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The History of Freemasonry

by Albert Gallatin Mackey

Chapter 14 - Customs of the Scottish Masons of the 17th Century

THE Masons of the 10th century in Scotland appear to have been divided into two classes, the Incorporations and the Lodges. These, although not exactly similar to the Masons' Company and the lodges of England, may be considered as in some degree analogous.

In 1475 the Mayor and Town Council of Edinburgh chartered the Incorporation of Masons and Wrights. In this body two Masons and two Wrights were selected and sworn to see that all work was properly done, to examine all new-comers into the town who were seeking employment, to make the necessary regulations for the reception and govemment of apprentices, to settle disputes between the craftsmen, to bury the dead, and generally to make laws for the two trades of Masons and Wrights.

Incorporations were also invested in Glasgow and other cities with the same prerogatives. Controversies repeatedly and naturally arose between these Incorporations and the Lodges with whose privileges and regulations they sought to interfere. But early in the 17th century the former ceased to exercise some of their offensive prerogatives, and especially that of receiving and admitting Fellows of the Mason's Craft. But as Lyon justly observes, the fact that Wrights were present with Masons at the passing of apprentices to the rank of Fellow, favors the opinion that the ceremony of passing was simply a testing of the candidate's fitness for employment as a journeyman.

But the Incorporations were really extraneous bodies having their origin in the municipal spirit of interference. In investigating the Masonic usages and customs of the 17th century we must look really to the lodges and to what is suggested or developed of them in the Schaw and other statutes, and in the early minutes of the lodges that have been preserved.

The assertion of Anderson, Preston, and other writers of the 18th century, as well as some of a later date, that there was from the earliest period a government of the Craft in England by a Grand Master has been proved to be wholly untenable. Something of the kind appears, however, to have prevailed in Scotland at least from the end of the 16th century.

William Schaw, in his signature subscribed to the Statutes enacted by him, and in various records going back as far as 1583, calls himself, and is called, "the King's Master of Work." This is a very common title in the Middle Ages, but by no means indicated that the possessor of it was a Mason. The Majester Operis, or "Master of the Work," sometimes called the Majister Operum, or "Master of the Works," was an officer to whom was entrusted the superintendence of the public works. Sometimes, but not necessarily, he was an architect, and hence Anderson always calls these Masters of the Works Grand Masters, an error which has a very unfortunate effect in confusing true Masonic history. The office was a monastic one also, and in early times the monk who was made the Master of the Work superintended the Masons employed by the monastery in conducting repairs or erecting buildings.

It does not, therefore, follow that Schaw was, from being called by this title, an Operative Mason. The evidence, though circumstantial, is the other way. Indeed, the office of King's Master of the Work was an old one in Scotland, and Schaw himself, in 1583, succeeded Sir Robert Drummond in the office.

But, in 1600, as it appears from a minute of the Lodge of Edinburgh, he presided over a Masonic trial, and to do this he must have been a member of the Craft. He was, therefore, it is to be supposed, a non-professional who was admitted to honorary membership, and he is only one instance among many of the adoption into the brotherhood of persons who were not Masons.

But, in that minute, Schaw is described as "the principal Warden and Chief Master of Masons."

Now, this title of "Principal Warden" is the same as that called in the Statutes of 1599 the "Lord Warden-General." This office of Warden-General, or General Warden, as it is also called, approaches nearer to the idea of a Grand Master than anything that we can find in Anderson's Constitutions in respect to the English Masons.

The General Warden appears, according to the Scottish Statutes, to have been possessed of several important prerogatives. He had the power of calling the representatives of the lodges to a General Assembly; he enacted the statutes for the government of the Craft-the election of Wardens in the particular lodges was to be submitted to him for his approval - and he exercised a general supervision over all the lodges; in short, the General Warden was, in fact, though not in name, the Grand Master of the Masons in Scotland.

There is some confusion about the names of the officers of the private lodges. In some instances we find the presiding officer called the Deacon, and in others the Warden. But it has been explained that the Warden was recognized as the head of the lodge in its relations with the General Warden, while the Deacon was the chief of the Masons in their incorporate capacity and also the head of the lodge. Sometimes both offices were united in the same person, who was then called "the Deacon of the Masons and the Warden of the lodge." As a general rule, however, the Warden appears to have been the presiding officer of the lodge, the custodian of its funds, and the dispenser of its charities. That he held a precedence over the Deacon is evident from the fact that when both are spoken of in a minute or in a regulation, the Warden is named before the Deacon. It is always "the Warden and Deacon," and never "the Deacon and Warden."

