"BLUE BANNER, THE" LODGE.
Gould, Hughan, Lane, and others who in the 1875-1890 period began the writing of Masonic history according to the canons of scholarly work which elsewhere governed professional historians, always hoped to find evidens of a great antiquity for pre-1717 Lodges but insisted on documentary proof, and refused to accept traditions, as they were right in doing, though it is now beliefed that they were somewhat more skeptical than they needed to have been. Also, present-day scolars know , they sometimes overlooked data which belonged neither to the class of traditions nor to the class of documents ; these data are present Lodge facts, customs, or possessions which in themselves, and necessarily, imply a long period of time.
A datum of this kind, an exceptionally interesting one, is the Blue Banner which was possessed by an Edinburgh Lodge, the history of which is given in Annals of Journeyman Masons, No. 8, by Seggie and Tumbull; Thomas Allan and Sons; Edinburg; l930. This Lodge began as a sort of ooffshoot, or Side Order, of an old Operative Lodge, and is therefore reminiscent of the "Accepcion" in the Mason Company of London. The history of the Blue Banner goes back for about eight centuries ; it was given to the Scottish Trade Gilds when they joined the Crusade under Pope Urban A, and for centuries entitled its possessors not only to special honors but to special privileges, and is more than once mentioned in the early records of the burgh.
This history contains one entry of a special interest to American Masons. In September, 1918, the Lodge was visited by Bro. Sam Gompers, President of the American Federation of Labor; he received the distinction for that Lodge a rare one, of being elected an Honorary Member. His home Lodge was Dawson's No 16 Washington D. C.
See also An Historical Acccunt of the Blue Blanket; or Crafts-Men's Banner. Containing the Fundamental Principles of the Good-Town, u¤th the Powers and Prerogatives of the Crafts of Edinburgh, Etc., by Alexander Pennecuik; Edinburgh; 1722. There were 14 incorporated Crafts in Edinburgh in 1722.
BOOK OF CONSTITUTIONS.
In England of the Eighteenth Century a permanent association or society was required to have a sponsor, the more exalted in the rank the better, who was named as its Patron - as the King himself was Patron of the Royal (scientific) Society; it was also expected to have authorization in the form of a charter, or deputation, or som similar instrument ; and the older one of these written instruments might be, other things being equal , the more weight it possessed. The old Masonic Lodges in London at the beginning of the Century had Sir Cristopher Wren as their patron (so tradition affirms) and for written charter each one had a copy of the Old Charges ; these documents attested that their original authority had been a Royal Charter granted by a Prince Edwin seven centuries before ; and though historians , for sound reasons, question this particular claim, it is important to remember that neither the Lodges nor the public between 1700 and 1725 ever questioned it.
In 1716 representatives of some four or five old Lodges, and Probably after discussions with other Lodges not represented, decided to set up a Body in which each Lodge could be a member, and which would be a central meeting place and at the same time could bring the Lodges into a unity of work and practice. This they called a Grand ( or chief) Lodge; and in 1717 they erected it by oflicial action, and put Anthony Sayer in the Chair as Grand Master.
This new Grand Lodge was itself a Lodge and therefore needed both a Patron and a Charter, or Old Charges, of its own, and suitable for needs not identical with those of a member Lodge. It found a Patron in the person of the Duke of Montague, elected Grand Master in 1721; after a time, and especially after the sons of George A had become Masons, it was under the patronage of the Royal Family and has been so ever since (Queen Victoria officially declared herself its Patroness).
To prepare a Grand Lodge equivalent of the Old Charges was a more difficult matter. Veteran Masons were consulted ; old manuscripts were borrowed from Lodges (and sometimes not retumed, as when Desaguliers forgot to retum documents to the Lodge of Antiquity). Some of the Lodges which were opposed to the whole Grand Lodge plan destroyed their documents. An unknown group of Masons forestalled the Grand Lodge by having J. Roberts print a version, now called the Roberts Constitutions, dated 1722 (of the two existing copies one is in the Iowa Masonic Library). From the Lodges in favor of the Grand Lodge plan fourteen veteran Masons acted as an advisory committee. By 1722 George Payne, a Grand Master, had prepared an acceptable version of that part of the Old Charges, the important half, which was called the Old Regulations. By the following year, Grand Lodge, reporting through a Committee headed by James Anderson, adopted a completed manuseript, entitled it The Constitution of Freemasons, and had James Anderson print it. Why this book has been accredited to the authorship of James Anderson is a mystery; he is called "author" at one or two places but as then used the word could mean "editor" or "scribe"; and his name does not appear on the title page. Payne wrote about one-half of it. J. T. Desaguliers wrote the dedication; the rest of it was the joint work of many hands and at least two Committees. The so-called historical part was collected-the record says "collated''-from Lodge copies of the Old Charges which differed much among themselves in detail. The title is a complete description of the book :
"The Constitution, History, Laws, Charges, Orders, Regulations, and Usages of the Right Worshipful FRATERNITY of Accepted Free MASONS ; collected From their general RECORDS and their faithful TRADITIONS of many Ages.
