their churches and monasteries, and to manage the expenses of their
buildings, and became members of an establishment which had so high and
sacred a destination, was so entirely exempt from all local, civil
jurisdiction, acknowledged the pope alone as its direct chief, and only
worked under his immediate authority; and thence we read of so many
ecclesiastics of the highest rank--abbots, prelates, bishops--conferring
additional weight and respectability on the order of Freemasonry by
becoming its members--themselves giving the designs and superintending
the construction of their churches, and employing the manual labor of
their own monks in the edification of them."

Thus in England, in the tenth century, the Masons are said to have
received the special protection of King Athelstan; in the eleventh
century, Edward the Confessor declared himself their patron; and in the
twelfth, Henry I. gave them his protection.

Into Scotland the Freemasons penetrated as early as the beginning of the
twelfth century, and erected the Abbey of Kilwinning, which afterwards
became the cradle of Scottish Masonry under the government of King Robert
Bruce.

Of the magnificent edifices which they erected, and of their exalted
condition under both ecclesiastical and lay patronage in other countries,
it is not necessary to give a minute detail. It is sufficient to say that
in every part of Europe evidences are to be found of the existence of
Freemasonry, practised by an organized body of workmen, and with whom men
of learning were united; or, in other words, of a combined operative and
speculative institution.

What the nature of this speculative science continued to be, we may learn