THE BUILDER January, 1929

The Degrees of Masonry; Their Origin and History

By BROS. A. L. KRESS AND R. J. MEEKREN
(Continued from December)

BEFORE commenting on Gould's argument as a whole that the evolution
of the original primitive two degree system into our present one of
three degrees, one more quotation must be given, that in some ways
is very illuminating, though perhaps not exactly in the way the
author intended it.

. . . I have expressed my belief that Anderson only joined the
English Craft in 1721, but whatever the period may have been, his
opportunities of grafting the nomenclature of one Masonic system
upon that of another only commenced in the latter part of that
year, and lasted barely six months, as his manuscript Constitutions
were ordered to be printed March 25 1722. He was, therefore,
debarred from borrowing as largely as he must have wished judging
from his fuller work of 1738  from the operative phraseology of the
Northern Kingdom (1).

This really seems like building a pyramid with its apex down! The
second edition contained one extra Scottish term, the word Cowan."
It is true that Gould brings up in support like a troop of camp
followers camouflaged as reserves the mention in the 1738 book of
the old custom of meetings held

. . . early in the Morning on the Tops of Hills, especially on St.
John Evangelist's Day . . . according to the tradition of the old
Scots Masons, particularly those of the antient lodges of
Killwinning, Sterling, Aberdeen, etc. (2)

This, he seems to think, may have given rise to like statements
which appear in most of the early printed exposures. But really
this is putting the cart before the horse! The paragraph in
question did not appear until 1738, and at least four such
"exposures," three of which are quite distinct and characteristic
in their contents (3), had been published before 1738, or rather
before 1731, and they all contain closely analogous statements. The
more reasonable interpretation is surely that we have here a
genuine operative tradition, current equally in England and in
Scotland.

At the critical date of 1723 the sum total of the Scottish
importations discoverable by Gould is actually two compound titles,
Entered Apprentice and Fellow Craft, of which compounds the chief
element in each case was admittedly known and familiar in England,
so that it is only the addition of the qualifying terms, "entered"
in the one case and "Craft" in the other, that can be claimed as
new. It would seem that a far more natural, and perfectly adequate
explanation (granting that the terms were an importation) is that
Anderson, who wrote calamo currents and who evidently never stopped
to verify quotations but just put down things as he remembered
them, simply used the phraseology that was familiar to him as a
Scottish Mason, with not the least idea or intention of supplanting
or altering that which was in use in London, or even realizing that
he was using terms that might be unfamiliar to his English
brethren. If so, it would follow that in his mind Entered
Apprentice was the same thing as Apprentice, Master Mason as
Master, and Fellow Craft as Fellow, and conversely that his English
readers understood what he intended as well as he did himself.

First of all, Gould's argument rests on the supposition that these
terms really were not known in England before Anderson's work was
published. Here we are once more presented with a negative
argument, and one resting on very slender evidence. There are,
roughly speaking, the Old Charges, the references of Ashmole and
Randle Holme, and the accounts of Plot and Aubrey. The "Old
Charges" hardly tell us anything, for they were copied from older
exemplars and would not have been changed even if current
terminology had been modified in this regard. And for proof of this
we have only to go to Scotland itself, where we find copies of the
old MS. Constitutions in which the terms Fellow and Apprentice are
found without qualifying additions. The copy that was used in the
Lodge of Aberdeen, which (if Bro. Miller's suggestion be accepted)
was copied by Dr. Anderson's father, may be taken as a peculiarly
appropriate example. It contains the normal phraseology, Fellow,
Master and Apprentice, though the Statutes of the lodge speak of
Master Masons, Entered Prentices and Fellowcraft.

Thus it would certainly appear that Scottish Masons must have quite
understood the English terminology, and it seems pertinent to ask
why English Masons should misunderstand that of Scotland; at least
we can rule out the evidence of Old Charges as being quite
irrelevant to this particular question. We thus have only four
brief mentions, which, were they more conclusive than they are,
could not possibly prove, being all earlier than the 18th century,
that London Masons were ignorant of these compound terms in 1720,
or even 1700. We are not suggesting that they were known, but
merely pointing out the fact that the evidence adduced is
altogether inadequate to prove such a sweeping negative as Gould
required for his argument.