To be Read At the Admission of a NEW BROTHER, when the Master or Warden shall begin, or order some other Brother to read as follows" :
then follows the text, in the first sentence of which reference is made to ''God, the great Architect of the Universe,'' and Geometry is named as the Masonic art par excellence, because it was the art used in architecture.
The publisher's signature on the title page :
"London, Printed by William Hunter, for John Senex at the Globe, and John Hooke at the Flower-de-luce overagainst St. Dunstan's Church, in Fleet-Street. In the Year of Masonry 5723. Anno Domini 1723."
This dating is a faet of prime importance, for it proves that the Freemasons identified their Fratemity with architecture which they rightly assumed to be as old as man. Theorists who have argued for another origin' of Freemasonry, among the Ancient Mysteries, or in occult circles, or in political circles, etc., will first have to explain why the founders of the Speeulative Craft had not even heard of such origins ; and one may safely assume that they knew more about the founding of Speculative Masonry than theorism two hundred years afterwards.
As time passed, and Lodges increased, amendrnents and revisions were called for; this was satisfied by the issuance of new editions.
NOTE. The Fifth, or 1784, Edition is there accredited to John Northouck ; in reality it should have been named after William Preston because he did the work on it. As each new Grand Lodge was erected in one Country after another, and in America in one State after another, it wrote or adopted a Book of its own. Such a Book dated as of today bears on the face of it little resemblance to the Edition of 1723 ; but the change from decade to decade has been a gradual one, always made in response to new needs, and in their prineiples and every other fundamental any regular Constitution of today is a direct descendant of the Constitution of 1723. The Antient Grand Lodge, erected in London in 1751, which was to become a rival of the 1717 Grand Body until 1813, published in 1756 a Book of its own, which it colled Ahiman Rezon ; this also was in substanee a repetition of the Book of 1723. Considered as a work of literature the most masterly version is the original Constitution of Ireland, a re-writing of the 1723 Edition by John Pennell, published in 1730.
A half century ago a number of writers proposed the theory that "Operative" Masonry had become defunct; that Desaguliers, Anderson, Payne, Montague, and a number of other ''gentlemen,'' "captured" the machinery of organization, and turned it into a Speculative Fratemity. This theory went to pieces against such facts as :
first, that the Grand Lodge began in 1716-not 1717- and that those gentlemen were not Masons for some time afterwards, at least not London Masons, and were not among the founding fathers ;
second, the old Lodges were not "Operative'' but only partly so, and one of them was wholly composed of Speculatives. Desaguliers and his colleagues were architects of the Grand Lodge system; they did not create anything new, they only found a new way for carrying on what was already very old. This is made clear by the Book of 1723 itself, and by the circumstances under which it was prepared.
BOOKPLATES, MASONIC.
Masonic Bookplates, by J. Hugo Tatsch and Winwood Prescott (The Masonic Bibliophiles; Cedar Rapids, Ia. ; 1928), lays down the accepted rules for a correct and (by connoisseurs) acceptable Masonic Ex Libris, or bookplate. Taking it for granted that a skilled artist will draw or paint it, and that it will be well engraved, the two authors advise: first, that the Mason who is to use it shall include in it only such emblems and symbols as represent the Rite (or Rites) to which he belongs ; second, that it be "personalized" by including in the design something to represent his own vocation, avocation, hobby, special interest, etc.
