Such then were the two great classes into which the whole population of Scotland was at this time divided. Earls, Thanes, Judges, and Ogtierns, with their respective kindred, composed the _Duchasach_ or _Duine-Uasal_, the free proprietary of the kingdom, together with the lesser _Duine-Uasal_ who dedicated their swords to the service of their Senior, answering to the Welsh _Boneddigion_. Amongst the numerous burdens which pressed so heavily upon the Irish peasantry in the Anglo-Irish period, was the payment of a certain sum under the name of _Bonnacht_, to relieve them from the necessity of supporting their lord’s retainers; the existence of this custom amongst the Irish Gael pointing to the manner in which, in a similar state of society, the lesser _Duine-Uasal_, or _Bonnacht_, amongst the Scottish Gael were quartered upon the native-men of their respective districts. Nor must the abbot and his kindred, with _Duine-Uasal_ connected with the _ab-thanage_, be omitted from amongst the _Duchasach_; whilst as there were “inborn” clergy, who at a later date were numbered amongst the _Nativi_, and the son of a chaplain by the laws of William lost his free-right upon the death of his father, the law of descent which was in force amongst the laity was evidently in operation amongst the clergy also.[280] No especial privileges of rank belonged to the ecclesiastical order in early times amongst the people of Germanic origin; they were assessed according to their actual birth, and it was an innovation upon ancient custom amongst the Anglo-Saxons when the priest, “on account of his seven orders,” was reckoned worthy of _Thane-right_ or nobility. The earlier custom was still in force apparently amongst the Celts; and as none beyond a certain limit of the “Founder’s kin” were privileged to succeed to the abbacy, so the descendants of the married clergy, beyond a similar limit, would appear to have become attached as dependants to the abbey lands; forming, probably, those bands of monastic warriors whose occasional conflicts, recorded in the Irish Annals, seem to have rivalled in ferocity the tumults of the eastern monks. The kindred of the sovereign enjoyed the rank and appanages of earls, the line of Atholl unquestionably, and perhaps that of Fife, branching off permanently in this manner from the royal stock--just as the ealdormen of Saxon Mercia towards the close of the tenth century traced their origin to Ælfhere the kinsman of Edgar. The remaining earls represented, either the “inborn” descendants of Mormaors appointed at an earlier period over conquered districts; or the inheritors of a province from an independent ancestry, who, acknowledging the superiority of the king of Scots, continued to hold their territories by hereditary right, resembling the ealdormen of Saxon Northumbria. Of the earls of Scotia, the majority probably answered to the former description, though the ancient earls of Strathern may have