590. The place of meeting was no longer the interdicted
Tara, but for the monarch's convenience a site farther
north was chosen--the hill of Drom-Keth, in the present
county of Deny. Here came in rival state and splendour
the Princes of the four Provinces, and other principal
chieftains. The dignitaries of the Church also attended,
and an occasional Druid was perhaps to be seen in the
train of some unconverted Prince. The pretensions of the
mother-country to impose a tax upon her Colony, were
sustained by the profound learning and venerable name of
St. Colman, Bishop of Dromore, one of the first men of
his Order.

When Columbkill "heard of the calling together of that
General Assembly," and of the questions to be there
decided, he resolved to attend, notwithstanding the stern
vow of his earlier life, never to look on Irish soil
again. Under a scruple of this kind, he is said to have
remained blindfold, from Ms arrival in Ms fatherland,
till his return to Iona. He was accompanied by an imposing
train of attendants; by Aidan, Prince of Argyle, so deeply
interested in the issue, and a suite of over one hundred
persons, twenty of them Abbots or Bishops. Columbkill
spoke for his companions; for already, as in Bede's time,
the Abbots of Iona exercised over all the clergy north
of the Humber, but still more directly north of the Tweed,
a species of supremacy similar to that which the successors
of St. Benedict and St. Bernard exercised, in turn, over
Prelates and Princes on the European Continent.