OATHS AND OBLIGATIONS.
Insofar as it was either a gild or an incorporated company Medieval Masonry had legal jurisdiction over its own members; could enact rules, regulations, etc., (sometimes called "points") with the force of law; could hold court; could inflict such punishments as fines, suspensions from work. and expulsion. When therefore a new member took an oath, he was submitting himself to Craft law, and from the moment of taking it was amenable to Craft authorities under penalties. From Fabric Rolls and from sentences or hints here and there in other records, it is evident that the Operative Masons could enforce their law with grimness if the need arose, as did other gilds and authorities at the time. The sword of the outer guard (tiler, in later nomenclature) was not a mere symbol or ornament.
In Speculative Freemasonry the Candidate takes not an oath but an OB., which term means that the tie is binding from both ends: the Lodge is bound to the Candidate, the Candidate is bound to the Lodge. Yet there is in the OB something of the nature of the Medieval oath, for it is the basis of charges made for non-Masonic conduct; and a trial, in the strict sense of "trial," could not legally be held without it. It has in it the character of legality, and is one of the foundations of jurisprudence. The Anti-Masons of the past century in the United States concentrated their attacks on the OB's which invariably they misdescribed as oaths, and they took them mistakenly to mean "oaths to keep secrets." A Candidate is obligated to keep the secrets, but they are so far outnumbered by the other rules, Landmarks, and customs that secret-keeping is only one of the many purposes of OB's.; as a matter of statistics it is doubtful if of any hundred Masonic trials more than two or three ever are for violations of secrecy. Had only the Anti-Masons known anything about the Fraternity they were attacking (and they knew very little, as is proved by John Q. Adams' writings) they could easily have discovered that most of the purposes of the OB's are to make it impossible for any Mason to do just those things which the Anti-Masons accused them of being pledged to do.
The Masonic oath stands in a line of unbroken continuity which goes back to early Anglo-Saxon times in England to a custom called the Frank-pledge, which was already old when Athelstan codified the laws of it. There is a reference to it in a record of 680 A.D. The men were divided into hundreds. When a boy reached his twelfth year he appeared before an assembly of his hundred, or else appeared with his hundred at a general assembly, and there took a pledge which bound him on penalty of his life and goods to be true and faithful to his rulers and to keep the laws; this made him a member. Each man had to have ten other men stand surety for him to see that he kept the peace, and if he became a fugitive it was for the ten to find arsd produce him. If he became a member of a frith (peace) gild he gave it a similar pledge. These were among the forms of the frankpledge. When gilds of trade and craft began to be organized after the Norman Conquest this system of frankpledge was continued by them; an apprentice took an oath of obedience and membership, and his fellows were responsible for his keeping the peace.
On page 231 of the 1903 edition of his Concise History, R. F. Gould writes that "from the time of Athelstan down to the Norman Conquest, and from the Conqueror to Edward I, and later, the oath of allegiance was annually administered to every free man, at what was called the View of Frankpledge—a distinguishing feature of the system of police, originating in Anglo-Saxon times .... The wording of this oath, as given in a publication of 1642, 'You shall be true and faithful to our Sovereign Lord the King,' is substantially the same as that of the corresponding 'Charge' or inculcation which is met with in the Masonic Constitutions." In the Fabric Rolls for York Minster for 1352 A.D. there is in a set of rules for receiving a new Mason to work, that (we transliterate) "after that he is found sufficient of his work, be received at the common consent of the master and the keepers of the work, and of the master mason, and swear upon the book that he shall . . . hold and keep all the points of this foresaid ordinance." The same Rolls show that there was an annual pledge-day "when the workmen swore to observe the orders which the Chapter had ordained for their management." (Concise History, page 106.) In the City Companies (including the Masons Company) an oath was given to the apprentice, to a workman admitted to the freedom of the Company, to the Masters and Wardens when they took office, and oaths were taken by the latter when submitting themselves to the mayor and aldermen of the city.
Both the Lodge and the Grand Lodge of Speculative Freemasonry naturally continued these old customs which had thus been sanctioned by more than a 1000 years of use, and had been called for by scores of royal statutes and borough ordinances. The notion that the Freemasons invented some dark, secret, terrifying "oath" of their own, like a Black-Hand society, is so remote from the facts that the mere act of holding it condemns a man of complete ignorance on the subject. The so-called Masonic oath is but one form, and a very old one, of the Frankpledge, and is as ancient as Anglo-Saxon civilization. In the Speculative Lodge the oath is but one element in a ceremony-as-a-whole which is called the obligation and which in addition to the oath contains many matters of another kind, and with which Freemasons are familiar; it is a form of admittance, and acknowledgment by the Lodge of fellowship, the creation of a status for the Candidate, etc.
