I have just described its decadence; but he is wrong in asserting that we are now ignorant of its character. In using the title, there is no reference to the Grand Lodge of all England, which met for some years during the last century, but rather to the York legend, and to the hypothesis that York was the cradle of English Freemasonry. The York Rite was that Rite which was most probably organized or modified at the Revival in 1717, and practised for fifty years by the Constitutional Grand Lodge of England. It consisted of only the three Symbolic Degrees, the last one, or the Master’s, containing within itself the secrets now transferred to the Royal Arch. This Rite was carried in its purity to France in 1725, and into America at a later period. About the middle of the eighteenth century the Continental Freemasons, and about the end of it the Americans, began to superimpose upon it those high Degrees which, with the necessary mutilation of the Third, have given rise to numerous other Rites. But the Ancient York Rite, though no longer cultivated, must remain on the records of history as the oldest and purest of all the Rites.