Royal Arch Masonry

[4][5] The exact origins of the four Chapter degrees in its current form as part of the York Rite are unknown.

[6] In Ireland, the degree of Mark Master Mason is still required to join a Royal Arch Chapter.

[7] The Most Excellent master's degree is considered American in origin,[8] although it has been postulated by Ray Denslow and Turnbull that it was merely a rearrangement of preexisting material.

21's records, the “Royal Arch” was carried in a procession by “two excellent Masons” through Youghal, Ireland, on December 27, 1743.

[14][15][16] The degree is also mentioned disapprovingly in Dassigny's "A serious and impartial enquiry into the cause of the present decay of Free-masonry in the Kingdom of Ireland" published in Dublin in 1744.

[17][18] Separate notes in this work indicate that the rite was practiced in Dublin, London and York, and described it as an "organis'd body of men who have passed the chair" (i.e. served as the Master of a Craft lodge).

[20] From Ireland, the Royal Arch spread to England, where it fueled the rivalry between the two Craft grand lodges in existence at that time.

In 1746, Laurence Dermott, later the Grand Secretary of the "Antients", had been accepted into a Royal Arch Chapter in Dublin, which at that time was open only to those who had previously served as master of a Craft lodge.

At the beginning of the 19th century, when the "Antients" and the "Moderns" moved from rivalry towards union, the role and purpose of the Royal Arch became a sticking point.

When the "Antients" and "Moderns" merged in 1813 to form the United Grand Lodge of England, this was possible only after reaching a compromise on the role and purpose of Royal Arch Masonry.

In its Book of Constitutions, the United Grand Lodge of England declared that "...pure Antient Masonry consists of three degrees and no more, viz.

those of the Entered Apprentice, the Fellow Craft, and the Master Mason including the Supreme Order of the Holy Royal Arch.

In Northern America, freemasons until the end of the 18th century performed Royal Arch ceremonies as well as some others that are now more familiarly part of Knights Templar and the Red Cross of Constantine.

[32] After the independence of the American Colonies in 1776, Freemasonry in the United States remained relatively little influenced by the rivalry between the "Antients" and "Moderns" in England.

In 1797, a group of Royal Arch masons met in Hartford to try to establish some sort of governing body for degrees that were largely conferred in the New England states, which became the Grand Chapter of the Northern States, and later was broken down into the state-by-state Grand Chapter system.

[34] Following this decision by the Grand Chapter in 2004, there are currently significant ritual differences between Royal Arch Masonry as worked in England and Royal Arch Masonry worked as part of the York Rite in the U.S.[citation needed] Fraternal inter-relations remain as before.