The Corporative Masonry of Great Britain 193them that the masons owed the king their loyalty, that they should ren-
der assistance to each other and call one another "brother," that they
should deserve their wages, and that they should designate the most
skilled among them as director of the work and call him "master."
Finally, Euclid ordered his masons to hold an annual assembly.
The legend next speaks of David, who loved and cherished the
masons and gave them licenses. His son, Solomon, gathered together
80,000 masons, including 1,000 masters, and finished the construction
of the Temple. Hiram, king of Tyre, who greatly loved Solomon, pro-
vided him with the wood he needed for the construction and sent him
an artist who was the very spirit of wisdom. This man's mother was of
the Nephtali tribe and his father was a man of Tyre, and his name was
also Hiram. (Some versions of the story describe him as the son of King
Hiram; others give his name as Amon or Aymon.) There had been no
one like him in the world before his time. A master mason of great
nobility and refined knowledge, Hiram was master of the construction,
all the builders of the Temple, and all the carved and sculpted works in
the Temple and the surrounding area.
The legend then leaps ahead several centuries and recounts how
Namus Graecus,* who had taken part in the building of Solomon's
Temple, introduced masonry into France by teaching it to Charles
Martel, who then instructed the men of France in its mysteries.+ The
tale then arrives at Saint Alban, the patron saint of masons, who
granted them a personal charter.++ Subsequently, masonry suffered
from a series of wars until the era of King Athelstan, who greatly
esteemed the masons, and his son Edwin, who himself became a
mason. It was Edwin who issued the Charges of the Masons during
an Assembly held in York in 926. At this point the story abruptly
comes to a halt.
This briefly describes the legend that was reproduced, with different
* It should be noted that this name simply replaces a Greek name that a former copier
was unable to decipher. For that reason we do not know which historical figure this
might be.+
We have already discussed the grounds on which this legendary role attributed to
Charles Martel is resting and how firm it might be.++
The Cooke Manuscript also mentions a Saint Amphibal, who convened Saint Alban.