In the Middle Ages, and, later, in Modern times government in both Britain and America performed scarcely any functions except to make laws, make wars, collect taxes; policing, fire protection, garbage removal, the building of roads and buildings, schools, whospitals, etc., were in the hands of small, local associations called by any one of a number of names. Since they thus performed municipal and public work and had authority over other citizens, oftentimes their members had to take oath, and in every instance their officers did. This made necessary such a multiplication of oaths that towns and cities had written or printed oath books (London had one; a large one) to make sure that-oaths were uniform and legally binding. Freemasonry grew up under that system, and therefore like other associations was expected to have its own oaths. This is yet another proof of the fact that the Masonic oath (in use in its present form at least as early as 1700) was nothing unprecedented, newly invented, or in any sense mysterious, or queer, or questionable.
OFFICERS, LODGE.
The Offficers of a Lodge fall into categories fundamentally unlike each other; also, they are unlike offices in other societies, associations, clubs because w here in those other societies of
ficers are creatures or servants of the membership, in the Fraternity they help to constitute Freemasonry; belong to what it is in its essence—are never, therefore, functionaries, or agents, or delegates, or supernummeraries; they are even an essential part of the Ritual, and are among the emblems and symbols—so much are they unlike officers or offices elsewhere that it is almost needed that a man shall strip his mind of every idea he had formed of offices before entering Masonic membership !
A. Government.
The Worshipful Master rules and governs his Lodge. This is an onerous, exacting, and responsible office, and he therefore has his Senior and Junior Wardens to assist him.
The Worshipful Master has the Senior Deacon as his personal assistant; the Senior Warden similarly has a personal assistant in the Junior Deacon. Accord ing to the original design, and as required by every principle of Lodge organization, the Junior Warden is assisted, or should be, by one or more Stewards; in average American Lodge practice this is not carried out, because one of the Junior Warden's original duties (it is a Landmark) is to preside over the Craftsmen when they are at refreshment—that is, in a Speculative Lodge, when Labor is called off, or in periods of fesstivity and entertainment. The last-named function usually is made over to a standing Entertainment Committee, or to special committees; it is agreed by Masonic jurisconsults that this disruption of the office of Junior Warden has been harmful to the Craft, and is more responsible than any other one factor for the thinness, coldness, and more or less perfunctory character of the social life of many American Lodges; also, it has given Lodge members the feeling that festivity and entertainment are extraneous to Lodge Work, and
are to be carried on at the side. (As against this view, see the original Book of Constitutions of 1723.)
B. Activities.
In carrying on its own Order of Business and in carrying out Masonic Purposes, a Lodge engages in a number of activities of many kinds; the offices of Secretary and Treasurer are means and agents of these activities. They have no share in ruling and governing but are instrumentalities and agencies of Lodge activities. Since those activities are of fixed kinds those Officers occupy fixed stations. Their duties are fixed and defined, but in both detail and amount are determined by the size of the membership, the {luctuH ations of attendance, and the amount of activities.
C. Ritualistic.
The Chaplain and the Marshal are ritualistic officers It is also a fact, albeit one difficult to define or des cribe, and owing to a long development of Craft histora, that the Offices in the first two categories also belong to ritual and ceremonies (also to etiquette)
They have two roles to play. When a Lodge is at work but is not conferring Degrees, they perform the actual, literal duties belonging to their stations and placeswhile a Degree is being conferred their stations and places become an integral part of the rites, ceremonies, and symbols. (In this, again, Lodge Offices differ fundamentally from offices in non-Masonic societies). In this dual function, the Ritualistic work of an office has affected or determined certain of the duties and functions of the same offices in a business communication; at the same time, the latter duties and functions have affected their role in the Ritual. A certain consistency had to be worked out; it would not do to have the Worshipful Mastership be one thing in a regular business Communication, and then something wholly differentt in the ritualistic Work of Making a Mason; and the fact explains a number of details in each of the offices in question which otherwise would appear queer or be unintelligible. (It explains, in example, why the Master remains covered.)
