THE BUILDER NOVEMBER 1925

The Claims of the Modern Operatives

BY BRO. R.J. MEEKREN

THIS article was partly written two years ago at the request of
Bro. Haywood, while the author was in England where he had the
privilege of seeing and hearing a good deal at first hand on the
subject. It has been completed with a view to presenting the other
side of the case so ably advocated by Bro. Springett in his article
that appeared in the August and September numbers of The Builder,
Bro. Wonnacott very kindly furnishing additional information for
this purpose, and permission to use his name.

SOME time within the first decade of the present century, I put it
thus indefinitely for so far I have not been able to learn exactly
when or how the first announcement was made, the members of the
Craft in England were intrigued by statements that lodges of
Operative Masons were still in existence, and working the original
initiatory rites as handed down from a remote past.

Clement Stretton, a north of England Civil Engineer, claimed to be
one of the three chief masters of this organization. Dr. Carr
became one of his disciples, and wrote his descriptive pamphlet,
The Ritual of the Operative Freemasons, and later Dr. Merz in this
country published Guild Masonry in the Making, while John Yarker
acted in support by various statements and references in certain of
his works. The claims made by these brethren were naturally heard
with mingled feelings by Masonic scholars. It is not easy to
mentally adjust oneself to facts that appear to undermine the very
presuppositions of all one's previous work. An analogous case in
science was the discovery of radio-activity, which necessitated an
entire revision of the accepted physical hypotheses and an
abandonment of the older theory of indestructible and inert atoms
as the substratum of matter.

The first impulse, and a perfectly normal and sane one, is to doubt
such alleged discovery, and to put it to the most searching tests.
This Masonic students did with the claims of the "Operative"
Masons: yet on the other hand they showed a perfect willingness to
be convinced, and many of them took a great deal of trouble, and
were willing to agree to any possible conditions that might be laid
down for an examination of the records said to be in the possession
of the Operative Society. In short, it cannot be said that these
claims met with an intolerant or prejudiced examination; and if the
weight of Masonic scholarship has finally rejected them it is due
to a continued refusal, or inability, to produce any tangible
evidence. It is certainly curious that not only have the ritual
secrets of the Guild been communicated freely to Speculative
Masons, but in the works of the brethren above mentioned they have
been published to the world at large, so far as it may be
interested; while inspection of minute books and accounts has been
consistently refused on various pretexts.

THE CLAIMS MADE BY THE OPERATIVES

It may be as well to recapitulate the more or less official
statements and claims of the modern Operative or Guild Masons, the
full title of whose society is "The Worshipful Society of
Freemasons, Rough Masons, Wallers, Slaters, Paviors, Plaisterers
and Bricklayers."

It may be noted, by the way, that while the name of the society
indicates that it includes all these occupations connected with
building yet apparently only the stone masons are actually admitted
into the lodges, though Carr does say that a Fellow will exchange
the apprentice grip with a bricklayer, but will go no further. The
operative craft, according to the accounts given, is divided into
two, the arch and square masons, and a man must belong to one or
other exclusively, except that the masters are free of both, and
form the link that unites the two branches into one organization,
for the lodges of the lower degrees are separate for each. The
Apprentice is not considered a member of the society, though
obligated and entrusted with certain ritual secrets. When he has
served his time he becomes a Fellow, from which degree he may
advance to Super-Fellow, and from that to Super-Fellow Erector.
Then he may become a Superintendent and after that a Passed Master.
From the Passed Masters on is annually chosen to be one (the
junior) of the three Masters who rule the society. This position is
filled annually, the second and third Masters holding office for
life or until they retire.

The ceremonies of the first grade correspond to those of Entered
Apprentice in Speculative Masonry, and Fellow to the Fellow Craft.
Super-Fellow and Erector parallel Speculative Mark Masonry, while
the degree of Master Mason is said to be an imitation of the annual
ceremonies connected with the election and installation of the
Third Master, who is said to represent H.A.B., only the ceremony is
used to retire the occupant of the office at the end of his term
and give an occasion to install his successor, instead of being an
initiation into a higher grade. From the accounts given us there is
one idea specially worked out in the ritual of each of the first
four grades, which is that the candidate is made to emblematically
represent the stone, in its rough and polished states and as marked
and set in its place in the building.

