Craftswomen (ICHF paper 2007)

[Tamrin]

CRAFTSWOMEN
in the Old Charges, in Building Trades and as Stonemasons

Philip Carter, International Conference on the History of Freemasonry, Edinburgh, 27 May 2007

To avoid distraction, to comment on this thread please do so on the appropriate thread, under Topics.

Introduction:¹

‘Sir, in 1986 how do you justify the exclusion of women?’ This question was put to H.R.H. the Duke of Kent, the M.W. Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of England, to which he replied,² saying in part: ‘It's simply that Freemasonry as you may know stems right back into the Middle Ages, there were no practicing women Masons who operated on building sites as they were in those days …’ This had been the most common explanation given for the ‘No Women!’ rule.³ However, as W.R. Day observed, in 1918:⁴ ‘As to the position of women in the Operative Lodges, that is a matter that can be gone into, though in the matter of absolute history we find ourselves in rather a difficulty…’ Today we will address that difficulty and in doing so repair a grievous loss to both Masonic and Labour Histories.⁵

Working class women have always had to work. Indeed, as the presumption of female delicacy rarely extended beyond the gentry, they often laboured in the most arduous occupations, including Stonemasonry. Their work contradicts what had been an article of faith among many mainstream Freemasons, who insisted that the medieval building trades generally—and Stonemasonry in particular, had maintained a strict ‘No Women!’ policy. In maintaining this opinion, Freemasons have often turned a blind eye to contrary evidence, or have dismissed each instance as being an isolated, irregular anomaly.

As it is commonly supposed that Freemasonry arose from these trades and is bound by their practices, many Masons maintain they cannot admit women as members (disregarding the selective introduction of actual and arguably even more significant, 'innovations').⁶ The opinion that there were no women in the building trades is debunked by bringing together reports of supposed ‘anomalies’ from Masonic sources and beyond.

Collectively, the evidence shows the involvement of women in these medieval trades was fairly common (albeit, some of the illustrations used today appear to be allegorical and, as such, are not presented as substantive evidence). While recognising what has been called a ‘stained-glass ceiling’,⁷ common disparities in pay, the late rise of Journeymen's lodges agitating against the employment of women and foreigners, as well as other complexities, this brief talk aspires merely to demonstrate the enduring presence of women in these trades. Firstly, we turn to the Old Charges.

¹ABSTRACT: The author shows contemporary illustrations depicting women in these trades, provides references to ‘sisters’, ‘dames,’ and to ‘she who is to be made a Mason,’ examines reports of women involved in the building trades (even an instance of them vastly outnumbering the men), compares this evidence with that contained in the 14th Century returns of English Gilds, and explores the implications of Stonemasons forming trade combinations with other artisans. He then proceeds to consider the privileged position of the wives and daughters of tradesmen and the special status of their widows. Finally, he acknowledges specific female Stonemasons, ranging from Sabina von Steinbach of 13th Century Strasburg, to Mary Banister of 18th Century London.

²S.C.R.L. (Southern California Research Lodge), 1989, ‘Interview with H.R.H. The Duke of Kent, Grand Master’, (transcript of interview broadcast on 9 July 1986), in The NSW Freemason, v.21, no.6, United Grand Lodge of NSW, Sydney, p.13.

³See Appendix.

⁴W.R. Day, in S. Scott-Young, 1918, ‘Women and Freemasonry’, in Transactions of the Sydney Lodge of Research, No. 290, U.G.L., N.S.W., Vol. V., Bloxham & Chambers, Sydney, p.42. See also George Smith, 1783, The Use and Abuse of Freemasonry: A Work of the Greatest Utility to the Brethren of the Society, to Mankind in General and to the Ladies in Particular, printed by the author, sold by G. Kearsley, London.

⁵Bob James, 1992, ‘Where are all the Women in Labour History?,’ in Whitlam, Gough, et al., A Century of Social Change, Pluto Press, Leichhardt, NSW.

⁶Kelvin H. Perdriau, April, 2001, ‘Innovation: A Long-standing Masonic Attribute’, in The NSW Freemason, v.33, n.2, UGL of NSW & ACT, Sydney.

⁷Brian W. Gastle, Spring 2003, ‘Breaking the Stained Glass Ceiling: Mercantile Authority, Margaret Paston, and Margery Kempe’, Studies in the Literary Imagination.

