History of the Allied Masonic Degrees

AMD Member

The vast majority of the ‘additional’ degrees worked in England in the early part of the nineteenth century originally came under the patronage of warrants granted by the ‘Antients’, who held that Craft Warrants entitled Lodges to work any Masonic degree to which they had knowledge and members available who could work it. Upon the formation of the United Grand Lodge various groups of degrees were gradually organised into separate Orders each with their own governing body.

Allied Masonic Degrees – Degrees of Significance

Allied Masonic Degrees

Of the many ‘extra-Craft’ degrees, those five controlled by the Grand Council of the Order of the Allied Masonic Degrees are probably the least known: one has to be a Mark Master and a Royal Arch Mason to be eligible and this double qualification will exclude many. There are also fewer private Allied Councils than there are lodges, or equivalent bodies, for the much larger orders of Mark and Royal Ark Mariners and even of smaller orders, such as the Royal and Select Masters.

A.G.Mackey – Selected Writings – Royal and Select

Mackey royal select

During research I was doing into the Holy Royal Arch of Jerusalem I came across a book in the George Holden library at the Solent Masonic Centre at Freshwater, Isle of Wight called the Book of the Chapter and printed in the United States in 1856, the Author being the famous American Masonic historian Albert Mackey MD. The book had been part of the collection of the Bombay Masonic Library in the latter half of the 19th century.