THE BUILDER MAY 1925

The Constitutions of 1723

By W. BRO. LIONEL VIBERT

P.M. QUATUOR CORONATI LODGE, NO. 2076;
EDITOR "MISCELLANEA LATOMORUM, England


It was evident very early in the career of the first Grand Lodge that there
would have to be something in the nature of Regulations to deal with such
matters as the election of the Grand Master and the conduct of the Annual
Grand Feast; and it appears also to be the case that, as early as 1721, Grand
Lodge proposed to retain in its own hands the privilege of conferring the
degree known as the Master's Part, which was at that time the only degree
practiced beyond that of Acceptance, or Admission. It being the recognized
custom, at the time, that no one could be Master of a lodge who had not taken
this degree, that conferred the rank of both Fellow and Master, it is obvious
that this restriction operated to give Grand Lodge a large measure of control
over the mastership of the lodges. Further, in 1721, it became apparent that
another new departure was inevitable. The Four Old Lodges, that alone
constituted Grand Lodge, were quite insufficient to cope with the numbers that
now came into the Order, and some provision was clearly necessary to meet the
requirements of the new brethren. What seems to have happened is that Grand
Lodge formally took power to constitute new lodges, and ordered that all such
lodges, to be regular, must have themselves constituted in accordance with the
form prescribed by the central authority, the essential feature of which would
seem to have been that they were enrolled in a list maintained in London, and
their names were notified to all existing lodges. There is good reason to
believe that the rules on this subject were first promulgated by Grand Master
Payne, in 1721.

THIS HISTORY OF MASONRY IS RE-WRITTEN

It was in harmony with the spirit that animated the new body, that it now
began to be felt that the old documents of the Craft were no longer suited to
the of laws--the Old Charges--which had for a long time been in great measure
obsolete, and had accordingly been ignored by the Masons, whenever they had
occasion to frame regulations in their trade corporations. They had also
preserved an elaborate legendary history, that could no longer be seriously
maintained as a satisfactory account of the origin of the Craft. Accordingly
when the suggestion was made that the new authority should have a new history
written for it, it was readily adopted, and the offer of Mr. James Anderson--
he became Dr. Anderson at a later date-- to write this history appears to have
been accepted by Grand Lodge in September, 1721.

The period was unfortunate. The history of the Craft, as we now recognize, is
bound up with the development of Gothic architecture, and with the trade gild
system of mediaeval England. The first quarter of the eighteenth century was a
time when it was fashionable to despise the indigenous Gothic as barbarous,
and to exalt the Renascence art of Bramante and Palladio at its expense.
Anderson was not of that robust order of intellects that maintains opinions
running counter to those generally held, and accordingly his attitude was that
England, under the stuarts and Hanoverians, had at last returned to the right
way and the true Art of Masonry.

The Traditional History traced Masonry, or Geometry, back to the children of
Lamech, and brought it down from them to David and Solomon; curious craftsmen
then disseminated the knowledge and brought it to France and England. In
France, Charles Martel was the patron and protector of the Masons; in England,
it was established by St. Alban first, and after by Athelstan and Edwin. No
attempt had as yet been made to fill in the gaps in this narrative, which
remained as it had been written some time early in the sixteenth century, that
text itself being a revision of a much earrier account. Anderson adopted an
entirely different scheme. He traced the art to Cain, who first built a city,
having been instructed in Geometry by Adam. Then, after Grand Master Noah, we
come to the Temple, which is described at great length, and from it all
civilized architecture is derived. He traces the progress of the science,
through Greece and Italy, to its culmination in Rome, in what he calls the
Glorious Augustan Style. In Britain, after the Romans, all knowledge of the
true art is lost, for Gothic is merely a barbarous substitute for it, and it
is reserved for the House of stuart to restore the knowledge of it, which was
done when James I introduced Renascence architecture into this country.
Subsequent monarchs have encouraged the art by their bright example, in
building Hampton Court, and so on, until the days of his Majesty King George,
who laid the foundation of the church of St. Martin's in the existing
conditions. They had furnished it with a code Fields.

In constructing this account of the Craft Anderson relied, almost exclusively,
on his general knowledge, and made very little use even of such documents
relating to the Masons themselves as were available at the time. Still less
did he make any sort of independent inquiry. He was content to link up his
Hanoverian Grand l.odge with Scotland and Rorne, and to treat everything that
was not due to one or the other of these influences as merely English
barbarism.

