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The Old Charges

The two oldest known masonic documents held in Britain have traditions from around 1390 and 1450 respectively. The first, which is called the Regius Manuscript, is a vellum at the British Museum containing a rather long (and not very good) poem of rhyming couplets.⁴ In 1757, a facsimile bearing the arms of King George II was produced for the Royal Library, and the original was discussed by Mr Halliwell-Phillips at the Society of Antiquaries in 1838. Subsequently, some transcribed copies were made, entitled The Early History of Freemasonry in England. The document makes no mention of King Solomon, but does feature the Alexandrian mathematician Euclid (c. 300 BC), along with an account of England’s King Athelstan of Mercia (c. 930) and his precepts concerning the duties of master masons and apprentices.

Rather more informative and entertaining than the Regius is the 15th-century Matthew Cooke Manuscript, which is also listed in the British Museum catalogue.⁵ Edited by a Matthew Cooke, it was published in London in 1891 and is believed to have originated in middle England. The two-part contents—known as the History and the Old Charges—formed part of the masonic General Regulations compiled in 1720, and were also used as reference material for James Anderson’s Constitutions three years later.

From a prayer-like beginning, the document moves to an explanation of the Seven Liberal Arts: grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. It then tells how the sciences which formed the bedrock of Freemasonry began with the biblical offspring of Lamech, namely Jabal, Jubal, Tubalcain and their sister Naamâh (Genesis 4:19-22). In line with the Bible, Tubalcain is featured in the 3rd degree of Craft masonry (the Masters degree) as an instructor of metal artificers, and historically this takes us back more than two millennia before Solomon to around 3500 BC when Tôbalkin the vulcan, son of Akalem (Lamech), was a prince in southern Mesopotamia.

Lamech was fourth in succession from Enoch (Henôkh), the son of Cain of Kish, and the manuscript relates that his offspring inscribed the sciences on two imperishable stones. They were of such virtue that one of them, called marbyll, would never burn—and the other, called latres, would not perish in water.

In part of the text the stones are referred to as ‘pylers’, and this has generally been assumed to relate to ‘pillars’. The same definition was also given in a 19th-century English translation from the 1st-century work of Flavius Josephus of Galilee, who had related a version of the same story in his Antiquities of the Jews.⁶ The translation from Josephus has been criticized by scholars because of its many inaccuracies, among which are the use of ‘brick’ and ‘stone’ for the Hebrew words equivalent to marbyll and latres. Similarly, the word ‘pillar’ was wholly misleading and led to the illusion of two great columns which appeared to have no geographical location. Given that Lamech and his sons lived before the biblical Flood, the stones became known as the Antediluvian Pillars.

In fact, there are two very distinct words used in old Hebrew, each of which has been translated to ‘pillar’ in the English version of the Old Testament—ammud and mazzebah.⁷ The first denotes a pillar such as a column in architecture or a column of smoke, but the second has a rather different connotation. It might refer to a stela or altar stone, but was equally applied to the stone that Jacob used for a pillow (pyler) and established as a mazzebah at Beth-el (Genesis 28:18). The antediluvian stones of the Matthew Cooke Manuscript were therefore correctly designated (before the translatory errors) as mazzebah stones of marbyll and latres. The former might perhaps have been marble or some crystalline rock, while the other was corrupted in some writings to ‘laterus’ and then reckoned to be ‘laterite’ (a red iron-based clay used for bricks and road surfaces). The fact is that the nature of latres is obscure, although early masonic tradition pre sumes it to have been a type of metal.⁸

