David Taillades’s article reopens the question of how to date and interpret the Old Charges by shifting attention from the material witness to the textual content. The study positions itself against a century of philological cataloguing and stemmatic subdivision, arguing for an internal, content-driven chronology and a “Continuum Theory” of transmission linking operative craft traditions to later usages. The corpus under review is selective but representative (Cooke, Regius, Grand Lodge No. 1, Lansdowne, Melrose No. 2, York No. 1, Harris No. 1, Buchanan, Taylor, Dumfries No. 4, Colne), each mobilised to illustrate a rule-governed procedure for content dating.
Thesis and Main Contribution
The thesis is twofold. First, codicology and palaeography, while valuable for dating the support, “do not date the content of a manuscript” and are therefore “useless to establishing when [the] content was originally written” when the witness is a copy (p. 2). Second, a rigorous reading of internal textual signals—lexical formulas, legal and civic references, titles, and narrative expansions—permits the construction of a relative, and often absolute, chronology of the content independent of the copy-date. The principal contribution is a worked method that re-dates key manuscripts’ originals to the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and an explicit “Continuum Theory” articulating sustained organisational, legendary, and practical continuities across England and Scotland.
Method and Rationale
Taillades begins with a historiographical audit: Begemann’s philological familial groupings generated “endless pages,” Hughan’s transcriptions lacked rigorous accuracy, and Poole and McLeod perpetuated approaches that have “failed to shed light” and led to dating by “paper, the ink, or the spelling” (pp. 1–2). Against this, he proposes an internalist method: date the content by signals embedded within the text—political titles (e.g., “King” vs “Supreme Governor”), statutory echoes (e.g., 1481 ordinance), lexical choices (“accepted” masons), and structural development (numbers of articles/points). The rationale is explicit: because “most of the Old Charges were copies of older manuscripts now lost,” external dating of the support cannot substitute for analysis of what the text says (p. 2).
Engagement with predecessors. The article critiques and repurposes earlier work: Begemann’s and Speth’s observations on Regius/Cooke layering are retained and extended; Hughan’s datings and transcripts are re-examined; Knoop & Jones are acknowledged for problematising Begemann’s taxonomies; Ward’s diffusion thesis is challenged; Stevenson’s Melrose inscription study is integrated as contextual support; and Prescott’s reassessment of Regius’s date is noted. The stance is corrective rather than dismissive: inherited categories are used heuristically, but the evidentiary burden shifts to internal content.
Main Arguments
- External dating cannot stand in for content dating : After reviewing codicology/palaeography, Taillades stresses that their reach ends at the copy. Since the Old Charges are “copies of older manuscripts now lost,” dating the medium cannot date the composition. He therefore operationalises a content-first method: look for formulae and institutional signals that carry chronological weight.
- Cooke–Regius sequence and early layering : Building on Begemann/Speth, he argues that expansions in Regius (15 articles/points) over Cooke (9) imply Cooke’s priority, even though the Regius poem is earlier than the Cooke copy. He asks whether content can refine the bracket for Regius beyond paleographical ranges (second quarter of the fifteenth century per Prescott) and reads its opening Euclidean frame and assembly rules as consistent with that horizon.
- Grand Lodge No. 1 as a late-medieval content witness : The manuscript’s copy-date “1583” is not taken at face value; internally it pledges allegiance to the “King of England,” a usage incongruent with Elizabeth I’s reign, supporting a content date earlier thant 1553 and, probably, about the 1480s. This is reinforced by Henry Jenner’s observation (reported to Sadler) that the language is “considerably earlier” than the copy. The argument hinges on title-forms and the co-existence of “Constitutions and General Duties” with “Constitutions and Duties for masons allowed,” the latter mirrored in Lansdowne.
