Winchester. He continued grand master under the reign of Richard II.; was
succeeded by Thomas Fitz Allen, Earl of Surrey, in Henry IV.'s reign; and
on Henry V.'s accession, Chichely, Archbishop of Canterbury, presided over
the society. We have records of a lodge held at Canterbury, under his
patronage, where Thos. Stapylton was master, and the names of the wardens
and other brethren are given. This was in 1429, four years after an act of
parliament, passed early in the reign of Henry VI., against the meetings of
the society, which was caused by the enmity of Cardinal Beaufort, Bishop of
Winchester, towards Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, the king's uncle, a great
patron of the craft. But this act was never enforced, and in 1442 the king
was himself initiated, and he patronised the society.

In the meantime, under the auspices of James I. of Scotland, masonry
flourished in that country. It had been nursed, during the wars which
ravaged Europe, in the humble village of Kilwinning, in the west of the
country; from whence it at length burst forth, and communicated its light
to the lodges in the south. The records of this lodge actually go back to
the beginning of the fifteenth century, as also do those of a lodge in or
near Edinburgh. And about this time the Scottish king appointed a fee to be
paid by every master to the grand master, who was chosen by the grand
lodge. James II. of Scotland made the grand mastership hereditary, and
conferred it on the St. Clairs of Roslin, in which family it continued till
1736, when the then representative of the family, being old and childless,
resigned it into the hands of the grand lodge, then first established on
its present footing, by whom he was re-elected grand master for life.

During the civil wars in England masonry declined; but on the accession of
Henry VII., in 1485, it revived again, under the patronage of the grand
master of the order of St. John, at Rhodes, who, in 1500, chose King Henry
their protector. In 1502 this king presided in person in a lodge of master