THE BUILDER MAY 1929

The Degrees of Masonry; Their Origin and History

By BROS. A. L. KRESS and R. J. MEEKREN
(Continued from April)

THE evidence that we have to work with in this investigation falls
naturally under four heads.

These are here put in the order of their age, or more exactly, of
the age of the oldest examples of each. They are:

1. The Old Charges or Constitutions.

2. Minutes and other lodge records.

3. Allusions and references.

4. The Ritual documents.

Of these, the second only, in our opinion, can properly be
subjected to Gould's legalistic criterion. Lodge records should be
found in lodge custody, or definitely traceable to such custody. In
other words their history should be known and authenticated. As a
matter of fact, though a number of the most important of these
records belonged to lodges now extinct, namely, Atchison-Haven,
Haughfoot, Alnwick and York, yet no doubt has arisen as to their
authenticity. Their history after the decease of the respective
lodges has been sufficiently determined, and there is nothing about
them or their contents to have given any rise to any suspicion in
the minds of the competent and critical scholars who have examined
and discussed them.

The documents in the first class, the Old Charges, we must insist
again, do not come under Gould's rule. For individual Masons were
interested (in the strict legal sense) equally with organized
groups. Indeed, as it appears that much of the activity of the
Fraternity was carried on in ephemeral lodges of "brethren and
fellows well met," the copies of the "Constitutions" used in them
must very frequently have been in private custody, even though
perhaps they may not always have been regarded as private property.
Of the third class, most if not all of the various references in
books have obviously no weight at all in the legal sense for,
according to the accepted rules, they are no more than hearsay
evidence. The diaries of Ashmole and Stukeley might be admissable,
perhaps, in a court of law, we do not presume to say. But the idea
of using legal rules in this case is obviously ridiculous. Gould
himself admitted these allusions without any obvious qualms. From
which it might appear that, lawyer-like, he only objected to
evidence when it told against the case he was seeking to prove,
though such a conclusion would not be just.

The fourth and last group of documents is in a different category
altogether. Except in one instance, nothing whatever is known of
their antecedents. In every case, with the one exception, we might
easily and properly reject the witness, taken alone, as without any
mark of authenticity to inspire credence. But these documents do
not stand alone, they form a group with well marked
characteristics. They have therefore to be examined carefully
according to the canons of literary criticism, in the same way, for
example, that the versions and recensions of the Graal Legend, and
other legendary cycles, have been treated. Admittedly the results
of such criticism are inferential, and often only hypothetical, but
it would be foolish to refuse to use them on this account.
Probabilities added to probabilities cumulatively support each
other, and may eventually reach a point only just short of
practical certainty.

We have, therefore, to conclude that on the whole the legalistic
method is entirely out of place in such investigations as this.
Some may desire to abide by it; that is their privilege. But if the
rule is adopted in one case, we may insist that it be consistently
applied, and only the small handful of documents that will pass
under it accepted. To pick and choose, to reject this document on
legal grounds, while admitting others no better qualified, cannot
be logically permitted. We prefer, as in practice most scholars
have done, to admit every scrap of evidence and assign to it the
weight it should carry in the light of such indications as are
available. But the legal rule may be used as an extra support where
it applies; and the documents that pass this test will in turn
support others that cannot do so, but which agree with them in
content. The evidence must be taken as a whole, and each part
viewed in the light of the remainder.

