History of Freemasonry

The history of Freemasonry takes in the origins, evolution and showing clear events of the brother-like organization experienced as Freemasonry. It covers three phases. firstly, the emergence of "joined in a cause lodges of operative" during the Middle ages, then the admission of Lay members as "accepted" or "speculative" stone-workers, and finally the evolution of only speculative lodges, and the emergence of Grand lodges to govern them. The first Grand Lodge was created in London in 1717. The difficulties facing writers of history are the lack of written material, even down to the 19th century, and the way knowledge was produced by stone-workers and non-masons from the earliest years.

Freemasonry's long history includes its early development from put in an orderly way bodies of operative stonemasons to the current-day system of speculative lodges joined in a cause around regional or national "Grand Lodges".