The Constitutions of the Free-Masons

What this book is

The Constitutions set down, for the first time in print, the rules and the self-told history of the new Grand Lodge of Free and Accepted Masons. Anderson's London text of 1723 became the model for the order across the English-speaking world.

Benjamin Franklin's Philadelphia reprint of 1734 carried that text to the American colonies. It is valued today less as ritual than as evidence — a printed record of how an eighteenth-century fraternity described its origins, fixed its conduct, and organised its lodges.

Anniversary Lodge of Research holds and studies texts of this kind as primary sources. This page is a reading selection; the complete text is the electronic edition linked in the source plate below.

The History

The book opens with a long history of the Craft. In some forty pages it traces Masonry from Adam through to the reign of King George I, takes in the Seven Wonders of the World, and dwells throughout on geometry and architecture as the arts at the heart of the work.

Scholars read this section as a traditional history — a legendary genealogy of the building art rather than a modern critical chronology. Its interest lies in what the early fraternity chose to claim for itself: descent from the great builders of antiquity, and a conviction that geometry orders both stone and society.

The Charges of a Free-Mason

At the heart of the book stand the Charges — the moral and civil obligations read to members. They are headed in the original:

1. I

   Concerning God and Religion

   Quoted in full above — the famous charge that a Mason hold to that religion in which all men agree, leaving particular opinions to themselves.

2. II

   Of the Civil Magistrate, supreme and subordinate

   That a Mason be a peaceable subject who honours the civil powers and never countenances plots against the peace of the state.

3. III

   Of Lodges

   Of the lodge as the place where Masons assemble and work, and of the duties of belonging to one and attending it.

4. IV

   Of Masters, Wardens, Fellows, and Apprentices

   That preferment among Masons rest on real worth and personal merit alone, with the orderly progression from apprentice to fellow and master.

5. V

   Of the Management of the Craft in Working

   Of conduct during the work itself — diligence, fair dealing between master and craftsmen, and honest wages.

6. VI

   Of Behaviour

   Of a Mason's behaviour in the lodge, after it closes, among brethren, and before strangers — courtesy, discretion, and good fellowship.

The General Regulations

After the Charges come the General Regulations — the working constitution of the fraternity. First compiled by George Payne in 1720 and printed here, the thirty-nine regulations govern the lodges and the Grand Lodge: the holding of communications, the election of officers, the admission of members, and the conduct of business.

Where the Charges set out a Mason's ethics, the Regulations set out the institution's procedure. Together they show a fraternity deliberately giving itself the form of a governed, minuted, self-amending body.

The Songs

The volume ends, characteristically for its age, with songs to be sung at the lodge's social table.

• ·The Master's Song
• ·The Warden's Song
• ·The Fellow-Craft's Song
• ·The Enter'd 'Prentice's Song

Convivial verse, not ritual — the printed close of an eighteenth-century gathering.

The Approbation

The text closes under the Grand Lodge's approbation — the formal authorisation by which the Grand Master and his officers approved the book and ordered it printed, giving the private compilation the standing of an official record.

Reading the full text

This page presents a curated reading selection. The complete forty-page text — title-page, history, charges, regulations, and songs — is freely available as the electronic edition prepared by Paul Royster for the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Libraries.

We link to that edition rather than re-key the whole work, so that scholarship rests on a citable, stable source. Use the actions in the source plate to open or cite it.