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Old Charges:

The 1389 ‘Certificate of the Gild of Masons at Lincoln’ specifically mentions ‘brothers and sisters’ in every clause. Yet, what began in 1929 as a simple translation and publication of the Certificate,¹ became contaminated through a chain of references,² until conjecture, solely on the basis of the clear involvement of women, that, ‘The guild of masons at Lincoln, founded in 1313, was a social or religious fraternity in 1389 and not a craft guild’,³ came to be accepted as a ‘fact’.⁴ Both the Regius Poem (c.1390) and the Lincoln Certificate (1389) are likely to have been produced in response to the Parliamentary writs of 1388: The first, calling for returns from the, ‘Masters and Wardens of all gilds and brotherhoods,’ and the second calling for copies of any charters or letters patent, if any, from the, ‘Masters and Wardens and Overlookers of all the Mysteries and Crafts’.⁵ The Regis Poem also refers to sisters, charging its members to act towards each other ‘as sister and brother.’⁶

Among other Old Charges, we find Apprentices being charged to obey their Master or Dame or any other Freemason.⁷ We also find the following clause:⁸ ‘The one of the elders taking the booke, and that he or shee that is to bee made a Mason shall lay hands thereon, and the charge shall be given.⁹’ There have been suggestions that there may have been an error whereby ‘he or shee’ should have read ‘he or they.’ Of this possibility, Rev. Cryer says:¹⁰

Now I have to tell you, that my predecessors in Masonic Research in England from Hughen and Vibert and from all the rest onward, have tried to pretend that the ‘shee’ is merely a misprint for ‘they.’ I now am the Chairman of the Heritage Committee of York. I know these documents; I’ve examined them, and I’m telling you, they say ‘she,’ without any question.¹¹

¹W.J. Williams, ‘Gild of Masons at Lincoln’, in Ars Quatuor Coronatorum (A.Q.C.), Transactions of the Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076, London, v. XLII, 1931, pp.64/67.

²A.Q.C., v. LIV, pp.108/110; v. XLIII, p.200; v. XLV, p.293; v. LIV, p.108/110; & v. LVI, p.293.

³Knoop and Jones, A.Q.C., v. XLV, p.293. However, prior to the sixteenth century, with the Reformation’s ‘disendowment of the religion of the misteries’ (Encylopædia Britannica, 1962, v.10, p.966), all guilds were predominantly social or religious in character, with some also having a trade as a qualification of membership (Ernest Pooley, 1945, The Guilds of the City of London, William Collins, London, p.8).

⁴E.G., Bernard Jones, 1956, Freemason’s Guide and Compendium (new & revised edition), A. Lewis, London, p.70.

⁵Toulmin Smith (Editor), 1963 (org. 1870), English Gilds: The Original Ordinances of More than One Hundred Early English Gilds Together with Ye olde Usages of ye Cite of Wynchestre The Ordinances of Worcester The Office of the Mayor of Bristol and The Costomary of the Manor of Tettenhal=Regis from Manuscripts of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, with intro. & glossary, etc. by L.T. Smith and an essay by L. Brentano[/i], Oxford University Press, London (for The Early English Text Society), pp.xxi: And Gastle, op. cit.

⁶George M. Martin (compiler), n.d., British Masonic Miscellany, David Winter & Son, Dundee, v.1, pp.6, 13 & 19.

⁷‘... In case anyone should think that such a title meant perhaps only the Master’s living partner’, Rev. N.B. Cryer tells us (1995, A Masonic Panorama: Selected Papers of the Reverend Neville Barker Cryer, Australian Masonic Research Council, Williamstown, Vic. p.23):

…it is worth noting that as late as 1683 the records of the Lodge of Mary’s Chapel in Edinburgh provide an instance of a female occupying the position of ‘Dame’ or ‘Mistress’ in a masonic sense. She was a widow of a mason but she exercised an equal right with other operative masons and took the same ceremonies.

⁸York Manuscript No. 4, 1693.

⁹Dudley Wright, 1922, Woman and Freemasonry, William Rider & Son, London, p.95.

¹⁰Masonic Times, May 1995, Rochester, N.Y.

