Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

440 LELAND
LELAND
and no less from a due regard to the royal
writer, and our author, his transcriber, indefatigable
in every part of literature : it will
also be admitted, acknowledgment is due to
the learned Mr . Locke, who, amidst the
closest studies and the most strict attention to
human understanding, could unbend his mind
in search of this ancient treatise, which he first
brought from obscurity in the year 1696 ."
The . Manuscript purports to be a series of
questions proposed by Henry VI . and answers
given by the Masons . It is accompanied by
an introductory letter and a commentary
by Mr . Locke, together with a glossary of
the archaic words . The'best account of the
Manuscript is contained in the letter of Locke
to a nobleman, said to be the Earl of Pembroke,
dated May 6, 1696, in which, after
stating that he had procured a copy of it from
the Bodleian Library, he adds :
"The Manuscript of which this is a copy
appears to be about one hundred and sixty
years old ; yet (as your Lordship will observe
by the title) it is itself a copy of one yet more
ancient by about one hundred years . For the
original is said to have been in the handwriting
of King Henry the VI . Where that prince
had it is an uncertainty ; but it seems to me
to be an examination (taken, perhaps, before
the King) of some one of the Brotherhood of
Masons, among whom he entered himself, as
'tis said, when he came out of his minority,
and thenceforth put a stop to a persecution
that had been raised against them."
After its appearance in the Gentleman's
Magazine, which first introduced the knowledge
of it to the world, and in Huddesford's
L. of Leland, who evidently copied it from the
Magazine, it next appeared, in 1764, in the
Pocket Companion, and in 1769 in Calcott's
Candid Disquisition . In 1775, Hutchinson
introduced it into his Spirit of Masonry.
Dermott published it in his Ahiman Rezon,
and Preston in his Illustrations . Noorthouck,
in 1784, embodied it in his edition of the Constitutions
; and it has since been repeatedly
published in England and America, so that the
Craft have had every opportunity of becoming
familiar with its contents . Translations of it
have also been given in French by Thory, in
his Acta Latomorum ; in German by Lenning,
in his Encyclopadie ; by Krause, in his Kunsturkunden,
and also by Fessler and several other
French and German writers .
This document-so important, if true, as a
record of the condition of Freemasonry in
the beginning of the fifteenth century-has
been from an early period attacked and defended
with equal vehemence by those who
have denied and those who have maintained
its authenticity . As early as 1787, the Baron
de Chefdebien, in a discourse entitled Recherches
Magonniques d l'usage des Freres de
Regime primif de Narbonne, read before the
Congress of the Philalethans, attacked the
authenticity of the document . Thory also,
although acknowledging that he wished that
the Manuscript was true, presented his objections
to its authenticity in a memoir read in
1806 before the Tribunal of the Philosophic
Rite. His objections are eight in number,
and are to this effect : 1 . That it was not
published in any of the early editions of the
works of Locke . 2 . That it was printed for
the first time at Frankfort, in 1748 . 3 . That
it was not known in England until 1753 . 4.
That Anderson makes no mention of it .
5. That it is not in any of the editions of
Leland's works printed before 1772 . 6 . That
Dr. Plot contends that Henry VI . was never
made a Mason . 7 . That the Manuscript says
that Masonry was brought from the East by
the Venetians . 8 . That the troubles in the
reign of Henry VI ., and his incapacity, render
it improbable that he would have occupied his
mind with the subject of Freemasonry . The
sixth and eighth of these objections merely
beg the question ; and the seventh is puerile,
founded on ignorance of the meaning of the
word "Venetian." But the other objections
have much weight . Sloane, in his New Curiosities
of Literature (1849, vol . ii., p . 80),
attacks the document with the bitterness
which he usually displays wherever Freemasonry
is concerned .
Halliwell, in his Early History of Freemasonry
in England (p . 40), has advanced the
following arguments against its authenticity :
"It is singular that the circumstances attending
its publication should have led no one
to suspect its authenticity . I was at the pains
of making a long search in the Bodleian Library
last summer, in the hopes of finding the
original, but without success . In fact there
can be but little doubt that this celebrated
and well-known document is a forgery!
"In the first place, why should such a
document have been printed abroad? Was
it likely that it should have found its way to
Frankfrt, nearly half a century afterwards,
and been published without any explanation
of the source whence it was obtained? Again,
the orthography is most grotesque, and too
gross ever to have been penned either by
Henry VI. or Leland, or both combined . For
instance, we have Peter Gower, a Grecian,
explained in a note by the fabricator-for who
else could have solved it?-to be Pythagoras!
As a whole, it is but a clumsy attempt at deception,
and is quite a parallel to the recently
discovered one of the first Englishe Mercurie. '
Among the German opponents of the Manuscript
are Leasing, Keller, and Findel ; and
more recently, the iconoclasts of England,
who have been attacking so many of the
ancient records of the Craft, have not left this
one unspared .
On the other hand, it has ranked among its
advocates some of the most learned Masons
of England, Germany, and France, of whom
may be named Krause, Fessler, Lenning,
Reghellini, Preston, Hutchinson, Calcott
(these three, perhaps, without critical examination),
and Oliver . Of these the language
of the last may be cited as a specimen of the
arguments adduced in its favor .
"This famous Manuscript," says Dr . Oliver
(Freemasons' Quart . Rev ., 1840, p . 10), "poe-