THE OLD CHARGES OF FREEMASONRY
by Bro. H. L. Haywood
The Builder
-
September 1923
By the Old Charges is meant those ancient documents that have
come down to us from the fourteenth century and afterwards in which are
incorporated the traditional history, the legends and the rules and regulations
of Freemasonry. They are called variously: Ancient Manuscripts,
Ancient Constitutions, Legend of the Craft, Gothic Manuscripts,
Old Records. In their physical makeup these documents are sometimes found
in the form of handwritten paper or parchment rolls, the units of which are
either sewn or pasted together; of hand-written sheets stitched together in book
form, and in the familiar printed form of a modern book. Sometimes they are
found incorporated in the minute book of a lodge. They range in estimated date
from 1390 until the first quarter of the eighteenth century, and a few of them
are specimens of Gothic script. The largest number of them are in the keeping of
the British Museum; the Masonic library of West Yorkshire, England, has in
custody the second largest number.
As already said, these Old Charges (such is their most familiar appellation)
form the basis of modern Masonic Constitutions, and therefore jurisprudence.
They establish the continuity of the Masonic Institution through a period of
more than five centuries, and by fair implication much longer; and at the same
time, and by token of the same significance, prove the great antiquity of
Masonry by written documents, which is a thing no other Craft in existence is
able to do. These manuscripts are traditional and legendary in form and are
therefore not to be read as histories are, nevertheless a careful and critical
study of them based on internal evidence sheds more light on the earliest times
of Freemasonry than any other one source whatever. It is believed that the Old
Charges were used in making a Mason in the old Operative days; that they served
as constitutions of lodges in many cases, and sometimes functioned as what we
today call a warrant.
The systematic study of these manuscripts began in the middle of the past
century, at which time only a few were known to be in existence. In 1872 William
James Hughan listed 32. Owing largely to his efforts many others were
discovered, so that in 1889 Gould was able to list 62, and Hughan himself in
1895 tabulated 66 manuscript copies, 9 printed versions and 11 missing versions.
This number has been so much increased of late years that in Ars Quatuor
Coronatorum, Volume XXXI, 1918, Bro. Roderick H. Baxter listed 98, which number
included the versions known to be missing. Bro. Baxter's list is peculiarly
valuable in that he gives data as to when and where these manuscripts have been
reproduced.
For the sake of being better able to compare one copy with another, Dr. W.
Begemann classified all the versions into four general families: the Grand
Lodge Family, the Sloane Family, the Roberts Family and the
Spencer Family. These family groups he divided further into branches,
and he believed that the Spencer Family was an offshoot of the Grand
Lodge Family, and the Roberts Family an offshoot of the Sloane
Family. In this general manner of grouping, Begemann was followed by Hughan,
Gould and their colleagues, and his classification still holds in general;
attempts have been made in recent years to upset it, but without much success.
One of the best charts, based on Begemann, is that made by Bro. Lionel Vibert.
The first known printed reference to these Old Charges was made by Dr. Robert
Plot in his Natural History of Staffordshire, 1868. Dr. A.F.A. Woodford
and William James Hughan were the first to undertake a scientific study.
Hughan's Old Charges is to this day the standard work in English. Gould's
chapter in his History of Masonry would probably be ranked second in
value, whereas the voluminous writings of Dr. Begemann, contributed by him to
Zirkelcorrespondez, official organ of the National Grand Lodge of Germany,
would, if only they were translated into English, give us the most exhaustive
treatment of the subject ever yet written.
The Old Charges are peculiarly English. No such documents have ever been found
in Ireland. Scotch manuscripts are known to be of English origin. It was once
held by Findel and other German writers that the English versions ultimately
derived from German sources, but this has been disproved. The only known point
of similarity between the Old Charges and such German documents as the Torgau
Ordinances and the Cologne Constitutions is the Legend of the Four
Crowned Martyrs, and this legend is found among English versions only in the
Regius Manuscript. As Gould well says, the British MSS. have neither
predecessors nor rivals; they are the richest and rarest things in the whole
field of Masonic writings.