Shute, who wrote and published the first book on architecture ever to be printed in England, is said to have been also the first engraver in England. After the Grand Lodge was formed in 1717 a long line of famous engravers were active members of the Craft; John Pine, William Hogarth, Francesco Bartolozzi, John Baptist Cipriani, Benjamin and John Cole, and our American Grand Master, inventor of a new process of engraving, Paul Revere. Their work, and especially their Masonic designs, should be studied by Masonic bookplate engravers. A Grand Lodge usually employs its own coat-of-arms in its bookplate. Pine was the first to make an engraved list of Lodges. (See also Book Plates and Their Value, J. H. Slater, Henry Grant; 1898. In addition to collectors' prices it contains a history of the development of Ex Libris art.
Some publishers spell ''bookplate'' as one word, others as two. The Tatsch and Prescott volume contains a full bibliography. Ex Libris Lodge, No. 3765, was founded . in London, 1915, by bookplate enthusiasts.)
BOONE, DANIEL.
Ray V. Denslow, specialist in early Middle Western Masonry, reported to The Builder, January, 1925, that "in his opinion" Boone had not been a Mason. He added however that "a very good friend" had in earlier days heard Boone spoken of as a Mason. Both the Grand Lodges of Kentucky and of Tennessee have searched the old membership rolls but have not found his narne. When appropriating a sum toward the Boone monument at Frankfort the resolution passed by the Grand Lodge of Kentucky made no mention of Boone's possible membership. At least one pall-bearer at Boone's funeral wore a Masonic collar. (It is interesting to note that "Boone" is a corruption of "Bohun," a family name of King Henry VAI.)
BOYDEN LIBRARY CLASSIFICATION.
Brother William L. Boyden, librarian for the Supreme Council, A.&A.S.R.,S.J., at Washington, D.C., after years of experience and experiment, perfected a library classifieation system for Masonie books. He divided titles under ten general heads, in 400 classes and subclasses. He made the system available to Masonic librarians in a brochure of twenty-two pages, a working manual: Classification of the Literature of Freemasonry and Related Societies, by W. L. Boyden; Washington, D.C., 1915; e/o The Supreme Council A.&.A.S.R.,S.J.
BOYDEN MS., THE.
A manuseript of the Old Charges, nine feet long and about eight and one-half inches wide, belonging to the Supreme Couneil, A.& A.S.R.,S.J., and in the vaults of the House of the Temple, Washington, D.C.; it was discovered (presumably in 1925) by the late W. L. Boyden, Librarian of the Supreme Couneil Library at the time, in North Riding of Yorkshire near Yorkshire, Eng.
Boyden published the text in The New Age, February, 1926; page 77. The text accompanied by critical notes is given in The Old 'Yorkshire' Old Charges of Masons, by H. Poole and F. R. Worts; published by Installed Masters' Assoeiation, Leeds, England ; 1935 ; page 171.
Some English Brothers have expressed regret (and not always un-spiced with resentment) that a Yorkshire MS. should "have been sold off to America."
Ameriean Masons can understand that feeling, and the more so in the case of Yorkshire which was the favorite field of Hughan and of Thorp, who are both as well remembered and as much revered by Masons on this side of the Atlantic as on that ; but at the same time they feel that the strictures often expressed, and especially the harshness in some instances, by Whymper, Gould, and Lane, are based on a misunderstanding of facts. The strictures have arisen from the assumption that a sizable number of precious, old, and oftentimes unique Masonie books and MSS. have been drained off out of England into America; but there has never been such a drain. The Boyden is the only MS. of which there is not at least one copy left in England. The printed Roberts MS. owned by the Grand Lodge of Iowa is one of two copies. The Carmick MS. owned by the Grand Lodge of Pennsylvania was written in Pennsyivania. The American craft, and considering that save for a very few years it is as old as the English Craft, and is in the same Masonic family, is peculiarly poverty-stricken in MSS. and rare books. Nor have the great and wealthy American collectors Huntington, Morgan, etc., collected Freemasoniana; Rosenbach, famous for so many years as their agent, told the writer that he had never included Masonic items in his search lists. If harsh complaints were in order American Masons themselves have a large ground for them ; during the French and Indian wars, the Revolutionary War, and the War of 1812 America was "drained" of the larger part of its early Masonic records, a fact which helps to account for the emptiness of the history of pre-Revolutionary Masonry in America.
