Danes, Saxons and Normans; or, Stories of our ancestors

by John G. Edgar

When Vaulcher, accompanied by a numerous train of Norman knights, reached York, Cospatrick presented himself, and conducted the new bishop to Durham. Perhaps, by this attention to Vaulcher, Cospatrick hoped to escape such a fate as had befallen every other Saxon of high rank. But if so, he was mistaken. Between the Norman king and the Saxon earl no real confidence existed. Every movement in Northumberland hostile to the Normans had exposed Cospatrick to suspicion; and, after having received Malcolm's homage, William, thinking he could dispense with the aid of the grandson of Uchtred, alleged that he had taken part in the murder of Robert Comine and in the siege of York, and formally deprived him of his earldom.

Cospatrick was now at his wits' end. Mortified at his own reverses, and grieving at the oppression under which his countrymen were labouring, but against which it seemed vain to struggle single-handed, he left England and passed over to Flanders, to which the Saxons still looked with hope of aid. But all efforts proved vain; and he returned to die in poverty on the verge of the great northern province which he had lately ruled.

It would seem that Cospatrick had, by advising the flight of the bishop from Durham, lost favour with the clergy, and that they used all their efforts to terrify him with threats of the wrath of St. Cuthbert. An aged priest of Durham, while in Holy Island, professed to have had a dream, in which he saw a great Northumbrian thane, who had maltreated the bishop and his company during their flight, suffering the torments of hell, and in which St. Cuthbert appeared denouncing woes against Cospatrick. This dream derived importance from the circumstance of the Northumbrian thane having died at the very time; and when related to Cospatrick, now grown old and infirm, it caused him much trouble of spirit. Indeed, he is said to have forthwith taken the shoes from his feet, and set out on a pilgrimage to Holy Island, to propitiate St. Cuthbert by prayers and offerings.

After his pilgrimage to Holy Island, Cospatrick found rest for a time at Norham, on the Tweed. At that place, weary with adversity and woe, he soon felt himself sinking under his infirmities. At length, sick unto death, he bethought him of religious consolation, and intimated his wish to have the spiritual aid of Aldwin and Turgot, two monks in whose piety and prayers he had great confidence.

At Melrose—not on the spot occupied by the magnificent ruins of that great abbey, to which Sir Walter Scott has, in our day, given so wide a fame, but in a flat peninsula, described by Bede as "almost inclosed by the windings of the river Tweed"—the Culdees had, in the seventh century, erected a religious house. After flourishing for two hundred years, this edifice had suffered at the hand of King Kenneth, and gradually dwindled down to a chapel sacred to St. Cuthbert. In this chapel Aldwin and Turgot were "living in poverty and contrite in spirit for the sake of Christ." On receiving Cospatrick's message, these holy men hurried down the Tweed, eager to comfort the expiring sinner.

On reaching Norham the monks found the Saxon earl loudly lamenting his shortcomings, and expressing penitence for his sins, and they confessed him with all the ceremonies usual on such occasions. Before their departure he gave them two dorsals, or pieces of tapestry which were hung against walls as screens for the back, and begged that, in whatever place the monks might chance to take rest, they would hang the dorsals up in memory of him. This scene over, Cospatrick yielded up his breath.

It was destined that the posterity of this great Saxon, who passed his last days hovering between two countries, in neither of which he could find a home, and who died in misery, and with lamentations on his lips, should exercise the very highest authority in centuries then to come. He left two sons. One of these was Cospatrick, founder of the House of Dunbar, whose chiefs were so great in war and peace; the other was Dolfin, male ancestor of the Nevilles, who became famous for making and unmaking kings.

Meanwhile, Cospatrick was laid at rest in the porch of the church of Norham. In the chancel of that ancient edifice, a recumbent effigy, in the decorated style of the fourteenth century, when his descendants on both sides of the Tweed were in all their glory, still recalls his memory, when the places that once knew them know them no more—when the castle of Dunbar is desolate, and when Raby no longer owns a Neville as its lord.