Five years after the erection of the See of Abercorn, [Sidenote: A. D. 685.] for some unknown cause, Egfrid, repeating the ravages of his Irish expedition of the previous year, poured a mighty army across the Forth, burning the _Raths_ of Tulach-Aman, and Dun Ollaig. His progress was unopposed, and penetrating into the neighbouring province of Angus, he crossed the Tay without resistance, and skirted the base of the Grampian range until he approached the neighbourhood of Lin Garan or Nectan’s Mere, a little lake in the modern parish of Dunnichen. Here his antagonist, who was his cousin Bruidi, awaited with his followers the hostile onset, the signal overthrow of the invading force justifying the choice of the position. The victory was as glorious as its consequences were important, Egfrid and the greater part of his army were left upon the field, whilst few escaped from the scene of slaughter to carry back to Northumbria the tidings of her monarch’s fall. All that the conquests of thirty years had wrested from the Picts was lost for ever to the race of Ida, and the Saxon bishop, abandoning in terror his See of Abercorn, never rested in his hurried flight until within the walls of Whitby he had placed the whole breadth of Bernicia between himself and his rebellious flock. The Dalriads also recovered their former liberty, and even the Britons enjoyed a momentary independence, and through the losses and embarrassments entailed upon Northumbria by the disastrous overthrow of Egfrid, the pre-eminence of the Northern Angles received a fatal shock which the utmost efforts of succeeding princes failed altogether to repair.[11] During the forty years which elapsed after the victory of Nectan’s Mere an occasional conflict with the Angles testifies to the embittered feelings which had arisen through Northumbrian aggression; and upon the abdication of Nectan, the correspondent of Ceolfred and somewhat arbitrary reformer of the Gaelic clergy, who after a reign of eighteen years relinquished his throne for the cloister, a contest seems to have arisen between four Pictish kings, which, after five years, terminated in the undisputed ascendancy of Angus Mac Fergus. [Sidenote: A. D. 730.] Fortune proved true to her favourite, whose alliance was courted at different periods by the Mercian and Northumbrian sovereigns, and in the results of his victories over his various competitors, and of his conquests over the Dalriads and the northern Britons, may be traced apparently the germs of the future kingdom of Scotland.[12]