ing the tenth part of the lands throughout his kingdom from all secular services and burdens, which narrates that he had resolved to grant the said tenth "in perpetuam libertatem," and free "ab omni regali seruitio et omnium saecularium absoluta seruitute."1

In A.D. 1048, Radulfus, a priest, granted to the monastery of Redon the church of St. Mary of Montalter. The gift was confirmed by Conan, Duke of Brittany, with freedom from rent and tribute, and a declaration that the men of the monastery were "ab omni servitute liberi." 2

By an undated charter of William the Conqueror, granted at Winchester, to the monastery of Battle, printed from the original by Selden, in his edition of Eadmer's Historia Novorum (p. 165), he declares that it should be "libera et quieta in perpetuum ab omni seruitute, et omnibus quæcunque humana mens excogitare potest;" and again, that the church, with its territory, "libera sit ab omni dominatione et oppressione Episcoporum sicut illa quæ mihi coronam tribuit," "Nec liceat Episcopo Cicestrensi quamuis in illius Diœcesi sit, in Ecclesia illa, vel in maneriis ad eam pertinentibus ex consuetudine hospitari contra voluntatem Abbatis."

When, therefore, we come to consider the following entry in the Chronicle of the Picts and Scots, bearing on the state of the Pictish Church, it will be seen that the writer makes use of expressions which were common in the contemporary records of other countries. In the lists of the Pictish kings, from the Register of St. Andrews, it is said of Girg or Grig, "Et hic primus dedit libertatem ecclesiæ Scoticanæ, quæ sub servitute erat usque ad illud tempus ex consuetudine et more Pictorum.3

1 Kemble, Codex Diplomat. AngloSaxon, vol. ii. p. 52.

2 Chartular. Redon, p. 144.

3 Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p.

From the uniform application of the words in the chronicles and charters just quoted, where the meaning is obvious, there seems every probability that the terms "servitude" and "liberty," just quoted, are meant for some tribute or service customarily exacted from the church by the Pictish chiefs, of which it was released in the time of Grig.'

We discover, from the grants in the Book of Deer, that there yet remained burdens exigible from the chief monasteries and chief churches of Alba, which the mormaer excepts from the general enfranchisement of his grant.

2

One of the memoranda in the Book of Deer, dated in the eighth year of the reign of David I., preserves the record of a grant by Gartnait the mormaer, and Ete his wife, to Columcille and to Drostan, of Pet-meic-Cobrig, for the consecration of the church of Christ and the apostle Peter; with a declaration that the

3

payable to him by all the abbeys of the country, "gualoir tocius abbatie per totum Britannie regnum diffuse, illam scilicet partem que principibus usque ad illud tempus solvi consueverat ;" at the same time enjoining on his officers, "ne quis eorum ingredi ulterius presumeret abbatiam Sancti Salvatoris pro hoc debito exigendo." (Chartular. de Redon, p. 250.)

The Pictish nation adopted the Roman usages, and, as we are told by Venerable Bede, rejoiced in being placed under the direction of St. Peter in the reign of King Nechtan, A.D. 710. Some of the Columbite churches at first refused to accept the usages, but soon conformed.-(H. E., lib. v. c. 21. Annals of Ulster, in Chronicles of the Picts and Scots, p. 354.)

lands were "free from all the exactions with the gift of them to Cormac, bishop of Dunkeld."

The king's share of Pet-meic-Gobroig had been already granted to the clerics by King Malcolm mac Kenneth; so it would seem that the "share" of the mormaer was now granted as a gift at the dedication of a newly-erected church at Deer.

It is not clear what is here conferred on the Bishop of Dunkeld, but probably we are to understand the subjection of the lands to his jurisdiction, and to his rights of visitation.2

The establishment of a bishop at Dunkeld, over a defined diocese, was then of recent date-having occurred less than twenty years previously.

1

Before this time Dunkeld was the site of a royal monastery,

The king's grant consisted of his share in the lands-not of the lands themselves, as seems to be assumed by Mr. Robertson (Scotland under her Early Kings, vol. ii. p. 499).

