The Freemasons And Architecture In England.

runs thus : — "The company of Masons , being otherwise termed Freemasons , ' of auntient standing and good reckoninge , by means of affable and kind meetyngs dyverse tynies , and as a lovinge brotherhode use to doe , did frequent this mutual assembly in the time of Henry VI . in the

, 12 th year of his most gracious reign , A D . 1434 . " The same record says further" That the charges and laws of the Freemasons have been seen and perused by our late sovereign King Henry VI ., * and by the Lords of his most honourable Council

, who have allowed them and declared that they be right good and reasonable to be holden , as they have been drawn out and collected from the records of auntient times , & c . " Poole , in his " History of Ecclesiastical

Architecture in England , " after ridiculing the claims to a great antiquity on the part of the Blasons made by Preston and some other authors , adds ( page 115)— "This , however , seems to be admitted on all hands , that in the tenth century a body of men calling themselves Freemasous , and claiming the right , under a Papal

privilege , of exercising their craft all through Christendom , and perhaps sometimes rudely enforcing their sole right to be employed in sacred edifices , were known over Europe , and though the unsettled state of this kingdom , while the Danes were yet formidablewould leave them little to desire

, here , yet probably before the Conquest , and certainly soon after , they were established in England under a local superior , with communication with a head of the whole order ; and so well did this system work , so far as the perfection of the art

which it fostered was concerned , that the soverei gns of different countries rather gave force to the Papal letters than withstood the monopoly which they created . Indeed , practically , the Masons would remain sufficientl y fixed to their own

country , the intercourse being chiefly that which would equally benefit all parties , the mutual communication of improvements' in the art which all professed . " Hope gives a very picturesque description of the lod ge which the Masons established for the time when they were engaged m any great work : — ' ' Wherever they came in the suite of missionaries , or were

The Freemasons And Architecture In England.

called by the natives , or arrived of their own accord to seek employment , they appeared headed by a chief surveyor , who governed the whole troop , and named one man out of every ten , under the name of Warden , to overlook the nine others ; set

themselves to building temporary huts for their habitation around the spot where the work was to be carried on : regularly organized their differen t departments ; fell to work ; sent for fresh supplies of their brethren as the object demanded

them ; often made the wealthy inhabitants of the neighbourhood , out of devotion or commutation of penance , furnish the requisite materials and carriages , and the others assist in the manual labour ; shortened or prolonged the completion of the edifice as they liked , or were averse to the place , or were more or less wanted in others ; and when all was finished again

raised their encampment and went elsewhere to undertake other jobs . Even in England , as late as the reign of Henry VI ., in an indenture of covenants made between the churchwardens of a parish in Suffolk * and a company of Freemasons , the latter

stipulate that every man should be provided with a pair of white leather gloves , a white apron , and that a lodge properly tiled should be erected at the expense of the parish , in which to hold their meetings . ] ' Poole is my authority for this statement . ( To be continued . )

Masonry Twenty-Five Years Ago.

MASONRY TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AGO .

THERE was a party of gentlemen travelling to the far "West , not without gold in their pockets at any time , in sufficient supply in an inhabited country , but worthless where they then were to buy food . One morning eighteen pilgrims , all told , might have been seen to arise from their blankets on the ground , on the banks of Humboldt