The one aspect of Freemasonry that is not supposed to be a mystery turns out to be the biggest mystery of all, and that is how Freemasonry came to be, and why. The origin and purpose of Freemasonry is not supposed to be a mystery because Masons, anti-Masons, and the general press almost universally agree that Freemasonry originated in the medieval guilds of stonemasons in Britain. The research behind this book led to the conclusion that this theory, no matter how widely accepted, is wrong. To disagree with authorities, both Masonic and non-Masonic, who have expounded the belief in guild origins generated a great measure of self-doubt, which in turn provided the incentive for many months of research involving thousands of miles of travel. At the end of the search the conviction that the guild theory was erroneous was stronger than ever, and the doubt was gone.
It must be admitted that modern Masonic writers do allow more room for new speculations and new research than their non-Masonic counterparts. Freemasons F. L. Pick and G. N. Knight, in their authoritative handbook The Pocket History of Freemasonry, state: “Up to the present time, no even plausible theory of the ‘origin’ of the Freemasons has been put forward. The reason for this is probably that the Craft, as we know it, originated among the operative masons of Britain.” The late Stephen Knight, the most outspoken critic of Freemasonry in recent years, expressed no doubt as to Masonic origins in his book The Brotherhood, in which the title he gave to Part One is “Worker’s Guild to Secret Society.” He stated that the history of Freemasonry “is the story of how a Roman Catholic trade guild for a few thousand building workers in Britain came to be taken over by the aristocracy, the gentry, and members of mainly nonproductive professions, and how it was turned into a non-Christian secret society.” That characterization didn’t deter us, for several reasons. First, all trade guilds in medieval Europe might well be styled “Roman Catholic,” because Roman Catholic was the only thing to be (unless one cared to risk loss of property, physical torture, and a premature end in the midst of a pile of burning faggots). Second, craft guilds were strictly local in nature and there was never a medieval craft guild that operated over the length and breadth of Britain. Third, the fact that Freemasonry does not require that a member be a Christian, but only that he believe in God and the immortality of the soul, suggests that such a group could not have originated in a craft guild, particularly one whose principal customer would have had to be the major customer for stone structures, the church.
On the other hand, one must take pause at the matter-of-fact declaration of the Encyclopaedia Britannica: “Freemasonry evolved from the guilds of stonemasons and cathedral builders of the middle ages.”
It would be necessary to examine the guild connection carefully, but early research indicated the high probability that the Masonic role as card-carrying members of a guild of stonemasons was a cover story, a not uncommon feature of secret societies. During World War II the Japanese operated a secret society, known as the Shindo Rommei, in the Amazon Basin. Its objective was the preparation for the exploitation of the natural resources of the area after the expected Japanese victory. Its cover operation was fishing; its secret vocabulary was made up of fishing terms. When the society was finally exposed and its members arrested, it turned out that its supreme commander was a Japanese colonel disguised as the female cook on a fishing vessel. In India, members of a secret society known as Thuggee (which gave us our word “thug”) traveled the roads disguised as itinerant traders and used the terminology of trading with secret meaning. They easily mixed with other traveling traders whom they marked as victims, murdering them with strangling cloths and dedicating the deaths to the bloody goddess Kali. In Elizabethan England, the prohibited Jesuits and their followers used trading language as a cover. If one Catholic told another that “two new merchants from Italy have landed at Plymouth and are seeking connections in Sussex,” the word had been passed that two new Jesuit priests had arrived and were seeking a safe house in Sussex. It would not be at all unusual for a secret society whose central ritual involved the allegorical building of the Temple of Solomon to gradually assume the cover story of being actual builders. On the other hand, a concept accepted as history for over two centuries could not be lightly shrugged aside, requiring that more be learned about the medieval guilds of craftsmen, especially those based on stonemasonry.
A guild was not an association of workers, but rather an association of entrepreneurial owners. It operated under a charter, which granted the association a franchise, a monopoly on a craft or service for a specified area, usually a town. The guild benefited by gaining the rights to shut out all competition, to set prices at levels guaranteed to turn a profit, to adjust the level of production to the current demand, and to control the number of new practitioners permitted to enter that trade or service. The benefit to the lord granting the charter was an orderly means of collecting tolls and taxes on raw material coming in and on the sale of the finished product. It could also mean the absence of petty problems or unrest by guaranteeing a level of product quality. Without a bakers’ guild setting and enforcing standards, for example, some bakers might short-weight loaves, underbake, or even throw a little sawdust in the recipe. Under the guild system, as it developed, the guild not only set the quality levels of finished products but also decreed the type and source of raw materials, the tools to be used, and even the methods of using them.
