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The Order of Mark Master Masons is an appendant order of Freemasonry that exists in some Masonic jurisdictions, and confers the degrees of Mark Man and Mark Master.
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Administrative structure
The administration of this degree varies greatly from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, though in all jurisdictions, the candidate for advancement is nowadays required to be a Master Mason to be eligible for this degree. In Europe, Asia and Australia the Mark Degree is conferred in separately warranted Lodges under the Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons.
Allegorical legend
Similarly to Craft Freemasonry, the Mark Degree conveys moral and ethical lessons using a ritualised allegory based around the building of King Solomon's Temple. The events of the degree require the candidate to undertake the role of a Fellowcraft, thus the degree is seen as an extension of the Fellowcraft Degree and the philosophical lessons conveyed are appropriate to that stage in a candidate's Masonic development. The legend reconciles the Anglo-American version of the Hiramic legend with the 3,300 Master Masons of Anderson's constitutions, making them Mark Masters, or overseers. The candidate is helped to choose a Mason's mark, and introduced to another extension of the Hiramic myth, relating to the manufacture, loss, and re-finding of the keystone of the Royal Arch of that degree. The link between the degrees of Master Mason, Mark Master Mason and the Royal Arch is further demonstrated in the Order of Royal and Select Masters.
History
The first record of the degree is in 1769, when Thomas Dunckerley, as Provincial Grand Superintendent, conferred the degrees of Mark Man and Mark Master Mason at a Royal Arch Chapter in Portsmouth.
Following the Union of the Antients and Moderns Grand Lodges and the formation of the United Grand Lodge of England in 1813, the articles of union stated that there would be three Craft degrees only, including the Royal Arch, excluding the Mark degree. For this reason, while in the rest of the world Mark Masonry became attached to Royal Arch chapters, in England it was actually proscribed from the Union until the 1850s. It was a group of Scottish masons who procured an illegal warrant from Bon Accord Chapter in Aberdeen to set up a Mark lodge in London. An attempt to add Mark Masonry to the approved craft workings was defeated in 1856, and a Grand Lodge of Mark Master Masons was created in response.
As Freemasonry spread around the globe in the 18th and 19th centuries, Mark Masonry became well established and now has a worldwide presence, with six daughter Grand Lodges and the degree being worked under alternative administrative structures elsewhere. In England, the current Mark Grand Master, HRH Prince Michael of Kent, is the younger brother of the Craft Grand Master, HRH Prince Edward, Duke of Kent.
Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas speculate in their 1996 book The Hiram Key that the construction of the Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland (1440–1490) provided the interface between the Knights Templar and Freemasonry. According to that analysis, the first degree and Mark Masonry was introduced by William Sinclair, whom they claim was the first Grand Master and founder of Freemasonry.