Both officers were elected by the suffrages of the Master Masons of the lodge, and the election was held annually.

In every lodge there were three classes of members: Masters, Fellows, and Apprentices; but it must be remarked that these were only three ranks, and that they do not by any means indicate that there were three degrees, in the sense in which that word is now understood.

The Masters were those who undertook contracts for building and were responsible to their employers for the fidelity of the work; the Fellows were the journeymen who were employed by these Master-builders; and the apprentices were those youths who were engaged, under the Masters, in acquiring a knowledge of their Craft.

If there was a ceremonial of initiation or reception and an esoteric knowledge of certain arcana, that ceremony and that knowledge must have been common to and participated in by each of the three classes. Whatever was the Mason's secret the Apprentice knew it as well as the Master, for one of Schaw's regulations required that at the admission or reception of a Master or Fellow, there should be present besides six Masters, two Entered Apprentices, whence it is evident that nothing could have been imparted to the newly accepted Master that the Apprentice was not already in possession of.

That the ceremony of initiation was in the 17th century a very simple one is very evident from the slight references to it in the minutes of the lodges. The Statutes of 1598 required it to be performed in the presence alike of Masters and Apprentices, which shows, as has already beeh said, that it was a ceremony common to both. It appears to have consisted principally of the impartation of what was called the "Mason Word," and a few secrets connected with it, which are called in one of the old minute books, "the secrets of the Mason Word." What these "secrets" were, it is now impossible to discover, but as it has been seen that the Scottish Craft customs were originally derived from the English and the Continental Freemasons it is most probable that the secrets of the Word and the ceremonies of initiation were much the same as those described in the Sloane MS., heretofore quoted as practiced by the English Masons, and those described by Findel as used by the German Masons in the 12th century.

The Squaremen were companies of Wrights and Slaters in Scotland who were very intimately connected with the Masons, and who appear to have had, in many respects, a similarity, if not an identity, of customs.

Now these Squareamen had a ceremony of initiation, a word which was called the "Squaremen's word" and secret methods of recognition. In the ceremony of initiation, which was called the "brithering," (1) the candidate was blindfolded and prepared in other ways; an oath of secrecy was administered, and after the performances, which were in a guarded chamber, were finished, a banquet was goven, the expenses of which were paid by the fee of initiation.

The banquet was in fact so important a part of the ceremony of initiation among the Masons that special provision for it was made by Schaw, the Warden General, in the Statutes of 1598. Apprentices

(1) Jamieson defines the word to brither thus: "To unite into a society or Corporation sometimes by a very ludicrous process." - "Dictionary of the Scottish Language " in voc.

were to pay on their admission six pounds to the "common banquet," and Fellow Crafts ten pounds.

The Fellow Craft was also required to provide the lodge with ten shillings' worth of gloves. Nothing more conclusively proves the connection of the Scottish with the Continental Masons than this reference in the Statutes of the former to the article of gloves to be provided for the lodge. The use of gloves as a portion of the dress of an Operative Mason, is shown in early records to have been very common from early times on the Continent. M. Didron gives, in the Annales Archeologiques, several examples from old documents of the presentation to Masons and Stonecutters of gloves. Thus in 1381 the Chatelan of Vallaines bought a considerable quantity of gloves to be given to the workmen, and the reason assigned for the gift is that they might "Shield their hands from the stone and lime." In 1383 three dozen gloves were distributed to the Masons when they began the buildings at the Chartreuse of Dijon. At Amiens twenty-two pairs of gloves were given to the Masons.

The use of gloves seems to have been, among the different crafts, peculiar to the Masons, and their use is well explained as being intended for protection against the corrosive nature of the mortar which they were compelled to handle.

When Operative was superseded by Speculative Masonry the use of this article of dress was not abandoned, and in the Continental lodges to this day, the candidate is required to present two pair of gloves to the lodge on the night of his initiation. But the explanation now made of their use is, of course, altogether symbolical.

