More than two million tourists visit York each year: there are the ancient encircling walls and their Bars (or gatehouses) . There is Clifford’s Tower, the Castle precinct with its museum and the nearby site where a Viking settlement once flourished. In the excavated foundations of the present Minster you can make your way not only amongst the Norman remains but the bases of the original Roman headquarters’ walls.
    For others there are the gardens in the grounds of what was once the large Abbey of St. Mary’s with its medieval Hospitium, once the convalescent home for the monks of St. Mary’s Abbey and present museum, alongside the medieval Hospital of St.Leonard, the site of which is still being excavated. When to all this you add the halftimbered halls of St.William, of the Merchant Taylors and Merchant Adventurers, along with the Guildhall, the Shambles and Petergate, where Guy Fawkes grew up as a lad, York’s many attractions become clear.
    To any interested Freemason all this poses questions. Who built all these remarkable structures? How were all these builders organised? Why did some of them take part in York’s annual Mystery Plays that were seen in the streets for over 200 years? What happened to the stonemasons when many of the religious buildings not only fell into disuse but were demolished and people began to prefer timber and brick buildings? What is the truth behind the story that Queen Elizabeth I wanted to close down the York Masons and was yet prevented from doing so by a Lord Sackville, who seems to have been a ‘Grand Master’? Why did Dr. James Anderson, the well known compiler of the early 18th century Constitutions, record a story of how stonemasons were assembled at or near York to be given a charter in King Athelstan’s time?
    These are some of the mysteries that have helped to create the very places that tourists, with Freemasons among them, still come to visit.
    There are also other mysteries. If the stonemasons’s trade went into decline in the Tudor age was that the end of the story?
    What is behind the fact that in the late 1500s, at least, we begin to see the records of Freemen in other trades joining the Masons’ Guild or the lodge that was attached to it?
    What can York perhaps tell us about the earliest traces of a Freemasonry in England that is at least as old as in Scotland? Is it possible that there is some evidence of other Accepted lodges being around in the 17th century when many believe that Sir Robert Moray and Elias Ashmole are the only names in England to be conjured with?
    In fact, is it possible that here, as in Chester, there is evidence of an organised Lodge in 1666 and by 1705 there was a York Lodge behaving as only an older type of Grand Lodge was expected to behave at that time? I have discovered hard proof that this is so.

ENGLISH SPECULATIVE FREEMASONRY

If Anderson was not entirely mistaken in mentioning York as a cradle of English masonry and if it can be shown that men in other trades than building ones were involved as Freemasons in York in the late 16th century, then a whole new understanding of our past begins to appear.
    The suggestion put forward that we owe our development as Accepted Freemasons to what took place in Scotland has to be newly reviewed if not firmly rebutted. No one questions the evidence produced to show how Scottish Freemasonry developed from at least 1599 and took on the new forms of Accepted Craft in that land.
    What evidence that is now to be offered from this part of England can show is that in another form, and following its own style of development, the Accepted Masonry of England was at least contemporary with, and not subsequent to, that in Scotland. There are two parts of the story worth exploring in more detail.
    The first of these takes us back to Anglo-Saxon times, while the other considers an event in the 18th century. There is little question that by the last years of the 8th century York had acquired a reputation as a special place of learning. Learning at that time really meant the study of the seven liberal arts and sciences, matters with which Freemasons are still expected to become familiar. One person at the centre of this reputation was a scholar called Alcuin who had attended, and then taught in, the school associated with the Minster. Not only was Alcuin a revered teacher there but he created the first substantial Minster library and he was also charged by Archbishop Albert to assist in the design and construction of a great new church in the Anglo-Saxon city. This was no doubt a further reason for interest in him as part of the traditional history of the Freemasons later claimed. Mention of him came about in this way.

