118 THE ORIGINS OF FREEMASONRY FROM ANCIENT TIMES TO THE MIDDLE AGESOnly the crafts masters' visits to the Enclos were authorized. Thus
we can read that on June 28, 1705, a declaration from the king to the
carpenters association granted:
[permission to the sworn syndics of said community to make their
visits to all the studios and worksites, whether in the Faubourg
Saint Antoine, the Enclos of the Temple, of Saint John of Latran... and other privileged places. And in the case they find there
shoddy products, defective wood, or works that violate police reg-
ulation and the art of carpentry, said sworn syndics will make their
report and appear before the lieutenant general of the police, in the
places where said visits were made...^16
Up until the end of the Ancien Regime, then, we find existing inside
the Temple domain craftsmen benefiting from privileges and franchises
that go back to the medieval Templars. These craftsmen formed more
or less marginal communities in relation to the sworn confraternities
and corporations of the city of Paris.
It is certainly much harder to find traces of these Templar associa-
tions than of the sworn associations. The latter were regarded as legal
entities: They had statutes, they possessed properties, and they con-
tracted and operated under terms provided by the justice system. It is
therefore possible to rediscover documents concerning them. The
Templar communities, however, were not legally formed groups. There
could be no question of this in the area of the Temple; such a legal
entity would have been irreconcilable with the exercise of francs
metiers, which was the rule of the Temple—they were de facto commu-
nities. Yet these groups were more than simple assemblies of workers,
craftsmen, and merchants of the same status within the same quarter.
That a trade was franchised did not mean it could not be regulated. The
rule that existed for carpenters, for instance, was modeled on the sworn
association that preceded it. Franchise merely meant that a master did
not have to purchase the trade, that he was exempt from royal and
municipal fees and charges, and that every journeyman could freely
establish himself as a master, but it did not mean that a trade was no
longer subject to traditional rules concerning length of apprentice and