Another important ceremony connected with advancement to a higher rank in the fraternity was the production of the Essay or Trial piece.

It was a very common custom among the early continental guilds to require of eveqr apprentice to any trade before he could be admitted to his freedom and the prerogatives of a journeyman, that he should present to the guild into which he sought membership, a piece of finished work as a specimen and a proof of his skill in the art in which hc had bccn instructed.

This custom was adopted among the Scottish Masons, and when an apprentice had served his time of probation and was desirous of being advanced to the rank of a fellow or journeyman, he was required by the statutes to present an Essay or piece of work to prove his skill and competent knowledge of the trade.

At first the privilege of inspecting and judging the character of this trial piece was intrusted to the lodge, but afterward it seems to have been taken from them and given to the Incorporations, who, however, resigned it early in the 17th century. When an Apprentice wished to become a Fellow, he applied to his lodge, which, in Edinburgh, referred him to the Incorporation of Masons and Wrights of St. Mary's Chapel. By that body the piece of work to be done was prescribed; Essay masters were appointed to attend the candidate and see that he did the work himself, and when it was done, it was submitted to the brethren, who by an open vote admitted or rejected the piece of work.

Lyon very correctly finds a parallel to these Essay pieces of the Scottish Operative Masons, in the examinations for advancement from a lower to a higher degree, in the Speculative Lodges, but he is wrong in supposing that these tests for advancement were, in the "inflated language of the Masonic diplomas of the last century characterized as the 'wonderful trials' which the neophyte had had the 'fortitude to sustain' before attaining to the sublime degree of Master Mason."

The "wonderful trials" thus referred to were not the examinations to which the neophyte had been subjected to test his proficiency in the preceding degrees, but were the actual ceremonies of initiation through which he had passed, and considering their severity in the continental lodges, it is hardly an "inflation of language," to speak of some fortitude being needed to sustain them.

Annually both the Masters and the Fellows were required to renew their oath of fidelity and obedience to the brotherhood, and especially to take the obligation that they would not work with cowans.

It was also provided by the statutes that yearly the Fellows and Apprentices should submit to an examination which should test their memory and knowledge of the principles of the art.

Now as it would not have been fair to expect an Apprentice or Fellow to remember what he had never been taught, this regulation led to the introduction of a particular class of persons in the lodges who were called "intendars" or instructors, whose duty it was to instruct the newly admitted persons in the principles of the art.

This custom, according to Lyon, still prevails in some of the Scottish lodges. In the United States, it is a very general usage at the present day to provide an Apprentice as soon as he has been initiated and a Fellow Craft when he has passed, with an instructor whose duty it is to drill him accurately in the lecture of the degree into which he has just been admitted, so that when he applies for advancement he may be enabled to answer the questions that will be asked, and thus prove that he has made "due proficiency."

The transition of Operative into Speculative Masonry which took place soon after the beginning of the 18th century, is the most important portion of the history of the Institution. The gradual approaches to that condition in which the Operative element was wholly superseded by the Speculative, must therefore be regarded with great interest.

These approaches are marked by the introduction of persons who were not professional Masons into the Operative lodges. Occasion has been had heretofore to speak of the reception by a lodge of Operative Masons at Warrington in England, of two gentlemen who certainly were not Operative Masons, namely, Colonel Mainwaring and Elias Ashmole. This event occurred in the year 1646, and it is the earliest record in England of the acceptance of a non-professional member by a lodge of Operative Masons.

It does not, however, follow because this reception is the first recorded that it was therefore the first that took place. On the contrary it is most probable that the custom of receiving non-operative members was a very old one. It had, as we have seen, been practiced by the Roman Colleges of Artificers, and was by them propagated into the early Craft and Trade Guilds, and eventually imitated by the more modern Operative lodges. The practice still prevails in the London Livery Companies, which we know are the successors of the Trade Guilds of the Middle Ages.

In Scotland the custom of admitting non-operatives into the lodges has a much older record than that of England just referred to.

A minute of the Lodge of Edinburgh of the date of June 8th, in the year 1600, a facsimile of which is given by Lyon, records the presence at the meeting of the lodge of William Boswell, Laird of Auchinlech. The meeting was called for the purpose of considering a penalty that had been imposed upon the Warden. The Laird of Auchinlech took a part in the deliberations, acquiesced in the decision at which the lodge arrived, and signed his name and affixed his mark to the minutes just as the Operative Masons did.