¹¹To those who claim ‘she’ is a mistranslation, we may ask them to consider that, if translated and transcribed from an earlier document, the work was likely to have been done by an esteemed master, well acquainted with the genuine imperatives of the Craft. Further, the manuscript seems to have been handed on to, read and accepted by subsequent masters without them perceiving any need for amendment or correction. As A.F.A. Woodford acknowledged (Editor, 1878, Kenning’s Masonic Cycopædia and Handbook of Masonic Archæology, History and Biography, George Kenning, London, p.146):

The words, ‘hee or shee,’ in York MS. No. 4, are only equivalent to what may be shown in other Guild regulations, and the suggestion that ‘shee’ should read ‘they,’ though made by so great an authority as Bro. D. Murray Lyon, is not, we venture to think, tenable in the face of the evidence of female Guild membership of some kind which may be adduced. The usage, as far as the Masons are concerned, proves the great antiquity of the instruction.

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IN THE BUILDING TRADES AND AS STONEMASONS

General:

Claudia Opitz, in writing about the Middle Ages, tells us that,¹ ‘... women worked in fields that today are more likely to be considered “typically male,” such as metalworking and the construction trade.’ E. Dixon, in an article entitled, ‘Craftswomen in the Livre des Métiers’ (Book of the Crafts),² set forth a study, focusing on the role of women in thirteenth century Parisian Crafts, as derived from a compilation of, ‘…careful and accurate digests of their traditions, ancient rights and privileges, interior trade-organization, and the like…’ In Dixon’s introductory paragraphs,³ we read that, with only a few specified exceptions, the employment conditions of both craftsmen and craftswomen were exactly the same, being applied with ‘entire impartiality.’⁴ Toulmin Smith’s English Gilds was also compiled from reports of guilds, etc. (in this case from the late fourteenth century). In it, his daughter Lucy reports,⁵ by way of post-humus introduction to his late nineteenth century publication:

Scarcely five out of the [over] five hundred were not formed equally of men and women, which, in these times of the discovery of the neglect of ages heaped upon women, is a noteworthy fact. Even where the affairs were managed by a company of priests, women were admitted as lay members; and they had many of the same duties and claims upon the Gild as the men.⁶

¹Claudia Opitz, 1992, ‘Life in the Late Middle Ages’, in C. Klapische-Zuber (Editor), A History of Women in the West: Vol. II, Silences of the Middle Ages, Harvard University Press, Massachusetts, p.301.

²E. Dixon, ‘Craftswomen in the Livre des Métiers,’ The Economic Journal, Vol. 5, No. 18, 209-228. Jun., 1895.

³Ibid., p.209.

⁴In Dixon’s closing paragraphs (ibid., p.227), we read:

…there is no trace in the Livre des Métiers of the modern [late 19th century] view that good industrial training and anything above a bare subsistence wage are unnecessary and superfluous for working women, because their labour is merely a bye-product before marriage.

⁵T. Smith, op. cit., p.xxx.

⁶The guilds of priests (e.g., Brentano, in T. Smith, ibid., p.lxxxviii) and those of scholars would more than account for the scarce five that did not admit women. This ratio of more than 99% of guilds admitting women is corroborated by R.F. Gould, (Gould, Robert Freke, 1882, The History of Freemasonry: Its Antiquities, Symbols, Constitutions, Customs, Etc. – Embracing an Investigation of the Records of the Organisations of the Fraternity in England, Scotland, Ireland, British Colonies, France, Germany, and the United States - Derived from Official Sources, Thomas C. Jack, London), who, while he maintained that Stonemasons excluded women, never-the-less wrote of the guilds in his History (v.1, p.90), saying: ‘Not one out of a hundred but recruited their ranks from both sexes...’ He continued (ibid.), saying:

And even in guilds under the management of priests, such as the Brother­hood of ‘Corpus Christ’ of York, begun in 1408, lay members were allowed (of some honest craft), without regard to sex, if ‘of good fame and conversation’ the payments and privileges being the same for the ‘brethren and sisteren.’ Women ‘were sworne upon a book in the same manner as the men.

