At the time when Harold reigned at Westminster, when Tostig was tempting the King of Norway to invade England, and when William the Norman was preparing that mighty armament the accounts of which filled the minds of the Saxons with dismay and alarm, without rousing them to preparations for a patriotic resistance, there might have been seen, in the north of England, riding somewhat discontentedly to the Northumbrian earl's court at York, or stalking about the woods of Raby, with a spear in his right hand, a hawk on his left wrist, and greyhounds running at his heels, a young man with fair face and blue eyes, whose dress was the short garment, reaching to mid-knee, of the Normans, but whose moustache, long hair, and speech, strongly tinctured with the "burr" which the Danes introduced into Northumberland, indicated, in a manner not to be mistaken, his genuinely English birth. He was a Saxon thane of high consideration, and was known as Cospatrick. Frank and hasty was this personage, ever too ready to trust foes and to quarrel with friends; but with all his faults, he was destined to play in his own day a conspicuous part in the affairs of struggling England north of the Humber, and to figure in history as male ancestor of the two mighty mediæval families of Neville and Dunbar. The father of Cospatrick was Malred, the son of Crinian; and his mother was Algitha, daughter of the great Uchtred, Earl of Northumberland. Moreover, the blood of the Saxon kings ran in Cospatrick's veins; for Uchtred had married Elfgiva, King Ethelred's daughter; and of that marriage Algitha was the issue. It was natural that, with such a pedigree, Cospatrick should be somewhat discontented; that he should look with discontent on the domination of the House of Godwin; that, as grandson of Uchtred, he should grow indignant at the sight of Tostig figuring as Earl of Northumberland; that, as great-grandson of Ethelred, he should boil with indignation at the sight of Harold on the throne of his young kinsman, the Atheling.