There are abundance of other instances of the admission of noblemen and gentlemen as honorary members. The case already cited of Boswell proves conclusively that the practice existed before the close of the 16th century. If we had the records we might, I think, find many cases still earlier.

In the admission of these "gentlemen masons," as they were sometimes called, the ceremonies of initiation, whatever they were, appear to have been the same as those practiced in the reception of operative members. As in the present day, and in Speculative Masonry, rank or condition secures no exemption.

Several instances are recorded during the 17th century of brethren who were not operative Masons being elected to preside over lodges. Thus Elphingston, who was tutor of Airth and collector of the King's Customs, was in 1670 one of the Masters or Past Masters of the Lodge of Aberdeen. The Earl of Cassilis was, in 1672, chosen as Deacon or head of the Lodge of Kilwinning. He had been preceded in the same office by Sir Alexander Cunningham, in 1671, and by the Earl of Eglinton in 1670. In 1678 Lord William Cochrane, the son of the Earl of Dundonald, was elected Warden of the same lodge.

All these appointments were merely honorary, and intended, it is to be presumed, to secure the patronage and influence of the noblemen or men of wealth and rank who were thus honored. They were not expected to perform any of the laborious duties of the office, for which task it is most probable that they were unfit. This, as Bro. Lyon observes, "may be inferred from the fact that when a nobleman or a laird was chosen to fill any of the offices named, deputies were elected from the operative members of the Kilwinning Lodge." (1)

The relation of females to Freemasonry in Scotland during the 17th century is worthy of attention.

It has already been seen that in one of the English Constitutions, when referring to the Charges, it is written that "one of the Elders taking the Booke and that he or shee that is to be made

(1) "History of the Lodge of Edinburgh," p. 52.

a Mason shall lay their hands thereon and the charge shall be given."

From this passage some persons have drawn the apparently natural inference that females were admitted. Bro. Hughan, in commenting on it, thinks that the manuscript being a copy from a much older one, the word "shee" was carelessly retained, and that it is only an evidence that females were admitted in the early Guilds, an historical fact that can not be denied. But he is not prepared to advocate the opinion that women were admitted into the Mysteries of Masonry. And he admits that the custom of the Guilds to admit women was gradually discontinued.

As the passage quoted is found only in the York MS. of 1693, it is more reasonable to suppose that the word "shee" was a clerical error for "they." Hence we have no satisfactory evidence that women were connected with the Masonic lodges in England.

But Bro. Lyon contends that the obligation of the apprentice to protect the interests of his "dame," which is mentioned in the same manuscript, would indicate that it was lawful at that time in England for females, as employers, to execute the work of Masons.

This statement derives probability from the fact that at that time, in Scotland, the widows and daughters of freemen Masons were, under certain restrictions, permitted to exercise the privilege of burgesses in executing Mason's work.

Lyon cites a minute of the Ayr Squaremen Incorporation of the date of 1628, which enacts that every freeman's daughter shall pay for her freedom the sum of eight pounds. But it is clear that if a fine was imposed for the freedom, there must have been a privilege accompanying it, which could have been nothing other than the right to do a freeman's work.

The Lodge of Edinburgh, in 1683, recognized this privilege and qualified it by certain restrictions. It was then enacted that a widow should not undertake work or employ journeymen herself, but might have the benefit of the work under the favor of some freeman "by whose advice and concurrence the work shall be undertaken and the journeymen agreed with."

It is apparent from these two minutes that, from 1628 to 1683 women, the widows or daughters of masons, were in the habit of employing journeymen to do work given to them by the patrons of their husbands or fathers.

But this custom, growing into an evil, in time the females acting independently and assuming the position and exercising the prerogatives of Master Masons, the Lodge of Edinburgh found it necessary at length to correct the abuse and to restrict the privilege by compelling the females to undertake the work and employ the journeymen under the direction of a Master Mason, who, acting for the widow, discharged the duties without receiving compensation (which was strictly prohibited) and gave her the profits.

Another usage of the Scottish Masons in the 17th century was that of opening the lodge with prayer. There is no record of the existence of such a usage in England, although it is highly probable that the same practice prevailed in both countries, since Freemasonry being a later institution in Scotland, we have seen that it derived many of its customs from the sister kingdom.