THE VALUE OF NEGATIVE EVIDENCE

One more point must be touched upon before we leave these
preliminaries. It arose incidentally in discussing Hughan's
argument, (1) but it is so important that it is advisable to bring
it up again. This is the question of the weight that should
properly be given to negative evidence, or the argument from
silence. It is very natural to suppose that a thing not spoken of,
that we have never seen mentioned, does not exist. As natural as
the contrary tendency to believe anything we are told where no
reason appears to doubt it. Being natural tendencies of the mind,
and being very frequently justified in experience, gives all the
more reason to examine them critically. When we do so, we see that
an unsupported statement, or conversely silence, about any given
thing, merely raises a presumption that such thing does or does not
exist. For example, we do not expect to find, and do not look for,
gold or oil or buried treasure in any locality, until someone has
found some by chance, or else that indications appear that
experience has shown may betoken the existence of such things. No
matter how complete and absolute the silence may have been, one
single positive instance overturns any argument built upon it. A
negative argument based on silence can only give a presumption that
a thing does not exist. That presumption may be so great as to
approach practical certainty, or it may be so small as to be almost
without weight. Thus every negative argument must be judged on its
own merits. The kind of circumstances to be taken into
consideration are fairly obvious. To take an example, suppose a
hundred men have prospected in the bed of a certain stream for
placer gold without finding any trace of it, we might take it as
practically certain there is none there. But suppose we find out
that not one of them had the least experience in prospecting. At
once the conclusion becomes doubtful; or rather the question is
practically left where it would have been had no search been made.
Gould pretended to doubt the real existence of "Robert Padgett,
Clerk," because there is no other known mention of him beyond the
appearance of his name on the Antiquity Roll. In such a case it is
purely a matter of balancing probabilities. An incidental
reference, where no motive appears for falsification, gives a
strong presumption in favor of what is referred to. Obviously there
have lived millions of people of whom no record remains; Padgett
may have been one just on the verge of that abyss of total
oblivion.

Now the importance of this point in our problem is obvious when it
is remembered how largely the argument from silence was used to
support the negative conclusions reached by Hughan, so that we must
decide what degree of presumption is raised against the existence
of any secret ritual by the complete silence of the earlier copies
of the Old Charges on this head, and the very vague indications in
some later ones. In other words, ought we to expect to find such
indications, or mention, either in these legal codes, or in lodge
records? If such mention is to be expected, then silence is a
strong argument against the existence of any such thing. But if
reticence would be natural in regard to such matters in these
documents, then silence proves nothing one way or the other. The
whole question lies in that point, would or would not reticence
have been considered natural and proper; and as we decide this, so
will the documents make non-existence seem highly probable, or
leave existence undecided. Each must decide this for himself. In
our subsequent argument we assume, as one of our postulates, that
extreme reticence was natural and fully to be expected.

One further point may be repeated here. If the negative argument is
to be accepted as of weight it must be consistently applied. No
more than the legal rule of evidence can it be applied to one thing
while another is passed over. The silence of the oldest documents
would prove, if accepted as conclusive on the point, not only that
there were not two degrees, but that there was no secret initiation
at all. Those who use this argument will be forced to the
conclusion that not till very late, that is, not till after the
decadence of operative masonry and the introduction of a strong
non-operative element into the Society or Fraternity, did anything
of this kind come into existence. We rather suspect that to most
this will seem too drastic.

The position thus resolves itself into a balancing of
probabilities. On the one hand the silence of the older documents
taken as of positive weight negates any esotericism at all. On the
other hand every indication and reference we have from, let us say,
the year 1730 back into the past, until details fade into vague
obscurity, reveals a highly conservative, traditional organization,
whose most striking characteristic is its mysterious ceremonies of
admission and its secret signs and tokens. Which of the two
arguments is to outweigh the other ? Our own conclusion is, we
hold, strictly based on acknowledged logical principles a purely
negative argument, the argument from silence, cannot stand against
positive evidence, no matter how scanty it may be.

Of course in this case positive evidence does not actually carry us
back further than the 17th century, or the last decade of the 16th
if we accept the oldest Scottish minutes. The rest is inference,
but even here the inferences drawn from positive evidence outweigh
those drawn from mere silence, especially when that silence is
natural and perfectly explicable in the light of the positive
evidence. But however this may be decided, and each of our readers
must decide it for himself, the inconsistent and illogical position
which Hughan slipped into unaware must be avoided. We cannot use
the silence of the Old Charges as an argument against the existence
of a plurality of degrees unless we also accept it as equally an
argument against the existence of any esotericism at all.

THE CRAFT IN THE OLD CHARGES

Having disposed of these preliminaries, and having made, as we
hope, the assumptions with which we begin perfectly clear and
explicit, we can now proceed to the discussion of the evidence in
those points which do not seem to have been fully brought out
previously, and to bring all the strands of the argument together.