- Lansdowne and the ‘making’ of masons : Lansdowne (content c. 1485) contains general charges plus sixteen “for masons allowed,” ending with “to be read att the makeing of Mason or Masons,” corroborating a craft practice of admission/allowance and providing an internal terminus anchored to the 1481 ordinance. The pairing with Grand Lodge No. 1 demonstrates parallel textual streams within the craft.
- English–Scottish continuity through content : Melrose No. 2 (copied 1674) contains an endorsement dated 1581 yet exhibits earlier content (e.g., absence of “Supreme Governor,” presence of “King of Ingland”), implying a pre-1553 original. The article generalises: Scottish witnesses (Edinburgh-Kilwinning, Dumfries, Dundee, Aberdeen) are copies of English Old Charges, evidencing shared usage “from at least the times of Queen Elizabeth I … and probably before” and supporting a continuum across the border.
- Re-dating specific witnesses by lexical/political cues : (a) Taylor: the term “emperor” (vs usual “king”), coupled with absence of “Supreme Governor,” suggests a content window under Henry VIII before 1534. (b) York No. 1: fewer charges (18) and the category “every Free Mason” point to an original prior to Grand Lodge No. 1’s more developed set, thus pre-1481. (c) Buchanan: alignment of structure and oath formulae with York No. 1 implies a similar horizon, again before Grand Lodge No. 1. (d) Harris No. 1: Christian prayer and structural features place its original before 1481 despite a seventeenth-century copy.
- Synthesis: the Continuum Theory and a new chronology : Taillades proposes a chronological list juxtaposing his content-dates with McLeod’s copy-dates, visualising the shift from support-dating to content-dating and embedding the Old Charges in a long “complex and varied continuum”.
Strengths of the Approach
- Rigour/Originality : The article articulates a clear rule-set for content dating and applies it consistently across case studies. The move from dating the support to dating the text—via titles, statutes, and internal formulae—constitutes a methodological advance, especially where copy-dates have long dominated interpretation.
- Methodological Contribution : By pairing manuscripts (e.g., Grand Lodge No. 1/Lansdowne) to demonstrate coexisting textual streams, Taillades supplies a replicable template for triangulating content horizons; his reading of Melrose No. 2 as an English-linked content witness reframes cross-border transmission as shared practice rather than post-1707 diffusion.
- Clarity of Argumentation : The paper proceeds from historiographical problem to method, then to dossier-based demonstrations, and closes with tabulated chronology—all of which allow the reader to audit each inferential step. Strategic citations to recent work (Stevenson; Prescott) anchor the reframing without overburdening the narrative.
Limitations and Potential Biases
- Limitation 1 : Several re-datings hinge on aligning titles and phrases with political-religious milestones (e.g., “Supreme Governor,” “emperor,” allegiance to “King”). While the logic is explicit, the inference assumes stable formula adoption and may be vulnerable to conservatism, scribal levelling, or local idiom; this moderates the conclusiveness of some proposed termini.
- Limitation 2 : The selection of witnesses is necessarily partial (“approximately 130 Old Charges are known … [only] certain essential Old Charges have been selected”), which the author acknowledges. The strength of the continuum model would be further tested by systematic application across the full corpus.
- Blind spot : None with respect to support/content distinction: the article repeatedly separates copy-date from composition and argues that external dating cannot determine the age of the text. A residual risk remains only where content dating relies on single indicators; the author mitigates this by cumulative criteria and by cross-manuscript triangulation.
Critical Conclusion
Taillades supplies a disciplined alternative to support-driven dating: a content-first protocol that correlates internal textual signals with historical horizons, re-dates several key witnesses’ originals to the later fifteenth century, and reframes English–Scottish relations within a single continuum. The dossier-based demonstrations—Grand Lodge No. 1/Lansdowne pairing, Melrose No. 2’s pre-1553 content, Taylor’s Henrician window—show the method’s traction while acknowledging corpus limits. The lasting contribution is methodological: a replicable, text-critical procedure that prevents conflating a copy’s date with the age of its content and that invites a systematic re-survey of the entire corpus on internal grounds.