Note 105 — Chapter IV · Kenneth the Second—971–995.

The principle of “the right of blood” latterly exercised a social influence over the ecclesiastical as over the political system of the Gaelic people, and bishops and abbots made their visitations and exacted their dues amongst a population united to them, in a certain sense, by the ties of kindred, whilst most of the superior offices in a monastery became hereditary. Not that they were invariably held from father to son, but the right of presentation to certain offices becoming vested in certain families, the people grew by degrees to be united to their abbots and other ecclesiastical dignitaries by a similar tie of blood to that which bound them to their chiefs and princes, and an abbot not chosen from one of the families of the district in which his monastery was placed, would have appeared (in an unconquered country) as great an anomaly as a chieftain or a king of alien blood—an ungecyndne cyning. When, therefore, Kenneth founded Brechin, which must undoubtedly have enjoyed the privilege of Cuairt or visitation over the same extent of country as was afterwards included in the diocese of that name, he must have possessed the power of insuring to the abbot and his monks the free exercise of their rights amongst the people of the district; in other words (as he had not inherited it), he must have conquered it. Beyond the territories over which the monastery exercised Cuairt, the country up to the Dee was placed under the jurisdiction of St. Andrews, the bishop of this diocese being the spiritual head of the conquests of the kings of Scots—as in the case of Lothian, for instance—except when it was otherwise arranged.