When the Old Charges are placed side by side it is immediately seen that in
their account of the traditional history of the Craft they vary in a great many
particulars, nevertheless they appear to have derived from some common origin,
and in the main they tell the same tale, which is as interesting as a fairy
story out of Grimm. Did the original of this traditional account come from some
individual or was it born out of a floating tradition, like the folk tales of
ancient people? Authorities differ much on this point. Begemann not only
declared that the first version of the story originated with an individual, but
even set out what he deemed to be the literary sources used by that Great
Unknown. The doctor's arguments are powerful. On the other hand, others
contend that the story began as a general vague oral tradition, and that this
was in the course of time reduced to writing. In either event, why was the story
ever written? In all probability an answer to that question will never be
forth-coming, but W. Harry Rylands and others have been of the opinion that the
first written versions were made in response to a general Writ for Return
issued in 1388. Rylands' words may be quoted: It appears to me not at all
improbable that much, if not all, of the legendary history was composed in
answer to the Writ for Returns issued to the guilds all over the country, in the
twelfth year of Richard the Second, A.D. 1388. 1
The two Oldest Manuscripts
In 1757 King George II presented to the British Museum a collection of some
12,000 volumes, the nucleus of which had been laid by King Henry VII and which
came to be known as the Royal Library. Among these books was a rarely beautiful
manuscript written by hand on 64 pages of vellum, about four by five inches in
size, which a cataloger, David Casley, entered as No. 17 A-1 under the title, A
Poem of Moral Duties: here entitled Constitutiones Artis Gemetrie Secundem.
It was not until Mr. J.O. Halliwell, F.R.S. (afterwards Halliwell-Phillipps), a
non-Mason, chanced to make the discovery that the manuscript was known to be a
Masonic document. Mr. Phillipps read a paper on the manuscript before the
Society of Antiquaries in 1839, and in the following year published a volume
entitled Early History of Freemasonry in England (enlarged and revised in 1844),
in which he incorporated a transcript of the document along with a few pages in
facsimile. This important work will be found incorporated in the familiar
Universal Masonic Library, the rusty sheepskin bindings of which strike the eyes
on almost every Masonic book shelf. This manuscript was known as the Halliwell,
or as the Halliwell-Phillipps until some fifty years afterwards Gould
rechristened it, in honor of the Royal Library in which it is found, the Regius,
and since then this has become the more familiar cognomen.
David Casley, a learned specialist in old manuscripts, dated the
Regius as of the fourteenth century. E.A. Bond, another expert, dated
it as of the middle of the fifteenth century. Dr. Kloss, the German specialist,
placed it between 1427 and 1445. But the majority have agreed on 1390 as the
most probable date. It is impossible to arrive at absolute certainty on this
point, says Hughan, whose Old Charges should be consulted, save that it is not
likely to be older than 1390, but may be some twenty years or so later. Dr.W.
Begemann made a study of the document that has never been equalled for
thoroughness, and arrived at a conclusion that may be given in his own words:
it was written towards the end of the 14th or at least quite at the beginning of
the 15th century (not in Gloucester itself, as being too southerly, but)
in the north of Gloucestershire or in the neighboring north of Herefordshire, or
even possibly in the south of Worcestershire. 2
In 1889 an exact facsimile of this famous manuscript was
published in Volume I of the Antigrapha produced by the Quatuor Coronati Lodge
of Research, and was edited by the then secretary of that lodge, George William
Speth, himself a brilliant authority, who supplied a glossary that is
indispensable to the amateur student. Along with it was published a commentary
by R.F. Gould, one of the greatest of all his Masonic papers, though it is
exasperating in its rambling arrangement and general lack of conclusiveness.
The Regius Manuscript is the only one of all the versions to be written
in meter, and may have been composed by a priest, if one may judge by certain
internal evidences, though the point is disputed. There are some 800 lines in
the poem, the strictly Masonic portion coming to an end at line 576, after which
begins what Hughan calls a sermonette on moral duties, in which there is
quite a Roman Catholic vein with references to the sins seven, the sweet lady
(referring to the Virgin) and to holy water. There is no such specific
Mariolatry in any other version of the Old Charges, though the great majority of
them express loyalty to Holy Church and all of them, until Anderson's familiar
version, are specifically Christian, so far as religion is concerned.