The Operatives give a very detailed account of the origin of
present day Speculative Masonry. They lay all the blame on Dr.
Anderson, who it would seem, poor man, has still another set of
sins to answer for in addition to those that have been laid at his
door by modern scholars, of unreliability in his historical
accounts and his liberalizing tendencies in religion. By this
account he was Chaplain to the old Lodge of St. Paul's (this same
account, by the way, is the authority that there was such a lodge)
and that he irregularly admitted sundry gentlemen as honorary
members of the Craft. For this he was expelled, and in consequence
proceeded to set up a Speculative lodge in conjunction with those
whom he had irregularly introduced (who included, it is said, Dr.
Desaguliers, Sayer and George Payne) and from this clandestine
Speculative lodge the Grand Lodge of 1717 shortly after arose. Dr.
Carr says:

"In 1717, under the influence of Dr. Anderson and his friends, some
Operative Freemasons with some of these non-Operative, Accepted or
Speculative Freemasons, belonging to four lodges in London, met and
formed the first Grand Lodge, a combination in which Speculative
Masonry instead of Operative Masonry was the primary consideration.
Architecture and Operative tools became symbolical, but the ritual
was based on the Ritual of the old Operative Society, of which,
indeed, it was largely a reproduction.

"The Apprentice Degree and the Fellow Craft Degree were founded on
the corresponding degrees of the Operative System.

"Later on, when a Master's Degree--not a Master of a lodge, but a
Master Mason--was added, Anderson and his friends invented a
ceremony based on the Operatives' Annual Festival of Oct. 2,
commemorating the slaying of Hiram Abiff at the building of King
Solomon's Temple.

"The real Secrets and real Ritual of the Operative Master's Degree
could not be given, as but few knew them, namely, only those who
had actually been one of the three Masters, Seventh Degree, by whom
the Operatives were ruled, and Anderson had certainly not been one
of these; his function having been that of Chaplain, although it is
quite possible he had been admitted an Accepted member of the Craft
some years previously in Scotland."

Now of course if Operative Masonry did consist of a two-branched
seven-degree organization, and if Sir Christopher Wren was chief
Master of the lodge that built St. Paul's Cathedral when Anderson
was Chaplain, then this account might be accepted; but as this
complicated organization of the Craft is one of the very points at
issue it must be held in doubt till the matter is decided.

THE OPERATIVE CONTENTIONS CRITICIZED

There are three lines of criticism which may be followed. The
strictly historical is one. The time and occasion when modern
Operative Masonry was first heard of, the development of its
claims, the attempts of qualified students to find out more about
it, the constant evasions of Bro. Stretton, and his refusal to meet
direct, straightforward inquiries concerning the alleged continuous
records. There is in the possession of Bro. Wonnacott, Grand
Librarian of the United Grand Lodge of England, a collection of
letters from Stretton to a prominent member of the Craft now
deceased, covering a period of about five years. In these letters
one can see a gradual evolution of the claims and characteristics
of the Guild organization; to use Bro. Wonnacott's own phrase, one
"can almost see it grow"; and by comparing dates, it is even
possible to see what books Stretton had been reading. In one
important point he flatly contradicted himself. One of the earlier
letters gives a long, circumstantial, half-jocular, account of the
initiation of the landlady of a public house where the meetings
were held, into the first degree, so that she could be free to
enter the lodge with refreshments when required. As the Operative
ritual requires the candidate to be stripped naked this was
somewhat embarrassing, as Stretton was at pains to explain. Some
years later he repudiates the idea that ever under any
circumstances could a woman be admitted. Masonic students in
England are personally aware of all these circumstances and so far
it has not seemed to them worth while to actually collect the facts
concerning these claims. But for the coming generation, and for
those at a distance it would be well if some qualified brother
should take this task in hand.

Another line of approach is through a criticism of the Operative
ritual itself in the light of all the facts known about the
Speculative ritual forms, and a third would be a consideration from
a technical point of view of the alleged Operative trade secrets
and methods of planning and laying out buildings. To deal with
these two aspects of the question we need no more evidence than is
furnished by the writings of the partizans of the Operative claims.

