ubject of freemasonry has unfortunately been treated
only by panegyrists or calumniators, both equally mendacious. I do not
wish to pry into the mysteries of the craft; but it would be interesting
to know more of their history during the period when they were literally
architects. They are charged by an act of parliament, 3 H. VI. c. i.,
with fixing the price of their labour in their annual chapters, contrary
to the statute of labourers, and such chapters are consequently
prohibited. This is their first persecution; they have since undergone
others, and are perhaps reserved for still more. It is remarkable, that
masons were never legally incorporated, like other traders; their bond
of union being stronger than any charter. The article Masonry in the
Encyclopaedia Britannica is worth reading.

[691] I cannot resist the pleasure of transcribing a lively and eloquent
passage from Dr. Whitaker. "Could a curious observer of the present day
carry himself nine or ten centuries back, and ranging the summit of
Pendle survey the forked vale of Calder on one side, and the bolder
margins of Ribble and Hadder on the other, instead of populous towns and
villages, the castle, the old tower-built house, the elegant modern
mansion, the artificial plantation, the inclosed park and pleasure
ground: instead of uninterrupted inclosures which have driven sterility
almost to the summit of the fells, how great must then have been the
contrast, when ranging either at a distance, or immediately beneath, his
eye must have caught vast tracts of forest ground stagnating with bog or
darkened by native woods, where the wild ox, the roe, the stag, and the
wolf, had scarcely learned the supremacy of man, when, directing his
view to the intermediate spaces, to the windings of the valleys, or the
expanse of plains beneath, he could only have distinguished a few
insulated patches of culture, each encircling a village of wretched
cabins, among which would still be remarked one rude mansion of wood,
scarcely equal in comfort to a modern cottage, yet then rising proudly
eminent above the rest, where the Saxon lord, surrounded by his faithful
cotarii, enjoyed a rude and solitary independence, owning no superior
but his sovereign." Hist. of Whalley, p. 133. About a fourteenth part of
this parish of Whalley was cultivated at the time of Domesday. This
proportion, however, would by no means hold in the counties south of
Trent.

[692] "Of the Anglo-Saxon husband