D. Position
The Tiler holds an office of position. Like a sentinel in an army or the look-out on a ship it is of the essence of his duties to remain at his post, to have a position and to remain in it over a given period of time. Every one of his duties is determined by where he is.
If these offices differ in kind from the offices which more or less correspond to them in non-Masonic societies it is because they are organs of the Lodge, and a Lodge is itself unique among organizations and societies. A number of men can agree among themselves to form a club or a new fraternity; they can invite others to join with them; they can then hold a meeting and after discussion can decide for themselves u hat their club is to be; it is their own creation; from then on they can by vote alter it to suit their altering tastes or needs—thus, more than one country club has begun by admitting men only, and ended by admitting women. In contrast to this, its own members have nothing to say about what a Lodge is. If seven or eight Masons decide to have a Masonic Lodge, it is to have something which already exists, doom to the last detail, and did so before they were born; when they have it, it is a Masonic Lodge w hich they have, and they can not transform it into anything else, and must take it as they find it or not have anything. From then on everything done is what it does. Even the outside community knows this to be true, knows a Lodge is not merely a circle of men, or a rough expression of their views, or a composite of their activities, but is itself an it, and when men say that Freemasonry is doing this or that they say it is doing it, meaning the Lodge. A mall who comes into it is not a citizen, resident, attendant, visitor, but is a member in a literal sense, as the eye or the hand is a member of the body. The Offices are organs of this member in a literal sense, as the eye or the hand is a member of the body. The Offices are organs of this Body of Masonry; as a Body it has its purposes to fulfiller~ and the Offices are among the means by which it fulfills them, and they are designed, constituted, and equipped for that express function.
OFFICIALISM.
A name in use during the midTwentieth Century to characterize certain characteristics of Masonic activities in the United States; denotes the virtual but unintentional absorption and control of a Lodge by its Officers, their Stations, Places, and Functions. In such a Lodge, Masonic life is much reduced; the members meet in Regular Communications once or twice a month, conduct the Regular Order of Business, confer a Degree (by the Officers), close the Lodge and have no Masonic activities until the next Communication. A Lodge given to officialism usually has a bare, sparsely furnished Lodge Room, without pictures or music, and is decorated and lighted with little taste. It has but seldom entertainments, special programs, or other opportunities for fellowship, and gives small attention to Masonic education, relief and charity, and takes little part in community affairs. In consequence, attendance is very low; one survey of a hundred of them by a Grand Lodge found their average attendance to be around four per cent of the membership. Members tend to feel that they can do only what the Officers approve; the Officers tend to oppose or belittle anything not proposed or initiated by themselves.
One effect of officialism in the Fraternity at large is in the confining of recognition, titles, and honors to Officers or exOfficers; they are the speakers on a program, occupy the seats at the speakers' table at banquets; receive the honorary titles; and it is taken for granted that they are the leaders and spokesmen for the Fraternity Members of the Lodge who devote themselves to charity and relief (or would do so), or who are singers and musicians, or whose talent is for Lodge social life, or who are Lodge speakers, or who have talents for leadership but do not wish to hold office, Masonie students, scholars, and writers, members who are enunent in public life, or in the arts, tend to be passed over by officialism with the result that the Fraternity becomes impoverished of talent, variety, and vitality. Members grow weary of the same voices and the monotony of the turning over of the same machinery and stay away.
The history of Freemasonry in the United States is as regards dominant characteristics a succession of periods. From the Revolutionary War until the Presidency of Andrew Jackson was a period of confusion: the Grand Lodge system had not crystallized, a system for Coordinating the five Rites was uncertain of accomplishment, Lodges were uncertain in mind as between a Grand Lodge for each State and a National Grand Lodge, there was no Uniform Work, two Antiblasonic movements had a dislocating effect, etc. The period from then until the Civil War was one of expansion with new Lodges and Grand Lodges being set up in one new territory after another. For about a decade after the Civil War the Fraternity was comparatively inactive, as if it were deadened, and could not grow. Then began a new period which was to last until about 1900, and one easy to characterize because the Craft painted its own portrait in Grand Lodge
Proceedings: Freemasonry became religious, almost solemn and with a tendency to the funereal; oratory and sermons attracted more delegates to Grand Lodge than Grand Lodge business; there was everywhere the sense that Masonry, like the nation, was weighted down by Destiny, and the result was the carrying of the religious consciousness into Lodges, and the oncefamiliar saying that "Freemasonry is the handmaiden of the Church" was often heard. Following that came a period of about fifteen years when the Craft throughout the country, and everywhere at about the saxne time, began to stir with the new effects of the universal use of the telephone, automobile, radio, of factory work, rapid growth of cities in number and size; Masons like other Americans, became uprooted and began to live in a community for an average of less than three years; in Grand Lodges attention became absorbed by new rules, regulations, edicts, discussions of policy; Masonic jurisprudence was at the head of Masonic subjects; and a nation-wide Masonic building boom began which had no precedent. The period of officialism immediately followed. What period will follow it, there is no way to foresee, but indications are that the dominant note may become, "What is there in Freemasonry for me?" If so, a Mason will not find much in officialism, and it may well be that in consequence Lodge life may become more complex, richer, more entertaining, and more rewarding.
