Old Freemasonry Before Grand Lodge.

OLD FREEMASONRY BEFORE GRAND LODGE .

By Bro . JOHN YARKER , jun ., P . M . ; P . M . M . K . ; P . Z . ; P . E . C . ; & c , & c , & c . I have read with great interest much of the correspondence appearing weekly in your pages , and to make , a short article of a long subject , will

at once proceed without preface to offer my protest against some of the opinions broached , and my own views thereon . In the face of past Masonic secrecy and in the present state of Masonic archaeology , no writer ,

however great his abilities is justified in asserting , that because documentary evidence of certain traditional beliefs have not been discovered by himself or friends , therefore , there is no truth in such traditional beliefs ; we have at the present

day far too much of this dogmatical writing , and the cause of the writers only is injured thereby ; in other words I have some faith in the morality of those who in 1717 and after , collected the traditions of the period , however much I may disagree with the views they enunciated . As I

have never hitherto been accused of any tendency to vanity , I think I may state without fear of such result , that during the last fifteen years I have read the bulk of what has been printed on Speculative Masonry , and the ancient and modern

philosophical associations of Rosicrucians , & c , besides a goodly amount of MS . evidence , and that I am therefore inclined to place far more reliance upon the views of the " Ancients " than those of the " Moderns . " By Speculative

Masonry of last and previous century I understand , then , a system of seven or eight degrees practised at York , in London , and in France , and as a revised rite alleged to date from at least 1686 ; by strict operative and guild Masonry , I

understand nothing more than what I find in the old MS . Constitutions ; the system of the present Grand Lodge I consider is neither one or the other , but simply , what it has itself always claimed to be " Modern Masonry . "

That the Master Masons degree should be a fabrication of 1717 is very unlikely , and there is nothing whatever to saddle such a gross imposition upon either the " Ancients " or " Moderns " beyond the fact that mention of it has not been

found in the operative lodges of Scotland , and this I consider goes for very little indeed . York in 1725 alludes to the "Master" and the first

Constitutions of the 1717 G . L ., lead us to believe ( as was also stated by the Ancients ) that such degree was conferred by the Ancient General Assemblies . Was it this degree and others ofthe speculative system which constituted Sir C . Wren ,

an " adopted brother " at St . Pauls in 1691 ? It sounds to sense that a Master ' s degree could be given only in the General Assemblies for the Master of a lodge being appointed for years , or even for life , no one in a private lodge could have

conferred the dignity upon him ; and it was evidently a fundamental princip le of the operative Craft that all its grades were to be conferred by sign , grip , word , and ceremonial ; and if such rule was followed in the case of a Master Mason it

would certainly apply in the case of any other gentleman admitted by the assemblies , and in the case of any other orders or degrees such as the Rosy Cross or the Temple of which they might then be possessed . In the case of Scotland '

matters were very different , the Craft ceased their General Assembly , and placed the government of themselves in an hereditary Grand Master . Other evidence of a Master ' s degree besides that at Eoslyn will I have no doubt eventually appe & P ' both in England and Scotland with the progress of Masonic Archasology .

I was at one time disposed to be very sceptical about the alleged Athelstan Constitution , but now think that there is evidence in Spain , long prior to 926 A . D ., of similar Masonic Government and in Norway and other parts , of these Guild

associations-immediate to the time of Athelstan . That the body of stonemasons in England held an Annual General : Assembly seems to admit of no manner of doubt . The constitutions of 1400 printed by Mr . J . 0 . Halliwell , says at page 16 ,

" That every Master , that ys a Mason , Most ben at the generale congregacyon . " and I may observe en passant that the first line of this quotation is in most singular coincidence with the 1500 MS . printed by Bro . Matthew Cooke ,

which states that the youngest son of Athelstan , became an operative mason , after having been a Master of Speculative Masonry , but neither of these MS . Constitutions allude to York , and no doubt it was intended that the General Assemblies

might be held wherever occasion necessitated . It has , however , been asserted , that Sir Thomas Sackville held an assembly at York in 1561 , and Bro . Godfrey Higgins seems to have received proof of this in a MS . obtained by G . M . Drake