The Seven Liberal Arts (artes liberales) were branches of knowledge taught in medieval schools, and they were so named from the Latin liber meaning ‘free’.⁹ (This is another possible derivation of the prefix ‘free-’ in Freemason, but again it is not the definitive source of the term as will become clear when we return to the subject in chapter 7.) The Liberal Arts were not so much taught as a means of preparing students to gain a livelihood, but to increase their awareness in the philosophical sciences. They were individually defined in 819 by the Benedictine scholar, Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mayence (Mainz) and Abbé of Fulda, the greatest seat of learning in the Frankish Empire in the days of Charlemagne. Rabanus was renowned as the most learned sage of the era, and it was said that he had no equal in matters of scriptural knowledge, canon law and liturgy.¹⁰ Among the most renowned works of Rabanus was his richly illuminated Life of Mary Magdalene.¹¹

The Liberal Arts were, in effect, perceived as routes towards personal enlightenment in the finer things that were the keys to harmony and justice. In the 2nd degree of Craft masonry (the Fellow Craft degree), it is explained to the candidate that there are seven levels to the winding staircase that leads to the middle chamber of Solomon’s Temple. They are important aspects of the journey to wisdom, and allude (among other things) to the Seven Liberal Arts. They are the abstracts of truth and, as Plato claimed, the steps of the universal whole. The painting Allegory of the Liberal Arts by the Italian artist Biagio d’Antonio (c. 1445-1510), shows the seven levels (reminiscent in concept to Blake’s Jacob’s Ladder), with scholars and philosophers receiving instruction in the respective Arts at each level, at the base of which is the Gate of Wisdom (see plate 3).

The Matthew Cooke Manuscript continues with the story of Noah and relates that after the Flood the marbyll and latres stones were found by Hermes and the Greek philosopher Pythagoras. In historical terms, this makes little sense given the enormous time span (around 3,000 years) between Noah and Pythagoras. However, the manuscript was produced in about 1450—two centuries before Archbishop Ussher of Armagh compiled the first biblical chronology, and many such date anomalies are discovered in documents of the era. But this does not excuse the naive manner in which the story is recounted verbatim today.

Other versions of the account separate the Hermes and Pythagorean involvements. They explain that, in the first instance, Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes the Thrice Great)—revered as the founder of alchemy and geometry, and from whose name the definition ‘hermetic’ derives—transcribed the stones’ content onto an emerald tablet. Then, in time, the emerald text of Hermes was inherited by Pythagoras.

The extent of truth in the story of Lamech’s offspring is unknown, but Apollonius of Tyana, from the Temple of Asklepios in Aegae, is said to have discovered the emerald text in the 1st century. From that time, many notable philosophers have studied and made use of his transcription. Extant part-translations date from the 700s, beginning with that of the Islamic philosopher Jãbir Ibn Hayyãn, who also wrote of the alchemical School of Pythagoras (the Ta’ifat Fthaghurus). Prominent among later students of the Emerald Tablet was Sir Isaac Newton. He was so entrenched in the research of ancient hermetic writings that, in a Royal Society lecture by Lord Keynes in 1942, he was referred to as ‘the last of the magicians; the last of the Babylonians and Sumerians’.¹² Unfortunately, Newton did not have the benefit of the thousands of Mesopotamian tablets discovered since his lifetime, so his efforts to produce a reliable chronology of events were substantially hampered.

Newton also translated the Corpus Hermeticum (attributed to Hermes Trismegistus), from the Florentine collection of Cosimo de Medici, and was especially interested in a unified theory of the law of the Universe (the prisca sapienta), which he referred to as the Frame of Nature. With Hermes’ maxim ‘as above, so below’ at its heart, it denotes that the harmony of earthly proportion is representative of its universal equivalent. In other words, that earthly proportion is the mundane image of cosmological structure. From the smallest cell to the widest expanse of the galaxies, a repetitive geometric law prevails, and this was understood from the very earliest of recorded times.

Following the ‘Wisdom of Lamech’ theme, the Matthew Cooke Manuscript moves to the geometry of Euclid, although confusing his lifetime with that of Abraham some 1,700 years before. It explains how geometry and masonry were synonymous crafts in ancient Egypt, and makes the point that these crafts were learned by the Israelites during their 400-year sojourn in the Nile Delta before travelling with Moses to the promised Holy Land (c. 1360 BC). Subsequently, the crafts flourished in Phoenicia and Judah, leading to their inheritance by King Solomon and his artificer Hiram, sent to Jerusalem by the King of Tyre.

