OVER a long period bridging the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as the reader is now well aware, none but Installed Masters were acceptable as Candidates for the Royal Arch. ‘Passing the chair’ was a device, a subterfuge, an evasion, originally designed for the one purpose of giving the Master Mason who had not ruled a lodge the status qualifying him as a Candidate. Originally, it is believed, it was introduced by the Antients,’ but was soon adopted by the Moderns.’ It took the form of installing the Third Degree Mason in the Master’s Chair by means of the customary ceremony or one closely resembling it, and then facilitating his leaving the chair in the course of a very few minutes.
The Antients’ believed the Installation ceremony to be time‑immemorial, to which belief a great many authors have lent support, and have even asserted that between the two systems was one chief distinction – the abandonment by the Moderns’ of the Installation ceremony. A statement to this effect has been repeated over and over again, but the present author has found no evidence of its truth.
Although the Lodge of Promulgation decided in 1809 that the ceremony of Installation was one of “two” (thought to be a literal error for “true”) landmarks that ought to be preserved, it does not follow that the Moderns’ had ever abandoned it. They did not have it to abandon! The Antients’ branded the Moderns’ as innovators, but, in fact, the amount of innovation introduced by them was small compared with that of their opponents. The Moderns’ were, in general, a more conservatively minded body, on the whole better educated and more sophisticated than their opponents. It was the Antients’ who found no particular difficulty in accepting any colourful and attractive ceremonial so long as it came dusty with the cobwebs of what Shakespeare has called “antique time.”
A fair inference is that the Craft Installation ceremony was introduced some time early in the 1740s, which would allow of the Antients’ (who were forming from late in the 1730s) adopting a ceremony which they must be credited with believing to have been a time‑immemorial rite heartlessly abandoned by the Premier Grand Lodge and its adherents. Many wholly independent lodges must have been meeting in various parts of the country at that time, each believing that it had the right to work any ceremonies it pleased. Growing from the bare practice of merely leading the Master to the chair, the Installation ceremony had apparently become, by a period not earlier than about 1740, a rounded‑off and established ceremony clearly associated with the Hiramic story and possibly or probably already complete with an Obligation and penalty of its own.
Gould believed that the Installation ceremony “was neither known nor practised in England during the early stages of the Grand Lodge era.”
It is impossible or at least extremely difficult to believe that the Installation ceremony, which would be nothing if robbed of its allusions to the Hiramic story, could ever have preceded the coming of the Third Degree. Now that degree, it will be remembered, did not reach the few lodges until late in the 1720s or the generality of lodges until many years after then ‑ not till the 1740s probably. The suggestion that such a significant ceremony as one reflecting the Hiramic tradition could have been abandoned by the Moderns’ is quite untenable, although a claim to that effect was commonly made by their opponents and by Masonic writers on their behalf‑and frequently taken for granted by some Masonic historians.
Some of the Moderns’ must have met the ceremony in its early days, but they were working under the discipline of a Grand Lodge and could not so easily please themselves in such a matter; later they adopted a version of it‑not, at first, for the installing of Masters, but as a means of conferring upon their Royal Arch candidates a qualification whose real significance must have escaped them, and would continue to escape the great majority of them for half a century or so.
The Antients’ insist that Royal Arch Candidates be Installed Masters
It is difficult to put into precise words the Antients’ attitude to the Installation ceremony. It was much more than approbation and esteem, more than regard; it had something in it of reverence and veneration. A Master was not only a chairman or past chairman of the lodge, superior to junior Brethren, but one who, having passed through an esoteric ceremony of distinction, was now of a definitely higher grade. This is recognized in their refusal to confer the Royal Arch Degree upon a Brother who had not passed through the chair; he was simply not good enough to be a Royal Arch Master.
There is a remarkable minute of the Antients’ Grand Committee as early as June 24, 1752, upon the occasion of Laurence Dermott’s being “installed” as Grand Secretary and being proclaim’d and saluted accordingly. ‑ After which he repeated the whole Ceremony of Instaling Grand & in the manner which he had learn’d from Brother Edward Spratt Esq. the Celebrated Grand Secretary of Ireland. The long Recital of this solemn Ceremony gave great satisfaction to the Audience, many of which never had an Opportunity of hearing the like before.