CHARLEMAGNE

Charlemagne, the famous ruler of much of western Europe in Alcuin’s time,was so struck by the reputation of this York scholar that he invited him to his court at Aachen. There he wished to create a new school for the sons of his nobles and also to build a new chapel for his palace. Eventually Alcuin was persuaded to leave York and completed both the tasks that he was assigned. In letters still extant we learn that Alcuin spoke of the new chapel as ‘The Temple of a new Solomon’ and remarked that should another Queen of Sheba come to view it she would be as impressed as had been the first. At this court he was also associated with a nobleman called Eberhard, the cup-bearer of Charlemagne, who was given the title ‘Naymus Graecus’ after the original Nehemiah.
    In the later masonic traditional history of Anderson’s Constitutions this name was misplaced and linked with Alcuin so that we read, ‘it happened that a curious Mason named Memongrecus, that had been at the building of Solomon’s Temple, came into France, and taught the Science of Masonry to Frenchmen; and there was a King of France called Carolus Martel, who greatly loved Masonry, who sent for the said Memmongrecus, and learnt of him the said Sciences...’ That Alcuin, as Memmon or Naymus, thus represents a substantial part of the ‘masonic glory’ attached to York there can be no doubt. Is it any wonder that there are still masons in a lodge there that proudly bears his name.
    Another mystery for some is why the lodge that is found in York from at least 1705 should lay claim not simply to being a Grand Lodge, but the Grand Lodge of all England.
    The title of ‘All England’ deserves treatment here. It derives from the period when the grandson of King Alfred, Athelstan, was at last able to conquer the lands north of the Rivers Trent and Humber, which had up to then been held by Viking rulers. The existence of this period is of course well known by all visitors who visit the Jorvik centre in York today.
    In 927 Athelstan at last took his place as King in York and was then described as ‘King of All England’. The title was understood to mean that he was now ruler of the old kingdom of Northumbria, that stretched as far as Dunbar.

ARCHBISHOPS OF CANTERBURY AND YORK

The Archbishops of York, for the remainder of the Anglo-Saxon period, also held the title ‘Primate of All England’ since their Province was this northern area. However, later Archbishops of Canterbury disliked this title which they clearly misunderstood. After a long dispute, involving the Pope, it was agreed that though the title went to Canterbury, both the Archbishops were of equal status. That solved the Church’s problem but from the start of its existence the masons in York simply revived the old meaning of the title.
    As the area of the premier Grand Lodge was initially in London and Westminster, the control of masons north of the River Trent was claimed to be in the hands of York. Interestingly the Antients Grand Lodge always recognised this until the York body began to fail.
    Here at last we can identify most of those Master Masons who are so often thought to be anonymous. We can discover who built which parts of our York Minster and other churches as well as the walls and houses. We can appreciate why working masons spent hard-earned money on producing public plays for so long and why those who were working stonemasons wanted eventually to withdraw from their old Guild and start another in the period after the Restoration of 1660. For some Brethren these have been ‘mysteries’ that have never been adequately solved. In this attempt at solving them it may prove to be a surprise for Freemasons in many other places to discover the answers to what have been puzzles about their own masonic ancestry.

THE YORK RITE

In nothing perhaps has this story more relevance to masons far and wide than in trying to understand the origin and present reality of what has been called ‘The York Rite’. That has been an unexplained ‘mystery’ for many for far too long. When we see what developed in York practice during the 18th century and how that practice was spread abroad by the Antients and miltary lodges, especially in North America, a solution begins to emerge.
    Whether there is properly a York Rite any longer is a claim that is questioned. Certainly any American Brethren who come searching for it in York today will be disappointed. It is in their homeland that the seeds planted here have now flourished.
    This very fact will perhaps show why York has been a place of mystery and fascination. Those who think that the mere mention of York describes something purely for northern masons need to think again. Here is matter for those in all England to discover and profit from.

Neville Cryer is the author of a new book York Mysteries Revealed published this year, which is reviewed on page 56 of this issue. All photos by Ken Lippett.