A seventeenth century English book collector owned a vellum manuscript book of about four by five inches in size which Bernard listed in his Catalog at Oxford in 1697 A.D. It was purchased for the King and was included by David Casley in his Catalogue of the Manuscripts of the Royal Library (1734 A.D.) under the title (possibly chosen by himself) A Poem of Moral Duties. King George DD included it when he made a present of the Royal Library to the British Museum in 1757 (the Grand Lodge was then forty years old), and for that reason the MS. was christened I (by R. F. Gould, and others) the Regius MS. It lay unnoted until J. O. Halliwell, a non-Mason, chanced to discover that it was not a poem, though written in doggerel verse; and was not on moral duties, but a document which had been written for an old Lodge of Freemasons. He discussed it in a paper read to the Society of Antiquarians in 1838-9 A.D., under the head of "On the Introduction of Freemasonry Into England." After his marriage he hyphenated his name to Halliwell-Phillipps; the MS. is often called by that name.
This was the most important single discovery ever made in Masonic scholarship, which in its modern, professional sense may be said to be dated from it, and which stands in sharp contrast to the guesswork of the earlier writers of whom the Rev. George Oliver was the most conspicuous example. It proved by documentary evidence that permanent Lodges of Freemasons had existed before 1400 A.D.; that Freemasons were in a class apart from other Masons; and that our Fraternity had not grown out of the building craft in general, but out of a highly specialized branch of it. Experts at first dated the MS. at 1390 A.D., but it is now believed that it was written at about 1400 A.D. Other written records in Fabric Rolls and Borough Records are older but they are not Freemasonic and cover only such details of building work as the dates of construction, names of workmen, wages, etc., etc., whereas the Regius belonged to an organized body of architects, of peculiar and specialized skill, with traditions, usages, and rules belonging exclusively to themselves. It is our Fraternity's oldest written historical record.
There are only 64 pages in the little book, with about fourteen lines to a page. Its title is also the first line of the text: "Here begin the constitutiones of the art of Geometry according to Euclid."
The author states that he found the story of how Euclid came to constitute it "written in an old book," possibly a polychronicon. According to this "old book" a number of lords and ladies were in poverty and had no heritage to leave to their children; Euclid arranged for these "children" to learn "Geometry," or architecture, because it was a fine and highly respected art suitable to their breeding. "He that would learn best" Euclid would "pass"; those that rose highest should teach "the simplest of wit"; "And so each one shall teach the other, and live together as sister and brother."
In this Craft there is to be a "Master"; "So that he were most worshipped, [honored] then should he be so called"; but within the Craft Masons should not call each other "subject nor servant," but "my dear brother." Euclid found geometry in Egypt, and from there taught it "full wide, in divers lands on every side." It, and by geometry was meant Masonry, or architecture-was brought into England in "good King Athelstan's day." "This good lord loved the Craft full well," so much so that to clear it of some faults and abuses which hindered it he called "all the Masons of the Craft" into a general assembly at York, with "divers lords, dukes, earls, and barons also" to decide "How they might govern it." These last statements show that in the eyes of the writer, and presumably of the Lodge for which lie was writing, the rules and regulations of the Craft had civil authority behind them, which were laws in a full, true sense; they also show that the authority possessed by the Master and the Lodge to enforce discipline, to hold courts, and to assess penalties was a delegated authority, delegated, that is, by the King and his Counsellors, the ultimate source of the Civil law, to Craft Officers.
Without further preamble the scribe gives those rules whereby "they might govern it" in fifteen articles and fifteen points:
I. The Master must be steadfast; must see that Craftsmen are well fed and housed; is to be of no faction, and is to accept no bribe from "lord or fellow"; and must be an upright judge.
II. Unless a Master is ill, or has not been notified, or has any other reasonable excuse, he must represent his Lodge in the "general congregation."
III. No Master Mason should take as an apprentice any youth not willing to give seven years to training.
IV. A Master Mason should not "make" a bondsman an apprentice; he must be free; and the scribe inserts on his own opinion that he ought to be "of gentle kind."
V. The apprentice must not be deformed, but must "have his limbs whole."
VI. This article is obscure, but the general sense of it is that no apprentice shall be dealt with differently from others.
VII. In this is a peculiarly Medieval rule that a Lodge shall not be a place of sanctuary for thieves or murderers.
VIII. If any craftsman proves to be inefficient the Master has full authority to discharge him and to employ another in his place.
IX. A Master of Masons should not undertake a building unless lie sees his way clear to completing it, for to abandon a work, half-finished is a great injustice to the employers; neither should a Master of Masons scamp or hurry his work.
X. If a Master Mason agrees to undertake a work, and is at work on it, no other Mason may by guile ease him out of it, or supplant him.
XI. This article ordains that "no mason shall work by night."
XII. If one Master Mason is asked about the ability of another, he shall not "run down the other": " he shall not his fellows' work deprave."