The Antients’ insisted that their Masters of Lodges should not only be correctly installed, but be able to install their successors. Take, for example, this further minute of the Antients’ Grand Lodge (June, 1756):
The Grand Secretary was Order’d to Examine several Masters in the Ceremony of Installing their Successors, and declared that many of them were incapable of performance. Order’d that the Grand Secretary shall attend such difficient lodges and having obtain’d the consent of members of the said Lodges he shall solemnly Install and invest the Several Officers according to the Ancient Custom of the Craft.
Warrants of the 1761 period help us to understand the insistence placed by the Antients’ on the Installation ceremony:
We do hereby further authorise and impower our said Trusty and wellbelov’d Bro. to nominate chuse and install their successors to whom they shall deliver this Warrant . . . and such successors shall in like manner nominate chuse and install their successors.
It must be apparent that the Antients’ were definitely teaching, and insisting upon, an Installation ceremony at a time when, in the Moderns’ lodges in general, an Installation was little more than the incoming Master taking the chair. It is extremely likely that the Installation ceremony became embellished in the course of time, and ultimately developed into what is now called the Extended Ceremony of Installation (the ceremony which, after some discussion, was permitted by Grand Lodge as recently as 1926 to be worked under certain safeguards, the most important of which is that the Installing Master must declare precisely that no further degree in masonry is being conferred).
The Royal Arch is referred to as “an organised body of men who have passed the chair” by Dr Fifield Dassigny, in his much quoted book, dated 1744 (see p. 45). Further, Laurence Dermott, in Ahiman Rezon of 1756, scornfully alludes to those “who think themselves R.A. masons without passing the chair in regular form.” (The word “passing” in this sentence must mean “going through” in the ordinary way, becoming a ‘Past’ Master; in the light of Dermott’s hostility to subterfuge ‘passing,’ no other interpretation is possible.)
It is hardly open to doubt that by the time we hear of the Antients’ working the Royal Arch ceremony they were already observing (and doubtless had always observed) the rule that Candidates must be Installed Masters. With the rise of the Royal Arch to popularity this rule proved unworkable. It was too restrictive, for while, on the one hand, there was a growing demand for Exaltation, there was, on the other, the bottleneck created by the rule, an embarrassing condition quickly but unofficially remedied by the subterfuge of passing a Brother through the chair for the sole purpose of qualifying him as a Candidate for Exaltation. He went through a ‘constructive’ ceremony, soon to be known as the Past Master Degree, and became a ‘Virtual’ Past Master.
The word ‘virtual’ has many definitions, the one best suiting our purpose being “in essence or effect, not in fact; although not real or actual, equivalent or nearly so.”
The device of ‘Passing the chair’ was invented by the Antients’ lodges themselves, and not by their Grand Lodge, as becomes clear from a minute of the Antients’ Grand Lodge for December 4, 1771, a minute, by the way, which lights up the relative dependence of the Antients’ Grand Chapter:
The Rt. Worshipful Deputy Grand Master informed the Grand Lodge of the Proceedings of the Royal Arch meetings, Vis. on the and October and 6th of November last and expatiated a long time on the scandalous method pursued by most of the Lodges (on St John’s Days) in passing a Number of Brethren through the chair on purpose to obtain the sacred Mystery’s of the Royal Arch, and proved in a concise manner that those proceedings were unjustifiable; therefore Moved for a Regulation to be made in order to Suppress them for the future. The Deputy was answered by several Brethren, that there were many Members of Lodges who from their Proffesions in Life (the Sea for Example) that could never regularly attain that part of Masonry, tho’ very able deserving Men, and humbly Moved that might be Considered in the new Regulations. The Grand Lodge in General thought such a Clause necessary and therefore the Question being put for the Regulation, it was unanimously Resolved;
“That no person for the future shall be made a Royal Arch Mason but the legal Representative of the Lodge, except a Brother (that is going abroad) who hath been twelve months a Register’d Mason; and must have the Unanimous Voice of his Lodge to receive such Qualification and in order to render this Regulation more Expedient it is further Order’d that all Certificates granted to Brethren from their respective Lodges shall have inserted the Day the Brother or Brethren joined or was made in said Lodge and that this Regulation take place on St. Johns Day the 27th Decr. 1771.”