OLDEST AMERICAN LODGES.
Under date of Dec. 5-8, 1730, Benjamin Franklin wrote in his Pennsylvania Gazette that there were "several Lodges of Free-Masons erected in this Province." The population of the Province in that year is estimated at 65,000; Philadelphia had a population of 10,000, more than New York City, and grew with frontier rapidity, its 700 dwelling houses of 1700 becoming 2300 by 1753. Ever since the Province had been established under the proprietorship of William Penn (he was not a Masons but his family was Masonic) carpenters and Masons were at a premium, many of them being given inducements to emigrate, and since large numbers came from North Ireland and Scotland where there were many Lodges long before 1717, a number of Freemasons undoubtedly were among them. In Lancaster County the Germans were much addicted (and still are) to mysticism, occultism, etc. (the Rite of Strict Observance was later practiced there); there may have been Lodges among them before there were any in Philadelphia, for in 1734 Franklin sent three copies of the Book of Constitutions to John Catherwood in the County very soon after its publication. The publication of that book was a large and expensive undertaking which a businessman as cautious as Franklin would not have risked had not he known of a sufficient market for it. He had lived in London in 1724-6, and very probably was often around Strahan's, the best printer and publisher in Britain, and he may there have met two of the leaders of the Grand Lodge, William Preston and John Northouck. (See The German Sectaruzns of Pennsylvanta, by Julius Sachse.)
Col. Daniel D. Coxe was appointed Provincial Grand Master for New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania in 1730, and at a visit to Grand Lodge in London the following year was toasted in that title. Since he was a man of many affairs and in public life it is impossible to believe that he would have accepted the appointment had there not been Lodges in those Provinces for him to supervise. Bro. David McGregor (see article on him in this Supplement) has proved the existence of a Lodge in New York City in 1731; by 1737 an alarmed reader of the New York Gazette could write that "a new sect [Masons] at last has extended to these parts" (why the "at lasts"; extended from where? from New Jersey and Pennsylvania? or from Britain?).
Governor Belcher, of Massachusetts, was made a Mason in England in 1704; Colonists were made Masons in Boston itself prior to 1733; a tradition, sounder than many which cautious historians accept, places a Ijodge in Sings' Chapel in Boston in 1720. Henry Price erected the Provincial Grand Lodge at Boston in 1733.
New Jersey possesses the oldest of American Masonic dates. John Skene, who settled in New Jersey in 1684, and was to become one of its most prominent citizens, was a member of the Lodge at Aberdeen, Scotland. With him came three other Masons from that same Lodge, but they did not remain.
There is some evidence for a Virginia Lodge as early as 1729. There is printed evidence for a Warranted Lodge as early as 1733; the Freemasons' Pocket Companion (a copy of the original edition is before the writer at the moment), published in Edinburgh, 1756, lists: "No. 172, The Royal Exchange, in the Borough of Norfolk, in Virginia; 1st Thursday; Dec., 1733."
Lodge records of the Seventeenth Century and of the Lodges formed soon after 1717 make it certain that Masons valued the possession of the Modes of Recognition even above membership in a Lodge, and particularly if they were travelers, seamen, in the army, or expecting to go away as colonists. The Mystic Tie was practiced with great seriousness, even at the cost of money or the risk of life, as may be found in the data in a work of such authenticity as Freemasonry in the Royal Scots, by T. R. Henderson. Responses to the G. H. S. of D. are not travelers' tales. Nor were they occurrences in remote countries only; even in London the Tie was so often used that it received public attention. The authentic (and also very cautious!) historian of Prince of Wales Lodge, gives as the Prince of Wales' reason for constituting a Lodge of his own "a strong belief in and reliance on the efficacy of the mystic tie"; and the numerous instances in Minutes of many Lodges which officially congratulate members of the Royal Family (the Jacobites were still a powerful faction) upon escapes from assassination, assault and conspiracy underline that word efficacy.. Proprietors of great tracts of land in the American Colonies made heavy investments, needed employees they could trust, shipped much money and many documents back and forth, had to have many skilled workmen among their settlers, offered bonuses to emigrants, and for confidential representatives required men like Col. Coxe who could be trusted to fight, administer, govern.
