186 FROM THE ART OF BUILDING TO THE ART OF THINKING
have originally designated a sculptor of stone (sculptores in Latin or
latomos in Greek) working free stone, which is to say stone that can
easily be carved by hammer and chisel, as opposed to rough stone or
hard stone. Later, when the decadence of Gothic art had brought about
the gradual disappearence of free-stone sculptors, the term freemason
would have been commingled with roughmason, but the first name pre-
vailed. This etymology, which Robert Freke Gould also found dubious,
cannot be supported. The word free or franc does not apply to the
craftsman working the stone but to the stone of pure and good quality
that is being worked.
In fact, the first use of the term freemason appeared in 1376 in the
license for the franchise of the Company of Masons of London, where
it was used in definition of its members. Its existence should go back to
a much earlier time though (the first half of the thirteenth century) and
its meaning, applied to the masons belonging to the guild, would have
evolved etymologically from its French origins. In 1377 William
Humbervyle, designated by the title magister operis and free master
mason, was hired by Merton College, Oxford. A mason free appears in
the Pershore records of 1381. In 1391, in a license composed in Latin
by the archbishop of Canterbury, there is reference to the use of twenty-
four lathomos vocatos ffremaceons, as opposed to lathomos vocatos
ligiers, which denotes liges, or vassals.
D. Knoop and G. P. Jones^3 also cite fourteenth- and fifteenth-
century texts where there is mention together of freemasons, masouns
hewers, masoun setters [stone cutters], and masoun legers [stone set-
ters]. It is these legers with whom they relate the ligiers cited above. It
appears their intention is to show the professional distinctions between
the first group—freemasons—and the others. In actuality, though, by
opposing these terms in this way, the authors introduce an element of
confusion to the names of these workers relative to their status and
their legal position within their specialization and type of work. It is a
bit like referring today to "unionized masons" in one part of a text and
in another "cement layers" and "tilers" in such a way that each term
appears opposed to another.
Along with this misleading opposition, we should be wary of ety-
mologies. For instance, the word layer, from to lay or lay, could mean