10-59 Ancient York Masons
The abbreviation, A.Y.M. is frequently met in Masonic history and nomenclature. It points to a legend, a persistent tradition; and it raises an almost unanswerable question.
Did, or did not, a form of Freemasonry exist in the City of York, England, in the year A.D. 926?
The answers to that question have created one of the most interesting problems for Masonic research. Eminent Masonic students, scholars, and investigators have for a great many years discussed, analyzed, examined, taken apart and put together all the direct evidence, all the indirect evidence, and evidence which is not even remotely indirect, concerning Ancient York Masonry.
The better to visualize the difficulties, consider that the "direct evidence" is contained in a manuscript the probable date of which is A.D. 1390, which is 464 years after the event chronicled in this manuscript are supposed to have occurred. We, now, examine this manuscript 1030 years after the event described and try to reach a conclusion.
It is just 467 years since Columbus voyaged to the New World. Suppose that some present day story teller should write an account of the voyages of Christopher Columbus, saying that he come to this continent, liked the Indians, admired their teepees, called them into a meeting and gave then a charter to build more and better teepees?
What would the historians and the researchers a thousand years from now make of this? About all they can do is to consider the probability of the unknown writer of 1959 having and writing accurate information.
The story in the REGIUS MANUSCRIPT is repeated in other and later manuscript constitutions. The first question which the researcher has to answer is: "Were all these manuscript constitutions copies made, one from the other, and added to and changed by each copyist's whim, imagination, or ignorance? Were they all copies of an unknown and now lost document which was the source of all the manuscripts we have?"
The same sort of problem is the synoptic Problem of the first three Gospels of the New Testament, Here the writers lived (probably) within a hundred years of the events which they chronicled. but the thousands of theologians, ministers, scholars, and historians who have for hundreds of years considered this problem are not yet agreed that one copied from another, or that all three had access to "Q" (from Quelle, German for spring, or source) an unknown, long-lost original, telling the story of the Carpenter of Nazareth.
Not the thousandth part of the effort put on the Synoptic Problem has been devoted to "the York Problem"' after all, ancient York Masonry is of interest chiefly to Freemasons and, really, to only a small per cent of them. Yet to those to whom it does matter, it is really important.
The evidence is not great in amount, nor difficult (except in the old spellings and ancient words) to interpret.
The REGIUS POEM, Freemasonry's oldest document, tells the story. Here is the pertinent paragraph, with modern spelling and words to make it easier to read:
"This craft came into England, as i tell you, in the time of good Kiong Athelstan's reign; he made them both hall, and also bower and lofty temples of great honor, to take his recreation in both day and night, and to worship his God with all his might. This good lord loved this craft full well, and purposed to strengthen it in every part on account of various defects that he discovered in the craft. He sent about into all the land, after all the masons of the craft, to come straight to him, to amend all these defects by good counsel, if it might so happen. He then permitted an assembly to be made to divers lords in their rank, dukes, earls, and barons, also knights, squires and many more, and the grat burgesses of that city, they were all there in their degree; these were there, each one in every way to make laws for the estate of these masons. There they sought by their wisdom how they might govern it; there they found out fifteen articles, and there they made fifteen points."
Our next oldest document in which this legend is recited is the COOKE MANUSCRIPT, whose date is probably in the first half of the 1400's. The details are here much more copious than those contained in the REGIUS MANUSCRIPT. The passage referring to the legend is as follows:
"And after that was a worthy kynge in England, that was callyd Athelstone, and his youngest some lovyd well the sciens of Gemetry, and he wyst well that hand craft had the practyke of the sciens of gemetry so well as masons; wherefore he drewe him to consell and lernyd (the) practyke of tht sciens to his spectulartyf For of the speculatyfe he was a masater, and he lovyd welle masonry and masons. And he bicome a mason hymselfe. And he yaf hem (gave them) charges and names as (h) it is now usyd in England and in other countres. And he ordeyned that they schulde have resonabulle pay. And purchesed (obtained) a fre patent of the kyng that they shulde make a sembly when thei sawe resonably tyme a (to) cum togedir to here (their) counselle of the whiche charges, manors & semble as is write and taught in the boke of oure charges wherefor I leve hit at this tyme."
In later lines, which appear to have been taken from what is called the BOKE OF CHARGES, The legend is repeated in these words:
"In this manner was the forsayde art baegunne in the lond of Egypt bi the forsayd maister Euglat (Euclid), & so, it went fro lond to londe and fro kyngdome to kyndgome. After that, many yeris, in the tyme of Kyng Adelstone, wiche was sum tyme kyngze of Englonde, bi his counsell and other gret lordys of the lond bi comin (common) assent for grete defaut y-fennde amongys hem (them). On (one) tyme of the yere or in iii yere, as nede were to the kynge and gret lordys of the provynce and fro countre to countre congregacions they that abe made masters schold be examined of the articuls after written, & be ransacked (thoroughly examined) whether thei be abull and kunnyng (able and skillful) to the profyte of the lordys hem to serve
THE SHORT TALK BULLETIN
The Masonic Service Association of the United States
VOL. 36 October 1959 NO.10