A Brief History of Freemasonry
W Bro Dr. Tejinder Singh Rawal
District Grand Mentor,
District Grand Lodge of Bombay
tsrawal@tsrawal.com
Empirical evidence supporting the history of Freemasonry prior to the 18th Century is hard to find. Even UGLE does not publish a house view prior to its own initial conception in 1717. Most of the Masons are content with the premise that Freemasonry is derived from the early medieval stonemasons' guilds and enquire no further. In this article I am happy to present a concise factual history of Freemasonry. I shall examine certain unproven theories and shall also explain the recorded history.
Operative Stonemasons Guilds: Most historians concur on existence of the Operative Stone Masons Guilds. Just how or when the transition took place is not very clear, although Scottish Lodge Kilwinnings records showing non Operatives being admitted by at least 1672 and some Lodges in England were entirely non Operative by the time of Elias Ashmole.
Operative Masonic guilds existed in Scotland as early as 1057 and possibly in England from 1220 when we know the Masons Livery Company was in existence. Those guilds, associations or Compagnonnage as they were known in France and mainland Europe, were conscripted to produce sufficient masons of all qualities to satisfy the aspirations of Kings and the Church in their respective building programmes.
Stonemasons were clearly the elite of the labour force, had secret customs and marks and would have attracted some of the brightest non-educated recruits. There were no written credentials those days, since not many of the workmen would know how to read and write. For executing the work the stonemasons were required to travel from place to place, and the guilds developed an elaborate secret method of recognition, not only to recognise a mason, but to examine him to find out his degree of proficiency and skill in the trade.
King Athelstan: Legend next informs us that Athelstan, having subjugated most of the minor kingdoms of England, gathered together many skilled masons and established York Rite Masonry in 926 AD by granting them a Royal Charter. Athelstan's importance to Stonemasons is mentioned in both the Regius and Cooke Manuscripts.
Uriels Machines : Knight and Lomas have suggested that Freemasonry ultimately evolved from Megalithic tribes who, having discovered science and astronomy, constructed numerous astounding astronomical observatories between 7100 BC and 2500 BC. These sites enabled those tribes to chart the seasons and years by observing the rotations of the sun and the third brightest object in the sky, Venus. Book of Enoch, discovered amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls from the Qumran and from which many higher Masonic Orders draw their inspiration, explains the scientific principles by which those earliest observatories (or Uriels Machines) operate. Many tribes maintained Enochian and Noachide customs for centuries and when the Enochian-Zadokite priests were expelled from Jerusalem in 70 AD by the Romans, they hid their scrolls and treasures deep under the ruins of Solomons Temple. Knights Templar families led by Hugues de Payens, would return in 1140 AD to dig them up and retrieve them.
Knights Templar : Knights Templar was an enigmatic and powerful military Order of fighting monks set up by Hugues de Payens in 1118. They had amassed considerable wealth and influence in London, Scotland and throughout the United Kingdom. It may be possible that the Knights Templars might have shared some of their knowledge and rituals with their more senior stone masons with whom they employed who later incorporated them into their own traditions.
The Knights Templars were effectively extinguished on Friday 13th October 1307 by King Philippe of France who, broke at the time, stole their lands and possessions.
Many Knights possibly settled in the comparative backwaters of Scotland. Rosslyn Chapel, situated 5 miles south of Edinburgh and built in 1446 by Sir William St Clair whose family had deep Templar ancestry and alleged family ties back to Hugues de Payens. The chapel contains the astounding "Apprentice Pillar" - even depicts some form of initiation. Official Rosslyn Chapel guidebook states that the William St Clair, brother of Edward, was granted the Charters of 1630 from the Masons of Scotland, recognising that the position of Grand Master Mason of Scotland had been hereditary in the St Clair family since it was granted by James II in 1441, the original charter having been destroyed in a fire.
King Solomon's Temple : Freemasonry draws much imagery from the history and construction of King Solomon's Temple (945 BC) by masons from the Phoenician city of Tyre, and Masonic ritual books rely heavily on this Biblical story. Many of the Masonic words in vogue today can be traced to the Egyptian language of this era. The virtues of truth and justice were said by them to be "on the square". Confucius in 500BC referred to the squareness of actions; even Aristotle in 350 BC associates square actions with honest dealings. The square and its symbolism is very old and interestingly has continued to maintain consistency of meaning over the centuries.
The Recorded history
Regius Manuscript held in the British Museum is the oldest genuine record of Masonic relevance and was written in 1390 AD. Its author was probably a priest and this manuscript takes the form of an historical and instructional poem. "So Mote it be" is first quoted in this text, which has been extensively quoted in all Masonic rituals. Cooke Manuscript (also in the British Museum) was written by a Speculative mason in 1450. This is an important document because many current Masonic usages (eg the Constitutions written by Anderson in 1723) have obviously borrowed heavily from its content, which includes reference to the seven Liberal Arts and Sciences and the building of Solomon's Temple.
