194 FROM THE ART OF BUILDING TO THE ART OF THINKING
variants and details, by the ancient charters and can be found in the
Masonic Poem (Regius Manuscript), the Cooke Manuscript, and so
forth. There is no need to point out its anachronisms and historical fan-
tasies; these in no way detract from its importance from an esoteric
point of view.
It is important to note the abrupt ending of the legend with the
Congress of York in 926 when all the existing versions of the ancient
charges are dated to after the end of the fourteenth century. Why was
there no effort made by the compilers to update the legend, at least to
the year 1400? We have to assume that either the original legend was
drawn up shortly after the last event it mentions, which is to say around
926, and was then copied by craftsmen who gave no thought to any
continuation; or that it was the result of a later compilation by some
writer who had a special reason for stopping the story at the time of
Athelstan and Edwin.
The first assumption is not supportable. Historically, it is impossi-
ble to speak of a corporation or crafts guild from the beginning of the
tenth century. The mention of Euclid in almost all of these texts, how-
ever, gives us a means to set the earliest possible date on which the leg-
end was crafted. The works of Euclid were most likely completely
unknown in England before they were introduced there by Adelard of
Bath in 1130.^12
In favor of the second hypothesis, we have the fact that in 1389
Richard II requested that the corporations file their statutes, indicate
the origins of their formation, and provide an inventory of their prop-
erty. It was completely in a corporation's interest to produce a charter
because it would strengthen its position within the city and could serve
to show its seniority. It was also advantageous to trace seniority back
to Athelstan, who was the last Angle king and was both the first and
the last to hold uncontested domain over his entire kingdom. He was
also, as noted earlier, a great legislator, and he granted various charters
to certain cities that referred to guilds that, if not professional, were at
least religious.