There is not much more to be said in regard to the Old Charges.
They present us with a vague background. They show the antiquity of
grades or ranks in the Craft, they differentiate between Masters,
Fellows and Apprentices while yet consistently grouping the Masters
and Fellows together. Excepting in some late exemplars they give no
hint of anything but trade and business secrets. Or rather to be
more specific, the charge to keep the privity of hall and bower, or
the secrets of the lodge, or the counsels of Masonry, or the
private affairs of the master and his wife and family, are
consistent with nothing more than that reserve and reticence about
private affairs that was so highly regarded in the Middle Ages, so
much so that every gild and every town council and royal commission
were bound by oath as a matter of course to observe it. Such a
clause proves too much if it is taken as in and by itself
indicating the existence of a secret ritual and modes of
recognition. On the other hand, as we have insisted above, the
requirement in no degree excludes the possibility of such things
being part of the "privities" and "counsel" of the Craft.

Further, the fact that some of the later and latest MSS., such as
the Harleian No. 1942 and No. 2054, the Buchanan; the Grand Lodge
No. 2 and the Dumfries Kilwinning No. 4, which have additions and
appendages that certainly do point to something esoteric, is
equally inconclusive. It is consistent on the one hand with the
existence from the first of such secrets; but on the other, it is
also quite consistent (by itself) with these having been of recent
importation or invention. For these MSS. are of the same period in
which definite indications from other sources are found of an
esoteric Freemasonry over and above, or in addition to, the Craft
"Mystery," which presumably was of the Dame general character as
the "mysteries" or "masteries" of other trades (2).

There is one feature, however, of the Mason's Craft as we see it
depicted in these ancient documents that stands out in strong
contrast to all other trade organizations, and the other gilds and
fraternities. It has been mentioned before, but is so important a
feature of the background that it must be explicitly stated here.
It is what we might call the "universality" of the mason's society
or maternity. A "foreign" mason, one from another district,
possibly even from another country, was to be received as a
brother, and either given work or assisted on his way. Though this
proves nothing of itself in regard to anything esoteric, it does
give support to, or rather it makes a natural and logical place
for, the theory that the Masons, at the least, always possessed
secret modes of recognizing each other.

THE RELATIONSHIP OF MASTER AND FELLOW

We noted above that these documents presented the craft as composed
of three ranks or grades. There is nothing peculiar in this, all
trades were so organized. Still it does not necessarily follow that
the inter-relations of these ranks or classes were exactly the same
in every craft or at every period. In fact, we know certainly that
in general they changed materially with the passing of the
centuries. The differentiation between workman and master tended to
become "a gulf fixed," that if not wholly impassable, was
practically so.

The impression given by reading a number of the Old Charges or MS.
Constitutions is that the Masters were employers, while the Fellows
were journeymen, receiving pay from their masters. In regard to the
status of the Apprentice there is no doubt or question. He was in
a probationary stage in which he was learning the technique of the
Craft, and doing such work as he was capable of in return for his
instruction. But though this is the first impression received in
regard to Masters and Fellows, a more careful consideration gives
rise to doubt whether it was quite so definite and simple as this.
The phraseology, even in a single document, is seldom consistent
with a fixed and well defined distinction between the two classes,
and we may even guess at a process of what (if we suppose it to
have been deliberate) might be called "editing." Some versions, and
they are on the whole comparatively late, have "Masters" only,
where others say "Masters and Fellows." In other instances "Mason,"
simply, appears where in other exemplars "Master" is used. For
example, in the Philipps MS. No. 1 the first of the "Charges
singular for Masters and Fellows" is

.... that noe maister or fellowe shall take upon him any lords
woork . . . unless hee know him selfe able and suffieient of
eunning to performe the same . . .