London Company of Freemasons was granted Arms in 1473 and their coat included three castles and compasses. They have been recently incorporated within Metropolitan Grand Lodge of London's arms upon its inauguration in 2003.
In 1583, a William Schaw was appointed by King James VI as Master of the Work and Warden General. In 1598 he issued the first of the now famous Schaw Statutes. More importantly for Freemasons today, Schaw drew up a second Statute in 1599 which carries the first veiled reference to the existence of esoteric knowledge within the craft of stone masonry. It also reveals that The Mother Lodge of Scotland, Lodge Kilwinning No. 0 existed at that time. His regulations required all lodges to keep written records, meet at specific times and test members in the Art of Memory. As a consequence he is regarded by some as the founder of modern Freemasonry as we know it today.
The earliest known record of a Masonic initiation: -John Boswell, Laird of Auchenleck, who was initiated in the Lodge of Edinburgh on 8 June 1600 is the first recorded Masonic initiation in Scotland. The earliest records of an initiation in England include Sir Robert Moray in 1641 and Elias Ashmole in 1646. The first native-born American to be made a Mason was probably Jonathan Belcher, in 1704, who was then the Governor of Massachusetts.
Ashmole a renowned author and scholar was a friend of Robert Boyle, Sir Robert Moray, Christopher Wren, Isaac Newton and Dr John Wilkins. They all were early members of the Royal Society, which began its life as the Invisible College, an organization led by Francis Bacon, before securing a Royal Charter from Charles II in 1662. Invisible College met at a place which carried lots of Masonic emblems. Invisible College was perhaps the invisible face of masonry, or if not that, it was being run by the same set of people who were running the Freemasonry. To get a flavour of the times in mid Seventeenth Century England, bear in mind that slavery was still universal. Galileo was in deep trouble with the Catholic Church by insisting that the earth revolved around the sun, Bacon's works were banned by Rome Despite the risks, Freemasonry was spreading quickly.
Freemasonry was in transition at this point from pure Operative Masonry to Non Operative or Speculative Freemasonry., England copied the Scottish Masonic structure .Interestingly, even in English lodges Constitutions were written by a Scotsman, Anderson.
Little is known of Masonic activity for seventy years after Ashmole's initiation in 1646. In 1717, four London lodges formed The Premier Grand Lodge of England. The date was St John The Baptists Day, 24 June 1717.
The third degree: Till 1730, Masonic ritual were being learned parrot-fashion until Prichard's exposure entitled Masonry Dissected was published. Ritual prior to that point followed a two-degree system simplified symbolism and the Old Charges. This two-tier degree system was expanded when Desaguliers (Grand Master in 1719) wrote the Third Degree and grew again when Laurence Dermott introduced the Fourth (ie Royal Arch) Degree in 1752. The words "hele" and "conceal" and "points of fellowship" are both found in the Edinburgh Register House Manuscript of 1696; "Brotherly Love, Relief, and Truth", made its appearance in print in a pamphlet printed in London in 1724. The word Tyler probably came into usage around this time and is thought to be derived from the French Tailleur, ie one who cuts.
In 1731 the first American Grand Lodge obtained its Constitution, The Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania, making it the first Grand Lodge in the United States of America. Over the next 100 years, Freemasonry attracted many leading lights forming the cream of the intellectual and scientific establishment including Sir Robert Walpole, Robert Burns, Mozart, Darwin, Frederick the Great and from the USA, Franklin, and Washington.
Ancients vs. Modern: Premier Grand Lodge made drastic changes to the ritual and passwords and the creation of a third degree out of the previous two-degree ritual system. Some traditionalists were so upset; they broke away and set up splinter groups. A significant group broke away in 1751 and was called The Grand Lodge of England, nicknamed The Antients, Those whom they left behind in The Premier Grand Lodge of England were nicknamed The "Moderns".
From this time onwards, new degrees and rituals proliferated which fuelled fierce argument between the "Antients" and the "Moderns". French Freemason, JM Ragon estimated that at one point, there were over 1400 separate Masonic degrees An example of dispute between these two Grand lodges would be that the Antients worked a four-degree system whilst the Moderns only recognised a three Degree system. To the irritation of the Moderns, they often found their members sympathetic to the fourth or Royal Arch Degree, to the point where it became regarded as an extension to the Third Degree.
Eventually a compromise was negotiated and on St John The Evangelists Day, 27 December 1813, United Grand Lodge of England was formed, largely though the combined efforts of the Earl of Moira presiding over the Duke of Sussex (Moderns Grand Master) and the Duke of Kent (Antients Grand Master). The ritual reconciled, mainly in favour of the "Antients". Most of the regulations and ritual determined then still apply to this day
In 2003 with the Inauguration of the Metropolitan Grand Lodge of London 50,000 London Freemasons have a separate identity from United Grand Lodge of England and enabled UGLE to concentrate on its worldwide affairs and duties.
Whatever course Freemasonry actually followed, it has inspired millions of people across many countries for more than three centuries and has attracted famous personalities from Europe, United States of America and other Continents.
