SIR
WILLIAM
WALLACE

SIR
WILLIAM
WALLACE

BY
A. F.
MURISON

FAMOUS
SCOTS
SERIES

PUBLISHED BY
CHARLES
SCRIBNER’S SONS
NEW YORK

5

TO
THE MEMORY OF
THE COMRADES AND HELPERS
OF
SIR WILLIAM WALLACE
MEN OR WOMEN
DISTINGUISHED OBSCURE OR NAMELESS

Quod de re publica non desperassent

6

7

PREFACE

‘The ignorance of some otherwise well-informed persons
respecting the claims of Wallace as a national patriot,’
wrote Dr. Charles Rogers, ‘is deplorable.’

The documentary authorities are, indeed, fragmentary,
and exceptionally perplexing. Some are clearly trustworthy;
many are conflicting, dissimulatory, falsified,
false, biassed in all degrees, and full of inference and
hearsay set forth in the guise of indubitable fact. The
researches of English historians—even when they happen
to be Scotsmen—have not yet rendered further investigation
superfluous.

The fact is, that a large critical undertaking must form
the basis of any adequate account of Wallace. In a brief
narrative the writer must resign himself to the simple if
somewhat perilous course of telling his story as it has
shaped itself in his mind during perusal of the available
authorities, with but occasional and slight indications of
the shaping process.

The noble poem of Blind Harry, thanks largely to the
ingenium perfervidum of the minstrel himself, has been
much—we may say wholly—discredited as history. Harry
has been very cavalierly dealt with, however; it is more
by a grin than otherwise that he has been vanquished.8
Stevenson’s tentative protest is here emphasised. For the
present sketch, however, Harry is used rather by way of
illustration than as a source of facts. He is cited without
any claim to credence, except on grounds definitely
specified. But such reservation is provisional, and conditioned
by such rational criticism as may one day yet
be applied. The citations in the text have been conservatively
modernised. All students of Harry’s poem
owe their most grateful acknowledgments to Dr. James
Moir and the Scottish Text Society.

One is reluctant to believe that there are no more
references to Wallace still lying dormant in the muniment
rooms of Scottish families. One is no less reluctant to
suppose that any patriotic Scot would leave a solitary
corner of his muniments unsearched for every possible
glint of light upon the great man that has stood forth for
six centuries, and will in all probability stand forth for ever,
as incomparably the most heroic and most fateful figure
in the history of Scotland—a Hero and a Patriot second
to none in the recorded history of the nations.

9

CONTENTS

11

SIR WILLIAM WALLACE

CHAPTER I
The English Aggression

A most fateful date in the history of Scotland was
the 19th of March 1285–86. In the dusk of that
memorable day, King Alexander III., riding along the
coast of Fife, near Kinghorn, was thrown over a precipice
and killed. He was only in the forty-fifth year of his
age, though in the thirty-seventh year of his reign. If
we take our stand at Kinghorn on the next melancholy
morning, and gaze backwards and forwards on the history
of the country, we shall witness the most impressive
contrast of peace and war that is presented in the annals
of Scotland, or perhaps of any civilised nation in the
world. This awful contrast forms a most essential element
in determining the judgment of history on the
policy of the Scots and of the English kings. At the
death of Alexander, Scotland was a most prosperous
country, steadily advancing in the arts of peaceful life—’more
civilised and more prosperous,’ says Innes, with12
the common assent of historians, ‘than at any period of
her existence, down to the time when she ceased to be
a separate kingdom in 1707.’ The policy of Edward I.,
however motived, was the prime cause of this lamentable
subversion of the tranquillity of a hundred years.

THE PROJECT OF MARRIAGE

The shadows of coming trouble had fallen upon
Scotland before the death of Alexander III. The
family of the King had been swept away by death.
His first queen, Margaret, eldest daughter of Henry III.
and sister of Edward I. of England, had died in 1275.
His younger son, David, had died in 1280. His elder
son, Alexander, who married Margaret, daughter of Guy,
Count of Flanders, in 1282, had died without issue early
in 1283–84. His only daughter, who married Eric II.,
King of Norway, in 1281, had also died early in 1283–84,
leaving a daughter. Alexander was little over forty.
Still there is no assurance of length of days; and if he
should die there would be a minority, probably a
disputed succession, possibly an active revival of the
English claim to over-lordship. In these circumstances,
Alexander at once proceeded to take such precautions
as he could. He summoned a Parliament at Scone on
February 5, 1283–84, and obtained from his nobles
their solemn acknowledgment of Margaret, Princess of
Norway, as heiress of Scotland, failing issue of himself
and of his late son. Towards the end of next year, he
also married a second wife, Joleta (or Iolande), daughter
of the Count de Dreux; but she bore him no child.
Alexander must have often and anxiously reflected upon
the likelihood of a recurrence of such baronial rivalries
as had proved a grave danger to the country during his
own minority. On his tragic death on March 19,
1285–86, the hopes of the nation were left to rest upon
the fragile Maid of Norway.

For a short period the affairs of the kingdom maintained
a placid course. On April 11, 1286, the magnates
assembled at Scone, and selected six of their number
to act as a Council of Regency, with the official13
designation of ‘the Guardians of the Kingdom of Scotland
appointed by the common advice.’ The Bishop of
St. Andrews and the Earls of Fife and Buchan were to
administer the districts north of the Forth; the Bishop
of Glasgow, Comyn of Badenoch, and James the Steward
of Scotland, were to rule the lands south of the Forth.
No question was raised as to the succession of the little
princess, and ostensibly there was every disposition on
the part of the barons to fulfil the solemn pledges they
had made to her grandfather two years before. It may,
however, be open to doubt whether intrigue had not
commenced to operate by the time that Alexander III.
was laid to rest at Dunfermline.

For one thing, there is extant a letter of credence,
dated Dunfermline, March 29, 1286, addressed to King
Edward by the Bishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow,
‘in their own name, and in the name of the clergy,
earls, barons, and all others of the realm of Scotland,
who had been present at the burial of the lord Alexander
of good memory, the late illustrious King of Scotland,’
and commending to Edward’s confidence the two
bearers, the Prior of the Dominicans of Perth and
brother Arnold. The two friars were to deliver an oral
communication, and bring back the King’s answer.
There remains no record of the matter of either message
or reply. It is not easy to suppose that the business
was of no deeper import than formal and complimentary
intercourse. In view of the circumstances, it all but
certainly must have borne reference, in part at least, to
the settlement of the succession. The political record
of the Bishop of St. Andrews is not calculated to disarm
suspicion. Edward, at any rate, appears to have been
satisfied, for he presently embarked for France, and remained
away for more than three years.

Again, a few months later, Bruce of Annandale—ex-Chief-Justice
of England, smarting under his recent
supersession—Bruce and his principal adherents took
quiet action in view of contingencies. On September 20,
at his son’s castle of Turnberry, fourteen Scots nobles—Patrick,
Earl of Dunbar, and three sons; Walter, Earl
of Menteith, and two sons; Bruce, lord of Annandale,14
and two sons; James, Steward (and one of the Guardians)
of Scotland, and John his brother; and Angus, son of
Donald of the Isles, and his son—entered into a stringent
bond, obliging them to give faithful adherence to Richard
de Burgh, Earl of Ulster, and Lord Thomas de Clare
(brother of Gilbert, Earl of Gloucester, Edward’s son-in-law
and Bruce’s brother-in-law), ‘in their affairs.’ The
nature of these affairs is not indicated, neither is there
any other record of them. There is a suggestive clause
saving their fealty to the King of England, and to ‘him
that shall obtain the kingdom of Scotland through blood
relationship with King Alexander of blessed memory,
according to the ancient customs in the Kingdom of
Scotland approved and observed.’ There is no direct
reference to the child queen. It is useless to inquire
what was the business that Richard de Burgh and
Thomas de Clare had on hand or in contemplation.
Plainly the instrument was simply a diplomatic process
of binding all the parties together in support of such
action as Bruce might take on the advice of a majority
of their number, for advancing his pretensions to the
throne of Scotland, when opportunity should serve.
There is nothing to show that Edward ever had knowledge
of this bond.

Somewhere about this time, moreover, Bruce passed
from speculation to action. Balliol, in his pleadings
before Edward in 1291, averred that, in violation of their
oath of fealty to Queen Margaret, ‘Sir Robert Bruce
and the Earl of Carrick, his son, attacked the castle of
Dumfries with fire and arms, and banners displayed, and
against the peace expelled the forces of the Queen, who
held the same. Hence Sir Robert advanced to the
castle of Buittle. He then caused a proclamation to be
made by one Patrick M’Guffock, within the bailiary of
the said castle,’ with the result that good subjects were
driven from the land. ‘Furthermore,’ the allegation
ran, ‘the Earl of Carrick, by the assent and power of
his father, took the Lady of Scotland’s castle of Wigton,
and killed several of her people there.’ A number of
entries in the Exchequer Rolls combine to support
Balliol’s charge, and even to show that the wave of disturbance15
was felt on the eastern seaboard. How Bruce
was brought back to peaceable ways does not appear.

The temporary stir occasioned by Bruce’s eagerness
was the only ripple on the face of affairs for some three
years. Early in 1289, however, Edward seems to have
made up his mind to strengthen his hold on Scotland by
a marriage between the young Queen and Prince Edward
of Wales. The proposed parties, being cousins-german,
were within the degrees prohibited by the canon law;
and on May 8, Edward despatched Sir Otho de Grandison
to Rome, with letters from himself and a petition
from the Prince, soliciting from Pope Nicholas IV. the
necessary dispensation. The idea may have presented
itself to Edward’s mind two years earlier; for on May
27, 1287, he had obtained a Bull from Pope Honorius IV.
permitting him to marry his children to relatives in the
fourth degree of affinity or consanguinity. However
this may be, in April and May 1289, envoys passed to
and fro between Edward and Eric on ‘certain affairs,’
which were no doubt affairs tending in the direction of
the marriage. On November 6, commissioners representing
the three countries concerned met at Salisbury,
and concluded a treaty. Eric was to send the Queen
to England or to Scotland by November 1 next year, free
from matrimonial engagement. If she came to England,
Edward would, on the establishment of security and
peace in Scotland, and on the demand of the Scots
nation, send her to Scotland, in like manner free from
matrimonial engagement, provided ‘the good nation of
Scotland’ gave ‘sufficient and good security’ to Edward
not to marry her without the appointment and advice of
himself and the assent of the King of Norway. The
Scots envoys engaged to establish such order as to
secure the Queen in the quiet enjoyment of her realm.
The preamble of the treaty is framed so as to convey
that Eric was the prime mover in the business. He is
represented as having applied to Edward for aid and
advice, the object being to secure for Edward’s niece
the obedience of her subjects and the free exercise and
enjoyment of her royal powers, after the manner of
other kings in their own kingdoms. On receiving this16
appeal, Edward, in his zeal for the peace of Scotland,
and for the establishment of his niece in her rightful
position, invited the Guardians to send commissioners to
the Salisbury convention. But there can be no doubt
that Edward himself was the prime mover. Eric certainly
was loth to part with his child; he had made no
representation on her behalf to the Scots Guardians, nor
had they indicated any wish to have her in Scotland.
On the other hand, Edward’s project of marriage would
naturally require her presence on this side of the North
Sea; and his influence with Eric was backed by a recent
loan of 2000 marks with easy arrangements for repayment,
which seems not to have been yet discharged. It
may be greatly doubted whether Edward was taking all
this trouble out of disinterested anxiety for the welfare
and royal status of his niece, or for the security of peace
on the English border. The treaty gives no hint that
the Salisbury commissioners had before them the marriage
contemplated by Edward; the terms of the engagement
of the Scots, as well as the absence of an
express statement, would seem to negative the idea.
Sufficient reason may be found in the fact that the dispensation
had not then been granted, as well as in
Edward’s desire to proceed with most cautious steps.
It is to be remarked that not only in the treaty, but also
in the Prince’s petition to the Pope, and in a communication
of Edward’s addressed to the Scottish people on
the same day as the treaty was made, and counselling
the obedience of all to the Guardians, the great object of
the peace and reformation of Scotland is dwelt on with
suspicious emphasis. Sir Otho de Grandison returned
to London on December 31. With the irony of fate, the
dispensation, which had been granted (and acknowledged
handsomely in gold florins) on November 16, did not
arrive in the form of a Bull till October 9, 1290, almost
simultaneously with the arrival of the rumour of the
Queen’s death.

At a conference held at Brigham on March 14, 1290,
the treaty of Salisbury was confirmed. Three days
later, the Guardians, who had now at least been informed
of Edward’s intention and of the dispensation,17
addressed a letter to Edward assenting to the proposed
marriage, and another letter to Eric urging him to send
Margaret at once to England. It may seem strange that
they should not have asked him to send her to Scotland;
but Edward obviously had laid great stress on the alleged
risks of the unsettled condition of the country; his solicitude,
from a family point of view, was not at all unreasonable;
probably enough he had impressed Eric with
anxiety on the same ground; and the Guardians seem
to have had no serious anticipation that their Queen’s
grand-uncle would infringe the international friendship
of a century. The Guardians’ letter to Eric was followed
by one from Edward in the same sense, on April 17.
Already the King’s butler was down at Yarmouth, preparing
and victualling ‘a great ship’ to carry Edward’s
plenipotentiary, Antony Bek, the astute and magnificent
Bishop of Durham, with an imposing retinue, to Norway.
The preparations took forty days; and at length Bek
sailed from Hartlepool on the 9th of May. Bek was an
adept in smoothing the diplomatic path; he distributed
judicious annuities to Norwegian friends to the extent of
£400 a year till the Queen should attain the age of
fifteen. Presumably the grand outfitting of the ship
implies that the Queen was expected to come over in it;
but it returned without her in June. It was not till
September that Eric set out with his daughter. In the
beginning of September, accordingly, Edward again
despatched Bek, this time to Orkney, to meet the Maid.
He was also attentive enough to send an ample variety of
jewels for the Queen’s use. At almost every step in the
proceedings, the records betray his eager haste. The
Guardians exhibited no such fervour; it was not till
October 3 that they accredited their envoys, and already
they had been urged to action by Edward.

Meantime the Guardians had been taking thought
for the security of the kingdom. The negotiations with
Edward issued in the treaty of Brigham on July 18, 1290.
By this treaty it was provided that the laws, liberties, and
customs of Scotland should remain inviolate for ever,
and that the realm should remain separate from, and
entirely independent of, England. No parchment terms18
could have done more to secure independence. There
was, indeed, an insidious saving clause, steadily recurrent,
which reserved such rights as Edward or others might
have; but whether intended to neutralise the specific
provisions or not, it must be regarded as purely formal.

The ardent development of Edward’s care for his
grand-niece and his son ought to have been at least
suggestive. There remain two striking documents, dated
August 28. In one of them, the Guardians agree to
deliver the castles of Scotland under certain conditions
to their Queen and Prince Edward; and in the other,
Edward notifies the Guardians of his appointment of
Bishop Bek to act in concert with them as lieutenant
of the royal couple. For it was incumbent upon him to
respect his oath to maintain the laws of Scotland. He
even appears to have gone so far as to demand the
surrender of the castles to himself, but this demand
the Guardians refused.

The whole of the laborious structure was levelled to the
ground on October 7, when the Bishop of St. Andrews
reported to Edward the rumour of the Queen’s death at
Orkney. The Queen had died on the passage from
‘Norrowa’ o’er the faem.’ The details are unknown. The
very fact, indeed, has been questioned; for a young woman
claiming to be Margaret, and telling a circumstantial
story of her being kidnapped at Orkney on the voyage to
Scotland, was burnt at the stake at Bergen in 1301 as an
impostor. Be this as it may, the luckless Margaret now
passes out of the history of Scotland, leaving a divided
kingdom face to face with the aroused cupidity of a
determined, astute, and unscrupulous neighbour.

THE ASSERTION OF OVER-LORDSHIP.

Who should now succeed Margaret on the Scottish
throne? Fordun relates that Malcolm, the first ‘rex
Scotiae,’ decreed a change in the principle of succession.
This enactment is said to have provided that thenceforth
each king should be succeeded by whoever was, at the
time being, the next descendant; that is, a son or a
daughter, a nephew or a niece, the nearest then living.19
It is not at all unlikely that the disturbance of the
balance of the kingdom by the acquisition of Lothian
may have rendered the substitution of the Teutonic for
the Keltic law of succession expedient, or even necessary.
The claims of Balliol and Bruce alone need to be considered;
and if this law was formally established, the
letter of it would be a strong support to Bruce’s candidature,
whatever the spirit of its intention. For the present
purpose, however, we are not concerned with the validity
of the claims of either competitor, but mainly with the
process whereby the final decision was reached. The
essential point is to discern the real spirit governing the
evolution of events.

The death of Margaret at once urged the competitors
to fresh activity. The Guardians were divided in their
sympathies, and the division no doubt ran deep into the
community. The first overt movement, so far as existing
documents indicate, was made by Bruce. It was an
indirect, tentative operation. Towards the end of the
year (1290), an appeal was preferred to Edward by ‘the
seven earls’ and the community of the realm of Scotland
against the Bishop of St. Andrews and Sir John Comyn
in respect of their action as Guardians. The appellants
asserted their privilege of placing the King of Scotland
on the throne, complained of acts of oppression exercised
by the Guardians on Donald Earl of Mar and the freemen
of Moray, narrated the recognition of Robert Bruce
of Annandale as next heir to the throne by Alexander II.,
and alleged some minor grievances. At this time there
were only four Guardians, the Earl of Fife having been
murdered and the Earl of Buchan having died; and the
two not inculpated, the Steward of Scotland and the
Bishop of Glasgow, were fast friends of Bruce. Mar
and Moray also leant to Bruce’s faction. Evidently
the appeal was promoted in the interests of Bruce, and
with his knowledge, if not positively at his instigation.
There is no record of any answer.

There is a glimpse of still earlier action by Bruce in
the letter of the Bishop of St. Andrews to Edward, reporting
the rumour of the Queen’s death. The rumour
arrived when the Estates were sitting to receive Edward’s20
answer to the refusal to surrender the castles to him.
Bruce, the Bishop says, had not intended to be present,
but, on hearing the rumour, had appeared with a strong
following. His ultimate intentions the Bishop could not
tell. Then follows a significant point. Should it unhappily
prove true that the Queen is dead, the Bishop
urges Edward to come to the marches without delay,
with the view of preventing bloodshed, and of aiding the
faithful of the land to place on the throne the man that
possesses the proper title—meaning, of course, Balliol.
To interpret the Bishop as merely currying favour with
the King is probably a large stretch of charity. He
certainly stood in a small minority in desiring Edward’s
intervention. The chroniclers, indeed, relate how the
community of the realm, impressed by the ancient
friendship between the two kingdoms and the particular
cordiality of Alexander III. and Edward, invited the
English King to arbitrate on the claims of the competitors.
But no such invitation is traceable in the
records, and, on that ground alone, apart from the
strong probabilities, it may safely be believed that such
an invitation was never sent. There was not the least
occasion for it, on either side. It certainly would not
have represented the true feeling of the community of
Scotland; and no doubt Edward was fully aware of the
fact, for, in the whole transaction, he studiously treated
that body with very scant regard.

The Waverley Annalist states that in March 1291, on
the day after Ascension, Edward declared to his nobles,
in the presence of nine of the competitors, who at the
same time submitted their claims to him, that he was
resolved to subdue Scotland as he had recently subdued
Wales. But Edward was now on the peaceful tack of
legal process. The competitors, though mostly great
Scots nobles, were also mostly the liegemen of Edward
for large possessions in England; and not one of them
could dare to claim the throne of Scotland without regard
to Edward’s opinion. It was quite inevitable that every
one of them should submit to his judgment. Besides
their material interests in England, they were of Norman
descent and of Norman upbringing and Norman sympathies,21
and thus they were largely alien to the mass of
the Scottish population. Their interest in Scotland was
little, if anything, more than a matter of land and lordship.
They were quite content to take the kingdom of
Scotland as a bigger fief. It was therefore the most
natural thing in the world for them to leave the decision
of the case in the hands of their liege lord, the King of
England. For the community of Scotland the question
wore a wholly different aspect.

Edward had taken good care not to allow the matter
to slumber through the winter. He had sent forth
his commands to all the religious houses of the land,
requiring them to search diligently in their chronicles,
and to transmit to him speedily extracts of all such
passages as might bear on the relations of England
and Scotland. Such of these extracts as had come to
hand, he caused to be recited before his Parliament
assembled at Norham on May 10. By the mouth of his
Justiciary, Sir Roger le Brabazon, he set forth his solicitude
for the peace of Scotland and his anxiety to do
justice to all, and required the Scots prelates and nobles
to recognise his superiority and direct lordship—a claim
affirmed to be ‘clear, from chronicles found in different
monasteries and other places in England and Scotland,
from other sources of information, from certain documents,
and on most evident reasons.’ The Scots nobles
present, although previously informed of Edward’s intentions,
represented their inability to reply without further
consultation with nobles and others not then present.
The meeting was adjourned till next day, when Bishop
Bek, not Edward personally, announced that they
might take three weeks, at the end of which time
they would be expected to produce any evidence they
might be able to find against the King’s claim of
superiority.

Meantime the returns from the religious houses continued
to pour in. The Scots nobles also must have
exhibited anxiety for the independence of Scotland; for
on May 31 Edward made them a declaration that the
coming of the magnates and the Community of Scotland
to Norham should not be drawn into a precedent in22
prejudice of the liberties of the realm. Then, on
June 2, the Scots nobles assembled on Upsetlington
Green—Holywell Haugh—on the north side of the
Tweed, opposite to Norham Castle. The Bishop of
Bath and Wells, Chancellor of England, with the usual
preliminary flourish about the gracious feelings and
intentions of Edward, informed them that the Kings of
England from the remotest times had held the over-lordship
of Scotland. They themselves, he pointed out,
had not even now brought forward any evidence in
disproof of Edward’s claim. Edward, therefore, in the
exercise of his right, would proceed to investigate and
decide the rights of the claimants. Eight of these,
who were present, formally acknowledged Edward’s
supremacy.

Next day the proceedings were resumed on the
English side of the Tweed, in the parish church of
Norham. Balliol, who had been absent on the previous
day, now made his acknowledgment. The Bishop of
Bath and Wells advanced Edward’s pretensions another
step; he explained that Edward did not construe the
possession and exercise of his right of over-lordship as
excluding his hereditary right of lordship. Then, as to
the mode of proceeding towards the determination of
the claims of the competitors, Edward suggested that
the chief claimants, Balliol and Bruce, should each, on
behalf of themselves and such other competitors as
should agree, nominate forty arbiters or auditors, the
King himself being content to nominate twenty-four,
more or less, to hear the evidence and to report to
him, whereupon he would give his decision. The one
hundred and four arbiters were appointed accordingly on
July 5; and next day they fixed the hearing to take place
at Berwick, the King himself appointing August 2 as the
date.

The 11th of June had been a memorable day. The
Guardians formally resigned the kingdom and its castles
to Edward as over-lord. The Bishop of Caithness, on
the nomination of the Scots nobles, was appointed by
Edward Chancellor of Scotland; and with him was
associated the King’s own clerk, Sir Walter de Amundesham23
(Amersham), who was presently (August 18)
succeeded by Adam de Botingdon. Two days later,
Sir Brian Fitz Alan was associated with the Guardians in
Edward’s interest; the first batch of Scots prelates and
barons swore fealty on the Holy Evangels; and Edward,
‘as over-lord of Scotland,’ ordered the governors of
castles in Scotland to deliver them over to governors of
his own appointment, the common consent of the Scots
Guardians and of the competitors being recorded; and
Edward, as over-lord, proclaimed his peace. On
June 17 a general order was issued that all freeholders
should swear fealty to Edward. The terms of the
ordinance as to homage and fealty, which had been
settled on June 12 at Norham by Edward ‘with the
advice of the prelates and magnates of Scotland there
present,’ were comprehensive and precise. They applied
to ‘all, both clerical and lay, who would have been
bound to make homage and fealty to a living king of
Scotland.’ All that came were to be admitted; those
that came and refused were to be arrested till performance;
those that did not come, but excused themselves
for good reason, were to be allowed till next Parliament;
those that neither came nor excused themselves were to
be ‘more straitly distrained’ till they conformed.
Thus, to all appearance, Edward held Scotland in the
grip of his iron hand—the reward of a patient diplomacy.

The great process was resumed on August 3 at
Berwick. The competitors, now increased to twelve,
presented their claims in technical form before the
hundred and four auditors. The first object was to
decide the point of law at issue between Balliol and
Bruce, namely, whether the nearer descendant by the
younger child or the more remote descendant by the
elder child had the preferable title. ‘Perhaps,’ as
Burton says, ‘the policy of the arrangement lay in this,
that in Bruce and Balliol, and those they might bring
with them, the Lord Superior knew whom he had to
deal with personally; among a set of miscellaneous
strangers, bringing their friends and supporters into the
controversy, he might find troublesome people.’ The
question, if in some sense ‘a by-question between two24
claimants,’ nevertheless went to the root of the claims of
the two competitors that were obviously first in the
running. The proceedings went on, without getting
much farther forward, till August 12, when Edward
adjourned the sittings to June 2, 1292.

It had been alleged that some document founded
upon by the Count of Holland was missing, and this
gave the King a welcome opportunity of further demonstrating
his resolution to do justice to the last iota. On
this 12th of August he appointed certain commissioners
to examine all documents presented by suitors or ‘in
any way touching us and our kingdom,’ whether in Edinburgh
Castle or elsewhere in Scotland. Under the order
many papers were carried away and deposited in Berwick
Castle. It does not appear that anything of importance
or of immediate relevance was discovered. Certainly
Edward found nothing to support his claim of over-lordship,
otherwise he would have utilised it, and had it
carefully recorded. Whatever his real intention in
directing the search, his subsequent dealings with Scotland
gave colour—and probably quite false colour—to
later allegations charging him with the express purpose of
wantonly destroying the national records. During the
next five or six days (August 13–18), Edward manifested
his satisfaction with events in a manner peculiarly
pleasing to some half-dozen Scots magnates. There
remains a record of certain grants he made to the
Bishop of Glasgow, James Steward of Scotland, Earl
Patrick of Dunbar, Sir John de Soulis, Sir William de
St. Clair, Sir Patrick de Graham, and Sir William de
Soulis. These grants are expressed to be made for
various expenditure, and ‘also for the zeal’ the grantee
‘had and has to promote peace and tranquillity among
the people’ of Scotland. The record, however, is cancelled
in the Rolls, for the very sufficient reason that
the particular grants were not made after all, equivalents
being given instead. Every reader may make his own
comment.

While English counsels ruled the policy of the Guardians,
and English castellans stretched their mailed hands over
Scotland from the strongholds, the great cause dragged25
on. At length, June 2, 1292, came round, and Edward
resumed the process at Berwick. A thirteenth competitor
now presented himself—Eric, King of Norway. Edward
professed anxiety to reach a decision, for was he not
moved by the sore desolation of Scotland? Still the contest
surged about the claims of Bruce and Balliol. How
to arrive at the right decision? The Scots auditors would
greatly assist the King to expedite matters if they would
inform him on what laws and customs he is to proceed.
The Scots auditors are helpless to decide without further
consideration and advice; perhaps the English auditors
would aid them? The English auditors join in consultation,
but they shrink from answering without further and
more precise advice, which they might perhaps obtain
from the prelates and nobles of England. Apparently,
then, there must be a further adjournment. Edward
accordingly fixed October 14 for next meeting, and stated
that in the meantime he and the rest of the parties
interested would take the best advice to be found anywhere
in the two kingdoms.

It is not relevant to the present purpose to pursue the
arguments of the October meeting. On the 15th the
case was closed, no doubt after private diplomatic dealing
with the competitors. On November 17, Edward announced
his decision in great state in the hall of Berwick
Castle—in favour of Balliol. Thereupon he issued orders
to the Guardians to deliver seisin of the kingdom to the
new King, and to the castellans of the twenty-three chief
strongholds to deliver them over to Balliol or his representatives.
On the 20th, Balliol swore fealty to Edward at
Norham; on the 30th he was enthroned at Scone; then
he went back to Newcastle-on-Tyne, and, having eaten his
Christmas dinner with his over-lord, did homage to him
next morning as an invested King. On January 2, by
letters patent, sealed by Balliol, by two great prelates, and
by ten of the principal nobles of Scotland, Edward was
acquitted of all obligations incurred by him while the
country was in his hands; and two days later he acknowledged
that his rights in Scotland were limited to homage
and its pertinents. Some special favours of a pecuniary
nature within the next few months intimate Edward’s satisfaction26
with his royal henchman. But these marks of the
over-lord’s pleasure were far from counterbalancing the
dissatisfaction openly and ominously manifested in his
kingdom of Scotland.

Two or three points in this prolonged process invite
particular remark. In the first place, as Burton justly
points out,

‘What confers a strange interest on the selfish squabble and
the array of technicalities and pleadings called out by it, is that
there is no more allusion to the rights of the Community of Scotland,
or the way in which a decision may affect them, than there
need be in any private litigation. They have no more place in
the question than the tenants on an estate while the settlements
are disputed. So far as one can gather from the terms of the
documents, it never seems to have occurred to the greedy litigants
themselves or their astute technical advisers, that there was a fierce
self-willed people, nourished in independence and national pride,
who must be bent or broken before the subtleties and pedantries of
the Lord Superior’s court would be of any avail. Totally unconscious
they seem also to have been that the intricate technicalities
which dealt with a sovereign independent State as a mere piece
of property in search of an owner, formed an insult never to be
forgiven, whatever might be the cost of repudiation and vengeance.’

