There were thus at this time two parties among the brethren in Iona. One party, who had reluctantly given way on some points, but in the main adhered to the customs of their fathers, and clung with tenacity to the monastic system hallowed by their veneration for the founder Columba; the other, and probably the larger and more influential, conforming in everything to the Roman party, and leaning towards a modification of their monastic institution by the introduction of a secular clergy—each party putting up a rival abbot as soon as they found themselves sufficiently powerful to do so. By the death of Dunchad, in 717, Faelchu was left for the time sole abbot of Iona. He was of the race of Conall Gulban, and the legitimate successor of the old abbots according to the law which regulated the succession to the abbacy in the Monastic Church; and his party would be strengthened by those of the refugee monks from the monasteries in King Nectan’s dominions who took shelter in Iona. Of the monks who had been driven out of the Pictish kingdom, some would merely pass over the Drumalban range into the territory of the Scottish kings of Dalriada, or seek a farther home among the Columban monasteries in Ireland; but many would no doubt be drawn to the parent monastery in Iona, which was beyond King Nectan’s power, and add numbers and force to what might be termed the Conservative party in the island. On the other hand, Ecgberct was still alive and resident in Iona, and would naturally be at the head of what may be called the Reforming party, and use all his influence in promoting and extending their authority in the island. The account Bede gives of his life there shows that his efforts were not so immediately and entirely successful as one would infer from his other statements, and that his progress was slow. He says, ‘This man of God, Ecgberct, remained thirteen years in the aforesaid island which he had thus consecrated again to Christ, by kindling in it a new ray of divine grace, and restoring it to ecclesiastical unity and peace. In the year of our Lord’s incarnation 729, in which the Easter of our Lord was celebrated on the eighth day before the kalends of May—that is, on the 24th April—when he had performed the solemnity of the mass in memory of the same resurrection of our Lord, on that same day he departed to the Lord; and thus finished, or rather never ceases to celebrate, with our Lord, the apostles and the other citizens of heaven, the joy of that greatest festival, which he had begun with the brethren whom he had converted to the grace of unity. But it was a wonderful provision of the divine dispensation that the venerable man not only passed out of this world to the Father at Easter, but also when Easter was celebrated on that day on which it had never been wont to be kept in these parts. The brethren, therefore, rejoiced in the certain and Catholic knowledge of the time of Easter, and rejoiced in the protection of their father,