The term “Acception” or “Accepcon” appears in the records of the Company of Masons of London in the years 1620 and 1621. Brother Hawkins believed it referred to the non-operative or speculative body associated with the Company, specifically the Lodge that Elias Ashmole visited in 1682.

Brother Edward Conder, Jr., in his work *The Hole Craft and Fellowship of Masons* (page 155), suggests: “It is evident that these Accepted Masons were on a different footing from those admitted to the freedom of the Company by servitude or patrimony. The word 'Accepted' occurs only a few times in the accounts, and from the inventories of the Company's goods and other entries concerning these members, proof is obtained that the Accepted Masons who joined this London Masons' Gild did so not necessarily for the benefit of the freedom of the Company but rather for the privilege of attending the Masons' Hall Lodge at which Ashmole was present.”

Brother Conder also notes that the 1631 entry referring to the Masons that were to be Accepted, along with the entries in the Minute Book of 1620, represent some of the earliest post-Reformation notices of speculative Freemasonry discovered in England.