for twenty-four pounders; and, lately, four iron balls were found, as large as that used for thirty-six pounders, in an apartment on the south-east side of the castle.

The time of the erection of Dunbar Castle cannot be precisely ascertained, but it was evidently built by the Picts at an early period of the Christian era. When these adventurers emigrated from Germany, they fixed their dominion in the Lothians, from which the latter acquired the appellation of Pictland. While the Scots delighted in hunting and war, the Picts, skilled in the arts which have contributed to the comforts of life, began to build houses and cultivate the ground. As a matter of necessity, their first consideration would be, to build fortresses, to defend them from the aggressions of the Scots, Saxons and Britons; and as Dunbar was stampt by nature a place of strength, and hung on the borders of the hostile country of the Saxons in Berwickshire, it is probable that a fort was built here in the fifth century, if not at a still earlier period.

Betwixt the years 835-9, Kenneth I. of Scotland, having totally defeated the Picts in a pitched battle, extirpated the inhabitants, and seizing the country, divided it amongst his nobles. The fortress, now styled the Castle of Dunbar, was awarded to Bar, a valiant captain of the Scots, whose counsel and service had materially assisted in the subjugation of the conquered nation: hence, according to Holinshed, it was called Dunbar; i. e. the Castle of Bar.*

Chalmers, the learned author of Caledonia, supposes Dun-bar in the British, and Dunbar in the Gaelic, to signify the fort on the height, top, or extremity; and Lord Hailes translates it, the top-cliff.

Bar was a person of considerable consequence in the army. Before acquiring the Pictish castle of Dunbar, he led the advanced division at the battle of Scoon, when Drusken, king of the Picts, was slain, and his followers nearly extirpated.

The next act of Kenneth, after destroying the Pictish people, and partitioning the country, was to. change the names of the places; so that were we even in possession of records anterior to 835, it would not be easy to recognise the features of Dunbar before that period.

Holinshed further informs us, on the authority of Boece, that a noble house or family had descended from this officer, and bore his local appellation; accordingly, in 961, we find the men of Lothian, under the captains Dunbar and Græme, discomfiting the Danes on the fields of Cullen; and, in 1005, we meet with Patrick de Dunbar, under Malcolm II. engaged against the Danish invaders in the north, at Murthlake, a town of Mar, where, in the brunt of the battle, along with Kenneth, thane of the Isles, and Grim, thane of Strathern, he was slain.

Here closes all that we have been able to glean of the history of the first family of the surname of Dunbar. It appears that Patrick, Thane of Lothian, had no issue, for Malcolm III. bestowed the manor of Dunbar, &c. on Cospatrick,* the expatriated earl of Northumberland, as will be noticed in the following chapter.

* Cospatrick, or, as he is sometimes styled, Gospatrick, seems a contraction of Comes Patricius.-Sir W. Scott.

CHAPTER II.

Into the kinrick of Bealm,

There winn'd a lord of that realm:
He was the greatest of renown,

Except the king that wore the crown.

HIST. OF SIR GREY-STEEL.

The Earls of Dunbar.

COSPATRICK, the father of the noble family of Dunbar, was the son of Maldred, the son of Crinan, by Algatha, daughter and heiress of Uthred prince of Northumberland, by Elgiva, daughter of Ethelrid king of England.

After the conquest of England by William the Norman, in 1066, Cospatrick and Merleswain, with other nobles of the highest rank in the north of England, consulting their own liberty and safety, fled to Scotland, carrying with them Edgar Atheling, the heir of the Saxon line, his mother Algatha, with his sisters Margaret and Christina, and sheltered themselves under the hospitality of Malcolm III.

In 1069, Cospatrick accompanied Edgar into England, and, assisted by the Danes, joined by forces from Scotland, took the city and castle of York, and put the garrison to the sword; but the same year, after being deserted by the Danes, and the resources of the Scots exhausted, he submitted to the English. William incensed, however, at the repeated insurrec

tions of the fierce hordes of the north, seized the sword and the brand, and laid waste their country from York to Durham.* But scarcely had the conqueror retired from the Northumbrian territories, when Malcolm entering England by way of Cumberland, made great devastations along the course of the Tees; and while Malcolm was thus employed, Cospatrick ravaged Cumberland; and, returning with great spoils, shut himself up in Bamborough's " towers, that shade the wave-worn steep."

Cospatrick now claimed the earldom of Northumberland in right of his ancestors; and purchased the king's confirmation of his title with a great sum of money. But in 1072, William, after his return from

* In a legend, which Simeon of Durham, or Turgot, relates on i this occasion, Cospatrick is charged with having advised the flight of the bishop and his clergy, and with having taken advantage of their absence by carrying off the precious ornaments of their church. An ancient priest of Durham, one of the company who fled to Holy Island, told Turgot a dream, in which he beheld a great Northumbrian baron, who had maltreated bishop Egelwin and his ! company in their flight, suffering the torments of hell; and, in the same dream, he had heard St Cuthbert denouncing woe against the earl for his sacrilege on the church. The inspiration of this dream was read, by the sudden death of the person who was seen in the fiery abyss; and when Turgot related this story to Cospatrick, after his retreat to Scotland, the earl was seized with such horror, ' that he immediately set out on a pilgrimage, on his naked feet, to the Holy Isle; seeking forgiveness from the saint by prayers and gifts. Turgot adds, that Cospatrick, after his impious conduct, was never in the same honourable state as before: but was expelled from his earldom, and, during the rest of his life, underwent other privations.

an expedition against Scotland, deprived Cospatrick of his earldom, under pretence that he had instigated -and assisted the murderers of Cuming, the former governor, as also those who had destroyed the Normans at York. The expatriated earl again sought -refuge in Scotland; but as peace had just been con-cluded with England, he was necessitated to repair to Flanders. On his return, which soon took place, Malcolm Canmore bestowed on him the manor of Dunbar, and many fair lands in the Merse and Lo

-thian.

Cospatrick next signalised himself in an expedition against a formidable banditti, that infested the south-east borders of Scotland. Having attacked -them, he slew six hundred, hanged eighty, and présented the head of their commander to the king; who, to reward: his valour created him earl of the -Merse, or March; and the lands of Cockburnspath were bestowed on him, by the singular tenure, of -clearing East Lothian and the Merse of robbers, and on his bearing a banner whereon a bloody head of a felon was painted:*

Besides these lands of the Merse and Lothian, his posterity possessed the barony of Bengeley in Northumberland, on the service of being in-borough and out-borough between England and Scotland," -saith Camden; or to observe the ingress or egress of those who travelled between the two kingdoms.

*Grose's Scots Ant. i. Lord Hailes considers this to be a

fiction