It is to be noted, as Gould points out in more than one place, that
the earliest copies of the Old Catechisms, both printed and in
manuscript, contain some mention of these two "scotticisms." The
curious and rather exasperating thing here is that none of the
manuscripts can be dated with any certainty before 1723, while all
the printed versions extant are later than the date of publication
of the Book of Constitutions. We have references to a catechism
printed before 1723, but no copy of it exists so far as is known.
Should it turn up some day, and prove to be (as we think very
probable) an earlier publication of the document printed in 1723
under the title of the "Mason's Examination" (and many times
thereafter under other titles) it might settle the question
definitely as against Gould. Or on the other hand it might lend him
strong support; though even then not to the point of absolute
conclusiveness. But that this should happen is only a pious hope.

As the matter stands, the evidence of the Catechisms is tied up
with the hypothesis we are considering in a very peculiar way. They
do not lend it any logical support, nor do they militate against
it. If on other grounds we agree with Gould that Anderson imported
these phrases, then it is likely that the compilers or publishers
of these effusions borrowed from him. If we doubt whether Gould is
right and suppose the terms were not wholly unknown, then their
appearance here will confirm our doubt. They fit either hypothesis
equally well.

The case of Sloane MS. 3329 and the Trinity College and Chetwode
Crawley MSS. is still more annoying (4). They have no date. From
appearance, paper, handwriting and the other criteria by which
experts judge the age of documents, they are all of about the
critical period. They may be earlier, they may be later. It is
equally obvious that they, like the printed versions, give no
certain indication. All three of them have a strongly Scottish
character, over and above the use of the terms "Entered Prentice"
and "Fellow Craft," or "fellow craftsman," and one is apparently
closely linked up with the usages of the old Haughfoot Lodge. Gould
was so obsessed with the idea that the Scottish Craft knew nothing
but the "Mason word," that he had to put on one side as
"exceptional" the indications plainly pointing to more than this
which appear in the records of Haughfoot and Dunblane, and which
are confirmed, and elucidated to some extent, by these MSS. And if
the two degree system was known in Scotland as well as in England
before 1723 or earlier, then the theory of misunderstanding will
become still more incredible. But we will have to discuss these
documents more fully later on and for the present we may leave them
on one side.

WAS ANDERSON MISUNDERSTOOD?

Let us admit, for the sake of argument, that these two phrases were
not known in England, and we think it is quite probable they were
at least not usual or familiar; the question then arises, were they
so new and unintelligible as to cause confusion in the minds of the
Masonic readers of the Book of Constitutions?

There surely could have been none in regard to the Apprentice. For
if, in England, he was not "entered," he was "admitted." The
difference in meaning is too slight for there to have been any
doubt in anyone's mind what was intended. The whole burden of the
alleged misunderstanding must rest on the term Fellow Craft.

If, as seems certain the sequence in England was Apprentice, Master
(of his Craft) and Fellow (the Mason being accepted as a Fellow of
the Fraternity because he had become master of his trade) it would
seem that it would have taken truly preternatural stupidity to
suppose that Master Mason and Fellow Craft meant something
different. The old sequence was not changed in Regulation XIII, and
in the fourth Charge the term Master obviously means Master of the
Lodge the two meanings one would suppose, were obvious enough, and
usual enough, to make misunderstanding very improbable. The two
uses of the term Master were not peculiar to the Masons, they were
general; and not only that, they have continued down to the present
time. We all understand at once the difference between a master-
workman, a man proficient in his trade, and the master, "boss," or
employer. But we may here quote a contemporary writer, Martin Clare
(5). In the Defense of Masonry, written in reply to Prichard's
Masonry Dissected, he says:

There are a MASTER, two Wardens and a number of Assistants, to make
what the Dissector may call (if he pleases) a Perfect Lodge in the
City Companies. There is the Degree of Enter'd Apprentice, Master
of his Trade, or Fellow Craft and Master, or the Master of the
Company (6).

