After the death of Angus MacFergus, king of the Picts, [Sidenote: A. D. 761.] who is stigmatized by a Saxon writer as “a bloody tyrant,” the history of the succeeding period again becomes obscure. Bruidi his brother followed him on the throne, which, after the death of Bruidi, and an interval of fifteen years, during which it was again occupied in succession by two brothers, reverted once more to the family of Angus in the persons of his son and grandson--Constantine MacFergus, [Sidenote: A. D. 789.] also probably a member of the same race, acquiring the supreme power towards the close of the century by driving out Conal MacTeige, who lost his life a few years later in Kintyre. The names of three kings of Dalriada attest the existence of the little kingdom, without throwing any further light upon its history, though from the character of a subsequent reference to Aodh “the Fair,” it may be conjectured that he was in some sense the restorer of the line of Kintyre. [Sidenote: A. D. 792.] After the death of Doncorcin, the last of these three princes, which happened shortly after the accession of Constantine, no further mention of the province will be found in any of the Irish annals which have hitherto been published.[20] For thirty years and upwards, the supremacy of Constantine was undisputed, and he was succeeded upon his death by his brother Angus, his son Drost, and his nephew Eoganan in the same regular order which is subsequently observable amongst the early kings of Scotland. His reign was unquestionably an era of considerable importance, tradition connecting it with the termination of the Pictish monarchy, and representing Constantine as the last of the Pictish kings--a tradition which must have owed its origin to a vague recollection of some momentous change about this period. He and his brother Angus are numbered most suspiciously amongst the immediate predecessors of Kenneth MacAlpin in the “Duan of Alban,” the oldest known genealogy of the early kings of Scotland; whilst the name of Constantine, unknown amongst the paternal ancestry of Kenneth, was borne by his son and many of his race, who would thus appear to have looked for their title to the throne quite as much to their maternal as to their paternal line of ancestry--for the mother of Alpin, Kenneth’s father, was traditionally a daughter of the house of Fergus.[21] The foundation of Dunkeld, in Atholl, during the same reign, and of St. Andrews, in Fife, during the reign of the younger Angus, point to the incorporation of both those provinces amongst the dominions of the Pictish sovereigns; for it is observable that the erection of a monastery was generally coincident with the reduction under the royal authority of the province over which the newly instituted abbot exercised jurisdiction, the authority of the ecclesiastical superior confirming and sanctifying as it were the power of the sovereign; and it will be found that when regular dioceses were