What is the Regius Poem?

The Regius Poem, also known as the Halliwell Manuscript, is the earliest surviving version of the Masonic Old Charges, composed in rhymed verse and dated to approximately 1390 or 1400 1.

In its traditional history of Craft Masonry, the poem recounts how the trade was introduced into England during the reign of King Athelstan, who convened an assembly of lords and masons to establish fifteen articles and fifteen points for the governance of the craft 1. The primary regulations set out rules for masters and apprentices, addressing physical sound health, fair wages, prohibitions against supplanting another mason's work, and the exclusion of felons 3.

The text concludes with an appendix mixing religious exhortation and instructions on etiquette, drawn in part from John Mirk's Instructions for Parish Priests and the anonymous poem Urbanitatis 12. This section instructed young apprentices—many originating from peasant homes—in table manners, speech, and proper conduct when interacting with nobility and church authorities on major building projects 1. Past Master Roderick H. Baxter later published a modern English transliteration of the complete text in 1927 1.

Masonic historians have differed over what the poem reveals about the origins of the Craft. Robert Freke Gould and Albert Pike argued that the poem's spirit and tone pointed to the existence of symbolic or speculative Masonry independent of operative building as early as the fourteenth century 2. Joseph Fort Newton rejected this reading as forced, holding that while the text contains the spirit of fellowship, it provides no evidence of a separate speculative organization existing apart from the operative craft 2.