XIII. A Master may not neglect any part of his apprentice training.
XIV. Unless a Master is free and able to give an apprentice complete training he is not to have apprentices.
XV. No Master can tolerate false oaths, or sins, or other wrongdoings among craftsmen, for gain or for any other reason.
The Fifteen Points, the scribe says, were also ordained at King Athelstane's Assembly; he entitles them "Plures Constituciones," or additional or Plural Constitutions:
1. A Mason must "love well God and holy church" and his fellows.
2. If Masons expect to be paid for holy clays when they do not work, each must work "on the work clay, as truly as he can or may."
3. Apprentices must reveal no secrets or counsels of either their Masters or the Lodge, even if they are among great lords and bodies who may believe themselves to have the right to command information.
4. "No man to his Craft be false"; he shall not maintain his errors against the Craft, nor do it "prejudice."
5. A Mason must accept his pay as agreed on; if a Master will not need him more he must "warn him lawfully before noon."
6. A warning against rancors caused by "great debate," or the interruption of work because of disagreements.
7. A rule of chastity among Masons and their families is enjoined.
8. Each Mason ought to be "a true mediator" among his "fellows free" to maintain peace and harmony.
9. Stewards who prepare and serve Lodge feasts should do it cheerfully and the fellows should serve as stewards in turn; and great care should be taken that everything is fully and promptly paid for.
10. No Mason should slander another.
11. If another Mason is doing his work "wrongly" teach him easily to amend.
12. Masons are subject to the laws as are other men; if any one of them "any strife against them make," he shall go into the hands of the sheriff.
13. Thievery of any form or degree is not tolerated.
14. A Mason must swear "the oath of the Masons" to observe these points, and to be "true also, to all their ordinances, wheresoever he go, and to his liege lord the King."
15. Any Mason who violates the ordinances made at the general assembly is to be expelled from the Craft.
At this point the writer inserts another general ordinance which calls for general assemblies at fixed times and places, a rule which prepared the way for, and in after centuries ultimately led to, the founding of the Grand Lodge System. Immediately afterwards he inserts a long version of the old legend of the Four Gowned Martyrs, whether because it was at that time a living tradition in the Lodges or as a contribution made by himself it is impossible to learn from the context, but in any event it reads as if written by a priest because it is concerned with worship and theology, and homilies on good behavior written around the Medieval text, "Manners make a man." Much of the material at the end is obviously either quoted or paraphrased from a book.
The second oldest of existing versions of the Old Charges (also piled Ancient MSS., Old Constitutions, etc.) was written ten to twenty years after the Regius, but internal evidence (and internal evidence is frequently the most solid kind of evidence) shows it to have been based on a "version of the Old Charges" older than She version which was used by the author of the Regius; since the content of the younger MS. is the older, it has the greater importance for historians. It was purchased for the British National Collection in 1859 A.D., was edited by Matthew Cooke, was published by R. Spencer, London, in 1861 A.D., and was named the Cooke MS. after its editor.
The writing of the original text of the Old Charges was not to event of importance in the history of the building Craft in general; it was more important but not in any sense epoch-making in the history of architecture, which is the branch of the Craft denoted to building as a fine art; but it was of the greatest importaance in the history of the Fraternity of those architects, or Freemasons, because out of that general, Operative Fraternity there could never have developed the Fraternity of Speculative Freemasonry without the Old Charges, and without the new steps taken by Freemasons here and there which is marked by the writing of the Old Charges.
Before the middle of the Fourteenth Century a Lodge of Freemasons was temporary. Any given Lodge lasted only as long as a sufficient group of Freemasons continued to work together in a given place; once they completed that work they dissolved their Lodge, and its members divided, each one going his own way to seek employment elsewhere. If Lodges had thus continued to be temporary no Speculative Freemasonry would ever have developed out of them; it was because they were documents used to constitute Permanent Lodges that the Old Charges are a continental divide across our history; it is in those permanent Lodges, not from the building Craft in general, or even from Operative Freemasonry in general, that the history of our own Speculative Fraternity properly begins.
When the first permanent Lodges were established we do not know, because no records have survived; it could have been at York, or at Westminster, or some fifty or sixty miles south of London because conditions in any one of those centers were favorable, and internal evidences in the Old Charges themselves incline scholars to that belief; it may be, as is most likely, that permanent Lodges were established within a few years of each other in all three centers.
When a Lodge became permanent it became in that instant in the eyes of Medieval law a corporation (or "body") and as such was required to have a charter; this charter could be issued by the church, or by a borough or city or county, or by the King; it had to be of required form, it could be granted only for a fee (oftentimes a large one), it had to satisfy certain conditions, and it had to be legally authorized and registered by the competent civil authority. Without such authority a body holding meetings under its own officers and for its own purposes was deemed to violate the civil laws governing assemblies, its oaths were unlawful, and if it was a gild of craftsmen it was stigmatized as an adulterine gild and its members were subject to severe penalties. The Old Charges carry on their face the marks of having been used for the purposes of a charter by the first permanent Lodges; this is borne out by the fact that subsequent permanent Lodges had to secure a copy before they could constitute themselves.