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Trade Combinations:

H.L. Haywood tells us that,¹ ‘In the Middle Ages the term Mason was used to denote a builder.’ This generic sense of the term has, to some extent, been carried over into Speculative Freemasonry, with references to tylers, timberworkers and artificers in metals (the latter even includes the cult hero, Hiram Abiff), as well as quarry workers and stonemasons. In the Royal Arch degree, upon being asked, ‘What do you mean by masonry?’ The required answer is, ‘We mean that great and universal science which includes almost every other…’ However, even if we assume Stonemasonry to be the exemplar among such trades and even if we try to entertain the notion that Stonemasons alone excluded women, we encounter a difficulty in the case of trade combinations. The difficulty, bearing in mind that, according to Gould’s History, women had been members of over 99% of guilds,² is that Stonemasons often combined with other artisans under a single guild or company, as with, The Worshipful Society of Freemasons, Rough Masons, Wallers, Slaters, Paviors, Plaisterers and Bricklayers. Thomas Carr tells us that,³ ‘This association of other trades with Masons was not at all an uncommon state of affairs in the 17th century’ and names similar combinations from Kendal, Oxford, Gateshead and Durham.

The admission of women among the Free Carpenters is well established,⁴ despite, as Gould admitted,⁵ ‘the trade of a carpenter was no more favourable to the employment of women than that of a mason.’⁶ Even if we disregard the ample evidence of women having been Stonemasons and try to entertain the proposition that their guilds excluded women, the aforementioned combinations present us with difficulties. One can scarcely accept that other artisans, in combination with Stonemasons, would have countenanced excluding women, simply to accommodate the scruples or prejudices of those members.

¹H.L. Haywood, 1951, Freemasonry and the Bible, William Collins, Sons & Co. Ltd, Great Britain, p.9. See also George F. Fort, 1884, The Early History and Antiquities of Freemasonry, As Connected with Ancient Norse gilds, and the Oriental and Mediæval Building Fraternities, Bradley & Co., Philadelphia, p.434.

²T. Smith, op.cit. & R.F. Gould, v.1, p.90: See also Women in the Medieval Guilds by Lady Magdelene Saunders <www.lothene.org/feudalist/guilds.html>.

³Thomas Carr, n.d., ‘Operative Free Masons and Operative Free Masonry’, in George M. Martin (compiler), op. cit., v.6, p.116.

⁴E.G., Fred J.W. Crowe, 1914, ‘The Free Carpenters’, in Rylands & Songhurst (Editors), AQC Vol. XXVII, Quatuor Coronati Lodge No. 2076 (E.C.), London, pp.5/19.

⁵R.F. Gould, op. cit., v.1, p.94

⁶Nevertheless, Gould maintained (ibid.) stonemasonry was a special case, in so far as, according to his unfounded assumption, women were excluded from the craft. Also note, there had been something of a dispute between the two trades as to precedence (René Guénon, 2004 org. 1964, Studies in Freemasonry & the Compagnonnage, translated by Fohe, Bethell & Allen, Sophia Perennis, Hillsdale, NY, pp.39/42).

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Widows:

Of widows, Paul Naudon reports that:¹ ‘ the widows of masters were authorized to continue the trade of their deceased husbands. It was generally assumed that they had acquired sufficient professional experience to do so.’ Lujo Brentano, writing of craft guilds, tells us:²

As long as members of the Gild were out of work, no member was to work with non-members. On the other hand, a member was always allowed to employ his wife, children and maid in work; for the whole household of a Gild-brother belonged to the Gild … after the death of a Gild-brother, his widow could carry on his trade, and could remain a member of the Gild. Even if she married again a man of the same trade who was not free of the Gild, she generally conferred on her second husband that freedom by marrying him. If, on the other hand, she married a man who did not belong to the same trade, she was excluded from the Gild during that wedlock.³

Even after women had been excluded from most trades we find an instance of time-immemorial custom being invoked among Stonemasons to permit the involvement of widows. This instance shows that the custom had fallen into abeyance and needed to be reaffirmed. A.S. MacBride who, while subjectively doubting the involvement of widows entailed their admission to the mysteries and privileges of the craft,⁴ nevertheless conceded that:⁵

It is true, in the minutes of ‘Mary’s Chapel Lodge’ it is written under date 17th April, 1683, ‘The whilk day, in presence of Thomas Hamiltone, deakone, and John Harrvy, warden, and remnant Masters of the mason craft, in corroboratione of the former practise, quhich was of use and wont amongst them, it is statute and ordained that it shall be in no tyme, or in no wayes, leithsome for a widow to undertake workes or to employ jurneymen in any manner or way ... providing always that they bespeake some freeman by whose advyse and concurrance the workes shall be undertaken,’ etc.

‘Sculptor,’ Giovanni Boccaccio, Le Livre des Cleres et Nobles Femmes, MS Fr. 598, fol. 100v;
French, fifteenth century, Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.

