Operative to Speculative Freemasonry

In my search for information on when operative masonry became more speculative, I have come accross some interesting views, theories and opinions. Below is some information that I'm sure you'll enjoy...(please understand that this info is not intended to offend and neither is this information considered 100% accurate, simply information that I have come accross in my research that I find interesting).

 According to certain masonic writers, the Druids originally came from Egypt and brought with them traditions relating to the art of building. The Culdees, who later on established schools and colleges in this country for the teaching of arts, sciences, and handicrafts, are said to have derived from the Druids.
But a more probable source of inspiration in the art of building are the Romans, who established the famous Collegia of architects referred to in the list of alternative theories given in the Masonic Cyclopædia. Advocates of the Roman Collegia origin of Freemasonry may be right as far as operative masonry is concerned, for it is to the period following on the Roman occupation of Britain that our masonic guilds can with the greatest degree of certainty be traced. Owing to the importance the art of building now acquired it is said that many distinguished men, such as St. Alban, King Alfred, King Edwin, and King Athelstan were numbered amongst its partons’ so that in time the guilds came to occupy the position of privileged bodies and were known as “ free corporations”; further that York was the first masonic centre in England, largely under the control of the Culdees, who at the same period exercised much influence over the Masonic Collegia in Scotland, at Kilwinning, Melrose, and Aberdeen.

 But it must be remembered that all this is speculation. No documentary evidence has ever been produced to prove the existence of masonic guilds before the famous York charter of A.D. 926, and even the date of this document is doubtful. Only with the period of Gothic architecture do we reach firm ground. That guilds of working masons known in France as “compagnonnages” and in Germany as “Steinmetzen” did then form close corporations and possibly possess secrets connected with their profession is more than probable. That in consequence of their skill in building the magnificent cathedrals of this period they now came to occupy a privileged position seems fairly certain.

 The Abbé Grandidier, writing from Strasbourg in 1778, traces the whole system of Freemasonry from these German guilds: “ This much-vaunted Society of Freemasons is nothing but a servile imitation of an ancient and useful confrérie of real masons whose headquarters was formerly at Strasbourg and of which the constitution was confirmed by the Emperor Maximilian in 1498.”

As far as it is possible to discover from the scanty documentary evidence the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries provide, the same privileges appear to have been accorded to the guilds of working masons in England and Scotland, which, although presided over by powerful nobles an apparently on occasion admitting members from outside the Craft, remained essentially operative bodies. Nevertheless we find the assemblies of Masons suppressed by Act of Parliament in the beginning of the reign of Henry VI, and later on an armed force sent by Queen Elizabeth to break up the Annual Grand Lodge at York. It is possible that the fraternity merely by the secrecy with which it was surrounded excited the suspicions of authority, for nothing could be more law-abiding than its published statutes. Masons were to be “ true men to God and the Holy Church,” also to the masters that they served. They were to be honest in their manner of life and “ to do no villainy whereby the Craft or the Science may be slandered .”

A seventeenth-century writer, in his book Natural History of Staffordshire, expresses some suspicion with regard to the secrets of Freemasonry. That these could not be merely trade secrets relating to the art of building, but that already some speculative element had been introduced to the lodges, seems the more probable from the fact that by the middle of the seventeenth century not only noble patrons headed the Craft, but ordinary gentlemen entirely unconnected with building were received into the fraternity. The well-known entry in the diary of Elias Ashmole under the date of October 16, 1646, clearly proves this fact: “ I was made a Freemason at Warrington in Lancashire with Col. Henry Mainwaring of Karticham [?] in Cheshire. The names of those that were then of the Lodge, Mr. Rick. Penket, Warden, Mr. James Collier, Mr. Rich. Sankey, Henry Littler, John Ellam Rich. Ellam and Hugh Brewer .” “ It is now ascertained, that the majority of the members present were not operative masons .”

Again, in 1682 Ashmole relates that he attended a meeting held at Mason Hall in London, where with a number of other gentlemen he was admitted into “ the Fellowship of the Freemasons,” that is to say, into the second degree. We have then clear proof that already in the seventeenth century Freemasonry had ceased to be an association composed exclusively of men concerned with building, although eminent architects ranked high in the Order ; Inigo Jones is said to have been Grand Master under James I, and Sir Christopher Wren to have occupied the same position from about 1685 to 1702. But it was not until 1703 that the Lodge of St. Paul in London officially announced “ that the privileges of Masonry should no longer be restricted to operative Masons, but extended to men of various professions, provided they were regularly approved and initiated into the Order .”

This was followed in 1717 by the great coup d’état when Grand Lodge was founded, and Speculative Masonry, which we now know as Freemasonry, was established on a settled basis with a ritual, rules, and constitution drawn up in due form. It is at this important date that the official history of Freemasonry begins.