The “seven sciences” are duly named and explained. The compiler apparently was a priest, line 629 reading “And, when ye gospel me rede schal,” thus also accounting for the many religious injunctions in the MS.; the last hundred lines are evidently based upon Urbanitatis (Cott. MS. Caligula A 11, fol. 88) and Instructions for a Parish Priest (Cott. MS. Claudius A 11, fol. 27), instructions such as lads and even men would need who were ignorant of the customs of polite society, correct deportment at church and in the presence of their social superiors.
The recital of the legend of the Quatuor Coronati has been held by Herr Findel in his History of Freemasonry (Allgemeine Geschichte der Freimaurerei, 1862; English editions, 1866-1869) to prove that British Freemasonry was derived from Germany, but without any justification, the legend being met with in England centuries prior to the date of the Regius MS., and long prior to its incorporation in masonic legends on the Continent.
The next MS., in order, is known as the “Cooke” (Ad. MS. 23,198, British Museum), because Matthew Cooke published a fair reproduction of the document in 1861; and it is deemed by competent paleographers to date from the first part of the 15th century. There are two versions of the Old Charges in this little book, purchased for the British Museum in 1859. The compiler was probably a mason and familiar with several copies of these MS. Constitutions, two of which he utilizes and comments upon; he quotes from a MS. copy of the Policronicon the manner in which a written account of the sciences was preserved in the two historic stones at the time of the Flood, and generally makes known the traditions of the society as well as the laws which were to govern the members.
Its introduction into England through Egypt is noted (where the Children of Israel “lernyd ye craft of Masonry”), also the “lande of behest” (Jerusalem) and the Temple of Solomon (who “confirmed ye chargys yt David his Fadir” had made). Then masonry in France is interestingly described; and St Alban and “Æthelstane with his yongest sone” (the Edwin of the later MSS.) became the chosen mediums subsequently, as with the other Charges, portions of the Old Testament are often cited in order to convey a correct idea to the neophyte, who is to hear the document read, as to these sciences which are declared to be free in themselves (fre in hem selfe). Of all crafts followed by man in this world “Masonry hathe the moste notabilite,” as confirmed by “Elders that were bi for us of masons [who] had these chargys wryten,” and “as is write and taught in ye boke of our charges.”
Until quite recently no representative or survival of this particular version had been traced, but in 1890 one was discovered of 1687 (since known as the William Watson MS.). Of some seventy copies of these old scrolls which have been unearthed, by far the greater proportion have been made public since 1860. They have all much in common, though often curious differences are to be detected; are of English origin, no matter where used; and when complete, as they mostly are, whether of the 16th or subsequent centuries, are noteworthy for an invocation or prayer which begins the recital:—
| “The mighte of the ffather of heaven And the wysedome of the glorious Sonne through the grace and the goodnes of the holly ghoste yt been three p’sons and one God be with us at or beginning and give us grace so to gou’ne us here in or lyving that wee maye come to his blisse that nevr shall have ending.—Amen.” (Grand Lodge MS. No. 1, A.D. 1583.) |
They are chiefly of the 17th century and nearly all located in England; particulars may be found in Hughan’s Old Charges of the British Freemasons (1872, 1895 and supplement 1906).[3] The chief scrolls, with some others, have been reproduced in facsimile in six volumes of the Quatuor Coronatorum Antigrapha; and the collection in Yorkshire has been published separately, either in the West Yorkshire Reprints or the Ancient York Masonic Rolls. Several have been transcribed and issued in other works.
These scrolls give considerable information as to the traditions and customs of the craft, together with the regulations for its government, and were required to be read to apprentices long after the peculiar rules ceased to be acted upon, each lodge apparently having one or more copies kept for the purpose. The old Lodge of Aberdeen ordered in 1670 that the Charge was to be “read at ye entering of everie entered prenteise”; another at Alnwick in 1701 provided—
| “Noe Mason shall take any apprentice [but he must] Enter him and give him his Charge, within one whole year after”; |
and still another at Swallwell (now No. 48 Gateshead) demanded that “the Apprentices shall have their Charge given at the time of Registering, or within thirty days after”; the minutes inserting such entries accordingly even so late as 1754, nearly twenty years after the lodge had cast in its lot with the Grand Lodge of England.