St John's in Peterborough

On Saturday, the Irish Degree Team from St John's Lodge (London East District) arrived in Peterborough - as guests of Peterborough Lodge - by bus in the late morning to perform the legendary Third Degree, and there were certainly plenty of visitors waiting in lodge in eager anticipation. As the Grand Master pointed out during his response to the The Toast To Grand Lodge at lunch, this is a degree that has a history beyond the Unification of 1813 and into the earliest lodges of the Ancients, especially in Ireland, Scotland and Northern England, prior to the eventual formation of the Premier Grand Lodge in London.

It was a great day. I had never seen the degree, but had heard a lot of rumours, regarding its rather violent nature - properly providing a candidate true trials and tribulations in order to become a Master Mason. Sitting in the East, I found the team, which were dressed appropriately, integrated the play aspect of Scottish Rite degrees really well to drive home the essential points of each lesson to be learnt on the floor of the lodge, and the recap was, frankly, brilliant. If you have a chance to do so, visit a lodge performing these timeless degrees!

St John's No 20 was constituted in October 4, 1841, under the Grand Lodge of Ireland, originally warranted as No 209, and continued working under the Irish warrant until 1855. The lodge was one of the founding lodges of the newly formed Grand Lodge of Canada, and ceased working under the Irish warrant. The lodge was renumbered 14, G.R.C., and was renumbered again to 20 in 1859 with the union of the two Canadian Grand Lodges into the Grand Lodge we know today. When the Grand Lodge of Canada decided to adopt a modified English Ritual, (Emulation), the lodge was granted dispensation to retain the original Irish ritual they had been using under the Grand Lodge of Ireland.

With respecct to Masonic history, according to Wikipedia, "The Halliwell Manuscript, or Regius Poem is the oldest known document of masonic origin. It was published in 1840 by Shakespearean scholar and collector James Halliwell who dated it to 1390. A. F. A. Woodford, the pioneering Masonic scholar and a founder of Quatuor Coronati Lodge, agreed with this dating.[29] More recently, historian Andrew Prescott has dated the text to the second quarter of the fifteenth century.[30]

The poem may be seen as a response to a stream of legislation dating back to the Black Death, and the Statute of Labourers of 1351, in which Edward III attempted to fix wages at pre-plague levels.[31] The earlier date follows the 1389 ordinance of Richard II requiring the guilds and fellowships to lay before him their Charters and Letters Patent,[31] and the second follows the more serious legislation of 1425 banning the annual assemblies of masons.

The lasting effect of the Schaw Statutes arose from the 1599 directive that the lodges should employ a reputable notary as secretary, and that he should record all important transactions. The Scottish lodges began to keep minutes, and therefore the appearance of "accepted" or non-operative masons is better recorded than in England, where there are no known internal records of lodge proceedings.

The first recorded admission of non-masons was on 3 July 1634 at Lodge of Edinburgh (Mary's Chapel) No. 1 , in the persons of Sir Anthony Alexander, his elder brother, Lord Alexander, and Sir Alexander Strachan of Thornton. Sir Anthony was the King's Principal Master of Work, and the man who had effectively blocked the second St Clair charter, the lodges of Scotland being his own responsibility."