This seems to indicate that seven years later there was no
confusion in Clare's mind about the equivalence of the old English
and the Scottish terms; and as the Defense was widely circulated,
and was reprinted as an appendix to the second Book of
Constitutions it would further seem to show that there was not much
room for misapprehension elsewhere; neither does Clare's language
betray any objection to the compound terms as Gould's argument
would seem to require (7).

Gould bases his belief that misunderstanding did exist chiefly on
the appearance of Prichard's three degree system, but he supports
it also by two other items of evidence. The first is the apparent
reference to three degrees by Francis Drake, F. R. S., in his
speech to the assembled Fraternity at York on the Festival of St.
John's Day, 17268. The passage in question follows a lengthy
quotation from Addison. Drake then goes on to say:

From what he [Addison] has said, the great Antiquity of the Art of
Building or Masonry may be easily deduced; for without running up
to Seth's Pillars or the Tower of Babel for proofs the Temple- of
Belus alone, or the Walls of Babylon . . . are sufficient
testimonies, or at least give great Reason to conjecture, that
three parts in four of the whole Earth might then be divided into
E-P-F-C & M-M.

We quite frankly do not have any clear idea what this means. It may
be that Drake had mistaken Dr. Anderson to speak of three grades in
London and did not wish to admit any fewer in York; it may be he
first learned of the term Fellow Craft in the 1723 Book of
Constitutions, and that Masons in the North of England had no
previous knowledge of its use in Scotland; it may be that they were
familiar with the terms and used them in the old way; but what
actually may be properly deduced from it as it stands we do not
even wish to guess. Gould held that there was but one ceremony
employed at York; basing that opinion on the minutes, which speak
only of candidates being "admitted and sworn." But then what did
the three titles mean to Drake and those who listened to him  ranks
merely? Or Degrees?

Gould says:

But, as it appears to myself, Drake had evidently constructed an
imaginary tri-gradal system, from a mis-reading of James Anderson's
ambiguous expressions in O. R. XIII.

But why should the "Apprentices," "Masters" and "Fellow Craft" of
the 1723 Regulation lead to such an imaginary construction when the
"Apprentices", "Masters" and "Fellows" of the Old Charges, with
which Drake must have been familiar, had not done so? The natural
thing would be to interpret the new in the light of the old, and we
have really nothing in the obscure reference to show that Drake, if
he did borrow his terms, understood them in any other sense than
Anderson in 1723 had intended them.

IRISH USAGE IN 1730

The next piece of evidence seems much stronger. In our opinion it
is the one really relevant fact he offers. In Pennell's
Constitutions, virtually an edition of Anderson, published in
Dublin before the end of August, 1730 (that is a little earlier
than Prichard's work) we find the following addition to Charge IV
(9):

No Master should take an Apprentice unless . . . [he is physically
qualified and so on, and thus not incapable] . . . Of being made a
Brother and a Fellow Craft, and in due time a Master; and when
quailfy'd, he may arrive to the Honour of being Warden, then Master
of a Lodge, etc.

When this is compared with Anderson it certainly does give the
strong impression that three degrees are intended. But seeing that
only a month or two later Prichard presents us with a complete
sketch of a trigradal system, it will depend on our opinion of the
origin of that work what significance we give to this. The curious
thing is that in 1734-1735 William Smith published in London and
Dublin A Pocket Companion for Freemasons, virtually a book of
Constitutions, having official approval of the Grand Lodge of
Ireland, which the 1730 work did not have. This follows Pennell
very closely, but it omits the pregnant words "and in due time a
Master."

This raises a number of questions. Was the omission intentional ?
If so did it mean that more than two degrees were unknown in
Ireland? Or was the Grand Lodge of Ireland seeking to suppress a
three degree arrangement introduced unofficially from England, and
trying to maintain the ancient system? It is impossible to say
without more evidence. So far, however, as Gould's theory goes,
Pennell's work is overshadowed by Prichard's Masonry Dissected,
which followed it so closely.

