In 688 Adamnan proceeded on a second mission to King Aldfrid, with what object is not known; but it appears to have been connected with the affairs of Dalriada. This second visit to Northumbria had very important consequences both for himself and for his church; for Bede tells us that ‘Adamnan, priest and abbot of the monks that were in the isle of Hii, was sent ambassador by his nation to Aldfrid, king of the Angles, where, having made some stay, he observed the canonical rites of the church, and was earnestly admonished by many who were more learned than himself not to presume to live contrary to the universal custom of the church in relation to either the observance of Easter or any other decrees whatsoever, considering the small number of his followers, seated at so distant a corner of the world. In consequence of this he changed his mind, and readily preferred those things which he had seen and heard in the churches of the Angles to the customs which he and his people had hitherto followed. For he was a good and a wise man, and remarkably learned in the knowledge of the Scriptures;’[342] and Abbot Ceolfrid of Jarrow, in his letter to King Naiton of the Picts, who calls him ‘Adamnan, the abbot and renowned priest of the Columbans,’ says that he visited his monastery, and narrates at length the conversation he had with him, to which he attributes Adamnan’s conversion.[343] ‘Returning home,’ continues Bede, ‘he endeavoured to bring his own people that were in Hii, or that were subject to that monastery, into the way of truth, which he himself had learned and embraced with all his heart; but in this he could not prevail.’ We have thus the anomalous state of matters that the abbot of the monastery had conformed to Rome, but that his monks and those of the dependent monasteries refused to go along with him. In the year after his return to Iona, the death of Iolan, bishop of _Cinngaradh_, or Kingarth in Bute, is recorded; and in 692, which the annalist marks as the fourteenth after the decease of his predecessor Failbhe, he went to Ireland, but for what especial purpose which might render the reference to Failbhe appropriate, we do not learn; and the following year we find him again in Iona, when the body of Brude mac Bile, king of the Picts, who died in 693, is brought for interment.[344] [Sidenote: A.D. 692. Synod of Tara. The northern Scots, with the exception of the Columban monasteries, conform to Rome.]