The guild motivation was profit, and the recognized way to maximize profit was through a monopoly that could adjust the supply to the demand. No guild member would want to adjust supply by producing less than his own capacity, so the accepted method of holding down supply became regulations regarding how many could enter the trade, and especially how many could become master craftsmen, which meant that they could own tools and turn out finished products for sale. The masters ran the guild, so were reluctant to permit new masters if there was not a ready market for their proposed output.
The master was the only full member of the trade or craft guild and was an owner-operator. His shop and home were generally combined, and he owned the tools. He purchased the required raw materials, supervised the work, and looked to the marketing of the product. He frequently obtained an extra source of both income and free labor by taking on one or more apprentices. These were usually boys, who would be young men by the time they finished their term of apprenticeship, usually seven years. The boys worked and learned under a legally binding contract that gave them a status akin to that of a bond servant. If they tried to run away they could be arrested, brought back, and punished. In the contract of apprenticeship, the master agreed to provide training in every facet of the craft to the level of skill at which the apprentice could be accredited by the guild by means of an examination, which often included the presentation of a finished product from the candidate, his “master-piece.”
The master also acted somewhat in the role of a foster father. He agreed to provide the apprentice with room and board and to raise him in the path of godliness. He set forth the rules of conduct and was legally entitled to punish the delinquent apprentice, even by beating. For all of these services the master was entitled to a fee plus all of the work he could get from his trainee.
Unfortunately, the completion of the apprenticeship, and even glowing praise accompanying the approval of his master-piece, did not mean that the newly accepted craftsman could automatically set himself up as a master. Only the guild could give approval of that status, which might not come for years, if ever. In the meantime, he drifted in limbo between the apprenticeship behind him and the master status ahead, which he might never achieve. All he could do was to offer himself as an employee to a master, who usually paid him on a daily basis for the days he worked. On that basis he became known as a “journeyman” (from the Middle English and Norman French word journée: “a day”). A journeyman who was particularly good might husband his pennies for the purchase of tools and look for a situation just outside the guild franchise area, perhaps just a mile or two from town, and risk the anger of the guild fathers by competing with their monopoly. For that reason the guilds were constantly striving to extend their franchised territories (as we saw during the Peasants’ Rebellion, when the rebels attacked Great Yarmouth with enthusiasm because the monopoly of the guilds there had been extended to seven miles around the town.).
As labor began to be divided into specialties, guilds found their profits influenced by other guilds, and conflicts arose. The saddlers needed to buy leather from the tanners and iron and brass findings from the metalworkers, then have the saddle decorated by the painters and stainers. The interrelationships were most complex in the woolen industry, which in the Middle Ages was Britain’s most important export. Profitability was influenced by the prices charged by the spinners, the dyers, the weavers, and the fullers. And by far the greatest influences on profitability were the great merchant guilds, which controlled the sources of raw materials, the shipping, and the export markets for the end products. Theirs was the greatest certainty of profit and they became wealthy enough to earn the envy of the landed aristocracy. Some of the merchant guilds were able to get permission to set up trading offices and warehouses in other countries, and foreign guilds, made up mostly of Flemings and Lombards, got the same privileges in Britain. The rebels in London, in their fury against the merchants, had dragged foreign merchants from their church to butcher them in the road. At Berwick, England’s Edward I revealed his attitude toward a charter granted by that Scottish town as he attacked the foreign merchants and burned their guildhall down around them.
Among other things, the great merchants used their wealth to change the course of municipal government. Forming associations that could legally be regarded as individuals (corpus: corporation), they leased entire towns from their lords and, in the case of London, from the crown itself. Giving up entry tolls, market fees, and other sources of income was palatable to the ruling lord in exchange for a dependable annual fee, which only the wealthier guilds could afford. This was clear in the Peasants’ Rebellion, as the craftsmen of York, Beverly, and Scarborough revolted to force the great merchant families to share the town government with them.
Eventually the craft guilds did achieve a voice in their own towns, and to this very day the ancient guilds of London, now called the Livery Companies (because of their common ceremonial costumes), elect the lord mayor of London from among themselves. Sir William Walworth, the mayor of London who struck down Wat Tyler, was a member of the Honourable Company of Fishmongers.