¹Paul Naudon, (trans. J.Graham), 2005, The Secret History of Freemasonry: Its Origins and Connection to the Knights Templar, Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vermont, p.150.

²T. Smith, op. cit., pp.cxxxi/cxxxii.

³While at this time and place, Gild-brothers were prohibited from employing women other than their wives and daughters (T. Smith, ibid., footnote, p.cxxxii). There remains the question of whether or not daughters (orphaned or not), like their widowed mothers, had, by virtue of their gild membership, the subsequent right to confer upon their husbands the freedom of the guild, provided their husbands were already in the trade. Brentanto implies this by reference to ‘special favours’ in such cases (p.cli).

⁴MacBride’s doubt (A.S. Macbride, 1924, Speculative Masonry, Southern Publishers, Kingsport, Tennessee, p.207) presents something of a paradox since, if justified, new doubts arise as to what the involvement and admission of widows entailed as, if not permitted to do the physical work of a stonemason and if not admitted to the mysteries and privileges of the craft, one may wonder in what sense they were members.

⁵Ibid.

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Würzburg:

Erika Uitz, in her book, Women in the Medieval Town, while noting the generally lower wages of females workers, remarks:¹

Even under such pay conditions, female employment rates were high. On Würzburg building sites, for example, a large amount of female labour was employed on a daily basis between 1428 and 1524. The low-skilled labourers received the following average wage, reckoned in pfennigs:

According to Uitz,² these pay conditions were not exceptional in the region and was typically for heavy work, such as the carrying of stones and mortar. This chart of those figures further emphasizes the ratio of women to men working on those building sites being, on average, more than three to one.

Thus, women not only endured the fatigues of labour in the building trades but also, at least in the Würzburg case, vastly outnumbered the men! Indeed, because of the prevalence of women and their acceptance of lower wages and relatively high productivity, the journeymen’s lodges, fearing for their own prospects, agitated for their exclusion, and that of foreigners, from most trades in the late middle ages. Claudia Opitz , described tension over pay rates towards the end of the middle ages, saying:³

The competition between various interest groups raged all the more fiercely, especially when times were hard. Journeymen played a key role in these battles; since female maids and apprentices earned a third less on average, the men fought successfully to have them excluded from virtually all guilds by the end of the Middle Ages.⁴

¹Erika Uitz, 1990, Women in the Medieval Town, Barrie & Jenkins, London, p.64.

²Ibid.

³Claudia Opitz, op. cit., p.302.

⁴According to the Encyclopædia Britannica (1962, v.10, p.966):

In the 14th century the journeymen or yeomen began to set up fraternities in defence of their rights. The formation of these societies marks a cleft within the ranks of some particular class of artisans—a conflict between employers, or master artisans, and workmen. The journeymen combined to protect their special interests, notably as regards hours of work and rates of wages, and they fought with the masters over the labour question in all its aspects. The resulting struggle of organized bodies of masters and journeymen was widespread throughout western Europe, but it was more prominent in Germany than in France or England. This conflict was indeed one of the main features of German industrial life in the 15th century. In England the fraternities of journeymen, after struggling for a while for complete independence, seem to have fallen under the supervision and control of the masters’ gilds; in other words, they became subsidiary or affiliated organs of the older craft fraternities.

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Strasbourg:

Returning to Erika Uitz’s account, we are also told of:¹

… the building and building-related trades in the late Middle Ages: Written and pictorial sources suggest that women were employed in the hard physical work involved in the building, mortar-mixing, roof-making, and glazier trades…

More specifically, she goes on to say:² ‘In Strasbourg from 1452 to 1453, two women joined the masons’ guild and were simultaneously granted the right to town citizenship’. Also in Strasbourg, Gould refers to an account,³ which he says was elsewhere reported as being of ‘undoubted authenticity’,⁴ but which, nonetheless, he doubts, solely on the basis of the involvement of a woman), whereby the porch of its thirteenth century cathedral was completed by Sabina, a skilful mason and the daughter of the cathedral’s famous architect, Erwin of Steinbach. Sabina and her father are depicted at the Cathedral. According to the description accompanying these pictures, Erwin is holding the plans of the cathedral and Sabina is holding a hammer and the Book of Constitutions of the Mason’s Gild.⁵

While not denying the possibility of the account, Gould argued against its probability, maintaining:⁶

Apprenticeship and travel were essentials, and these ordeals, though the fortitude of a determined woman might have sustained her throughout the labours of the former, it is scarcely to be conceived that a member of the gentler sex could have endured the perils and privations of the latter.

