Freemasons. The masonic brotherhoods of the middle ages were organised incorporations, not substantially different in their nature from the other guilds, governed by rules of their own, and recruited from a body of apprentices who had undergone a period of probationary servitude. Fable and imagination have traced back the origin of freemasonry to the Knights Templars, the old Roman empire, the Pharaohs, Hiram of Tyre and the Temple of Solomon, or even the times of the Tower of Babel and of the Ark of Noah. The masonic craft in reality sprang into being about the same time and from the same set of causes as other incorporated crafts; but a variety of circumstances combined to give it an importance and influence beyond the rest. Men skilled in the hewing and setting of stones were naturally prized in an eminently church-building age. Their vocation necessarily involved travelling from place to place in search of employment. Wherever a great church or cathedral was built the local masons had to be reinforced by a large accession of craftsmen from other parts; and the masons from neighbouring towns and districts flocked to the spot and took part in the work, living in a camp of huts reared beside the building on which they were engaged. A master presided over the whole, and was assisted by wardens having surveillance of the rest. A mason, therefore, after going through his apprenticeship and probations, could not settle down like other craftsmen among his neighbours and acquaintances, but must travel from place to place to find employment; hence it became desirable or necessary to devise means by which a person once a member of the fraternity might be universally accepted as such, without requiring, wherever he went, to give fresh evidence of his skill, or having to undergo a renewed examination on his qualifications. In order to accomplish this end, and to enable a mason travelling to his work to claim the hospitality of his brother-masons on his way, certain signs and words were conveyed to him, which he was bound to keep secret. This arrangement is the sole shadow of foundation for the popular notion that the masonic brethren were in possession of secrets of vital importance, the knowledge of which had been from generation to generation confined to their own order. It has been supposed that the possession of the masonic secrets enabled the masons to design the great cathedrals of the 13th and 14th centuries; whereas it is now certain that during the purest ages of Gothic architecture, both in France and in England, the architects were not members of the masonic fraternity at all, but either laymen of skill and taste, uninitiated in the mysteries of masoncraft, or oftener bishops and abbots. The masons who worked from the architect's design were, at the same time, not the mere human machines that modern workmen too generally are, but men who, in carrying out an idea imparted to them, could stamp an individuality of their own on every stone. Architecture was then a progressive art, and the architect of every great church or cathedral had made himself acquainted with the works of his predecessors, and profited by experience, adopting their beauties and shunning their defects. The nature of the advance which architecture was then making has been compared by Fergusson to the advance with which we are familiar in the present day in shipbuilding and other useful arts. 'Neither to the masons nor to their employers, nor to the Abbé Snger, Maurice de Sully, Robert de Susarches, nor Fulbert de Chartres is the whole merit to be ascribed, but to all classes of the French community carrying on steadily a combined movement towards a well-defined end.' In Germany, however, the masons of the 14th century, who had attained a wonderful skill in carving and in constructing arches, overstepping their original functions, took to a great extent the office of architect into their own hands; and it is undeniable that the churches designed by German masons, though rich in the most exquisite workmanship, are not comparable in the higher elements of beauty to the works of non-masonic architects.
The epithet 'Free,' as applied to the craft, was originally used as an abbreviation of the term 'freemen masons'—free of their guild. Scotland possesses the earliest record of the presence of theoretical or speculative masons in mason lodges. This is shown in the minute of a conventicle of the Lodge of Edinburgh, held at Holyrood House in the year 1600.
The history of freemasonry has been overlaid with fiction and absurdity, partly from an exaggerated estimate of its importance in the development of architecture, and partly from a wish to connect medieval masonry with the institution that passes under the same name in the present day. Modern (or so-called 'speculative') freemasonry is an innocent mystification unconnected either with the building craft or with architecture. It is of English origin, and dates from the 18th century. According to its peculiar phraseology, it is founded in the 'practice of moral and social virtue;' its distinguishing characteristic is charity, in its most extended sense; and brotherly love, relief, and truth are inculcated by its precepts. In freemasonry there are three grades—apprentice, fellow-craft, and master-mason; there being peculiar ceremonies at the making of each; and it is only on attaining to the degree of master-mason that a brother enjoys the full benefits and privileges of the craft.
The 'Lodges' of Scotland profess to trace their origin to the foreign masons who came to Scotland in the 12th century to build the Abbeys of Holyrood, Kilwinning, and Melrose. Those of England go still further back, to an assemblage of masons held by King Athelstan, at York, in 926. The mother-lodges of York and Kilwinning were the parents of many lodges erected in different parts of Great Britain; while several of the pre-18th century Scottish lodges were self-constituted. Towards the close of the 18th century it was in some quarters (as by Robison in his Proof of a Conspiracy, &c. 1797) made a charge against freemasonry that under its symbolism was concealed a dangerous conspiracy against all government and religion. The accusation was probably groundless enough as regards British freemasonry; and so little effect was produced by it that, in an act passed in 1799 for the suppression of secret societies, an exception was made in favour of freemasons. On the Continent political intriguers may sometimes have availed themselves of the secrecy afforded by freemasonry to further their schemes. In 1717 a Grand Lodge was formed in London, with power to grant charters to other lodges. Under its sanction the first edition of the constitutions of the fraternity was published. The Grand Lodge was for a length of time on an unfriendly footing with the lodge of York, in consequence of having introduced various innovations not approved of by the older lodge, and of having granted charters within the district which York claimed as its own. In 1782 the then Duke of Cumberland (brother of George III.) was elected Grand Master of the Grand Lodge; and on his death George IV., then Prince of Wales, succeeded to the office, which he continued to hold till he was appointed regent, when, it being considered unsuitable that he should longer exercise any personal superintendence, he took the title of Grand Patron. In 1813 an understanding and a union was brought about between the two rival Grand Lodges by their respective Grand Masters, the Dukes of Kent and Sussex. The fraternity has since been managed by the 'United Grand Lodge of Ancient Free and Accepted Masons of England,' consisting of the Grand Master, with his Deputy, Grand Wardens, and other officers, the provincial Grand Masters, and the Masters and Wardens of all regular lodges, with a certain number of stewards annually elected, who meet four times a year for the despatch of business, besides which there is an annual masonic festival, at which every mason is entitled to attend. The Grand Lodge of England has at present nearly two thousand lodges under its protection; the Prince of Wales was elected its Grand Master in 1874.
