[105] The principle of “the right of blood” latterly exercised a social influence over the ecclesiastical as over the political system of the Gaelic people, and bishops and abbots made their visitations and exacted their dues amongst a population united to them, in a certain sense, by the ties of kindred, whilst most of the superior offices in a monastery became hereditary. Not that they were invariably held from father to son, but the right of presentation to certain offices becoming vested in certain families, the people grew by degrees to be united to their abbots and other ecclesiastical dignitaries by a similar tie of blood to that which bound them to their chiefs and princes, and an abbot not chosen from one of the families of the district in which his monastery was placed, would have appeared (in an unconquered country) as great an anomaly as a chieftain or a king of alien blood--an _ungecyndne cyning_. When, therefore, Kenneth founded Brechin, which must undoubtedly have enjoyed the privilege of _Cuairt_ or visitation over the same extent of country as was afterwards included in the diocese of that name, he must have possessed the power of insuring to the abbot and his monks the free exercise of their rights amongst the people of the district; in other words (as he had not inherited it), he must have conquered it. Beyond the territories over which the monastery exercised _Cuairt_, the country up to the Dee was placed under the jurisdiction of St. Andrews, the bishop of this diocese being the spiritual head of the conquests of the kings of Scots--as in the case of Lothian, for instance--except when it was otherwise arranged. [106] _Innes_, Ap. 5. _Wynton_, bk. 6, c. 10. _Fordun_, l. 4, c. 36. _Tigh._ 995. The king’s visit to Fettercairn was probably a _Cuairt_ or royal progress. The Prior of Lochleven merely says that Kenneth was slain by some members of his own court--the _socii sui_ of Tighernach. Fordun, or rather perhaps Bowyer, names the assassins, Grim, the _son_ of Kenneth MacDuff, and Constantine, the son of Culen, whilst he and Boece describe the machine which cost the king his life. It was as follows:--“In the middes of this hous was ane image of bras, maid to the similitude of Kenneth, with ane goldin apill in his hand, with sic ingine that als sone as any man maid him to throw this apill out of the hand of the image, the wrying of the samein drew all the tituppis of the crosbowis up at anis, and schot at him that threw the apill.” _Bellenden’s Boece_, bk. 11, c. 10. [107] _Fordun_, l. 4, c. 30. [108] _Fordun_, l. 4, c. 36. He merely alludes to the death of Malcolm MacDuff in the twentieth year of Kenneth’s reign; but _Boece_, bk. 11, c. 9, makes the king poison him.