Masonic Education for October 2021
From the booklet – “PENETRATING THE VEIL”
– by David C. Bradley–Grand Master–1989-1990
This month’s issue is titled –
“THE ENTERED APPRENTICE.”
(As the presentations in this website are available to all readers, items involving the Second and Third Degrees will be excluded.)
The earliest printed references to entered apprentices are found in varying forms in such documents as The Edinburgh Register House MS, 1696: “Q. What makes a true and perfect lodge? An: seven masters, five entered apprentices …”; The Chetwode Crawley MS, c. 1700: “Here am I the youngest and last entered Apprentice …”; the Sloane MS 3329, c. 1700: Q. What is a just and perfect or just and Lawful Lodge? A. a just and perfect Lodge is two Interprintices two fellow craftes and two Masters …”; The Trinity College Dublin, MS 1711: “Q. What makes a full and perfect lodge? A. three masters, 3 fellow craftsmen and 3 enterprentices …” 16 A footnote in Anderson’s Constitutions, 1723 gives “That enter’d Prentices at their making …” and, in the same volume the title of a song attributed to a “Mr. Matthew Birkhead, deceas’d is given as “The Enter’d Prentices Song”. The classification of a candidate as an entered apprentice is well known from 1599 in Scotland, but the use of entered, but the use of entered is not found in English documents until 1720. The first record of initiation in England is in Newcastle-on-Tyne on May 20,1641. This, however, was performed by members of the Lodge in Edinburgh, who were serving with the Scottish Army that had invaded England. 17
16 The Early Masonic Catechisms, p.69
17 The Pocket History of Freemasonry, p.44
(The READER, may notice that there appear to be many spelling mistakes in the above. As I was typing this article, I verified that the spelling was as recorded in the booklet.)
R.W. Bro. Robert South