Gould’s baseless and peculiar, class laden Victorian condescension would, if true, have prevented wives and daughters from accompanying their husbands and fathers and would have precluded women from pilgrimages, migrations and tramping in search of domestic work.⁷ We know that women were employed as carpenters⁸ and in other trades that also required travel.⁹

According to Gould,¹⁰ until the capture of the city by France in 1681, the headquarters of the German Stonemasons was in Strasbourg (even as late as 1760 the Strasbourg lodge still claimed tribute from the lodges of Germany). Indeed, Albert Mackey, in his Encyclopedia,¹¹ cites the theory, ‘which places the organization of the Order of Freemasonry at the building of the Cathedral of Strasburg, in the year 1275.’ If so, Sabina von Steinbach would have been one of Freemasonry’s founders.

Statues of Erwin & Sabina von Steinbach: Strasbourg’s Notre Dame Cathedral.

¹Erika Uitz, op. cit., p.61.

²Ibid.

³R.F. Gould, op. cit., v.i, pp.175/6.

⁴G.F. Fort, op.cit., p.81.

⁵Private Email to author, 1 October 2006.

⁶R.F. Gould, op.cit., v.i, p. 176.

⁷We also know that some women have even distinguished themselves as explorers <http://www.distinguishedwomen.com/subject/explore.html>.

⁸R.F. Gould, op. cit., v.i, p.176. & Crowe, op. cit.

⁹Journeywomen page <http://www.geocities.com/womenmasons/journey.html>

¹⁰R.F. Gould, op. cit., v.1, p.173.

¹¹Albert Gallatin, Mackey, 1917 (org. 1874), Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and its Kindred Sciences Comprising the Whole Range of Arts, Sciences and Literature as Connected with the Institution, McClure Publishing, Philadelphia, p.704.

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The Auld Alliance—France & Scotland:

Paul Naudon, tells us¹ of male and female Parisian instructors in the art of craft and masonry from the mid sixteenth century through to the late eighteenth century. Turning to Scotland, Robert Clegg reports that:²

Brother Lyon cites a minute of the Ayr Squaremen Incorporation³ of the date of 1628, which enacts that every freeman’s daughter shall pay for her freedom the sum of eight punds. But it is clear that if a fine was imposed for the freedom, there must have been a privilege accompanying it, which could have been none other than the right to do a freeman’s work.⁴

Masons constructing the city wall (detail) Collected Works of Christine de Pisan: Citédes Dames.
MS. Harley 4431, f. 290. French Fifteenth century. British Library, London.
Christine de Pisan (with trowel): a medieval speculative Freemason, allegorically depicted
building an ideal city for worthy women with the assistance of ‘Reason’ (with crown). E. McLeod, 1976,
The Order of the Rose: The Life and Ideas of Christine de Pizan, Chatto & Windus, London.

¹Paul Naudon (op. cit., p.126), writing of Trinity Hospital, tells us of women instructors:

At the time of the hospital’s reorganization, supported by an act of Parliament on July 1, 1547, it was decided that children of the poor would also be raised there and educated in craft techniques by male and female workers in return for the privilege of obtaining, in six years’ time recognition as masters in their crafts without the requirement of any fee or masterpiece… Two acts of Parliament, one of December 3, 1672, and one of August 22, 1798, specifically confirmed ‘the rule over the rights and privileges of those who taught the art of craft and masonry in the hospital of the Trinity and those who have learned it in said hospital.

²Robert Ingham Clegg, 1921 (org. 1898), Mackey’s History of Freemasonry, (new, revised & enlarged edition), The Masonic History Company, Chicago, v.3, p.690.

