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Niall Livingston, ‘by the grace of God’ Coarb of St Moluag, Abbot of Lismore and Baron of Bachuil, holds ‘the Apostle of the Picts’ St Moluag’s Great Staff, on his ancestral lands on Lismore near St Moluag’s Cathedral with, behind, the Hill of Fire where the Kings of the Western Picts were cremated. Inset are St Moluag and Bachuil House.
IT IS claimed to be Britain’s oldest aristocratic title and church office – older than the Archbishop of Canterbury, dating back to a Celtic saint who founded a monastery on the Isle of Lismore in the Dark Ages – and the only title, besides the Queen’s, granted ‘by the grace of God’.