The Deputy Grand Master . . . informed them that there was several Brethren of Different Lodges that had been Admitted amongst the Royal Arch Masons Illegally and that it would be necessary to take their case into consideration but as it was concerning the Royal Arch presumed they would leave it to the next Grand Chapter and they might depend that every thing should be pursued for the real honor of the Fraternity. The Grand Lodge having duly weighed the forgoing proposition and considering that several of the Members of the Grand Lodge were not Royal Arch Masons. It was agreed by the Majority That the R: A: Chapter were the properest persons to adjust and determine this matter and therefore it was agreed that the case should be reffered to the Royal Chapter, with full Authority to hear, determine and finally adjust the same.
On St John’s Day in December, twenty‑three days later, the Grand Lodge confirmed the ‘New Regulations,’ the D.G.M. giving the Brethren present to understand that these were “to be strictly observed in their respective Lodges.” It is doubtful whether this protest and resolution had much effect; indeed, the Antients’ Grand Lodge itself was hardly consistent in the matter, for it seemed to have no objection on principle to ‘Constructive’ or ‘Virtual’ ceremonies when, for instance, on December a, 1789, Sir Watkin Lewis, Knight, City of London’s Alderman and M.P., having been elected junior Grand Warden, it smoothed the way for his Obligation and Installation by resolving “that his private lodge be directed to pass him through the Chair in the Morning of St. John’s day next, if he should not before that time be installed Master of a Lodge.” Actually he was “obligated and installed “at a meeting of Grand Lodge at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand, on St John’s Day, December 28.
Although the qualifying ceremony through which the Royal Arch Candidate passed was essentially identical with the Installation ceremony, it did not confer upon him in the early days (and only occasionally in the later ones) any privilege other, it is supposed, than a higher status; it seldom availed him when he came to be elected Master of his lodge, for then he generally had to be regularly installed.
The Moderns’ adopt the Qualification
It is well known that the Moderns’ were working the Royal Arch Degree at an early date. Now they knew nothing (officially) of an esoteric Installation ceremony, and originally could not have demanded that Candidates should have the Master’s qualification. The Grand Master did not sanction the ceremony of Installation until 1828, many years after the Union, although there is plenty of evidence that the Installation ceremony was being worked in a great many lodges long before that year.
Unexpectedly, the earliest surviving minute recording a passing through the chair is that of a Moderns’ lodge ‑ Anchor and Hope, Bolton, Lancs. At a Lodge of Emergency, November 30, 1769, “Bro. John Aspinwall, Bro. James Lever and Bro. Richd Guests were installed Masters and afterwards Bro. James Livesay Sen: was re‑installed.” Livesay, it should be said, had already been installed on June 24 of the same year, and James Lever had served as the Master of the lodge. This minute antedates by rather more than two years the first mention in the Antients’ records of this practice, but all the circumstances are against the Moderns’ having been the first to use it.
Undoubtedly, as the eighteenth century progressed, some Moderns’ worked an Installation ceremony as they worked others borrowed from the Antients,’ but not to the ‘knowledge’ and with the approbation of their Grand Lodge. But, in preparation for the Union, the Lodge of Promulgation (1811) was teaching the Installation ceremony, and the instructed lodges were teaching others.
