Robert de Comines
Robert de Comines | |
|---|---|
| Died | 28 January 1069 Durham, County Durham, England |
| Title | Earl of Northumbria |
| Term | 1068–1069 |
Robert de Comines (died 28 January 1069) (also Robert de Comines, Robert de Comyn) was briefly Earl of Northumbria.
Life
His name suggests that he originally came from Comines, then in the County of Flanders, and entered the following of William the Conqueror.
He was sent to the north as earl from 1068 to 1069 after the deposition of Gospatric. He reached Durham with 700 men, where the bishop, Æthelwine, warned him that an army was mobilised against him. He ignored the warning and, on 28 January 1069, the rebels converged on Durham and killed many of his men in the streets, eventually setting fire to the bishop's house in which Robert had taken refuge and Robert died.[1]
After this attack, Æthelwine turned against the Normans and gathered an army in Durham before marching on York, leading to the Harrying of the North in retaliation by King William's army.
Issue
Robert de Comines could be the father of:[2]
- John de Comyn (died c. 1135), killed during The Anarchy, married the daughter and co-heiress of Adam Giffard of Fonthill, had issue, and;
- William de Comyn (Cumin) (died c. 1158), Lord Chancellor to David I of Scotland, disputed Bishop of Durham (1141–1143) and Archdeacon of Worcester in 1125 and 1157.
Notes
- ^ Creighton 1887.
- ^ Paul, James Balfour (1904–1914). The Scots peerage : founded on Wood's ed. of Sir Robert Douglas's Peerage of Scotland; containing an historical and genealogical account of the nobility of that kingdom. Robarts - University of Toronto. Edinburgh : D. Douglas.
Sources
- Creighton, Mandell (1887). . In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 11. London: Smith, Elder & Co. p. 440.
- Stenton, Frank M. Anglo-Saxon England. 3rd ed. Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1971.