While we have at Freemasons’ Hall in London a public relations machine to combat ill-informed reports and to proactively promote Freemasonry, we still have a rather fixed view of masonic history: that is, the history written by Freemasons for Freemasons. In itself it is harmless enough but until quite recently this was also the only history available for non-masons to get any feeling about where Freemasonry came from. However good this history is, the agenda, and the themes, explored by masonic historians today, are by and large those set over a century ago.
    R. F. Gould’s, The History of Freemasonry was first published in 1887! He and his friends had a fundamental preoccupation with the origin of Freemasonry, with the identification of the moment of its birth. While they accepted a period of pregnancy, the idea to most, that parenthood and the artisan were linked, was beyond the Pale. The Freemasons he was writing for belonged to an organisation with the Prince of Wales as Grand Master and Lodges containing the local social elite. It was an organisation which was the natural home for the Victorian middle-class male. The London Illustrated News published pictures of the Grand Master in his regalia. Local Press would report Masonic Balls and who were present. These were all important social events.
    Gould’s generation of masonic historians were men of independent means writing for the emerging late-Victorian middle-class. For them, the conception of Freemasonry in the seventeenth century was due to the interjection of their perceived social antecedents: seventeenth century gentry, intellectually associated with Rosicrucianism and other movements. But the only empirical evidence Gould has for this comes from Elias Ashmole’s diary where he stated ‘I was made a Free Mason in 1646’ and giving the names of those who were then at the Lodge. From Gould’s point of view, it established beyond doubt that there was in existence a Lodge of Freemasons composed of speculative or non-operative members.
    In 1894, just a few years after Gould wrote his History, Sidney and Beatrice Webb produced their influential, The History of Trade Unionism. The Webbs came from the same sort of background as Gould, and like Gould, they had an agenda, not the least being the forming of a Labour Party, the London School of Economics, and the London County Council. Their writing of history served this end.
    One might well ask, what is the connection between these two histories? Well, the Webbs argued that it appears ‘probable, indeed, that the masons, wandering over the country from one job to another, were united, not in any local guild, but a trade fraternity of national extent’. The Webbs were not aware of it but they were referring to the fraternity known to Gould as the Society of Free Masons. The Webbs added that such an association may, ‘possess many points of resemblance to the Friendly Society of Operative Stone Masons’. This latter was a Trade Union formed just three years before Gould’s birth in 1836.
    The main sources of information which we have of the Society of Free Masons have come from antiquarians such as John Aubrey and seventeenth century scholars like Dr. Robert Plot. Plot was a product of restoration science; part of a new breed of scholars who declined to ‘proceed, by repeating what somebody else had written and adding a little more.’ To them, ‘the Nature of Things in Metaphors and Allegories is nothing else but to sport and trifle with empty words.’ They were to ‘speak of things as they are’. They relied on ‘first-hand observations and credible reports.’ And when they wanted to learn more about stone building they spoke to ‘masons, and stone-cutters’.
    Plot claimed of the ‘Society of Free Masons’ that their Lodges were ‘spread more or less all over the Nation’. Lodges were on, or near, building sites such as St. Thomas’ Hospital, Southwark; St. James’ Church, within monumental masons’ yards; others were in quarries. Some seventeenth century quarries even displayed the Mason’s Arms at the entrance, indicating the importance of the trade, its customs and rules.
    In London, a Lodge met at the Hall of the Masons’ Company; we have one meeting recorded in 1682. In fact, this was the second, and only other, meeting attended by Ashmole. Those present, while important, were masons by trade. William Wilson carved the elaborate porch to Subrey Hall. William Woodman was a monumental mason at Westminster Abbey, Thomas Wise was a stone carver, Nick Young worked at the Apothecaries Company, William Hammon[d] at the Vinters’ Company and the Royal College of Physicians. John Shorthose carved the steeple door at Christ Church Newgate, and William Stanton was an important monumental mason with a yard in Holborn. The importance of this record is that it definitively kills Gould’s notion of gentlemen scholars partaking of esoteric secrets, for what happened that night was that a young man who had just finished his apprenticeship was initiated, was ‘made a mason’.