Whatever the practice became in the course of a few years, it is quite clear that under the rules of the first Grand Chapter (1766) it was not necessary for the Candidate to be of higher rank than Master Mason. Neither these rules nor those given in the Charter of Compact (the authorizing document) required or could require the Candidate to be a Past Master; obviously so, inasmuch as the Installation ceremony was unknown officially to the Moderns,’ although individually and irregularly they may have been aware of it. It is not unreasonable to assume that had a ‘Virtual’ P.M. degree for exaltees been common practice among the Antients’ as early as 1766, both the Charter of Compact and the rules of the Grand and Royal Chapter might have made a glancing or oblique reference to the fact, but they did not. The wording in the Charter of Compact is quite simple: “That none but discreet and Experienced Master Masons shall receive Exaltation to this Sublime Degree.” There is not here the slightest hint that any higher qualification than Master Mason was required. Nevertheless, the eighth ‘clause’ of the Charter says “that none calling themselves Royal Arch Masons shall be deemed any other than Masters in operative Masonry.” (The last term must be taken as meaning ‘Craft masonry.’) This statement appears to echo the claim to superior status made years before by the ‘Scotch Masons’ (see p. 39) and thus strengthens any supposition that the earlier rite was indeed a prototype of the later one; but does it also help us to understand how it came about that Grand Chapter, with no certain experience of esoteric installation but regarding itself as an association of Masters, was so soon to insist on the Past Master qualification in its candidates?
While it is accepted that the Moderns’ were quick upon the heels of their opponents in adopting the custom of ‘Passing the chair,’ it is safe to say that in the year of the Charter of Compact (1766) they knew but little about it and that the Antients’ were only beginning to work it. In March 1766 of four new Master Masons who took the Royal Arch Degree in the Mourning Bush Lodge, Bristol (founded 1740), not one had been in the chair, and not a suspicion of a hint is given in the lodge records that they had passed through any ‘Constructive’ ceremony.
However, within a very few years, the Moderns’ were in general requiring prospective exaltees to be Past Masters, which mostly meant actually that they should have taken a constructive degree learned from their opponents, a degree whose significance must have been largely lost on the Moderns’ and one that embodied a ceremony not recognized by their Grand Lodge. We find the Regulations of the premier Grand Chapter in 1778, twelve years after its founding, laying down that none should be admitted to this exalted degree but those who were proved to have “been regularly apprenticed and presided as Masters, to be justly intitled to, and have received the Past Master’s token and pass word.” Three years later (May 1782) this was altered to those “who have passed through the three probationary degrees of Craft masonry; and have presided as Masters.” The wording might appear to convey the impression that Grand Chapter was well aware that Candidates were evading the Regulation. The reference to “Past Master’s token and pass word” appears to indicate that by 1778 some Moderns’ lodges may have been sufficiently Antient’ in sympathy (adoption of the Royal Arch Degree was in itself fair evidence of such a condition) to have adopted an Installation ceremony.
Many times between 1771 and 1813 did the Antients’ officially denounce the subterfuge ‘Passing’ and try to insist that Candidates for the Royal Arch be Masters of twelve months’ standing or bona‑fide Past Masters‑but without much success until the end of the period. It is very doubtful, also, whether the Moderns’ could do much to prevent Candidates taking the ‘Virtual’ P.M. Degree. Obviously the Antients’ had set the fashion in this matter, and as they started so they continued. The rules of a great many chapters about this time provide that Candidates must have been Master Masons for at least twelve calendar months, and that none ought to be admitted except “men of the best character and education; open, generous, of liberal sentiment, and real philanthropists; who have passed through the probationary degrees of Masonry, have presided as Master…. The Brother to be not less than twenty three years of age at the time of exaltation.”
Apparently, the matter can be summed up in this way. All Antients’ Royal Arch lodges and chapters required Candidates to have passed the chair, actually or virtually, and a number of Moderns’ chapters did the same, but certainly not all of them; as one example, the Chapter at Wakefield did not regard the P.M. Degree as a necessary prerequisite, J. R. Rylands tells us, and he records that of five Candidates in 1816, all Master Masons, two had passed the chair and three did not appear to have done so.
It is curious to learn that some Candidates were passed through the ‘Virtual’ ceremony after they had been exalted, and this in spite of the Royal Arch ritual (catechism) then demanding from each Candidate answers to such questions as “How were you prepared as a P.M. of Arts and Sciences?” and “How were you prepared as an Excellent Mason?” In the Antients’ Neptune Lodge, No. nn, in the month of October 1808, three Brethren were exalted, not one of whom had passed the chair; they went through that ceremony in the following July. But probably this may have been nothing more than an attempt to remedy an accidental omission!