The same holds for the old charge of "piracy." A small number of Eighteenth Century books (Oliver, presston, etc.) were published here without permission and without payment to their British authors ; to do so was both piratical and inexcusable. But there was as quite as much piracy from the British end. Books by Harris Town, Mackey, Morris, etc., were extensively pirated in England right down to the middle of the Ninteenth Century : this Encyclopedia was pirated a in half dozen languages.
BRIDGE BUILDERS.
In the article which begins on page 151 it is stated that the Gild of Bridge Builders was a religious fraternity. Since that article written (it was based on the then most reliable authorities) what may be called the archeology of bridge building has put that ancient craft in a new light. Just as some bishop or abbot was given credit for almost every cathedral, large church, or abbey, and even though the prelate might not have been born when the construetion was begun, so did the same chroniclers make out that almost every other concerted public activity, association, etc., had been either an action by the Church or else one directed by it.
Even a local gild of six or seven blacksmiths in a French town of the year1200 A.D. may appear in the monkish chronicles as having been a Holy Brotherhood of the Church of St. Paul Dedicated to St. Dominic, etc., the whole of it sounding as if blacksmithing had been a holy rite. Everything in the Twelfth Thirteenth, and Fourteenth Centuries was, as it were, assurated with the appearance of religion-it was then as it is now with the Mexican language in which "good-bye" becomes "God go with you," and a man asks for a match "in the name of God," and a mother names a son Jesus and a Daughter Holy Annunciation .
There were fraternities of Brige Builders in the Middle Ages ; they had their Patron Saints ; they went by religious names ; but bridge building per se was no more religious than it is now. A bridge was build at need, and often at the expense of the taxpayers in a town; its construction might be entrusted to a special gild formed for the purpose; it might be paid for by gifts or by tolls; but the Masons who built it usually were ordinary Masons. Its was only when great bridges were built, like London Bridge (which was a row of buildings erected across the Thames ) or when one was ornamented with carving or with Sculpture, or involved difficult problems of engineering, that Freemasons were called in; but it is doubtful if in many instances they formed fraternities qua bridge builders, after the fashion of the separate associations of eastle builders, military architects, tilers, etc.
It is of interest that the first great Modern bridge (at least it is so claimed by historians of it) was to a peculiar extent almost an event in the history of Speculative Freemasonry. The engineer and constructor of the famous Wearmouth Bridge in England (pages are given to it in a number of histories of engineering) was Bro. Rowland Burdon. He was made a Mason in Phoenix Lodge, no. 94, Sunderland ; he joined Palatine Lodge in 1791; in 1793 was elected Master, and served several years. The foundation of the Bridge was laid with Masonic ceremonies by the Provincial Grand Lodge, September 24, 1793; its completion was also celebrated by ceremonies by the Provincial Grand Lodge on August 9, 1796 (during Washington's second term, it may be said to help Americans to place the date).
(It happens that the builders of the Brooklyn Bridge were Masons, as may be found in an article in the New York Masonie Outlook. See History of Phoenix Lodge; see also other bridge items in History of Britannia Lodge, page 104.)
NOTE. Apropos of the typieal Medieval custom of clothing everything with a religious guise it is interesting to observe that ordinary business documents such as deeds, bills of sales, contracts, or legal documents, or a physician's prescription, or a parchment roll of kitchen recipes might be decorated with religious emblems and begin-like the Old Charges-with a religious invocation.
Bishops often were educated and trained in cathedral schools at a prince's or king's expense expressly to hold positions in what is now the civil service. Even the since-canonized Thomas à Beeket served for years in that capacity, and was made a bishop for political reasons!
Thousands of tonsured clerics were trained to work in offices, government bureaus, etc., as clerks, bookkeepers, etc., and never performed religious services in their lives.
It is not out of any desire to disparage religion, or to discredit the church, but solely in obedience to the facts as found, that historians are agreed that the Ages of Faith were not more faithful than other ages, and that the men were in their spirit, thought, and conduct no more religious, or pious, in the Thirteenth Century than they are now. The fact is important for Masonic history, because a reader of it may gain the impression that because so many Medieval Freemasons worked on churches, cathedrals, abbeys, priories, monasteries, chapels, etc., they were in some peculiar sense a religious fraternity. They were men in religion, but no more so than other men ; ran their own affairs ; excluded priests from control over their Lodges ; and had no religious rites, practices, or doctrines peculiar to themselves.
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