Rare and out-of-print masonic texts
Rare Masonic Texts
- Definition from A Concise Encyclopædia of Freemasonry
- Excerpt from History of Freemasonry
Definition
This is the name generally given to a number of old manuscripts which have been found in England and elsewhere during the last seventy years. They generally consist of three parts — first, an introductory prayer or invocation; second, the history of the Order, or the Legend of the Craft, commencing at the time of Lamech and ending with the era of Athelstan, or about 926AD; and third, the peculiar statues and duties, the regulations and observances, which the Craft in general or Masons in particular are bound carefully to uphold and inviolably to maintain. There are now some 70 copies of these Charges known to be in existence, and new ones may be discovered at any time, for about 40 have come to light in the last 35 years, chiefly owing to the indefatigable research of Bro. W.J. Hughan, who has made them his especial study.
The earliest known reference to them made by any writer is in Dr. Plot’s Natural History of Staffordshire, published in 1686, in which he gave an account of the Freemasons of that county, and said that they had among them a large parchment volume containing the history and rules of the Craft of Masonry.
Of these Old Charges the earliest so far discovered is a poem of 794 lines, supposed to have been written about 1390, and now in the British Museum; known as the Regius Poem. The next in point of time is in prose and also in the British Museum; experts fix its date as about 1450; it is known as the Matthew Cook MS. Then comes one known as the Grand Lodge MS. No. 1, as being in the possession of the Grand Lodge of England; this was dated by the copyist ‘1583’. And so they approach in date nearer and nearer to our own time, until we come to a copy made in 1869 from a MS. which has since been missing.
Though all have a general likeness, yet no two are precisely the same, showing additions, omissions, variations, and discrepancies of names. It has been supposed that in former times each Lodge possessed a copy of these Charges, which was read to a candidate on his initiation, but there is no actual proof that such was the case.
Bro. W.J. Hughan, in his work The Old Charges, has given full particulars of each of these documents and the Quatuor Coronati Lodge has issued facsimiles and transcripts of several of them.
From A Concise Encyclopædia of Freemasonry by E. L. Hawkins, London 1908