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The Operative Mason of the Middle Ages

In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the official in charge of the technical side of a large building project was known as the Master Mason or Master of the Works. Usually he was the architect who designed the edifice. For this he had a "tracing board", which served as a drafting table. Most of his workmen were journeymen masons who had given proof of their skill and had been certified as fellows of the craft. On large jobs there would be a few apprentice masons, learning the trade by working with the fellows. Normally they were engaged by the Master or by the institution that employed him. The journeymen themselves had too little job security, and not enough money, to maintain an apprentice.

In Scotland by 1598 a new stage had come into being, probably to restrict the number of fully qualified masons on the pay roll. A journeyman who had completed his apprenticeship was to serve a further term of from two to seven years, according to location, before he was admitted a fellow of the craft. In the meantime he was called an "entered apprentice".

In most localities there would also be men who had learned to build walls or dikes without being apprenticed to the trade or being admitted to a lodge. In Scotland a "dry-diker" was known as a "cowan", which is defined as "a mason without the word". The Schaw Statutes of 1598 ordered "that no Master nor Fellow of the Craft receive any Cowans to work in his society or company, nor send none of his servants to work with cowans". In a matter of bread and butter, however, expediency could take precedence over doctrinaire principle. Cowans could be employed by Master Masons for any kind of work provided that no regular craftsman could be found within fifteen miles. Originally the word was not necessarily derogatory. Today it means an impostor or eavesdropper who has not been regularly admitted to lodge. A Masonic catechism of 1730 asks, "If a cowan (or listener) is catched, how is he to be punished?" Answer, "To be placed under the eaves of the houses (in rainy weather) till the water runs in at his shoulders and out at his shoes" (Early Masonic Catechisms, p. l63).

Many sets of regulations survive which were laid down for the governance of operative masons by craft guilds, by incorporations, and by both non-permanent and territorial lodges. Certain clauses recur repeatedly in these codes, above all those which maintained the quality of the work and protected the rights of the employer. The term of apprenticeship was fixed, usually at seven years. The competence of apprentices or other applicants for admission was to be supervised, tested, and certified. Masters were to respect the integrity of other Masters, and not take work over their heads, nor employ nor entice their workmen. Disputes between Masters and workmen were to be settled. Some rules were appropriate only to municipalities: the provision for periodic "searches", that is, inspections of work already completed, and trade restrictions on those who were not full fellows of the craft. One rule, from the Old Charges, was applicable only to the transitory lodges: a travelling mason who arrived was either to be given work or, if that was not possible, money enough to see him to the next lodge.

As well as regulating the trade some of the Masonic bodies also filled religious functions and collected funds for pious uses and for benevolence. Throughout the whole period from 1376 to 1650 or even later, operative masons were known sometimes as freemasons. There is no clear distinction between "mason" and "freemason", and at times they clearly mean the same thing. The latter came to have certain distinct connotations. Originally it was simply an abbreviation of "freestone-mason", a mason who worked in freestone (a kind of English limestone). Later, after the name became established it was misunderstood. A freemason was thought of as "free" because he had the "freedom" (membership) of a company, guild, or lodge. Still later it was taken to mean a mason who was free by birth, that is, who was not a bondsman. Gradually the word came to be associated with non-operative masons. About 1655 it was dropped from the title of the London Company of Masons.

Decline of the Operative Mason

As we have seen, mediaeval masons' organizations exercised a restrictive trade control, partly to protect the brethren, but largely to serve the bosses. In order to enforce regulations they needed exclusive supremacy over all masons within their reach. So long as access to the area under jurisdiction of a guild could be controlled, its authority was unchallenged. Once the monopoly was cracked, it could no longer police the trade. In Scotland at least, the downfall of operative masonry came as the cities expanded and work became available outside the old city walls. Cowans or alien masons could now enter and be hired without let or hindrance.

Perhaps the last straw came with the Great Fire of London in 1666, and with a disastrous series of fires in Edinburgh culminating in 1674. A vast amount of stone rebuilding was required, too much by far for the local masons to undertake. Masons from elsewhere were encouraged to contribute their skills. In 1667 the freedom of London was granted for seven years to anyone who could hold a hammer and nail. To those who completed the seven years the grant was extent for life. These benefits had formerly been available to craftsmen only through the guilds.

The Masons' Company had lost the chief incentive it formerly offered for new members, and its domination of the trade was effectually smashed. It could no longer finance its activities by admission fees alone, and it reverted to the old custom of collecting a "quarterage", a levy of sixpence per member every three months. Quarterages were continued by the premier Grand Lodge; hence derives our practice of submitting an annual return of members to Grand Lodge, together with a per capita appropriation.

Now that their original objectives were unattainable, the lodges had to find other ways to justify their continued existence. At first they became, to a large extent, benevolent societies. A preoccupation with the relief of distressed brethren begins to appear in masonic documents of the 1670's and 1680's. Once the aims were changed it became possible to have more than one lodge in a city, or even to hold lodge where there had not previously been a stonemasons' guild.

Acceptance of Non-Operatives

This decline of the guilds heralded another important innovation. By 1621 the London Masons' Company was using the words "making of Masons" in connection with men who had already reached the highest ranks of operative masonry. The company apparently had within it a more exclusive body which one could enter by paying a required fee and "being made a Mason". By 1631 it was "making Masons", or accepting, men who had no connection with the building trade. "Accepting" is used as a technical term, meaning "receiving non-operatives into the Craft". This particular segment of the company was at first called The Acception. By 1682 it was The Lodge. It had no function in regulating trade.

Elsewhere too, we find non-operatives being accepted or adopted as masons. Often they were members of the upper classes. For them the rule fixing the term of an E.A. was suspended, so that they could be advanced to F.C. immediately. Otherwise the nature of the lodge remained unchanged for them. The earliest certain example of a non-operative mason is on June 8, 1600, when John Boswell, Laird of Auchinleck, attended the Lodge at Edinburgh. In July, 1634, the same Lodge admitted Lord Alexander of Menstrie, Viscount Canada, and two other noblemen as F.C. In 1646 the diaries of the antiquarian Elias Ashmole record how he was made a Mason at Warrington, in Cheshire. Other names can be cited, later than these, in both England and Scotland.

The reasons that led the gentry to interest themselves in an artisans' craft are obscure. It seems likely that the lodges benefited financially. In Scotland higher fees were charged to gentlemen masons than to operatives. Men of distinction were perhaps encouraged to enter in order to promote contributions to charity. They may have consented for antiquarian reasons-curiosity about the history and mystery of cathedral building; or perhaps "the meetings of the lodge provided a convenient opportunity for that compound of refreshment, smoking and conversation, in circumstances of ease rather than elegance, and undisturbed by the society of women, in which many men can take a rational pleasure" (Knoop-Jones, Genesis of Freemasonry, p. l41).

In due course there came to be lodges in which the number of non-operatives outweighed the operatives. This was already the case at Ashmole's lodge at Warrington in 1646, at Chester about 1673, at Dublin in 1688, at Chichester in 1695, and at several locations in London and Yorkshire between 1693 and 1717.