236 FROM THE ART OF BUILDING TO THE ART OF THINKING
The admission of "accepted" members is a very old practice in
masonry. Clerics were always to be found in the association because of
the religious foundation of mastery associations and brotherhoods.
This was how a priest initiated into the order was the one to draft the
famous Masonic Poem (Regius Manuscript) at the end of the fourteenth
century. This priest most likely held the duties of chaplain or secretary
or perhaps both. In the seventeenth century, Atcheson Haven Lodge
shows these duties entrusted to a notary who was intentionally initiated
as a mason so that he could write apprenticeship contracts.^3
Over time many other figures were given access to masonry, whether
because they themselves were drawn by the institution's prestige or
because their support was sought by the organization. This was how
King Henry IV and the nobles of his court were initiated into the broth-
erhood in 1442.^4 Indeed, the Regius Manuscript mentions apprentices
"with the blood of high lords." It is obvious that this does not refer to
the sons of high nobility who were actually plying the craft of masonry.
The Cooke Manuscript is the first to employ the word speculative. The
son of King Athelstan, it states, was a true speculative master.
In these older times, the professional or operative element was
more prevalent in the order. But an era eventually arrived when the
external element, the accepted, prevailed over the operative element,
first in quality then in actual quantity. This occurred when artisans
confined to their professional tasks considered all that had constituted
the grandeur and prestige of the order to be nothing more than an old,
worn garment. This old clothing, deemed to be more or less anachro-
nistic by humble craftsmen, was, however, quite suitable for the needs
of others.
For various reasons, the task of achieving this transformation—this
subrogation, to use a legal term—belonged to the lodges of Great
Britain.* The Scottish lodges preceded the British lodges down this
- Although L. Vibert claims the contrary, the German Hiitten included accepted mem-
bers. We need only refer to the stonecutter statutes for proof of this. Further proof can
be found in the well-known sign of the interlaced square and compass with the letter G
at its center, which served as the logo of Strasbourg publisher Jean Grieninger in 1525,
a time when the corporation was still enjoying the height of its prosperity in that city
(Clavel, Histoire pittoresque de la Franc-Maconnerie, 86; B. E. Jones, Freemason's
Guide and Compendium, 299).