OTHER MATTER IS ADDED

This history was completed during the mastership of Montagu, to whom the
concluding paragraph refers; and the Dedication suggests that it was read by
Montagu and approved by him. But it was not at once printed. The Craft had its
traditional Rules, the Old Charges, and the new Grand Lodge had its own
Regulations, introduced by Payne in 1721, and apparently it was decided that
these should be embodied in the work as published, the task of preparing them
for publication being also entrusted to Anderson, who possibly had for this
part of his labors the assistance of brethren specially conversant with the
facts. Current opinion, as we see from various allusions in contemporary
literature, associated Desaguliers in particular, not only with this part of
the work, but also with the History, it being suggested (somewhat uncharitably
perhaps) that a note therein which indicates a knowledge of Hebrew could not
have been written by Anderson without assistance. In any case, Anderson
proceeded to embody in his work a set of Charges, thirty-nine Regulations, the
Manner of Constituting a New Lodge, and a selection of poems and songs.

The Charges were six in number, and were in fact a complete restatement of
precepts to be found in the old texts, with some added material. They have
been preserved to our own day with certain verbal modifications. The
Regulations, as Anderson has himself stated in the heading to them, were a
restatement of Payne's original rules, and it is not possible to disentangle
the new from the old in them; but it is obvious that they contain a great deal
that was never put forward by Payne. Indeed, they are not even a statement of
the law as it stood at the time, but are rather a draft of what Anderson
considered it should be; for instance, they provide for a Treasurer, but this
officer was not appointed for many years. They make elaborate provisions as to
the election of the Grand Master, which never were the law, and they enact
provisions with regard to the Annual Feast, which were independently
promulgated some years later, the fact that Anderson had included them in his
Regulations being ignored.

Such then was the First Book of Constitutions: a History, written in the taste
of the time; a set of six so-called Ancient Charges, which were in fact a
modern arrangement based on passages in the old texts; a code of Regulations
corresponding to nothing that existed in practice; directions for the ceremony
of constituting a new lodge, which were probably official and genuine; and a
set of songs and poems of which one, the Enter'd Apprentice Song, has alone
survived. The work was Anderson's private property, although it took rank as
an official publication with the general public. From this book has come down
the whole series of Constitutions, Ahiman Rezons, or whatever they may be
styled, that have been issued by Grand Lodges all over the world, but the
original model has of necessity been much varied in the course of time. The
developments beyond the United Kingdom lie outside the scope of this article.

ITS VALUE AS CONTEMPORARY EVIDENCE

As a contemporary document the Constitutions of 1723 afford us a certain
amount of information as to the condition of affairs in the Craft at this
period, but not so much as we would like; far from it. In this respect the
most important contribution is a list of lodges, distinguished by numbers
merely, which is appended to what is called the Approbation. The work was
submitted for the approval of Grand Lodge, in manuscript, in December, or late
in November, 1722, and was then ordered to be printed; and a formal and very
long Approbation was drawn up, possibly by Anderson himself, which was signed
by the Masters and Wardens of twenty lodges--in two cases the signature of the
Master has not been obtained. This is a valuable list of names. A year later,
in November, 1723, the Grand Secretary compiled a list of lodges with names of

*****
their members in many cases, which is still on record in the first Minute Book
of Grand Lodge.

From this and other sources, it appears that in December, 1722, there were at
least twenty-three lodges in existence, so that three were not represented at
the meeting of Grand Lodge at which the Approbation was signed. But no
conclusion can be drawn from this circumstance. At the same time, from the
actual minutes it is apparent that, when the brethren had had time to study
Anderson's Charges and Regulations, many of them were very far from approving
the way in which he had carried out the work entrusted to him. The publication
being, however, a private venture, the most they could do was to prevent any
resolution being recorded approving of his version of the Regulations, or
confirming it; and this was what actually happened at the next meeting of
Grand Lodge after the publication, when a resolution to that effect had to be
withdrawn, and one was submitted that it was in the power of no person to make
any innovation in the Body of Masonry without the consent of the Annual
Meeting of Grand Lodge. Anderson seems to have realized that he had not earned
the esteem of the brethren, for he did not appear again in Grand Lodge for
some seven years.