Edward himself, however, was gifted with a deeper insight
than all the rest. He at least was thoroughly aware of the
deeper elements of the problem, and of their difficult character.
At the Upsetlington meeting, while the prelates
and nobles had nothing to urge against Edward’s claims—for
Wyntoun’s record of the Bishop of Glasgow’s bold
denial of the pretended right of superiority must be held
in suspense—the ‘Community’ of Scotland undoubtedly
presented a protest. What this body had to say on the
point, most unfortunately we do not know. It finds no
place in the very full record of proceedings preserved in
the Great Roll of Scotland. There is, however, no doubt at
all that some answer was made, and that it was set aside
as ‘nothing to the point’ (nihil efficax). But Burton’s
comment deserves to be carefully borne in mind. ‘Transactions,’
he shrewdly remarks, ‘are profusely recorded,
as if for the purpose of courting all inquiry into doubts or
difficulties that might affect conclusions, yet one ever feels,
throughout all this candour, that the truth is to be found27
somewhere behind, and that the abundance of punctilious
record is devised to conceal it.’ The exclusion of all
notice of the action of the Community from the official
record must be taken to have been deliberate. But it was
an act of policy, not of inappreciation, on the part of the
King.

There is another element in certain documents of the
time that confirms this conclusion in a very striking
manner. In the official record of the case, Edward is
designated Lord Superior at every turn. There is a
marked contrast, however, in the order he directed to each
of the Scots castellans to deliver over their strongholds
to English successors. ‘In the preamble,’ Burton points
out, ‘Edward does not make display of his office of Lord
Superior, as in the documents which were not to go to Scotland.
He is Edward, King of England, Lord of Ireland,
and Duke of Guienne; and he demands delivery of the
fortress by assent of the Guardians and of the several
candidates, and only towards the conclusion does he
briefly bring in his title of “Soveryn Seygnur.”‘ In this
order, as well as in the order as to fealty, he judiciously
associates with himself the prelates and magnates of the
realm of Scotland. Obviously, he exercised sleepless discretion
in the pushing of his claims, with a careful eye on
the possible effects in a high-spirited community.

A word may also be said on the functions of the
auditors. From the record of their appointment, it would
seem to be plain enough that they were intended to sit
together as a single board of referees. The magnanimity
of Edward and his confidence in the justice of his cause
were not ignored by the English chroniclers; eighty to
twenty-four manifests a generosity of fairness. But then
we have already seen that the auditors did not, at any rate
always, act as a single body. At a late stage of the proceedings,
two questions arose: By what law should the
question be tried—by the Imperial (that is, the Civil or
Roman) law, or by the laws and customs of England or
Scotland? Is there any specialty in rank or dignity of
this kingdom of Scotland that should exempt it from being
adjudicated upon like the other tenures of the realm?
‘On these two questions,’ says Burton, ‘King Edward’s28
own council of twenty-four were alone consulted. “Those
of Scotland,” as the persons selected by Bruce and Balliol
were termed, had no opportunity of recording their opinion
on these, which, of all the questions put, were the most
eminently national in their character.’ This is a somewhat
startling result, in view of the expectations raised by
the terms of appointment. ‘Yet,’ Burton proceeds, ‘it
was so managed that they too should appear to have had
a voice. It was put to the claimants, Balliol and Bruce,
and to the eighty of Scotland selected by them, whether
they could show any cause why the kingdom of Scotland—a
fief of the King of England—should be treated differently
from earldoms, baronies, and other tenures. Under nice
distinctions in the ways of putting questions, the broad
fact can be distinctly traced, that the twenty-four of England
were advisers or referees of the supreme judge,
Edward himself, as to the judgment to be given, while the
eighty of Scotland were merely the advisers of the two
claimants as to the position they should take up as
litigants—what they should admit, and what they should
dispute. Accordingly, the eighty are not heard in answer
to the questions put; the competitors, Balliol and Bruce,
give the answers.’ Even, however, if the apparent intention
to constitute a single board of 104 had been consistently
maintained, the result would have been practically
the same. The Balliol and the Bruce men would
have neutralised each other, and the English twenty-four
would have decided every point—and that, too, inevitably
in the sense conformable to the mind of the King of England.
The whole process was a gigantic palaver, impressing
the grandeur, the legality, and the considerateness of
Edward, while utilised as a cloak and a means for the
remorseless prosecution of his designs upon the independence
of Scotland.

It remains to inquire briefly into the substantial
validity of the claim of over-lordship. It might augur
industrious adventure to penetrate to the misty age of
Brute the Trojan and Scota the daughter of the King
of Egypt. It would be little less futile to trace the
records of the chronicles collected by Edward from the
time of Edward the Elder down through four centuries.29
It is hardly worth while even to deal with the submission
of William the Lion when he was accidentally captured
in 1174, before Alnwick Castle, on a raid into the north
of England. The facts have been obscured by the
greater anxiety of historians to fit them in with their
preconceptions than to ascertain precisely the meaning
of the plain record. If the release of William’s obligations
by Richard for 10,000 marks, to eke out his
preparations for a crusade, has any meaning at all, it
means clearly the restoration of the absolute independence
of Scotland. The treaty of Falaise ‘created the
new condition of vassal and superior from that date’;
and the Canterbury transactions released William from
all the engagements that Henry II. thereby ‘extorted
from him,’ as Richard’s charter phrases it, ‘by new
deeds and by consequence of his captivity.’ The competitor
that submitted to Edward that Richard could not
legally release the homage of Scotland, was either praise-worthily
exhaustive or hopelessly barren of argument.
It seems to demand a facile credulity to believe that
William gave 10,000 marks to be released from one
ground of an obligation that still remained valid against
him on another ground not even specified in express
terms, or that Richard placidly went off to the crusade,
leaving on the northern marches of England an inviting
opportunity to an active and aggrieved neighbour. That
William should do homage for his estates in England
was a matter of course, but quite a different matter.

Henry III. appears indeed to have entertained the
claim of over-lordship. There is no reference to homage,
however, in connection with the treaty of Newcastle.
Henry and Alexander II. simply engaged not to abet
each other’s enemies, and not to invade each other’s
territories without just provocation. Nor, when Alexander
III. succeeded to the throne in 1249, at the age of
seven, did Henry put forward any claim of wardship—a
fact especially significant of the relations between the
kingdoms. It is no doubt true that Henry prayed Pope
Innocent IV. to prohibit the anointing and crowning of
the child King of Scots, on the ground that Alexander
was his liege vassal; for so much appears from the30
Pope’s letter of refusal, dated 1251. But Henry does
not seem to have proceeded further in the matter. It
is stated that, on the occasion of Alexander’s marriage
with his daughter Margaret in 1252 at York, Henry
demanded homage for Scotland as a fief holden of
England; and that the reply of the boy King, that he
could not take such an important step without the knowledge
and assent of his parliament, closed the question.
The reply bears evident witness to the vigilance of Alexander’s
advisers. The like vigilance is to be remarked in
the terms of the safe-conduct of Alexander and his queen
to England in 1260. Neither the King nor his attendants
should be required to treat of State affairs during
the visit. In fact, Henry III., whatever his theoretical
claims, never exercised the right of over-lordship. On
the contrary, whenever he did interfere in the affairs of
Alexander’s kingdom, it was in the capacity of a friendly
father-in-law, and under the style of ‘Principal Councillor
to the illustrious King of Scotland.’

The case of 1278 is strikingly illustrative. In that
year Alexander did homage to Edward I. at Westminster,
and the fact is recorded in a transcript of a Close Roll
in absolute terms: ‘I, Alexander, King of the Scots,
become liege man of the Lord Edward, King of the
English, against all nations.’ Allen verified the entry,
and found that the writing was upon an erasure. The
suspicion aroused by the erasure is not lightened by the
record of the proceedings preserved in the register of
Dunfermline Abbey. There the scribe expressed the
homage of Alexander very differently: ‘I become your
man for the lands which I hold of you in the kingdom
of England, for which I owe you homage, saving my
kingdom.’ Furthermore, it is added: ‘Then said the
Bishop of Norwich, “And saving to the King of England,
if he right have, your homage for your kingdom,” to
whom the King instantly replied, saying openly, “To
homage for my kingdom of Scotland no man has right,
except God alone, nor do I hold that kingdom otherwise
than of God alone.”‘ The vague and insidious use of
such expressions as ‘if he right have,’ or ‘whatever
right he may have,’ or ‘whenever he chooses to exercise31
his right,’ fostered the tendency to elevate a claim into
a right. It indicates that there actually existed no right
capable of definite formulation on firm grounds, or at
any rate no right capable of assertion. The gross falsification
of such records permits us to hold the Dunfermline
scribe as at least an equal authority with the
Westminster scribe. This convenient vagueness of
suggestion of right reappears with like tameness in the
tail of the treaty of Brigham.

Did King Edward honestly believe that he was
entitled to the homage of the new King of Scots?
The question may be least ungraciously answered by
another question: Supposing the sides reversed, would
Edward have submitted with intellectual conviction to
the same claim advanced against himself on the same
grounds? We decline to libel his intelligence. It is
impossible to believe that he cared one atom for the
chronicles he marshalled so industriously, except for indirect
purposes. It is easy enough to understand that
his conceptions of policy could readily justify a wrong
as ministerial to what he conceived to be a higher right.

THE TRIUMPH OF AGGRESSION.

Uneasy lay the head that wore the crown of Scotland.
The flatteries of King John’s friends could not blind him
to his isolation. The formal respect rendered to him
often betrayed, not merely reluctance, but defiance and
contempt. The leading men of the dissident factions
soon proceeded to remove his friends from his side and to
surround him with strangers, and even to take out of his
control the direction of affairs. The St. Albans Annalist
records that John dare not open his mouth, lest his
people in their rage should starve him or throw him
into a dungeon; ‘he was like a lamb in the midst of
wolves.’

John’s uneasiness was not mitigated by the action of
his suzerain. Edward mixed his early complaisances
with disagreeable reminders. Thus, on December 31,
1292, he required John to attend at Newcastle on
the appeal of Roger Bartholomew, a burgess of Berwick.32
It was in vain that John pointed Edward to the convention
of Brigham, under which no Scotsman was to be
required to plead in any legal proceeding out of the
realm of Scotland; Edward insisted on the cancelment,
not only of the convention, but of every document,
known or unknown, calculated to restrict in any way the
free exercise of his superiority. Again, on March 8,
John was cited to answer in the English court for denial
of justice to the indefatigable John Mazun, a merchant of
Gascony, who had a big claim against the late Alexander
III. In a fortnight’s time, March 25, John was again
cited to appear before the English parliament to answer
an appeal of Macduff of Kilconquhar from a decision of
the Scots parliament in February. John did not appear.
He was again cited to appear on October 14. He
did appear then, but the only answer to be extracted
from him was that he dare not act without consultation
with the Estates of his realm—an answer probably put
in his mouth by his Stirling parliament in August. He
was cast in heavy damages; and, on the principle that
the wrongdoer should be curtailed in the means of wrongdoing,
it was resolved that the three principal castles in
Scotland, with their towns, should be delivered over
to the Lord Superior till his vassal should have purged his
contumacy. John humbled himself, however, before
judgment was formally given, and Edward granted a
further postponement. Meantime, in June and September,
two more summonses had come; and two more
followed in November. The English parliament had,
indeed, passed certain standing orders, including one
that admitted no excuse of absence from either party.
John was bound to be constantly trotting up and down,
on the most trivial matters. Edward was undoubtedly
within his technical rights, and, as Lord Hailes says, he
was bent on exercising them ‘with the most provoking
rigour.’ ‘It is easy to see,’ as Burton remarks, ‘that
his immediate object was to subject his new vassal to
deep humiliation.’

Meantime the King of France was preparing to mete
out to Edward the same measure as Edward was meting
out to John. He summoned Edward to answer before33
the Twelve Peers in December for certain acts of aggression
of Englishmen upon French subjects in the preceding
spring. Regarding the summons as a pretext for the
annexation of his French dominions, Edward stayed at
home and temporised; but in February Philip declared
him contumacious, and in May pronounced forfeiture of
his fiefs. Edward kept up negotiations, but prepared for
war; and, as over-lord of Scotland, he summoned Balliol
and twenty-one Scots magnates to join him with their
forces at London on September 1, 1294. John attended
the English parliament, and contributed three years’
rental of his large English estates. But his magnates
disregarded the summons, and, when pressed, alleged
their inability.

Edward’s difficulties between France and Wales, as
well as at home, furnished both encouragement and
opportunity to the discontent seething in Scotland. A
parliament was held at Scone. The Estates dismissed
all English court officials, and appointed a Council of
Twelve, probably after the model of the Twelve Peers
of the King of France, to conduct the government.
John was formally reduced to a figure-head. Urged by
his Council, and stung by the humiliations heaped upon
him by Edward, he entered into a secret alliance, offensive
and defensive, with Philip of France, under which
his son and heir, Edward Balliol, was to marry Philip’s
niece, the eldest daughter of Charles, Count of Valois
and Anjou. John accredited his envoys to Philip in
July 1295; the treaty was signed by Philip in October;
and John ratified it at Dunfermline on February 23,
1295–96, with the assent, not only of his prelates and
nobles, but also of the chief burgh corporations and other
public bodies of the kingdom. The scheme was carefully
placed ‘on a broad popular basis,’ and it seems to
have been arranged with as little publicity as was consistent
with a wide representation of the nation. ‘This
was the starting of that great policy which had so much
influence for centuries on both sides of the British
Channel—the policy of France and Scotland taking
common counsel against England.’

In the course of the early autumn of 1295, it is likely34
that Edward got wind of John’s treasonable doings. He
issued summonses for his memorable parliament of
November. Perhaps as a feeler, he required John
to expel all Frenchmen and Flemings, his enemies,
from Scotland; otherwise, to put in his hands the three
castles and towns of the eastern frontier—Berwick, Roxburgh,
and Jedburgh. The first alternative was firmly
refused; but it appears from an existing document that
the castles were delivered over to the Bishop of Carlisle.
On October 16, there are two remarkable records: one
is the engagement of Edward to his ‘beloved and faithful’
John to redeliver the three castles and towns at the
end of the French war; the other is a circular order
to all the sheriffs in England to take into the King’s hand
all the lands and goods of Balliol and of all other Scotsmen
staying in Scotland, within their respective jurisdictions.
Were these castles ever delivered to Edward?
That is to say, was the engagement of October 16 (with
the order to the Bishop to take delivery, dated
October 12) only anticipative, and never operative?
There is, indeed, strong historical support to the view
that the Scots absolutely refused both alternatives, and
shook in Edward’s face Pope Celestine’s absolution of
them from homage and fealty. The confiscation order
was probably Edward’s counterstroke. It was followed
up on February 13 by an order for the sale of all goods
on such lands, excepting only agricultural stock and
implements, the proceeds to go into the Exchequer.

The inevitable collision was precipitated by an outbreak
at Berwick, in which some English merchants
were killed and their goods seized. On February 23,
Edward issued urgent orders to hurry up the forces
appointed to meet him at Newcastle-on-Tyne, directing
that ‘neither for assizes, gaol deliveries, or any other
business’ is the Sheriff of York to hinder the men of
his county from arriving on the day fixed, apparently
March 1. He summoned John to Newcastle to answer
for the Berwick riot and his breaches of allegiance, but of
course John declined the invitation.

About the middle of March, Edward moved to Wark,
just abandoned by the romantically traitorous Robert35
de Ros; but he appears to have had scruples about commencing
the invasion of Scotland till Easter was past.
Then, on March 28, he passed the Tweed with 30,000
foot and 5000 armed horse, and on March 30 he took
Berwick town without any effective opposition. As
Burton records—

‘There is an awful unanimity of testimony to the merciless use
made of the victory. The writer who knew best of all describes
the King as rabid, like a boar infested with the hounds, and issuing
the order to spare none; and tells how the citizens fell like the
leaves in autumn, until there was not one of the Scots who could
not escape left alive, and he rejoices over their fate as a just
judgment for their wickedness.’

The gallantry of the Flemings in defence of their Red
Hall only ensured their destruction. ‘Thus it was on
the community among whom the protection of the Lord
Superior was first sought that his vengeance first fell.’
Berwick, ‘the great city of merchant princes,’ a ‘second
Alexandria,’ was reduced to a common market-town.
‘Such a massacre,’ says Pearson, ‘had not been witnessed
within the four seas since the ravage of the North
by the Conqueror. From this time a sea of blood lay
between the English King and his Scottish dominion.’
The castle was surrendered the same day by Sir William
Douglas, on guarantee of the lives of the garrison.
Edward remained at Berwick nearly a month, actively
refortifying the town.

It was in Berwick Castle, on April 5, that Edward
received John’s formal renunciation. John bluntly complained
that he had been vexatiously cited to England
at the trifling instance of anybody and everybody; that,
without fault on his part, Edward had taken possession
of his and his subjects’ castles, lands, and possessions
within his kingdom of Scotland; that Edward had taken
his and his subjects’ goods by land and sea, and resetted
them in England; that Edward had killed merchants and
other inhabitants of his kingdom; that Edward had
forcibly carried off subjects of his from Scotland, and
detained them in prison in England; that Edward
had paid no heed to his representations; and that
Edward had publicly summoned his army, and had now36
come with ‘an innumerable multitude of armed men’
to strip him and his subjects of their inheritance, and had
approached with hostile intent the boundaries of his
kingdom—nay, had crossed them, and had committed
atrocities of slaughter, arson, and violence by land and
sea. John therefore resigned fealty and homage on
behalf of himself and all others of his realm that might
adhere to him. ‘Has the felon fool done such a silly
thing?’ the King is said to have exclaimed. ‘If he will
not come to us, we will go to him.’ But it is far from
apparent why Edward should have manifested any such
surprise.

On March 26, while Edward lay at Wark, a large body
of Scots, under Comyn, Earl of Buchan, made a foray from
Annandale into Cumberland, assaulting Carlisle (where
Bruce of Annandale was governor), and burning a large
part of the city. On April 8, too, a foray was made by
the same body from Jedburgh into Northumberland,
wasting Coquetdale and Redesdale, and burning Corbridge,
Hexham, and Lanercost. These expeditions
were futile and inglorious efforts of retaliation. The
troops returned to Jedburgh, and then took possession
of Dunbar Castle, to reduce which Edward despatched
a strong force under Warenne. The governor of the
castle, Sir Richard Siward, agreed with Warenne to
surrender unless relieved within three days. On the
morning of the third day, Balliol’s army came in sight,
and, mistaking an irregularity of movement of the
English troops for a retreat, rushed upon them from a
stronger position, and was defeated, with fearful slaughter.
Barons and squires crowded for refuge in the castle; Sir
Patrick de Graham, whose fruitless valour extorted the
unanimous admiration of Englishmen, died sword in
hand. The castle surrendered next day to Edward
himself, who consigned the flower of the fighting strength
of Scotland to a score of castles in England and Wales.
There is much reason to doubt whether Siward did not
prove a traitor; and it looks as if the Scots nobles were
entirely ignorant of his agreement for surrender.

Scotland lay prostrate before the invader. Having
appointed constables of the eastern border castles,37
Edward marched on Edinburgh, which surrendered
after an eight days’ siege. At Stirling he encountered
no opposition: all had fled. Yet the record of the gaol
delivery at Stirling on June 19 affords an interesting
glimpse of the spirit of resistance. Thomas, the chaplain
of Edinburgh, who was charged with publicly excommunicating
the King with bell and candle, confessed
frankly that he did so in the King’s despite; and Richard
Gulle, charged with ringing the bell, likewise confessed.
Both culprits were, by order of Edward, delivered to the
Archdeacon of Lothian.

On July 7, in the churchyard of Stracathro, John
renounced his treaty with the King of France. And
on July 10, in Brechin Castle, he formally resigned his
kingdom and people, with his royal seal, to the Bishop
of Durham, on behalf of the King of England. There
was an end of ‘Toom Tabard’ as King of Scotland.
He was kept in England at Hertford, the Tower, and
elsewhere, till July 18, 1299, when he was delivered by
Sir Robert de Burghersh, Constable of Dover, to the
Papal Nuncio, Reynaud, Bishop of Vincenza, at Wissant
in France, ‘for disposal by his Holiness.’ He lived to
hear of the decisive victory of Bannockburn.

From the middle of March onwards to autumn,
homage and fealty were performed up and down Scotland
to Edward and his representatives. Edward
himself passed north to Elgin, and after a triumphal
progress of twenty-one weeks returned to Berwick on
August 22. He appointed John de Warenne, Earl of
Surrey and Sussex, Governor of Scotland; Sir Hugh de
Cressingham, Treasurer; and Sir William de Ormsby,
Justiciar. He committed the subordinate wardenships,
castles, and sheriffdoms to English officers. He made
arrangements for the establishment of a new Treasury at
Berwick, on the model of the Treasury at Westminster.
He broke in pieces the ancient Great Seal of Scotland,
and substituted a new seal. He had enforced his
‘property and possession’ of the realm of Scotland.
Yet he left behind him the active germs of retribution.

Among Edward’s spoliations were two notable national
possessions. One was the Black or Holy Rood, ‘a38
certified fragment of the true Cross preserved in a shrine
of gold or silver gilt.’ It had been brought over by
St. Margaret, who left it as a sacred legacy to her
descendants and their realm. The other, an even more
honoured possession, was the Stone of Destiny—’the
palladium of Scotland.’ It was reputed to have been
Jacob’s pillow what time he saw the vision of the angels
ascending and descending the ladder, and to have been
brought to Scotland by the eponymous Scota the
daughter of Pharaoh. It was enshrined in the coronation
chair of the Kings of Scotland. Edward had it
similarly enshrined in a chair that became the coronation
throne of the Kings of England. His superstition
might have been overawed by the prophetic couplet—Boece
says inscription—

That is to say:

For a hundred years before the death of Alexander III.,
the peaceful administration and firm policy of the Scottish
kings had immensely strengthened Scotland both in
her internal organisation and in her external influence.
It had inspired respect in the strongest of contemporary
English sovereigns. Between Alexander III. and Edward
I. there prevailed a genuine cordiality, based not
more on family relationship than on political conduct.
On the unexpected death of Alexander, the active mind
of Edward must very promptly have perceived a great
opportunity of annexing Scotland, as he had just
annexed Wales. But strong-handed and imperious as he
was, he was also governed by ideas of legal procedure,
and still more by policy. Warrior as he was, he would
still prefer to attain his ends by politic address. He
could not in decency raise his mailed hand against the
infant granddaughter of his own sister, or arbitrarily39
pick a quarrel with a friendly nation at accidental disadvantage
by the tragic and premature death of his
amicable brother-in-law. The project of marrying the
child Queen to his eldest son was a stroke of policy of
the happiest conception for the peaceful attainment of
his purposes. The death of the Queen and the rivalry of
the competitors threw him on fresh lines of action,
plausibly justifiable by the necessity of protecting his
own kingdom from the results of internal discord on
the northern border. The prolongation of the dispute
as to the succession appears to have been very much
due to his waiting for the opening up of the smoothest
line of advance. The preference of Balliol, after an
ostentatiously elaborate process of legal formality, not
only wore the aspect of a profound homage to law, but
also placed on the throne of Scotland the candidate that
would be most plastic in his hands. The successive
steps show clearly, from the first idea of the marriage at
least, the gradual and deliberate tightening of a resolute
grasp upon the kingdom of Scotland. If Edward had
really believed that he was entitled to the over-lordship
of Scotland, it is extremely difficult to understand why
he did not at once claim the wardship of the infant
Margaret. The enforcement of such a claim would
have been awkward enough at a moment when he needed
all his force elsewhere; but he might at least have put it
forward. He could not have been unaware of this right
if it had actually existed. Again, as Macpherson says, ‘it
seems very surprising that he did not claim the crown of
Scotland for himself as heir of Malcolm Kenmore, whose
grand-daughter Mald was his great-great-grandmother.’
Such an astute intellect as his could not have been
impressed with the documentary authorities arrayed by
patriotic priests and supported by sycophantic officials.
It is not easy to resist the conclusion that the claim was
neither more nor less than a fraudulent contrivance of a
semblance of legality to cover the aggression of a
rapacious ambition. If the persecution of John was
purely the outcome of Edward’s ‘exasperating legality,’
it does as little credit to his political capacity as the
atrocity of his vengeance at Berwick and his tyrannical40
settlement of the conquered country. Already, however,
in the breast of an obscure young man in an obscure
district of the west of Scotland there were surging
turbulent feelings of personal and patriotic resentment,
destined eventually to overturn all these calculations of
ambitious aggression. That young man was William
Wallace of Elderslie.

41

CHAPTER II
Wallace’s Family and Early Years

William Wallace was the second son of Sir Malcolm
Wallace of Elderslie, and of his wife Margaret, daughter
of Sir Reginald Crawford of Crosby, hereditary Sheriff
of Ayr.

Blind Harry, a perfervid Scot himself, and keenly
jealous for the perfection of his hero, exhibits lively
anxiety to impress the fact that Wallace was a thorough
Scotsman—’of whole lineage and true line of Scotland.’
Sir Malcolm, he says, at his marriage,

And for further information he refers to the history of
‘the right line of the first Steward.’ He does not
pursue the female line.

The connection of the Wallaces with the Stewards of
Scotland is abundantly evidenced. Walter Fitz Alan,
the first Steward, came from Oswestry in Shropshire,42
where his father, Alan, son of Flaald, a Norman, had
obtained considerable lands from William the Conqueror,
and had married a daughter of Warin, the Sheriff of the
county. He was appointed Steward of the royal household
by David I., who also assigned him extensive lands
in Ayr and Renfrew. He would be followed to Scotland
by families of local descent, who would settle under
him in Kyle. A Richard Walense, who witnessed charters
of Walter, is found at Riccarton (Ricardtun). Two
more Richards follow, contemporary with the next three
Stewards, the third Richard witnessing charters of the
fourth Steward, and extending the territorial possessions
of the family. At the head of the Elderslie branch
appears a Henry Walense, supposed to be a brother of
the first Richard, holding the lands of Elderslie under
the first Steward. An Adam Walense, possibly a son of
Henry, is found in connection with the third and fourth
Stewards, and this Adam has been supposed to be the
father of Sir Malcolm. The lands of Auchinbothie, in
Lochwinnoch, were acquired by a Wallace of Elderslie.

It does not seem possible, on the available evidence,
to place the known members of the Riccarton and
Elderslie lines—if indeed they were parallel lines—in
their definite positions of relationship, except with the
caution of probability. Harry makes Sir Richard
Wallace of Riccarton the uncle of his hero, William
Wallace of Elderslie; but the use of the word uncle
may be definite or lax. All that can be confidently
affirmed—and it is enough for the present purpose—is
this, that all these Wallaces of Riccarton, Elderslie,
Auchinbothie, and ‘other sundry place,’ belonged to
the same family, and that, at the birth of the hero, that
family had been settled in Scotland for more than a full
century.

The family of Crawford is traced back to Thorlongus,
an Anglo-Danish chief, who was driven out of Northumberland
by the Conqueror, and obtained lands in the
Merse from Edgar about the commencement of the
twelfth century. Early in the thirteenth century, at any
rate, a Sir Reginald Crawford married the heiress of Loudon,
and was created first hereditary Sheriff of Ayr; and43
his grandson in the main line was the father of Margaret
Crawford, the wife of Sir Malcolm Wallace. It may be
confidently accepted that, on the side of the spindle as
well as on the side of the spear, William Wallace’s
ancestors were domiciled Scots for more than a hundred
years before he was born.

The ultimate origin of the Wallace family thus dwindles
to extreme unimportance. It has been contended that
the very name shows that the family was Welsh or Keltic;
that the name ‘was used of the Wallaces, or Welsh, of
Elderslie, or elsewhere, not so much as a surname as a
description,’ and hence it is often given as ‘le Waleys.’
It may be so, but not at all necessarily. Again, it is
certain that Wallaces came over among the Normans,
and ancestors of the Wallaces of Kyle may have come
over in the train of ancestors of the Stewards. But after
the lapse of a century it is really not of the slightest
practical consequence whether the family was originally
Welsh or Norman—or otherwise. We do not, as did the
English nobles of 1238, cavil at Simon de Montfort as a
Frenchman; nor did the Irish of our own day cavil at
Parnell as an Englishman. Much less, then, is it reasonable
to cavil at Wallace as a foreigner; for he had
behind him a hundred years of ancestry on Scottish soil,
and his forebears were lowly enough to be associated in
spirit with the people of the land far more than with
the exotic barons, who preserved Anglo-Norman habits
and feelings by free intercourse with England and the
English court. Wallace was undoubtedly ‘of whole
lineage and true line of Scotland’; and through his
social position he was thoroughly in touch with the
national feeling.

At Elderslie, in all probability, Wallace was born.
The times were perfectly quiet, and but for accidental
circumstances, it seems unlikely that his mother would
have been away from her home on the occasion. Harry
makes the mayor of St. Johnston speak of Wallace as
‘born in to the West.’

The precise date of his birth cannot be determined
with certainty. The chroniclers describe him as a young
man (juvenis) at the battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297.44
The description is elastic, but probably it would not
have been used at all unless it had been intended to
mark the fact that his youthfulness was particularly
striking. Harry is definite—doubly definite; but he is
vexatiously contradictory. He is, indeed, emphatic on
the point of Wallace’s youth; but he gives two violently
conflicting statements without supplying the means of
confident decision in favour of either.

In the first place, early in his poem, Harry makes
Wallace eighteen when he killed young Selby at Dundee.
The date he intends is evidently about December or
January 1296–97. This would make Wallace about nineteen
at Stirling Bridge—an age incredible to many,
though, in our opinion, not very difficult to accept. The
Selby episode, however, may readily be thrown back
to 1291–92, in which case Wallace would have been of
the more mature age of twenty-three or twenty-four at
Stirling Bridge, while still his youth would be distinctive
enough for special remark. This age is accepted by the
Marquess of Bute, who would place Wallace’s birth in
1274; and it is an age that would still favour the Marquess’s
impression that Wallace’s extreme youth ‘was one
of the reasons for the shyness with which he was undoubtedly
looked upon by many of the more leading
among his own countrymen.’