Within the frameworks of their charters, the guilds enjoyed a high degree of self-government, and they, not the courts, usually heard grievances against the products or services of the guild members, holding the power to discipline those found breaking the guild rules. This is not as unusual as it sounds, and one might gain a somewhat better understanding of the guild system by examining the practice of law in the United States. Attorneys have charters that grant them a monopoly on the practice of law, and those charters are issued by states as well as by agencies of the federal government. After a period of training, the student is given an examination to prove that he or she has achieved sufficient knowledge to be worthy of admission. Although that training is now received by means of law schools, there are still attorneys alive who did not attend law school but learned by apprenticeship to other lawyers, a practice known as “reading to the law.” The attorneys’ associations have a strong influence on schools of law and even assist in the establishment of curricula.
Internally, the attorneys have standards of conduct and service called Canons of Ethics. Censure and discipline can be levied upon members who transgress those rules. Attorneys also maintain grievance committees to hear complaints against members and these may rule on such matters as the fees charged for services. In all of these things, the monopolistic associations of attorneys are much like guilds. Also like guilds, membership can bestow privileges. One of those privileges, granted centuries ago, is still treasured in remembrance by attorneys throughout the English-speaking world.
It may be recalled that during the Peasant’s Rebellion the rebels attacked the rooms of lawyers in the Temple area of London between Fleet Street and the Thames River. That property had been taken from the Templars and given to the Hospitallers, who in turn leased part of it for inns and rooms for lawyers who came to London to appear before the king’s court in the adjoining Royal City of Westminster. The location was perfect because it was adjacent to a gate to Westminster called the Barrière du Temple. The barrière (from which we get our word “barrier”) was a checkpoint for the paying of tolls to pass through. Lawyers going back and forth several times daily could not be expected to pay a toll every time, so were granted the valuable privilege of passing through the Barrière du Temple, eventually anglicized to the “Temple Bar,” without paying the toll. The young man who finally qualified to appear before the court earned the right to “pass the bar.” Those entitled to pass the Barrière became known as “barristers,” and to this day the remembrance of that privilege is preserved as young people take bar examinations to pass the bar and join the attorneys’ “guilds,” now called bar associations.
Medieval guilds were also a strong support to the established religion. They made gifts to the Church of money and of valuable religious objects. Many owned relics of saints and had patron saints whose feast days they celebrated publicly. Most had specially designated churches in which they performed their own special observances and devotions. The practice lives on, and today the lovely little Wren church of St. James Garlickhythe (hythe means “dock”) is the official church of eight London Livery Companies: the Vintners, the Dyers, the Painter-Stainers, the Joiners and Ceilers, the Horners (lantern makers), the Needlemakers, the Glass Sellers, and the Gold and Silver Wyre Drawers.
In their religious activities the craft guilds provided an earthy experience the people could appreciate because the guild members were of the common people, not the aristocracy. They staged religious miracle plays, many of which required months for the preparation of costumes and scenery, and the dialogue was not in Latin, but in the vernacular of the common people. They helped in the transition into Christianity of the very ancient celebrations occasioned by weather and the phases of agriculture, which could not be totally stamped out by the Church and so were finally taken over as Christian festivals. The winter solstice festival, celebrating the victory of the sun over the powers of darkness (as the days grew longer), was celebrated as Christmas; the vernal equinox was covered by Easter; the summer solstice became the feast of Corpus Christi; and the fall harvest festivals were celebrated as All Saints’ Day. As far back as the seventh century the church had begun to bend, trying to pry the people loose from their old natural religion. The Venerable Bede told his missionary priests not to deny the British goddess known variously as the “Earth Mother,” “Corn Woman,” or simply “The Lady,” but to tell people that The Lady was the same as Our Lady, and that the priests had come to clarify Her heavenly role. No longer is anyone concerned that certain pagan symbols have proven to be unrootable, and very few people today mind the use of the heathen term Yule, or the use of those symbols of the strong spirits that kept life going through the death of almost everything else in winter, as we tack up holly and mistletoe and decorate Christmas trees. Nor is anyone offended at the continuing popularity of the fertility symbols of the rabbit and the egg at Easter. (There did come a time in England, however, when the maypole was condemned and banned as a beribboned phallic symbol, which it was).
What the guilds did was to stage miracle plays, some lasting for days, that took the Christian teaching to the people in language they could understand and gave them a visual presentation of the Bible, which they were forbidden to read. Touches of the old pre-Christian religious customs were occasionally and inadvertently blended into scriptural accounts, doing much more to weld the audiences to the church than any of the Latin services they could not comprehend and with which they could not empathize. The guilds were very proud of their miracle play productions and strove to outdo one another, becoming a very important part of the medieval Christian experience. These, then, were the people who are supposed to have been the predecessors of religiously tolerant Freemasonry, in a guild devoted to the craft of the stonemason.