Lodge Permission to be exalted
A Brother wishing to be exalted had customarily to get the consent of his lodge, firstly to pass the chair, and commonly he had to be elected to the honour. He might be proposed by a Brother, or often he would propose himself, just as in some early Craft lodges a Fellow Craft might propose himself to be raised to the Third Degree. The result was generally, but not always, a foregone conclusion; in the Mount Moriah Lodge, then No. 31, 羨ntients,’ in the year z80z, permission was refused because, apparently, the prospective exaltee was going abroad and was Senior Warden; the lodge would “not approve … without leave from the Deputy Grand Master.”
It is quite usual to find the proposal taking the form of the Candidate’s asking for a certificate as a Geometric Master Mason to allow of his being made a Royal Arch mason. Neptune Lodge, No. ia, 羨ntients,’ at Rotherhithe, London, August 8, z 80g, opened in the Third Degree when Brother Peter Rokes moved for his Private Lodge Certificate as a Geometric Master Mason, for the purpose of passing the Holy Royal Arch. The certificate, duly signed by the officers, was handed to him in open lodge. This was not quite a simple case, though, for Brother Peter Rokes was actually the Master of the Lodge and as Senior Warden had been “passed to the chair” the previous February; in June he had become Master, having, however, already served in the meantime as Acting Master for about six weeks‑on the strength, it is supposed, of his 宋irtual’ qualification! But he still needed a certificate as a Geometric Master Mason to get him through the door of the chapter.
Conferring the P.M. Degree‑making a 膳irtual’ Master
As the 宋irtual’ ceremony developed in the course of a few years into what was in effect a distinct degree, the practice arose in some places of conferring it in chapter instead of lodge, a likely indication that it was
189
coming to be regarded as one of a sequence of Royal Arch Degrees (as in effect it is still so regarded in some American states) and that its original significance was in danger of becoming dimmed. The practice met with opposition (echoes of which remain in American masonry to this day), and we note one instance, recorded by H. Hiram Hallett, in which a West of England chapter expressed the opinion that chapter should not be adjourned to allow Candidates to pass the chair, but that the ceremony should be performed at a regular lodge or at a lodge held prior to the opening of the chapter. From this it appears that the custom had been to adjourn the chapter, open a lodge for the conferring of the P.M. Degree, and then change back to chapter for the Exaltation. Thus, in 1811, the bylaws of the Chapter of St James directed that the “first assistant Sojourner should take the Chair as Master of the Previous Lodge and open the same in due form, in the Third Degree … and then prepare the Candidate for the Ceremony of Exaltation according to ancient usage.” In this “Previous Lodge” the Candidate occupied a Warden’s chair, was proposed as Master and elected. He took an Obligation at the Pedestal, was raised, placed in the chair, and “exercised the duties of W.M.” He was then again taken to the Pedestal, and the Principal Sojourner as Worshipful Master then explained the purpose of the qualifying ceremony, following which the Candidate was told that he was not entitled to consider himself a Past Master or to wear the badge of a Master of a Lodge. He was next entrusted with the secrets of a Master of Arts and Sciences, and was finally introduced into chapter and exalted. (But often elsewhere a 宋irtual’ Master was entitled to wear the Master’s badge.)
Care was generally taken to impress upon the 宋irtual’ Master that’ he was not being qualified to rule over the lodge for more than a very brief time, but there was considerable variation in the form of words. Occasionally he was empowered to preside over a lodge pro tem. and also to conduct a ceremony (as, for example, at Wakefield). In an American ceremony, obviously stemming off from early English practice, the ‘virtual’ Master is told that “no test of his proficiency is at this time required of him.” In the Mount Moriah Lodge, No. 34, Wapping, in the year 1785, he was installed “to be Master until next stated lodge night, if in his power to be so long in the place.”