³In his Encyclopedia (op. cit., p.841), Mackey says:

Squaremen. The companies of wrights, slaters, etc., in Scotland were called ‘Squaremen.’ They had ceremonies of initiation, and a word, sign, and grip, like the Masons. Lyon (Hist. Of the L. at Edinb., p.23) says: ‘The “Squaremen Word” was given in conclaves of journeymen and apprentice wrights, slaters, etc., in a ceremony in which the aspirant was blindfolded and otherwise “prepared;” he was sworn to secrecy, had word, grip and sign communicated to him, and was after¬wards invested with a leather apron. The entrance to the apartment, usually a public house, in which the “brithering” was performed was guarded, and all who passed had to give the grip. The fees were spent in the entertainment of the brethren present. Like the Masons, the Squaremen admitted non-operatives.’ In the St. Clair Charter of 1628, among the representatives of the Masonic Lodges, we find the signature of ‘George Lidde’’, deakin of squarmen and now quartermaister.’ This would show that there must have been an intimate connection between the two societies or crafts.

⁴By failing to connect this decision with the wider movement at the time, which sought to exclude women from many trades, Clegg (op. cit.) leaves the reader with the impression that Stonemasonry was, and always had been, a special case. Here Clegg, interpolates his own subjective opinion, stating (ibid.):

But this custom, growing into an evil, in time the females acting independently and assuming the position and exercising the prerogatives of Master Masons, the Lodge of Edinburgh found it necessary at length to correct the abuse and to restrict the privilege by compelling the females to undertake the work and employ the journeymen under the direction of a Master Mason, who, acting for the widow, discharged the duties without receiving compensation (which was strictly forbidden) and gave her the profits.

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Lincoln:

Presumably, the Guild of Masons at Lincoln, whose Certificate has been discussed, was identical with, or at least connected with, the city’s Guild of St Mary. Of this Mason’s guild, T.H. Rae, tells us:¹

W. Watkins … stated that it was a mason guild and the most important one in the country. M. Watkins says, ‘I am emboldened to suggest that Lincoln was the place and St. Mary’s Guild the building in which the arts and crafts were taught for several centuries,’ and later the same authority says, ‘I repeat the suggestion that the headquarters of our English mediæval building fraternity were established in this Guild building at Lincoln.’ It is to be noted that when the Guilds were suppressed the property of St. Mary’s was given to the city of Lincoln in 1548, ‘with the consent of the fraternity, brethren and sisters.’²

Women Builders (detail). Roman des Girart von Roussillon, Cod. 2549, f.167v,
Flemish, 1447, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna.

¹T. Herdman Rae, 1931, The Mediæval Mason: A Sketch of the Times and the Men, Manchester Association for Masonic Research (reprinted from their transactions), pp.22/3.

²Reasoning from the mistaken 'No Women!' article of faith, Rae then maintains (ibid.) that the mention of 'sisters' casts doubt on whether or not the guild still retained its 'operative' nature. However, on the one hand, the wording of the Certificate, including both brothers and sisters and referring to the 'operative' practice of taking apprentices, should, if connected with this particular lodge, put his doubt to rest. On the other hand, were his doubt well founded, then this example would be even more relevant to the 'speculative' nature of modern, mainstream Freemasonry.

[Tamrin]

London:

Cyril Batham, in an address entitled, The London Company of Masons,¹ observed of London Livery Companies in general that: 'Membership is largely male but there have been female members from very early time.' Marjorie Keniston McIntosh tells us of:² ‘Agnes Ramsey, daughter of the famous London architect/mason William Ramsey and wife of Robert Hubard, another mason, ran her father’s business after his death in 1349.’ Bernard Jones, referring specifically to the London Company of Freemasons, tells us:³ ‘Margaret Wild, widow, was a member in [1663] ... As late as 1713-14 we find the remarkable instance of Mary Banister, the daughter of a barber of Barking, being apprenticed to a mason for the term of seven years, the fee of 5s. being duly paid to the company. In 1696 the Mason’s Court Book gives the names of two widows...’ We are also told that, around the same time:⁴ ‘Several instances of male apprentices being assigned to work under female masters during the period 1713-1715 appear in the records of the ‘Worshipful Company of Masons’ in ... London.’ Moreover, as this slide demonstrates, the Operative Craft lives on and the participation of women continues.

¹Cyril Northwood Batham, ‘The London Company of Masons,’ in Tony Pope (Editor), Freemasonry in England and France: Collected Papers of C.N. Batham, Australian Masonic Research Council, Williamstown, Vic., Australia, p.102.

²Marjorie Keniston McIntosh, 2005, Working Women in English Society, 1300-1620, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, p.236.

³B. Jones, op. cit., pp.77/8.

⁴The Honourable Fraternity of Ancient Freemasons’ website <www.hfaf.org/womenmsns.htm>.