The first major problem with the concept of a Masonic predecessor guild of stonemasons is the franchise territory. Craft guilds were almost always local, but Freemasonry was found in cells all over Britain. Even if one could contemplate some loose association of guilds in England, it would be difficult to maintain that the same organization existed in Scotland. A guild, after all, required a charter. We have seen how things stood between England and Scotland in the Middle Ages, and it is highly unlikely that a group chartered by one would be welcome to the other: Quite the opposite would have been true. There is simply no way that any one guild could have been acceptable to the governments of England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. As to their charters, in such broad territories those charters would have had to come from the central governments, and there is no record, nor even a hint, of such a thing ever happening. There are, however, numerous records citing the master builders of notable structures, and quite often these were members of the religious orders for whom the buildings were being built, monks who certainly were not members of any guild.
Masons and non-Masons alike have explained the need for secret grips and signals by stating that medieval stonemasons were itinerant workers, traveling from castle job to cathedral site as work was available. Because they had no permanent base like other guilds, they would need secret signs by which to identify each other to maintain their “closed shop” monopoly status. With no fixed home, they would meet in lodges to discuss their affairs. That theory would have us believe that constructing an abbey, a castle, or a cathedral was not unlike throwing up prefabricated tract housing with temporary workers. To build a castle, in fact, might take five to twenty years, and the great Gothic cathedrals were under construction for generations, with some taking as much as a century to complete. On such jobs, a man was not likely to live in temporary quarters with the wife and children off somewhere at home. The theory would also require that the structure was being built outside the jurisdiction of the authority of the guild charter, which would require permission for legal travel. Evidence of membership in that guild would not have to have been kept a secret, nor would the evidence of such membership have been limited to verbal communication. To the contrary, proof of membership in a legally chartered association and proof of a job waiting would have to have been produced on demand, especially in the Middle Ages in England, when for much of the period a pass was required for a man to travel outside his own town or hundred. To get such a pass, the reason for the travel had to be stated and believed.
As for guild meetings in “lodges,” there certainly were barracks built for the hordes of workmen who were frequently drafted at those times when they were not desperately needed for plowing, planting, and harvesting. They worked in the quarries, transported stone, and provided an army of muscle for the stonemasons. They were very temporary, and were provided with a place to sleep and food to eat. Certainly the master builders did not eat and sleep in the labor barracks, which just as certainly were not “lodges.”
Freemasons have a few ancient documents they call the “Old Charges of Masonry,” the oldest of which appears to date from the fourteenth century. They set forth rules of conduct and responsibility that have been assumed to relate to the conduct of the medieval stonemasons’ guild. One of these charges is that no member is to reveal any secret of any brother that might cost him his life and property. The only such secret, one that would cost a man his life and property, would have been that he was guilty of treason or heresy, or, as is often the case when there is a state religion, both. Another charge is that no visiting brother is to go into the town without a local brother to “witness” for him. If a stonemason had legitimate employment with the local lord or bishop, he would have had no need for anyone to witness for him (evidence knowledge of him). On the other hand, if he had no proof of employment, had no travel pass and no means to explain his business in the town, he could and would have been apprehended and thrown into jail straightaway and held there until the matter was settled. A known local witness could provide a believable cover story and verification of a real or assumed identity. Most important, the resident brother could steer the visitor away from the very people and places that might cause the questions to come up.
Still another Old Charge was that the visiting brother be given “employment” for two weeks, then given some money and put on the road to the next lodge. We should not be asked to believe that medieval guilds of master craftsmen made a practice of hiring men they didn’t need and bestowing money on itinerant stonemasons passing through. That kind of treatment is much more likely to be extended to a man on the run, who would be given lodging for up to two weeks, not “employment.” Another interesting Old Charge is that no Mason should engage in sexual congress with the wife, daughter, mother, or sister of a brother Mason. This charge has been used by anti-Masons to show that Masons had selective morality, because their moral code was limited to their own members, allowing the brothers to have sexual relations with the wife, daughter, mother, or sister of any non-Mason. The mistake of such critics lies in seeing that charge as part of any code of morality, which it is not. This brotherhood was a secret organization that somehow included men being, or aiding and abetting, heretics and traitors. It was vital that they stick together. A man coming home to find a brother having at it with his wife or daughter might forget his sacred oath of brotherhood on the spot, so that the prohibition of such activity was not morality; it was wisdom.
A very major difference between medieval guilds and Freemasonry was the one cited by Stephen Knight. The guilds were very religious, and any guild counting on the Roman Catholic church as its major customer would have been especially and overtly devout. Freemasonry, however, admits any believer in a monotheistic God. The ritual makes no mention of Jesus Christ, or of His Mother, while many guilds were in the forefront of the growing special veneration of Mary. How could such a transition have taken place? It didn’t.