In Scotland the masons, when they were a real company of artificers, were, like other handicrafts, governed by wardens of districts appointed by the king. In 1598 a reorganisation of the mason lodges was effected under William Schaw, principal warden and chief master of masons, who in the following year confirmed the three 'heid lodges' in their ancient order of priority—Edinburgh first, Kilwinning second, and Stirling third. In 1736, the operative element in mason lodges having become absorbed in speculative masonry, the Grand Lodge of Scotland was instituted by the representatives of thirty-four lodges, by whom also William St Clair of Roslin was elected Grand Master, on account of his ancestors' alleged ancient connection with the mason craft as patrons and protectors. Priority was assigned to the lodges according to the antiquity of their written records. The Lodge of Edinburgh (Mary's Chapel), with its records dating from 1599, was placed first, and Kilwinning, possessing records from 1642, second. The Lodge of Kilwinning did not formally object to this till 1744, when it withdrew from the Grand Lodge and resumed its independence. On relinquishing this position in 1807 it was re-admitted into the Grand Lodge by the title of Mother Kilwinning, with precedence over the other lodges, and the Provincial Grand Mastership of Ayrshire confirmed in perpetuity to its Master.
Besides granting charters of affiliation, the chief use of the Grand Lodge, whether of England or Scotland, consists in its acknowledged authority to enforce uniformity of ceremonial and other observances, and to settle all disputes that may arise within the lodges under its charge. In Scotland the officers and members of the Grand Lodge are delegates from the respective lodges; the delegation being the masters and wardens or their proxies. As a source of revenue, for each member made by a lodge a fee must be remitted to the Grand Lodge, whereupon a diploma of brotherhood will be issued. There are upwards of six hundred lodges under the Grand Lodge of Scotland. The Grand Lodge of Ireland, instituted in 1730, exercises jurisdiction over nine hundred lodges. There are funds of benevolence connected with each of the British Grand Lodges.
Modern freemasonry spread from Britain to the Continent, to America, and to India. It was introduced into France in 1725, into America in 1730, Russia in 1731, and Germany in 1740. Grand Lodges now exist in France, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Mexico, Egypt, Portugal, Greece, Canada, in Central and South America, in British Columbia, and in Australia. Lodges in connection with European grand bodies exist in India, China, Japan, Africa, Polynesia, Turkey, the West Indies, Syria, Newfoundland, and New Zealand. There are forty-eight Grand Lodges exercising control over nearly ten thousand lodges in the United States, and nowhere is masonry in greater honour or importance. Roman Catholics treat freemasonry as a pantheistic system, essentially opposed to belief in the personality of God, subversive of all legitimate authority, whether of the church or of the state—the hatching ground of most of the revolutionary societies of continental Europe (see Addis and Arnold's Catholic Dictionary, 1883). It has been expressly condemned by bulls from five popes.
The deep symbolical meaning supposed to be couched under the jargon of the masonic fraternity is as apocryphal as the dangers of masonry to government and order. A set of passwords and a peculiar grip of the hand enable the initiated to recognise each other, and give a zest to their convivial meetings; and, if the institution possesses any practical utility, it is in its enabling a mason, in a place where he is a stranger, to make himself known to his brother-masons and claim their protection and assistance.
See J. Fellowes, Mysteries of Freemasonry (new ed. 1882); J. How, Freemasons' Manual (1880); A. G. Mackey's Manual of the Lodge (New York, 1862), Masonic Ritualist (1867); Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry (1874), and Lexicon of Freemasonry (7th ed. 1885); Paton's Freemasonry, its Symbolism and Religious Nature (1873); Lyon's Freemasonry in Scotland (1873); R. F. Gould, Four Old Lodges (1879), and History of Freemasonry (1886); the Handbuch der Freimaurerei, published as 2d ed. of Lenning's Encyklopädie der Freimaurerei (4 vols. 1863-79); Schauberg's Vergleichendes Handbuch der Symbolik der Freimaurerei (3 vols. 1861-63); and the anonymous Maçonnerie Pratique: Cours d'enseignement Supérieur de la Franc-maçonnerie (2 vols. Paris: Baltenweck, 1885-86); Findel's collected works on Freemasonry (6 vols. Leip. 1882-85); Fort's Antiquities of Freemasonry (Phila. 1878).