History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 58

The device is a strange one, rare in heraldry. It seems to have arisen out of the
chequers of Vermandois. The connection with Vermandois is important because
Harelbeke, the first seat of the counts of Flanders, was old Vermandois territory. When
Count Baldwin I moved his seat of government to Gent about 1160, he discarded the
Vermandois colours for his own famous black lion on a shield of gold.
The first Campbell of whom we have note bore the thoroughly Flemish name of
Erkenbald, written in Scotland as Archibald and translated into Gaelic as Gillespic, or
“servant of the Church”. Gillespic Campbell married Eva, daughter and heiress of Paul
O’Dwin, the native lord of Lochow. At that time the western part of the country was not
in the hands of the king. Norwegians of Orcadian descent held parts of it, and the rest
was controlled by Somerled, lord of Argyll. It was not until the end of the 13th century,
when the Norwegian threat had been pushed back, that the Campbell name began to
appear in official documents of the region. Up till then, Gillespic Campbell and his
heirs might have kept a discreet profile in the west until the quarrel with the men of
Lorn in the 1290s, which the Campbells won at the cost of the death in 1294 of their
chief and hero, Colin Campbell or Cailean Mor. His son, Sir Neil Campbell of Lochow,
married the sister of Robert Bruce.

COMYN
Robert de Comines was made Earl of Northumberland by William the Conqueror in
1069. In 1133, William Comyn, his grandson or great-nephew (the exact relationship is
not known) was appointed High Chancellor of Scotland by David I. One of his
nephews, Richard, received from David’s son, Prince Henry, the lands of Linton
Roderick, in Roxburghshire, which were the first Scottish possessions of this great
family. These men of Combines, who became Coming, Cumin, Cumming, were
Fleming’s.
The town of Comines is nowadays a substantial place on the border between France
and Belgium. In the l1th century it was a small manorial estate in Hainaut belonging to
the Count of St Pal whose surname was Campdavene. The St Pal arms have become
the famous mark of Comyn- William Comyn’s brother Richard married Hextilda, the
granddaughter of Donald Bane, slain in 1097. We know from the Regesta Rerum
Scottorum and other sources that a 13th-century Count of St Pal -- by then not any
longer Campdavene but Chatillon had built for himself “in Inverness that is in Moray a
wonderful ship, so that in it he could boldly cross the sea with the Flemings.

CRAWFORD
The first adequately recorded member of the Crawford (or Crawfurd) family is John,
stepson of Baldwin the Fleming, of Biggar, who was given lands near Crawford which
thereafter became known as Crawfordjohn. Towards the end of the 12th century,
William de Lindsay came into Crawford and made the place impregnable by building
Tower Lindsay.
The Crawford arms are known to have been borne by castellans of Douai. The
labyrinthine inter-relationships of the Flemish nobility in their own country continued
into England and Scotland, and there are other clues to the origin of the Crawford
arms. Baldwin of Biggar is sometimes described, apparently because of his wife, as
Baldwin of Multon. The place is nowadays identified as Moulton in Lincolnshire; its first
known holder the Anglo-Flemish Lambert of Multon, also held estates in the north,
58