The western towers or adjuncts, already mentioned (see Fig. 567), were structures of considerable importance, that on the south-west being a very strong keep, about 34 feet by 32 feet, with walls 9 to 10 feet thick, strengthened by great buttresses. It was about 54 feet in height to the parapet, and 70 feet to the cape house roof. This structure is believed to have been built about the middle of the fourteenth century. Those who know anything of our pele towers can easily understand how much the cathedral was marred by the loss of such a characteristic feature. The other structure which stood at the north-west angle was of about the same size, but was considerably higher, being 118 feet to the parapet, and was surmounted by a lead-covered spire. Both the above adjuncts were taken down in 1846. The ancient monuments in the cathedral are comparatively few, those which survive being all of the sixteenth and later centuries. Two of these are seen in Figs. 588 and 590, which show that the design of that period is well represented. Another of these sixteenth century monuments is shown in Fig. 606, erected in memory of the barons of the House of Mynto. This monument is noteworthy from its possessing one of the few examples of old brasses in Scotland. The brass (Fig. 607) represents one of the barons in armour kneeling and looking towards the sun, surrounded with rays in the upper corners. BRECHIN CATHEDRAL, FORFARSHIRE. The Bishoprics of Brechin and Dunblane were founded towards the close of the reign of King David I. from the remains of the old Pictish Bishopric of Abernethy. Although a religious establishment had existed at Brechin previously, it had no claim to represent an old Columban monastery. The earliest notice of Brechin is that in the Pictish chronicle which narrates that King Kenneth, son of Malcolm, who reigned from 971 to 995, gave the great town of Brechin to the Lord. The dedication of the church to the Holy Trinity also indicates a comparatively late date. This church, like many others founded after King Kenneth Macalpin’s restoration of the Irish priests in the middle of the ninth century, emanated from the Irish Church, and was assimilated in character to the Irish monasteries. To this connection is, no doubt, attributable the famous round tower which still exists at Brechin. The next notices of Brechin occur in the reign of David I. In the early part of his reign a charter to the Church of Deer is witnessed by “Leot, Abbot of Brechin,” and a later charter is witnessed by “Samson, Bishop of Brechin.” The abbot had probably, in the interval, become the bishop, while the abbey was secularised and passed into the possession of a lay abbot, and a community of Keledei under a prior. These formed the chapter of the diocese till they were superseded by a regular cathedral chapter. In 1218 the Keledei are distinguished from the chapter, and in 1248 they entirely disappear.[71]