On these tours he made the acquaintance of the leading clergy in the north of England. It is supposed he met Bede, then a young man, at the Court also. This distinguished historian gives various facts regarding the abbot and his movements. He appears to have read Adamnan’s book on the “Holy Places,” though it may be that he never saw the biography, which was a much later production. At least he makes no mention of it anywhere. There were two great questions that then divided the Celtic churches—the celebration of Easter and the tonsure. Through his intercourse with the English clergy in Northumbria, and more especially, it is affirmed, through a lively discussion he had with the learned Ceolfrid, Abbot of Jarrow, Adamnan was persuaded to adopt the Catholic in preference to the Celtic usage in these matters. On his return to Hy the brethren strenuously opposed the innovation, and there was a lasting difference of opinion thus originated by his change of views. For years the abbot, who was pre-eminently a man of peace and unity—and, like the great and pious scholar he was, always open to conviction,—earnestly strove to win them over to what he deemed to be the better method, but did not succeed in his own lifetime, though in after years the change was ultimately adopted. In 692 he visited Ireland, and again in 697, between which years he wrote the book that has made his name and memory immortal. A man of great energy and incessant diligence, he was much on the move convening synods and negotiating affairs. Like his extraordinary patron, he interested himself in politics as well as in religion and literature, of which he was a shining light. Unhappily the law which St. Columba had got enacted, exempting women from fighting in actual warfare, had soon fallen into abeyance, and Adamnan resolved to have it re-enacted. According to a legend in the Leabhar Breac and Book of Lecain, his attention was called to the inhuman custom in the following accidental way. One day he happened to be travelling through the plain of Bregia, says the legend, with his mother on his back, when they saw two armies in deadly conflict. During the heat of the combat his mother’s eye caught sight of a woman dragging another woman by means of an iron reaping-hook from the opposing battalion. The hook was fastened in the unfortunate victim’s breast. Sitting down overcome by the sight, the distressed Ronnat said to her son, “Thou shalt not take me from this spot until thou exemptest women for ever from being in this condition and from excursions and hostings.” Adamnan promised it. And at the important Synod of Tara, convened in 697, with the approval of King Finnachta, the point was carried, involving a mighty social revolution from henceforth in the life and customs of the Gael. For under the old regime, men and women went equally to battle.