The Royal Arch: Its Origin, Development and Ritual

By ALEX HORNE, F. P. S.

1897 - 1988

The first printed reference to a Royal Arch Degree comes in connection with a little work by Dr. Fifield Dassigny (Dublin, 1744) as part of a general discussion of Masonic conditions in Ireland and elsewhere. Here Dassigny makes mention of a certain “Brother of probity and wisdom, who had some space before attained that excellent part of Masonry in London,” but gives no further details as to what this “excellent part of Masonry” consisted of. But he did say that he had been informed that some Royal Arch Masons did assemble in York in 1744, and were “excellent Masons,” comprising “an organized body of men who have passed the Chair and given undeniable proofs of their skill.” Bernard E. Jones, in his excellent and definitive Freemasons’ Book of the Royal Arch (London, 1957) – a companion volume to his equally authoritative Freemasons’ Guide and Compendium (London, 1950) – says that “there is a general consensus of opinion that his (Dassigny’s) statement is sound evidence of an early R. A. Degree in working order, even at a date a few years earlier than 1744;” and in Scotland as well where a Lodge Minute from Sterling is found, date July 30, 1743, citing two petitioners who, “having found qualified, they were admitted Royal Arch Masons of this Lodge.”

Now, as to the essence of the Royal Arch, in the early formative years, we get some tentative suggestions in the way of words, phrases, ideas, that crop up here and there in our printed literature, such as the Early Masonic Catechisms of the 18th century, and in newspaper accounts, and other sources, and which are later found to have become incorporated into Royal Arch work. A characteristic example is The Whole Institutions of Free-Masons Opened (Dublin, 1725), with its reference to “the primitive Word” pointing to “God in six Terminations: to wit I am, and Jehovah is the answer to it,” and citing as proof, the first verse of St. John. What is sometimes referred to as “Scots” Masonry may have contributed to this type of tradition, this being a superior kind of Masonry, it was believed, which R. F. Gould says “had as its motif the discovery in a vault by Scottish Crusaders of the long-lost and Ineffable Word” as cited by Jones, who offers two early sections of his work on the development of the proto-material that gradually accumulated and finally crystallized into what we have today as the Royal Arch Degree.