In the next place, however, towards the end of his
poem, Harry expressly states that Wallace was said to be
forty-five when he was betrayed to the English; and here
he seems to rely specifically on Blair and Gray, on whose
chronicle of Wallace’s deeds he professes to base his
poem. In xi. 1425–8, he says:

Now, if Wallace was forty-five in 1305, he would have
been born in 1260, and would have been thirty-seven at
Stirling Bridge; but then he would hardly have been
described as juvenis; nor does forty-five fit in with Harry’s
previous chronology, which ought also to agree with45
Blair’s record. Carrick makes a desperate effort at reconciliation,
by suggesting that the transcriber of Harry wrote
‘forty’ instead of ‘thirty’; but 16 + 29 = 45 in incontrovertible
arithmetic. There remains, however, this
insuperable difficulty—twenty-nine years back from 1305
brings us to 1276, some ten years before the death of
Alexander III.; and during this decade, as well as for at
least five years later, there was profound peace, and there
could have been no ‘deid’ of Wallace’s for Blair and
Gray to know.

Lax as Harry is, one hesitates to saddle him with such
an egregious contradiction. If it were worth while to
bring him to reasonable consistency, one might reject the
forty-five couplet as an arithmetical exercise of the transcriber,
with his nose on the preceding line and his mind
vacant of all other considerations. Then Harry might
be taken to say that Blair and Gray were intimate with
Wallace from his sixteenth year till he was out twenty-nine.
If he was in his thirtieth year in 1305, he would
have been born in 1275. If he killed Selby in 1291–92,
he would have been in his seventeenth year, which is
close to Harry’s statement, and at Stirling Bridge he
would have been in his twenty-third year.

If we put Harry out of court as an irresponsible
romancer, then we are thrown back upon the elastic
epithet juvenis of the chroniclers, and the date of Wallace’s
birth becomes movable according to the fancy of the
reader. At twenty-two or twenty-three Wallace must undoubtedly
have been a man of exceptional (or at any rate
impressive) physique, commanding energy of mind, and
magnetic enthusiasm. More than that, he must have
been at least as experienced a soldier as any Scot in the
army on the slope of Abbey Craig. There must be an
accentuated meaning in the epithet juvenis. In fact there
need be little hesitation in reconciling Harry with the
chroniclers and with himself. Wallace may be taken to
have been born in 1274 or 1275.

Wallace had certainly one brother, Malcolm, who was
older than himself; possibly another brother, John; and
perhaps two sisters. It is recorded in an extant letter,
written on August 20, 1299, that at the meeting of Scots46
barons at Peebles on the previous day, Sir Malcolm
Wallace and Sir David de Graham drew their knives on
each other over a demand of the latter for the lands of
Sir William Wallace, who was going out of the kingdom
without leave. The accuracy of the writer almost conclusively
bars the supposition that he could have
blundered on the name Malcolm instead of John,
as has been suggested. If this be so, it supports
Wyntoun’s statement that the ‘elder brother enjoyed
the heritage,’ and negatives Harry’s assertion that
young Sir Malcolm was killed, with his father, at Loudon
Hill in 1296—or rather in 1291. Bower mistakenly
calls him Sir Andrew.

A Sir John Wallace was undoubtedly executed in
London in 1307. The sanctimonious Langtoft gloats
over the details of the execution, and says his head was
‘raised with shouts near the head of his brother, William
the Wicked,’ on London Bridge. It has been doubted,
on no very clear grounds, whether Sir John did not
belong to the family of Riccarton. Harry mentions that
Wallace, during his Guardianship, ‘his brother’s son put
to his heritage’; but this is on the presupposition that
Malcolm was slain at Loudon Hill; and Sir John could
hardly have been young Sir Malcolm’s son. Even
Langtoft may for once be right.

For the sisters there is only the authority of Harry.
He mentions Edward Little as Wallace’s ‘sister’s son,’
and Tom Halliday as ‘sib sister’s son to good
Wallace.’ If Harry be correct, these sisters must have
been much older than Wallace.

The position of the Wallaces among the county gentry
was by no means pretentious. ‘I imagine them,’ says
the Marquess of Bute, ‘in a position of easy fortune, with
a certain number of free tenants paying rent in kind and
divers services in peace, and, if need had been, in the
event of war. And then with a surrounding of peasants,
working at Elderslie itself and for their tenants feudally
attached, paying no rent, and receiving no wages.’

As a boy, Wallace was almost certainly schooled in the
elements of formal education, secular and religious, by
the monks of the Abbey of Paisley, then ‘the centre of47
religion and learning in the quasi-principality of the
High Stewards, to which he belonged.’ ‘Taking it
as a whole,’ says the Marquess of Bute,

‘I conceive that there can be no doubt that his mental culture
was at least as great as would be that of a person in a corresponding
position at the present day…. Sir William Wallace at
least knew how to read and write three languages—namely, his
own, and Latin and French; and it appears also that he knew
Gaelic. He knew the ancient and modern history, and the common
simpler mathematics and science of his own day.’

In his boyhood, his deep religious feeling must also
have been powerfully fostered. The Abbey of Paisley
was the parish church of his family. ‘The community
of Paisley,’ says the Marquess of Bute, with
great probability,

‘was then in all the fervour of its first love, and it was there
that William Wallace imbibed his consistent and unfading veneration
for the Church and respect for her ministers…. It was as the
sublime compositions of the ancient Hebrew poets alternately
thundered and wailed through the Abbey Church of Paisley, that
William Wallace contracted that livelong love for the Psalms which
lasted until he died, with a priest holding the Psalter open, at his
request, before his darkening eyes.’

There is probably but little stretch of fancy here,
considering the natural disposition of the man.

The foundation of Wallace’s acquirements must have
been well and truly laid in his early youth. How much
of his education was imparted to him at Paisley, it is
quite impossible to say, with any approach to definiteness.
Whatever he learned there, however, must have been
powerfully reinforced by his association with an uncle, a
brother of his father’s, the comfortable priest of Dunipace,
who is described by Harry as ‘a man of great riches,’ a
‘mighty parson,’ and ‘a full kind man.’ The precise
period of Wallace’s stay at Dunipace cannot be fixed;
but he must have been well out of childhood, if it be
true that the priest inculcated in his pupil’s mind
moral maxims compactly framed in Latin, and frequently
drawn from the classical Latin authors. In particular,
the good priest is credited with the noble purpose and
achievement of instilling into Wallace’s soul a passionate48
love of liberty, which is the key-note of his elevated
character and his glorious career. The very formula
employed to imprint the memorable injunction has been
preserved to us through the centuries:

Artificial as the Latin couplet may be deemed, it has
become invested for ever with an interest peculiarly
touching to all lovers of human freedom, and especially
to the compatriots of Wallace.

At a still later period, according to Harry, Wallace
was sent for further instruction to Dundee. The
occasion of this was, in fact, the break-up of the
Elderslie home. Harry intends the date as 1296, when
‘Scotland was lost’ after Dunbar; but he does not
recognise that Scotland was lost in 1291, which seems
likely to have been the true date of the episode. On
June 11, 1291, the Scots Guardians surrendered the
kingdom and the castles to Edward as over-lord; and on
June 12, Edward, ‘with the advice of the prelates and
magnates of Scotland there present,’ settled a general
ordinance requiring ‘homage and fealty to be made by
all, both clerical and lay, who would have been bound to
make it to a living King of Scotland.’ Sir Malcolm
Wallace, however, did not appear before Edward’s
deputies at Ayr, nor did he send an excuse; there is no
evidence, indeed, to show that he ever made submission—worthy
father of his heroic son! According to Harry,
he retired to the Lennox, taking young Malcolm with
him; while Sir Reginald Crawford, who bent to the
storm as hereditary Sheriff of Ayr, took charge of Lady
Wallace, his sister, and the boy William, and sent them
for refuge to an uncle, a priest at Kilspindie in the
Carse of Gowrie. Whether the priest was Sir Reginald’s
or Wallace’s uncle is not clear; but since Harry describes
him as ‘an aged man,’ he may be taken rather as
Sir Reginald’s uncle. Assuming Harry’s connection of49
events, the flight to Kilspindie must have taken place in
1296 or 1291—preferably 1291, when Wallace was in his
seventeenth year.

Sir Malcolm seems to have soon ventured back from
the Lennox, if Harry is right in stating that shortly afterwards
he was killed at Loudon Hill in a conflict with an
English party under an officer named Fenwick. According
to Harry, young Malcolm was slain with his father;
which, as we have seen, is almost certainly a mistake.
His desperate valour, as described by Harry, anticipates
the Chevy Chace minstrel’s picture of Widrington, who,
‘when his legs were hewn in two, yet he kneeled and
fought on his knee.’ But it is curious to observe that
the first edition of Harry’s poem (1570), by the transposition
of two lines (as compared with the existing MS.),
assigns the description to Sir Malcolm the father; and
no doubt this is right.

Meantime Wallace was living at Kilspindie, and proceeding
with his studies at Dundee in some school
connected with the Church. There he met John Blair,
who subsequently became a Benedictine monk, but left
the cloister to attend his friend as chaplain, to bear a
hand in many a tough fight, or to conduct diplomatic
negotiations, and who eventually wrote the biography
that formed the basis of Harry’s poem, probably in the
retirement of Dunfermline Abbey. There, too, according
to Harry, he met Duncan of Lorn, who figures in
one of his early enterprises; Sir Niel Campbell of
Lochawe; and probably others of his later trusty
comrades.

The question arises why young Wallace was staying at
Kilspindie and studying with the monks in Dundee
when his father and his brother were so sore bested.
He must have been a big fellow, well capable of wielding
arms to purpose. It may be that his father judged that50
his own and his eldest son’s lives were a sufficiently
heavy stake, and that it was desirable that one of his
sons at least should be near his wife, even in a place of
comparative shelter. If it had been intended that
William should rejoin his father and brother by and
by, the early disaster at Loudon Hill would have
rendered his presence in the West worse than futile.
There may, indeed, have been another idea. There
may have been an intention to dedicate him, a
younger son, to the service of the Church. Harry
indicates, at a late period of his career, some purpose
of religious retirement ‘to serve God and the Kirk’—a
tendency that may readily connect itself with an early
bent of mind.

The idea of making Wallace a priest, if it ever existed,
was promptly dispelled by the force of circumstances.
One day, Harry says, he was grossly insulted in Dundee
by a young Englishman named Selby, a son of the
‘Captain,’ who was strolling about with several companions.
Wallace restrained himself till Selby attempted
to wrest his knife from him, whereupon he seized the
aggressor by the collar and struck him dead on the
spot. Defending himself knife in hand, he made for a
house his uncle had used to frequent, and was quickly
disguised by the lady of the house, who rigged him out
in a dress of her own, and set him down with a ‘rock’
(distaff) to spin. He thus eluded his pursuers; and at
night he escaped out of the town by some irregular way.
The English authorities at once put the law in active
motion in Dundee, and made it impossible for him to
remain longer in such dangerous neighbourhood.

This episode, the very first of Harry’s stories, has
been overclouded with doubts. In deference to the
scruples of those that cannot imagine Wallace as only
at the end of his teens at Stirling Bridge, we have
ventured to throw back the occurrence some five years.
Who was Captain of Dundee in 1296–97 we do not
know. Was Selby, then, the ‘Captain’ in 1291–92?
The Captain of Dundee Castle from July 18, 1291, to
November 18, 1292, was Sir Brian Fitz Alan. But
Sir Brian was at the same time castellan of Forfar, and51
(from August 4) of Roxburgh and Jedburgh; and on
June 13 he had also been appointed one of the
Guardians, and he was (at any rate, by August 23) one
of the three Justices. His hands must therefore have
been very full of official business, and he could not
be always in Dundee. It has accordingly been suggested
that Selby might have been his deputy, or
lieutenant, in Dundee—the acting ‘Captain.’ But he
may, on the other hand, have been the Captain, not of
the castle, but of the town. Or would it be extravagant
to suspect that ‘Selby’ may be a popular degeneration
and perversion of ‘Fitz Alan’? The story, if accepted
at all, probably dates in December 1291, or January
1291–92. Wallace would thus have sojourned at Kilspindie
about half a year.

The experiences of this half-year may well have made
a profound impression upon a youth of Wallace’s sensitive
temperament and martial spirit. Harry represents him,
with dramatic truth at least, as brooding painfully over
the death of his father (and brother), and as being
stirred to uncontrollable resentment of the treatment of
Scots within his personal observation. On Harry’s
statement, the desolation of his house, the exile of his
mother, and the oppression of his countrymen, had
already nerved his heart and hand to terrible reprisals—such
reprisals as, apart from the controlling circumstances,
would be justly reprobated as monstrous. Harry himself
is consistently ‘dispitfull and savage’ against the
Southron; yet one cannot but hesitate to ascribe to
his bloodthirsty imagination the private deeds of revenge
he attributes to young Wallace. In those hard days,
the removal of an enemy did not touch the conscience
as it does in modern civilised society, accustomed to
peace and security, and informed with a developed sense
of humanity; and the justification derived from intolerable
oppression is, at any rate, a vastly more efficient
salve in the actual case than it is in mere historical contemplation.
At all events, Harry relates that young
Wallace, on finding an Englishman alone, never hesitated
to cut his throat or to stab him dead. ‘Some disappeared,
but none wist by what way.’ The weak,52
maddened by tyranny, will do as they may; there is
ample testimony to the exacerbation of Scottish feeling
at this period; and, while we may deplore, we need not
be so childishly unhistorical as to affect not to understand.
The iron of English oppression had already entered deep
into the soul of Wallace.

About eighteen, then, young Wallace bore the brand of
an outlaw for the shedding of English blood in peculiarly
daring circumstances. The family council at Kilspindie
decided that he and his mother had better travel westward
again. They assumed the disguise of pilgrims to
St. Margaret’s shrine at Dunfermline. At Dunipace,
they resisted the urgent invitation of the priest to stay till
better times; and thence they made straight to Elderslie.
Sir Reginald Crawford would have had the outlawry
annulled, but Wallace was obdurate and irreconcilable.
There were many Englishmen in the neighbourhood;
and Sir Reginald, to get his spirited nephew out of the
way of harm and of temptation, sent him to Sir Richard
Wallace at Riccarton. There they kept him quiet and
safe for a time—possibly till the English occupation of
1296.

At a Christmas time a few years later, when Wallace
(according to Harry) was closely engaged in the far west—Harry
intends 1297, but he cannot be right—there
came to him the heavy tidings of the death of his mother.
She is said to have been compelled to leave Elderslie
once more, and to have returned on pilgrimage to
Dunfermline, to seek at the holy shrine of St. Margaret
the rest denied her in her own home. Unable personally
to render her the last offices of affection, Wallace despatched
John Blair and the sturdy Jop to represent him
on the mournful occasion. The bitterness of his heart
is expressed by Harry in two pregnant lines:

Still more distressful was the fate of Wallace’s wife,
Marion Bradfute, the heiress of Lamington. Wyntoun
calls her his ‘leman’—a designation not necessarily
contradictory, but at least ambiguous. Harry’s account53
agrees with Wyntoun’s very closely, yet he would seem
to have had some other narrative before him, and
possibly Wyntoun and Harry may have drawn mainly
upon a common predecessor. However this may be,
Harry, with inflexible allegiance to his hero, expressly
affirms: ‘Mine author says she was his rightwise wife.’
The point really needs no consideration.

Harry lavishes a wealth of tender emotion over the
loves of Wallace and Marion Bradfute, and his sympathetic
feeling elevates him to genuine poetic expression,
often touched with extreme delicacy. Marion lived at
Lanark, ‘a maiden mild’ of eighteen. Her father, Sir
Hugh de Bradfute, and her eldest brother, had been slain
by Hazelrig, the Sheriff of Lanark; her mother, too, was
dead; and such peace as she enjoyed was dependent
on her having ‘purchased King Edward’s protection,’
although that did not secure her from the offensive
attentions of his local minions.

When Wallace first saw her, Hazelrig had just broached
a proposal of marriage between her and his son. Harry
dwells strongly on the division of Wallace’s mind between
the claims of war and the urgency of love; and he tells
how the faithful Kerly’s pointed advice broke down his
hesitations. The inevitable conflict with Hazelrig arose.
The Sheriff’s emissaries fastened a quarrel on Wallace.
Taken at disadvantage, he was compelled to retreat
to his house. His wife, having admitted him and his
men, and let them out by another way, held the pursuers
in parley till his escape was assured. Whether then, or
immediately after (on Hazelrig’s return to town), she
paid for her courageous fidelity with her life. Wallace,
with a handful of men, came upon Hazelrig at dead of
night, and slew him in his bedroom with his own hand.54
The Lanark rising and the death of the Sheriff certainly
took place in May 1297.

Harry further asserts that a daughter was born to
Wallace and his wife, that she married a squire named
Shaw, and that ‘right goodly men came of this lady
young.’ The edition of 1594 at this point inserts a few
lines not found in the existing MS. stating that this
daughter of Wallace’s married a squire of ‘Balliol’s
blood,’ and that

This points to an alleged second marriage with Sir
William Baillie of Hoprig. To this allegation it is by
no means a conclusive answer that Sir William Baillie,
second of Hoprig, as son-in-law of Sir William Seton,
obtained a charter of ‘Lambiston’ barony as late as 1368.

According to Harry’s narrative, Wallace found some
of his most active and trustworthy allies, especially in
his earlier career, among his own relatives. This is at
least extremely probable. Sir Richard Wallace of
Riccarton gives him shelter and provision, and sends him
his three sons, of whom Adam, the eldest, distinguishes
himself conspicuously. The priests of Dunipace and Kilspindie
we have already met. Wallace of Auchincruive,
‘his cousin,’ provides supplies for the outlaw of Laglane
Wood and his single ‘child.’ Edward Little is Wallace’s
‘sister’s son.’ Tom Halliday, too, is Wallace’s ‘nephew’—his
‘sib sister’s son’; and Halliday’s eldest daughter
is the wife of Wallace’s great lieutenant, Sir John the
Graham; while his second daughter is the wife of Johnstone,
‘a man of good degree,’ installed as castellan of
Lochmaben, the first castle that Wallace attempted to
hold permanently. Young Auchinleck of Gilbank becomes
Wallace’s ‘eyme’ or ‘uncle,’ by marriage.
Kirkpatrick is ‘of kin,’ and to ‘Wallace’ mother near.’
And Kneland (or Cleland) and William Crawford are both
designated his ‘cousins’; Kneland, indeed, his ‘near
cousin.’ The family tree must have thrown out shoots
in many directions, and more likely than not Harry
may be substantially right.

55
Wallace, as we have seen, and as the indictment on
his trial stated, was a Scotsman born and bred. His
ancestors on both sides, whether Keltic, Norman, or
Saxon, had been domiciled in Scotland for more than a
century, and had entered into the feeling and thought of
the mass of the Scots population. Wallace himself, possibly
with a view to the Church, had received as good an
education as the times afforded. Whether or not the
good priest of Dunipace inculcated in his opening mind
the inestimable value of liberty, he was aroused, while
yet ‘in his tender age,’ to bitter reprisals on the
oppressors of his family and of his countrymen. A
younger son, without rank or fortune or the experience
of age, he girded on his sword ‘both sharp and long,’
and appealed to the justice of Heaven. Scorning intercession
for relief of his outlawry, he betook himself to
the fastnesses of his country, resolute to right his wrongs
in the only way open to him, and filled with undying
hatred to the tyrants of his native land.

56

CHAPTER III
Guerrilla Warfare

Apart from the Hazelrig and Ormsby episodes, the
chroniclers plant Wallace at Stirling Bridge almost as
if he had just started from the ground, or come down
from the clouds, ready to command an army in the field.
Yet they call him brigand, public robber, cut-throat, and
other suchlike names, strangely inadequate as explanation
of his command of the Scots against a mighty English
host. Wallace’s leadership really has to be accounted
for on some more rational principle.

Now, Harry is the main guide up to the Hazelrig
episode; and Harry has been grievously discredited.
As the criticism of his poem stands, each reader must be
left free to make his own deductions; but at least it may
be claimed for Harry that each episode be judged on its
merits, not by the jeers of Lord Hailes or an echo thereof.
In any case, it is beyond all question that Wallace must
have gone through some such experience as Harry details.
Stirling Bridge was not an historical miracle.

OCCASIONAL EARLY ADVENTURES.

It might be possible to refer some of the earlier exploits
of Wallace, as recorded by Harry, to 1292, without57
much more violence than is involved in the like reference
of the Selby episode. But there is no similar necessity.
They all imply the presence of Sir Henry de Percy in
the Ayr district, and Percy was appointed Warden of
Galloway and Ayr and Castellan of Ayr, Wigton,
Cruggelton, and Buittle on September 8, 1296, though
he did not reach his post till well into October. It is
excess of stringency to bind Harry definitely to particular
months.

What Wallace had been doing in the gap between
1292 and 1296 remains unknown. It seems hopeless to
connect him in any way with the events of March and
April 1296, at Berwick and Dunbar; and it is likely
enough that Sir Richard Wallace sedulously kept him
out of mischief and danger, at Riccarton, till the fresh
occupation of Galloway and Ayr by the English in
October 1296. On the assumption, however, of his
marriage with Marion Bradfute, which cannot easily
be placed later than the first months of 1296, there
must have been considerable intermissions of his restraint.
Sir Reginald Crawford had duly submitted
to Edward, who confirmed him in the Sheriffdom of
Ayr on May 14 at Roxburgh.

The fresh involvement of Wallace with the English is
ascribed by Harry to an accidental conflict with five men
of Percy’s train at the Water of Irvine. Wallace was
fishing as Percy passed, and the men proceeded to
appropriate his takings. He killed three of the five.
Sir Richard was distracted. Plainly, Wallace could not
remain longer at Riccarton. Taking a youth as his sole
attendant, he rode straight to Wallace of Auchincruive,
and sought shelter in Laglane Wood, where his relative
secretly supplied him with necessaries.

Wallace, however, chafed in inaction. He would see
what was doing in Ayr. At the market-cross he fell in
with a champion, who was offering English soldiers and
others a stroke on his back with a rough bucket-pole for
a groat. Wallace gave him three groats, delivered his
stroke, and broke the man’s backbone. The English at
once attacked him, and he had to slay five of them
before he could escape to his horse, which he had left58
with his man at the edge of the wood. Further pursuit
was in vain.

This affair having blown over, Wallace would again
visit Ayr. It was market-day. Sir Reginald’s servant
had bought fish, when Percy’s steward insultingly demanded
them; and on Wallace’s interposing a gentle
remonstrance, the steward in choler struck him with his
hunting-staff. Wallace instantly collared him, and stabbed
him to the heart: ‘caterer thereafter, sure, he was no
more.’ Some fourscore men-at-arms had been told off
to keep order on market-day, and Wallace was at once
assailed. After a fierce struggle, with many casualties,
he was borne down and taken prisoner—’to pine him
more’ than forthright death. Cast into an ugsome cell,
and badly fed, he fell very ill; and when the gaoler was
sent down to bring him up for judgment, he found
his prisoner apparently dead, and so reported. In the
result, Wallace’s body was tossed over the wall into ‘a
draff midden,’ presumably lifeless. Hearing of this, his
old nurse, who lived in the New Town of Ayr, begged
leave to take the body away for burial; and, her request
being contemptuously granted, she had it carried to her
house. Her tendance revived Wallace, but she kept up
the outward pretence that he was dead. It argues a
good nurse and a good constitution if he made recovery
within the limits of time indicated by Harry.

At this period the famous Thomas the Rimer happened
to be on a visit at the neighbouring monastery of
Faile (St. Mary’s). He felt deep concern for Wallace’s
fate. The ‘Minister’ of the house despatched a messenger
to ascertain the truth privately. On hearing that
Wallace was really alive,

A similar prophecy is mentioned by Harry as lying
heavy on the mind of Percy—a prophecy that a Wallace
should turn the English out of Scotland. ‘Wise men,’59
said Percy, ‘the sooth by his escape may see.’ The
same view, according to Harry, took a strong hold of the
popular mind.

Sending his benefactress and her family to his mother
at Elderslie, Wallace got hold of a rusty sword, and set
out for Riccarton. On the way he encountered an
English squire named Longcastell (Lancaster), with two
men, who insisted on taking him to Ayr. Wallace
pleaded to be let alone, for he was sick. Longcastell
pronounced him a sturdy knave, and drew his sword.
Wallace at once struck him dead with his rusty weapon,
and then killed the two followers. Taking the spoils, he
hurried to Riccarton. There came Sir Reginald and
Wallace’s mother and many friends, and great was the
rejoicing.

GUERRILLA IN THE WEST.

Wallace, however, was eager to avenge him on his
enemies. He would not rest at Riccarton. Accordingly,
he was furnished forth, and was accompanied by
several lads of spirit, his relatives and friends. Adam
Wallace, Sir Richard’s eldest son, now eighteen, Robert
Boyd, Kneland, ‘near cousin to Wallace,’ Edward Little,
‘his sister’s son,’ and Gray and Kerly, with some attendants,
bound them to ride with him to Mauchline Moor.
Learning there that an English convoy from Carlisle to
Ayr was approaching, Wallace rode to Loudon Hill and
lay in wait. The convoy came in sight. It was conducted
by Fenwick, the officer that had commanded
the English in the recent combat here, when Wallace’s
father was slain. This concurrence of circumstances
exalted Wallace’s spirit, and steeled his mind to a
resolute revenge. He had but 50 men against 180;
and his men fought on foot. By throwing up a rough
dyke of stones, he had narrowed the approach of the
harnessed English horse, whose riders fancied they had
no more to do than to trample their enemies down.
Wallace promptly disabused their minds of that time-honoured
superciliousness. His men plied them first
with spears and then with swords, keeping close order,60
and defying the horsemen’s efforts to scatter them.
Wallace himself in fury struck Fenwick from his horse,
Boyd giving the finishing blow; and a hundred of the
English lay dead on the field. The superstition of the
invincibility of armed horse by footmen was exploded by
Wallace’s tactics and fierce resolution. The victors
carried off Percy’s convoy to the depths of the forest of
Clydesdale, whence they freely distributed ‘stuff and
horses’ privately to friendly neighbours. The success
of this daring effort tended to corroborate the prophecy
of True Thomas and spread the fame of Wallace.

Wallace’s Loudon Hill exploit came under the cognisance
of Percy in council at Glasgow. Sir Reginald was
taken bound for the culprit’s good behaviour, and, in
order to shield the Sheriff, Wallace’s comrades induced
him to consent to a peace for ten months—a peace limited
to Percy’s jurisdiction. Presently Wallace would yet again
see Ayr, and went to Ayr with fifteen men. Invited by
an English buckler-player to try his sword, Wallace cut
through buckler, hand, and brain down to the shoulders.
At once a fight ensued, at great odds, and the Scots had
to retire, Wallace protecting the rear. Harry says 29
out of 120 English, including three of Percy’s near kin,
were slain. Percy, however, recognised that Wallace
was not the aggressor, and contented himself with binding
Sir Reginald to keep him from market-town and fair
and like resorts. So for a week or two Wallace stayed
at Crosby.

Another Council was now summoned at Glasgow, ‘to
statute the country.’ Sir Reginald, as Sheriff, obeyed
the summons, taking Wallace with him. Wallace rode
ahead, overtaking the Sheriff’s baggage, which soon came
up on Percy’s. Percy’s horse was tired, and Percy’s
conductor insolently appropriated Sir Reginald’s fresher
beast, despite Wallace’s remonstrance. ‘Reason him
ruled,’ and he returned to Sir Reginald, who took it very
calmly. Wallace, however, fired up, and swore that,
peace or no peace, please the Sheriff or otherwise, he
would exact amends for the wrong. Spurring forward
again in high dudgeon, with Gray and Kerly by his side,
he quickly overtook Percy’s baggage east of Cathcart,61
slew the five attendants, and took the spoil. Then said
Wallace, ‘At some strength would I be.’

The Council promptly outlawed Wallace, and made
Sir Reginald swear to hold no friendly communication
with him without leave. Meantime Wallace, with his
two men, had passed to the Lennox. Harry sends him
to Earl Malcolm, who proposed to make him ‘master of
his household.’ The Earl had, in fact, already sworn
fealty to Edward, not once, but twice (March 14 and
August 28), though Harry says, ‘he had not then made
band’; but that consideration would be open to easy
interpretation in the remote fastnesses of Dumbartonshire.
In any case, Wallace is said to have declined the offer,
his mind being set upon wreaking revenge on the English.
He was joined by about sixty men, some of them Irish
exiles, and all of them pretty rough. Two of them must
be signalised: Fawdon, a big dour fellow; and Steven of
Ireland, a most valuable recruit, who soon became a great
friend of Kerly’s.

Gray and Kerly, who had been with him at Loudon
Hill, he instructed to keep near his person, knowing
them ‘right hardy, wise, and true.’ The field of action
was closed against him in the west. He would therefore
strike to the north.

GUERRILLA IN THE NORTH.

With his sixty men, Wallace started through the
Lennox. He was well provided from the spoil of Percy’s
baggage, and he liberally distributed the good Earl’s gifts
among his followers. The first exploit of the campaign
was the capture of the peel of Gargunnock, a little west
of Stirling. Wallace sent two spies at midnight to find
out how the place was defended; and their report was
that everything betokened heedlessness—sentry asleep,
bridge down, labourers going in without question.62
Hurrying up his men with due precaution, Wallace
entered without hindrance. The peel door he found
guarded with a stubborn bar, which, to the marvel of his
men, he wrenched out with his hands, bringing three
yards’ breadth of the wall with it. Next moment, he
burst in the door with his foot. The watchman, wakened
up suddenly, struck at him with ‘a felon staff of steel,’
which Wallace wrested out of his hands and brained him
with. The captain, Thirlwall, with the aroused garrison
at his heels, came forward, only to be battered to death
with the same steel mace. Not a single fighting-man—and
there were twenty-two of them—was spared; but
women and children, according to Wallace’s invariable
rule, were protected. Having gathered the spoils,
Wallace and his men hastened on their way.

