Abbot Diarmaid did not remain long in Iona, for we find him in the year 831 returning to Ireland with the _Mionna_,[574] and we hear no more of him. In 849 Innrechtach, abbot of Iona, is said to have gone to Ireland with the _Mionna_ of Columcille, from which we may infer that they had been restored to Iona, and that some time between the year 831 and 849 Innrechtach had become abbot. We know nothing of his race except that his surname was Ua Finachta, and nothing of his history except that he was slain by the Saxons when on a journey to Rome in the year 854, and that he is then called heir, or coärb, of Columcille.[575] In the meantime that great revolution had been effected which placed a Scottish dynasty on the throne of the Picts. This is the most obscure portion of the history of Scotland, and it is now hardly possible to trace the circumstances which combined to elevate a Scot, in the person of Kenneth mac Alpin, to a position of so much power, or to ascertain to what extent the ecclesiastical element entered into this revolution; but we can gather that it led to the reintroduction of the Scottish clergy into the eastern districts thus added to Kenneth’s kingdom, and to an attempt to reclaim for them these monasteries from which they had been expelled in the preceding century. And this appears to have extended even to the Scottish foundations in Lothian; for Kenneth, we are told, invaded Saxonia, as the country south of the Firth of Forth was still termed, six times, and burnt Dunbarre and Mailros, which had been usurped. In whatever sense Dunbarre was held to be usurped, or whether this epithet was intended to apply to it as well as to Mailros, the latter was unquestionably founded by the Scottish missionaries from Iona, who were, as we know, expelled from the monasteries they had founded, if they would not conform to Rome; and it is possible that Dunbar may also have been a Scotch foundation. It was undoubtedly in the possession of the Angles of Northumbria; but Melrose appears to have been transferred to the Britons of Strathclyde, as we find it afterwards in the diocese of Glasgow; and it was probably in retaliation that the Britons burnt Dunblane.[576] Be this as it may, Kenneth certainly resolved to re-establish the Columban Church within the territories of the southern Picts, which now formed the heart of his kingdom, on a different basis; and, for this purpose, selected Dunkeld, where Constantine, king of the Picts, had founded a church, probably as being the nearest of the Pictish churches to the former Scottish kingdom of Dalriada, and the most central for the whole kingdom. [Sidenote: A.D. 850-865. Tuathal, son of Artguso, first bishop of Fortrenn and abbot of Dunkeld. Cellach, son of Aillelo, abbot of Kildare and of Iona.]