In a number of different places, Gould has intimated his theory of
how the change was effected, as for example, in the History he says
(10):

It is probable that about this period [1724-25] the existing
degrees were remodelled, and the titles of Fellow Craft and
Master disjoined the latter becoming the degree of Master Mason,
and the former virtually denoting a new degree, though its
essentials were merely composed of a severed portion of the
ceremonial hitherto observed at the entry of an apprentice.

This opinion (with which, as it is here stated, we fully agree) is
based on a comparison of Prichard with the other versions of the
Old Catechisms. The process is by no means fully complete in
Prichard, but it does show us a second degree, called the Fellow
Craft's Part, which is not so much a severed portion, but a variant
version of part of the old Mason's Examination or Catechism. It is
a separate degree almost entirely in virtue of having a name and
being set apart, rather than in its content; indeed if might almost
be called a doublet of the first. However, in spite of its
embryonic form it may be taken as a sketch of what later became the
normal type.

Gould adduces another fact to support his contention that in 1723
the Grand Lodge recognized only two degrees. A French lodge was
constituted in London in August of that year, by the Earl of
Strathmore, and 'le Maitre, les Survetllants, les Compagnons et les
Apprentifs [The Master, the Wardens, the Fellows and the
Apprentices] were alone particularized. He goes on. (11) 

Soon after 1730, indeed a system of three degrees crept into use,
of which the proximate cause appears to have been the influence
exercised both directly and indirectly by the spurious ritual of
Samuel Prichard. But there is nothing from which we may infer that
a division of the old "Apprentice Part" into two moieties each
forming a distinct step or degree had been approved by the Grand
Lodge prior to the publication of the New Book of Constitutions in
1738.

In an article in the Northern Freemason in 1906 he recapitulated
his position (12). Referring briefly to the fact that 

In Scotland, both before and long after the year 1723, the
expressions "Fellow Craft" and "Master" were terms of indifferent
application, meaning one and the same thing....

he goes on to repeat the assertion, which while possible (and even
probable) is not as, we have said, demonstrated, that the term
"Fellow Craft" was unknown in England until Anderson imported it.
He then says:

The combined use, therefore, of the terms Apprentice, Fellow Craft
and Master in the XIIIth of the "General Regulations" (1723) gave
rise to the singular hallucination that they denoted three distinct
and separate degrees which were then recognized by the Grand Lodge.

And then after running over the earliest allusions to three
separate degrees, that we have already discussed, down to Pennell's
Constitutions, he adds:

. . . After this the delusion assumed such proportions that
yielding to the popular clamor, the two degrees inherited and
hitherto only recognized by the Grand Lodge of England were by the
bisection of the Apprentice part declared not only to be, but to
have been, THREE.

For a historian this seems to us a very unguarded statement.
Granting, as we are certainly willing to do, that the change might
have been made in the way he asserts; it is going entirely beyond
any evidence adduced by himself, or known to us, to say the Grand
Lodge made any such declaration unless he means no more than the
official approval, or acquiescence, in the changes made by Anderson
in his New Book of 1738. If this was his meaning, it seems so over-
emphatic as to be very misleading to any reader who has not been
able to weigh all the evidence for himself.

DID THE GRAND LODGE OPPOSE THE NEW SYSTEM ?

He had been more cautious in 1903. In a paper read to the Quatuor
Coronati Lodge, he said (13):

The precise circumstances under which an expansion of the original
system of degrees was authorized, or perhaps it would be better to
say regulated, by the earliest of Grand Lodges, have not been
recorded, but there is a sufficiency of evidence from which the
broad facts of the ease become distinguishable. The governing body
of English Masonry evidently tried to combat the new doctrine of
which Samuel Prichard was the high priest by having the "Discourse"
of Martin Clare read in the lodges and doubtless in other ways. But
finding the novelty had taken root and there can be no doubt that
the seed from which Masonry Dissected ultimately germinated, had
been sown by Anderson . . . the Grand Lodge, it is more than
probable, felt bound to regulate a movement it was unable to
suppress. Three steps therefore, were declared. to exist in the
Constitutions of 1738 and the order of their precedence was
determined by the Grand Officers, in the manner which appeared to
them in the greatest harmony with the ancient and Symbolic
traditions of the Craft.

