The book Arran; - Cook Clan

80 THE BOOK OF ARRAN
than within, gathered the neighbours in numbers, and no
pews hmited the interior space. Sermons were rarer de-
Hghts. Then, as now, on clear spring days of Easter the
Arran folk would look up the strath on the horn-like peaks
of Ben Nuis and Goat Fell, the crossing ridge of Tarsuinn
and the jagged edge of the Cir, where they lifted over the
sky-line in dry colours of clear pastel richness. Possibly
the humble building was in existence when, in 1326, Sir
Benedict was 'rector of the Church of Arram' (sic),^ in the
days of Bruce. We observe that the island was still, seem-
ingly, but a single parish. Thirty years later we have notice
of the two churches, which now, for a time, suffer the fate
of so many parish churches, in being handed over to swell
the revenues of a great ecclesiastical corporation.
Over the water and a little beyond was the Abbey of
Kilwinning, whose ' Winnin,' Welsh Gwynnyn, is (Reeves)
or is not (Skene) to be identified with St. Finnan, a saint of
county Down, and which owed its foundation, it is told,
towards the close of the twelfth century, to one of the De
Morevilles, Lords of Lauderdale and Cunningham. But the
chartulary has not survived, and of date and founder nothing
certain can be said.^ Its original monks, of the Tironensian
order, reformed, that is stricter, Benedictines, had apparently
been brought from Kelso. Local magnates, as the way was,
added to its endowments from time to time, here a property,
there a parish church or so of which they owned the patronage
or advowson, the relevancy of which endowment lay in the
fact that a cure of souls represented so much income. The
monastery became the rector of the church and discharged
its duties through a vicar or member of its own body. Now
among the patrons of Kilwinning appears John de Menteith,^
lord of Arran and Knapdale, who, in 1357, for the salvation
' Exchequer Rolls, vol. i. p. 62.
2 See Archceological Collections relating to Ayr and Wigtown, vol. i.^ 1878.
5 The Earl of Menteith of a previous generation is among its principal benefactors.