Taken all together, what had been learned about Freemasonry indicated that it was essentially a mutual protection society of men at odds with church or state, or both, and not a building society. That opinion was so far from the view held by almost everyone else that the point seemed best put to rest by going to the source, to the original charters of the medieval stonemasons’ guilds, to check their territorial limitations and the monopolistic aspects of their franchises.
London was the first stop, but most of the records we might like to have seen were destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. There is a Company of Masons among the Livery Companies of London, but it was formed much too late to have had a role in Masonic origins. It ranks twenty-ninth in precedence among the Livery Companies, many of which have permanent Masonic lodge rooms in their own guildhalls. If the London masons’ company had had a role in Secret Masonry, it would now be treated with reverential awe, but there is no indication that it receives any special treatment from Freemasons.
It was decided to turn to Oxford, that most monumental of British cities, which holds in addition to its ruined castle and lofty churches a collection of colleges, all of stone, each with its own chapel and halls. Building went on there for generation after generation, and if only one city in Britain could have supported a permanent local guild of stonemasons, Oxford was surely it. Weeks before my arrival I arranged for a seat in the search room of the Archives of Oxfordshire County, where documents go back to the twelfth century. I had told the staff in advance that I would want to look at charters or any other documentation relating to any guild of stonemasons. Upon my arrival, the staff seemed embarrassed to tell me that they had searched their files and could find not even a reference to a guild of masons in Oxfordshire. In an extra effort, they contacted the clerk to the Town Council at nearby Burford, where some of the beautiful Cotswold stone is still quarried. That gentleman also tried, but could find no reference to any guild of stonemasons. He suggested that if I was eager to find a medieval guild of masons, I should go to France.
The next try was at Lincoln, a city known for its medieval stone buildings, including its magnificent cathedral, its massive castle, and the best collection of medieval houses and guildhalls in England. The library staff there were helpful but could provide no evidence of a medieval guild of stonemasons in Lincoln. The same spirit of helpfulness and the same negative result was encountered at the Lincolnshire County Museum.
A final check at Oxford’s Bodleian, one of the great libraries of the world, and I finally felt absolutely secure in stating that Freemasonry did not evolve from the medieval guilds of stonemasons in Britain because it would appear that there were no medieval guilds of stonemasons in Britain. Freemasons, anti-Masons, and interested historians will apparently have to live with the simple fact that constant repetition does not create truth.
If I felt lonely in that discovery, the feeling didn’t last long. Before leaving England, browsing the bookshops on Charing Cross Road, I discovered that a serious book on Masonry had been published in 1986. It was The Craft, written by John Hamill, the librarian and curator of the United Grand Lodge Library and Museum in London. Mr. Hamill opens the first chapter of his book with these words: “When, Why and Where did Freemasonry originate? There is one answer to these questions: We do not know, despite all the paper and ink that has been expended in examining them.” Toward the end of that chapter he states: “Whether we shall ever discover the true origins of Freemasonry is open to question.” Although it is possible that Mr. Hamill may not agree in any way with the conclusions finally reached in this book, at least his reasonable open-mindedness and impeccable credentials established a common ground of wiping out all prior notions as unproven. It had become possible to begin at ground zero to examine the rites and rituals of Freemasonry, unencumbered by advocacy or preconceptions.
To get to the heart of Secret Masonry required a look at the initiation ceremonies and lectures for the three basic degrees of Craft Masonry: the Entered Apprentice, the Fellow Craft, and the Master Mason.
What would be being sought was any clue to the great Masonic mysteries:
1. When did Freemasonry come into existence? Did it evolve, or was it triggered by an event or set of circumstances?
2. What was the purpose of Freemasonry that kept it alive underground for centuries and that kept it constantly supplied with new recruits?
3. Why was that purpose totally lost by 1717?
4. What are the meanings of the Mason’s symbols—the compass and square, the apron and gloves, the letter G, the circle on the floor, the black and white mosaic?
5. How did Masonry come to attract and ultimately be led by the upper reaches of the aristocracy and the royal family?
6. How and why did Freemasonry adopt a policy of total religious tolerance in an atmosphere in which Roman Catholicism was the only legal creed, thereby risking torture and death?
7. What was Freemasonry doing for all those years that required such incredible secrecy and such bloody penalties for revealing its secrets?
8. Was there any direct connection between Freemasonry and the suppressed order of the Knights of the Temple?
It took some digging, but the answers were all there.