The article, forming with two earlier instalments, a sustained inquiry into the early Old Charges, re-examines the manuscript commonly styled Grand Lodge No. 1. The author assesses its ascribed date (25 December 1583), material support (parchment), internal narrative novelties, and regulatory matter, and proposes a programme for renewed technical and archival scrutiny. The study is positioned within AQC’s historiographical conversation of the late twentieth century and aims to recalibrate dating and provenance by combining external and internal criticism rather than relying on inherited assumptions.
Thesis and Main Contribution
The thesis is that Grand Lodge No. 1 is unlikely to be what its ostensible date implies. The handwriting, the economic and customary implications of parchment use, calendrical conventions around “25 December,” and the appearance of specific narrative elements together point to a later compilation drawing on post-medieval printed sources. The principal contribution is twofold: first, a cumulative case that undermines a naïve reading of “1583”; second, the identification of plausible printed antecedents for certain passages, thereby setting a post-medieval terminus for parts of the text and reframing the manuscript as a composite witness shaped in the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
Method and Rationale
The author combines external criticism (support, script, cost and convention of parchment; dating practices around Christmas) with internal criticism (lexical usage; onomastic and biblical errors; new legendary insertions) and contextual comparison (craft and civic ordinances) to constrain the manuscript’s chronology. The rationale is to avoid circular confirmation from tradition by triangulating material indices, linguistic features, and institutional parallels. Where direct proof is lacking, the argument proceeds by delimiting what cannot be earlier than demonstrable printed sources or statutes, and by calling for targeted tests (professional palaeography; technical examination) to settle residual uncertainties.
Regarding predecessors, the article explicitly places itself within recent AQC debates and revisits earlier assumptions about dating and sources. It adopts, nuances, or contests prior views where relevant, with an avowed aim of tightening standards of external and internal criticism rather than proposing a single definitive redating.
Main Arguments
- The “25 December 1583” ascription is methodologically suspect : The use of parchment for such a text, the symbolic valence of Christmas as notional New Year in post-Bede practice, and palaeographical impressions together render a literal reading of the inscription improbable. The hand does not compel an earlier sixteenth-century date; at minimum, the ascription cannot be accepted without corroborating material analysis. The date may reflect convention or presentation rather than the actual copying moment.
- Internal novelties imply dependence on printed sources : Several distinctive elements (notably onomastic forms, scriptural allusions, and legendary expansions) are better explained as the uptake of readily available early modern prints and chronicles than as survivals from a medieval archetype. This yields post-medieval termini for those layers and cautions against projecting an undifferentiated “medieval” date onto a composite text.
- The regulatory “articles and points” align with wider craft ordinances : Parallels with civic and guild regulations indicate that the prescriptive sections reproduce common disciplinary topoi rather than uniquely Masonic norms. Some features echo later statutory frameworks, again suggesting late shaping of these strata.
Strengths of the Approach
- Rigour/Originality : The argument is cumulative across material, calendrical, linguistic, and contextual axes, avoiding reliance on a single criterion. This multi-pronged method strengthens the case against a literal 1583 reading and reframes the manuscript as layered.
- Methodological Contribution : By insisting on demonstrable termini from printed antecedents or statutory echoes, the study operationalises internal criticism to constrain dating and provenance, and it articulates an explicit research agenda (specialist palaeography; technical testing) to replace impressionistic dating.
- Clarity of Argumentation : The paper moves from external to internal evidence and then to contextual comparison, making each inferential step transparent and leaving open specified points for empirical resolution rather than asserting finality.
Limitations and Potential Biases
- Limitation 1 : Key linkages from proposed printed antecedents to the compiler remain inferential. In the absence of explicit citations or marginalia in the manuscript, these connections—though plausible—moderate the conclusiveness of dating for particular passages.
- Limitation 2 : The challenge to the stated date rests on palaeographical impressions, conventions around parchment, and calendrical reasoning; no instrumental tests (ink, parchment, or non-destructive imaging) are reported, which the author himself calls for to consolidate the case.
- Blind spot : A British Museum assessment communicated to Henry Sadler concludes that “the language of the Charges is considerably earlier” and that “one may date the composition of the document some century earlier than the copy”. The article does not engage with this specific prior judgement, although it bears directly on the separation between the date of the copy and the earlier composition of the text.
Critical Conclusion
The article persuasively recasts Grand Lodge No. 1 as a composite witness whose famed “1583” cannot be read at face value. By triangulating material indices, internal linguistic and narrative features, and institutional comparanda, it shifts the debate from inherited labels to testable claims and sets a concrete agenda for technical verification. Its limits are acknowledged: several source-linkages remain inferential, and the empirical base would be strengthened by instrumental analyses. Even so, the study’s durable contribution is methodological: it exemplifies how external and internal criticism can be combined to separate copy-date from textual time-depth, to resist conflating the date of a support with the date of a tradition, and to demand proof commensurate with long-standing assumptions.