An Historical Account Of Master And Free Masons.

bound , as before , to obey the royal mandate , or patent to others , when required , ancl to take tbe prescribed wages . Preston asserts that they received immunities from that monarch . But , in 1435 , he granted a patent to Bicbard , Duke of York , to

impress masons , AVIIO contracted Avitb William Horwood , as master , to build the chapel of Fotlieringhay " who , if the contract be not performed properly , shall y ield his body to prison at the lord's will . " With due dili-I have searched the Rotulus

Patengence , tium , Avithout having discovered any granted to Freemasons by Henry VI , although very frequently g iven to gilds and fraternities . * The penalties enacted Avere probably evaded by the proviso made by the master-masons in all great contracts ,

the conditions annexed to undue performance having been always specified ; so that these two compulsory acts having lain totally dormant is a mere assumption , t The fixed Avages , however , were considerably hiher than those of any other

meg chanics ; and if we estimate them by the relative value of money , to Avhat it now bears , sufficiently liberal . ! Even as late as Charles the Second ' s time , the magistrates of Warwickshire set an assize for

them as for other artisans . § If the chapters , or assembling of Freemasons had been injurious to tbe state by fomenting insurrections , it is scarcely probable that such fact Avould have been totally overlooked , not only by the English historiansbut in tbe statutes . It is alleged ,

, that by the Act of the fifth of Elizabeth ( 1562 ) they Avere exonerated from all penalties , which is recited as tbe opinion of a very celebrated sage of the law . Jj When it is said that the Act of Henry VI . Avas passed at the instigation of Henry

Cardinal Beaufort , and that tbe Bishops Wykeham , Waynflete , and Ohicheley , were grand-masters , I must be allowed to prefer evidence to conjecture , but none has been

adduced . It admits of a doubt , whether it were then considered as authorized b y ecclesiastical constitutions , that its most eminent members could have presided as grand masters , and have been associated Avith the mysterious brotherhood ; or that they could have been so , without the prescribed initiation I If authentic

documents Avere ever in the archives of the fraternity , a modern inquirer Avould seek for them in vain . But if the mysteries of the brotherhood are considered to be sacred , Avhy is their true history concealed ? —or given , as by Preston and bis

predecessors , Avithout citing any other than obscure authority ? Ware , iu his Essay in the Archseologia , says that Nicholas Stone destroyed many valuable papers belonging to the Society of Freemasons : ancl he adds — " Perhaps his master , Inigo Jones ,

thought that the UOAV mode , though dependent on taste , was independent on science ; and , like the Calife Omar , that what Avas agreeable to the new faith was useless , and that what was not ought to be destroyed . " An important subject of these observations is the examination of several treatises

which have appeared in print , one of which is taken from a most curious and early MS . said to have been in the handwriting of King Henry VI , but nowhere extant . A copy taken b y Leland , and preserved among his papers , is said to be in the

Bodleian Library . This has been recopied , and was first published at Francfort , in Germany , in 1748 . There is scarcely a work on Freemasony in which is has not been reprinted . W e are apt to attach an imaginary value to MSS . Avhich have

been destroyed , as we are precluded from making a collation of the copy Avith the original . From an inspection of Henry the Sixth ' s royal signature , and a letter in the British Museum , it may admit of some doubt whether that Avas anautograph MS . Avhich Leland copied ; for in that age feiv