Third Degree Origins
How Part of the Fellowcraft Degree Became the Base for the Master Degree
Today I am honored and proud to publish the first paper in Emeth’s essay contest. I read it with a great deal of interest, and I think that you will find it to be as fascinating as I did.
It’s author is Worshipful Brother Thomas Lamb.
Brother Lamb has been a Freemason for eighteen years, and is a member of five Lodges here in Washington. He has been recognized with both the Hiram Award and the Grand Master’s Achievement award. He has served as Worshipful Master three times, once in Edmonds Lodge No. 165, and twice in Walter F. Meier Lodge of Research, a position he currently holds.
Without further prelude, I’m pleased to commend Brother Lamb’s paper to you…
How Part of the Fellowcraft Degree became the base for the Master Degree
By Thomas Lamb
Masons with an interest in the history of Freemasonry are led to believe that at the time of the formation of the Grand Lodge of London and Westminster there were only two degrees, Entered Apprentice and Fellow of the Craft. These degrees were in practice by the Operative Masons in Scotland.
Somewhere between 1710 and 1723 a third degree was being conferred in Scotland and then in 1726 a revised third degree was presented as a play in England. We know from documents at the time (Rituals and lodge minutes) that the current third degree was formed by taking a part of the Fellowcraft degree and constructing the Hiram Legend around it. The problem is that it is not generally known what part was moved and it requires looking at several ancient documents to find the answer. I will attempt to share this knowledge with you.
Prior to the third degree the history of Freemasonry used the Noachite Legend, but it was changed to the Hiram legend when the current third degree was invented. Who came up with the idea of Hiram?
There are written records from Lodges in Scotland from as early as 1598 and there is evidence from non-Lodge sources there were lodges functioning (but not recording anything in writing) as early as 1481. These lodges were operative lodges, and many have a continuous life and exist to this day. They had only two degrees, though some researchers claim that there was only one degree, namely Fellow of the Craft.
Robert Cooper, the Curator of the Grand Lodge of Scotland, states in a recent article: “In Masonic circles it is generally accepted that the third or master’s Mason’s degree was ‘invented’ in London, England, during the early part of the 1720’s. There are several reasons for this assumption. Firstly, in the ‘The Constitutions of the Free Masons’ published in London in 1723, refers to how the affairs of Grand Lodge are to be conducted. Article XIII (page 61) states: ‘Apprentices must be admitted Masters and Fellow-Crafts only here…’. This led many to believe that in addition to the [Entered] Apprentice degree there were two others that of Fellow Craft and Master Mason.
However, as we know in Scotland from the earliest written rituals (the Edinburgh Register House MS (1696), the Haughfoot Fragment (1702) the Airlie MS (1705) and the Chetwode Crawley MS (c.1710) MSS)) the terms Fellow Craft and Master Mason were inter-changeable. In other words, these were two terms for the same degree.
Because of the literal interpretation of the rather cryptic (some would say nonsensical) reference to Fellow Craft and Master Mason in 1723 it became ‘fact’ that there were three degrees of Freemasonry. The earlier Scottish rituals were not discovered until much later and could not therefore be used to correct this ‘fact’ that became embedded in Masonic knowledge.
To make matters worse the earliest reference to the conferral of a third degree was also said to have taken place in London in 1725 but not in a Lodge but in a musical society (‘Philo-Musicae et Architecturae Societas Appolloni’). The reference to the Fellow Craft and Master Mason’s was like the reference in the Constitutions of two years earlier taken literally. One error (a ‘fact’) served to confirm the same error as ‘fact’. Masonic historians are now well aware of those errors, but they have become so embedded in the lore of the Craft that they are repeated in the most knowledgeable and respected sources of the history of Freemasonry: Coil’s Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry reprinted as recently as 1996, is the supreme example.
What therefore are the ‘facts’ (not errors masquerading as facts!) regarding the Fellow Craft or Master’s degree. First and foremost, we now know far more about the ritual used by stonemasons’ lodges before any Grand Lodge existed and as we know these rituals were all Scottish, all quite similar in content but unknown until relatively recently.
The first of the three was not discovered until 1930 and the most recent, the Airlie MS was accidentally discovered a mere eight years ago. Attempting to use these recent documents to overturn almost 300 years of ‘fact’ is an uphill struggle.
That said, the attempt should be made, and I wish to bring to the attention of the brethren two pieces of evidence that ought, at the very least, cause every respectable Masonic historian to reconsider where and when the Master Mason’s degree originated.
Also, how it was invented will also be revealed.
