Difficulty Of Ascertaining The Age Of Undated Old Masonic Mss.

That the spelling is no proof of its haA'ing been Avrittenin the 17 th century , I could prove from hundreds of documents in our LaAV Courts , Avritten after 1733 . But I beg to call Bro . Woodford ' s attention to the fac-simile of the Boston petition in 1773 , to Henry Price , to constitute the undersigned , into a Lodge ,

which accompanied Bro . W . S . Gardner ' s address on Henry Price . Therein , he will find , Brittain , y ; y ' - f- capacitys , y , att , w ' etc , and if in addition to the above , our Brother Avould reperuse the facsimile of Henry Price ' s letter ( AVIUCII

Ave sent him about a year ago ) , dated 1770 , he would become fully satisfied that bad spelling , etc ., is no evidence of its being written in the 17 th century . The fact is , it is possible that two MSS . were written in the same year

, say 1730 . Yet one of them may appear as being one hundred or . even more years older than the other . This may be owing to the different standards of education of the writers . As an instance , the chirography and spelling

of Henry Price ' s letter of 1770 , seems older than the Sloane MS ., which was probably Avritten in 1725 or 1730 . Secondly , the oldest looking M . S . may have been Avritten by a Provincialist , where the old style of writing , spelling ,

and speaking , is a hundred years behind that of the intellectual centre , which leads the way to innovation or improvement in language , spelling , etc . And thirdly , the two MSS . may have been penned by educated men , say in London

at the above date , but one of the writers Avas seventy-five or eighty years of age when he penned the scraAAd , and the other was only twenty-five years old ; one left school sixty years before 1730 and the other onlten ;

, y years hence , the penmanship , spelling , language , etc ., of one willhavetheappearauce of greater antiquity than that of the other .

Our esteemed Bro . Woodford alludes to Bro . Findel ' s supposition , that Dr . Plot , who abused the Freemasons in 1686 , in his Natural History of Staffordshire , must have seen the identical

Sloane MS . To make this clear to our less informed readers , Ave shall give from Bro . Findel ' s History of Freemasonry ( page 118 , second edition ) , the quotation from the above-named work of Dr . Plot . The doctor says , "When any

one is admitted into this society ( of Freemasons ) , a meeting or lodge ( as it is called in many places ) is convoked , which consists at least of five or six of the elders of the confederacy ; they and their wives receive presents of gloves

from the candidate , and are entertained Avith a collation of some sort , regulated according to the usages of the place where they may happen to be . At the close of the repast , the ceremony of initiation begins , which consists

principally in the communicating of certain secret signs , whereby they recognise each other anywhere , and are therefore sure of protection wherever they may travel ; for when any one appears , and makes these signs to any member of the society who is an Accepted Mason , though mutually unknoAvn to

each other , yet the latter is compelled to attend the summons in whatever company or whatever place he may be , should he hav ' e to descend from the top of a church steeple to do so . " To this Bro . Findel adds in a note" Plot had

, tA \ o sources whence he derived his communication , viz ., a copy of the old Constitutions , and a MS . of the signs and usages of Freemasons . "

We shall show that our worthy friend Bro . Findel AA as rather too hasty in his inference with regard to the Sloane MS . Dr . Plot mentions a " scrole of parchment volume , " and makes no allusion to a MS . written on

paper . Furthermore , Dr . Plot seems to have imbibed so great a hatred to the Masons , as not only to lay the subject of Masonry into a work professing to treat of Natural History , but even took the trouble to hunt the history of

up Athelstan , and to ridicule the notion of Edwin being the son of the King . NOAV , if the Sloane MS ., or any other MS . of the kind had been in Plot ' s possession , that Mason hater Avould not