"When the authentic school [in the 18th C] came to examine the English records they could find no evidence at all of the existence of operative lodges. In medieval times the operatives' lodge had simple been a hut or lean-to on the site in which they stored their tools and took their refreshment and ease.

By the 1600s the guild system, with the exception of the London Livery companies, was virtually moribund. Not was there any evidence of an English Mason word or of the English operatives having had secret modes of recognition....

Accepted masonry simply seems to have appeared in England as a new organization without any prior connections with the operative craft."
    - John Hamill, The Craft, A History of English Freemasonry