Crossing the Forth, they headed north to the Teith,
where Wallace gave Kerly custody of the useful mace of
steel; and, having passed the Teith, they held on, by
one ‘strength’ and another, to Strathearn, religiously
slaying every Englishman they fell in with. At Blackford,
for instance, they encountered five riding to Doune,
and killed and spoiled them, and put the bodies ‘out of
sight.’ They then crossed the Earn, and made for
Methven Wood, where they found ‘a land of great
abundance.’

Wallace, however, did not enjoy the fat of the forest in
idleness. He longed to see St. Johnston. Appointing
Steven of Ireland, who had done good service as guide
after Gargunnock, to command in his absence, Wallace
took seven men and fared to the town. ‘What is your
name?’ inquired the provost (mayor). ‘Will Malcolmson,’
replied Wallace, ‘from Ettrick Forest; and I
want to find a better dwelling in this north land.’ The
provost explained his inquiry by reciting the rumours
that were rife about Wallace, the outlaw. ‘I hear speak
of that man,’ said Wallace, ‘but tidings of him can I
tell you none.’ Sir Gerard Heron was captain, and
‘under-captain’ was Sir John Butler, son of Sir James
Butler of Kinclaven, who then happened to be in St.
Johnston. Harry recounts Wallace’s nightly regrets that
he had not force enough to take the town. He discovered,63
however, the strength and distribution of the
enemy in these parts; and, having learnt when Sir James
Butler was to return to Kinclaven, he at once set out
again for Methven Wood, where the blast of his well-known
horn quickly assembled his men.

Advancing towards Kinclaven, on the right bank of
the Tay a little above the junction of the Isla, Wallace
ambushed his men near the castle in a thickly-wooded
hollow. In the early afternoon his scouts brought him
the news that three fore-riders had passed, but he did
not move till Butler and his train came up so as to make
sure of their exact strength. There were ninety good
men in harness on horseback. When Wallace showed
himself, these warriors contemptuously imagined they
could simply ride down him and his footmen, but they
were promptly taught the lesson of Loudon Hill.
Wallace and his men stood shoulder to shoulder, and
plied their swords with dire effect. Wallace himself was
conspicuous where his brand was most needed, and at
length he reached Sir James Butler, and clove him to
the teeth. Steven of Ireland and Kerly ‘with his good
staff of steel’ especially distinguished themselves. Three
score of Butler’s men were slain, and the remnant fled to
the castle, hotly pursued by the Scots. The bridge was
lowered and the gates cast open to the fugitives; but
Wallace followed so fast that he got command of the
gate, and his men entered with the flying enemy. Not
a fighting-man was left alive in the place; only Lady
Butler and her women, two priests, and the children
were spared. Only five Scots were killed. Having
plundered, dismantled, and burnt the castle, Wallace
drew off into Shortwood Shaw.

When the country folk, seeing the smoke, hastened to
Kinclaven Castle, they found ‘but walls and stone.’
Lady Butler herself carried the news to St. Johnston.
At once Sir Gerard Heron ordered 1000 men ‘harnessed
on horse into their armour clear,’ to pursue Wallace.
The force was disposed in six equal companies, five to
surround the wood; the sixth, led by Sir John Butler, to
make the direct attack. Wallace had taken up a strong
position, which he fortified by cross bars of trees except64
on one side, whence he could issue to the open ground.
This ‘strength,’ he determined, must be held to the
last. Butler had 140 archers, said to be Lancashire
men, with 80 spears in support. Wallace had only 20
archers, and ‘few of them were sikker of archery’;
they were more familiar with spear and sword. Wallace
himself had a bow of Ulysses: ‘no man was there that
Wallace’ bow might draw.’ He was short of arrows,
however; for, when he had shot fifteen, his stock was
exhausted. The English, on the other hand, were
plentifully supplied. The odds were overwhelmingly in
their favour. Wallace did his utmost to shelter his men,
‘and cast all ways to save them from the death.’ With
his own hand he dealt death to many of the foe in
sudden sallies. Here he had a very narrow escape.
Observing his tactics, an English archer lay in wait for
him, and shot him

It is curious to note that the alleged French description
of Wallace preserved by Harry mentions ‘a wen’
or scar in this very spot. Wallace instantly made for
his assailant at all hazards, and killed him in sight of
friends and foes.

In the course of the afternoon the English were
reinforced by the arrival of Sir William de Loraine from
Gowrie with 300 men to avenge the death of his uncle,
Sir James Butler. ‘Here is no choice,’ said Wallace,
‘but either do or die.’ A combined assault was made
on his position by Butler and Loraine; and he had only
50 to withstand 500. The battle raged fiercely, and in
spite of his most arduous efforts with his ‘burly brand,’
Wallace was compelled to evacuate and to seek shelter
in the thickest part of the wood. At last he cut his way
through Butler’s company, and established himself in
another ‘strength.’ The English stuck close to him,
however. In the mêlée, he struck hard at Butler, who
was saved from death by the interposition of the bough
of a tree, which Wallace brought down upon him. By
this time Loraine had come up, and Wallace, making65
straight at him, cut him down, but did not regain the
‘strength’ without a desperate struggle.

Still Wallace held his ‘strength.’ Sir Gerard Heron,
however, on hearing of the death of Loraine, moved all
his troops simultaneously against the position; whereupon
Wallace and his men issued at the north side of
the wood in retreat, ‘thanking great God’ that they
got off on such terms. The Scots had lost seven men
killed; the English, 120.

Wallace took refuge in Cargill Wood. The English,
deeming it fruitless to pursue him, set about seeking
where the plunder of Kinclaven had been deposited in
the forest; but they found nothing except Sir James’s
horse. They then returned to St. Johnston, more
dispirited than elated. The second night, the Scots
returned cautiously to Shortwood Shaw, and carried
away the hidden spoils. By sunrise they reached
Methven Wood, and three days afterwards they established
themselves in a strength in Elcho Park. They
had eluded the vigilance of their enemies.

Thanks to the temerity of Wallace, however, they
were soon discovered. According to Harry, he returned
to St. Johnston in the disguise of a priest, in prosecution
of an amour commenced on his first visit. He was
recognised and watched; and the woman is said to have
disclosed the date of the next appointment. He was
accordingly waylaid; but, on her confession, he threw
aside his own disguise and arrayed himself in her dress,
and, dissembling his countenance and his voice, passed
safely out at the gate. As he increased his pace,
two of the guards, thinking him ‘a stalwart quean,’
hastened after him. In a few minutes they lay dead
on the South Inch, and Wallace was hurrying to
Elcho Park. This story of Harry’s is unusually clumsy,
or the eyes of the guards must have been peculiarly
vacant.

The two men being found slain on the South Inch,
Sir Gerard Heron set out in pursuit of Wallace with 60066
men. He took with him also a sleuth-hound of the best
Border breed. Heron with half his force surrounded
the wood where Wallace was posted, and Butler made
the attack with the rest, 300 against 40. In the first
ruthless onset, the Scots killed forty, but lost fifteen.
Finding their ground untenable, they cut their way
through the enemy to the banks of the Tay, intending
to cross; but the water was deep, and one-half of them
could not swim. They had no alternative, therefore,
but to face Butler’s men again; and after a severe
struggle, in which Steven and Kerly, as well as Wallace,
performed doughty deeds, they again cut through the
English, killing sixty and losing nine. Already Wallace
had lost more than half his men, twenty-four out of
forty, and sixteen was a mere handful against hundreds.
As Butler was re-forming his men, Wallace took the
opportunity to dash through between him and Heron,
and made for Gask Wood.

The approach of night was in his favour. But the
way was uphill and rough, and when they were yet east
of Dupplin, a considerable distance from the anticipated
shelter, Fawdon broke down, and would not be persuaded
to hurry on. Having exhausted argument and entreaty,
Wallace in anger struck off his head. Harry justifies
the act. It might stop the sleuth-hound. Fawdon was
suspected of treachery; he was ‘right stark’ and had
gone but a short distance. If he was false, he would
join the enemy; if he was true, the enemy would kill
him. ‘Might he do aught but lose him as it was?’
On the alleged facts, probably there is little more to
be said. The succeeding narrative shows plainly
enough that Wallace felt himself in a most painful
dilemma.

While Wallace hastened forward, Steven and Kerly
stayed behind in a bushy hollow till Heron came up, and
then cautiously mixed with the English as they were
speculating on Fawdon’s fate. The hound had stopped,
and as Heron was inspecting Fawdon, Kerly suddenly
struck him dead. Kerly and Steven at once dashed off
towards the Earn. Butler despatched an escort with
Heron’s body to St. Johnston, and pushed on to Dalreoch.67
Meantime Wallace had occupied Gask Hall—Baroness
Nairne’s ‘Bonny Gascon Ha”—

with his remnant of fourteen, and was painfully anxious
about Steven and Kerly, and vexed about the death of
Fawdon. In the circumstances of his mental excitement
and bodily fatigue, the story of the apparition of Fawdon,
which Harry works up so elaborately, finds a very natural
basis. Whether or not Wallace sent out his men in
relays to discover the meaning of the strange horn-blowing,
and so forth, and then sallied out alone under
the urgency of the apparition, he appears to have now
lost all touch with his men.

Passing along Earn side all alone, Wallace fell in with
Sir John Butler, who was patrolling the fords. Butler,
suspecting his explanation of his business, drew upon
him; whereupon Wallace killed him, seized his horse,
and rode away, pursued hotly by the English. In the
running fight he killed some twenty of them; but at
Blackford his horse broke down, and he was obliged to
take to the heather on foot. Struggling to the Forth,
he swam the cold river and hastened to the Torwood,
where he got shelter in a widow’s hut. Sending out
messengers to repass the way he came and get news of
his men, he retired to a deep thicket to rest, watched by
two of the widow’s sons, while a third went to apprise
the priest of Dunipace of his arrival.

The priest came. Wallace was still suffering severely
from fatigue as well as excitement.

The priest, however ardent for freedom in the abstract,
could not but recognise the hopelessness of Wallace’s
position. His men were lost; more would not rise with
him in their place; it was useless for him to throw away
his life. Let him seek honourable terms with Edward.
The old man may have been overpowered by Wallace’s68
disastrous condition; he may have been testing his
nephew’s mettle.

Such was the indomitable resolution of Wallace in
these hopeless circumstances. Presently he was cheered
by the arrival of Steven and Kerly, who were overjoyed
to find him alive. ‘For perfect joy they wept with all
their een.’ Wallace was eager to move. The widow
gave him ‘part of silver bright’ and two of her sons.
She would have given the third but that he was too
young. The priest provided Wallace with horses and
outfit; but ‘wae he was his mind was all in war.’ And
so Wallace passed on to Dundaff Moor. Though the
northern campaign had closed with the annihilation of
his force, it had spread the rumour and inflamed the
spirit of resistance.

THE CAPTURE OF LOCHMABEN

Wallace with his four followers rode to Dundaff, a
hilly tract in Stirlingshire. The lord of Dundaff, according
to Harry, was Sir John the Graham, ‘an aged
knight,’ who paid tribute for a quiet life. Abercrombie,
however, following Sympson, says he belonged not to the
Dundaff, but to the Abercorn family; and, on the
strength of a charter in the possession of the Duke of
Montrose, he states that Dundaff was then held by Sir
David de Graham. A Sir David de Graham, brother of
the gallant Sir Patrick, was taken prisoner at Dunbar,
and relegated to St. Briavell’s Castle. Anyhow, this
knight of Dundaff had a son, also named Sir John, ‘both
wise, worthy, and wight,’ and

69

Young Sir John prepared to ride with Wallace, but
Wallace would not take him then.

He would try to raise his friends in Clydesdale, and give
Sir John notice. Sir John eventually became his most
illustrious lieutenant.

So Wallace passed on to Bothwell Moor, to one Crawford,
no doubt a relative; and next day he went to
Gilbank, which was held on tribute by Auchinleck, a
youth of nineteen, closely related to him by marriage.
Here he is said to have remained over Christmas.
The English in these parts had heard of his doings in
the north, but he had disappeared in Strathearn, and so
went out of their minds. Wallace, though lying quiet,
was not inactive. He despatched the trusty Kerly to Sir
Reginald, Boyd, Blair, and Adam of Riccarton. Blair
at once visited him. From all his friends reinforcements
poured into his exchequer.

Starting from Gilbank after Christmas, Wallace with
his four men rode to Corheid in Annandale. Here he
was joined by Tom Halliday and Edward Little, who
were delighted to find that there was no truth in the
report that he had been slain in Strathearn. Wallace
was now sixteen. He longed to see Lochmaben town.
So he set out with Halliday, Edward, and Kerly, leaving
the rest in the Knock Wood. While they were hearing
mass, Clifford, Percy’s nephew, with four men, came to
their hostelry and spitefully cut off the tails of their
horses. Wallace killed them all. The English quickly
pursued, about 150 strong. Wallace reached his men in
the Knock Wood, but his horses were failing through loss
of blood, and he was caught up before gaining Corheid.
Returning desperately, he killed fifteen of the foremost,
and compelled the survivors to fall back on the main
body, but did not pursue, Halliday having descried some70
200 in ambush. The English again pressed the Scots
retreat. Wallace cut down the redoubtable Sir Hugh de
Morland, and, mounting Morland’s ‘courser wight,’
again compelled the advanced guard to retire with the
loss of twenty men. Sir John de Graystock, the English
leader, was furious. Meantime Wallace hurried on,
himself and Halliday stoutly guarding the rear.

Near Queensberry Wallace was happily reinforced by
Sir John the Graham with thirty men, and by Kirkpatrick
of Torthorwald, who had been holding out in Eskdale
Wood, with twenty men. The Scots thereupon charged
through the English, scattering them in flight; but 100
held together, and Wallace, with brusque directness,
recalled Sir John and ordered him to break up this body.
The rout was complete, and at the Knock Head Sir John
killed Graystock. The valour of Sir John, Kirkpatrick,
and Halliday had been conspicuous. Harry remarks a
delicate courtesy of Wallace’s in apologising to Sir John
for the brusqueness of his order in the heat of the pursuit;
and no less generous was Sir John’s answer. In
this engagement the Scots did not lose a single man!

The victorious Scots now held a council, and unanimously
adopted Wallace’s proposal to take Lochmaben
Castle, the seat of the Bruce. The possession of Lochmaben
would establish a strong footing against the English;
and perhaps they might also link with it Carlaverock
Castle, if this could be wrested from Sir Herbert de
Maxwell. In the dusk of the evening, Halliday, taking
with him John Watson, both of them having special local
knowledge, rode to the gate. The porter, who knew
Watson well, unsuspiciously opened the gate, on his information
that the captain was coming, and was instantly
killed by Halliday, Watson taking his keys. Wallace
then came up and entered, finding only women and a
couple of men-servants. The women he spared, but the
men he killed. As the Knock Head fugitives returned,
Watson let them in, and Wallace’s men immediately
slew them. ‘No man left there that was of England
born.’ Johnstone, the husband of Halliday’s second
daughter—probably the Johnstone of Eskdale mentioned
later by Harry—was made captain. Lochmaben71
was thus the first castle that Wallace attempted to
hold.

The short campaign in Annandale was over. Halliday
settled down again in the Corhall, and Kirkpatrick
returned to Eskdale Wood. Wallace and Sir John, with
forty men, passed north into Lanarkshire, and having
captured and dismantled Crawford Castle, proceeded
straight to Dundaff.

The short and sharp campaigns of the west and the
north—whether as detailed by Harry or not—had placed
Wallace before his countrymen as the foremost champion
of the liberties of Scotland.

72

CHAPTER IV
The Deliverance of Scotland

Leaving Dundaff, Wallace proceeded, in April 1297, to
Lanark, attended by nine men. He joined his wife in a
house just outside the gate, and here Sir John the
Graham came to him, with fifteen followers. Sir William
de Hazelrig,1 the Sheriff, the oppressor of his wife’s
family, and Sir Robert Thorn, presumably the Captain,
soon devised a plan for taking him at disadvantage. As
Wallace was returning from mass one May morning with
his companions, not in armour, but pranked out in the
civilian ‘goodly green’ of the season, he was ostentatiously
insulted by an English soldier—’the starkest
man that Hazelrig then knew.’ He tried to get away73
without a disturbance; but the arrival of Thorn and
Hazelrig with some 200 men in harness at once precipitated
a conflict. The odds were overwhelming, and
the Scots retired through the gate, Wallace and Sir John
doughtily defending the rear. Reaching Wallace’s
house, they were let in by his wife, and passed out
by a back door, while she held the enemy in parley.
They at once sought the shelter of Cartland Crags.

According to Harry, the English, enraged at being
baffled, put Wallace’s wife to death; but Harry professes
himself unable to state the circumstances. Wyntoun,
whose account is extremely similar to Harry’s, says the
Sheriff came to Lanark after the disturbance, and then
caused her to be put to death. He adds that Wallace
secretly, but helplessly, beheld her execution; an absolutely
incredible assertion. Harry’s version is certainly
nearer the facts. The English had killed Wallace’s
father; they had persecuted his mother; now they had
inhumanly murdered his wife. The cup was running
over.

The distress of Wallace and his friends is finely
depicted by Harry. It inflamed them to a desperate
and exemplary revenge. Reinforced by Auchinleck with
ten men, Wallace and his party entered Lanark at night
by different gates in twos and threes, without exciting
remark. Wallace made for Hazelrig; Sir John, for
Thorn. Dashing in the door with his foot, Wallace
found Hazelrig in his bedroom, and slew him on the
spot, while Auchinleck, gave himself the satisfaction of
‘making sikkar’ with three thrusts of his knife. Young
Hazelrig, rushing to the aid of his father, was also
instantly slain. Meantime Sir John had burnt Thorn
in his house.

Wallace drew off to Clydesdale for aid. His terrible
wrongs and his signal revenge brought him troops of
friends, and the hopes of patriotic Scotsmen rose high.
Sir John the Graham and Auchinleck were at his side.
Adam of Riccarton, Sir John of Tynto, Robert Boyd,
and Crawford (not Sir Reginald, who was in England),
hastened to him. From Kyle and Cunningham came
1000 horse. Presently Wallace found himself at the74
head of 3000 ‘likely men of war,’ besides many footmen,
who ‘wanted horse and gear.’

One notable recruit deserves especial mention—Gilbert
de Grimsby, whom Wallace’s men rechristened Jop.
Jop was a man ‘of great stature,’ and already ‘some
part grey.’ He was a Riccarton man by birth, and had
travelled far in Edward’s service as ‘a pursuivant in
war,’ though, Harry says, he consistently refused to bear
arms. No doubt he was the ‘Gilbert de Grimmesby’
that carried the sacred banner of St. John of Beverley
in Edward’s progress through Scotland after Dunbar, a
distinguished service for which Edward on October 13,
1296, directed Warenne to find him a living worth about
20 marks or pounds a year.

The news of the Lanark affray having reached Edward,
Harry marches up to Biggar an ‘awful host’ of 60,000
men under the ‘awful king’ Edward, and scatters it
like chaff before Wallace, killing thousands, a fabulous
number of the slain being near kinsmen of the King.
But Edward was certainly in England at the time, busily
struggling with adversity in his preparations ‘to cross
seas’ to Flanders. He had, indeed, one eye on the
Scots. In the beginning of May he was having his
‘engines’ overhauled at Carlisle; on May 24 he
addressed a circular order to his leading liegemen in
Scotland to hear personally from certain high officers of
‘certain matters he had much at heart’ in view of his
intended departure to Flanders; and through May and
June he received the oaths of several Scots barons to
serve him ‘in Scotland against the King of France.’
But, so far as authentic documents show, those preparations
led elsewhere, not to Biggar. As there exists no
historical record of this Biggar expedition, and the local
tradition is most likely a mere echo of Harry’s trumpet,
the Marquess of Bute and Dr. Moir may be right in the
suggestion that Harry’s battle of Biggar is a duplicate of
the later battle of Roslin. In any case, it must be
seriously modified both in dimensions and in details.

Harry’s account of Wallace’s subsequent doings in the
south-west must at present be left in a tangle of misconceptions.
The dreadful story of the Barns of Ayr, however,75
claims notice. The details of the treacherous
preparations must be rejected, or at least held in grave
suspense. The alleged result was that some 360 of the
leading Scots of the district—Sir Reginald Crawford,
Sir Brice Blair, Sir Niel Montgomery, Crawfords,
Kennedys, Campbells, Barclays, Boyds, Stewarts, and
so forth—being summoned to attend an eyre at Ayr on
June 18, were hanged as they entered, one by one, in the
‘Barns,’ or barracks, where the meeting was convened.
Wallace, who had been specially aimed at, escaped by an
accident. Gathering what men he could muster on the
spur of the moment—some 300—he came to the Barns
at night, fired them, and burnt and slew all the English
there. Next he took the castle, but there were only a handful
of men in it. Supplementary to the revenge taken by
Wallace was ‘the Friars’ Blessing of Ayr’; for Friar
Drumlay, the Prior, who had 140 English quartered with
him, simultaneously rose with seven of his brethren,
donned harness, and took arms, and slew most of his
guests, the few that escaped being drowned. Harry
reckons the whole slaughter bill at 5000.

What may be the kernel, or fragments, of truth in the
story cannot now be stated. Certainly Sir Reginald
Crawford was alive after June 18. Arnulf the Justice
may, as the Marquess of Bute suggests, stand for
Ormsby the Justiciar, who was attacked by Wallace at
Scone. The Marquess looks for explanation to the
occasion of Edward’s visit to Ayr on August 26, 1298,
when the English found Ayr Castle burnt and abandoned.
Lord Hailes supposes the story may have taken origin in
the pillaging of the English quarters at Irvine in July
1297. Possibly there is a jumble and an exaggeration
and distortion of all these facts. But there must be
something deeper. The event is mentioned as well
known, not only by Harry, but also by Barbour and
Major, and in the Complaynt of Scotland. The story, as
it stands, does not fit into the known history of the time
and place alleged, and must be reserved for more
adequate examination.

Wallace, according to Harry, proceeded straight to
Glasgow, fearing that Bek and Percy might be perpetrating76
a similar atrocity at the eyre of justice they were
holding for Clydesdale. He defeated the English in a
stiff combat, killing Percy quite unhistorically. Bishop
Bek, with an escort, escaped to Bothwell, whither Wallace
pursued him, but apparently he could not take him out
of the hands of Sir Aymer de Valence. Bek was no
doubt in Scotland somewhere about this time—perhaps
two or three months later than Harry supposes; for
Edward had sent him to report personally on the state of
affairs, concerning which various unwelcome indications
had reached him.

One especially unwelcome report, which the chroniclers
specify as the immediate reason for despatching Bek,
informed the King of a daring attack upon Ormsby, his
Justiciar, at Scone, by Wallace and Douglas. Ormsby
demanded homage and fealty, and visited non-performance
with the utmost severity. ‘The temper of
Scotland at that season,’ says Lord Hailes, ‘required
vigilance, courage, liberality, and moderation in its rulers.
The ministers of Edward displayed none of these
qualities. While other objects of interest or ambition
occupied his thoughts, the administration of his officers
became more and more abhorred and feeble.’ This is
true of Ormsby, and true generally. Ormsby, forewarned
of the approach of Wallace, just managed to escape,
leaving all his goods and chattels to the spoilers.
Wallace and Douglas, it is said, killed a great many
Englishmen, and laid siege to several castles; but the
details are not available.

The date of the attack on Ormsby is given by the
chroniclers as May; but the seriousness of the situation
must have impressed Edward before then, for we
have seen that by this time he was preparing for a
‘Scottish war.’ The insurrectionary feeling was certainly
stirring all over the country, and not merely within the
range of Wallace’s known operations. About this time,
or a little later, Macduff had made an ineffectual rising in
Fife; on August 1, Warenne reports from Berwick that
the Earl of Strathearn had captured Macduff and his two
sons, and ‘they shall receive their deserts when they
arrive.’ About this time, or very little later, Sir77
Alexander of Argyll was reported to have taken the
Steward’s castle of Glasrog, and to have invaded
Alexander of the Isles, a liegeman of Edward. Has this
anything to do with the expedition that Harry sends
Wallace on to Argyll for the rescue of Campbell of
Lochawe from MacFadyen, whom Edward had made
Lord of Argyll and Lorn? After giving over the pursuit
of Bek, Wallace had retired to Dundaff, where Duncan
of Lorn found him and besought his aid. Wallace
promptly responded to the call of his old schoolfellow,
defeated MacFadyen, and established Campbell and
Duncan in their lands. At Ardchattan many men rallied
to his standard, including Sir John Ramsay of Auchterhouse,
who had long held out in Strathearn; and with
them he proceeded to attack St. Johnston. Whatever
the blunders in Harry’s details, it is quite certain that
there now was revolt against English supremacy in
Argyll.

The chroniclers join Douglas with Wallace in the
attack on Ormsby. Harry does not mention the episode
at all; and if he confuses it with the Barns of Ayr, he
does not mention Douglas as present. It may be
supposed that Douglas had come south from Scone, and
was engaged on a separate enterprise. Harry first puts
him in independent action at a much later—and
impossible—period. He makes Douglas attack and
capture Sanquhar Castle; whereupon the captain of
Durisdeer raised the Enoch, Tibbermoor, and Lochmaben,
and besieged him in Sanquhar. Douglas, in
distress, sent for aid to Wallace, then in the Lennox.
May it be Argyll, and not the Lennox? Or did Wallace
go to the Lennox after driving Bek out of Glasgow?
The event must have been about this time, if ever. At
any rate, Wallace promptly relieved him; defeated the
English at Dalswinton, slaying 500; and made Douglas
keeper from Drumlanrig to Ayr. Be all this as it may,
Edward on June 12 confiscated all Douglas’s lands and
goods in Essex and Northumberland; which seems to
indicate that by that date he had learned that Douglas
had forsworn his liege lord.

In Galloway, Edward had further trouble with the78
shifty Bruce of Carrick. When the disturbance took
place at Scone, the Bishop of Carlisle, acting with
Edward’s other high officers in these parts, summoned
Bruce to appear, and exacted from him an oath that he
would lend faithful aid to the King against the Scots.
This may have had nothing whatever to do with the
Scone attack, but may have been simply a part in the
regular preparations that were going on for the ‘Scottish
war.’ Bruce is supposed to have made a display of his
fidelity by the raid he presently made upon the lands of
Douglas, which he harried with fire and sword, carrying
off Douglas’s wife and children to Annandale. It is,
however, an obvious suggestion that this vicious foray
was a counterblow for the burning of Turnberry Castle in
the Biggar campaign, if Douglas was with Wallace in that
enterprise, as, on Harry’s story, he probably was. Such
an interpretation of Bruce’s action would tend to confirm
Harry on the point; and there was no clear need for
Bruce to signalise his fidelity in that particular fashion.

At the same time, Bruce may have done it in order to
cloak the conspiracy he was hatching in concert with
the Bishop of Glasgow, the Steward, and the Steward’s
brother John. When the scheme was ripe, Bruce
attempted in vain to raise his father’s men of Annandale,
but he was supported by his own men of Carrick. His
party at once fell on burning and slaying, and the
chroniclers specially mention the expulsion and contumelious
treatment of the English ecclesiastics. If such
expulsion was in furtherance of the execution of the edict
of April 1296, hitherto held in abeyance by the English
domination, that was but a very subordinate consideration.
The popular view seems to have been that Bruce was
aspiring to the throne. Probably enough, at any rate, he
thought that he might lead the nobles to the success that
was likely otherwise to crown Wallace. There is no
trace of any direct personal connection of Wallace with
this movement—no trace except a blunder of Rishanger’s,
who mentions both Wallace and Andrew de Moray,
(? Thomas or Herbert de Morham), but Walter of
Hemingburgh rightly gives Douglas in place of Wallace,
and omits Moray. Bruce, of course, could not have79
been expected to put himself under the leadership of a
mere landless squire, whose proper place he would have
considered to be that of a henchman of his own—a
squire, moreover, that consistently professed to act as
the liegeman of King John. No; the rising most
probably represents an independent attempt of Bruce’s
party, on the suggestion of Wallace’s successes.

Burton is not unnaturally surprised to find Sir William
Douglas in Bruce’s party. It would be easier for the
Douglas pride to bow to Bruce than to Wallace; and the
raid on the Douglas estates might be held to cancel the
burning of Turnberry, or might otherwise receive a large
atonement. In any case, there is barely room for doubt
that Douglas eventually, if not from the first, cast in his
lot with Bruce. The plot proved a complete fiasco. An
English army was upon them. In the first days of June,
Edward had appointed Percy and Clifford ‘to arrest,
imprison, and “justify” all disturbers of the peace in
Scotland and their resetters.’ Having at length, with
great difficulty, raised an army of 300 mounted men-at-arms
and 40,000 foot in England north of Trent, Percy
and Clifford entered Annandale early in July. Pushing
on to Ayr, they learned that the Scots force was near
Irvine. The Scots barons are represented at sixes and
sevens; so selfishly at strife, that Sir Richard de Lundy,
who had never done homage to Edward, passed over to
Percy in open disgust at their discord. At any rate, they
had neither men nor military capacity nor patriotic ardour
to stand up against the English army. They at once
sued for terms. On July 7, at Irvine, Percy and Clifford
received them to Edward’s peace, provisionally promising
them their lives, property, and personal liberty, but
requiring hostages. Such a pusillanimous collapse of the
joint enterprise of half a dozen of the most powerful
Scots nobles, the natural leaders of the nation, with young
Bruce himself at their head, may suggest some measure
of the courage, resource, and patriotism of the youthful
and obscure Wallace—especially if we look but two
months ahead to the signal victory of Stirling.