Men with the Mystic Tie satisfied those requirements. It is suggested that as between 1700 and 1730 there were many more Masons in the Colonies than the present paucity of American Lodge records would indicate.
It is very likely that when in London, Governor Belcher had been in contact with Christopher Wren, Master of Antiquity Lodge long before 1717, who was on the boards of management of Colonial Companies t and that it was in Wren's Lodge that he was made a Mason in 1704; Coxe, belonging to the same class as Belcher, may also have come into Masonry via that same route. Records of that period belonging to the Lodge of Antiquity were lost or destroyed, or were among those famous papers which Antiquity loaned to Dr. Desaguliers who forgot to return them; there are in existence, however, written records to support the probabilities given above. There were among the earliest individual Masons in pre-1730 America two classes: men of the ruling, aristocratic, big-business class, like Perth, Coxe, Belcher, most of whom had
doubtless been made Masons in London, where Grand Lodge and many Lodges were officered by Royalty and the Nobility; and trained workmen masons, carpenters, etc., who more likely came from Lodges in Ireland and Scotland.
This class cleavage came to the surface a half century later when most of the Modern Masons and Lodges remained Tories, most of the Antient (Grand Lodge of 1751 of Irish origin) Masons and Lodges and also most of the Masons and Lodges from Scotland were on the Patriot side.
None of the Masons, Lodges, or Provincial Grand Lodges in America prior to about 1760 can be brought to the test of Masonic legal requirements and standard practices which have been established since. The Grand Lodge of 1717 attempted little supervision of its Lodges even within the ten-mile radius it had assigned itself as its own Jurisdiction. Lodges at work
elsewhere often scarcely knew of its existence. It kept no Minutes for years; for some years thereafter they were not Minutes but brief reports, copied out by hand (until Pine happened to offer to engrave them) by a groaning Grand Secretary who looked upon Lodge Secretaries as his natural enemies, and then only upon demand from the Lodges. Warrants or Charters as now used, legal documents containing authority in themselves, were unknown until 1757. A
Grand Master was expected to form a new Lodge in person; failing that he was to deputize another to act for him, giving him a warrant to do so in shape of a letter (or deputation); this deputation had no author ity in itself, and lasted only during the Grand Master's personal pleasure. For years after this custom was begun (a decade or so after the creation of the Grand
Lodge) it was only loosely enforced in England. In the Seventeenth Century a local Lodge acted as the "mother" of another Lodge, such as the Lodge at Derby "mothering" Ashmole's Lodge at Warrington, Mary's Chapel and Kilwinning mothering other Lodges in Scotland; in English regions remote from London this continued in at least a few known instances long after the Grand Lodge adopted its rule about "deputation."
After the Grand Lodge of 1717 was erected Lodges were asked to unite with it, and to receive, a new "warranting"; those which did were called "regular," but those which did not were not stigmatized as irregular or clandestine. Exclusive Territorial Jurisdiction was unknown; the first Grand Lodge claimed jurisdiction only as far as Westminster ("ten miles"), but it itself did not hesitate to invade the jurisdiction of the old Mother Lodge at York. When the Grand Lodge of All England was established at York, the "London," or "Prince of Wales" (1717) Grand Lodge Id did not protest; the two Grand Bodies maintained amicable relations. The founding of the Antient Grand Lodge in 1751 was not a violation of Jurisdiction. The Provincial Grand Lodges set up in the 1730's were experiments at first, tentative, diverse among themselves, of undefined and untested authority, with ill-defined jurisdictions, and were for years very fluid in form, jurisdiction, and activity. (Why historians of English Speculative Masonry confine themselves primarily to the 1717 Grand Lodge and secondarily to the 1751 Grand Lodge, and ignore the great bulk of Lodge histories and Provincial Grand Lodge histories, where English Freemasonry was made, is one of the many mysteries of Masonry; another mystery is why American Masonic historians give little attention to Scotland; still more, so little to Ireland, from which directly, and indirectly through the Antients, American Freemasonry received so much. The bulk of space devoted to the London Grand Lodge of 1717 is out of proportion.)