Once they are seen to have been used for charter purposes the Old Charges, as they stand, and without explaining anything s, become intelligible. If the Cooke MS. (or any later version) is taken as history it is full of absurdities from beginning to end, and no amount of special pleading or learned pedantry can explain those absurdities away; if they were never intended to histories, but were composed solely for charter purposes, the absurdities themselves (from an historical point of view) cease to be absurdities and become reasonable. It is even possible that when the author of the Cooke MS. quoted from a number of non-Masonic books instead of setting down Freemasonry's own traditions it is because he was writing for the non-Masonic eyes of the civil authorities.
A body of men petitioning for a charter had to have grounds on which to base their plea, these grounds being that such a body as theirs was needed, that it was honorable, would engage in no conspiracies, and would loyally keep the Ordinances of Religion and the King's laws. The petition for a charter then went on to set down a statement of its purposes, of the rules and regulations by which it would govern itself, its offices, and the territory or jurisdiction to which it would confine itself. The Old Charges follow this usual form of petitioning for a charter except that they claim that a Royal Charter had been granted to the Craft in the Tenth Century by King Athelstan and that its rules and regulations had been drawn up and approved at that time; they are in reality not a petition for a new charter but a petition to have an old charter officially recognized; their claim was allowed.
The Cooke MS. follows this outline. It is so composed that if the Lodge's claim to having charter authority already and, is disallowed, the claim can in that event (and at the same time) act as a petition for a new charter. The first part of the MS. lays down the grounds upon which the claim is made. Freemasons practice an art, called geometry or architecture, which is as old as the world; it was founded by the same patriarchs who had founded the other ancient arts and crafts. It has been patronized and approved by a long succession of kings and princes, and upon its introduction into England was not only approved but was headed by Athelstan, the first great English king. During its history it has been practiced or developed by many of the greatest and most famous of men, among them being Hermes, Moses, Adam, Noah, Tubalcain, Solomon, Euclid, Pythagoras. In France it had a glorious career. The art truly had been handed down from the beginning by apprenticeship and oral tradition, it never countenanced secret or occult practices, and could not work to the detriment of Church or State.
In the middle portion of the Cooke MS. it claims that in the Tenth Century King Athelstan called together at York an assembly of Freemasons themselves, and also, to meet with them, a large number of great lords; he gave the Freemasons a Royal Charter; and between them the Freemasons and the great lords of government agreed upon rules and laws for the government of Freemasons. Prince Edwin, who in the Cooke MS., and in the old Saxon Chronicles, both, is described as Athelstan's son, became head of the Craft; That Royal Charter continues to be active, and any Lodge of Freemasons can act under it. Modern historians may doubt if Athelstan had a son, but the fact is neither here nor there; the Freemasons of (about) 1350 A.D., did not doubt it, nor did the civil authorities.
The third and last portion of the Cooke MS. consists of the charges, points, offices, rules and regulations by which the Lodge would govern itself, or any other Lodge under the same constituting document. These rules and regulations are wholly unlike modern club rules; they are not even the work rules of day laborers, although they contain work-rules; they are a composite portrait of a Fraternity, and there was as much of what we now call `Speculative" in them as there was "Operative." They show that Freemasons were not merely building laborers but were architects, and practicing a fine art. They show that the organization included families and homes and religion and sociability as well as labor, and that Freemasons comprised a community; that new members were made Masons before being received as members; that members were in the grades of Apprentices and Fellows, and that Officers had a status of their own (they were responsible to civil authorities as well as to craftsmen); that Freemasons lived and worked according to their own laws, within their own obligatations, under their own lawful and official oaths, and that the only penalties were reprimands, fines, suspension, and expulsion. The work consisted not only of stone-cutting but was an assemblage age of many arts and sciences, and skills, and therefore Freemasons had to be men of intelligence, education, and character who could live and work together in peace and harmony.
The Old Charges therefore were a legal document
not historical or ritualistic and they were legal, as it were,
at each end, in the eyes of the Craft itself and at the same time
in the eyes of the civil law. It is this legal character that
they have borne through the chances and changes of the Fraternity
ever since. They were a constitution, and no permanent Lodge could
be legally and regularly constituted without them hence the multiplication
of copies and versions, of which there must have been at least
1200 over a period of two or three centuries. They were used when
a Candidate took his oath; they were kept in the Lodge; the first
Book of Constitutions was a Grand Lodge version of them; and in
the Eighteenth Century they became the Volume of Law on the Altar,
and the Charter on the wall.
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