The craven spirit of these barons is pilloried in the
ignominious document recording their appeal to Warenne80
to support the convention with Percy. There they
stated shamelessly that they had been afraid lest Edward’s
coming army should harry their lands, and that they had
been surely informed that the King would impress ‘all
the middle people of Scotland’ for his war over sea.
They had accordingly taken up arms in defence, until
they could protect themselves by treaty from such a
grievance and dishonour. ‘And therefore, when the
English army entered within the land, they came to meet
them, and had such a conference that all of them came
to the peace and the fealty of our lord the King.’ Yet
their disgraceful treaty, negotiated by the Bishop of Glasgow,
acknowledges that they had committed ‘acts of arson,
slaughter, and plunder.’ They had to put the best face
upon a weak case. There was vastly more spirit in the
nameless Scots and Glaswegians that plundered the English
baggage in Irvine, slaying over 500 of the enemy,
while their betters were grovelling to Percy and Clifford
for admission to the peace of the usurper.

On July 15, Percy and Clifford reached Roxburgh,
where they found Cressingham with 300 covered horses
and 10,000 foot soldiers, ready to march to their aid
next morning. Cressingham’s report to the King on
July 23 throws interesting side-lights on the situation.
Percy and Clifford appear to have thought that the whole
object of the expedition had been accomplished. Cressingham,
however, urged that ‘even though peace had
been made on this side the Scots water, yet it would be
well to make a chevachie on the enemies on the other
side’; or, at any rate, ‘that an attack should be made
upon William Wallace, who lay then with a large company—and
does so still—in the Forest of Selkirk, like
one that holds himself against your peace.’ We shall
presently see that the Scots north of Forth were tolerably
active. Meantime Cressingham’s reference to Wallace,
as well as the formal treaty, appears to indicate all but
conclusively that Wallace was no partner of the barons in
the fiasco of Irvine. In the result Percy and Cressingham
concluded to make no expedition until Warenne
should arrive from England.

The next day both Cressingham and Spaldington wrote81
further particulars to Edward. Spaldington informed
him that ‘because Sir William Douglas has not kept
the covenants he made with Sir Henry de Percy’—that
is, had failed to provide hostages or guarantors—’he
is in your castle of Berwick, in my keeping, and he is
still very savage and very abusive; but,’ he added with
dutiful zest, ‘I will keep him in such wise that, please
God, he shall by no means get out.’ Douglas was put
in irons. On October 12, he was consigned to the Tower
of London, and on January 20, 1298–99, he is reported
as ‘with God.’ Again, Cressingham’s letter of July 24
shows the irksomeness of the English position. Edward,
who had met almost insuperable difficulties in fitting out
his Flanders expedition, had urged him to raise money
from the issues and the rents of the realm of Scotland
to aid Warenne and Percy in their military operations.
‘Not a penny could be raised,’ says Cressingham,
‘until my lord the Earl of Warenne shall enter into
your land and compel the people by force and sentence
of law.’ More than that:—

‘Sire, let it not displease you, by far the greater part of your
counties of the realm of Scotland are still unprovided with keepers,
as well by death, sieges, or imprisonment; and some have given up
their bailiwicks, and others neither will nor dare return; and in
some counties the Scots have established and placed bailiffs and
ministers, so that no county is in proper order, excepting Berwick
and Roxburgh, and this only lately.’

After all, Harry may not be far wrong in stating that
Wallace appointed sheriffs and captains from ‘Gamlispath’
to Urr Water, and controlled Galloway, after the
alleged battle of Biggar. It may be also, as he says,
that Douglas came to Wallace’s peace at that time, and
ruled from Drumlanrig to Ayr as his lieutenant. In any
case, Cressingham’s letter marks emphatically the strength
of the silent, as well as of the active, resistance of the
people of Scotland. The impecunious and helpless
Treasurer could qualify his rueful report by only one
vague crumb of comfort. ‘But, sire, all this will be
speedily amended, by the grace of God, by the arrival of
the said lord the Earl, Sir Henry de Percy, and Sir
Robert Clifford, and the others of your Council.’

82
The alleged delay of the barons in giving hostages is
attributed by the more trusted chroniclers to the urgency
of Wallace. First Douglas, and then the Bishop, surrendered
their liberty, pricked (it is said) by insulting
suspicions of their honour. But this seems to be matter
of inference, not of fact. For on August 1, Warenne
wrote to Edward: ‘Sir William de Douglas is in your
castle of Berwick, in good irons and in good keeping, for
that he failed to produce his hostages on the day appointed
him, as the others did.’ As for the Bishop,
Edward’s own theory, based (he said) on intercepted
correspondence of Wishart, was, that he had voluntarily
submitted to internment in Roxburgh Castle, in order to
plot for its betrayal to the Scots. One would like to see
that correspondence. No doubt the compulsion in both
cases was altogether external. At any rate, we are told
that Wallace was extremely angry when he heard of their
surrender; and that, in his rage, he harried the Bishop’s
house, carrying off his furniture, arms, and horses. Possibly
he did; possibly, too, the true story may be that
this was the harrying of Bishop Bek, not of Bishop
Wishart, in Glasgow. It is further admitted that his
followers increased to an immense number, the community
of the land following him as their leader and
chief, and the whole of the retainers of the magnates
adhering to him; ‘and although the magnates themselves
were with our King in the body, yet their heart was
far from him.’ This picture agrees fully with the lamentable
report of Cressingham.

The trouble in the north was certainly not to be
ignored, as Cressingham well knew. Andrew de Moray,
son of Sir Andrew de Moray (since Dunbar a prisoner in
the Tower), was at the head of an insurrection of considerable
magnitude. The Bishop of Aberdeen, and
Gartnet, the son of the Earl of Mar, had proceeded to
quell it; and early in June Edward had despatched to
their aid the Earl of Buchan, and later the Earl of Mar.
Mar, Comyn, and Gartnet reported on July 25, that on
July 17 at Launoy (?) on the Spey ‘met us Andrew de
Moray with a great body of rogues,’ and ‘the aforesaid
rogues betook themselves into a very great stronghold of83
bog and wood, where no horseman could be of service.’
They mention ‘the great damage which is in the country,’
and send Sir Andrew de Rathe to inform him particularly.
It is instructive to observe that, when Sir Andrew
showed his credence to Cressingham at Berwick, Cressingham
warned Edward (August 5) to give little weight
to it, for it ‘is false in many points, and obscure, as will
be well known hereafter, I fear.’ On the same date the
Constable of Urquhart reported how Moray had besieged
his castle; and about the same time Sir Reginald le
Cheyne informed Edward how Moray and his ‘malefactors’
had spoiled and laid waste his goods and lands.
Apparently a peace had been patched up somehow; for
on August 28 letters of safe-conduct were issued in favour
of Andrew de Moray, and of Hugh, son of the Earl of
Ross, whose Countess had brought material aid to the
English party against Andrew de Moray, to enable both
men to visit their fathers in the Tower of London.
Andrew de Moray, however, could not have used his
safe-conduct, for he fought at Stirling Bridge. By this
time Aberdeen was also in revolt. On August 1, Warenne
reports that ‘we have sent to take Sir Henry de Lazom,
who is in your castle of Aberdeen, and there makes a
great lord of himself.’ Warenne has not yet heard of
Lazom’s fate; but he can promise that ‘if he be caught
he shall be honoured according to his deserts.’

Wallace, whatever his strength in Selkirk Forest, evidently
felt it inexpedient to offer direct opposition to the
troops under Percy and Cressingham at Roxburgh, and
under Spaldington at Berwick. He went north, no doubt
by Glasgow, if it be true that it was now he harried the
facile bishop—or the astute one either. His force augmented
steadily as he marched onward. It may have
been at this time that he made the expedition into Argyll
and Lorn; it may have been at the earlier date previously
mentioned. For some little space we must again fall
back on the guidance of Harry, who, as we have just
seen, brings him from Ardchattan to the siege of St. Johnston.
The details that Harry supplies give an air of verisimilitude
to his narrative. He tells how Sir John
Ramsay had ‘bestials’ of wood made in the forest, and84
floated them down the river; how the troops filled the
dykes with earth and stone, and advanced the ‘bestials’
to the walls; and how Wallace, Ramsay, and Graham at
last sacked the town, slaying 2000. Ruthven, who had
joined with thirty men, and distinguished himself in the
siege, Wallace installed as Captain and Sheriff, with the
hereditary lieutenancy of Strathearn.

Having first made a flying visit to Cupar, whence the
English abbot had fled, Wallace swept over the north
country with his accustomed energy. At Glammis he
was joined by Bishop Sinclair; Brechin was reached the
same night. Next morning Wallace displayed ‘the
banner of Scotland,’ and rode through the Mearns ‘in
plain battle’ to Dunnottar Castle, where some 4000
English had taken refuge. He destroyed them all, even
burning down the church, which was full of refugees;
not even the intercession of the bishop could save them,
for Wallace had fresh on his mind the atrocities of the
Barns of Ayr.

Hastening to Aberdeen, Wallace suddenly fell upon
the shipping, and destroyed it. Harry mentions no difficulty
with the garrison. Wallace at once swept through
Buchan, and then round the further north. It is impossible
to say how the tour was affected by the results
of the recent operations of Andrew de Moray west of the
Spey. On August 1—a rather early date—Wallace was
back in Aberdeen, making arrangements for the administration
of the north. He immediately passed south to
the siege of Dundee.

There are some historical blunders in Harry’s sketch
of Wallace’s northern expedition. Thus, Sinclair, though
a good patriot, was not Bishop of Dunkeld till 1308, at
any rate, not ‘with the Pope’s consent’; Matthew de
Crambeth was bishop from 1288 to 1304 at least. Sir
Henry de Beaumont, too, whom Harry drives out of
Buchan, was not earl till some ten years later. Again,
if Wallace was in Selkirk Forest on July 23, as Cressingham
reported, he could not, with all his celerity, have
overrun the north and been back in Aberdeen by August85
1. It does not, however, by any means follow that
Harry’s account is not fairly right in substance. In any
case, it seems certain that the whole of Scotland north
of the Forth—except Dundee and Stirling—was under
the sway of Wallace just before the battle of Stirling
Bridge.

On August 22, Edward embarked for Flanders, and
did not return to England till March 14. A few days
before sailing (August 14), he had designated Sir Brian Fitz
Alan to succeed Warenne as Governor of Scotland, Warenne
being ill and anxious to be relieved. In obedience
to urgent orders to remain at his post, however, Warenne
had gone north at the head of the English army, and was
making for Stirling. On hearing of his approach, Wallace
left one of his lieutenants to carry on the siege of Dundee,
and hastened to dispute the passage of the Forth. He
could not occupy Stirling Castle, for the castle was not,
as Harry says, in the hands of Earl Malcolm (who, on
the contrary, was in the English camp), but had been in
the hands of Sir Richard de Waldegrave, the English
Constable, since September 8, 1296. Wallace chose his
position with the instinct of military genius. With his
back to the Abbey Craig and the Ochils above the Abbey
of Cambuskenneth, and with a loop of the Forth protecting
him in front, he commanded at his will the head
of the bridge that lay between him and the enemy. He
is said to have had 180 horse and 40,000 foot, while
Warenne had 1000 horse and 50,000 foot; but little
reliance can be placed on the figures. Cressingham, it
is said, had directed Percy to disband his army of the
west, believing that the force under Warenne was amply
sufficient for the campaign.

As the armies lay in view of each other, with the river
rolling between them, negotiations took place with a view
to some accommodation. The Steward of Scotland and
Earl Malcolm of the Lennox readily obtained Warenne’s
permission to try what they could do in representations
to Wallace. Wallace, however, was absolutely irreconcilable.
Warenne next despatched two friars to Wallace,
to invite him and his men to come to the King’s peace,
promising impunity for all past offences. ‘Take back86
for answer,’ said Wallace, ‘that we are not here to sue
for peace, but are ready to fight for the freedom of ourselves
and of our country. Let the English come on
when they please, they shall find us ready to meet them
to their beards.’ The reply might have been anticipated.

In the English camp the report of the friars was correctly
interpreted as a plain defiance, and strengthened
the clamour of Cressingham and his friends for an immediate
attack on the presumptuous Scots. Warenne, ill,
and anxious to reach an easy settlement, was unable to
withstand ‘the ignorant impetuosity’ of the overbearing
churchman. Sir Richard de Lundy, whom Harry mistakenly
ranges on the side of Wallace, interposed with a
wise suggestion. He pointed out the fatal folly of attempting
to advance over the bridge, which allowed only
two to pass abreast; by that way ‘we are dead men.’
He offered to take a party of 500 horse and a detachment
of infantry across a ford—’probably the ford of
Maner,’ Hailes thinks—and catch the enemy in the rear.
Lundy’s proposal was declined, on the flimsy ground
that it would divide the army, the real ground probably
being doubt of his fidelity. Still Warenne hesitated.
‘Why do we drag out the war in this fashion,’ urged the
Treasurer, ‘and waste the King’s treasure? Let us fight,
as is our bounden duty.’ Warenne at last gave way.

On the morning of September 11, Cressingham led the
English van across the narrow bridge of Stirling. From the
slopes of the Abbey Craig—over which now towers the
imposing National Monument—Wallace sternly watched
them defiling in steady movement all the morning till
eleven o’clock. At the critical moment he sent the blast
of his horn thrilling through the valley, the signal to
launch his eager men upon the English van. While the
main bodies of the combatants met in deadly shock, a
company of Scots seized and held the head of the bridge.
This movement was no sooner realised than it embarrassed
and disordered the advancing English, and struck
apprehension into the hearts of such as had passed over.
Hopeless confusion passed into irretrievable disaster.
The English vanguard was cut to pieces or driven into
the Forth. Cressingham himself was slain. Sir Marmaduke87
Twenge, who had been among the first to cross,
seeing the inevitable rout, cut his way back to the bridge
with conspicuous valour, and effected his escape. This
remarkable exception indicates forcibly the plight of the
rest. As the English drew back from the bridge, the
Scots pressed vehemently upon them. Warenne, who
had not crossed the river, promptly took to horse, and,
ill as he was, did not draw bridle till he reached Berwick,
and did not rest till he was safe on the English side of
the Border.

It is said that the Scots flayed Cressingham’s body
and distributed the skin in strips. So deeply was he
detested in life, that it is far from unlikely that his
enemies took a morbid revenge upon him in death.
After all, it is only sentimentally worse than the fate he
narrowly escaped at the hands of his own men, who were
incensed almost to the point of stoning him to death for
declining the aid of Percy’s force. Still the fact, if a fact,
is to be regretted; although the Furies were let loose.

The Steward and Earl Malcolm are represented as
playing a double part, at which the Steward, at any rate,
was getting well practised. Having failed to arrange
an accommodation with Wallace, they had promised
Warenne to bring him some forty more horse on the
day of battle. They discreetly waited to see how the
event would declare itself, and then calmly stood on the
winning side with contemptible judiciousness.

The Scots at once entered upon an eager pursuit of
Warenne’s flying army. Harry traces the English flight
through the Tor Wood, and on to Haddington and
Dunbar, marking the route by large chronicles of the
slain. Wallace at once returned to Stirling. The
Constable of the castle, Sir Richard de Waldegrave, and
great part of the garrison, had been killed at the bridge;
and Warenne had given the command to Sir William
de Fitz Warin, with whom was the redoubtable Sir
Marmaduke de Twenge, and ‘other good soldiers.’ The
castle was quickly reduced ‘from want of victuals.’ Sir
William de Ros, by his own account, was one of the
captives, and ‘William le Waleys spared his life from
being Sir Robert’s brother (? cousin); but as he would88
not renounce his allegiance, sent him a prisoner to Dumbarton
Castle, where he lay in irons and hunger till its
surrender to the King after the battle of Falkirk.’ On
April 7, 1299, Edward authorised negotiations for the
exchange of a number of prisoners, including Fitz Warin,
Twenge, and Ros. Fitz Warin died the same year
(before Dec. 23). The fate of the rest of the garrison
was probably similar.

Harry tells how Wallace received all the barons that
were willing to come to him, requiring them all to swear
‘a great oath’ to be loyal to himself and to Scotland,
with the alternative of death or imprisonment. Sir John
de Menteith he mentions specifically as having taken the
oath. But this subordination of the ‘barons’—in spirit
at least—is to be accepted with some reserve; though
an English annalist also tells us that the Scots adhered
to Wallace, ‘from the least to the greatest’; and the
papers about ‘ordinances and confederations,’ found on
Wallace’s person when he was captured, point to a concordat
of some sort. Dundee was at once evacuated;
and in ten days not an English captain was left in
Scotland, except in Berwick and Roxburgh. Wallace had
at length achieved the deliverance of Scotland.

89

CHAPTER V
Wallace Guardian of Scotland

The immediate outcome of the victory of Stirling
Bridge was the clearance of the English out of the realm
of Scotland. At the same time, the success gave no
measure of the relative strength of the two countries,
now fully transformed from friendly neighbours into
bitter enemies. It in no way diminishes the glory of
Wallace to recognise the accidental weakness of the
English at Stirling—the illness of Warenne, the headstrong
folly of Cressingham, and the absence of Edward
in Flanders. Wallace, on the other hand, had also his
own disadvantages in men and means, owing especially
to the fatal operation of the feudal machinery of society.
He was grievously weakened by the absence of adherents
of hereditary name and territorial importance; and yet the
presence of such adherents was soon destined to paralyse
his efforts. Whatever the difficulties of Edward—foreign
expeditions, vexatious claims of intractable barons, or
lack of ready money—he could always in the last resort90
raise a large army of veteran troops, against which the
raw levies of Wallace could not possibly hold a plain
field. But then Wallace had the courage never to
submit or yield. The military determination of such a
conflict could not lie in a single decisive battle; it
could be reached only through long years of desultory
and embittered warfare. Yet the victory of Stirling was
all-important to the Scots, in demonstrating that even the
mighty armies of England might be disastrously overthrown,
and that Scotland might, after all, succeed in
throwing off the intolerable yoke of foreign domination.
It was a star of hope.

There can be little doubt as to the course taken by the
Scots leaders after the expulsion of the English. They
summoned a council or convention at St. Johnston. At
this council they elected William Wallace and Andrew
de Moray ‘generals of the army of Scotland,’ with full
civil powers as well, in the name of King John. By the
victory of Stirling, Wallace stood forth the foremost man
in Scotland. He had held the leadership, and he had
proved himself worthy. But while his deserts were
beyond cavil, there was a natural reluctance on the
part of the barons to serve under such a ‘new man’;
and, to obviate this difficulty, it was necessary, or at least
desirable, to join with him in command a representative
of the baronage. The choice of Andrew de Moray
was no doubt suggested by his conspicuous services,
especially his recent action in Moray, and his conduct at
the bridge. Baronial considerations may also explain
the official precedence of Moray’s name. Some of the
chroniclers say that Sir Andrew de Moray, his father,
fell at Stirling; but Sir Andrew was lying safe in the
Tower of London. The report of an inquisition at
Berwick in 1300 incidentally mentions that it was
Andrew de Moray himself that fell at Stirling, but this
must be a blunder. The fallen Moray must have been
some other member of the brave and prolific family of
Morays.

For all practical purposes, at any rate, the interests of
the country were in the keeping of Wallace, and he
undoubtedly proceeded to establish order with a firm91
hand and with unflagging energy. One of the most
powerful of the Scots nobles, Patrick Earl of March, did
not appear to the summons to council. The general
feeling, Harry tells us, ran in favour of proceeding against
him without delay. Wallace, however, deprecated such
brusqueness of action, and induced the Council to
despatch a special invitation to the Earl, urging him to
come and take his proper place in the counsels of his
countrymen. Patrick, however, returned an insulting
answer, contemptuously pointed at Wallace, whom he
called a ‘King of Kyle’; implying thereby much what
Langtoft means when he calls Wallace a ‘master of
thieves’; for Kyle signifies ‘forest,’ as well as designates
the district of Wallace’s birth. Thereupon Wallace at
once went against him, defeated him in a hard fight near
Dunbar, and took his castle, Patrick himself escaping
into England. Even after the expedition into England,
which was no doubt now resolved upon, had reached
Berwick, Wallace, it is said, on learning that certain
recalcitrants as far north as Aberdeen ignored the
summons to render aid, left Moray in charge and proceeded
at once to the spot, where he promptly hanged
such as failed to furnish a good excuse. Wallace appears
to have carried out consistently the rule of driving furth
of Scotland every Englishman, layman or ecclesiastic;
unless exception must be made of the garrison of Roxburgh.
Scotland for the Scots! On the death of Fraser,
he had William de Lamberton appointed Bishop of St.
Andrews, defeating the opposition of William Comyn,
brother of the Earl of Buchan.

The military situation was but a temporary respite,
and required instant preparation for both attack and
defence. The condition of the country was lamentable.
The land south of Forth had been denuded of everything
likely to afford subsistence to the invaders; and what the
Scots had not drawn off had been eaten up or destroyed
by the English troops. Throughout Scotland there was
severe scarcity, if not actual famine, with pestilence in
its track. In view of relieving the pressure at home,
and of adding to the supplies from the plenty of the
northern counties of England, as well as of heartening92
his men and people by striking a counterblow to the
enemy in their own territory, Wallace—or the Council—projected
a strong foray across the border. For that
enterprise, however, it was necessary to make adequate
preparations.

Wallace appears to have not rested content with
marshalling afresh his Stirling forces, with the later
recruits that flocked to his standard. He is stated to
have now made a deliberate attack upon the feudal
vassalage, which hampered him so menacingly. He is
said to have divided the country into military districts,
establishing district muster-rolls of all persons between
sixteen and sixty, capable of bearing arms. Over every
four men he appointed a fifth; over every nine, a tenth;
over every nineteen, a twentieth; and so on upwards.
A gibbet frowning over every parish enforced respect
to the conscription; examples were not wanting. The
barons were threatened with imprisonment or confiscation
in case they offered any obstacle to the incorporation
of their vassals in the army of liberation. The particular
process outlined by the later historian Bower may be
no more than his own interpretation of facts he little
understood; but there need be no hesitation in believing
that Wallace at this time made some strenuous effort of
reorganisation, directed to blunting the force of feudal
influences, as well as to rendering his army both more
flexible and more efficient.

At the same time it is certain that his mind was much
occupied in devising means of alleviation of the internal
distress occasioned by the prolonged inflictions of foreign
invasion and foreign occupation. The trading activity of
the seaports, animated by settlers from the Continent,
notably by enterprising Flemings, had permeated and
vivified the whole country; but the wars had seriously
checked the streams of business across the North Sea,
as well as the inland trade and industry. That Wallace
took energetic measures of amelioration has been happily
placed beyond question by Lappenberg’s discovery (1829)
of a most significant letter still extant in the archives of
the city of Lübeck. This letter, which is in Latin, may
be rendered thus:

93

‘Andrew de Moray and William Wallace, the Generals of the
army of the realm of Scotland, and the Community of the same
realm, to the prudent and discreet men and well-beloved friends,
the Mayors and Commons of Lübeck and Hamburg, greeting, and
increase ever of sincere friendship.

‘We have learned from trustworthy merchants of the said realm
of Scotland that you, of your own goodwill, lend your counsel, aid,
and favour in all matters and transactions touching us and the said
merchants, although we on our part have previously done nothing
to deserve such good offices; and all the more on that account are
we bound to tender you our thanks and to make a worthy return.
To do so we willingly engage ourselves to you, requesting that you
will make it known among your merchants that they can have safe
access to all the ports of the realm of Scotland with their merchandise;
for the realm of Scotland, thank God, has been recovered by
war from the power of the English. Farewell.

‘Given at Hadsington (Haddington), in Scotland on October 11,
in the year of Grace 1297.

‘We further request you to have the goodness to forward the
business of John Burnet and John Frere, merchants of ours, as you
would wish us to forward the business of merchants of yours.
Farewell. Given as above.’

Moray and Wallace, it is to be noted, designate themselves
‘the Generals,’ and join with themselves ‘the
Community’ of Scotland. They are Joint-Guardians in
effect, though not in official name.

The Scots army mustered on Roslin Moor. As it
approached the border, the English settlers in Roxburgh
and Berwick mostly fled into Northumberland, whence
the Northumbrians themselves were fleeing to the protection
of Newcastle. Towards the end of October,
the Scots streamed into England, and ravaged Northumberland
at will, molested only in its fringes by occasional
and trifling sallies from strongholds like Alnwick Castle.
Here they derived effective assistance from the local
knowledge and strong arm of Sir Robert de Ros of Wark;
and they apparently made Rothbury Forest a rallying
ground. They next directed their march to Carlisle; but
Carlisle, like Alnwick, was too strongly fortified to yield
to besiegers unprovided with ‘engines.’ We have the
Bishop’s word for it, however, that they wasted the
country for some thirty leagues around; and the chroniclers
tell us how they traversed Englewood Forest and
Allerdale with fire and sword, penetrating as far as to the94
Derwent at Cockermouth. Crossing country again from
Cumberland, with designs on the bishopric of Durham,
they were repelled by a timely storm—hail, snow, and
hard frost—invoked by St. Cuthbert. Many of them,
Hemingburgh affirms, perished from hunger and cold.
Thereupon they fell back on Hexham.

At Hexham Priory, which Comyn’s expedition had left
in ruins some eighteen months before, the Scots found
only three canons, who had valorously ventured to
return. These now took refuge in their oratory, which
they had newly erected in the midst of the desolation,
there to die, should such be the will of God, in the odour
of holiness. ‘Show us the treasury of your church,’
roared the marauders, brandishing their spears, ‘or you
shall instantly die.’ ‘It is no long time,’ stoutly replied
one of the canons, ‘since you and your people carried off
pretty well everything we possessed, and what you have
done with it you know best yourselves. Since then, we
have got together but a few things, as you now see.’ At
this moment, Wallace himself opportunely entered, and,
ordering his men to fall back, requested that one of the
canons would celebrate mass. On the elevation of the
Host, Wallace went out to lay aside his arms, and, when
the celebrant was about to receive the sacred elements,
the Scots crowded up to him, with the intention of
snatching away the chalice. He retired into the sacristy
to wash his hands. Then the rapacity of the soldiers
broke loose. They seized the chalice from the altar,
where the canon had left it in unsuspecting confidence,
the napkins, the altar ornaments, and the very mass book
the canon had been using. Wallace, on his return,
found the canon in bewildered consternation, and instantly
ordered the culprits to be sought for and beheaded.
They were not found, says the historian ruefully, for the
seeking was without intention of finding. Wallace,
however, took the canons under his immediate protection,
warning them to keep close to his person, for his
men were full of mischief, and little amenable either
to law or to punishment. This story, Canon Raine
thinks, ‘was probably told to the historian by his brother
canon, William de Hexham, who migrated from the95
north to Leicester in 1321.’ Knighton of Leicester,
however, copied or adapted the story from Hemingburgh;
but Hemingburgh himself may have got it at
Guisborough in Yorkshire in some such direct way. It
forms a very striking episode, and it fits in perfectly with
Wallace’s grant of two charters—one of protection and
one of safe-conduct—to the Prior and convent.

The violence of the soldiery of the time, Scots or
English, is a fact, demanding such blame or palliation
as may be fairly evoked by the circumstances of each
case. The specific protections now issued by Wallace,
as certified by Hemingburgh, himself an English
chronicler, constitute a conspicuous and irrefragable
testimony to the hero’s humanity. Did Wallace’s conduct
touch the old chronicler himself? At this story he
drops his usual epithet for Wallace—’that notorious
bandit’ (ille latro). We refrain from pressing the
obvious contrasts to Wallace’s considerate action. The
charter of protection to the Prior and convent of Hexham
may be rendered thus:

‘Andrew de Moray and William Wallace, Generals of the army of
Scotland, in the name of the renowned Prince Lord John, by the
grace of God, the illustrious King of Scotland, with the consent of
the Community of the same realm, to all men of the said realm to
whom the present writing shall come, greeting,—

‘Know that we, in the name of the said King, have duly taken the
Prior and convent of Hexham in Northumberland, their lands, their
men, and the whole of their possessions, including all their goods,
movable and immovable, under the firm peace and protection of the
said Lord King and of ourselves. Wherefore we strictly forbid
that any one presume to do them any evil, annoyance, injury, or
offence in their persons, lands, or goods, under penalty of forfeiture
of all the offender’s property to the said Lord King, or to put them,
or any one of them, to death, under penalty of loss of life and limbs.
These presents to remain in force for one year and no longer.

‘Given at Hexham, November 7.’

A letter of safe-conduct was at the same time granted
in the following terms:—

‘Andrew de Moray and William Wallace … (as before).

‘Know that we have received one canon of Hexham, with his
squire and two attendants, to the safe and secure conduct of our
King and of ourselves, to enable them to come to us wherever we
may be, whenever it shall be necessary and expedient for the said96
house. And therefore, in the name of the said Lord King, we
order and strictly enjoin you, all and every, that, when any canon
of the said house, with the squire aforesaid and his attendants, shall
come to you with the object of coming to us, bearing the present letter,
you conduct them to us under safe charge, in such manner that no
one shall molest them in their persons or in their belongings in any
respect, under penalty of forfeiture of all the offender’s property to the
King, or shall put them or any of them to death, under penalty of
loss of life and limbs. These presents to remain force during our
pleasure.’

Moray and Wallace are still ‘the Generals of the army
of Scotland,’ but now it is further stated that they are
acting in the name of King John. The deposition of
John is defiantly ignored. It has been supposed that,
between October 11 and November 7, John had sent them
a commission authorising them to act under his sanction.
This is not impossible; but the step would have involved
extreme risk of personal danger to himself, however it
might have strengthened the official influence of the
Generals. It seems too hazardous to conjecture that the
fresh expression implies a fresh sanction, obtained in
such circumstances. One had rather regard it as simply
a fuller statement of the view that the Generals now, if
not all along, held as to the nature of their position.
There seems little reason, however, to doubt that the
Council had from the first resolved that all official acts
should be in the name of King John.

Having spent two days at Hexham, the expedition
headed for Newcastle, burning Ritton on the way. The
garrison of Newcastle showed fight, and the garrison of
Durham also; otherwise there was no opposition. The
Scots had no means to enter upon an effective siege, and
accordingly they wasted no efforts upon an attempt.
They recrossed the border about Christmas, having
worked their will in the three northern counties for the
best of two months.

