The abbots had several special privileges; they were exempted from assisting at the yearly synods; they had the custody of the Brecbennach, or consecrated banner of St. Columba; they acquired from Pope Benedict, by Bull, dated at Avignon, the right to wear a mitre, and were in some instances the foremost churchmen of the Kingdom. The abbey was toll-free, _i.e._ protected against the local impositions which of old beset all merchandise. "But," says Dr. Cosmo Innes, "the privilege the abbot most valued (and intrinsically the most valuable) was the tenure of all his lands, 'in free regality,' _i.e._ with sovereign power over his people, and the unlimited emoluments of criminal jurisdiction.... Even after the Reformation had passed over abbot and monk, the lord of regality had still the same power, and the Commendator of Arbroath was able to rescue from the King's Justiciar and to 'repledge' into his own court four men accused of the slaughter of William Sibbald of Cair--as dwelling within his bounds (quasi infra bondas ejusdem commorantes). The officer who administered this formidable jurisdiction was the Bailie of the Regality, or 'Justiciar Chamberlain and Bailie'--the Bailiary had become virtually hereditary in the family of Airlie.[433] ... The mair and the coroner of the abbey were the executors of the law within the bounds of the regality, and the best thought it no degradation to hold their lands as vassals of the great abbey."[434] The monks made a harbour and fixed a bell on the Inchcape Rock as a warning to sailors; the abbey was burnt in 1272 and 1380. Referring to its chartulary as a record of the names of the old Scottish families Dr. Cosmo Innes says:-- "Many of our ancient families went down in the War of Independence, and few of our present aristocracy trace back beyond the revolution of families and property which took place under Bruce. The Earls of Angus, Fife, and Strathearn are little more than mythological personages to the modern genealogist.... It is the common case all over Scotland."[435] In connection with the monks he has the following interesting note:-- "It is to be remarked that in Scotland, as in other countries, while the secular or parochial clergy were often the younger sons of good families, the convents of monk and friars were recruited wholly from the lower classes; and yet--not to speak of the daily bread, the freedom from daily care, all the vulgar temptations of such a life in hard times--the career of a monk opened no mean path to the ambitious spirit. The offices of the monastery alone might well seem prizes to be contended for by the son of the peasant or burgess, and the highest of these placed its holder on a level with the greatest of the nobility."[436]