The author furnishes a list of fifteen points and fifteen articles, all of which
are quite specific instructions concerning the behavior of a Craftsman: this
portion is believed by many to have been the charges to an initiate as used in
the author's period, and is therefore deemed the most important feature of the
book as furnishing us a picture of the regulations of the Craft at that remote
date. The Craft is described as having come into existence as an organized
fraternity in King Adelstoune's day, but in this the author contradicts himself,
because he refers to things written in old books (modern spelling) and
takes for granted a certain antiquity for the Masonry, which, as in all the Old
Charges, is made synonymous with Geometry, a thing very different in those days
from the abstract science over which we labored during our school days.
The Regius Poem is evidently a book about Masonry, rather than a document
of Masonry, and may very well have been written by a non-Mason, though there is
no way in which we can verify such theories, especially seeing that we know
nothing about the document save what it has to tell us about itself, which is
little.
In his Commentary on the Regius MS, R.F. Gould produced a paragraph that
has ever since served as the pivot of a great debate. It reads as follows and
refers to the sermonette portion which deals with moral duties: These rules of
decorum read very curiously in the present age, but their inapplicability to the
circumstances of the working Masons of the fourteen or fifteenth century will be
at once apparent. They were intended for the gentlemen of those days, and the
instruction for behavior in the presence of a lord - at table and in the society
of ladies - would have all been equally out of place in a code of manners drawn
up for the use of a Guild or Craft of Artisans.
The point of this is that there must have been present among the Craftsmen of
that time a number of men not engaged at all in labour, and therefore were, as
we would now describe them, Speculatives. This would be of immense
importance if Gould had made good his point, but that he was not able to do. The
greatest minds of the period in question were devoted to architecture, and there
is no reason not to believe that among the Craftsmen were members of good
families. Also the Craft was in contact with the clergy all the while, and
therefore many of its members may well have stood in need of rules for
preserving proper decorum in great houses and among the members of the upper
classes. From Woodford until the present time the great majority of Masonic
scholars have believed the Old Charges to have been used by a strictly operative
craft and it is evident that they will continue to do so until more conclusive
evidence to the contrary is forthcoming than Gould's surmise.
Next to the Regius the oldest manuscript is that known as the Cooke.
It was published by R. Spencer, London, 1861 and was edited by Mr. Matthew
Cooke, hence his name. In the British Museum's catalogue it is listed as
Additional M.S. 23,198, and has been dated by Hughan at 1450 or thereabouts, an
estimate in which most of the specialists have concurred. Dr. Begemann believed
the document to have been compiled and written in the southeastern portion of
the western Midlands, say, in Gloucestershire or Oxfordshire, possibly also in
southeast Worcestershire or southwest Warwickshire. The Book of Charges
which forms the second part of the document is certainly of the 14th century,
the historical or first part, of quite the beginning of the 15th. 3
The Cooke MS. was most certainly in the hands of Mr.
George Payne, when in his second term as Grand Master in 1720 he compiled the
General Regulations, and which Anderson included in his own version of the
Constitutions published in 1723. Anderson himself evidently made use of lines
901-960 of the MS.
The Lodge Quatuor Coronati reprinted the Cooke in facsimile in Vol. II of its
Antigrapha in 1890, and included therewith a Commentary by George William Speth
which is, in my own amateur opinion, an even more brilliant piece of work than
Gould's Commentary on the Regius. Some of Speth's conclusions are of
permanent value. The M.S. is a transcript of a yet older document and was
written by a Mason. There were several versions of the Charges to a Mason in
circulation at the time. The MS. is in two parts, the former of which is an
attempt at a history of the Craft, the latter of which is a version of the
Charges. Of this portion Speth writes that it is far and away the earliest, best
and purest version of the Old Charges which we possess. The MS. mentions nine
articles, and these evidently were legal enforcements at the time; the nine
points given were probably not legally binding but were morally so.
Congregations of Masons were held here and there but no General Assembly (or
Grand Lodge); Grand Masters existed in fact but not in name and presided at one
meeting of a congregation only. Many of our present usages may be traced in
their original form to this manuscript.