The records of the earliest Masons and Lodges in America lie in the framework of facts as above given; instantly they are described, assayed, assessed in the terms of a later period, when laws and forms had become crystallized, they are misreported and misunderstood. The pre-1730 and pre-1733 Lodges at Philadelphia, New York, and Boston had no warrants, were self-constituted, but they were as legal as any that had. The regions over which Coxe, Price, Riggs, Harison, etc., were to warrant Lodges as personal deputies of the Grand Master in England were not Junsdictions, with exclusive sovereignty; had they been, the Grand Master in England would not have appointed more than one Provincial Grand Master for the same "territory." The Grand Lodges in Britain evidently acted upon the assumption that American Masons and Lodges must be left to look after their own affairs not only because of the great distance in months and miles between it and "Lodges in ye colonies" but also because the Grand Lodge, so long in perfecting its own organization, and understaffed, seas having its hands more than full at home; and more especially so in the 1730's, the critical decade in
America, when it and its Lodges in London were under a barrage of Anti-Masonry, exposes, derision, and mockeries; to contend against which in about 1735 it took the fateful and almost fatal step of altering the all-important Modes of Recognition, which act was to win it the epithet of "Modern" (innovator) in 1751.
In the eyes of an American Grand Master of the middle of the Twentieth Century scarcely anything in early American Masonry was regular, lawful, or according to the Rules of Order. Henry Price set up a Provincial Grand Lodge with only one Lodge in it, constituted the same day, an unprecedented action; later, he issued in writing a document to appoint Benjamin Franklin Provincial Grand Master at Philadelphia, also an act unheard of before and one which the Grand Lodge at London did not, as far as anybody knows, ever authorize. A military Lodge at Albany, N. Y., penned a copy of its own warrant for a Lodge of civilians, installed the officers, then moved away; even so, the civilian Lodge, thus so irregularly parented, flourished and was accepted, and still works under the name of Mt. Vernon, No. 3. It was. as already stated, long a custom for one Lodge to mother another, or for a Lodge to be a Lodge in the afternoon and a Grand Lodge the same night; doubtless early Lodges in Lancaster County, Pa., in the Carolinas, and in Georgia functioned that way; if so, they were afterwards accepted as regular.
Reports, Lodge records, certificates, were irregular and uncertain. The veteran John Lane, in his paper on Masters' Lodges in Ars Quatuor Coronatorum, and commenting on the weird doings of a Master's Lodge in Providence, R. I., rather querulously wondered what that errant Lodge had done with the £3 per Making it was supposed to return to Grand Lodge, implying between the lines (and our English Brothers of the same school often packed many things between the lines when writing about us!) that the members had probably stolen it or drunk it up; his ghost could be informed that to the members of Providence Lodge the Grand Lodge at Boston was the only Grand Lodge they knew (London answered no mail) and that they doubtless sent each £3 up there—Providence Masons were then, as now, superior to £3!
Price, Coxe, Franklin, et al, apparently were confused about their jurisdiction; they need not have been, for Grand Lodge had left them the whole of North America to work in, and without let or hindrance, in fact if not in writing. Who gave Benjamin Franklin authority to publish the Anderson Book of Constitutions or authority to distribute it to nowunknown Lodges never on the lists of Grand Lodge? In the British-Canadian and in our own FrenchIndian wars a quarter century before the Revolution so many military Lodges came in that in one British force stationed at Quebec there were no fewer than six. Such Lodges left a trail over America that no historian has traced—erratic, irregular, and seldom according to the Landmarks; and these trails were cut across by Lodges brought in under Irish, Scottish, Antient, and even French deputations. The questions as to who was the first Mason, what was the first Lodge, the first Grand Lodge, which were regular and "duly constituted" and which were not, are in the same melting pot the Fraternity itself was in between 1720 and the Revolutionary War. But not for that reason need American Masons two centuries after feel ashamed of their ancestors. If nevertheless they do so feel they can be shriven of their shame and eased of their embarrassment by reading during the evenings of some winter twenty or so histories of the oldest Lodges and Provincial Grand Lodges in England (or Ireland!); the ones here were not one whit more "irregular" than the Lodges there, and apparently were much more peaceable among themselves.
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