The use of prayer as an introductory ceremony has always been practiced in the English speculative lodges, and combining this with the fact now known that it was observed by the Scottish operatives, we have an additional reason for believing that it was a usage among the English operative masons of the 17th and earlier centuries.

Bro. Lyon says that in opening with prayer, the Lodge of Edinburgh "followed an example which had been set in the ancient Constitutions of the English Masons which open and close with prayer." Here our generally accurate historian appears to have fallen into an error in confounding the form of composition adopted in writing a manuscript with that of opening a lodge, two things evidently very distinct. It is of course admitted that all of the old English Constitutions commence with a religious invocation, and that they end either with a prayer for help or an imprecatory formula like the condition of an oath to keep the statutes.

But in a careful examination of all these Constitutions from the Halliwell MS. to the Papworth MS., that is from the first to the last, I have failed to find any regulation or article which prescribes that the business of a lodge shall be preceded by prayer. The only regulation that has a religious bearing is the one that prescribes a reverence for God and Holy Church and the avoidance of heresy or error.

That it was the practice of the early English operative lodges to open and closc with prayer, is an opinion founded wholly on conjecture, but for the reasons already assigned, the conjecture appears to be a plausible one.

But the use of prayer in the Scottish lodges of the 17th century is not conjectural, but is proved by actual records, and Bro. Lyon, in his invaluable work, to which I have been almost wholly indebted for the facts in the present and the preceding chapter, supplies us with two forms of prayers, one "to be said at the convening," and the other "to be said before dismissing." Both are extracted from the minute-books of Mary's Chapel Incorporation for the year 1699, and it will be interesting to compare them with the oldest English formula, namely, that given by Preston.

The first of these, or the prayer at the opening of the lodge, is in the following words:

"O Lord, we most humblie beseech thee to be present with us in mercy, and to bless our meeting and haill (whole) exercise which wee now have in hand. O Lord, enlighten our understandings and direct our hearts and mynds, so with thy good Spirit, that wee may frame all our purposes and conclusions to the glory of thy name and the welfare of our Brethren; and therefore O Lord, let no partiall respect, neither of freed (enmity) nor favour, draw us out of the right way. But grant that we may ever so frame all our purposes and conclusions to the glory of thy name and the welfare of our Brethren. Grant these things, O Lord, unto us, and what else thou sees more necessarie for us, and that only for the love of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, our alone Lord and Saviour; To whom, with thee, O Father, and the blessed Spirit of Grace, wee render all praise, honor and glory, for ever and ever, Amen."

The second prayer, or that used at the dismission or closing of the lodge, is as follows:

"O Lord, wee most humbly acknowledge thy goodnesse in meeting with us together at this tyme, to confer upon a present condition of this world. O Lord, make us also study heaven and heavenly myndednesse, that we may get our souls for a prey. And O Lord, be with us and accompany us the rest of this day, now and forever, Amen."

The importance of this record of prayers at opening and closing in the Scottish lodges, is that it adds great force to the conjecture that a similar custom prevailed in the English lodges at the same period. The statement made by the biographer of Wrenn and quoted by Findel, that the mediaeval Masons of England commenced their labor each day at sunise by a prayer, the Master taking his station in the East and the Brethren forming in a half circle around him, is a mere tradition. There is the want of a contemporary record. But the fact that there is such a record, absolutely authentic in the minutes of a Scottish lodge of the period, throws necessarily an air of great probability upon the tradition.

That the record of the Scottish lodge is a minute made in the last year but one of the 17th century does not necessarily lead to the inference that the custom had just then begun. The record is more likely, when there is no evidence to the contrary, to have been that of a custom long previously in existence than of one that has just then been adopted.

So we may fairly conclude that it was the usage of the Scottish lodges of the 17th century to open and close their meetings with prayer, a usage that we have reason to infer was also practiced by the English lodges of the same period.

The last of the Scottish Masonic customs to which it is necessary to refer is that of the use of Marks, instead of, or sometimes as supplemented to, the written signature.

This is an interesting subject and claims a very careful and thorough consideration.