The narratives of the inroad are, perhaps unavoidably,
somewhat confused. The movements of the Scots seem to
have been exceedingly rapid; they may, not improbably,
have come and gone in relays, keeping temporary headquarters
in Rothbury Forest; and it may be that the
incidents are not all treated in their right order. But the97
general account of a comprehensive ravage of the three
northern counties from Tweed to Tyne and Derwent,
during November and December, is solid fact. The
effects of the visitation may be partly gathered from
Hemingburgh’s narrative. ‘During that time,’ he says,
‘the praise of God ceased in all the monasteries and
churches of the whole province from Newcastle-upon-Tyne
to Carlisle; for all the monks, canons regular, and
other priests, servants of the Lord, had fled, with (one
may say) the whole of the common folk, from the face
of the Scots.’ We cannot attend Harry on his rambles
to two sieges of York and a descent upon St. Albans
(to say nothing of the Queen’s embassy); much less can
we go with Boece as far as Kent—which his editor,
however, boldly converts into ‘Tyne.’

About the same time, Sir Robert de Clifford, the
Warden of the Western Marches, had executed a diversion
by way of reprisal. He sallied from Carlisle with 100
men-at-arms and (says Hemingburgh) 20,000 chosen foot
soldiers, crossed the Solway, and ravaged Annandale
with fire and sword, carrying back considerable booty.
The raiders returned to Carlisle on Christmas Eve.
Probably Clifford had in fact no great force at command,
even if the levies ordered for him in Lancashire in the
middle of November had by this time joined him.
Towards the end of February he made a like foray, and
burnt the town of Annan, but apparently this was a less
forcible effort than the raid of December.

Meantime extensive preparations had been in progress
in England for a fresh expedition against the Scots.
Edward was still in Flanders. After Stirling Bridge,
Warenne had gone to consult with Prince Edward at
York. On September 24, the northern barons, who had
been summoned to join the Prince in London, were
directed to join Warenne; and Clifford and Fitz Alan
were instructed to act in concert with him. On October
23, Ormsby received orders to raise levies numbering
over 35,000 men. On October 26, it was ordered that
provisions and stores should be forwarded from all the
eastern seaboard, by sea and land, to Holy Island or
Newcastle. On December 10, an order was issued for98
levies to be raised in Wales, and to be ready at Durham
or Newcastle by January 28 at the latest. On the same
day Warenne was formally appointed to the command.
The available strength of England was to be hurled
against Scotland.

The main body of the English army was to assemble
at York on January 20. On the 14th a parliament was
held. The English magnates attended in great force,
and their goodwill was conciliated by a confirmation of
Magna Carta (with certain additional concessions) and of
the Forest Charter, sent by Edward from Flanders. The
Scots nobles that had been summoned ‘neither came
nor sent.’ Warenne proceeded to Newcastle. There,
on January 28, Hemingburgh says, he marshalled 2000
armed horse, over 1200 unarmed horse, and more than
100,000 foot, including the Welsh contingent; and the
army was steadily augmented as it advanced. Warenne
relieved Roxburgh and recovered Berwick, the Scots having
retired before his overwhelming force. There, however,
his expedition was stayed by a despatch from Edward,
announcing the conclusion of peace with France, and
directing Warenne to hold Berwick, but not to undertake
any enterprise of importance till he himself should arrive.
Warenne therefore temporarily disbanded his army,
retaining with him in Berwick 1500 armed horse and
some 20,000 foot from Wales and from the remoter
parts of England.

The retreat of the English before the Scots at Stanmore
is very differently related by Scots and English
historians; and the Scots writers are undoubtedly
wrong in stating that Edward himself was present. It
can be readily explained by the orders to Warenne;
and, in any case, it is of no importance. Plainly the
Scots were unable to hold the open field. How Wallace
was engaged immediately after the retreat from Roxburgh,
where he is said to have been personally in command, we
do not know. It seems probable that, amidst all his
concern for the military situation, he was not neglecting
the internal reorganisation of the country. Under date
March 29, 1298, he granted to Alexander Scrymgeour
the hereditary Constableship of Dundee ‘for his faithful99
service and aid in bearing the Royal Banner in the
army of Scotland,’ a service he was then actually performing.
The charter bears to be granted by ‘Sir William
Wallace, Guardian of the realm of Scotland and leader
of the armies of that realm, in the name of the renowned
Prince Lord John, by the Grace of God, the illustrious
King of Scotland, with the consent of the community of
the said realm.’ In the body of the document the
grant is stated to be made ‘by the consent and approbation
of the magnates of the said realm.’ ‘The
common seal of the aforesaid realm of Scotland’ is
stated to be impressed on the charter, and the
seal of John is attached. The place of grant is
Torphichen.

Andrew de Moray is no more in joint authority—very
likely he had died; and Wallace is officially designated
‘Guardian of the realm of Scotland.’ He may, as is
usually said, have been elected in the Forest of Selkirk—a
very wide place in those days; and the immediate
reason may possibly have been the expediency of an
undivided authority in the face of an overwhelming
army of invasion. Lord Hailes says he ‘assumed’
the title; but if this means that Wallace adopted
the title without having it conferred on him, the
suggestion is wholly improbable. It is interesting to
know that on December 5, 1303 (? 1300), Bruce,
as one of the Guardians, recognised and enforced this
charter.

It is a point of small importance when or by whom,
if ever, Wallace was formally knighted. But since it
has been made an occasion for carping at Wallace, we
may cite an English political song in default of better
authority. Philip of France, in a letter quoted on a
subsequent page, styles him miles, but the objectors say
that may mean simply ‘soldier.’ The song says—

That is to say:—’Now return to Scotland the100
malignant people; and to William is given the
knightly pledge—knighthood: from a robber he becomes
a knight, as from a raven a swan; the unworthy
takes the seat, when there is none worthy by.’
Thanks to the ‘malignant’ poet. The writer of the
Cottonian MS., referring to this song, states that it was
one of the foremost Scots earls that girded Wallace with
the belt of knighthood; but he places the date just
before, not after, the foray into England.

Edward landed at Sandwich on March 14, and lost no
time in pushing forward the Scottish expedition. He
accommodated his nobles with a promise of reconfirmation
of the charters, the York confirmation not
having been made in England. Fresh orders were
issued for provisions, the Carlisle depôt to be specially
supplied from Ireland. A parliament was held at York
on May 25, the place and date originally fixed for the
muster. Again, it is stated, the Scots nobles summoned
‘neither came nor sent.’ On May 27, Edward issued
orders to the sheriffs to have their men up at Roxburgh
by June 23; and next day he appointed Earl Patrick
Captain of Berwick Castle. Meantime he sought inspiration
at the shrines of St. John of Beverley and of
two other less famous saints. On reaching Roxburgh,
he found his army ready to march. According to
Hemingburgh, there were 3000 armed horse, 4000
unarmed horse, and 80,000 foot, consisting largely of
Welsh and Irish. At the head of this immense force,
Edward advanced to Kirkliston.

By this time Sir Aymer de Valence and Sir John
Siward, who had sailed direct from Flanders, had landed
in Fife. Wallace found them in the Forest of Blackearnside,
and defeated them severely on June 12.
He is said to have lost Sir Duncan Balfour, Sheriff
of Fife, and perhaps Sir Christopher Seton, while Sir
John the Graham was badly wounded. This is one of
Blind Harry’s great fights. One would much like to
have certain authority for his statement that Wallace, in a
respite from actual fighting in the heat of the day, instead
of taking much-needed rest, carried water in a helmet from
a neighbouring brook for the relief of his wounded men.101
We should not hesitate to accept it, on a general
impression of the character and temperament of the
Guardian. Having reasserted his authority in Fife,
Wallace drew south again to keep the English army
under observation.

The English army lay at Kirkliston. Edward had
suffered much annoyance from parties sallying on the
fringes of his army from Dirleton and two other castles;
and he had sent the Bishop of Durham to reduce them.
The Bishop found his task by no means an easy one.
He was not well furnished either with provisions or with
engines, and the garrison of Dirleton fought him manfully.
He sent a messenger to Edward, a truculent
soldier, Sir John Fitz Marmaduke. With a sub-humorous
reply to Antony, Edward is said by
Hemingburgh to have thus instructed Fitz Marmaduke:
‘You are a relentless soldier, Marmaduke. I have
often had to reprove you for too cruel exultation over
the death of your enemies. But return now whence you
came, and be as relentless as you choose—you will
deserve my thanks, not my censure. But look you do
not see my face again till these three castles are razed
to the ground.’ The three castles were soon taken and
burnt down.

Still Edward waited anxiously for his provision ships
from Berwick, which had been long detained by contrary
winds. There was little to be got from the
country around, for the Scots had adopted the usual
tactics and cleared the land before the approach of the
enemy. The army began to feel the sharp pinch of
hunger. The Scots, perfectly aware of the plight of the
English, were keeping close in touch with them, ready
to harass the anticipated retreat. At last some provisions
arrived, including 200 casks of wine, which
Edward did not hesitate to distribute freely. Two of
the casks, it is stated, went to the Welsh, who had
broken down greatly, many of them having died. Some
of the Welshmen incontinently got drunk, raised a
quarrel with some of the English, and eventually
developed an affray, killing eighteen English ecclesiastics,
possibly peacemakers, and wounding many more. A102
party of English horse, excited by the disturbance,
charged upon the Welsh, and killed eighty of them, the
rest taking to flight. If, as Hemingburgh says, there
were 40,000 Welsh—or even, as another writer says,
10,000—the two casks look like a niggardly proportion,
monopolised by a few. The whole of the Welsh contingent
stood aloof in deep dudgeon, and it was
believed in the English camp that they would go
over to the Scots, unless some steps were taken to
mollify their resentment. Edward, relying no doubt
on his mounted troops, treated the camp rumours with
contempt: ‘What matter if enemies join with enemies?
Let them go where they please; we will beat the Scots
and them too.’ But still the gripe of hunger tightened
upon his men, and it must have been a cruel moment for
him when at last he gave the order to prepare to retire
upon Edinburgh.

Suddenly, however, the order was reversed, much to
the astonishment of the uninstructed camp. Early in
the morning of July 21, the King had learned that the
Scots army was but a few leagues off, near Falkirk, in
the Forest. He at once put his men under arms,
and moved steadily forward to seek the enemy. That
night the English encamped some way east of Linlithgow,
lying on their arms in the fields. The horses had
nothing to eat—’nothing but hard iron,’ and were kept
in readiness beside their riders. On this occasion
Edward himself met with an awkward accident, attributed
to a page’s lack of care. His destrier trampled
on him as he lay asleep, says Hemingburgh; and, as
news of his hurt passed through the army, there arose
shouts of treason and exclamations that the enemy were
on them. According to Rishanger, there broke out a
terrible uproar in the camp at daybreak, under the impression
that the enemy were at hand; and the King’s
steed, catching the excitement, threw him as he mounted,
and kicked him in the side, breaking two ribs. Both
accounts testify to a lively sense of insecurity in the
English camp. Edward, with the stoical firmness of a
veteran, mounted another horse, and advanced with his
army.

103
As day broke on July 22, Edward passed Linlithgow.
With the growing light, he discovered the Scots posted
on an opposite eminence, in preparation for battle.
Wallace now lacked the natural strength of the slopes of
the Abbey Craig, but he again signalised his military
ability by a masterly disposition of his troops—masterly,
yet desperately daring. The real strength of the Scots
cannot be even approximately estimated; but though
one English chronicler mentions that prisoners said there
were 300,000 foot, and another English scribe numbers
them at over 200,000, and yet another imaginative
English annalist says 100,000 of them were slain, it is
extremely unlikely that they approached the numbers of
the English. Be this as it may, Wallace threw the whole
of his infantry in front, disposing them in four circular
bodies or schiltrons, exactly analogous to the modern
square to receive cavalry, the front rank sitting on their
heels, the next ranks successively rising, and all presenting
to the foe an oblique ‘wood of spears.’ The intermediate
spaces were occupied by the archers, under the
command of Sir John Stewart of Bonkill, the Steward’s
brother. The cavalry were placed in the rear: even the
English chroniclers do not number these higher than
1000. The front of the position was protected by a
morass—a peat moss, or turf bog; and it was further
strengthened by a stockade, consisting of long stakes
firmly driven into the ground and connected securely by
ropes. On the military theory of the day, which laid all
stress on ironclad horse and relegated footmen to contemptuous
subordination, the Scots were hopelessly
inferior. It may safely be said that no competent living
general, except Wallace, would have dared to meet
Edward in the open field on such terms; and it seems
all but certain that even Wallace would not have dared
it otherwise than as a desperate alternative to an impossible
retreat. The dispositions completed, Wallace is
said to have addressed his first line in one of his crisp,
gay, and homely speeches: ‘I have brought you to the
ring: hop (dance) if you can.’ The remark glows with
the joy of battle, and thrills with the general’s confidence
in the prowess of his men.

104
On the English side, there is no record of the dispositions
of the infantry—a comparatively unconsidered
quantity. The cavalry was massed in two main divisions:
the first under the Earl Marshal, and the Earls of Hereford
and Lincoln; the second under the warlike Bishop
of Durham and Sir Ralph Basset of Drayton. The rest
of the army, horse and foot, was immediately under the
King himself.

Edward opened the attack by ordering the Welsh to
advance, no doubt making a preliminary trial of their
temper. The Welsh, however, ‘from the inveterate
hatred they bore the King’ (says Rishanger), declined to
move; possibly with an idea of joining eventually the
side that should prove victorious. Edward accordingly
gave the signal to the first cavalry division. The Earl
Marshal rode straight ahead, ignorant of the peat bog in
front; but, after a little embarrassment, he led his men
round the west side, and dashed upon the Scots right. The
Bishop was before him, however; having known of the
bog, and led his men round the east end, he had already
struck the left of the foremost Scots schiltrons. The
hedge of stakes had gone down with a crash. The Scots
cavalry, witnessing the combined shock of the English
horsemen, incontinently fled without striking a blow—all
except a few, who had been specially detailed to head
the schiltrons. The bowmen were the next to fail,
though not with dishonour. Their commander, Sir
John Stewart, fell from his horse, while directing the
operations of the Selkirk Forest contingent, and was
killed in the thickest of the onset. His men—fine tall
men, says Hemingburgh—bravely, though vainly,
formed around him, and fell by his side. The spearmen
of the schiltrons, however,

The defence was undoubtedly magnificent. The cavalry
could neither break up the circles nor ride them down,
and many a saddle was stoutly emptied. At last a large105
body of infantry was brought up, armed partly with
arrows, partly with stones, which grievously harassed the
Scots, and eventually disorganised the front line. The
moment the edge of the schiltron showed a gap, the
cavalry dashed in, and the battle was converted into a
massacre.

The Scots losses must have been very heavy: one
annalist runs them up to ‘about’ 100,000—’like snow
in winter’—’the living could not bury the dead’; Hemingburgh
is content with 50,000 foot slain, besides some
30 horsemen, and an unknown number drowned. Sir
John Stewart and his men of Bute, and Macduff and his
men of Fife, died where they stood. Sir John the
Graham is also said to have fallen: Wallace’s lament
over his dead body forms one of the finest passages in
Harry’s poem. The most distinctive loss on the English
side was Sir Brian le Jay, the Master of the Templars in
England. The English loss in common folk cannot even
be guessed at: one patriotic scribe places it at ‘about 30
foot.’ The romance of this history is no monopoly of
poor old Harry’s.

Lord Hailes remarks on ‘the fatal precipitancy of the
Scots.’ ‘If,’ he says, ‘they had studied to protract the
campaign, instead of hazarding a general action at
Falkirk, they would have foiled the whole power of
Edward, and reduced him to the necessity of an inglorious
retreat.’ But there surely can be no question that
this was the very policy of Wallace, now as ever; and we
have seen how very near Edward was to a retreat upon
Edinburgh, which must soon have been extended to a
retreat into England. If this be so, the real question is,
Why did the policy fail? The Scots were, of course,
keeping as close to the English as was consistent with
safety, in order to take advantage of the opportunities
offered by a retreat necessitated by hunger. Were they
suddenly caught, so as to be unable to retire without
excessive danger? The greater probability seems to be
that they were; for it is inconsistent with Wallace’s stern
assertion of authority to believe that he would have
yielded his better judgment to the urgency even of the
Steward and Comyn. How came it about, then, that a106
general of Wallace’s discretion, vigilance, and personal
activity allowed himself to be caught?

The Scots chroniclers tell of grave and heated dissension
among the Scots captains. Comyn is said to have
worked on the pride of the Steward so as to induce him
to claim to lead the van. We can quite believe that
Wallace, on hearing this claim offensively urged, ‘burnt
as fire,’ as Harry says he did. It was not, as Hailes
jeeringly misrepresents, a question of ‘the punctilio of
leading the van of an army which stood on the defensive.’
The claim was simply an insolent usurpation of the plain
function of the Guardian of Scotland—a claim, too, preferred
by a noble whose conduct had aggravated Wallace’s
difficulties in making a Scots Guardian of Scotland so much
as a possibility. Wallace’s resentment was most just and
proper; the absence of it would have been contemptible
pusillanimity: and it is impossible to doubt that Wallace
would sooner have died on the spot, at the hands of the
English or otherwise, than have submitted for a moment
to any such pretension on the part of any man living,
Balliol alone excepted. Nor is it at all in consonance with
one’s conception of the character of Wallace, that he would,
as Harry says he did, have stood apart, under the constraint
of a heated vow, and let the Steward be borne down
by the enemy: such a representation is no less degrading
than preposterous. Boece is no authority, indeed, but
it is interesting to remark that he explicitly denies Harry’s
version, and says Wallace fought hard and was unable to
help the Steward—a vastly more probable story. Whatever
dissensions there may have been—and it is far from
improbable that baronial pride did give rise even to
violent dissensions—still such dissensions would, as
Hailes remarks, have had no ‘influence on their conduct
in the day of battle.’ But the proposition must be
guarded by a proviso neglected by Hailes; and that
essential proviso is, that all the men were honest patriots.
For the moment, there need be no question as to the
temporary patriotism of the Steward.

It is different with Comyn. Comyn is believed, almost
with certainty, to have commanded the cavalry, and the
cavalry fled at mere sight of the first shock on the schiltrons,107
without striking a blow, or even waiting to see
what was to happen to the foot circles. Now, Hailes
thinks the truth of the matter is this: that the Scots
cavalry, seeing that they were greatly outnumbered by
the English cavalry, and far less effectively equipped,
were intimidated and fled. But they knew all that before.
Even if they had remained on the field, Hailes thinks,
though they might have preserved their honour, they
never could have turned the chance of the day. It was
natural, he adds, for such of the infantry as survived to
impute their disaster to the defection of the cavalry; a
natural pride would ascribe their flight to treachery rather
than to pusillanimity. Well, the readiness to invoke
treachery as an explanation of such reverses is very
familiar; but it does not follow that it is always untrue.
It is impossible, however, to impute cowardice to Comyn
personally; nor does Hailes do so. But it is equally
impossible to impute cowardice, without proof, to Comyn’s
men, any more than to the humbler men of the schiltrons.
This, however, is what Hailes quietly postulates; for he
says the commander must follow his men, as Warenne
did from Stirling Bridge, though he forgets that Warenne
did not budge till it was plain to everybody that the day
was disastrously lost. Comyn could not have been
unaware of Wallace’s expectations from the schiltrons,
based on tried experience in many another, if smaller,
combat. Whether or not his active assistance would
have turned the day, is beyond positive decision; but
the stubborn resistance of the schiltrons shows that an
additional force of 1000 horse would have proved very
materially helpful. In any case, the very least Comyn
could have done would have been to attempt to break
the force of the attack on the schiltrons, and when the
schiltrons were finally broken, to have protected the
rear of the retreat, as no doubt Wallace himself did
with a body of his devoted lieutenants. Pusillanimity
is no appropriate name for such glaring misconduct as
Comyn’s.

Hailes finds ample exculpation of Comyn in the
fact that he was presently chosen one of the Guardians,
in succession to Wallace. It is said that Sir John108
Comyn was made Guardian on Wallace’s resignation,
and that Sir John de Soulis was associated with Comyn
by Balliol. If so, who elected Comyn? And was
his ‘pusillanimity’ at Falkirk a recommendation? We
know the nature of the next election, at Peebles, on
August 19, 1299, when the assembly was a scene of
violence, and the Guardians practically elected themselves
by way of temporary accommodation of their
warring ambitions.

The election of Comyn, now or subsequently, does
not in the smallest degree ‘indicate that the charge of
treachery is of later concoction.’ The positive and strong
assertions of the Scots chroniclers are not to be so lightly
set aside. One does not expect an English chronicler
to mar the glory of the English King by any mention of
extraneous aid of such a quality. Yet Hemingburgh
remarks a fact that is at any rate very suggestive. He says
it was Earl Patrick and the Earl of Angus that brought
the news of the Scots position to Bishop Bek, and then
the three introduced a youth to tell the King the information
he was supposed to have spied out. Earl Patrick
and the Earl of Angus were nearly related to Comyn;
and the Comyn envy of Wallace was undoubtedly intense
and bitter. Yet Comyn did not go over to Edward; on
the contrary, he was presently made a Guardian of Scotland.
Did Comyn scheme to get rid of Wallace, either
by the sword of the English in a hopeless battle, or by the
unpopularity attendant upon a great military disaster?
We should be glad to discover some less dastardly reason
for his ignominious conduct at Falkirk.

There is great unanimity among the Scots chroniclers
that, apart from the treachery of Comyn and his adherents,
the essential cause of the disaster at Falkirk was the action
of Robert Bruce. They say that the schiltrons resisted
every attempt to force them, till Bruce and Bek came
round in the rear, and broke the line. This is a very
fine illustration of the irony of fate, but it is not history.
Bruce was certainly not on the field, neither was he at
this time in Edward’s allegiance; scarcely a month before
(June 24) Edward had ordered his goods and chattels in
Essex to be sold up. It is possible that this very grave109
blunder arose from confounding Bruce with Basset, and
a flank with a rear attack. Presently, too, Bruce was
elected one of the Guardians in the name of Balliol—’one
of those historical phenomena which are inexplicable,’
says Hailes, rather helplessly.

The remnants of the Scots army drew off from Falkirk
towards the north, burning the town and castle of Stirling
as they passed. So far Edward pursued them.
Having repaired the castle and garrisoned it strongly
with Northumbrians, he is said to have harried St. Andrews
and St. Johnston. He then passed through Selkirk
Forest to the west, where he found that Bruce had burnt
down Ayr Castle and retired into Carrick, but he could
not pursue for want of provisions. Continuing his journey
through Annandale, Edward took Lochmaben Castle
and burnt it. At Carlisle he held a parliament, and distributed
lands in Scotland to his deserving officers—lands
in prospect rather than in possession; and, having
arranged affairs at Durham and Tynemouth, he settled
down at Cottingham to spend his Christmas in the
neighbourhood of the comforting shrine of St. John of
Beverley.

Shortly after Falkirk, whether at the Scots Water or at
a convention in St. Johnston, Wallace is said to have
resigned voluntarily the office of Guardian of Scotland.
The Scots writers attribute this step to his recognition of
the impossibility of maintaining the independence of his
country in co-operation with the jealous nobles. There
is much reason to accept this explanation. Not one of
the brood could be relied on, except to undermine his
authority. He may therefore have determined to stand
by himself henceforth, as he had done before, aided by
such as might choose to attach themselves to his standard.
In the political conditions of the time this result would
be not only not surprising, but, to all appearance, inevitable.
The envy and malice of the magnates, the natural
leaders of the nation, had driven from the wheel of State
the one man that was then capable of steering the
shattered bark to a safe and quiet haven.

Comyn and Soulis are said to have been the new
Guardians, and, in place of Soulis, Lamberton and Bruce110
were added at Peebles in August 1299. Yet it may be
worth while to keep an open eye for further light on the
question, whether Wallace did not remain Guardian till
near the latter date, resigning only in view of his
purpose to visit France.

111

CHAPTER VI
Wallace in France

There is not a little consensus of opinion that Wallace
proceeded to France after the battle of Falkirk, but
this part of his career is vexatiously obscure.

Harry does not scruple to send Wallace to France, not
once only, but twice. The first visit extends from April
21 to the end of August, in some year when Wallace
was Guardian, and shortly before the battle of Blackearnside.
Wallace departs without announcing publicly his
intention; partly because he was aware that stout
objections would be raised to his going, partly because
the English would be sure to take measures to intercept
him. Leaving the Steward as his substitute, he sailed in
a fine new barge from Kirkcudbright, with fifty men.
Next morning he met with an adventure. The Red
Rover hove in sight; but the redoubtable pirate was
forced to strike his flag to Wallace, who spared his life.
He turned out to be a Frenchman, named Thomas de
Longueville, who had hung out his ‘red blazon’ because
of injustices he had suffered. He received pardon and
knighthood, on Wallace’s suggestion, from the French
King; ever afterwards he stood firmly by Wallace; and
eventually he became lord of Kinfauns, near Perth, where
he founded, or continued by marriage with the heiress,
the family of Charteris. Landing at Rochelle, Wallace112
proceeded to Paris, where he was cordially received by
the French King. He soon tired of inaction, however,
and, getting together some 900 Scots, went to fight
the English at Guienne, his chief exploits being the
capture of Schenoun (? Chinon) and Bordeaux. Meantime,
the Scots at home, being hard pressed, despatched
Guthrie to urge him to return. Guthrie sailed from
Arbroath to Sluys, and, having at length reached
Wallace, brought him back by Paris to Sluys, and landed
him at Montrose. Wallace had been a little over four
months absent.

The second visit Harry places immediately after
Wallace’s resignation of the Guardianship, shortly after
Falkirk. Wallace, he says, sailed from Dundee in a
merchant ship with eighteen companions. Again he
met with an adventure. Off the mouth of the Humber
he encountered a pirate, an Englishman this time, John of
Lynn. Putting the crew down in the hold out of his way,
he engaged the pirate 18 to 140, boarded him, and killed
him. From Sluys Wallace passed through Flanders to
Paris, where the King offered him the lordship of
Guienne, which he declined. Again he proceeds to
Guienne; again he captures Schenoun; and again he
besieges Bordeaux. While staying at Schenoun, he finds
that there is treachery in France as well as in Scotland.
Sent for by the King, he remains in the royal household
for two years; and even here he at length finds
traitors at work. He will stay no longer. The King
gives him letters that had come from Scotland urging his
return, loads him with presents, and reluctantly parts
with him. Wallace sails from Sluys, and, passing up the
Tay, lands at the mouth of the Earn.

The two visits are so similar in incident, that there is
something to be said for regarding them as variants of a
single visit. The specific date of the first visit must be
wrong; nor is it easy to believe that Wallace would have
left the kingdom secretly—unless by ‘secretly’ Harry
means what Sir Robert Hastings means by ‘without
leave’—or have deputed the Steward to fill his place. In
itself, there is nothing improbable in the story of the
Red Rover, which Sir Walter Scott incorporated in The113
Fair Maid of Perth as ‘given by an ancient and uniform
tradition, which carries in it great indications of truth, and
is warrant enough for its insertion in graver histories than’
that historical romance. The second visit is perplexed
by one of Harry’s specific appeals to his ‘auctor’; he
rests his narrative of Blair’s exploits in the sea-fight
on the account inserted by Gray (who represents himself
as an eye-witness) in the book that Harry professes to
follow. In any case, Wallace could hardly have spent
two years at the French court. In the existing lack of
adequate criticism of Harry, one can only reproduce the
substance of the stories.

If the author of the Muses’ Threnodie might be
supposed to be independent of Harry’s influence, some
interest might attach to the following verses:—

The French Trouvères are said to have exercised their
poetic skill on the exploits of Wallace. But no aid
appears to be now derivable from that quarter: M.
Michel states that the search for such compositions has
hitherto proved unavailing.

It is difficult to feel on more solid ground with the
annalist—Rishanger or another—when he states that
Wallace, with five knights, went to France after Falkirk,
to ask aid of Philip; that at Amiens he was ordered by
Philip to be imprisoned and kept under observation—an
order that the Amiens people cheerfully obeyed, ‘for
much they loved the King of England’; that Philip
offered to deliver him to Edward; and that Edward, with
effusive thanks, begged Philip to keep him where he was.
There is nothing satisfactory here. Philip might indeed,
in pressing circumstances, have used Wallace as a
political pawn; but we know that in fact he treated him
very differently. And it is extremely improbable that
Edward would have missed such an opportunity of taking114
his implacable and vexatious foe into his own surer
hands. We know how keen he was to catch Lamberton;
and Wallace would have been a vastly bigger prize.

More assistance is to be derived from Bishop
Stapleton’s Kalendar of Treasury documents, compiled
about 1323. One interesting entry mentions ‘certain
letters of safe-conduct granted by Philip King of France,
John King of Scotland, and Haco King of Norway, to
William Wallace, enabling him to go to the realms of those
kings, to sojourn there, and to return; together with
certain letters concerning “ordinances and confederations”
written to the said William by certain magnates of
Scotland.’ These letters, it is added, were found on
Wallace when he was captured, and were delivered to
Edward at Kingston by Sir John de Segrave. They are
now, unhappily, lost. The dates are not preserved in
the Kalendar entry. It is impossible, therefore, to do
more than guess at the circumstances of Wallace’s
proposed visit; and, so far as the entry goes, we can only
be certain that he seriously entertained the purpose of
visiting France—and possibly Norway—not that he
actually carried out such purpose.

The inference that Wallace positively did visit France
may, however, be safely drawn from an existing letter
of recommendation in his favour. This letter may be
translated as follows:—

‘Philip, by the grace of God, King of the French, to my beloved
and trusty agents appointed to the court of Rome, greeting and love.
We command you to request the Supreme Pontiff to hold our beloved
William Wallace of Scotland, Knight, recommended to his
favour in those matters of business that he has to despatch with him.
Given at Pierrepont on Monday after the Feast of All Saints.’

