The Comparative Age Of Our Masonic Mss.

THE COMPARATIVE AGE OF OUR MASONIC MSS .

BY THE EDITOR . I HAVE not thought it necessary to take any earlier notice of Bro . Norton ' s remarks on tho age of our Masonic MSS ., because I felt that , though bis observations might have some effect on those who did

not understand the point at issue , they could not by any possibility have any on those who did . For as a scientific way of dealing with MSS . I bold Bro . Norton ' s to be radically wrong , in Avbieb opinion I know all who have studied the

question and are in the habit of considering the date and character of MSS . will entirely concur . Bro . Norton , in fact , reproduces Kloss ' s view of the Masonic Poem , based on internal evidence alone , or on data

Avhich , as I shall show , I hope , are not critically tenable , or absolutely sound . The judging of the age of a MS . by internal evidence is , at the best , a very doubtful process , often a very deceiving one , and cannot be commended or accepted by men who know well that MSS . can be best handled and their true age come at

by external evidence familiar to every expert . There is no expert , L repeat , in any country who could or would accept Bro . Norton ' s conclusions as an unerring test whereby to decide the age of a MS ., the more so when tbe MS . itself lies before you with all its critical " indicite " of date

and epoch . One of Bro . Norton ' s infallible tests is , as Kloss contended , that because certain passages refer to a similar state of things provided for by certain statutes , and those statutes are latetherefore the poem and

, tbe additional MS . are late 15 th century i But Bro . Norton forgets that such an argument is more than questionable even in itself if it be correct . Acts of Parliament do not foreshadow a state of things or doings , but provide for them , legislate

for them or against them , or are , as it were , the formal recognition ot them , whether favourably or unfavourably . The state of affairs and customs to which these Acts of Parliament allude is far older than the Acts of Parliament themselves , and therefore the allusion to a similar state of

things in the Masonic MSS . is no proof that tbey arc after tbe Acts of Parliament but rather before . Tradition precedes and outlives alike Acts of Parliament , and so do trade customs and the regulations of operative guilds . But if Bro . Norton ' s

argument is a good one at all , it Avill bear testing . Will it 1 There is in the Masonic Poem , and in Cooke ' s MS ., a regulation that no bondman is to be made apprentice in the folloAving terms . Masonic Poem articulus Quartus : —

" That be no bondeman prentys make , Ny for no covetyse do byni take , For the Lord that he ys bonde to May fache the prentes where ever he go . " In Cooke ' s MS . the fourth article is this : —

" That no master for uo profit take No apprentice for to be learn'd That is born of bond blood , For because of his lorde , to Whom he is bond will take Him as he well may from

His art and lede him Avitb him out Of his loge or out of bis Place that he worketh in , " & c .

Such a regulation as this must have some reason for it , and so when we look back among the old laws we find that in . the 25 th Edw . 1 IL , 13-50 , cap . xviii ., the lords may seize the bodies of their villeins even while the writ of "Libertate

probanda" is being tried , as they could before . " If Bro . Norton ' s argument is to prevail , the date of the two MSS . may be not later than 1350 . But the truth is , as I said before , that we cannot at all safely rely on

such external evidence as proof of the age of a MS . The age of the Masonic Poem , and of tbe additional MS ., is in no way affected by such a line of argument . The only two views permissible about them are , either that which places the

Masonic Poem at the end of the 14 th and tbe additional MS . at the end of the loth century , or that which considers them both to belong to the first quarter of tbe 15 th century , before 1425 , certainly not later . It is now quite clear , as , indeed , the

writer of tbe poem says , that the poem is a transcript of an earlier poem , probably like '' John Myre , " a , translation from