Published Masonic reference works document the Societas Rosicruciana in Anglia's Provincial administration of its Second Order, Grades V through VII, as public organizational information, and Adeptus Major's place within that span, opening, continuing or closing it, is part of the same documented structure.
The direct naming parallel between the SRIA's Second Order grades and the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn's own Second Order, sharing the titles Adeptus Minor, Adeptus Major and Adeptus Exemptus exactly, is treated in published histories of both orders as clear documentary evidence of the borrowing, rather than as coincidence or independent invention by the later order.
General reference works on the SRIA describe this administrative tier, Provinces rather than Colleges, as marking a real increase in organizational seniority for Adeptus Major and its companion grades, distinct from, but structurally comparable to, the seniority the Golden Dawn later attached to its own Second Order.
That the SRIA predates the Golden Dawn by roughly two decades is itself among the most consistently published facts in the comparative literature on both societies, cited whenever a general account needs to establish which order's structure came first.