did the craft always have three degrees or were the earlier ones just entered apprentice and fellow craft with the master's part separate

Early operative and pre-revival Masonry did not possess the three-degree system used today, operating instead with a single form of initiation 1341. Before the expansion of ritual in the 1720s, the essentials of what are now the first two degrees were communicated together to the Entered Apprentice, while the esoteric secrets of what became the third degree were imparted to the Fellow Craft or Master 2.

The formal division of the system into three distinct degrees developed in London following the formation of the Grand Lodge in 1717 134. William James Hughan observed that no Masonic manuscript prior to the second decade of the eighteenth century mentions three degrees, concluding that the tri-gradal system was an English creation arranged between 1720 and 1723 as speculative Masons assumed leadership 34. George Oliver went further, asserting that John Theophilus Desaguliers and James Anderson manufactured the Third Degree and its Hiramic legend around this time, drawing from Jewish Targums published in 1715 3.

The adoption of the Third Degree was gradual across the Craft 12. Under the General Regulations of 1721, the Grand Lodge attempted to restrict the making of Masters and Fellow Crafts to its own quarterly meetings, leaving local lodges primarily composed of Entered Apprentices; this restriction was repealed in 1725 to allow individual lodges to confer the higher degrees at discretion 1. Even so, many lodges maintained the older two-step procedure for decades. Records from York show candidates simply being sworn and admitted without degrees through 1729 2, and several Scottish lodges—including Haughfoot and Dunblane—remained unacquainted with the Third Degree as late as 1760 3.