We may start with the title itself. We have already pointed out the
contradiction between a Society of Rough Masons, Plasterers,
Bricklayers and others that does not admit any man of these trades
to more than a first degree, which is expressly stated to be
exterior (that is, the apprentice is not a member of the Society)
so that though the Slater or Pavior may be given the apprentice
grip and word he does not really belong. Bro. Merz in his Guild
Masonry in the Making alludes to a number of instances of Guilds or
Companies composed of a group of crafts including masons. He also
gives in full the charter given by the Bishop of Durham to a Guild
in that city in 1638. The curious thing in this (it is not a
charter of constitution, but of confirmation) is that in the
preamble it speaks of the Society having formerly existed under the
name of Rough Masons, Wallers, Slaytors, Pavers, Playsterers and
Bricklayers--the title is mentioned twice, the second time to say
that "from henceforth and hereafter" it is to be "in deed and name
one body politiq ppetuall and incorporate by the name of the
Company society and fellowship of freemasons, roughmasons, wallers,
etc." That is the freemasons are from thenceforward to be a part of
this civic corporation. How this can be evidence of any esoteric
organization is hard to see. All such guilds and companies composed
of like (and in some cases unlike) occupations were formed for
purely local and sectional reasons, to make rules for the
occupations concerned, to inspect work done and, especially, to
prevent the employment of "furriners," men without the freedom of
the city. Again all the old MS. Constitutions insist that there
must be no consorting with roughmasons or layers--probably much the
same class of workmen as wallers, yet according to the modern Guild
rules they are allowed to enter as apprentices. Yet the old
"Charges" are claimed as being really Guild documents ! They
certainly are operative documents, but the assumption of the term
operative by a modern organization gives the latter no claim on
them except by confusion of thought.

WERE THERE SEVEN DEGREES?

The next point is the hierarchy of seven grades or degrees. We must
all heartily agree with Bro. Merz that the medieval Masons could
have devised and worked a seven degree ritual, but the question is
not whether they had the ability but whether they actually did so.
If the modern Operatives did not appeal to the Old Charges and the
other records of the Craft we could have little to say, for it is
hard to prove a negative. Such an organization might have existed,
might have been perpetuated, but it would be something quite other
than the organization that we know did exist. But if they bring the
records of this last as evidence for their claims it seems they can
only be disallowed, for the Mason craft of which we have
documentary knowledge possessed three ranks and two grades, or if
not two then only one. This last is to some extent still an open
question--but the bearing is the same, however decided. There were
three ranks known--the Masters, employing other men, the Fellows
and the Apprentices. In degree, either all ranks were included in
one esoteric grade or the Apprentice grade was one step and Master
or Fellow another.

DEGREE TITLES SOUND MODERN

The titles of the seven Operative degrees give the impression of
modernity rather than antiquity. SuperFellow and Super-Fellow
Erector are very clumsy titles--not such as would stand the wear
and tear of centuries. A "banker" or "setter", a "layer", "cutter",
or "carver" are terms that could be and have been used. But the
prefix "super" applied to fellow is not easy to say, it does not
run smoothly. It also suggests some forgotten side degrees of the
middle eighteenth century Speculatives, such as Super-excellent
Master, a much more euphonious title, by the way, than Superfellow,
though it has been practically discarded for the more sonorous
Most-excellent. The sixth grade is called Passed Master, which
composes the body of Harodim. Passed or Past Master is a simple,
smooth sounding phrase that might be of any age, only there is no
evidence in any documentary record that it was actually used until
after the crucial year of 1717 and the formation of the Speculative
organization. So far as can be gathered it meant (however spelled)
either one whom we would call a Past Master, or what we intend when
we say one has been raised a Master. The terms pass and raise were
at first used indiscriminately for either or both the Speculative
degrees of Fellowcraft and Master Mason. Harodim is again a curious
term. It is not impossible, of course, that it might have been used
in medieval times, but it is quite certain that we first hear of it
in connection with Speculative Masonry. It sounds very much like a
bit of the learned pedantry that marked the period in which the
latter was organized. Until some record of its previous use can be
adduced it rather points to modern invention than immemorial usage.

