The Old Charges
Bro. H. L. Haywood
from The Builder, September 1923.
WHAT THE OLD CHARGES ARE
I have just come from reading an article in one of the more obscure masonic
periodicals in which an unknown brother lets go with this very familiar
remark: "As for me, I am not interested in the musty old documents
of the past. I want to know what is going on today." The context makes
it clear that he had in mind the Old Charges. A sufficient reply to this
ignoramus is that the Old Charges are among the things that are "going
on today." Eliminate them from Freemasonry as it now functions and
not a subordinate lodge, or a Grand Lodge, or any other regular masonic
body could operate at all; they are to what the Constitution of this nation
is to the United States government, and what its statutes are to every
state in the Union. All our constitutions, statutes, laws, rules, by-laws
and regulations to some extent or other hark back to the Old Charges, and
without them masonic jurisprudence, or the methods for governing and regulating
the legal affairs of the Craft, would be left hanging suspended in the
air. In proportion as masonic leaders, Grand Masters, Worshipful Masters
and Jurisprudence Committees ignore, or forget, or misunderstand these
masonic charters they run amuck, and lead the Craft into all manner of
wild and unmasonic undertakings. If some magician could devise a method
whereby a clear conception of the Old Charges and what they stand for could
be installed into the head of every active mason in the land, it would
save us all from embarrassment times without number and it would relieve
Grand Lodges and other Grand bodies from the needless expenditure of hundreds
of thousands of dollars every year. If there is any practical necessity,
any hard down-next-to-the-ground necessity anywhere in Freemasonry today,
it is for a general clear-headed understanding of the Ancient Constitutions
and landmarks of our Order.
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", etc, etc. 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 beautiful 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, page 40 (1918), Brother Roderick
H. Baxter, now Worshipful Master of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, listed 98,
which number included the versions known to be missing. Brother 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, the erudite doctor 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 Brother Lionel
Vibert, a copy of which will be published in a future issue of The Builder.
The first known printed reference to these Old Charges was made by Dr.
Robert Plot in his Natural History of Staffordshire, published in 1686.
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." (A.Q.C. XVL page 1)
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