The presence of certain figures chiselled on the stones of a building has been remarked by travelers as occurring in almost all countries where architecture had made any progress and at very early epochs. It has been remarked by Mr. Ainsworth, an oriental traveler, that he found among some ruins in Mesopotamia that "every stone, not only in the chief building but in the walls and bastions and other public monuments, when not defaced by time, is marked with a character which is for the most part either a Chaldean letter or numeral."

On the floor of a tomb at Agra, in India, it was found that every stone was inscribed with a peculiar mark chiseled upon it by the workman. Copies of over sixty of these marks were given in 1865 by a writer in the London Freemasons' Quarterly Review.

In an interesting work on Architecture by Mr. George Godwin, (1) the author, referring to the Freemasons of the Middle Ages, makes the following remarks:

"Several years ago my attention was led to the fact that many of our ancient buildings exhibited on the face of the walls, both inside and outside, marks of a peculiar character on the face of the Stones which were evidently the work of the original builders; and it occurred to me that if examined and compared they might serve to throw light upon these bands of operatives. I made a large collection of them in England, France, Belgium and Germany, some of which were published in the Archaeologia. These are simply the marks made by the Masons to identify their work; but it is curious to find them exactly the same in different countries and descending from early times to the present day; for in parts of Germany and Scotland tables of marks are still preserved in the lodges, and one is given to the (practical) mason on taking up his freedom. He cuts it, however, on the bed of the stone now instead of on its face. The marks are usually two or three inches long."

These marks were, it is evident, prescribed by the Masters or Superintendents of the buildings in process of construction to be used by the workmen, so that each one's work might be identified when censure or approval was to be awarded. It was a measure of precaution, and the employment of marks is no evidence, unless the mark itself is of a purely Masonic character, that the workmen who used them were Freemasons.

At first, it seems from the observations of Mr. Ainsworth, they were merely letters or numbers. Afterward those found at Agra were principally astronomical or mathematical. But when used by organized bands of Freemasons we find among these marks such symbols as the hour-glass, the pentalpha, and the square and compasses. When the Freemasons followed the precautionary system of the ordinary stonecutters and adopted the use of marks, they gave, most generally, a symbolic character to them, though sometimes they made use of monograms of their names.

M. Didron, who discovered these marks at Spire, Worms, Strasburg, Rheims, Basle, and several other places, and who made a report of his investigations to the Historical Committee of Arts and

(1) "History in Ruins; a Handbook of Architecture for the Unlearned." By George Godwin, F.R.S., London, 1858.

Sciences of Paris, believed that he could discover in them reference to distinct schools or lodges of Masons. He divides them into two classes, those of the overseers and those of the men who worked the stones. The marks of the first class consist of monogrammatic characters, while those of the second are of the nature of symbols, such as shoes, trowels, and mallets.

It is possible that something like this distinction is to be found in the old Scottish marks. Of the 91 marks, copies of which are given infacsimile by Bro. Lyon as taken from the minute-book of the Lodge of Edinburgh, 16 are evidently monograms, such as GI, ME, AL, VH, NI, etc., while the remaining 75 are symbols, principally the cross in various forms, the triangle, the hour-glass, represented by two triangles joined at their apices, the pentalpha, etc. In one instance the monogram and the symbol are combined, where David Salmon adopts as his mark a fish or salmon, with the head in the form of the Delta or Greek letter equivalent to D.

There was undoubtedly a distinction of monogrammatic and symbolic marks, but whether Didron's idea that they belonged to two different classes of workmen is correct or not, it is impossible positively to ascertain. Bro. Lyon, however, affirms that "in regard to the arrangement of Marks into distinctive classes, one for Apprentices, one for Fellow Crafts, and a third for Foremen - the practice of the Lodge of Edinburgh, or that of Kilwinning, as far as can be learned from their records, was never in harmony with the teachings of tradition on that point."