But in the corresponding passage of the Scarborough Roll we find
that

. . . no Master Shall take upon him any Lords Worke . . .

and so on (3). In itself such a variation as this is too slight to
build on very heavily; it is submitted merely as an example of a
vagueness in the use of the terms that runs all the way through all
the copies of these old codes. As we noted above, this vagueness
appears not only as between one version and another, but in each
one taken by itself. If Masters alone are spoken of in respect to
taking work, the fellows are coupled with the masters in the
prohibition of supplanting one who already has charge of a job.
Fellows as well as Masters could take apprentices, or so we must
judge from the phraseology of the clause dealing with this as it
appears in many of the versions. We may quote the Buchanan Roll,
which has the following in the sixth of the "Charges singular":

And alsoe that noe master nor ffellow take any apprentice to bee
allowed his apprentice any longer than seven yeares and the
apprentice to bee able of birth and limbs as hee ought to bee.

The Grand Lodge MS. No. 1 has in the same place:

And also that no mrs and ffellowes take no prentiee but for the
terme of vij yeres (4).

The Buchanan version, and some others, make what seems to be a
manifest error in saying the period was not to be any longer than
seven years. The object of the provision, as appears plainly from
a consensus of readings, is that apprenticeship should not be for
a less period. The Buchanan MS. is dated circa 1670, and as a pure
matter of speculation, one might wonder if possibly this change was
made in lodges of prevailingly non-operative membership, in which
apprenticeship would, at most, be a matter of form (5).

Other MSS., such as the Harris No. 2 and the Cama, say "No Mason"
is to take an apprentice, instead of "No Master or fellow," thus
apparently equating Masters and Fellows under the general head of
Masons. On the other hand a number of versions omit "Fellow" here,
and say merely that "no Master" is to "take an apprentice" except
under the usual conditions. Among these is the very ancient Matthew
Cooke MS., though the William Watson, which is supposed to be a
descendant from the same original, has "Masters and Fellows."

The Grand Lodge MS. No. 2, with others of its family, has another
reading altogether in this place. The nouns are replaced by the
personal pronoun; "You shall not take an apprentice," and so on. In
most versions this rule appears in the "charges singular for
Masters and Fellows" following the "Charges general," but in the
MS. just quoted, and those of the same family, the charges general
and singular are not differentiated, though they appear
consecutively in the same order as in the other versions. In this
MS. the address of the administrator is to his "Loving friends and
brothers," who are exhorted to "be careful in the observation of
these articles" which he is about to read to this deponent." The
deponent is evidently the person who is being made a Mason, and
this raises another question which will-have to be considered next
in order.

These citations may perhaps seem-rather irrelevant as well as
tedious, but in view of the widely differing conceptions that have
been expressed as to the distinction between these generic terms,
Master and Fellow, it is necessary to try to reach some definite
conclusion on the point before proceeding further, for otherwise to
come to even a tentative agreement is impossible. We may say then,
and our readers must go to the documents themselves if they wish to
be sure how far this is justified, that the impression given by the
Old Charges as a whole is that there was no hard and fast
distinction between the Masters and Fellows. No more, let us say,
than between a foreman and a skilled mechanic in a machine shop
today. Both had the same training, both shad the same
qualifications. The difference was, so to speak, an external and
economic one, and not one of rank or status. Further, these old
codes are quite consistent with, that is, nothing in them excludes,
the use of the term "Master" in the same sense in which, according
to the late Bro. Condor, it was used in the records of the Masons
Company. In these the apprentice at the end of his servitude took
up the mastership of the Craft, although it was obvious that he was
not a master either in the sense of an employer, or of a director
of labor (6).

THE APPRENTICE ALLOWED

In any case, whether this be admitted or not, it is clear that
Masters and Fellows were grouped together in sharp distinction to
the Apprentices, and we now have to consider the question mentioned
above. Who was it who received the Charges? Most of the documents
are quite explicit that they were to be read when 'any Mason"
should be "made." But this only changes the form of the question,
who were made Masons? Or, what did making a Mason imply? That is,
putting it specifically, was it the apprentice who was "made," when
he was "allowed" to be an apprentice, according to the rules of the
Craft? And these may have been far more stringent than the external
regulations imposed by civil authority. At least such distinction
may be implied by the phrase

. . . to take any apprentice to be allowed his apprentice ...

Or, on the other hand, was it the Apprentice who had served his
time and was now being made free of the Craft ?