In the actual ceremonies themselves as they have been described to
us there are many minor points that seem to indicate an evolution
from the Speculative ritual used in England at the present time.
Some of these points indeed are even used by the supporters of the
"Guild" claims as evidence for their contention. The mere fact of
resemblance proves nothing one way or the other, nor does it follow
that the more developed is necessarily the original, it may be an
evolution from the simpler form. For instance, Bro. Carr in a paper
read before the Author's Lodge (1) makes a point of the fact that
in an Operative masters lodge three mountains intimately connected
with Hebrew history are referred to, Moriah, Tabor and Sinai. Then
he observes that in the special form of opening the lodge in the
English Grand and Provincial Grand Lodges the Grand Wardens are
said to have their stations on Tabor and Sinai respectively. The
argument is that because the Speculative ritual does not go on to
place the Grand Master on Moriah this ceremony is an imperfect
reflection of the Operative form. So it might be if there were
nothing else to consider. But when we remember that this Tabor,
Sinai form is peculiar to England, and that it is restricted to
Grand Lodge, we have to hesitate, because to fully appraise the
problem we must remember that other Speculative ritual traditions
are of equal value to the post Union ritual of England, if indeed
they are not of even greater weight, when we are trying to work
back to early eighteenth century forms. Briefly we know that the
oldest catechisms referred to high hills and to the Valley of
Jehosaphat. This was quite sufficient to have been the germ of the
Grand Lodge formula and the Operative addition could have well been
a still further evolution, put in conjunction with their method of
placing the officers in just the opposite positions to those they
have in Speculative Masonry, that is WestEast-North instead of
East-West-South. But all the earliest ritual evidence, which must
almost certainly take us behind the supposed Andersonian
innovations, goes to show that the Master's place was always East
and the Warden's (for at first there seems, at least in some
places, only to have been one) in the West.

OTHER POINTS CRITICIZED

In the Operative system a great deal is made of the great secret of
the 3-4-5 sided triangle, and each of the three Masters has a rod
of proportionate length, so that with the three such a triangle can
be made. This Operative grade is equated with the Royal Arch. In
the English form of this degree each of the three principal
officers bears a scepter, and at a certain point in the ceremonies
a triangle is formed with them, an equilateral triangle. Here again
just from these facts alone the derivation might have been one way
or the other. The Operative theory is that the Speculative ritual
framers had a vague inkling of the formation of a triangle but did
not know its significance. But we know, curiously enough through
Bro. Yarker himself who laboriously made a beautifully written copy
for the Library of the Grand Lodge of England and another for
Quatuor Coronati Lodge, that a form of lectures used by
Speculatives at the end of the eighteenth century contained this
great Operative secret, so that it was quite well known to the
Speculative Craft late in the eighteenth century. An argument based
on this being unknown to them must fall to the ground in the light
of this evidence.(2)

Another point is made of the length and complexity of the Operative
ceremonies, and the references to technicalities and trade secrets.
But inherently this would seem to point rather to invention than to
tradition. A ceremony is no place for practical instruction. The
apprentice was not taught in a class but as he worked. At the end
of his apprenticeship he was a master of his craft, he knew all the
trade secrets and operations and had the manual skill to employ
them.

A ceremony is described of stretching a cord between the stations
of the three principal officers so as to make a triangle, and then
the measurement of the three angles together must make three right
angles. The three angles of any triangle must always equal two
right angles, though to measure the angle made by a stretched cord
would be difficult enough to do with any accuracy--and as useless
as difficult.

The symbolism of the Pole Star and the Swastika again sounds very
like a borrowing from modern researches; one would guess that the
framer of these rituals had read Bro. Simpson's work on the
Buddhist Prayer Wheel, and other works of like content that were
published in the late nineties of last century or the first years
of the present one; that he was acquainted with the various
theories advanced by Masonic scholars, such as the old one that the
Royal Arch was originally part of the third degree--a hypothesis
that seems the less tenable the more closely it is considered in
the light of known facts; or the opinion that the "Lodge" is
derived from the "Guild," which brings many unnecessary
difficulties in its train; or the very common supposition that
Craft ceremonies are ultimately of Hebrew origin, which has led to
so much learned darkening of counsel by multitudes of words.

These points we have been considering are not of course conclusive,
but taken together in the light of the constant refusal to submit
any of the documentary evidence which is said to be in the
possession of the Operative Society they certainly make a strong
case for rejection of the claims made for its continuous existence,
in its present form, from time immemorial. It is difficult to get
over the extraordinary facility with which esoteric and ritual
secrets have been published while such commonplace things as
minutes and books of account have been withheld. The story that
they are in a secret vault that only the Masters can enter, and
from which they cannot be removed, is not very convincing. Bro.
Carr is of the Master's Grade, yet he has apparently never seen
them, at least he has never said so publicly, nor has he ever dwelt
on the point, although it has always been the first one to be
raised by every serious student when confronted by the Operative
claims.

