The Manuseript has been discussed at various thnes by several students. A lengthy and careful examination of it appears in volume i of the Antigrapha of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, 1889, and among the Collected Essays and Papers Relating to Freemasonry by Robert F. Gould, 1913, published by William Tait of Belfast, Ireland. Brother William Begernann published a discussion of it in the German language, which is summarized by Brother George William Speth in volume vii~ Transactions of Quatuor Coronati Lodge.
The name Reyius Manuscript was the suggestion of Brother Gould as indicating its pre-eminence as a Masonic document as well as its previous ownership by the Kings of England. The Manuseript, as Brother Baxter well said, is of prime importance to the Fraternity of Freemasons as being its oldest preserved document which affords evidence of a legendary history and an indication of a speculative origin. Brother Baxter read a paper upon the subject before the Lodge of Research at Leicester on November 2S, 1914. From this discussion we take the following comments of Brother Baxter:
I should like to ask you to carefully consider the wording of the poem, and to notice the remarkable number of instances in which the phrases have been introduced
although in different terminology into our ritual, and the cases in which its requirements have been incorporated with our Constitutions. Even the last stage of the document, which deals with manners at table and in the presence of superiors, and appears at first sight to be quite irrelevant, may be accepted as evidence that our present custom of celebrating special Masonic events by
banqueting and fraternizing was a feature of the Craft at the time of which the Manuseript speaks. You will all be acquainted in some degree with the remarkable series of documents known variously as the Manuscript Constitutions, the Gothic Constitutions, or more commonly
nowadays as the Old Charoes of the British Freemasons and you will further know that after an introductory prayer, of a purely Christian character, they go on to relate how the science of geometry (or Freemnsonry) came to be founded. This same legend forms the first part of the poem we are now considering, and as it clearly states that the story is to be found in old books, abundantly proves that the versifier had access to copies of the Old Charges which are unhappily now lost to us.
I wish to use this legend as the basis of a theorv which I shall try to develop. Briefly stated, my idea is that the poem, as well as all the other Old Charges, elearly indicates that architectures the mistress of the arts, which is undoubtedly founded on geometry, was developed in Egypt, the cradle of civilization, and that its early practitioners were, as related in these old Manuseripts, of gentle birth. They must have been the actual designers of the structures and have worked, in conjunction so far as the execution of their projects was concerned with the skilled craftsmen and manual labourers who were necessary to their purpose. A gild, composed of different grades of members, would thus be formed, possibly with different secret signs for each class, and from this gild, through different channels of development, would arise the present-day purely speculative form of Freemasonry, with its system of Degrees.
Brothers Speth and Gould have laboured hard to establish the fact that prior to the institution of Grand Lodge, and during its early regime, two Degrees only were worked, and I have used the weight of later evidence to back up their assertion. What is more likely than that the higher or Master's Degree was confined to the skilled geometricians, whilst the simpler artificers had to content themselves with the lower step? All students know definitely, that from the earliest times of which we have any monuments remaining, that architecture was a living art developing along elearly defined lines, and varying in character with the nature of the materials employed, and the climatic conditions existing in the countries where they were used, down at least to the close of the Gothic Era in Western Europe, and its counterpart in Eastern countries. (I am not at all suggesting that the Renaissance effected an arrest of creative design, although it reverted to and made use of forms of a bygone age.) It is therefore not possible to conceive that buildings of any architectural pretensions could have been erected, without carefully thought-out designs having been prepared. Dealing more particularly with the actual time of the writing of the poem, we can only conclude that such a progression of design as commonly proceeded over the whole of England almost simultaneously, could only have been produced bv a school of thought and not by individual effort. My firm conviction is that this school was composed of the Master Freemasons of the period.
Commenting on lines 143-G of the poem which (modernised) read:
By old time written I find
That the Prentice should be of gentle kind
And so sometime great lords' blood,
Took this geometry that is full good.