A MS. in the possession of Bruce Oliver (see p. 161) gives a ritual which in its broad lines must represent the 宋irtual’ chair ceremony of the 1790‑1835 period. The ceremony is assumed to take place in a lodge opened by members of a chapter preceding an Exaltation. The lodge is opened in the “P.M. Degree” and is declared by the W.M. to be dedicated to the noble Prince Adoniram. In general the working suggests the Craft Installation, and many present‑day familiar phrases are found in it. The Obligation is on
190
customary lines. The W.M. gives the Candidate the distinguishing mark or signature used by the Brothers of this degree ‑ namely, A/S, in which the first letter stands for Adoniram and the second for the Sidonians, the famous class of workmen who distinguished themselves in finishing the Porphyre (Porphyry). The Candidate is now entrusted with the signs, etc., of the degree, these resembling those of the Extended Ceremony, emphasis being laid on the symbolism of the plumb‑line. Next he is invested with a Master’s jewel, warned to exercise his new authority with discretion, and having enjoyed a moment of authority, is delicately relieved of the semblance of the Master’s honours and invited to regale his Brethren “with a suitable refreshment.” On leaving the chair he is invested with the P.M. jewel.
Following the Craft and Royal Arch Unions, we find a remarkable instance of the 閃oderns’ adapting or applying a ceremony to what was to many of them an unfamiliar purpose‑a ceremony long known to many of them, but one whose true significance they had in general only dimly understood. The instance (it may have been one of many about that time) is related by J. R. Rylands in A.Q.C., vol. lxv. After 1823 the Master of Unanimity Lodge, Wakefield, had to be installed “according to ancient usage,” but no “ancient usage” was known, so apparently the 叢assing’ ceremony ‑ involving a formal opening and closing with esoteric matter appropriate to a separate degree ‑ was adopted to meet the new rules!
Late Instances of Passing the Chair
In spite of many attempts to bring the practice to an end, the ceremony of passing the chair was worked in many lodges until long past the middle of the nineteenth century. Thus, in 1822 or 1823, the Howard Lodge of Brotherly Love, an old Sussex lodge, opened “into the fourth degree,” and a Brother was “rewarded with the degree of a P.M. of Arts and Sciences “; five Brethren in this same lodge in the year 1833 “passed the chair in ancient form.” In the Chapter of Sincerity, No. 261, Taunton, ten Brethren were so “passed” in 1832. In the old Bury Lodge, now Prince Edward’s Lodge, No. 128, the ceremony continued to be worked until 1840; in the Durham Faithful Lodge, No. 297, Gibraltar, in 1837, six Brethren “received the fourth … degree which they withstood manfully,” four more underwent the degree “with fortitude and courage.”
In Bolton’s old lodge, originally Hand and Banner, now St John’s, No. 221, several Brethren passed the chair in 1846; one of them, the Master of the Lodge three years later, recorded that these several Candidates “were the last persons in Bolton permitted to go through this Ceremony, the New Authorities having prohibited the practice.” In the Lodge of St
191
John and St Paul, Malta, five Brethren passed the chair in 1852, and apparently, about four years earlier, any Brethren wishing to take the degree had it “conferred upon them.” In an old 羨ntients’ lodge, Commerce, No. 215, Haslingden, Lancs, when ordinary Masonic business was not pressing, it was customary in the 1862 period to confer the chair degree on Master Masons! Even later instances could be quoted to show that the custom was “an unconscionable time a’dying,” although it is obvious that the P.M. Degree had long been in decline and by the middle of the century was, in the great majority of places in England, quite obsolete; it should have disappeared as from May 8, 1822, when the Past Master qualification was abandoned and all that was required was that of twelve months’ standing as a Master Mason. But none of the principal chairs is open to a Companion below the rank of Installed Master.
Twelve months had been the general qualification for some time. It was replaced by one month in the Regulations of 1893.
The suppression of the P.M. Degree met with resentment in some quarters, a few Candidates tending to be disappointed at failing to receive what had come to be regarded as one of a proper sequence of degrees. The Lodge of Probity, No. 6I, West Yorkshi re,raised the legality of the degree with the Deputy Provincial Grand Master, who replied that the practice was “altogether illegal,” and he “was not aware that one lodge could be found in the Province of West Yorkshire pursuing such a practice.” In 1859 Grand Scribe E. wrote to the British Chapter, No. 334, Cape Town, saying that no such degree as the P.M. Degree was “known to or acknowledged by either the Grand Lodge or the Supreme Grand Chapter . . . the Companions who feel aggrieved at not receiving an irregular degree ought rather to congratulate themselves, and the Chapter, that the orthodox working has been restored.”
