Warwickshire Scout Lodge No. 9648

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This was to prove that he was properly trained and had been a member of a lodge.  It was, after all, easier to communicate a special word to prove that you knew what you were doing and were entitled to the wages it deserved that to spend hours carving a block of stone to demonstrate your skills.  We know that in the early 1600’s these operative lodges began to admit men who had no connection with the trade - accepted or 'gentlemen' masons.  Why this was done and what form of ceremony was used is not known.  As the 1600s drew to a close more and more gentlemen began to join the lodges, gradually taking them over and turning them into lodges of free and accepted or speculative masons, no longer having any connection with the stonemasons' craft.  The only problem with this theory is that it is based solely on evidence from Scotland.  There is ample evidence of Scottish operative lodges, geographically defined units with the backing of statute law to control what was termed 'the mason trade'.  There is also plenty of evidence that these lodges began to admit gentlemen as accepted masons, but no evidence so far that these accepted members were other than honorary masons, or that they in any way altered the nature of the operative lodges.  No evidence has come to light, after more than a hundred years of searching building archives, for a similar development in England.  Medieval building records have references to mason's lodges but after 1400, apart from masons' guilds in some towns, there is no evidence for operative lodges.  Yet it is in England that the first evidence of a lodge completely made up of non-operative masons is found. Elias Ashmole, the Antiquary and Founder of the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, records in his diary for 1646 that he was made a Free Mason in a lodge held for that purpose at his father-in-law's house in Warrington.  He records who was present, all of whom have been researched and have been found to have no connection with operative masonry.

English evidence through the 1600’s points to Freemasonry existing apart from any actual or supposed organisation of operative stonemasons.  This total lack of evidence for the existence of operative Lodges but evidence of 'accepted' masons has led to the theory of an indirect link between operative stonemasonry and Freemasonry.  Those who support the indirect link argue that Freemasonry was brought into being by a group of men in the late 1500’s or early 1600’s.  This was a period of great religious and political turmoil and intolerance.  Men were unable to meet together without differences of political and religious opinion leading to arguments.  Families were split by opposing views and the English civil war of 1642-6 was the ultimate outcome.  Those who support the indirect link believe that the originators of Freemasonry were men who wished to promote tolerance and build a better world in which men of differing opinions could peacefully co-exist and work together for the betterment of mankind.

In the custom of their times they used allegory and symbolism to pass on their ideas.  As their central idea was one of building a better society they borrowed their forms and symbols from the operative builders' craft and took their central allegory from the Bible, the common source book known to all, in which the only building described in any detail is King Solomon's Temple.  Stonemasons' tools also provided them with a multiplicity of emblems to illustrate the principles they were putting forward.  A newer theory places the origin of Freemasonry within a charitable framework.  In the 1600’s there was no welfare state, anyone falling ill or becoming disabled had to rely on friends and the Poor Law for support.  In the 1600’s many trades had what have become known as box clubs.  These grew out of the convivial gatherings of members of a particular trade during meetings of which all present would put money into a communal box, knowing that if they fell on hard times they could apply for relief from the box.  From surviving evidence these box clubs are known to have begun to admit members not of their trade and to have had many of the characteristics of early Masonic lodges.  They met in taverns, had simple initiation ceremonies and pass-words and practised charity on a local scale.  Perhaps Freemasonry had its origins in just such a box club for operative masons.

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