THE BUILDER MAY 1926

The Roberts Constitutions of 1722

By BRO. J. HUGO TATSCH, Associate Editor, Iowa

CONSIDERABLE interest has been aroused by an article making the
rounds of the Masonic press regarding a very rare Masonic book
offered for sale in England for 1650 pounds, or $7600--the
equivalent of the English figures at the time the story originated.
The volume is The Old Constitution Belonging to the Ancient and
Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons; credit is given to
the Iowa Masonic Library for having the only other copy heretofore
available.

As is generally known to Masonic students, the premier Book of
Constitutions authorized by the Grand Lodge of England was the one
brought out by the Rev. James Anderson, D.D., in 1723. Bro. Lionel
Vibert of England, a Past Master of Quatuor Coronati Lodge of
London, has written an introduction to the 1923 Quaritch reprint of
the 1723 volume which is the most scholarly treatment of the
subject in print. Bro. Vibert also wrote a shorter article on the
same theme which appeared in THE BUILDER, August, 1923.

The Minutes of the Grand Lodge of England begin with the entry of
June 24, 1723; we are therefore dependent upon The New Book of
Constitutions for the historical account of what transpired in
Grand Lodge between 1717 and 1723. We read therein, as of Sept. 28,
1721, that

His Grace's Worship and the Lodge finding fault with all the Copies
of the Old Gothic Constitutions, order'd Brother James Anderson, A.
M. to digest the same in a new and better method.

On Dec. 27, 1721, Montagu, Grand Master, appointed a committee of
fourteen to examine Bro. Anderson's manuscript, who reported on
March 25 following that they had approved of it, after some
amendments. According to Anderson's account in the 1738 volume of
the Constitutions, the book was in print Jan. 17, 1723. So far as
I know, there is no record anywhere indicating that the Roberts
Constitutions of 1722 was authorized by the Grand Lodge of England.
As its title page indicates (see illustration) it is "Taken from a
Manuscript wrote about Five Hundred Years since," and doubtless the
printer or the transcriber had access to one of the old manuscript
charges of which ninety have been found up to the present time. (1)
This document, now lost to the Craft, apparently escaped
destruction in 1720, when

This Year, at some private Lodges, several very valuable
Manuscripts (for they had nothing yet in Print) concerning the
Fraternity, their Lodges, Regulations, Charges, Secrets, and Usages
(particularly one writ by Mr. Nicholas Stone the Warden of Inigo
Jones) were too hastily burnt by some scrupulous Brothers, that
those Papers might not fall into strange Hands.

Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, Vol. 22, contains an able article by Sir
Alfred Robbins, P.G.W., United Grand Lodge of England, on "The
Earliest Years of English Organized Freemasonry," and in a
subsequent reference to the same subject, entitled "A Newly
Discovered Print of the 'Roberts MS.'," he points out that The Post
Man and the Historical Account, etc., for July 31 Aug. 2, 1722 (No.
60015), contains a letter alluding to an old Masonic document, in
which is reprinted the text of the Roberts Constitutions,
practically verbatim, as we know it from the pamphlet version so
extremely rare. R. W. Bro. Robbins states:

I am of the opinion that Roberts did not make his copy from the
Post Man but that both prints were copies direct from the original
MS., as in a few instances blanks in the newspaper are filled up in
the pamphlet. It is very remarkable that all other copies of the
Post Man, as well as of the Roberts' print should have so
completely disappeared.

It has not been determined which of the two printed versions of
1722 had priority; one can only guess at the circumstances in
connection with it. Anderson makes no mention of it; and venturing
an opinion upon the indignation which Anderson expressed in 1735,
when one Smith of London "pyrated" the 1723 Anderson work, it may
be that Anderson willfully ignored the Roberts pamphlet of 1722,
and did not leave us any record of Grand Lodge mention, if there
were any, of the Roberts work in 1722 and 1723. On the other hand
--and it is a more charitable and fraternal supposition --it must
be remembered that the Roberts pamphlet does not include the
General Regulations first compiled by Grand Master George Payne in
1720, and approved by Grand Lodge on St. John the Baptist's Day,
1721, and for this reason it is rather unlikely that the pamphlet
by Roberts was an official or authorized publication. The
manuscript, as a whole, in fact, is in no way comparable to the
compilation by Anderson, and would be as unsatisfactory for the
regulation of a Grand Lodge as were all the other manuscript
("Gothic") constitutions then known. Why the Roberts pamphlet was
printed at all is something difficult to conjecture; but I incline
to the opinion that the original Post Man article, in which the
Craft was maligned (together with other probable attacks of the day
against Freemasonry), was responsible for the printed version of
this old manuscript. This is borne out, I believe, in the following
paragraph, appearing as a part of the introduction:

