The condition of the Culdees, after the reign of David, varied according to the circumstances of the dioceses in which they were placed. None can be traced to the south of the Forth, where they appear never to have existed; nor within the limits of the see of Moray, in which they must undoubtedly have been suppressed, upon the forfeiture of the ancient earls of the province. In Aberdeen, only those establishments seem to have been retained which were dependant on the bishop of St. Andrews; whilst little or nothing is known of the existence of Culdees in Ross and Caithness, though they probably lingered for some time amidst the mountains of those remote districts. In the bishoprics of St. Andrews and Dunkeld they remained in the character of Hospitallers, retaining the tithes of certain parishes, with the privilege of electing the prior and other members of their fraternity, subject to the approval of the bishop. But the case was widely different in the dioceses of Brechin and Dunblane, where the Culdees long shared in the privileges of the Chapter--a compromise that must be attributed to the peculiar circumstance of those bishoprics, in which the church-lands were held by powerful feudatories, whom it would have been dangerous and impolitic to offend.[369] But even in those dioceses in which the church lands had reverted to the crown, either through hereditary succession, or from the forfeiture of their earlier possessors, the Culdees, chosen from amongst the leading provincial families, were far too powerful a body to submit without a struggle to the loss of their former privileges.[370] It appears to have been their object to establish themselves as Regular Canons, independent of the authority of the bishop; and they were occasionally assisted in their endeavours to promote their aim by the earl of the province, with whom they were frequently connected by the ties of relationship. At the opening of the thirteenth century, the Bishop of St. Andrews was obliged to obtain a Papal Bull to prevent the refractory brethren of Monymusk from exchanging the character of Hospitallers for that of Regular Canons; though the Culdees, who seem to have enlisted in their behalf the Earl of Mar and the Bishop of Aberdeen, eventually obtained their object, and before the middle of the same century, they were addressed by the pope as Regular Augustine Canons.[371]