Family records of the Bruces and the Cumyns

HISTORY OF THE CUMYNS FROM THE CONQUEST. 393
immediately set open their gates and submitted themselves to his mercy. The
chief instigator of their disloyalty was ' Githa', mother of King Harold, and
sister to Sweyne, King of Denmark.
" But fortune to Cumine was not so favourable in the north, nor himself so
circumspect as valiant ; for, lying securely as he thought, in the citie of Durham,
he was, on the sudden, surprised in the night by Edgar ^Etheling and his
followers, when Robert and his 700 Normans were slain, only one escaping, who
brought the bloody news thereof to King William, which happened in the third
year of his reign, and in the year of Christ 1068-69, January 28. The depth of
winter notwithstanding, William posted to the north, whose only terror daunted
all further attempts ; so that, taking some of the authors of the rebellion, he cut
off both their hands, and some their heads — conceiving, thereupon, more hatred
against the English — and in that spleen of displeasure he returned to London."
Upon the death of Robert Cumine, Cospatrick, son of Maldred by " Algitha," 1069.
daughter of " Uchtred" (who had been Earl of Northumberland in the reign of
Canute), bought the earldom from King William ; but on its being soon after 1070.
discovered that he had countenanced the murder of Robert Cumine, he was
obliged to fly from the wrath of King William, and took refuge with Malcolm
III., King of Scotland, who made him " Earl of Dunbar and the Marches," and
gave him that debatable land to defend, and to supply his followers with food.
Cospatrick's race still exists in the Dunbars and Dundases, although there is no
longer a " Counte des Marches d'Ecosses " — though, oddly enough, he who held
that title by lineal descent from Cospatrick in 1400, claimed cousinship with
Henry IV. of England through the " blude of the Cummyn," Henry claiming
alike descent. — See Appendix.
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