Not All Passings were for Qualifying Candidates
Andrew Hope, in his history of St John the Baptist Lodge, No. 39, Exeter (dating back to 1732), says that officers of that lodge, in cases of emergency, had the degree of P.M. conierred upon them; he cites a minute of an Installation meeting of January 27, 1823, at which four Brethren “were (in order to assist at ye installation) admitted to ye degree of Past Master.” In the minutes of St John Lodge, No. 348, Bolton, appear numerous references to “passing the chair” in the 1816‑40 period, with no accompanying indication that the Brethren concerned were proposing to be exalted; a chapter warrant was not obtained until I 840. J. R. Rylands has made it clear that in Unanimity Lodge, for a period ending in 1826, the 宋irtual’ P.M. Degree was worked without reference to or association
192
with the Royal Arch. The British Union Lodge, No. 114, Ipswich, passed twelve Brethren through the chair on the one occasion in 1790 to qualify them to attend an Installation.
Passing the Chair in Ireland and Scotland
Ireland. In the latter part of the eighteenth century Irish lodges were in close accord with the 羨ntients’ in regarding the rank and status of a Past Master with marked respect, and they commonly conferred the “P.M. Degree”; instance the Banagher Lodge, No. 306, which in 1794 opened and closed a P.M.’s Lodge; a Royal Arch chapter then opened; the proceedings of the P.M.’s Lodge were read and approved; and the Brethren who had been advanced to the Chair Degree were then made Royal Arch masons. The funds of the chapter were combined with those of the lodge. The 宋irtual’ degree was widely worked in the nineteenth century, but in 1864 the Irish Grand Chapter brought the custom to an end.
Scotland. There was no (official) ceremonial Installation of the Master of a Lodge in Scotland until 1858. In that year, George S. Draffen tells us, “a ceremonial for the Installation of a chairman of a Lodge” was adopted. This was followed in 1872 by the introduction of the English Installation ceremony now in use, the “only Craft Degree for which there is an authorised Grand Lodge ritual” (a 租egree,’ the reader will note). The Scots Grand Lodge resolved that this ceremonial or degree should not be conferred on any one except the Master of the Lodge or one who produces a certificate that he has occupied the chair as duly elected Master.
However, in Scotland, as elsewhere, the lack of official recognition did not prevent the 宋irtual’ P.M. Degree from being worked, but not, it is thought, before the early nineteenth century. George S. Draffen’s valuable little book The Triple Tau states that the Supreme Grand Chapter of Scotland (not the Grand Lodge) authorized charters in 1842 to what were called ” Chair Master Lodges,” and in these lodges was worked the degree called in Scotland “Master Passed the Chair.” There was some anomaly here because these lodges were Craft lodges, and “the R.A. Chapters were already empowered to work the [P.M.] degree by virtue of their existing charters and required no further authority.” Not more than three of these 舛hair Master’ charters were issued: (a) Kinross, 1842, recalled four years later; (b) Edinburgh, 1842, recalled four years later, although the degree was worked until 1856, when the lodge became dormant; the lodge was revived without sanction in 1867 and finally dissolved in 1899, when it took out a charter as a Royal Arch chapter; (c) St John’s, Manchester, England, 1845, recalled in the following year.
The degree of Master Passed the Chair was removed in 1846 from the
193
Royal Arch rite in the chapters of Scotland, and they were forbidden to work it, but Scottish chapters overseas continued to work it until 1872, when it was finally abolished.
Passing the Chair in the United States of America
The fact that only about one in three of the American jurisdictions works a Craft esoteric Installation ceremony inevitably affects the question of the qualifications of Royal Arch Candidates in the United States of America, although, contradictory as it may seem, it does not always follow that in jurisdictions where there is no Craft Installation, as the English mason understands the term, there is necessarily any waiving of the ancient requirement that the Candidate should have passed the chair.