Anderson's Constitutions and other printed versions
One of the most important of all the versions of the Old Charges is not an
ancient original at all, but a printed edition issued in 1722, and known as the
Roberts, though it is believed to be a copy of an ancient document. Of this W.J.
Hughan writes: The only copy known was purchased by me at Bro. Spencer's sale
of Masonic works, etc. (London, 1875), for 8 pounds 10s., on behalf of the late
Bro. R.F. Bower, and is now in the magnificent library of the Grand Lodge of
Iowa, U.S.A. This tiny volume is easily the most priceless Masonic literary
possession in America, and was published in exact facsimile by the National
Masonic Research Society, with an eloquent Introduction by Dr. Joseph Fort
Newton in 1916. The Reverend Edmund Coxe edited a famous reprint in 1871. It is
a version meriting the most careful study on the part of the Masonic student
because it had a decided influence on the literature and jurisprudence of the
Craft after its initial appearance. It appeared in one of the most interesting
and momentous periods of modern Speculative Masonry, namely, in the years
between the organization of the first Grand Lodge in 1717 and the appearance of
Anderson's Constitution in 1723. It is the earliest printed version of the Old
Charges known to exist.
Another well-known printed version is that published in 1724 and known as the
Briscoe. This was the second publication of its kind. The third printed
version was issued in 1728-9 by Benjamin Cole, and known as the Cole Edition in
consequence. This version is considered a literary gem in that the main body of
the text is engraved throughout in most beautiful style. A special edition of
this book was made in Leeds, 1897, the value of which was enhanced by one of W.J.
Hughan's famous introductions. For our own modern and practical purposes the
most important of all the versions ever made was that compiled by Dr. James
Anderson in 1723 and everywhere known familiarly as Anderson's Constitution. A
second edition appeared, much changed and enlarged, in 1738; a third, by John
Entick, in 1756; and so on every few years until by 1888 twenty-two editions in
all had been issued. The Rev.A.F.A. Woodford, Hughan's collaborator, edited an
edition of The Constitution Book of 1723 as Volume I of Kenning's Masonic
Archeological Library, under date of 1878. This is a correct and detailed
reproduction of the book exactly as Anderson first published it, and is valuable
accordingly.
Anderson's title page is interesting to read: The CONSTITUTION, History,
Laws, Charges, Orders, Regulations, and Usages, of the Right Worshipful
FRATERNITY of ACCEPTED FREE MASONS; collected from their general RECORDS, and
their faithful TRADITIONS of many Ages. To be read At the Admission of a NEW
Bro., when the Master or Warden shall begin, or order some other Bro. to read as
follows, etc. After the word follows Anderson's own version of
Masonic history begins with this astonishing statement: Adam, our first
Parent, created after the Image of God, the great Architect of the Universe,
must have had the Liberal Sciences, particularly Geometry, written on his Heart,
etc.
Thus did Dr. Anderson launch his now thrice familiar account of the history of
Freemasonry, an account which, save in the hands of the most expert Masonic
antiquarian, yields very little dependable historical fact whatsoever, but
which, owing to the prestige of its author, came to be accepted for generations
as a bona fide history of the Craft. It will be many a long year yet before the
rank and file of brethren shall have learned that Dr. Anderson's history belongs
in the realm of fable for the most part, and has never been accepted as anything
else by knowing ones.
The established facts concerning Dr. Anderson's own private history comprise a
record almost as brief as the short and simple annals of the poor. Bro. J.T.
Thorp, one of the most distinguished of the veterans among living English
Masonic scholars, has given it in an excellent brief form: 4
Of this distinguished Bro. we know very little. He is believed to have been
born, educated and made a Mason in Scotland, subsequently settling in London as
a Presbyterian Minister. He is mentioned for the first time in the Proceedings
of the Grand Lodge of England on September 29th, 1721, when he was appointed to
revise the old Gothic Constitutions - this revision was approved by the Grand
Lodge of England on September 29th in 1723, in which year Anderson was Junior
Grand Warden under the Duke of Wharton - he published a second edition of the
Book of Constitutions in 1738, and died in 1739. This is about all that is known
of him.