At this point in the Matthew Cooke text, there is a dramatic leap in historical context and, in the same paragraph that relates to Solomon, it is stated: ‘And from thence this worthy science was brought to France.’ The account continues with the notion that Charles II of France (c. 885) was a mason before he became king. Then, flitting back in time, we are in England with the 3rd-century St Alban, followed (as in the Regius Manuscript) by the 10th-century King Athelstan and his council of stonemasons!

In all of this, the Matthew Cooke Manuscript centres on the fact that the precepts of masonry were first cemented when 40,000 masons were employed to build the Tower of Babel in Shinar (historically, the great ziggurat of Babylon in Mesopotamia). The masonic Charges, it states, were formulated by King Nimrod of Babel—the mighty hunter of Genesis 10:8-10—when he sent 3,000 masons to build the city of Nineveh in Assyria (northern Mesopotamia). Again there is a major date anomaly here since there were more than 2,000 years between Nimrod and the building of Nineveh.

Authentic or not, this rambling and diverse account is a strange mixture of tales concerning philosophical mathematics and hermetic practice, interwoven with the artisan craft of straightforward stonemasonry, without actually detailing much about any of them. Although considered to relate to speculative Freemasonry (as against operative stoneworking) it does little more than establish the fact that there is a similarity in the guild-like structure of officers and workers in the lodge fraternity.

Antients and Moderns

The documented history of Craft Freemasonry in a form that might be recognized today starts in 1717. This was just three years after Georg, Elector of Hanover in Germany, was brought over by the Westminster politicians to become King George I of Britain, thus initiating the Hanoverian dynasty, which followed the Stuart and Orange reigns. On 24 June that year, the Grand Lodge of England was founded by an amalgamation of four London lodges, which met at different taverns, namely The Goose and Gridiron, St Paul’s Churchyard, The Crown, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, The Rummer and Grapes, Channel Row, and The Apple Tree, Covent Garden.¹³ (The Goose and Gridiron, as it was in 1870 before demolition, is shown in plate 26.)

Following the death of King William in 1702, his late wife’s sister had reigned as Queen Anne for a while. But since Anne had no surviving children by her husband Prince George of Denmark, her own choice of successor was the German Electress, Sophia of Hanover. She was the daughter of Frederick V, Elector Palatine of the Rhine, whose wife was Elizabeth Stuart, a daughter of King James I (VI). Irrespective of the Stuart maternal connection, however, the Scots vigorously opposed the concept of a German ruler to the extent that the English Parliament implemented express trade limitations against the Scots. In March 1705, Westminster passed the Alien Act¹⁴ which demanded that the Scots must accept Sophia of Hanover as Anne’s successor or all trade between the North and South would cease. The importation of Scottish coal, linen and cattle into England would be forbidden and there would be no continued export of English goods into Scotland.

In order to give Westminster full powers north of the Border, the traditionally separate Scottish Three Estates Parliament in Edinburgh was terminated by the 1707 Act of Union. Many Scots would have preferred to install the son of the deposed King James as their monarch when Queen Anne died in 1714. But they had no say in the matter and, in the light of Sophia of Hanover ‘s own demise, her son Georg von Brunswick duly arrived in London to receive the crown. Following the termination of Scotland’s Parliament, all traditional Scottish Orders were taken over and reconstituted by the English establishment. These included The Most Ancient and Noble Order of the Thistle (previously equivalent to England’s Most Noble Order of the Garter) and, in the course of the restructuring, Scottish Freemasonry was also subsumed. As a result, English Freemasonry rose to the fore, soon to be granted the Hanoverian patronage that persists today with Edward, Duke of Kent, as the overall Grand Master.