The late F. J. Furnivall said, "I should like to see the evidence of a lords son having become a working mason. and dwelling seven years with his master 'his craft to learn."' Alv contention is that neither the poem nor any other craft document ever suggested that a lord's son had become a working mason. That they became students of geometry and designers of buildings is in every
way likely, and was in no way derogatory to their dignity. I might even point out that the present Lord Ferrers (the successor in the earldom of your own late Provincial Grand Master) was, before his accession to the title, a practicing architect, and that other scions of noble families are at present similarly engaged. There seems to be good evidence of this in the poem, particularly in Lines 279-83, which read:
She privities of the chamber tell he no man,
Nor in the lodge whatsoever they don;
Whatsoever thou hearest or seest them do
Tell to no man wheresoever you go;
The counsel of hall and even of bower
Steep it well to great honour—
That these gentlemen were on a different footing from the ordinary eraftsmen, and that their labours were conducted. not in the Lodge, but in the chamber, are conditions which I suggest are parallel to the masons' shed and the drawing office.
Reverting now to Henry Yevley, whose name is variously spelled, but always easily recognisable, I find on turning up his name in Ivenning's Cyclopaedia
'Said by the Revd. James Anderson, D.D. (in the first edition of the Book of Constitutions, 1723) to have been the King's Freemason, or general surveyor of the buildings of King Edward III, and employed by His Majesty to 'build several abbies' and other edifices. Unfortunately Doctor Anderson was gifted with the imaginative faculty to an undue extent, so that such statements as the foregoing (which are frequently met with in his work) confuse more than they benefit the general reader, and, Masonically speaking, have done much harm. We fail to see why Masonry requires unhistorical statements to render it acceptable in any way."
The Reverend Brother Woodford, who was the author and editor of the encyclopedia, in conjunction with Brother Vaughan, who wrote the articles under the letters U. V, W. Y. and Z. appears, however, to be wrong on this occasion, and the imaginative doctor quite right. Doctor Begemann contributed a note to Transactions. Quatuor Coronati Lodge, xxi, in which he endeavored to prove—and I think with complete success—that the title of Freemason applied to Yevley by Stow in his Survey of London, 1598, had actually been used during the former's lifetime, and was not a posthumous description. Doctor Begemann's note inspired an article by Brother E. W. M Wonnacott, of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, and himself an architect in the same volume, in which he conclusively proved from existing documents, that as early as 1362 Yevley was described as a " deviser of Masonry," and that William of Wykeham, generally credited with having been a great architect, was merely mentioned as a clerk. In 1381 Nicholas Typerton undertook to build the aisle of Saint Dunstan's Church in Thames Street " selon ho devise de Mestre (according to the design of Master) Henry Iveleghe," and in 1395 works were carried out at Westminster Hall from a model made by the advice of Waster Henri Zeveley.
" Selone be purport d'une fourme et molde fait par conseil
de mesttre Henri Zeveley.
(According to the style of a form and mold made by counsel of Master Henri Zeveley.)
I have not picked out the ease of Yevley as being at all singular, but merely because it has been so fully dealt faith in Masonic writings which are available to us all. tn examination of the list of names in Wyatt Papworth's paper on the Superintendents of English Buildings during the Middle Ages, and a careful study of their records, nould doubtless prove that their duties were in every way analogous to those of the character selected. Surely there ean no longer be any doubt that the Master Masons of the Gothic Era at least (and possibly so long as architecture has been practiced), were architects in the truest sense of the word, for when we eonsider the constructive ingenuity of their buildings, no less than their perfect proportions and beauty, we are compelled at once to admit, that their skill and knowledge of geometry were profound. Thus I think you will agree, I am quite justified in concluding that the legend of the founding of the science of geometry by the children of great lords and ladies, as related in the first part of the poem, is no myth, but is founded on fact, for unlettered working masons could never have produced the temples and churches for the worship of T. G. A. 0. T. U., which of all things that excite pleasure to the eye, rank next only to the works of the Great Creator Himself.