Though it has quite generally been taken that "making" occurred at
the beginning of the Apprenticeship, we believe that a retreading
of most of the documents will give the contrary impression, that it
was at the end of that period of pupilage that men were made
masons, and "charged." But this conclusion, however, is not
compulsory, the references are too vague to give more than an
impression; while it must be admitted that some versions, the
William Watson MS. for one, give a contrary impression. This, as
was pointed out by Bro. Dring (7), seems to make a distinction
between "making" Masons, and "receiving" Fellows. The passage
occurs at the end of the account of the great Assembly at York
under Prince Edwin, with which the Legend of the Craft normally
concludes. The usual version is that it was ordered that the
Charges, as then collected and codified, should "be read or told
when any mason should be made." The Watson MS. has a more expanded
statement of which the following is the passage especially
pertinent in the present connection.

In England, right worshipful masters & fellowes yt been of divers
Semblies and congregations wth ye consent of ye Lords this Realme
hath ordained & made charges by their best advise yt all manner of
men yt shall be made and allowed Masons, must be sworne upon a
booke to keep the same in all yt they may to ye uttermost of their
power, & alsoe they haue ordained yt when any ffellow shall be
reeeiued & allowed yt these charges might be read unto him & he
take his charges . . .(8)

At first sight this seems conclusive that "making and allowing"
Masons was a different thing from "receiving and allowing" Fellows.
But further consideration gives rise to doubts. The double
application of the term "allow" is curious, and the contrast made
is apparently between Masons and Fellows, not Apprentices and
Fellows; and as we have already seen "Mason" was used in other
cases as an alternative and inclusive term for Masters and Fellows,
our doubt is still further increased. As a matter of fact, in none
of these documents, so far as we have discovered, is an Apprentice
definitely and unequivocally said to be a Mason, or spoken of as a
Mason, not even those that contain the "New Articles" and the
"Apprentice Charges." It has naturally been taken for granted (and
we do not say incorrectly) that, seeing that since 1730 "Making a
Mason" has been used as synonymous with "Entering an Apprentice,"
it also means the same thing before 1700. All that it is desired to
point out here is that there is nothing in the Old Charges
themselves to indicate such an interpretation.

There is, so far as we know, just one exception to this general
silence upon this fundamental point. The Operative Lodge at
Swalwell, the "Orders" of which were written into the records on
Sept. 29, 1701 possessed certain "Apprentice Orders" which begin
thus:

Forasmuch as you are contracted and Bound to one of our Brethren:
we are here assembled together with one Accord, to declare unto you
the Laudable Dutys appertaining to those yt are Apprentices, to
those who are of the Lodge of Masonry which if you will take good
heed unto and keep, will find the same worthy your regard for a
Worthy Seienee, ffor at the building of the Tower of Babylon . . .

The rest is a very abbreviated and compressed recapitulation of
some of the chief heads of the "Legend of the Craft."

We find also in the fifth of the "Orders" of the "Company and
Fellowship" of Alnwick that

. . . noe mason shall take any Apprentice [but he must] enter him
and give him his charge within one whole year after.

The corresponding regulation at Swalwell was less definite.

When any mason shall take an APPRENTICE he shall enter him in the
Company's Records within 40 days . . .(9)

And all this really seems to complicate matters still more. Was
this "entering" anything at all equivalent, on the one hand, to the
"entering" practiced in Speculative Lodges after the critical
period ? And on the other, was it the same thing as an Apprentice
being "allowed," as specified in the Old Charges generally in the
regulation concerning them? But whether either or both or neither,
one thing does seem to follow, that at Alnwick not the "Old
Charges," but an abbreviated synopsis of the introductory portion
with special Apprentice Charges were used at entering. And then
rises the question, was this peculiar to Alnwick, or was it
representative? It is rather curious, in view of this vagueness and
indetermination, that it should have been so generally and so
confidently assumed that the Legend and Charges were read to the
Apprentice and that this composed the main part of the ceremony of
entering. This as much by the proponents of the single initiation
theory as by those who have opposed it. Really, if we had nothing
else to build upon, the most natural hypothesis would be that there
was only one ceremony, which came at the end of the Apprenticeship,
not at the beginning. Yet that clause, which appears again and
again, "that no master or fellow take no apprentice to be allowed
his apprentice," would always return like Banquo's ghost to give
rise to doubt.

