constitutions."

I can see in this act the suggestion of the idea then beginning to be entertained by the Speculative leaders of the new society to give it a more elevated character by the adoption of new laws and a new form of ceremonies. To guide them in this novel attempt, they desired to obtain all accessible information as to old usages.

And now, some of the older Operative Craftsmen, becoming alarmed at what they believed was an effort to make public the secrets which had been so scrupulously preserved from the eyes of the profane by their predecessors, and who were unwilling to aid in the contemplated attempt to change the old ritual, an attempt which had been successful in the fabrication of a Second degree, and the modification of the First, resolved to throw obstructions in the way of any further innovations.

This will account for the fact recorded by Anderson that, between June, 1719, and June, 1720, * several valuable manuscripts concerning the ancient "regulations, charges, secrets, and usages" were "burnt by some scrupulous brothers, that those papers might not fall into strange hands."

(* Dr. Anderson, in his chronological records, counts the years from the installation of one Grand Master in June to that of the next in June of the following year.)

The records do not say so, in as many words, but we may safely infer from their tenor that the conflict had begun between the old Operative Freemasons who desired to see no change from the ancient ways, and the more liberal-minded Theoretic members, who were anxious to develop the system and to have a more intellectual ritual - a conflict which terminated in 1723 with the triumph of the Theoretics and the defeat of the Operatives, who retired from the field and left the institution of Speculative Freemasonry to assume the form which it has ever since retained, as "a science of morality veiled in allegory and illustrated by symbols," a definition which would be wholly inapplicable to the old Operative system.

In the minute of the Dunblane Lodge which has been cited through Bro. Lyon, it was said that the candidate in being advanced from an Entered Apprentice to a Fellow-Craft had "passed from the Square to the Compass."

It is curious and significant that this expression was adopted on the Continent at a very early period of the 18th century, when the hautes grades or high degrees began to be manufactured. With the inventors of these new degrees the Square was the symbol of Craft Masonry, while the Compass was the appropriate emblem of what they called their more elevated system of instruction. Hence, instead of the Square which is worn by the Master of an Ancient Craft Lodge, the Master of a Lodge of Perfection substitutes the Compasses as the appropriate badge of his office.

But in Ancient Craft Masonry, with whose history alone we are now dealing, the Compass is at this day a symbol peculiar to the Third degree, while it would seem from the above-cited minute that in the beginning of the 18th century it was appropriate to the Fellow-Crafts.

In commenting on this phrase in the record of the Lodge of Dunblane, Bro. Lyon makes the following remarks:

"To some it will appear to favor the theory which attributes the existence of the Third degree to a disjunction and a rearrangement of the parts of which the Second was originally composed."

I have no objection to accept this theory in part. I believe, and the hypothesis is a very tenable one, that when the Second degree was fabricated, the secrets, the ritual, and instructions which were formerly comprised in the single degree which was then given to the whole Craft, indiscriminately, to Apprentices, to Fellows, and to Masters alike, were divided between the two degrees which were then formulated, with certain new additions; and that subsequently, when the Third degree was invented, there was a further disintegration, and a portion of that which had constituted the "part of a Fellow-Craft " was, with many new points, transferred to that of the Master.

I have thus, by what I believe to be a tenable hypothesis, sought to fix the time of the first expansion of the old ritual of the Operatives, which was for a short time made use of, in all its simplicity, by the Speculative Grand Lodge.

The next step in this expansion was the fabrication of the Third or Master Mason's degree. To the time when this important event took place and to the circumstances attending it we are now to direct our attention. This shall therefore be the subject to be treated in the following chapter.

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