Nor is their Value lessen'd or abated at all by the Dust and
Scandal rais'd by any men against them, or by the Freedom they have
taken to banter and rally them. The Dirt thrown at them flyes back
at those that cast it, and the Honour of the Society of Free-Masons
remains entire. So that none of the Persons of Honour who have
lately grac'd the Society with their Presence, have yet seem any
reason to be asham'd of them, or to withdraw their Protection from
them.

[Since the foregoing was written, Bro. N.W.J. Haydon of Toronto has
called my attention to the Inaugural Address of W. Bro. Edward
Conder, Jr., Worshipful Master of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, No 2076,
for the year 1901. He says in part:

. . . We know that for the first few years after the foundation of
Grand Lodge, there was absolutely nothing in print beyond slight
notices of the existence of the Fraternity.

As the number of Lodges became augmented by the foundation of new
ones, so did the increase of copies of the Old Constitutions become
a necessity, consequently it is not surprising to find this demand
supplied by printed copies. In 1722 a London printer issued an
authorised edition with the following title page. (Here follows the
text.) 

This printed copy of the MS. Constitutions was quickly followed by
the Constitutions of the Free-masons, &c., for the use of Lodges,
drawn up by Dr. James Anderson, and published with the authority of
Grand Lodge in 1723. (2)

Bro. Conder, in a footnote, says: "This first edition is extremely
scarce, only one copy is known to exist, it is a faulty copy of
Haileian MS., 1942." I gladly defer to such an eminent authority as
Bro. Conder, but nevertheless will let my opinion stand regarding
the publication of the Roberts Constitution as having been probably
brought out in connection with the attacks the Fraternity.] (3)

The increasing popularity of the Craft, and its appearance in the
public eye, would warrant a printer in believing that a pamphlet on
the subject was readily salable. However, this may not have been
true, for one is justified in believing that more than two copies
would have otherwise survived the years. It may also be that the
pamphlet came out so late in 1722 that it was overshadowed by the
more useful Anderson compilation, available by Jan. 17, 1723.

No serious attention was paid, so far as I can discover, to the
Roberts pamphlet until 1871, when the work of William James Hughan
on the Old Charges revived an interest in the early documents of
the Craft. The researches instituted at the time warranted a
reproduction of some of the early issued of the Book of
Constitutions. Richard Spencer, a noted Mason of his day and a
publisher of Masonic books, brought out a volume entitled The
Constitutions of the Freemasons, 1722 - 3 - 6 - 30, London, 1871,
in which the Roberts item of 1722 has leading place.

Bro. Spencer states in the preface to his book that the 1722
Constitutions came into his possession "about a quarter of a
century ago" (about 1845), bound up in the end of a 1723
Constitutions. "The Freemasons' Magazine and Masonic Mirror,"
September, 1857, page 721, contains this statement:

Brother Spencer has called at our office and shown us a specimen of
Brother Harris's skill in a facsimile executed for him a few years
back, in restoring a portion of the O.B. printed in black letter to
copy of the Book of Constitutions printed in 1722, now in his
possession, and supposed to be unique; and which Brother Spencer
will be most happy to show to any member of the Craft.