Meanwhile, with the four tavern lodges combined to form the premier Grand Lodge of England from 1717, John, 2nd Duke of Montagu, was installed as Grand Master in 1721. The frontispiece of James Anderson’s Constitutions depicts Montagu passing the Constitutional Roll and the compasses (dividers) to his successor Philip, Duke of Wharton, in 1723 (see plate 5).

Having stated that the pre-1688 records of Freemasonry had been lost, Anderson set down a schedule of regulations concerning lodge appointments and activities as approved by Lord Montagu. His 1723 Constitutions also contained a list of Charges, described as being ‘The Ancient Records of Lodges beyond the Sea, and of those in England, Scotland and Ireland’—though from where he obtained them in that particular form is unknown. In 1738, however, Anderson produced a revised set of Constitutions in which his (or someone’s) imagination concocted a detailed history of English Freemasonry, which had supposedly begun with an assembly of stonemasons convened in York by a Prince Edwin in 926.¹⁵

To substantiate his dubious history of the masonic institution, Anderson explained how it had been neglected and sidelined by the previous Grand Master, Sir Christopher Wren, who had conveniently died since the 1723 Constitutions were published. This was in direct contrast to Anderson’s earlier pronouncement that there had been no Grand Lodge, and therefore no Grand Master, prior to 1717, and Wren is certainly not listed as a documented Grand Master after that date. So why did Anderson single out Christopher Wren for the blame? The reason, as will become clear, is that Wren had been a prominent mason of the Stuart fraternity of King Charles II, whose records Anderson claimed had been lost. With the Hanoverian Elector now reigning in Britain the chance came to reinvent the history of Freemasonry, and James Anderson was the foremost architect of this project, whose imaginative writings emerged like a holy writ.

In 1768, the decision was taken to build a central headquarters for Grand Lodge. A site was duly purchased in Great Queen Street, London, and on 23 May 1776 the foundation stone was laid for what was to become the first Freemasons’ Hall (incorporating, of course, the Freemason’s Tavern so as to maintain the traditional meeting environment). When producing the 1784 revision of Anderson’s Constitutions, the prestigious Hall was featured in the new frontispiece illustration (see plate 7). In this depiction, the figure of Truth is holding her mirror to illuminate the Hall, while accompanied by the other virtues of Freemasonry. (The larger Freemason’s Hall complex used today in Great Queen Street was built in 1927-33.)

During the course of Anderson’s revisions, a second Grand Lodge was founded on 17 July 1751. Calling themselves the ‘Antients’ (Ancients), they nicknamed the earlier Grand Lodge—which by then had around 200 member lodges—as the ‘Moderns’. The full style of the new group was The Most Antient and Honourable Fraternity of Free and Accepted Masons. Whereas the Moderns used the old Company of Masons guild crest as their arms, the Antients used a quartered design of a lion, ox, man and eagle—the four ‘living creatures’ from the Old Testament book of Ezekiel.¹⁶ (These visionary creatures are known in astrological circles as the Tetramorphs, representing Leo, Taurus, Aquarius and Scorpio respectively.) The Antients’ Book of Constitutions, called the Ahiman Rezon (meaning, essentially, ‘Brother Prince’) was prepared by the Irish masonic artist Laurence Dermott, who became Grand Secretary of the Antients and the chief protagonist for their Royal Arch degree (of which more later).¹⁷

Claiming a more authentic Scots-Irish tradition, which they undoubtedly had by way of the Royal Arch ritual, the Antient Grand Lodge became significant competition for the premier Grand Lodge, especially since they warranted travelling lodges in regiments of the British Army, which eventually took the masonic concept to the colonies.

