Facing Up At Last?

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The 1991 edition of a popular history of SF, first published in 1953 and since then revised and re-published many times maintained:


Up to the present time, no even plausible theory of the 'origin' of the freemasons has been put forward.235
This is a remarkable statement and stretches the whole organisations' credibility to breaking point. The two authors, both well-respected Masons, don't improve the situation by following the above sentence with:


The reason for this is probably that the Craft, as we know it, originated among the operative masons of Britain.

They proceed to bury on page 246, two brief paragraphs on 'The Worshipful Society of Free Masons, Rough Masons, Slaters, Paviors, Plaisterers and Bricklayers' in whose history one imagines a 'plausible theory' could be sought. Indeed, Pick and Knight begin these two paragraphs with the bald statement:


This society is popularly known as 'The Operatives' because it preserves the old operative rituals in its ceremonies.

Not, notice, 'because it is believed that' or 'its members believe that' but simply 'because it preserves the old operative rituals.' Perhaps I'm missing something, not being an SF but I would have thought that possession of 'the old operative rituals' would, in itself, be sufficient evidence to resolve the major issue once and for all. Any doubts that exist could be addressed very easily through seriously conducted comparative tests.236 I return to this shortly.

Some mainstream Freemason researchers moved in the 1990's to break out of the impasse. Markham, author of the prestigious 1997 Prestonian Lecture, 'Some Problems of English Masonic History' joined brethren urging that 'the Craft' engage with outside historians for 'despite its very interesting historical character, Freemasonry has never been understood by non-masonic historians as part of general history.'237 He was most concerned with the damage done by anti-Masonry attacks published and circulated over the years, but he acknowledged that not all Masonic 'histories' had been useful:


There have been many theories of (the) origin of Freemasonry (some logically argued, and others eccentric in the extreme). A general approach has been to take a preconceived theory and try to make it fit with the various surviving divergent fragments of evidence of early masonic history; and there has been a general lack of success.238

In sadness, not anger, I note that in 1890 Gould had made plain to his colleagues in SF research his opinion that:


(The) domain of Ancient, as distinguished from that of Modern Masonry, has been very strangely neglected, and that if we really wish to enlist the sympathy and interest of scholars and men of intelligence, in the special labours of the [Research] Lodge, we must make a least a resolute attempt to partially lift the veil, by which the earlier history of our Art or Science is obscured.239

In order that his meaning would be totally clear to all, he spelt out that:


(By) the expression 'Ancient Masonry' is to be understood the history of the Craft before, and by that of 'Modern Masonry' the history of the Craft after the era of Grand Lodges. The line of demarcation between them being drawn at the year 1717.

Apparently making a break, academic and SF Prescott announced in 2000 the establishment of the Centre for Research into Freemasonry at Sheffield University, to 'encourage and undertake objective scholarly research into the social and cultural impact of freemasonry' [NB lack of a capital - emphasis mine] Prescott said he and his colleagues at the Centre took as their intellectual manifesto an article by Oxford historian Roberts published in 1969 where could be found:


It is surprising that in the country which gave freemasonry [no cap] to the world it has attracted hardly any interest from the professional historian...The result has been at best faithful reproduction of traditional hagiography and at worst lunatic speculation. 240

Markham acknowledged the use of secrecy by lodges was a contributor to the situation he was addressing and that in Ireland especially, ritual and rules were simply not committed to paper until late in the 18th century.241 He made clear that the later the ritual the more likely it was to occupy a greater number of words, but that on a number of significant occasions attempts were made to get back to an earlier, simpler version, what was known in continental Europe as the 'English' rite:


(the) French were not content with limiting the movement to the supposed moral customs, secrets and ritual of stonemasons, and soon related it also to ideals of knighthood...When, in the late 18th century, particularly in Germany, excesses arose in the attempted development of Masonry and its rituals, including attempts to use them for commercial gain, it was to the pure ideals of 'English Masonry' that a return was sought.242

Curiously, this 'English' rite almost certainly owed its survival to the committment of Irish masons who were responsible for what is now called the 'Antient' form, which Markham believed research has shown, was of mediaeval origin.243 Whether this made these 'masons' both speculative and operative at the same time is the $64 question, and one I can't answer at the moment.

The 'Antients' were a group of lodges, whose 'history' is not clear, unhappy with changes introduced after 1717, on the basis of their claimed knowledge of the earlier rites. Many of them aligned with a Grand Lodge at York until 'the Union' of 1813, when what I would call a 'revised' SF incorporated sufficient 'Antient' material for that 'faction' to agree to a merger with the London-based Grand Lodge, the 'Moderns.'

Although it is likely, therefore, that basic, 'Craft' SF ritual today is closer to that of the mediaeval operative stonemasons than it was for the period 1723 to 1813, an outcome impacting on the Webbs' interpretation of labour history, this is not the whole story.