The Old Charges, we may sum up, give us an indistinct background
and nothing more. We must now go on and see if the many
alternatives they leave open can to some extent be reduced by other
lines of evidence.

THE EARLY ALLUSIONS TO MASONRY

We may as well take next the third heading into which we divided
the evidence, for the reason that it is fairly simple and can be
shortly considered and dismissed. With the various hearsay and
"profane" references may be grouped the personal ones of individual
Masons, Randle Holme, Ashmole and Stukeley. Ashmole gives us the
terms "made a Freemason" and "admitted into the Fellowship of
Freemasons" which seem to be used by him as synonymous (10). While
Stukeley's remark in his Autobiography that he was induced by
curiosity to become a mason, as he suspected it "to be the remains
of the mysterys of the ancients," show definitely, only far too
late to be of very great value, that the world at large was more or
less aware of a mysterious ritual practiced by the Masonic
Fraternity. On this point Plot and Aubrey are of greater service,
though both of course wrote as outsiders. Plot may or may not have
had more information than the Masons of the day would willingly
have allowed him, but the references to "secret signed and their
efficacy in bringing "a Fellow of the Society, whom they otherwise
call an accepted muson," even from "the top of a Steeple," do not
put this beyond doubt. It is quite possible that all this had
become part of a popular body of information, and misinformation,
about the Free Masons.

Indeed we would be inclined to think that before the Reformation
the members of the Craft kept their secrets so well that few
outside even suspected that there were any. This would have been
fully in accord with the manners of the Middle Ages; which it is
very probable were soundly based on a lively sense of the need for
caution. Governments and governors were paternal and inquisitorial;
anything that was secret savored of treason, heresy and witchcraft
as a matter of course. It is quite possible that after the
Reformation had become established in Britain, and in conjunction
with the co-incident decay of the operative craft, and the growing
numbers of non-operative "accepted" Fellows of the old Fraternity,
that individual members relaxed to some extent the absolute silence
heretofore maintained, and may even have enjoyed mystifying their
non-Masonic acquaintance with cryptic utterances, just as some good
brethren do today.

But we are perhaps going too fast, and assuming what is yet (if
possible) to be proved. These references do show that the masons
had secret signs and ceremonies before the Grand Lodge era, but
hardly enough earlier to exclude all possibility that they were
then of comparatively recent introduction or invention, and perhaps
due to the non-operative members of the Craft.

NOTES

(1) BUILDER, 1928, p. 173
(2) It is of course impossible to cite the charges in full here,
for what we have in mind is the general impression given by reading
a number of them at the same time. Most Masonic histories give one
or more versions in full. There are many given in A.Q.C. and
Q.C.A., for those with access to the Transactions and Reprints of
Quatuor Coronati Lodge. The York Roll No. 1 was republished in THE
BUILDER for December 1923. But possibly the best work for the
present purpose is Hughan's Old Charges.
(3) Q.C.A., Vol. v.
(4) The Buchanan and Grand Lodge MSS. are both to be found in
Q.C.A. The first in Part III, p. vi, and the second in Part I, p.
vii.
(5) We are not very sure of this. Time and opportunity have been
lacking to find out how many versions have this reading. The
Atchison Haven minute book contains the same inversion of the
normal requirement, in identical words. It is dated 1666
approximately the same date as the Buchanan MS. Could it have been
a repealing of the clause in the Sehaw statutes, which requires a
second period of seven years before the apprentice could be made
"brother and fellow in craft"?
(6) THE BUILDER, Oct., 1928, p. 300.
(7) Ibid, 1929, Feb., p. 37.
(8) Q.C.A., Vol. iii, Part iv.
(9) Gould. History, Vol. iii, pp. 14-16.
(10) Gould. Concise History (Revised), pp. 112 and 116 (241 and 245
in American Edition).

(To be continued)
