The first to bring these qualities to bear upon the subject was undoubtedly the late Dr. Joseph Robertson, in a very remarkable essay which appeared in the _Quarterly Review_ in 1849, under the title of ‘Scottish Abbeys and Cathedrals’ (vol. lxxxv. p. 103); and this was followed by a valuable essay ‘On the Scholastic Offices in the Scottish Church in the twelfth and thirteenth Centuries,’ printed in 1852 in the _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_ (vol. v. p. 56). But, in 1857, there appeared by far the most important work bearing upon the history of the early Scottish Church. This was the edition of Adamnan’s Life of St. Columba, by the Rev. Dr. Reeves, now Dean of Armagh, printed for the Irish Archæological Society and the Bannatyne Club. This work is a perfect model of an exhaustive treatment of its subject, and exercised at once an influence upon the study of Scottish church history, the importance of which cannot be over-estimated. It was followed, in 1864, by a work of the same author on _The Culdees of the British Islands as they appear in History_, in which he has brought together almost all the evidence we possess with regard to their history. In the same year the late Bishop of Brechin commenced his useful labours in this department of history by publishing the Missal of Arbuthnot, with a valuable preface. And in 1866 the late Dr. Joseph Robertson produced his last and most important work, viz., the _Statuta Ecclesiæ Scoticanæ_, which he edited for the Bannatyne Club, in two volumes, the first of which consists of an elaborate introduction by himself. It is cause of much regret that this accurate and acute historian had not lived to devote his great abilities and extensive research to a complete history of the church, which would have rendered the present attempt unnecessary. Dr. John Stuart, who had already, in his great work on the Sculptured Stones of Scotland, made one of the most important contributions to the elucidation of Scottish antiquities which we possess, edited in 1868 the Charters of the Priory of the Isle of May for the Society of Antiquaries, with a valuable preface; and in 1869 we are indebted to him for an admirable edition of the Book of Deer, printed for the Spalding Club, to which he has prefixed an elaborate preface. Chapters IV. and V. of this preface on Celtic polity and on the early Scottish Church are essays of singular ability, and full of acute and valuable suggestive matter.