Historical memoir of the family of Eglinton and Winton

NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS. 141
largely, if indeed not altogether, to account for this
state of the matter, as well likewise as for the
little attention at that time paid to any branch
of literature, or objects of art or taste of any kind.
During the earlier remarkable ages of church build-
ing, however, we may be well assured, the matter of
free-masonry received great attention and was in
the highest repute ; but ultimately, as corruption
crept in and strengthened among the occupants of
the gorgeous alluring structures which it produced,
the power and influence of the entire system in
which it originated slowly but surely sank into
feebleness and decay ; whilst the final storm of the
religious revolution swept every thing, good and
bad, regarding it into irretrievable destruction.
The priority, and perhaps originally the supre-
macy of Kilwinning in the " Craft" here, however,
from all that may now be gathered of the memorials of
masonry, would seem to be evident enough ; and the
present curious and interesting document certainly
appears very plainly to corroborate the fact — though
evidently, long before this time, the order had un-
dergone quite a systematic change in its general or-
ganisation, more particularly as regarded the con-
stituting Edinburgh, the centre and capital of the
kingdom, as its head quarters. The allusion to the
annual election of office bearers of Kilwinning, that
it be made " within the kirk of Kilwynning, as the
held, and secund ludge of Scotland," seems evidently
allusive to its original right of precedency as Mother
Lodge, whilst, unavoidably, in the new arrangement