Fortunately for the present purpose, a manuscript entitled The Degree of Past Master: a Degree of the Chapter, by Ward K. St Clair, Chairman of the Library and Museum Committee of the Grand Lodge of New York, has been very kindly placed at the author’s disposal in response to a request for information, and from it is learned that, of the U.S.A.’s forty‑nine Masonic jurisdictions existing in the year 1943, only fifteen required the Master‑elect to be installed in an esoteric ceremony, and even then the custom was not always observed. In twenty‑two jurisdictions the Master is not so installed, as, for example, in Minnesota (since 1918), in Nebraska (since 1930), and in Montana (since 1941); in these jurisdictions the lodge pleases itself in the matter. The Installation ceremony is only sometimes termed a 租egree,’ but the ceremony in which a 宋irtual’ Past Master is made is commonly known as the 善ast Master Degree,’ although the rituals of the two ceremonials are said to be practically identical.
The 宋irtual’ Past Master Degree is conferred under the jurisdiction of chapters of R.A. masons to qualify a Mark Master Mason to receive the R.A. or, more correctly, the Degree of Most Excellent Master. The lastnamed is a prerequisite to the R.A. in every jurisdiction except that of Pennsylvania, where the Candidate automatically receives in lodge the qualification of Installed Master (P.M. Degree) that he may need as a prospective exaltee. In Northern and North‑Eastern States, the oldest of the United States jurisdictions, the P.M. Degree goes back to before 1800, when only twelve American Grand Lodges were in existence; it was worked in Pennsylvania in 1783, and was regarded as “a fully‑fledged Degree” when the Grand Chapter for the Northern States was founded in 1797. But in one of these old jurisdictions, where Installation is regarded as obligatory, a Past Grand Officer has stated that he did not receive the degree until some time after he went into the chair. Old minute‑books of chapters in the Northern States prior to 1797 mention the Degree of
194
Excellent Master and indicate that this was really that of Past Master. An old Connecticut chapter, now Washington Chapter, No. 6, recorded in 1783 that a Candidate “was raised an Excellent Mason passing the chair in due form,” and this is believed to be the earliest American minute of its kind.
Apparently, all through the nineteenth century there was discussion, often pointed and forthright, on whether the Installation ceremony and the P.M. Degree should be under the jurisdiction of Grand Lodges or Grand Chapters. Seldom did the Grand Lodges assume rights over what may here be called the Chapter P.M. Degree, but very frequently Grand Chapters sought to justify their claim that both the Craft Installation ceremony and the P.M. Degree were their concern alone. But in 2853 the General Grand Chapter (the highest Royal Arch authority in the U.S.A.) resolved that it did “not claim jurisdiction over the P.M. degree when about to be conferred on the Master‑elect of a Symbolic (Craft] Lodge.” Three years later, in 1856, the suggestion of some Grand Chapters that the P.M. Degree should be omitted from the degrees controlled by the General Grand Chapter aroused much argument, which reflected the controversy in the English Craft back in the eighteenth century when only the 羨ntients,’ in general, installed their Masters in an esoteric ceremony.
A recommendation by the General Grand Chapter that the Grand Chapters and, chapters should “abridge the ceremonies of the P.M. Degree” met with some approval, but the many jurisdictions had each their own point of view with regard to the desirability of retaining the degree itself. Many, including New York, insisted on the importance of the degree, and the Grand Chapter of Michigan claimed the exclusive right to confer it within its territory. In Indiana the Candidate was qualified if he had received the degree in lodge or in chapter, whereas in Maine, even the Past Master of a lodge had to take the 宋irtual’ degree to qualify him for the Royal Arch. In Kentucky and Columbia, a 宋irtual’ P.M. could preside over a Craft lodge. The Grand Chapter of Delaware claimed the power to warrant a Lodge of Past Masters. The P.M. Degree was not regarded as a true degree in Kansas, West Virginia, Georgia, and some other states, including Louisiana, the last‑named not objecting to the Craft Installation being performed in public. In West Virginia and Virginia the degree was customarily conferred on Wardens of a Craft lodge. Pennsylvania, as already stated, insisted on the P.M. qualification, but gave it automatically to every Master Mason. In the jurisdiction of Indian Territory and Oklahoma the Craft Installation was optional, and in the 1890痴 a Grand Master who had already served three years stated that he had not been esoterically installed.