In his 1738 edition Anderson so garbled up his account of the founding of Grand
Lodge, and contradicted his own earlier story in such fashion, that R.F. Gould
was inclined to believe either that he had become disgruntled and full of
spleen, or else that he was in his dotage. Be that as it may, Anderson's
historical pages are to be read with extreme caution. His Constitution itself,
or that part dealing with the principles and regulations of the Craft, is most
certainly a compilation made of extracts of other versions of the Old Charges
pretty much mixed with the Doctor's own ideas in the premises, and so much at
variance with previous customs that the official adoption thereof caused much
dissension among the lodges, and may have had something to do with the
disaffection which at last led to the formation of the Ancient Grand Lodge of
1751 or thereabouts. The Anderson of this latter body, which in time waxed very
powerful, was Laurence Dermott, a brilliant Irishman, who as Grand Secretary was
leader of the Ancient forces for many years, and who wrote for the body its own
Constitution, called Ahiman Rezon, which cryptic title is believed by
some to mean Worthy Bro. Secretary. The first edition of this important version
was made in 1756, a second in 1764, and so on until by 1813 an eighth had been
published. A very complete collection of all editions is in the Masonic Library
at Philadelphia. A few of our Grand Lodges, Pennsylvania among them, continue to
call their Book of Constitutions, the Ahiman Rezon.
Anderson himself is still on the rack of criticism. Learned brethren are
checking his statements (see Bro. Vibert), sifting his pages and leaving no
stone unturned in order to appraise correctly his contributions to Masonic
history. But there is not so much disagreement on the Constitution. In that
document, which did not give satisfaction to many upon its appearance, Anderson,
as Bro. Lionel Vibert has well said, builded better than he knew, because he
produced a document which until now serves as the groundwork of nearly all Grand
Lodge Constitutions having jurisdiction over Symbolic Masonry, and which once
and for all established Speculative Freemasonry on a basis apart, and with no
sectarian character, either as to religion or politics. For all his faults as a
historian (and these faults were as much of his age as of his own shortcomings),
Anderson is a great figure in our annals and deserves at the hand of every
student a careful and, reverent study.
Conclusion
I return to my first statement. In the whole circle of Masonic studies there is
not, for us Masons at any rate, any subject of such importance as this of the
Old Charges, especially insofar as they have to do with our own Constitutions
and Regulations, and that is very much indeed. Many false conceptions of
Freemasonry may be directly traced to an unlearned, or willful misinterpretation
of the Old Charges, what they are, what they mean to us, and what their
authority may be. In this land jurisprudence is a problem of supreme importance,
and in a way not very well comprehended by our brethren in other parts, who
often wonder why we should be so obsessed by it. We have forty-nine Grand
Lodges, each of which is sovereign in its own state, and all of which must
maintain fraternal relations with scores of Grand bodies abroad as well as with
each other. These Grand Lodges assemble each year to legislate for the Craft,
and therefore, in the very nature of things, the organization and government of
the Order is for us, not English Masons, a much more complicated and important
thing than it can be in other lands. To know what the Old Charges are, and to
understand Masonic constitutional law and practice, is for our leaders and
law-givers a prime necessity.
FOOTNOTES:
1 A.Q.C. ,XVL.
2 A.Q.C., VII.
3 A.Q.C., IX.
4 A.Q.C., XVIII.
Source
The Masonic Review, XIII;
A.Q.C., I, IV, V, VII, VIII, IX, XI, XVI, XVIII, XX, XXI, XXVIII;
A.Q.C., Antigapha, all volumes;
Clegg, Mackey's Revised History;
Edward Conder, Records of the Hole Craft and Fellowship of Masons;
Findel, History of Freemasonry;
Fort, Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry;
Gould, History of Freemasonry, I;
Gould, Concise History;
Gould, Collected Essays;
Hughan, Cole's Constitutions;
Hughan, Old Charges;
Hughan, Ancient Masonic Rolls:
Pierson, Traditions, Origin and Early History of Freemasonry;
Stillson, History of Freemasonry and Concordant Orders;
Vibert, Story of the Craft;
Vibert, Freemasonry Before the Era of Grand Lodge;
Waite, New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry;
Ward, Freemasonry and the Ancient Gods:
The records of the Vialardi di Sandigliano Foundation Museum and Center for
History and Humanities
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