ee ee ee 
449 
himself, and united in his person the exercise of the religious 
functions, and the enjoyment of the possessions, of which he 
was, according to precedent, only the trustee or farmer. The 
lineal transmission of the abbatial office in various monasteries, 
which appears in the Irish Annals from the close of the eighth 
century onwards, had its origin in the usurpation by the 
Plebilis progenies, in the several monasteries, of the functions 
of the Ecclesiastica progenies, which would be the necessary 
result of the hereditary occupants omitting to keep up the 
purely spiritual succession. It was this consolidation of spiri- 
tuals and temporals, no doubt, which led to the existence of 
the Abbates laici, of whom Giraldus Cambrensis* speaks as 
existing in Ireland and Wales. Hence, also, grew that me- 
lancholy misappropriation of the endowments of Bangor, of 
which St. Bernard{ so feelingly writes, and of the propor- 
tionate declension of the religious character of that once-famed 
monastery. Hence, too, in a measure, the anomalies in the 
case of Armagh, on which the same writer dwells in terms of 
such heartfelt reprobation.{ 
With respect to Armagh, that church was situate in the 
territory of the descendants of Colla-da-chrioch, one of the 
founders of the Oirghialla, or Oriel race. Daire, who granted 
the site to St. Patrick, was of this tribe, and many of the 
early abbots or bishops of the church were, from the fifth to the 
eighth centuries, members of the Hy-Bresail, and Hy-Niallain 
families, which derived their names from descendants of Colla- 
da-chrioch, and left their designation stamped on the districts 
which they occupied, still preserved in the forms O’Bresail and 
Oneilland, thelatter of which is known as a baronyin the county 
of Armagh. Subsequently, another descendant of Colla, 
named Sinach, founded a family, called from him the Clann 
* Ttinerarium Cambrie, ii. 4. 
+ Vita S. Malachie, cap. 5 (Messingham, Florileg., p. 356). 
{ Ibid., cap.7 (Messingham, pp. 358 b, 359). 
272 
