of as many of the fraternity at large as, being within a convenient
distance, could attend once or twice a year, under the auspices of one
general head, who was elected and installed at one of these meetings, and
who, for the time being, received homage as the governor of the whole
body. Any Brethren who were competent to discharge the duty, were allowed,
by the regulations of the Order, to open and hold lodges at their
discretion, at such times and places as were most convenient to them, and
without the necessity of what we now call a Warrant of Constitution, and
then and there to initiate members into the Order.[5] To the General
Assembly, however, all the craft, without distinction, were permitted to
repair; each Mason present was entitled to take part in the deliberations,
and the rules and regulations enacted were the result of the votes of the
whole body. The General Assembly was, in fact, precisely similar to those
political congregations which, in our modern phraseology, we term "mass
meetings."

These annual mass meetings or General Assemblies continued to be held, for
many centuries after their first establishment, at the city of York, and
were, during all that period, the supreme judicatory of the fraternity.
There are frequent references to the annual assemblies of Freemasons in
public documents. The preamble to an act passed in 1425, during the reign
of Henry VI., just five centuries after the meeting at York, states that,
"by the _yearly congregations_ and confederacies made by the Masons in
their _general assemblies, _ the good course and effect of the statute of
laborers were openly violated and broken." This act which forbade such
meetings, was, however, never put in force; for an old record, quoted in
the Book of Constitutions, speaks of the Brotherhood having frequented
this "mutual assembly," in 1434, in the reign of the same king. We have
another record of the General Assembly, which was held in York on the 27th
December, 1561, when Queen Elizabeth, who was suspicious of their secrecy,