It has been supposed the degree now called the "Mark Master's Degree" was originally manufactured by some ritual mongers toward the close of the last century and attached as a supernumerary degree to the Ancient and Accepted or Scottish Rite. I have in my possession the original charter granted in 1802 by the Grand Council of Princes of Jerusalem, of Charleston, S.C., to American Eagle Mark Lodge No. 1. (1) When Thomas Smith Webb was establishing his new system he incorporated the Mark degree in his ritual and made it the fourth degree of the American Rite, as it is practiced in the United States of America. It has been supposed that Webb derived his degree from the Ancient and Accepted Rite,

(1) It was published in 1851 by the author in the "Southern and Western Masonic Miscellany," vol. ii., p. 300.

and it is not improbable that he did so. But more recently it has been discovered that the degree of Mark Mason and that of Mark Master Mason was given in Scotland by some of the Craft lodges as early as 1778. An excerpt made by that indefatigable Archaeologist, Bro. W. J. Hughan, from the minutes of the Lodge Operative Banff under date of January 7, 1778, shows that the degree of Mark Mason was conferred on Fellow Crafts, and that of Mark Master Mason on Master Masons.

I think, therefore, that we may fairly attribute the origin of the degree to the Masons of Scotland. The ritual has of course grown, as all rituals do, by gradual accretions to its present extent. But it is hardly necessary to say that the allegory and the tradition of the origin of the degree at the Temple of King Solomon is a mere symbolic myth, which is wholly unsupported by historical authority.

The statutes enacted by William Schaw, in 1598, for the government of the Masons of Scotland, direct that on the reception and admission of every Fellow Craft his name and mark shall be inserted in the book or register of the lodge.

The subsequent lodge minutes show that giving or taking a mark was accompanied by a fee, which was paid by the Fellow for this privilege.

The minutes also show that Apprentices were also permitted to select and use a mark.

The position and the prerogatives of Apprentices in the Scottish lodges is worthy of notice, especially as throwing some light on their condition in the English lodge, of which so little is said in the old Constitutions.

The presence of Apprentices at the admission of Fellow Crafts, was provided for in the Statutes of Schaw, as has already been seen.

Another prerogative granted to the Apprentices was that of giving or withholding their assent to any proposed accession of their ranks in the lodge.

They thus appear to have been so far recognized as active members. But Lyon says that this concession does not appear to have been granted to all Apprentices, but only to such as being "bound for the freedom" afterward became "Mason burgesses" and members of the Incorporation - Apprentices whose aim was that of becoming qualified for employment as journeymen.

If this view of Lyon is correct it would show an aristocratic distinction of rank, which was certainly unknown to the English Masons.

Apprentices are sometimes permitted to undertake work, of no very great value, on their own account, but with the consent of their Masters; a privilege that does not appear to have been conceded by the English Statutes.

The "passing" of an Apprentice to the rank of a Fellow Craft, although not a ceremony which added anything to the store of his Masonic knowledge, was still necessary to the extension of the influence and the increase of the revenues of the lodge. Apparently toward the end of the 17th century, many Apprentices were disinclined, at the expiration of their time of service, to undergo the trouble and expense of passing, but were disposed to work as unpassed journeymen. So at the beginning of the 18th century it was made imperative on Apprentices soon after their time of apprenticeship was out to "make themselves Fellow Crafts." Fellow Crafts, or journeymen, were permitted to have Apprentices of their own, and it was provided by law that a Master might employ such fellows and yet not also employ their Apprentices, or he might employ the Apprentice and not the Fellow to whom he was bound. This seems to have been a peculiarity of Scottish Masonry in the 17th century. No similar provision is found in the English Constitutions.

Apprentices were prohibited from marrying, a very necessary provision, considering their relation to their Master's houses, which it may well be supposed existed in every other country.

In all of these usages of the Scottish Masons in the 17th century, we see the characteristics of an operative system. But this system was admitting the gradual encroachment of the Speculative element exhibited in the admission into the operative lodges of non-professional members.

The progress of this transition from an Operative to a Speculative character is better marked or rather better recorded in the Scottish than in the English history of Freemasonry. In the latter we are aroused with suddenness from the contemplation of the operative system as detailed in the manuscript Constitutions extending into the very beginning of the 18th century, to the unexpected organization, without previous notice, of a purely Speculative Grand Lodge a very few years after the date of the last written Constitution, which makes no reference to such an institution.

But the Grand Lodge of Scotland was not organized until nineteen years after that of the sister kingdom. The approaches to the change were gradual and well marked, and the struggle which terminated in the victory of Speculative or modern Freemasonry. has been carefully recorded.

But the narrative of the events which led to the establishment in the year 1736 of the Grand Lodge of Scotland will form the interesting materials for a distinct chapter.

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