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MASONS GUILD

In the Middle Ages, any skilled trade or craft was known as a "mystery". This is not our word "mystery", meaning "a secret that is not to be revealed", which is connected with the Greek myo, "to keep mum". It is an English corruption of a totally different word, the French mestier (modern French me'tier), "a trade or occupation".

The so-called craft guilds (or gilds) began in England soon after 1100. They were associations of men who worked at a common trade, and were designed to protect their interests and to administer their own affairs. They served the public by ensuring good material and adequate workmanship. They excluded competition from migratory or unskilled laborers. They set rules for apprentices, journeymen, and masters, settled disputes, and so on. In many ways the craft guilds prefigured the modern trades unions.

As time passed, their influence grew, and they were eventually recognized by the civic authorities. In London by 1319 each craft ran a "closed shop". All men of that craft within city limits were compelled to belong to the guild. They could not obtain the "freedom" of the city - the full rights of trade and industry - without being endorsed by a company of their peers.

Because the masons had fewer craftsmen than did many trades, and because not a few of them lived and worked outside the cities, they were slow to organize their own guild. In fact we have proof positive that there was no trade organization of masons in London before 1356. In that year a dispute broke out between "mason hewers" and "mason layers or setters", in the matter of defining what work a specialist was permitted to do. Men of both parties came before the city fathers and drew up a code of trade regulations. The preamble asserts that the masons' trade "has not been regulated in due manner by the government of folks of their trade, in such form as other trades are". One provision of the new code settled the demarcation dispute by ruling that every man of the trade could do any work connected with it, provided that he was fully skilled in it.

By twenty years later, in 1376, the masons had won recognition as one of forty-seven "mysteries" in London. They were to elect four men of the trade to serve on the Common Council. This is the earliest British Masonic craft guild of which we have record. Not many others are known. In England they are mentioned at Norwich and Lincoln. In Edinburgh the masons and wrights petitioned the city jointly in 1475, and were granted self-government as an incorporation.