General Notes

REFN: 1148AN
REFN: P1148
Married his cousin, Ada (Dunbar), daughter of Sir Patrick, fifth Earl of
Dunbar.
William gave to the monastery of Coldstream several lands p ro salute
animae suae et M. Comitissae uxoris meae, and also to the monastery of
Kelso; who his first Countess was is not known; died before 1256.
[From History of Dunbar Hume and Dundas from Drummond's Noble British
Families, Wil liam Pickering, London 1846]
THE Homes are among the oldest and most celebrate d of the historical
families of Scotland. Their founder was descended from th e Earls of
Dunbar and March, who sprung from the Saxon kings of England and t he
princes of Northumberland. After the conquest of that country by William
of Normandy, Cospatrick, the great Earl of Northumberland, and several
other Saxon nobles connected with the northern counties, fled into
Scotland in the year 1066, carrying with them Edgar Atheling, the heir of
the Saxon line, an d his two sisters, Margaret and Christina. Malcolm
Canmore, who married the P rincess Margaret, bestowed on the expatriated
noble the manor of Dunbar, and broad lands in the Merse and the Lothians.
Patrick, the second son of the thi rd Earl of Dunbar, inherited from his
father the manor of Greenlaw, and havin g married his cousin Ada, daughter
of the fifth Earl by his wife, a natural d aughter of William the Lion,
obtained with her the lands of Home (pronounced Hume), in Berwickshire,
from which the designation of the family was taken. T he armorial bearings
of his ancestors, the Earls of Dunbar, which were a whit e lion on a red
field, were assumed by him on a green field for a difference, referring
to his paternal estate of Greenlaw.
Under the protection of their potent kinsman, the De Homes flourished and
extended their possessions, and kept vigilant ‘watch and ward’ on the
Eastern Marches against the incursions of the Northumbrian freebooters.
One of their chiefs, a Sir John De Home, was so conspicuous for his
successful forays across the Border, always fighting in a white jacket,
that he obtained from the English the sobriquet of ‘Willie with the White
Doublet.’ The son of this redoubtable Border chief acquired t he estate of
Dunglass (from which the second title of the family is taken) by his
marriage to the heiress of Nicholas Pepdie, in the reign of Robert III.
The second son of this couple was the founder of the warlike family of
Wedd erburn, from which the Earls of Marchmont are descended.
Hitherto the De Homes had acknowledged as their feudal lords the Earls of
Dunbar and March, the he ads of the great house from which they sprung,
who, from their vast possessio ns and their strong castle of Dunbar, on
the eastern Border, having the keys of the kingdom at their girdle, as
they boasted, were among the most powerful nobles in the kingdom. Partly
from ambition, partly, it would appear, from a hereditary fickleness of
character, these barons were noted for the frequenc y with which they
changed sides in the wars between England and Scotland. The eleventh Earl
was in the end unfairly deprived of his earldom, castles, and estates by
James I., towards the middle of the fifteenth century, in pursuanc e of
his policy to break down the power of the great nobles. As some
compen sation for this treatment, the King conferred upon him the title of
Earl of B uchan, but he indignantly refused to accept of the honour, and
sought an asyl um in England, from which he never afterwards returned. His
father, the tenth Earl of Dunbar and March, who was one of the heroes of
Otterburn, in consequ ence of the manner in which the contract of marriage
between his daughter and the Duke of Rothesay was broken off (see THE
D0UGLASES), renounced his alleg iance for a time to his sovereign; the De
Homes, his kinsmen, abandoned his b anner, and fought against him and
Harry Percy at the sanguinary battle of Hom ildon, where their chief, SIR
ALEXANDER HOME, w