2 Writing of early Episcopal visitations, Dr. Reeves remarks-"The first rudiment of the Irish system of visitation is to be discovered in the practice of the abbots of chief monasteries, who occasionally made a circuit of a particular district where the memory of their patron saint was held in esteem, carrying with them his reliques or insignia, and levying contributions from churches and people."-(Primate Colton's Visitation of Derry, p. iii.) It followed that churches and lands in different parts of the country might thus be subjected to a bishop in consequence of the connection being frequently the result of merely per

sonal considerations. Thus, A.D. 1140, the Coarb of Patrick (Bishop of Armagh) went on a visitation-tour in Connaught for the first time, and obtained a liberal tribute; and it was agreed by Turlough O'Connor and the nobles of Connaught to place their churches in subjection to his control."-(O'Donovan's Annals of the Four Masters, vol. ii. p. 1063.) In the early Irish Church the right of refection in visitations formed the principal means of support to the bishop, "and indeed by these refections did the Byshops chiefly mayntayne themselves and their followers, spending the most part of the yeare in this wandring kind of lyfe among their tenents and receaving from them meate and drink for 100 and some tymes 200 people that followed the Bp."-(MS. of Bishop Montgomery, quoted in the Ordnance Survey Memoir of Templemore, p. 50.)

founded about the middle of the ninth century. It was dedicated to St. Columba, and was rendered illustrious by its possession of some of the relics of that great saint. For a time the abbot of Dunkeld seems to have exercised that primacy over the church of Alba which originally belonged to the abbots of Hy. The Annals of Ulster, in A.D. 864, record the death of Tuathal, son of Artgus, chief Bishop of Pictland and Abbot of Duncaillenn. About a century later, the primacy was transferred to the Abbot of St. Andrews; and amid the distractions incident to the desolations of the Norsemen, and other causes which were at work throughout Europe, the abbacy fell into the hands of laymen, who assumed the name of abbots, and transmitted the inheritance to their children.

The idea of defined territorial dioceses was foreign to the ecclesiastical system of the Celtic people of Ireland and Scotland; and when Dunkeld was erected into the see of a bishop, his diocese was not a continuous territory, with boundaries suggested by the natural features of the country, but rather consisted of districts without any such relation, and of churches on opposite sides of the kingdom, destitute of any connection with Dunkeld, except that arising from circumstances of personal and religious affinity.

In this way the newly-created bishopric of Dunkeld comprehended within its spiritual jurisdiction Argyle, with Iona, in continuation of the primacy with which the abbey of Dunkeld had been invested.

It would seem, then, that the gift to Cormac, Bishop of Dunkeld, expressed in the grant of the mormaer of Buchan, was a token of veneration for the memory of the great Columba, and a memorial of the original connection of Deer with him as its founder.

The lands granted by Gartnait lay within the still more recently created diocese of the bishop whom King David had established at Aberdeen; but it is plain that the subjection to the Bishop of Dunkeld did not infer any breach of diocesan privileges, and we may readily believe that these were as yet too undetermined, and the old feelings of personal connection too common, to render such an arrangement in any way unsuitable.

There is a remarkable exception from a general confirmation of the offerings to the clerics of Deer (p. 95), in which Colban and his wife mortmained the whole from every burden for ever, except as much as would fall on four davochs of the gross burdens exigible from the chief monasteries and chief churches of Alba.2

What constituted a chief monastery or chief church was probably the importance arising from antiquity of foundation and extent of endowments. Some monasteries had under them dependent houses and churches, as Mortlach, which had a subordinate monastery at Cloveth, and five churches. The monastery of Dull, in Athole, seems to have been subject to that of Dunkeld, and a payment continued to be made out of the abthania of Dull to the Bishop of Dunkeld, apparently as in place of the earlier abbots, in the year 1361.— (Chamberlain Rolls, vol. i. p. 381.) The Culdee monastery at Madderty seems also to have been subject to Dunkeld, whose "clerics" had right to certain payments from the abthania of Madderty.-(Registr.

de Inchaffray, pp. 15, 71, 72.) The church of Kinkell had under it seven churches.

In the matter of jurisdiction as apart from extent of endowment, the monastery of Hy was chief of all the monasteries of the Columban order both among the Scots and Picts of Alba, as well as in Ireland. Venerable Bede, writing of the foundation of Durrow and Iona, says, "Ex utroque monasterio plurima exinde monasteria per discipulos ejus et in Brittania et in Hibernia propagata sunt; in quibus omnibus idem monasterium insulanum in quo ipse requiescit corpore principatum tenet."(H. E. iii. c. 4; see also c. 21.) The primacy was afterwards vested in the monastery of Dunkeld, and lastly in that of St. Andrews.

Precedency among churches was sometimes acquired from circumstances connected with their foundation. Thus of