The work also enables us to reconstruct the actual history of the events of
1722, as to which Anderson in his second edition in 1738 put forward a very
inaccurate story. The Grand Master from June, 1722, to June, 1723, was Philip,
Duke of Wharton, a nobleman of a most unstable and eccentric disposition, who
quitted England in 1725, a discredited Jacobite, and after wandering about the
continent died in a Spanish monastery in the utmost indigence and misery in
May, 1731. In 1723 he had had a serious difference with the Grand Lodge, which
refused to allow itself to be turned into a Jacobite political organization
for his benefit, and he revenged himself by founding a rival society, styled
the Gormogons, which professed to impart the secret wisdom of the Chinese, and
assured all concerned that the Freemasons were a set of charlatans and
humbugs. The Society collapsed as soon as his influence had been withdrawn.
Accordingly, while in 1723 during his Grand-Mastership his name was given due
prominence in the Constitutions, the position of affairs was very different in
1738. Anderson now alleged that Wharton, instead of succeeding to the office
in the regular course in June, 1722, had got himself irregularly elected by a
small clique, and was only allowed to hold office at all through the
generosity of Montagu, who in January, 1723, recognized his authority, and
permitted him to complete his year of office with his own Deputy and Wardens.
That Wharton had been Grand Master could not well be denied, but it was now
made to appear that he seized the office by fraud, and only held it by
Montagu's good will. The whole story is a fabrication; the Constitutions of
1723 show conclusively that Wharton was Grand Master in his own right, with
the approval of at least twenty lodges out of twenty-three in December, 1722,
and was then busy constituting new lodges, and the contemporary references in
the newspapers show that he was not merely elected in June, 1722, but was
chosen by a unanimous vote.

MAKING MASTERS IN GRAND LODGE BECOMES OBSOLETE

We learn, from the offlcial Minutes, that the direction of Grand Lodge, which
appears in the Regulations, that the superior Degree, the Master's Part, was
only to be conferred in Grand Lodge, was abrogated in November, 1725. It is
obvious that as soon as there were lodges all over England--and the Craft had
begun to spread to the country in the previous year--this restriction was
unworkable. It is most probable that the restriction was in fact never
observed. It would almost appear as though Payne, at the same time that he
regularized the formation gf new lodges in 1721, thought it wise to institute
this check on their activities; but that the old lodges were not willing to
allow what had been their time immemorial privilege to be thus taken from
them, and that the Regulation was in fact a dead letter. This may indeed be
the explanation of the introduction of the intermediate degree of the
Fellowcraft, which was arrived at, not by interfering with the Master's Part,
but by splitting up the Acceptance. By this means a Brother became a Fellow,
and so technically eligible to be the Master of a lodge; and Grand Lodge's
position being thus turned as it were, the abrogation of the Regulation was
bound to follow sooner or later. The custom which makes it necessary that the
Master should have taken the Third Degree is a development of later date.


There are very few hints of Ritual in the book. We have a prescribed form of
words for the ceremony of constituting a new lodge; we have the definite
statement that there were only two degrees, the Admission, and the Master's
Part, which conferred the rank of Fellow and Master; and we have a long note
in the History on the name Hiram Abif. This indicates that the name itself was
not regarded as secret--although it does appear that it had been so considered
in earlier times--and also shows, as we should expect, that it had a
particular significance for the Craft. It was also a name which, outside the
Craft, would at this time be unknown to the general public, as it had
disappeared from our Bibles by 1550, or so. Accordingly, it was presumably
because it had been preserved in the lodges themselves, without its exact
meaning being understood, that a note was now deemed appropriate. It cannot be
said that there is anywhere in the work a specific reference to any other
degree, although there are several hints of mystery introduced, and at the end
there occurs the phrase "the whole body resembles a well-built Arch."

In the same way as the original restrictions as to conferring the higher
degree had to go by the board, so the form of constituting a new lodge had to
be modified when lodges had come into existence far away from the metropolis.
Originally, the ceremony was to be conducted by the Grand Master or his Deputy
in person; later the duty was delegated to a deputy appointed ad hoc, in the
locality; and eventually the formalities were exchanged for the issue of a
written certificate--the Warrant of today--the ceremony being carried out by
the Provincial authorities. The Provincial system, which is peculiar to this
country, is in its development closely connected with the constituting of new
lodges.

In 1738 Anderson brought out his second edition. In this he re-wrote the
History in such a fashion that Gould was driven to suggest that he was either
failing in his wits, or deliberately hoaxing the Grand Lodge. But it was an
uncritical age, and this extraordinary account of our origin and early
history, was solemnly reprinted for a century and more by Preston, Oliver and
others, and is not without its admirers today. It ceased to appear as part of
the Constitutions after the Union. In 1738 Anderson also re-issued his
original Regulations, but he added to them a confused jumble of alleged
amendments and explanations, which made the whole thing unintelligible. In the
next edition, that of 1756, the Regulations were entirely recast. They were
again revised in 1815 and still again in 1882, when they took the form they
have today, although since then various small amendments have been made.
Throughout all these changes a certain amount of Anderson's wording has
persisted, and can still be traced, in the earlier Regulations of our modern
official Constitutions. The Six Charges stand today very nearly as he wrote
them in 1723.

The influence of this work on the Craft ever since its original publication,
just over two hundred years ago, is difficult to estimate; but with all its
faults it must always be one of the most important possessions of Freemasons.