Lionel Vibert, mentioned above, is also the editor of "Miscellanea
Latomorum," a valuable periodical of Notes and Queries on matters
relating to the Craft. In the October, 1923, issue, he comments
upon the discovery of the second copy of the Roberts pamphlet, now
in the collection of Bro. W. J. Williams, of England, and, and
says:

A comparison of the new copy of the Roberts print with the Iowa
copy shows that the alignment of the Obligation in black letter is
quite different on p. 23 (really 25) and that in the Iowa copy the
word here occurs in the first line, and is not in the original.
Furthermore the signature letter D occurs in the new copy (as it
should for this is really page 25, and C occurs on p. 17), but it
is absent from the Iowa copy. The word here appears in the
Obligation on p. 18, which is from this point word for word
identical with that on pp. 23 and 24. The Obligation is half at the
bottom of p. 23, and the rest on the upper portion of p. 24. On p.
24 the finial is an ornament of a basket with fruit and flowers
carried by a cherub. The identical ornament occurs again on p. 19.
In the new copy the ornament is there in full; in the Iowa copy
there is only the basket and its contents; the supporter and all
ornaments below the actual basket are absent. A careful examination
of the photograph reveals on both sides of the leaf indications of
a junction in the paper which would mean that if at any time the
portion below the line were missing the whole of the Obligation
text on the first page, 23, will have been absent, and all the
ornament except just the top on p. 24....

There is no other Book of Constitutions printed in 1722, so there
can be no doubt, I fear, that the Iowa pamphlet is the work, the
last page of which was restored by Harris. Accordingly the position
now is that the only perfect copy of the Roberts print is in this
country, for I understand that the copy recently discovered is
complete. It may be observed that the error in the pagination, by
which the two last pages are numbered 23 and 24 instead of 25 and
26, is a feature of the original; as already stated, the only
details in which the Iowa copy does not exactly reproduce the
original are that it adds the word here in the first line of the
Obligation and omits part of the finial ornament, that the
signature letter is omitted, and that the obligation is not printed
line for line as the original on p. 23. Naturally at the time of
the sale of the library the fact that this restoration had been
carried out was lost sight of; it had been done for Brother Spencer
more than twenty years previously.

One of the outstanding book sales in the Craft was that of Richard
Spencer's private library in London, July, 1875. It came to the
attention of Bro. Robert Farmer Bower, of Keokuk, Iowa, a merchant
whose success in business enabled him to indulge his hobby of
Masonic book collecting rather freely. He promptly cabled Richard
Spencer an offer to buy the entire collection; but this was
declined. Bro. Bower then communicated with Bro. Hughan, who
consented to act for him at the sale, and among the treasures
secured for America was the Roberts Constitutions, which was sold
for eight pounds ten shillings, or about forty dollars. Much to
Bro. Spencer's disappointment, the entire sale yielded considerably
less than what Bro. Bower had offered for the collection intact.

Bro. Bower died May 19, 1882. Theodore Sutton Parvin, ever watchful
of opportunities to enrich the library which he had founded, took
steps to secure the Bower Library, which was bought for four
thousand dollars in the same year. This collection, more than any
other single purchase, has made the Iowa Masonic Library what it is
today, and the plaudits of the Iowa Craft, and the Craft as a whole
in America, are due Bro. Parvin for his foresight, skill and
assiduity in securing rare books whenever obtainable. The Roberts
Constitutions is now carefully protected in a steel vault with
other rare books, and is only displayed to the serious students of
the Craft.

The Research Committee of the Grand Lodge of Iowa consented to the
reprinting of the Roberts Constitutions by the Masonic Research
Society in 1915. An edition of two thousand was printed from copper
halftone plates, photographed direct from the original volume.
Copies of the reprint are still available, I believe, through the
National Masonic Research Society.

NOTES

(1) The Old Charges. Rev. Herbert Poole, London, 1924. The table
prepared by Bro. Lionel Libert and published in THE BUILDER, Vol.
IX (1923), page 368, gives a classification of these old documents.
(2) A.Q.C., Vol. XIII, page 180.
(3) It has also been suggested that this printed version of the Old
Charges was put out on behalf of a conservative element who were
opposed to the determination of the majority to recast the
Constitutions, with the intention of detracting from the effect of
the official work. Such an opposition might explain the rarity of
the work, as it may have been suppressed as A Defense of
Free-Masonry is supposed to have been at a later date. [Ed.]
