Patrick de Dunbar, 9th Earl of March, (c. 1285–1369) was a prominent Scottish magnate during the reigns of Robert the Bruce and David II. Early years The earldom, located in East Lothian, and known interchangeably by the names Dunbar and March (so-called Northumbrian or Scottish March), was one of the successor fiefs of Northumbria, an Anglo-Saxon Kingdom and later Earldom. The Dunbar family descended from one branch of ancient Earls of Northumbria, specifically from a branch which also had Scottish royal blood. He is said to have been aged 24 in 1309 at the death of his father, Patrick, 8th Earl of March, who had been one of the Competitors for the Crown of Scotland in 1291. The 8th Earl's wife, Marjory, daughter of Alexander Comyn, Earl of Buchan, was also descended from King Donald III. Bannockburn to Durham After the Battle of Bannockburn, Patrick de Dunbar gave sanctuary and quarter to the English King Edward II at the fortress of Dunbar Castle, on the east coast of Scotland between Edinburgh and Berwick-upon-Tweed, and managed to effect the king's escape by means of a fishing boat whereby that monarch was transported back to England. The earl afterwards made his peace with his cousin Robert the Bruce, and was present at the parliament held at Ayr on 26 April 1315, when the succession to the Crown of Scotland was settled. In 1318 he assisted in retaking Berwick-upon-Tweed from the English, at which time he is noted as Sheriff of Lothian. In 1320 he was one of those nobles who signed the Declaration of Arbroath sent to Pope John XXII asserting the independence of Scotland. Laing relates a charter of a Precept originally written in Norman-French by Patrick de Dunbar, Earl of March, to Sir Robert Lauder of Quarrelwood, for heritable sasine of the reversion of the lands of Whitelaw within the Earldom of Dunbar, plus 10 livres yearly from the mill of Dunbar, and the farms and issues of the granter's said town (ville) of Dunbar, according to the terms of charters to the grantee. Dated at Berwick-upon-Tweed, 20 October 1324. Sometime after 1331 the Bishop of Durham complained to the Regency in Scotland that the village of Upsettlington, on the Scottish side of the River Tweed west of Norham, belonged to the See of Durham and not the Earl of Dunbar, who had seized it. The King of England now