    To become a member of the Society in the seventeenth century required that you were freeborn and of good kindred; entry requirements which were not too different from those of the Friendly Society of Operative Stone Masons in the nineteenth century. The candidate was then given a history which started from the Book of Genesis and the building of the first stone house by Jabell. It proceeded to explain how the rules of the ‘craft’ had been established, and later confirmed, by King Solomon at the time of the building of his Temple – and so on! This myth or legend did not disappear: in 1868, A.J. Waudby was commissioned to design an emblem for the Friendly Society of Operative Stone Masons; it was made quite clear to him that the central panel was to depict the building of Solomon’s temple.
    The History having been read to the candidate, he placed both hands on the ‘book’ – the Bible – and each rule of the Society was read, repeated and rehearsed. The Society of Free Masons saw itself to be synonymous with the ‘trade’ and so the new member, through his obligation to the rules, was deemed to have been ‘made a mason’. Then the newly ‘made mason’ was taken to one side and given ‘certain secret signs’ and the ‘masons’ word’. Two hundred years later the Friendly Society of Operative Stone Masons, the Trade Union, would publish similar initiation rituals which they used.
    William Dugdale, in conversation with John Aubrey in 1691, talked of Free-Masons being ‘known to one another by certain Signes & watch-words’ and of the Lodges where if any ‘of them fall into decay the brotherhood is to relieve him &c’. For the travelling mason with no means of support, the notion was simple enough. Whether money was given, or gained, it gave him the ability to stop at Inns, such as the seventeenth century Inn at Cotgrove, which displayed the arms of the Society, and ‘pay truly for any meat and drink’. In England, in the mid-nineteenth century, ‘one fifth of the stonemasons’ lodges or relieving stations’ were still held in Inns displaying the ‘Masons’ Arms’.
    In London, the Society of Free Masons, was formally integrated within the Company of Free Masons from the early seventeenth century. The practice appears to have been that you were made free and joined the livery, then paid an extra fine to be ‘made masons’ just before leaving the confines of the City of London; ‘going abroad’ to seek, or undertake, work elsewhere.
    In the first half of the seventeenth century this would have been a one-way traffic but this changed after the Great Fire of London. With the passing of the Rebuilding Act in 1667, London was an open city with the Company of Free Masons losing control over labour. Masons from all around the country were allowed to work in the city. The Society of Free Masons displayed the ‘names of the accepted Masons in a faire inclosed frame with lock and key’.
    It was in this period in the history of London that the Society of Free Masons was operating as a labour exchange or house of call for masons coming in from the country. It has to be understood that both masters and men were members of the Society. This was still the case in the 1830s: members of the Friendly Society of Operative Stone Masons took an oath, ‘that I will not work for any master that is not in the Union’.
    After the Rebuilding Act’s powers came to an end, work for masons started to dry up. William Preston explained some time later that the old lodge at St. Paul’s, and a few others, continued to meet regularly, but had few members. To increase their numbers, a proposition was agreed, that the privileges of Masonry should no longer be restricted to operative masons but extend to men of various professions. This was the birth of Freemasonry.
    By 1717 we had the forming of Grand Lodge. The mistake has always been to assume that working stone masons were not members of the new Freemasons. This is far from the case. In fact, whole Lodges of Operative Masons joined the new Grand Lodge in the Counties in the 1730s, in London in the 1760s, and in the north of England one Lodge joined as late as 1822; this Lodge returned its Warrant ten years later, the year that the Friendly Society of Operative Masons was founded.
    We can see then that Freemasonry was integral with the evolution of this Trade Union and others.

Andy Durr was Mayor of Brighton and Hove, and currently is Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Sussex. He is a member of South Down Lodge, No.1797. This article is a summary of some points taken from a chapter of his book in progress under the working title of, The English Artisan and Fraternal Association – A Troublesome History but Common Heritage – Fraternities, Freemasonry, Secret Orders and Trade Unions.