Quoting again from Bob Cooper’s paper:
The first piece of evidence is to be found in the Minute Books of the Lodge of Dunbarton, No.18, the entries are shown in full below:
At the meeting of the Lodge of Dunbritton [Dunbarton] the 29th day of January 1726 the which day there where present ‘John Hamilton, Grand Master, accompanied with seven Master Masons, six Fellows of Craft and three entered apprentices’
The Minute of the next meeting reads: ‘25th March 1726 – the said day Gabriel Porterfield by unanimous consent of the Masters admitted and received a Master of the Fraternity’. This clearly shows that in 1726 in Scotland there were three degrees being conferred within Lodges.
The enormous significance of this is that in January 1726 there were eight members of a Scottish Lodge who were in the possession of the Master Mason’s degree and that they conferred that degree on a Fellow of Craft.
Where, when and how these eight Scottish Freemasons received the Third Degree before it even existed in England is the intriguing part but sadly, we are unlikely ever to know because the Minutes only commence at that time. Our best hope is that Minute Books of another, earlier, Lodge (not yet found) will reveal that it had invented or developed the third degree.
It may strike you as strange to suggest that the third degree was invented or developed in SCOTLAND but there are two reasons why I can make such a claim. The first comes from the earliest rituals in the world, previously mentioned – ERH (1696), Airlie (1705) and CC (c.1710) MSS. At the very end of the Fellow Craft part of these rituals the candidate is asked:
Q ‘Are to a Fellow of Craft?’
A Yes
Q How many points of Fellowship are there?
A Five.
The FPOF were therefore an essential part of the second or Fellow of Craft degree – so important in fact that the candidate had to be able to repeat them exactly before he would be accepted a TRUE mason. Where do we find the FPOF today? In the third, or Master Mason’s, degree. Sometime between 1710 and 1726, part of the Scottish second degree was removed and made part of the third or Master Mason’s degree.
Is it probable that the early Scottish third degree used the Noah Legend as it is in the early referenced masonic manuscripts and that Desaguliers change it to the Hiram? Why was this done. Keep in mind That Desaguliers visited Edinburgh (St Mary’s) Lodge #1 in 1721 and witnessed the Fellowcraft Degree BEFORE HE REPORTEDLY INVENTED THE THIRD DEGREE.
So, we now know that the FPOF and the “Mason’s Word” are the part of the original second degree that was moved into the third degree. But who did it? Many masonic writers believe it was Desaguliers. Did he invent the Hiram legend?
Robert Cooper suggests that HA replaced Noah to avoid trouble with the church because Noah 'belonged' to them whereas HA is our invention and does not exist in scripture (there is an HA in the Old Testament, but he is not the masonic' HA).
The next author who wrote about this matter was David Murray Lyon, who published his HISTORY OF THE LODGE OF EDINBURGH in 1873. His work deals, as its title indicates, with the history of the old Lodge of Edinburgh or “Mary’s Chapel,” but in dealing with this he was obliged practically to write a history of Freemasonry in Scotland. In his work he gives in full the Schaw Statutes, the St. Clair Charters, and copious extracts from the minutes of the Lodge of Mary’s Chapel (the earliest of those still extant being dated July 1599) and quotations from the minutes of other old lodges of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Upon these he bases the following conclusions regarding Scottish Masonry, to which he strictly confined himself. That the operative craft of Masonry was fully organized from an early date, though he does not allow anything very definite before 1590; that the Masons possessed a secret spoken of as “the Word;” that this was communicated to those newly entered in a simple ceremony, great stress being laid on its simplicity; that there is no trace of any further secrets than this Mason Word, that the Speculative Masonry of the London Grand Lodge in 1721 was sufficiently like that of the Operative Masonry of Edinburgh to enable the secretary of Mary’s Chapel to record, under date of Aug. 24 of that year, that:
. . . John Theophilus Desaguliers, Fellow of the Royall Societie and Chaplain in Ordinary to his Grace James Duke of Chandois, late Generall Master of the Mason’s Lodges in England, being in town and desirous to have a conference with the Deacon, Warden and Master Masons of Edinr., which was accordingly granted, and finding him qualified in all points of Masonry, they received him as a Brother into their Societie. (8)
Lyon proceeds to conjecture that Desaguliers wanted to propagate the new secrets alleged to have been fabricated by himself and others in London shortly before, but that he exemplified (as we should say) the new “part” or degree, at two meetings. That Desaguliers had been invited by the authorities of the city of Edinburgh to give them advice, as a scientific expert on hydraulics, on a proposed system of waterworks would account for it in part. This fact, which, apparently, was not known to Lyon, tends very much to lessen the probability of the supposition that he was there chiefly in the capacity of a propagator of new degrees. This conjecture has also been refuted by Robert Cooper as reported in the first reference.