This little document shows that Wallace had intended
to proceed to Rome, no doubt to urge the Pope to
stronger action in favour of Scotland, as against the
encroachments of Edward. And it seems beyond reasonable
doubt that he was already at the court of Philip
when he obtained it. The absence of the year date is
very tantalising.

Yet, may it not be fixed with fair certainty? On
August 20, 1299, Sir Robert Hastings, the castellan of115
Roxburgh, reported to Edward an account of the stormy
meeting of the Scots nobles at Peebles on the preceding
day, when, among other excitements, Sir David de
Graham demanded the lands and goods of Sir William
Wallace, ‘as he was going abroad without leave.’ True,
Wallace’s ‘going abroad’ may be nothing more than a
reported intention, the report not being necessarily trustworthy,
though no doubt honestly believed. Yet Sir
Malcolm Wallace was present, and would probably have
known; but though he withstood Sir David, the grounds
are not stated. On the whole, however, it seems extremely
probable that Wallace’s reported intention was a
fact. If so, Philip’s letter of recommendation would
readily fall to 1299.

Burton regrets ‘that there is nothing to inform us distinctly
whether the scraps of evidence alluded to are or
are not connected with eminent diplomatic services
performed by the popular hero.’ There can be no reasonable
question that they are connected with a specific effort
of Wallace’s at least to attempt to perform diplomatic
services. It may be taken as certain that Wallace did
not go to France on private business, or for mere
pleasure, or even in disgust with the nobles. Lamberton
had just returned from a substantially unsuccessful
mission to France; and it seems extremely likely that
Wallace had determined to go and see what he could
do in person.

It is historically certain, then, that Wallace visited
Philip at least once; that he intended to visit the Pope,
and perhaps the King of Norway, if he did not actually
do so; and that he used every possible opportunity on
such visits to further the interests of Scotland to the
utmost of his power. It is apparently beyond doubt
that his mission was not official; but, in any case, his
fame would give him a hardly less influential standing.
The Pope’s spurt of valorous policy about the time
Wallace would have been in Rome may entitle us to
reckon him among the ‘enemies of peace’ Edward then
complained of so bitterly. Scanty and dim as the facts
are, such inferences appear to be historically reasonable,
if not inevitable.

116

CHAPTER VII
The Leadership of the Barons

The victor of Falkirk was received in London with extravagant
demonstrations of rejoicing. Little did the
Fishmongers of the city, who were foremost in ostentation,
know that Falkirk was a lucky accident, that the
King and all his host had just previously been on the
point of retirement, and that after the battle they had
had to beat a decently expeditious retreat before the
terrors of starvation. The north was solidly in the hands
of the Scots. The south, apart from strongholds, was
but nominally under the control of the English. The
English, in fact, did little more than hold the mere
ground they stood on. Nor was the spirit of the Scots
broken.

On the contrary, Edward no sooner commenced to
retire than the Scots swarmed after him over the Forth
line. Within a fortnight of Falkirk, and only three days
after Edward had received homages in Newcastle-under-Ayr,
they were in Glasgow, before Edinburgh, and in
Selkirk Forest. On August 9, Sir John de Kingston,117
the Constable of Edinburgh Castle, wrote a most
suggestive despatch to the Lord Treasurer. ‘The
Earl of Buchan, the Bishop of St. Andrews, and other
great earls and lords, who were on the other side of
the Scots water, have come,’ he says, ‘to this side.
To-day they are in Glasgow. They intend to go
towards the borders, as is reported among them and
their people who are in the Forest. They of the Forest,’
adds Sir John, ‘have surrendered themselves to the
Scots.’ Besides, another party had ‘suddenly come
before our Castle’ of Edinburgh, and apparently had
done some execution, for ‘Sir Thomas d’Arderne was
taken.’ Edward’s mighty expedition had, in fact, been
no more than a huge foray.

This despatch of Kingston’s is interesting also as
casting strong suspicion on a famous soldier of those
times, Sir Simon Fraser, whose loyalty to Edward since
May 1297 had been conspicuous and valuable. Fraser
had accompanied Edward to Flanders, and won golden
opinions of the King, who had restored his lands in
both countries and otherwise made much of him. At
this time he was Warden of Selkirk Forest. He had
written to Kingston to come to him ‘on the day on
which our enemies suddenly came before our Castle,
and on which Sir Thomas d’Arderne was taken; wherefore,’
Kingston warns the Lord Treasurer, ‘I fear that
he is not of such good faith as he ought to be,’ and ‘I
beg of you and the rest of the King’s Council to beware.’
More than that:

‘Whereas Sir Simon Fraser comes to you in such haste, let me
inform you, Sire, that he has no need to be in such a great hurry,
for there was not by any means such a great power of people who
came into his jurisdiction but that they might have been stopped by
the garrisons if Sir Simon had given them warning. And of this I
warned him eight days before they came; and before they entered
into the Forest, it was reported that there was a treaty between
them and Sir Simon, and that they had a conference together, and
ate and drank, and were on the best of terms. Wherefore, Sire,
it were well that you should be very cautious as to the advice which
he should give you.’

Fraser’s view of the signs of the times, if not mistakenly118
represented by Kingston, would further show how slight
was the English hold on Scotland.

During the remainder of the year, large quantities of
provisions and war material were pressed forward to the
castles south of Forth; each castle made a foray as it
found opportunity; and occasionally combined forays
were made, with special precautions, particularly into
Selkirk Forest. One of the most important of these
combined expeditions, devised at Berwick on December
1, was to start about the middle of the month for Stirling,
which was in want of supplies. Sir John de Kingston
was head organiser, and horses were requisitioned as
far south as Norham. In these arrangements, full
confidence appears to be extended by the King to Sir
Simon Fraser. It may also be noted that on November
19, Earl Patrick had been appointed Captain of the
Forces and Castles on the East March of Scotland
south of Forth.

The summonses for next year’s expedition against
Scotland were issued in good time. On September 26,
the army was ordered to assemble at Carlisle on Whitsun
eve. On December 12, orders were issued to various
sheriffs and other officers in England to forward provisions
to Berwick, and to the high officers of State in
Ireland to forward provisions to Skinburness, in each
case by the same date (June 6). Edward was in hot
mood. He was determined to attack the malignant
rebels next summer ‘in great power,’ and to annihilate
them (in eorum summum exterminium). The language
of his writs is somewhat difficult to reconcile with
laudation of his tenderness and sense of justice. The
great expedition, however, did not start at Whitsunday,
as Edward had proposed in the preceding September.
Barons had proved recalcitrant; and the King’s wrangles
with them over further ratification of the great Charter
had been kept up through the year, till Edward was
compelled to yield to their demands.

One of the annalistic records ascribed to Rishanger
states that Wallace, together with his brother—probably
Sir Malcolm—the Earl of Athol, and many others, lay in
hiding after Falkirk. That is to say, finding open opposition119
impossible, Wallace resumed his guerrilla tactics. No
doubt he had separated himself from the untrustworthy
nobles, and determined to maintain resistance as and
how his men and means would allow him.

In the early summer of 1299, Lamberton had gone to
the court of France, probably at the instance of Wallace,
to seek the aid of Philip. Edward got news of this,
and between June 10 and August 20, he issued safe-conducts
in favour of the masters of half a dozen vessels
of Winchelsea and Rye, whom he had directed to keep a
look-out and intercept the Bishop and his company,
‘who have already come into Flanders, prepared to go
into Scotland.’ The attempt was unsuccessful. Lamberton’s
mission, however, did not prove fruitful, at least
directly. Through the good offices of the Pope, peace
had been patched up between Edward and Philip; and
indeed there were already in negotiation two royal
marriages—one between Edward and Philip’s half-sister
Margaret, which was celebrated at Canterbury in the
following October; and one between Prince Edward
and Philip’s infant daughter Isabella, who were betrothed
on May 20, 1303, and married on January 25,
1308.

During Lamberton’s absence, Wallace was no doubt
actively engaged, though there remain no records to
show clearly how or where. It may be that this is the
occasion when John the Marshal, bailiff of the Earl of
Lincoln in the barony of Renfrew, despatched to Edward
an urgent request for aid. The Guardian of Scotland,
with 300 men-at-arms and a multitude of foot, who had
lurked in Galloway, he says, had entered Cunningham
after the King’s son, had taken his bailiffs, with other
freeholders there, and had made a fine for their heads,
and had totally rebelled against their late fealty. Unless
he have immediate aid, he cannot defend the barony
against so many Scots. To the same time evidently belong
undated petitions to the King from the Abbot and
convent of Sweetheart, and from the Abbey of Our Lady
of Dundrennan, which show that the English power in
Galloway was totally inadequate to stem the advances of
the Scots. Was Wallace still ‘the Guardian of Scotland’?120
Or does the incident belong to 1300 or 1301, the (local)
‘Guardian’ being Comyn?

It was probably Lamberton’s report that determined
Wallace to go to the Continent in person. In spite of
occasional successes, it must have appeared to him all
but hopeless to maintain any effective resistance to
Edward in the divided state of the Scots counsels, unless
some external aid could be procured, either directly in
support of the Scots, or indirectly in restraint of Edward.
On the failure of his envoy, he seems to have resolved to
sheath his sword for a time, and to proceed to Paris,
and, if need were, to Rome, in quest of support. There
can indeed be no doubt that the inherent weakness of
the situation had been pressing severely upon him ever
since the battle of Falkirk; and it is likely enough that
he had already provided himself with letters of safe-conduct.
Was it at this time that he formally resigned
the office of Guardian?

On August 19, 1299, there was a remarkable gathering
of the Scots nobles at Peebles. An account of
the proceedings is given in a letter of August 20,
addressed to Edward by Sir Robert Hastings, the
castellan of Roxburgh, from information obtained
through a spy. The Scots had made a vigorous
inroad on Selkirk Forest. The nobles present were
‘the Bishop of St. Andrews, the Earls of Carrick,
Buchan, … and Menteith, Sir John Comyn the
younger, and the Steward of Scotland.’ The council
board was ringed with dissension. Sir David de Graham
demanded Sir William Wallace’s lands and goods, because
‘he was going abroad without leave.’ Sir Malcolm
Wallace, however, the hero’s brother, interposed objections;
and presently ‘the two knights gave each other
the lie, and drew their knives.’ This was but a prelude.
Sir John Comyn took the Earl of Carrick, the future
King, by the throat; and the Earl of Buchan laid violent
hands on the sacred person of the Bishop of St.
Andrews.

The question that generated so much heat was an
election to the Guardianship. The physical encounters
indicate clearly the division of parties: it was a struggle121
between the Comyn and the Bruce influence. Wallace
himself, of course, had washed his hands clean of
ambitious nobles, but his Bishop naturally stood by
Bruce against Comyn. The Bruce party gained the day.
The final agreement, as the letter correctly states, was,
that the Bishop of St Andrews, the Earl of Carrick, and
Sir John Comyn should be Guardians of the realm, the
Bishop having custody of the castles as principal. Sir
Ingram de Umfraville, who had taken a conspicuous
part in the inroad, was made Sheriff of Roxburgh, and
Sir Robert de Keith Warden of Selkirk Forest, with 100
barbed horse and 1500 foot, besides the foresters, to
make raids on the English march. Leaving a portion
of their men with Umfraville, the lords departed the same
day; the Earl of Carrick and Sir David de Brechin going
to Annandale and Galloway, the Earl of Buchan and
Comyn to the north of Forth, and the Steward and the
Earl of Menteith to Clydesdale. The Bishop of St.
Andrews was to stay in the meantime at Stobo. The
election was obviously a mere arrangement between the
parties, backed by their immediate henchmen; but that
did not hinder them from speaking, in their official
documents, in the name of the community of the
realm.

Edward was as eager as ever to quell the perverse
Scots. On September 18, he summoned a levy of 16,000
men to assemble at Newcastle-on-Tyne by November 24.
He was still delayed, however, by his recalcitrant barons;
and on November 16 he issued a fresh summons for his
army to meet him at Berwick on December 13. Meantime
the Scots Guardians, who were investing Stirling, had
intimated to him on November 13 their willingness to
cease hostilities on the basis of the proposals the King
of France had made to him. Edward ignored their offer,
however, and proceeded to Berwick, with the determination
to raise the siege of Stirling. But at Berwick his
magnates proved intractable; and he was compelled
to abandon Stirling to its fate, and returned to London.
The garrison of Stirling soon after surrendered, having
suffered cruel privations.

Nor was Edward more successful at the other end of122
the border. During the summer immense supplies had
been landed at Skinburness and stored at Carlisle, from
which Lochmaben was largely furnished. Raids had
been made into Galloway in force; yet the Scots had
cut off convoys at the Solway. From Carlaverock
Castle they had even seriously menaced Lochmaben.
Sir Robert de Felton tells how Carlaverock ‘has done
and does great damage every day to the King’s castle and
people’; adding the gratifying intelligence that on the
Sunday next after Michaelmas he had had the pleasure
of adorning the great tower of Lochmaben with the
head of the Carlaverock Constable, Sir Robert de
Cunningham, a near relative of the Steward’s. In
December, Warenne, with some of the greatest English
barons, conducted to the western march an expedition
consisting (or intended to consist) of some 500 barbed
horse (with 200 more, if they could be got), and over
8000 foot. But this enterprise also proved abortive.
The Scots were yet to be subdued; and Edward, on
December 29, issued summonses for next year’s campaign,
the army to muster at Carlisle on July 1.
Rishanger’s summary of the year is suggestive: ‘Scotis
perfidia notabilis.’

In 1300 the vexatious English raids were repeated,
with like results. In mid July Edward advanced from
Carlisle and besieged Lochmaben, which had fallen into
the hands of the Scots. Having taken Lochmaben, he
moved on Carlaverock, which refused his demand of
unconditional surrender; whereupon he raged ‘like a
lioness robbed of her whelps,’ besieged the castle, and
took it. He then marched into Galloway, Prince
Edward and Warenne with him. Lochmaben and
Carlaverock notwithstanding, he was in a very gloomy
mood. The Bishop of Witherne and two knights came
to treat for peace: he would do nothing. Again
they approached him at the bridge of Dee: still
he would do nothing. Then, at Kirkcudbright, the
Earl of Buchan and Sir John Comyn treated with
him for a day, and again for another day: all in
vain. Their terms, it is said, were these: that Balliol123
should be restored and the succession vested in his
son Edward (Sir John Comyn’s wife was Balliol’s
daughter Marjory); and that the Scots nobles should
have the right to redeem such of their lands as Edward
had bestowed on Englishmen: otherwise they would
defend themselves as long as they might. Edward was
exceedingly angry, and repelled their demands. The
Scots accordingly harassed his retreat. Some severe
fighting took place; a Scots deserter is said to have led
some 200 of the English into a trap, on pretence of
enabling them to surprise the enemy; and though the
Scots were at last defeated and fled ‘like hares before
harriers,’ Edward was not comforted. Day by day he
was eating out his heart because of his ill-success. His
Welsh troops deserted. Many of his nobles even,
seeing the futility of the enterprise, and writhing under
lack of money and necessaries, requested leave to go
home, and, on the King’s refusal, they too deserted.
In this emergency, baffled to know what to do against
the accursed Scots (contra nefandam gentem Scotorum),
he appealed to his friends for counsel. One noted the
approach of winter; another recalled the punishment
inflicted on the enemy; a third impressed the expediency
of releasing at any rate some of his followers. The
enterprise of the year was clearly over. But Edward,
with stubborn tenacity, not to say wilfulness, would
remain yet a while in Galloway. Then he would winter
in Carlisle, and return to crush the perverse nation in
the spring. And some of his earls stood by him in the
dreary and futile delay. At last, on the interposition of
Philip, a truce was ratified at Dumfries on October 30,
to run from Hallowmas to Whitsunday. The expedition
had proved an inglorious failure. Rishanger’s summary
of the year is this: ‘Sollicitus propter rebellionem Scotiae.’

On June 27, 1299, the Pope had issued a Bull to
Edward, claiming Scotland as from ancient times and
now a fief of the Holy See, and not now or ever a fief of
the English King; ordering the instant release of the
Bishop of Glasgow and other Scots ecclesiastics from
English prisons; and demanding the surrender of the124
castles, and especially of the religious houses, in Scotland.
The Bull was an abnormal time on the road: it seems
to have taken the best part of a year to reach the Archbishop
of Canterbury, who was instructed to deliver it
into the King’s own hand; and the Archbishop, whose
adventures Burton details with grave humour, did not
succeed in executing his commission till towards the end
of August 1300. The barons took up the matter with
clear decision; 104 of them, in parliament at Lincoln
on February 12, 1301, firmly rejected the Pope’s claim
in the most absolute terms. Edward, in outward respect
for his Holiness, again had the monasteries ransacked
for information, sent to Oxford and Cambridge for
doctors of the civil law, and set forth an elaborate statement
of his case, concluding with the assertion of his
absolute and indefeasible title to the realm of Scotland
in property as well as in possession. The document is
dated May 7, 1301. It is an extraordinary example of
solemn diplomatic fooling, in reckless defiance and
omission of essential facts. The answer of the Scots
envoy, Baldred Bisset, partly followed the same lines,
but dealt fatal blows to every substantial element of
argument. Edward’s only firm ground was conquest,
and the conquest of Scotland was the one point in
practical dispute.

In May the Scots and French envoys were to be in
conference with Edward’s commissioners at Canterbury,
with a view to peace with Scotland. The reference was
explicitly detailed:—

‘Super emendatione inobedientiarum, rebellionum, contemptuum,
transgressionum, injuriarum, excessuum, et dampnorum, nobis et
nostris per dictam gentem illatorum, ac etiam super aliis contingentibus
dictam pacem.’

But early in April, Edward, to make sure of the event,
warned his magnates in the north, ‘on the expiry of the
truce to be ready on the march to resist the attacks of
the Scots, if necessary.’ The expression is curiously
defensive. However, on May 12, he had become
satisfied of the necessity, and issued orders for a levy
of some 12,000 men. His actual force on the expedition125
consisted of little more than half that number—about
6800, all on foot, except their officers and a few
light horsemen or hobelars. On July 6–18, Edward was
at Berwick; August 2–14, at Peebles; August 21 to
September 4, at Glasgow; September 27 to October 27,
mostly at Dunipace, also at Stirling; November 1 to
January 31, at Linlithgow, where he built a peel; and on
February 19, he repassed the border into England. The
main fact recorded by the chroniclers is the loss of
horses through want of forage and the severity of the
winter.

The campaign, in fact, was conducted at cross-purposes.
The Scots avoided the English army, and
practised guerrilla. In September Sir Robert de Tilliol,
the castellan of Lochmaben, was in great straits, and
thankful for a promise of relief. ‘And we give you
to understand as a certainty,’ he writes to the King,
‘that John de Soulis and the Earl of Buchan, with
their power, are lying at Loudon; and Sir Simon Fraser
at Stonehouse, and Sir Alexander de Abernethy and Sir
Herbert de Morham.’ If the King would only send a
hundred armed horse, with a good leader, to-morrow at
the latest! But’—and at this time Edward was probably
in Glasgow—’be informed that all the country is
rising because we have no troops to ride upon them.’
On September 7, Sir John de Soulis and Sir Ingram de
Umfraville, with over 7000 men, actually burnt Lochmaben
and assaulted the peel, and next day they made another
attempt. Sustaining some severe losses, however, they
turned away towards Nithsdale and Galloway. ‘They
cause to return to them,’ says Sir Robert, ‘those persons
who had come to the peace, and they are collecting
greater force to come to our marches.’ A few days later
Sir Robert Hastings was on the outlook for this body of
Scots about Roxburgh.

Again, on October 3, the Constable of Newcastle-on-Ayr
wrote to the King that ‘the Scots were in Carrick,
before the Castle of Turnberry, with 400 men-at-arms,
and within these eight days had wanted to attack Ayr
Castle.’ He accordingly begs for speedy succour, ‘for
the Scots are in such force that he and the other loyalists126
there cannot withstand them.’ In February Newcastle-on-Ayr
was besieged by the Scots, and the garrison
‘could noways go out with safety, and lost some in their
long stay.’

But in all these excursions and alarms there was
nothing decisive. One cannot imagine that, with anything
like 7000 men at his back, Wallace would have
allowed Edward, with only a slightly larger and not so
very much better armed force, to winter comfortably at
Linlithgow. Edward, in any case, went bootless home.
On January 26, at Linlithgow, on the interposition of the
French King, he had ratified a truce with the Scots, to
last till St. Andrew’s Day (November 30), 1302. The
year, according to Rishanger, had been ‘Scotis suspiciosus
turbidus inquietus.’

Edward himself clearly felt that nothing solid had been
accomplished, and bent again to the task. He had only
reached Morpeth on his return journey, when, on February
23, he expressed to a large number of his lords his
wish to prepare—in case the truce worked no amendment
in the Scots—for an expedition that should be
vigorous and final. The high Irish officials, in particular,
were directed to bestir themselves.

In 1302, Lamberton again paid an official visit to
Philip, and brought back a letter with him dated April 6.
Philip’s letter is addressed to the Guardians, the magnates,
‘and the whole community, his dear friends,’ to
whom he ‘wishes health and hope of fortitude in adversity.’
The Calendar summarises it thus:—

‘He received with sincere affection their envoys, John, Abbot of
Jeddwurth (Jedburgh), and John Wissard, Knight, and fully understands
their letters and messages anxiously expressed by the envoys.
Is moved to his very marrow by the evils brought on their country
through hostile malignity. Praises them for their constancy to their
King and their shining valour in defence of their native land against
injustice, and urges them to persevere in the same course. Regarding
the aid which they ask, he is not unmindful of the old league between
their King, themselves, and him, and is carefully pondering
ways and means of helping them. But, bearing in mind the dangers
of the road, and dreading the risks which sometimes chance to
letters, he has given his views by word of mouth to W[illiam],
Bishop of St. Andrews, for whom he asks full credence.’

127
Philip would an if he could, at any rate in words; but
his truce with Edward had been steadily renewed, and
restrained his ardour in the cause of Scotland. He had
already burnt the Pope’s offensive Bull, however, and the
great quarrel between these potentates was hot. Boniface
accordingly had drawn towards Edward. On August
13 he had addressed Bulls to the Bishop of Glasgow
(for whom he had doughtily taken Edward to task in
1299) and to the other Scots bishops, menacingly exhorting
them to peaceful ways, and administering a special
wigging to the shifty Wishart, whom he likened to ‘a
rock of offence and a stone of stumbling.’ But Edward,
his ‘dearly-beloved son in Christ,’ astutely temporised
with his urgent representations in favour of a resumption
of war with France. Still the Pope’s anxious desire for
Edward’s favour relaxed the modicum of restraint he had
exercised upon Edward’s aggression on the Scots.

In April, Bruce appears to have gone over to Edward
again. On the 28th Edward writes of ‘his liege Robert
de Brus, Earl of Carrick,’ and of special favour he
restores to Bruce’s tenants their lands in England lately
taken for their rebellion, and grants to Patrick de Trumpe
the younger and his aunt Matilda de Carrick, two of such
tenants, certain lands in the manor of Levington in
Cumberland, to which they had fallen heirs.

The campaign of 1302 was entrusted by Edward to Sir
John de Segrave. On September 29, Segrave was ordered
to execute with all haste a foray, lately arranged with Sir
Ralph de Manton, by Stirling and Kirkintilloch. On
January 20, Edward sent to his aid Sir Ralph Fitz
William, having heard from Segrave and others ‘that
for certain the Scots rebels, in increased force, have
broken into the lands there in his possession, occupied
certain castles and towns, and perpetrated other excesses;
and, unless checked, they may break into England as
usual.’ He was destined soon to hear worse news.
Segrave’s army, marching in three divisions, was suddenly
attacked by Comyn and Fraser, who made a forced night
march from Biggar, and came upon the first division at
daybreak of February 24 in the neighbourhood of Roslin.
The division was totally defeated, and Segrave himself128
was seriously wounded and captured. The second
division coming up, shared the fate of the first. The
third division, who had meanwhile been at their devotions,
succeeded (according to the English accounts) in
repulsing the Scots ‘in great measure,’ and in recovering
some of the prisoners. The Scots chroniclers make a
big affair of it, and report the English as worsted in all
three encounters. In any case, it was the main body
of the English army that was surprised and routed, and
it must have been a fight of considerable magnitude.
Sir Ralph de Manton, the Cofferer or Paymaster, was
among the slain.

Rishanger attributes the rising of the Scots to the
action of Wallace, who had been appointed their leader
and captain; but there is probably some confusion in
this, and stronger authority is needed to induce belief
in any association of Wallace with the movements of
Comyn. Rishanger sums up the year as ‘Scotis odibilis,
detestabilis, et invisus.’

In the meantime, seven envoys from Scotland were in
Paris with the object of gaining effective aid from Philip.
They were William Lamberton, Bishop of St. Andrews;
Matthew Crambeth, Bishop of Dunkeld; the Earl of
Buchan; the Steward; Sir John de Soulis; Sir Ingram
de Umfraville; and Sir William de Balliol. They appear,
as Hailes judges, ‘to have been the dupes of the policy
of the French court.’ On May 25 they report to Sir
John Comyn the conclusion of a final peace between
France and England (May 20), the Scots being excluded.
That very significant omission, they urge, should not
alarm their friends in Scotland. For Philip will at once
despatch envoys to Edward to draw him back from war
on the Scots, and to procure a truce, pending a personal
conference of the Kings, when a peace favourable to the
Scots will be concluded, if not previously effected by the
envoys. Philip had positively assured them on this point.
The real reason for the exclusion of the Scots is simply
this, that their case will be more easily settled between
the two Kings when these are united in friendship and
affinity; Prince Edward and the Princess Isabella being129
now betrothed. They are urged by Philip to remain so
as to carry back a good result of their errand—not, of
course, to keep them out of the field against Edward.
The fame of the late conflict has spread over the whole
world; let them, therefore, in case of Edward’s refusal
of a truce, for the Lord’s sake, not despair, but act with
resolution. As Hailes remarks, the letter ‘exhibits a
characteristical portrait of fortitude and credulity.’ Edward
ratified his treaty with France on June (? July) 10,
at St. Johnston!

On April 9, Edward ordered a levy of 9500 men in
England, and about the same time summoned Bruce to
bring 1000 foot from Carrick and Galloway, and Sir
Richard Siward to bring 300 from Nithsdale. On May
16 the King was at Roxburgh, where he remained to the
end of the month. He marched north by Edinburgh
and Linlithgow, and stayed at Perth, with occasional
excursions, from June 10 to the end of July. By Brechin
and Aberdeen, he passed on to Banff, Cullen, and Elgin,
and rested at Kinloss in Moray from September 13 to
October 4. On November 6 he was back at Dunfermline,
where he remained till March 4, 1303–4.

Edward’s progress through Scotland met with no
opposition; except at Brechin, where Sir Thomas de
Maule maintained a heroic resistance, till he was killed
on the castle wall. Hemingburgh says the advance of
the army was marked by burning and devastation.
Burton, however, thinks such violence was inconsistent
with Edward’s policy, which then led him to avoid
exasperating the people. ‘Had there been much wanton
cruelty or destruction,’ he says, ‘it would have left its
mark somewhere in contemporary documents.’ The
inference is hardly a safe one, in any case. There does
exist, however, another significant record—an order of
Edward’s, dated Dunfermline, November 18, 1303,
directing his Chancellor to issue a pardon in favour of
Warin Martyn. Martyn, it is recited, had very often
been leader of the Welshmen in the King’s army in
Scotland, and had represented that these men, in coming
and going, had perpetrated murders, robberies, arsons,
and other felonies, under his leadership, and that he130
could not altogether do justice on them. He had
therefore supplicated a pardon, fearing that these deeds
might subsequently be brought up against him. It is
not readily credible that Edward could keep a tight hand
on his soldiery, any more than Comyn or Wallace—or
Warin Martyn. And then there is the burning of
Dunfermline Abbey.

For several weeks negotiations for a peace were
carried on between Edward and Comyn, and at length
a peace was settled at Strathord on February 9. The
terms were remarkably easy for the Scots, possibly because
Edward was in a benignant mood, much more
probably because he felt that the coming siege of Stirling
Castle would absorb his undivided attention. The one
prominent Scot that did not submit was Sir William
Wallace. The terms of peace will be more conveniently
noted in the next chapter, in connection with the striking
basis laid down by Edward for their eventual mitigation.

It was in March 1303–4, on Edward’s departure, that
‘Dunfermline saw its Abbey red with flames.’ The
burning of this magnificent house has been variously
characterised as ‘atrocious,’ ‘barbarous,’ ‘unscrupulous
and vindictive,’ and so forth. A Westminster chronicler
appears to hold undisputed the bad eminence of attempting
to justify the deed. The Abbey, he explains, was
spacious enough to lodge at one and the same time conveniently
three mighty kings and their retinues. But
there was an accursed taint on the place. Its size had
rendered it suitable for the Scots nobles to hold their
meetings there; and there they had devised machinations
against the English King; and thence, in time of
war, they issued as from ambush, to harry and murder
the English. What then? The King’s army, therefore,
perceiving that the temple of the Lord was not
a church, but a den of robbers, a thorn as it were in the
eye of the English nation, fired the buildings. The
church and a few cells for monks—this was all that
remained of the venerable and magnificent Abbey
capable of receiving three mighty kings together.

131
But there was another thorn in the eye of Edward,
and that was the Castle of Stirling. On April 1, he
commanded the Earls of Strathearn, Menteith, and
Lennox to see to it that none of their people should go
to the castle to buy or sell provisions or merchandise,
to carry any victuals to the garrison, or indeed to hold
any communication with them. On April 6, engines
were shipped from Edinburgh; on the same day, engines
and materials were despatched from Berwick; on April
16, Sir John Botetourte is directed to aid Bruce in forwarding
‘the frame of the great engine of Inverkip,’
which Bruce had just reported as unmanageable; and on
April 21, Sir Robert de Leyburne, Constable of Inverkip
Castle, gets a wigging and is ordered ‘to arrest at
Glasgow all the iron and great stones of the engines
there, and forward them to Stirling, without any manner
of excuse or delay,’ for by the inaction in these parts
‘the siege is greatly delayed.’ On April 12, the King
had ordered the Prince of Wales ‘to procure and take
as much lead as you can about the town of St. John of
Perth and Dunblane, and elsewhere, as from the churches
and from other places where you can find it, provided
always that the churches be not uncovered over the
altars.’ In the first half of April, Edward had spent
several days before the walls, and on April 22 he
definitely opened the siege.

