Gospatric, Earl of Northumbria

Gospatric was a great-grandson of Æthelred II through his mother, Ealdgyth, and his maternal grandmother, Ælfgifu, who had married Uchtred the Bold.[1][2]

After his victory over Harold Godwinson at Hastings, William of Normandy appointed a certain Copsi or Copsig, a supporter of the late Earl Tostig, who had been exiled with his master in 1065, as Earl of Bernicia in the spring of 1067. Copsi was dead within five weeks, killed by Oswulf, grandson of Uchtred, who installed himself as Earl. Oswulf was killed in the autumn by bandits after less than six months as Earl.[7] At this point, Gospatric, who had a plausible claim to the Earldom given the likelihood that he was related to Oswulf and Uchtred, offered King William a large amount of money to be given the Earldom of Bernicia. The King, who was in the process of raising heavy taxes, accepted.[8]

In early 1068, a series of uprisings in England, along with foreign invasion, faced King William with a dire threat. Gospatric is found among the leaders of the uprising, along with Edgar Ætheling and Edwin, Earl of Mercia and his brother Morcar. This uprising soon collapsed, and William proceeded to dispossess many of the northern landowners and grant the lands to Norman incomers. For Gospatric, this meant the loss of his earldom to Robert Comine and exile in Scotland. King William's authority, apart from minor local troubles such as Hereward the Wake and Eadric the Wild, appeared to extend securely across England.[9]

Gospatric joined the invading army of Danes, Scots, and Englishmen under Edgar the Aetheling in the next year. Though the army was defeated, he afterwards was able, from his possession of Bamburgh castle, to make terms with the conqueror, who left him undisturbed till 1072. The widespread destruction in Northumbria known as the Harrying of the North relates to this period.

In 1072 William the Conqueror stripped Gospatric of his Earldom of Northumbria,[10] and he replaced him with Siward's son Waltheof, 1st Earl of Northampton.

Gospatric fled into exile in Scotland and not long afterwards went to Flanders. When he returned to Scotland he was granted the castle at "Dunbar and lands adjacent to it" and in the Merse by King Malcolm Canmore, his cousin.[11] This earldom without a name in the Scots-controlled northern part of Bernicia would later become the Earldom of Dunbar.

Gospatric did not long survive in exile according to Roger of Hoveden's chronicle:

[N]ot long after this, being reduced to extreme infirmity, he sent for Aldwin and Turgot, the monks, who at this time were living at Meilros, in poverty and contrite in spirit for the sake of Christ, and ended his life with a full confession of his sins, and great lamentations and penitence, at Ubbanford, which is also called Northam, and was buried in the porch of the church there.

Gospatric was the father of three sons,[10] and several daughters:[10]

• Dolfin, oldest son, received from Malcolm the government of Carlisle. Dolfin has also been identified with Dolfin de Bradeley and is believed to be the progenitor of the Bradley, Staveley, De Hebden, and Thoresby families.
• Gospatric who was killed at the battle of the Standard in 1138.
• Waltheof, Lord of Allerdale and Abbot of Crowland
• Ethelreda, who married Duncan II of Scotland, the son of King Malcolm Canmore.
• Matilda married Dolfin, son of Aylward[12]
• Gunnilda, married Orm of Workington, son of Ketil [13]
• Octreda, married Waldeve, son of Gillemin [14]

• Under the alternative spelling Cospatrick, he appears as a major character in Nigel Tranter's 1979 historical novel Margaret the Queen.
• Gospatric is one of the central characters of the novel Warriors of the Dragon Gold by Ray Bryant. The author employs the version that he is the youngest son of Earl Uchtred, so he is named Gospatric Uchtredsson in the book.

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article Gospatric.

• "Gospatric" . Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.
• Clan Dunbar
• Barrow, G.W.S., The Kingdom of the Scots. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2003. ISBN 0-7486-1803-1
• Fletcher, Richard, Bloodfeud: Murder and Revenge in Anglo-Saxon England. London: Penguin, 2003. ISBN 0-14-028692-6
• Forte, Angelo, Oram, Richard, & Pedersen, Frederik, Viking Empires. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-82992-5
• Freeman, E. A. (1876). "THE EARLDOM OF GOSPATRIC". The History of the Norman Conquest of England (2nd ed.). Oxford: Clarendon Press. pp. 745–747.
• Higham, N.J., The Kingdom of Northumbria AD 350-1100. Stroud: Sutton, 1993. ISBN 0-86299-730-5
• Stenton, Frank M., Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973. ISBN 0-19-280139-2

• Gospatric 1 at Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England