We see that here, perhaps because addressing a more critical
audience, he inserts a qualification, "it is more than probable"
the Grand Lodge felt bound to act. It seems to us that Anderson's
emendations in the New Book are rather a recognition or an
adaptation of formula to a fait accompli; but perhaps this is all
Gould meant. If by his Discourse, reference is made to the Defence
of Martin Clare we presume the passage that we quoted above is what
Gould had in mind as the reason for the Grand Lodge having it read
in the lodges (14). But there is so much more of value in Clare's
tract that it is hard to pick on one brief, and not especially
striking paragraph, and say that that was pre-eminently the thing
it was desired to disseminate. And finally, where is there the
least shadow of an indication that "the Grand Officers" took
counsel together on the subject? It is all pure inference, based in
Gould's mind on another part of his general hypothesis which we
will shortly have to consider, respecting the "order in which the
two moities" of the Apprentices part were given. We now continue
the quotation:

The second edition of the Constitutions, like the first, was the
cause of serious trouble in the lodges, and in each ease the
discontent appears to have been at its height about a year after
the publication of the work. In 1739, the rearrangement of the
degrees gave offense, not only to brethren who were working in the
old way, i. e., according to the system of two degrees as existing
prior to and after 1717; but also to all those practicing three
ceremonies, who followed the method of conferring them as laid down
in Prichard's Spurious Ritual of 1730. There were other causes
which tended to widen the breach between the Masons who were
submissive and those who were disobedient to the mandates of the
Grand Lodge. The principal of these was a second tampering with the
"Mason's Creed," which, at a later period, caused a further
divergence of procedure between the two parties into which English
Freemasons ultimately became separated. (15)

The two parties are the rival Grand Lodges of "Moderns" and
"Antients," and the "Mason's Creed" is, we suppose, the first
charge, "Concerning God and Religion," which was somewhat modified
in the New Book; but while those lodges which continued to work
only two degrees may have objected to the innovation, no evidence
whatever has been brought to light, in such minutes as have
survived, to show either that they rebelled on this account, or
that the Grand Lodge sought, for the sake of uniformity, or any
other reason, to force them to do their work in three stages
instead of two. It may have been so, but there is absolutely
nothing to show it.

NOTES

1. Gould, History, Vol. iii, p. 111.

2. Ibid, Vol. iii, p. 45.

3. These are the Mason's Examination published in the Flying Post
of April 13, 1723, the Grand Mystery of Freemasons Discovered,
published in 1725. These two Gould reproduces in the Appendix of
his History, Vol. iv, p. 281. On Aug. 16, 1730 the Daily Journal
published the Mystery of Freemasons, the catechism in which is a
slightly variant version from that of the Examination. It was
reproduced by Franklin in the Pennsylvania Gazette in the December
following. In October Prichard's Masonry Dissected appeared.
Besides these we really should add the Sloane MS. No. 3329 as no
authority gives it so late a date as 1738. The Trinity College and
Chetwode Crawley MSS. might be also adduced if it were not that
they may be of Scottish origin

4. The Trinity College has on it the following endorsement,
"Freemasonry, Feb. 1711" but this is in a different hand from the
contents of the MS. itself, and as we have no idea who made it or
when, or what grounds there were for the statement it is impossible
to receive it as evidence.

5. A. Q. C., Vol. iv, p. 33; Vol. 28, p. 80.

6. Anderson's New Book of Constitutions 1738, p. 217, Reproduced in
Q. C. A., Vol. vii.

7. For Gould's argument on this point the Concise History, p. 400,
and Essays, p. 223, may be consulted.

8. Hughan's Masonic Sketches and Reprints (1871), p. 112.

9. Gould, Essays, p. 218. Pennell's work was reproduced by Dr.
Chetwode Crawley in Caementaria Hibernica, Vol. i.

10. History, Vol. iii, p. 114.

11. Essays, p. 218

12. Ibid, p. 269.

13. Ib., p. 223.

14. We judge that it is. see Concise Hist., pp. 400-401. Compare
also Wonnacott, A. Q. C., Vol. xxviii, p. 80.

15. Compare also the Concise History, p. 417.
(To be continued)
