priests who ask their service, and hearing confessions, either as ordinary or extraordinary confessors to convents or other religious communities. Scotland The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle dated to 565 A.D., relates that Columba, Masspreost (Mass-Priest), "came to the Picts to convert them to Christ". St Columba (Columbanus, Colmcille) was the disciple of St. Finnian, who was a follower of St. Patrick. Both Columba and Finnian embraced the regular life which Patrick had established in Ireland. Tradition places the first landing of Columba on leaving Ireland at Oronsay, and Fordun (Bower) notices the island as "Hornsey, ubi est monasterium nigrorum Canonicorum, quod fundavit S. Columba" (where is the monastery of Black Canons which St. Columba founded), though this is clearly anachronistic. According to Smith and Ratcliff there was a homogeneity among the Augustinian houses in Scotland before 1215 which had much to do with King David I who gave them a common economic policy, and Robert, Bishop of St Andrews, himself a former Augustinian canon at the Priory of St. Oswalds, at Nostell and the founding prior of Scone, united the houses of canons through his patronage and by engaging them as his advisors. At the time of the Reformation the chief houses were: Scone, founded by King Alexander I of Scotland. Tradition says that the Culdees were at Scone before Alexander brought canons regular from Nostall Priory in 1115. St. Andrews, the Metropolitan see of Scotland, founded by Angus, King of the Picts. The church was at first served by Culdees, but in 1144 Bishop Robert, former Augustinian prior of Scone, established there members of his own order. The prior was mitred and could pontificate. Holyrood, which King David I founded in 1128 for canons regular. This famous abbey was burnt down at the instigation of John Knox in 1544. Many of the houses which claimed to have been founded by St. Columba remained in the possession of canons regular till the Reformation, including Oronsay and an alleged foundation at an unidentified locality in the Western Isles named as Crusay. Ireland The Augustinian canons regular established 116 religious houses in Ireland in the period of church reform early in the 12th century. The role of the Augustinian Canons within the population was the main reason for their being the largest single order in Ireland. The canons regular did not practise the isolation from the general population operated by the Cistercians, and participated