Three centuries had now elapsed since the conquests of the Pictish Angus established the supremacy of his native province, and laid the foundation of the future kingdom of Scotland. During the earlier portion of this period no addition had been made to the territories of the reigning family, the lords of the southern capital of _Dunfothir_ contenting themselves with the vague dignity of “Ardrigh of Alban,” and with excluding from the privileges of “a royal race” the rival chieftains of _Dundurn_. The incursions of the Northmen, above all the conquests of Thorstein Olaveson, weakened the power of the southern kingdom, and by exhibiting the almost forgotten spectacle of a prince of Dundurn sharing the throne of Scotland with a scion of the royal race, resuscitated the hopes of the northern tribes; the deaths of three kings of the MacAlpin dynasty in the province of Moray testifying to the obstinacy with which the people of that district continued to resist the pretensions of the southern family to the right of _Can_ and _Cuairt_ throughout the north. But the rise of the Jarls of the Orkneys again turned the scale in favour of the south, and from the time when the second Kenneth favoured the claims of Thorfin’s family upon the mainland earldom of their maternal ancestor, Forres ceased to be fatal to his race, and he was at leisure to carry out his projects against the heir of Finella, and to make the first actual addition to the territories of the Scottish kings by bringing the eastern coasts into a more direct dependancy upon the crown. The “Bishopric of the Scots,” co-extensive in jurisdiction with the royal power, henceforth reached to the Dee, and the fatality to the royal race was transferred to the eastern provinces; for the struggle was no longer in the north until the old rivalry again broke out on the rupture of the alliance with the Orkney Jarl.