In 1727, a central charity fund had been established by the premier Grand Lodge to give the cause a common purpose and, following a programme of diversified contributions for some decades, a girls’ school (funded by voluntary subscriptions) was founded in London in 1788. This established a more positive focus and soon afterwards, in 1798, the Antient Grand Lodge set up a charitable fund for boys. Now, not only was there competition over seniority and authenticity of ritual, but the two key Grand Lodges were competing in the arena of public relations and social recognition. To complicate matters even further, yet another lodge, the Grand Lodge of All England was established at York in 1761. And, in 1778, a breakaway group from the premier Grand Lodge was styled (by way of a warrant from York) as the Grand Lodge South of the River Trent.

The whole scene had become so argumentatively pointless within the course of a century that a necessary truce was called. Articles of Union were then agreed and signed by the respective Grand Masters and officers at Kensington Palace on 25 November 1813. Henceforth, the Antients and Moderns were amalgamated to form the United Grand Lodge of England which prevails today.

Old Masters

The legend of Hiram Abiff and the building of Solomon’s Temple, which dominates the 3rd degree of modern Craft Freemasonry first appeared in print as late as 1730 in a treatise by the London mason Samuel Pritchard, entitled Masonry Dissected.¹⁸ Its appearance in that work indicates that it was known earlier as part of the newly designed Grand Lodge ritual, although not mentioned by Anderson in 1723. The English scholar Thomas Paine (1723-1809) stated that Pritchard swore an oath before the Lord Mayor of London that his Masonry Dissected was a ‘true and genuine copy of every particular’—but he did not say a copy of what! (Paine was personally famedfor his works, Common Sense, Age of Reason and The Rights of Man, along with his part in the American Revolution.) We shall examine in detail the main Hiramic legend in chapter 8, but for now we can look at another account of Freemasonry’s origins as it appeared soon after the foundation of United Grand Lodge.

In 1802, a Portuguese journalist named Joseph Hippolyte da Costa was imprisoned by the Catholic Inquisition for the crime of being a Freemason, as was denounced by papal decree. Following his escape after three years, in 1820 he wrote an essay entitled ‘History of the Dionysian Artificers’ which drew parallels between masonic initiation and the Orphic mysteries. (See chapter 5 for more on this Portuguese mason.)

In this account, Hiram Abiff is said to have belonged to an ancient society known as the Dionysian Artificers, who emerged around 1000 BC just before the building of Solomon’s Temple.¹⁹ They took their name from the Greek god Dionysus (Bacchus), and were associated with another group called the Ionians, who built the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. Apparently, when in Jerusalem, the Dionysian Artificers called themselves the Sons of Solomon, and used Solomon’s six-pointed seal (two interlaced triangles) as their masons’ mark. They were seemingly masters of sacred geometry and hermetic philosophy.

There is no reason to doubt the existence of the Dionysian Artificers. They were, in fact, cited by the Greek geographer Strabo in the 1st century BC. He wrote that they acquired their name because Dionysus was reckoned to be the inventor of theatres. Whether Solomon’s artificer, Hiram of Tyre, was associated with this group is another matter. He might well have been if they had a presence in Phoenicia, but there is no mention of the Hiram connection that can be discovered prior to the 1820 treatise.

Another addition to the said masonic pedigree comes in the form of a college of architects called the Comacine Masters, who were based at Lake Como in Northern Italy during medieval times. The masonic link to this guild was said to have been referenced by a Lucy Baxter (pen-name Leader Scott) in her book The Cathedral Builders, published in 1899. The theme of a link between the Comacines and Freemasonry was subsequently taken up in a booklet called The Comacines that was serialized in the masonic journal, The Builder, in 1910.

From the architectural records of Lombardy, it can be deduced that the Magistri Comacini were indeed prominent in their day, and they made a good contribution to Italian design between the years 800 and 1000. But there is nothing whatever to associate them in any way with English masonic history. In fact, not even Leader Scott (who is widely misquoted) said there was a connection. Having investigated the possibility, she stated: ‘There is no certain proof that the Comacines were the veritable stock from which the pseudo Freemasonry of the present day sprang.’²⁰