The General Assembly was, in fact, precisely similar to those political congregations which, in our modern phraseology, we term "mass meetings." These annual mass meetings or General Assemblies continued to be held, for many centuries after their first establishment, at the city of York, and were, during all that period, the supreme judicatory of the fraternity.
There are frequent references to the annual assemblies of Freemasons in public documents.

The preamble to an act passed in 1425, during the reign of Henry VI., just five centuries after the meeting at York, states that, "by the _yearly congregations_ and confederacies made by the Masons in their _general assemblies, _ the good course and effect of the statute of laborers were openly violated and broken." This act which forbade such meetings, was, however, never put in force; for an old record, quoted in the Book of Constitutions, speaks of the Brotherhood having frequented this "mutual assembly," in 1434, in the reign of the same king.

We have another record of the General Assembly, which was held in York on the 27th December, 1561, when Queen Elizabeth, who was suspicious of their secrecy, sent an armed force to dissolve the meeting.

A copy is still preserved of the regulations which were adopted by a similar assembly held in 1663, on the festival of St.John the Evangelist; and in these regulations it is declared that the private lodges shall give an account of all their acceptations made during the year to the General Assembly.

Another regulation, however, adopted at the same time, still more explicitly acknowledges the existence of a General Assembly as the governing body of the fraternity.