Under the strong pressure exerted by monastic expansion the governmental character of episcopacy became attenuated. This was especially the case in Ireland and in those churches which owed their foundation to Irish missions. The multiplication of bishops tended to degrade the office. It is impossible to read the accounts of monastic rule as developed by St. Bridget at Kildare and by the Irish mission at Iona, and of the mechanical and subsidiary part which the bishops were called upon to play in the drama, without being aware of the subversion of one of the fundamental marks of episcopacy. The present writer has found but slight evidence of this disastrous policy in Wales and Brittany. There the abbot-bishop is seen as the ruler of a monastery or of a tribe. Innumerable monasteries had no bishop at all. The presence of a bishop gave to the monastery the elements of permanence and priority. The Breton and Welsh monastery-bishoprics have in many instances survived as bishoprics up to the present time solely, as it would seem, owing to their early episcopal character. The distinction between the Irish and British conception of episcopacy must be borne in mind when we attempt to reconstruct the ecclesiastical institutions of Cornwall. It has been shown that the relation between Cornwall and Brittany was that of mother and daughter. Between Wales and Cornwall the relation, though probably less close, was far closer than that between Ireland and Cornwall. It is therefore more than probable that while the abbot-bishop was everywhere a distinguishing feature of Celtic Christianity there was here (in this county) no such perversion of the episcopal office as to give rise to a body of _episcopi vagantes_ of whom we read in connection with Ireland and Irish missions.[51] That Cornwall possessed bishops is certain, and that they ruled monasteries is equally certain, diocesan bishops being, during the period under consideration, practically unknown to the Celtic world. History helps us little as regards Cornwall. We know that in A.D. 664 two British bishops (duobus de Brittonum gente episcopis), whom Mr. Haddan considers to have been Cornish, assisted Wini, the Saxon bishop of Wessex, in the consecration of St. Chad.[52]