The Minutes of the Lodge of Edinburgh #1 records that Desaguliers visited the lodge once and observed the Fellowcraft degree and persuaded the lodge to repeat it for some of his friends. The record does not even say he was present for the second presentation.
Having considered the development of the third degree it is necessary to examine what if any legend was part of the early Scottish third degree.
It may be a surprise to some Freemasons that Hiram Abiff wasn't always in the Master Mason Degree. The first reference to the Hiramic legend occurs in 1730 in Samuel Prichard's MASONRY DISSECTED. Therein he refers to Hiram as "Grand Master Hiram". We further know that by 1738, the Hiramic Legend was in place, as Anderson's Constitutions of 1738 states that after the completion of the Temple, "their joy was soon interrupted by the death of their dear Master, Hiram Abiff, whom they decently interred in the Lodge near the Temple according to ancient usage." If Hiram wasn't always featured in the Master Mason degree until sometime around 1730, who was?
For this we look to the ancient manuscripts and the Noachite legend is probably the best option. Not only because it was available from the earliest of time (in all the early manuscripts), but also because the new HA legend third degree follows it in many ways, one example is the attempt to raise the body from the grave in a similar manner.
In 1936, the Graham Manuscript was discovered, comprising two small pieces of parchment which have been dated to 1726. It was written in very old English. Translated into Modern English it reads:
"We have it by tradition, and still some reference to scripture for it caused Shem, Ham and
Japheth to go to their father Noah's grave for to see if they could find anything about him to
lead them to the valuable secret which this famous preacher had...
For I hope all will allow that all things needful for the new world was in the Ark with Noah.
Now these 3 men had already agreed that if they did not find the very thing itself,
that the first thing that they found was to be to them as a secret...
They not doubting, but did most firmly believe that God was able and would also
prove willing, through their faith, prayer and obedience, to cause what they did find to prove
as valuable to them as if they had received the secret at first from God Himself at its headspring.
So [they] came to the grave, finding nothing save the dead body almost consumed away.
Taking a grip at a finger, it came away... so from joint to joint... so to the wrist...
so to the elbow... so they reared up the dead body... and supported it...
setting foot to foot... knee to knee... breast to breast... cheek to cheek... and hand to back...
and cried out 'Help, Oh Father'...
As if they had said 'Oh Father of Heaven, help us now, for Our earthly father cannot'...
so laid down the dead body again and not knowing what to do...
so one said: 'Here is yet marrow in this bone' and
the second said: 'But a dry bone' and
the third said: 'It stinketh'.
So they agreed to give it a name as is known to free masonry to this day...
so went to their undertakings, and afterwards works stood."
It is obvious from this that Noah held an important role in the Masonry prior to the introduction of Hiram Abiff. But with all the characters in the Old and New Testaments, why would Noah be chosen to be represented in the Master Mason degree prior to Hiram Abiff?
Noah was important for a few reasons:
The Noah legend was well established for over three centuries in masonic manuscripts.
He and his ancestors would have been the progenitors of humans after the flood, as well as the saviors of the animals of the land that he held in the Ark.
2. He carried the Noachide Laws, or the six laws given to Adam by God to which a seventh was given to Noah. These were the laws which would be followed by his people until he gave Moses the Ten Commandments.
The Noachide Laws were:
1. Renounce all idols.
2. Worship the one true God.
3. Commit no murder.
4. Be not defiled by incest.
5. Do not steal.
6. Be just.
7. Eat no flesh with blood in it.
In conclusion:
There was a third degree in existence and practiced in a Scottish lodge in 1726.
The main character was not Hiram Abiff and not known, but probably Noah.
Desaguliers and friends changed the main character from Noah to Hiram Abiff sometime between 1725 and 1738.
The first ever presentation of the current third degree was put on in a theatre as a play and not in a masonic lodge in 1726.
It is suggested that they replaced Noah by Hiram Abiff to avoid trouble with the church because Noah 'belonged' to the Church whereas Hiram Abiff is a masonic invention.
REFERENCES
The Origin of the Third or Master Mason’s Degree - New Evidence, Robert LD Cooper PM Curator Lodge Sir Robert Moray No. 1641. Beacon #190, Posted by Clark on April 29, 2018
History of the Lodge of Edinburgh, David Murray Lyon, 1873, as covered in The Masonic Trowel, The Degrees of Masonry - Their Origins and History
The Noahchites, WB Darin A. Lahners, Midnight Freemason
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Wow what a tremendous paper,,thank you WB Lamb.
Excellent work! Well justified winner!!!