In the immensity of war material that had been
laboriously brought up, there were at least thirteen
powerful engines, capable of throwing weights of 100,
200, and 300 lbs.—besides the ‘War-wolf,’ a novel
machine, which apparently was not quite ready for
action. The garrison appear to have improvised some
machines of offence; for both Rishanger and Hemingburgh
record that they killed many of the besiegers with their
engines. Edward entered into the conduct of operations
with the old fire of younger times. One day, as he
was riding about and directing his men, he was shot with
an arrow or quarrel, which stuck in his armour, but did
not wound him. In Homeric fashion, he loudly menaced
the shooter with a good hanging.

Towards the end of June, the English appear to have132
been hard pressed for forage. The King’s horses, according
to one correspondent, ‘have nothing to eat but
grass’; there is ‘the utmost need of oats and beans.’
And in another letter of the same date, the same writer
urges the addressee—probably Sir Richard de Bremesgrave—’to
send all the King’s stores he can find in
Berwick, in haste by day and night, to Stirling, for they
can find nothing in these parts.’ At the same time
Edward was still summoning from England cross-bowmen
and carpenters.

The garrison made a spirited and resolute defence.
Every day Edward had the dykes filled with branches of
trees and logs of wood; and every day the garrison fired
them. Then he filled up the dykes with stones and
earth, and pushed the scaling machines up to the walls.
Thereupon the garrison, who were in desperate straits
from hunger, offered to capitulate on terms of life and
limb. Edward, however, insisted on absolute submission.
At last, on July 20, 1304, the garrison surrendered at
discretion. They are said to have numbered 140; but,
besides the gallant Constable, Sir William Oliphant, there
are only 25 others, including two friars, mentioned in the
instrument attesting the surrender. Before evacuation, a
strange ceremony took place, partly for scientific experiment,
partly to amuse the English ladies. The King
ordered that none of his people should enter the castle
till it should be struck with the ‘War-wolf’ (tauntqz il
est ferru ove le Lup de guerre); those within might defend
themselves from the said ‘Wolf’ as best they could!
Oliphant, who had been captured in Dunbar Castle, and
kept in prison in Devizes Castle till September 8, 1297,
was now sent back to England and lodged in the Tower
of London. The rest of the garrison were distributed to
various English castles. Edward returned to England
towards the end of August.

The four years’ warfare of the barons—we may say, of
Comyn—had not advanced the cause of independence.
Still it had deferred submission. Bruce, apparently
influenced by some trumpery matter of property in
England, possibly galled by friction with Comyn, had133
again bent the knee to Edward early in 1302. Lamberton
had confined himself to diplomacy and administration;
Comyn had practically the whole direction of
military affairs. Both had exerted themselves creditably;
but both of them submitted to Edward in 1304. They
displayed neither brilliance nor endurance. They lacked
the qualities of leaders in the forlorn state of the
kingdom.

From the autumn of 1299 to 1303–4, no definite
share in the desultory warfare can be assigned confidently
to Wallace. If the movement that culminated
in the victory of Roslin in 1302 may be ascribed to him,
on the authority of Rishanger, yet it would be rash
to believe that he was on the field of battle. It may,
rather, be taken as certain that he did not act in concert
with Comyn. Nor is it easy to suppose that Wallace
was in Scotland in 1301 and 1301–2, when Edward was
allowed to stay comfortably some three months in
Linlithgow with a very small force—a force little stronger
than Comyn’s officers had about the same time in the
south-west. It may be that such points indicate the
exhaustion of the country as much as the incapacity of
the generals: Langtoft says Comyn and his men (1303–4)
‘have nothing to fry, or drink, or eat, nor power remaining
wherewith to manage war.’ One can only fall back on
the conviction that Wallace could have used the available
materials to far greater advantage; and that, in the
circumstances, he had at any rate been doing his best
for his country. The surrender of Comyn in 1304 again
brought him to the front as the one Scots leader that
stood immovably against the invader, resolute to live or
to die a free man.

134

CHAPTER VIII
The Betrayal and Death of Wallace

‘In the history of the next five years’ after the battle of
Falkirk, writes Lingard, Wallace’s ‘name is scarcely ever
mentioned.’ The suggestion seems to be that Wallace
ceased to be an influential factor in the course of events.
But after all Lingard is driven to acknowledge the force
of Wallace’s personality, at the expense of his own consistency.
He comes to admit that ‘the only man whose
enmity could give’ Edward a ‘moment’s uneasiness, was
Wallace.’ The statement looks remarkably like a reproduction
of an English scribe’s assertion that, after the
submission of Comyn and the other nobles, there
was left but ‘one disorderly fellow (unus ribaldus),
William Wallace by name, who gave the King just a
touch of uneasiness’ (aliquantulum fatigavit). Edward
himself, it is plain, had formed a very different estimate
of that touch. He was well aware that the other Scots
leaders would stand with him or against him according135
to the strength of his grip on the country; more than
once he had beheld both sides of the political coats of
most of them. The more dangerous of them—three or
four—he could muzzle effectively enough by a short
period of banishment, during which he would reduce the
inflammability of the materials they could work upon.
Wallace, however, was a conspicuously abler man than
any of the time-servers; he was the one prominent Scot
that had never submitted; and he was known to be
resolutely irreconcilable. There remained only one
course: Wallace must be destroyed.

Edward, with the siege of Stirling before him, would
not have been likely to allow resentment to overbear
policy in the case of any of the Scots leaders, unless he
had become convinced that the particular offender was
either not worth consideration or else hopelessly recalcitrant.
There must, indeed, as Lingard says, have been
‘something peculiar’ in Wallace’s case, ‘which rendered
him less deserving of mercy’ than the others. Wallace
alone was expressly excluded from the treaty of Strathord.
Sir John Comyn, the head and front of the immediate
offending, escaped easily by the ignominious door of
abject humiliation. The Steward and Sir John de
Soulis, who had on previous occasions bent to like
necessities, were let off with two years’ banishment south
of Trent. Sir Simon Fraser and Thomas du Bois—both
men that compelled the respect of their opponents—were
more severely dealt with, by exile for three years
from Scotland, England, and France. Yet Edward must
have had very distinctly in his mind the mortifying defeat
of Roslin, achieved by Comyn and Fraser. The chameleon
Bishop of Glasgow, ‘for the great harm he has
done,’ was merely banished for two or three years. In
any case, these judgments were but slackly enforced, even
in those instances where enforcement was within Edward’s
power. But Wallace—’he may come in to the King’s
grace, if he thinks good.’ It is idle to speculate what
Edward would have done with him if he had then ‘come
into the King’s grace.’

Edward had certainly made attempts to conciliate
Wallace. By the agency of Warenne, he did so just136
before the battle of Stirling. He may even have offered
the patriot his royal pardon, with lordships and lands.
Bower says he did. He may, though not at all probably,
have dangled before him the crown of Scotland under
English suzerainty. The record of the judgment pronounced
on Wallace mentions that after Falkirk the
King had ‘mercifully caused him to be recalled to his
peace’; and the reference is probably to some specific
overture, and not merely to the general summons.
Bower reproduces the story that Wallace’s friends now
urged his acceptance of the proposed terms, and
that Wallace thereupon delivered his sentiments as
follows:—

‘O desolate Scotland, over-credulous of deceptive speeches, and
little foreseeing the calamities that are coming upon you! If you
were to judge as I do, you would not readily place your neck under
a foreign yoke. When I was a youth, I learned from my uncle, a
priest, this proverb—a proverb worth more than all the riches of
the world—and ever since I have marked it in my mind:—

Dico tibi verum, Libertas optima rerum;

Nunquam servili sub nexu vivito, fili.

And therefore, in a word, I declare that, if all Scotsmen together
yield obedience to the King of England, or part each one with his
own liberty, yet I and my comrades who may be willing to adhere
to me in this behalf, will stand for the freedom of the realm; and,
with God’s help, we will obey no man but the King, or his
lieutenant.’

Whether this striking scene was ever enacted or not,
there can be no doubt that the writer represents with
fidelity the attitude of Wallace. The rejection of the
King’s proffered clemency, even if but indirectly or
generally proffered, would naturally sting his proudly
sensitive feeling. In any case, Edward was fully satisfied
that he would never have peace in Scotland while Wallace
was in the field, and that Wallace would contemn alike
his threats and his promises, and succumb only to
superior force or to insidious policy.

Early in 1303–4, Edward had made up his mind that
he would receive Wallace on no terms short of unconditional
surrender, and he was determined to have him in
his power at the earliest possible moment. To somewhere137
very near this period—say February—must probably
be assigned an undated draft of letters-patent,
whereby Edward grants to his ‘chier vadlet’ (dear
vallet), Edward de Keith, afterwards Sheriff of Selkirk,
all goods and chattels of whatever kind he may gain from
Sir William Wallace, the King’s enemy, to his own profit
and pleasure. At this date, certainly, Edward was
putting all irons in the fire to accomplish his intense
wish to lay hands upon the redoubtable Wallace.

About this time Wallace and his followers appear to
have been hovering not very far away, south of Forth.
Sir Alexander de Abernethy, Warden between the Mounth
and the Forth, had been despatched by the Prince of
Wales to Strathearn, Menteith, and Drip, to guard the
passage of the river. Sir Alexander appears to have
written to the King on the subject of terms to Wallace.
In his answer, dated March 3, Edward laid down
definitively, once more, the requirement of unconditional
submission:—

‘In reply to your request for instructions as to whether it is our
pleasure that you should hold out to William Wallace any words
of peace, know that it is not at all our pleasure that you hold out
any word of peace to him, or to any other of his company, unless
they place themselves absolutely (de haut et de bas) and in all things
at our will without any reservation whatsoever.’

The final corrections of the original draft of this letter
indicate how careful Edward was to express his stern
resolution with unmistakable precision and emphasis.
Wallace must surrender at discretion.

There is nothing to show whether Sir Alexander Abernethy
had put the point to Edward of his own motion,
in view of contingencies, or on the prompting of some
application addressed to him from the Scots side. It
seems more likely that he was hopeful of success, and
wished to fortify himself with definite instructions. The
first paragraph of the letter shows markedly the King’s
sense of the importance of Sir Alexander’s service: he
urges the knight to all possible diligence; he signifies
where aid, if necessary, may be had; and he orders that
Sir Alexander shall not leave his service in these parts
unaccomplished, ‘neither for the parliament nor for any138
other business.’ The same day (March 3), Edward wrote
to ‘his loyal and faithful Robert de Brus,’ applauding his
diligence on that side the Forth, and urging him, ‘as the
robe is well made, you will be pleased to make the hood.’
Two days later he directed the Prince of Wales to reinforce
Abernethy at the fords and passes above Drip;
and on March 11 he sent special instructions also to the
Earl of Strathearn to see to the guarding of the fords and
of the country about, so that none of the enemy might
cross to injure the King’s lieges on the north side. The
proximity of Wallace, and the hope of putting him down
finally, no doubt had a foremost place in Edward’s
calculations. It does not seem likely, though it may
have been the case, that application had been made to
Abernethy on behalf of Wallace; perhaps the King’s
reply would have specifically indicated the fact. It is
not to be believed for an instant that any such application
would have been made with the sanction or knowledge
of Wallace himself.

But for the absurd bias of Langtoft, one might be
inclined to connect an episode of his with the negotiations
that issued in the treaty of Strathord and with Sir
Alexander de Abernethy’s letter. After Christmas 1303,
Langtoft says, Wallace lay in the forest—the glen of
Pittencrieff has been suggested as the particular spot—and
‘through friends’ made request to the King at Dunfermline
‘that he may submit to his honest peace without
surrendering into his hands body or head, but that the
King grant him, of his gift, not as a loan, an honourable
allowance of woods and cattle, and by his writing the
seisin and investment for him and his heirs in purchased
land.’ The whole bent of Wallace’s mind was undoubtedly
against any such application. Anyhow,
‘the King,’ says Langtoft, ‘angered at this demand,
breaks into a rage, commends Wallace to the devil,
and all that grows on him, and promises 300 marks
to the man that shall make him headless.’ Whereupon
Wallace takes to the moors and the hills and ‘robs for a
living.’

Wallace, however, had very different business on hand.
Apparently he had found it hopeless to effect the passage139
of the Forth or to communicate with Stirling Castle;
Sir John de Segrave, the Warden south of Forth, had
joined hands with Bruce and Clifford to attack him.
He had therefore retired into Lothian, Sir Simon Fraser
with him, and the English force in pursuit. A renegade
Scot, John de Musselburgh—let his name be pilloried!—guided
the English commander to the retreat of his
countrymen. Wallace and Fraser were brought to bay
at Peebles (Hopperewe) in Tweeddale, and defeated.
The news was brought to Edward at Aberdour on
March 12; and on March 15, John of Musselburgh
received from the gratified King’s own hand the noble
guerdon of 10s.

Already Edward was deep in preparations for the siege
of Stirling, which, as we have seen, absorbed his whole
energies from the middle of March till late in July.
On July 25, 1304, the day after the formal surrender
of the obstinate castle, he was in high good humour.
There has been preserved the roll of magnates and
others that served under him in this campaign; and one
of the paragraphs informs us how the King on that day
commanded fourteen barons therein named to settle in
what manner they and the others on the roll should be
rewarded for the services they had rendered. At the
same time his mind recurred with renewed energy to
Sir William Wallace. A later paragraph represents him
as attempting to enlist the Scots leaders whose terms of
submission had been arranged in the beginning of
February, in a comprehensive hunt after Wallace.
There is no crude mention of a specific blood-price in
marks. But on the success of the hunt their own future
treatment is made very expressly dependent. Comyn,
Lindsay, Graham, and Fraser, who had been adjudged to
go into exile, as well as other Scots liegemen of Edward,
were enjoined to do their endeavour ‘between now and
the twentieth day after Christmas’ to capture Wallace
and to render him to the King. The King will see
how they bear themselves in the business, and will show
more favour to the man that shall have captured Wallace,
by shortening his term of exile, by diminishing the
amount of his ransom or of his obligation for trespasses,140
or by otherwise lightening his liabilities. It is further
ordained that the Steward, Sir John de Soulis, and Sir
Ingram de Umfraville shall not have any letters of safe-conduct
to come into the power of the King until Sir
William Wallace shall have been surrendered to him.
It stands to the eternal credit of the comrades of Wallace
that they do not appear—not one of them—to have
taken a single step to better or shield themselves by
ignominious treachery to their undaunted friend.

Apparently Wallace and Fraser had got together some
followers again, after their defeat at Peebles, and had
drawn towards Stirling in the hope of effecting some
diversion in favour of the gallant garrison. They do not,
however, seem to have been strong enough to contribute
any useful support. After the capitulation of Stirling
Castle, an English force appears to have proceeded
against them, for in September there is record of a pursuit
after Wallace ‘under Earnside.’ But there are no
particulars available: the record affords but a momentary
glimpse into the darkness.

Meantime the attempt to capture Wallace was steadily
kept up by Edward and his emissaries. On February 28,
1304–5, Ralph de Haliburton, who was—unhappily for his
honour—one of the Scots survivors of the siege of
Stirling Castle, was released from prison in England, and
delivered to Sir John de Mowbray, ‘of Scotland, knight,’
to be taken to Scotland ‘to help those Scots that were
seeking to capture Sir William Wallace.’ It stands on
record that Sir John and others gave security to re-enter
Ralph at the parliament in London in three weeks from
Easter (April 18), ‘after seeing what he can do.’ But,
so far as appears, the miserable renegade was not able to
do anything effective. Is this possibly ‘Ralph Raa’?

Somewhere about this period may probably be placed
an episode in the chequered career of a Scots squire,
Michael de Miggel, who had been in Wallace’s hands, if
not actually of his company. Michael had done homage
to Edward in the crowd on March 14, 1295–96, but had
promptly repented, for in six weeks’ time he was taken
prisoner in Dunbar Castle. For eighteen months thereafter
he was confined in the Castle of Nottingham; which141
may probably indicate that the English officers were
aware that he needed to be strictly looked after. On
September 1, 1305, an inquisition was held at Perth
‘on certain articles touching the person of Michael de
Miggel,’ the substantial charge apparently being that he
had been a confederate of Wallace. The sworn statement
of the inquisitors was ‘that he had been lately taken
prisoner forcibly against his will by William le Waleys;
that he escaped once from William for two leagues, but
was followed and brought back by some armed accomplices
of William’s, who was firmly resolved to kill him
for his flight; that he escaped another time from said
William for three leagues or more, and was again brought
back a prisoner by force with the greatest violence, and
hardly avoided death at William’s hands, had not some
accomplices of William’s entreated for him; whereon he
was told if he tried to get away a third time he should lose
his life. Thus it appears,’ they concluded, ‘he remained
with William through fear of death, and not of his own
will.’ The explanation served. The date ‘lately’ in all
probability places the episode in the last few months of
Wallace’s career. It at least confirms the strenuous
persistence of Wallace, as far as his means would permit,
against the enemies of his country, and their relentless
hunting down of all his adherents.

Unable to maintain himself in the east, Wallace
retired to the west. Whether Harry be right or
wrong in making Sir Aymer de Valence bargain with
Sir John de Menteith for the capture of the patriot,
matters little; the result is the same. Menteith, in
any case, took up the hunt. It has been somewhat
strangely urged in palliation of his infamy, that he
was then Edward’s man. True, he was Edward’s
man; and since March 20, 1303–4, he had been Constable
of Dumbarton Castle and town, and Sheriff of
Dumbartonshire. He was therefore acting in the plain
way of duty. At the same time, the previous question
remains to be disposed of: why was he, a Scots knight,
the man of the English King? Instead of palliating his
infamy, his official position only deepens its blackness.
The despised Harry finds a much more plausible excuse142
for the poor-spirited creature. Harry depicts him as
displaying reluctance; as urging to Sir Aymer—

Harry appears to think that Menteith was Constable of
Dumbarton in Wallace’s interest; and the dramatic remonstrance
he puts into Menteith’s mouth is sufficiently
transparent. However, it elicits from Sir Aymer a promise
that Wallace’s life shall be safe, and that Edward
will be satisfied if his great enemy be securely lodged in
prison. On this promise, Menteith consents. True or
untrue, it is the only decent plea that has ever been
suggested on Menteith’s behalf; and even then it disgraces
his intelligence. Harry further indicates that
Menteith, after all, delayed somewhat in the execution of
the project. He says that Edward wrote to Menteith
privately, and ‘prayed him to haste.’ The infamous
wretch sorely needs the full benefit of Harry’s palliations.

Menteith proceeded to carry out his scheme. Harry
says he got ‘his sister’s son’ to attach himself to
Wallace’s personal following, with full instructions for
the betrayal. The youth was to inform Menteith of
Wallace’s movements, so as to enable him to effect the
capture under the most favourable conditions. This
subordinate tool is said to have been named Jack Short:
the authority of Langtoft is usually given, but mistakenly;
it is not Langtoft, but Langtoft ‘illustrated and improved’
by Robert of Brunne, that mentions ‘Jack Short
his man’ as the instrument of Wallace’s betrayal, adding
by way of explanation, that ‘Jack’s brother had he slain.’

The desired opportunity soon offered. According to
Harry, Bruce, in reply to an invitation to come and
claim the crown, informed Wallace that he would devise
an excuse for leaving the English court, and endeavour
to meet him on Glasgow Moor on the first night of July.
Attended only by the ever-faithful Kerly and the
treacherous emissary of Menteith, Wallace rode out on
several evenings from Glasgow to Robroyston, in expectation
of Bruce. On ‘the eighth night,’ Menteith received143
notice, and with sixty sworn men—’of his own kin, and
of kinsmen born’—he hurried to the scene. About
midnight, Wallace and Kerly went to sleep—a very
unlikely thing for Kerly to do in the circumstances.
The traitorous attendant then is said to have removed
their arms, and given the signal to Menteith. Kerly
was instantly despatched. Wallace started up, and,
missing his arms, defended himself with his hands.
Menteith then came forward, and represented that
resistance was in vain, the house being surrounded by
English troops; that the English really did not wish to
kill him; and that he would be safe under his protection
in his (Wallace’s) own house in Dumbarton Castle.
Wallace thought that Menteith, his gossip—nay, ‘his
gossip twice’ (for Major, in consonance with Harry,
records that Wallace had stood godfather to two of
Menteith’s children)—might be trusted; still he made
him swear. As Harry remarks, ‘That wanted wit; what
should his oaths avail any more, seeing he had been
long forsworn to him?’ The oath taken, Wallace resigned
his hands to the ‘sure cords’ of Menteith.

As they fared forth, Wallace saw no Southrons, and he
missed Kerly—to him convincing signs of betrayal.
Still Menteith protested that the sole intention was to
keep their prisoner in security; there was no design
against his life. The truth, however, was at once
evident. Menteith did not proceed to Dumbarton, but
took his way right south with all speed, ‘aye holding the
waste land,’ for ‘the traitors durst not pass where Scotsmen
were masters,’ and it was essential to their purpose
to gain time on Wallace’s men, and to baffle the certain
pursuit. On the south side of ‘Solway sands,’ Menteith
delivered Wallace to Sir Aymer de Valence and Sir
Robert de Clifford, who conducted him ‘full fast’ to
Carlisle, where they threw him into prison. His real
custodian, however, appears to have been Sir John de
Segrave, the Warden south of Forth.

Such writers as exculpate Menteith from participation
in the capture of Wallace lie under the obligation of
explaining the following facts. There still exists a document
that looks like a memorandum of business for144
Edward’s parliament or council. It notes that 40 marks
are to be given to the vallet who spied out (espia)
William Wallace; that 60 marks are to be given to the
others, and that the King desires they shall divide the
money among them; and that £100 in land is to be
given to John de Menteith. Again: shortly after the
middle of September, when the Scots commissioners
attended the English parliament for the special purpose
of agreeing to regulations for the settlement of Scotland,
nine, instead of ten, appeared; and in place of Earl
Patrick, who was the absent member, Sir John de
Menteith ‘by the King’s command was chosen.’ By one
of the regulations then agreed to, Sir John de Menteith
was confirmed in the governorship of Dumbarton Castle.
Further: on November 20, 1305, a signal mark of royal
favour is recorded with peculiar emphasis. At the request
of ‘his faithful and loyal John de Menteith,’ Edward
commands his Chancellor to issue letters of protection
and safe-conduct in favour of certain burgesses of St.
Omer passing with their goods and merchandise through
his dominions; the letters to be framed in such especial
form as John de Menteith shall wish ‘in reason,’ to last
for two or three years as pleases him most. The Chancellor
is to deliver them without delay to Menteith, and
to no other; for the King has granted them to him ‘with
much regret,’ and would have given them to no other
than himself. And finally, on June 16, 1306, Edward
commands Sir Aymer de Valence to deliver to Sir John
de Menteith the temporality of the bishopric of Glasgow
towards Dumbarton, during pleasure; and on the same
date he informs Sir Aymer that he has ordered the
Chancellor and Chamberlain to prepare a charter granting
the Earldom of the Lennox to Sir John de Menteith,
‘as one to whom he is much beholden for his good
service, as Sir Aymer tells him, and he hears from
others,’ and he commands Sir Aymer to give him seisin.
Harry may have mixed up the facts a little, but it is plain
that he has got hold of the main thread. Apart from the
capture of Wallace, it is simply incredible that Menteith’s
services would have been deemed so markedly valuable
in the eyes of the English King.

145
Having apprised Edward of the capture of his great
enemy, Valence and Clifford brought Wallace on to
London. Harry says Valence and Clifford, but no
doubt he ought to have said Sir John de Segrave; at
any rate, Wallace was in the custody of Segrave on
August 18. The news of Wallace’s coming had spread
far and wide, and as the cavalcade approached the
capital, it was met by a multitude of men and women,
curious to gaze upon the rebellious savage—says Stow,
‘wondering upon him.’ The illustrious captive was lodged
in the house of Alderman William de Leyre, in the parish
of Allhallows Staining, at the end of Fenchurch Street.
It may seem strange that he was not taken to the Tower.
In any case, it is in the last degree improbable that the
fact points to any intention of Edward to make a final
attempt to secure Wallace’s submission to his grace.
There is certainly more probability in Carrick’s conjecture,
that the reason was ‘the difficulty which the
party encountered in making their way through the dense
multitudes who blocked up the streets and lanes leading
to the Tower.’ Anyhow, it is a point of very subordinate
interest. The date of the arrival was Sunday, August 22.

No time was lost. Everything was in readiness. The
very next morning, Monday, August 23, 1305, Wallace
was conducted on horseback from the City to Westminster,
to undergo the farce of trial. Sir John de
Segrave was in command of the escort, and with him
there rode the Mayor, Sheriffs, and Aldermen of London,
followed by a great number of people, on horseback and
on foot. Arrived at Westminster Hall, Wallace was
placed on the bench on the south side. It is said that,
as he sat there awaiting his doom, he was crowned with
a garland of laurel leaves. The popular English fancy
absurdly associated this strange procedure with an alleged
assertion of Wallace’s in times past, to the effect that he
deserved to wear a crown in that Hall. Some writers
regard it as a mark of derision. Llewelyn’s head had
been exposed on the battlements of the Tower crowned
with a wreath of ivy—said to be in fulfilment of a
prophecy of Merlin’s. Sir Simon Fraser is said, in the
ballad, to have been drawn through the streets to the146
gallows with ‘a garland on his head after the new guise’;
though Langtoft says Fraser’s head was fixed on London
Bridge ‘without chaplet of flowers,’ as if the omission
were a noticeable breach of custom. It is a mistake,
then, to suppose that the garland was a special insult to
Wallace. It may have marked the satisfaction of victory
over a notable enemy. It may be taken as the fillet of
the destined victim.

The Commissioners appointed to try Wallace were
Sir John de Segrave; Sir Peter Malory, the Lord Chief
Justice; Ralph de Sandwich, the Constable of the Tower;
John de Bacwell (or Banquelle), a judge; and Sir John
le Blound (Blunt), Mayor of London. They had been
appointed by Edward on August 18. They were all
present. The indictment was comprehensive, charging
sedition, homicide, spoliation and robbery, arson, and
various other felonies. The charge of sedition or treason
was based on Edward’s conquest of Scotland. On
Balliol’s forfeiture, he had reduced all the Scots to his
lordship and royal power; had publicly received homage
and fealty from the prelates, earls, barons, and a multitude
of others; had proclaimed his peace throughout
Scotland; and had appointed wardens, his lieutenants,
sheriffs, and others, officers and men, to maintain his
peace and to do justice. Yet this Wallace, forgetful of
his fealty and allegiance, had risen against his lord; had
banded together a great number of felons, and feloniously
attacked the King’s wardens and men; had, in particular,
attacked, wounded, and slain William de Hazelrig,
Sheriff of Lanark, and, in contempt of the King, had cut
the said Sheriff’s body in pieces; had assailed towns,
cities, and castles of Scotland; had made his writs run
throughout the land as if he were Lord Superior of that
realm; and, having driven out of Scotland all the wardens
and servants of the Lord King, had set up and held parliaments
and councils of his own. More than that, he had
counselled the prelates, earls, and barons, his adherents,
to submit themselves to the fealty and lordship of the
King of France, and to aid that sovereign to destroy the
realm of England. Further, he had invaded the realm
of England, entering the counties of Northumberland,147
Cumberland, and Westmoreland, and committing horrible
enormities. He had feloniously slain all he had found in
these places, liegemen of the King; he had not spared
any person that spoke the English tongue, but put to
death, with all the severities he could devise, all—old
men and young, wives and widows, children and sucklings.
He had slain the priests and the nuns, and
burned down the churches, ‘together with the bodies of the
saints and other relics of them therein placed in honour.’
In such ways, day by day and hour by hour, he had
seditiously and feloniously persevered, to the danger
alike of the life and the crown of the Lord King. For
all that, when the Lord King invaded Scotland with his
great army and defeated William, who opposed him in a
pitched battle, and others his enemies, and granted his
firm peace to all of that land, he had mercifully had the
said William Wallace recalled to his peace. Yet William,
persevering seditiously and feloniously in his wickedness,
had rejected his overtures with indignant scorn, and refused
to submit himself to the King’s peace. Therefore, in the
court of the Lord King, he had been publicly outlawed,
according to the laws and customs of England and Scotland,
as a misleader of the lieges, a robber, and a felon.

It was laid down as not consonant with the laws of
England, that a man so placed beyond the pale of the
laws, and not afterwards restored to the King’s peace,
should be admitted either to defend himself or to plead.
Still it is recorded that Wallace, whether regularly or
irregularly, did reply to Sir Peter Malory, denying that
he had ever been a traitor to the English King. He is
also said to have acknowledged the other charges preferred.
There are allegations of wanton and extravagant
misdeeds that undoubtedly merited denial, and could
not have been positively acknowledged by Wallace. It
may be that he considered it futile to raise any further
objection, and heard the charges with the contempt of
silent indifference.

Sentence was pronounced:

‘That the said William, for the manifest sedition that he practised
against the Lord King himself, by feloniously contriving and
acting with a view to his death and to the abasement and subversion148
of his crown and royal dignity, by opposing his liege lord in war to
the death, be drawn from the Palace of Westminster to the Tower
of London, and from the Tower to Aldgate, and so through the
midst of the City, to the Elms;

‘And that for the robberies, homicides, and felonies he committed
in the realm of England and in the land of Scotland, he be there
hanged, and afterwards taken down from the gallows;

‘And that, inasmuch as he was an outlaw, and was not afterwards
restored to the peace of the Lord King, he be decollated and decapitated;

‘And that thereafter, for the measureless turpitude of his deeds
towards God and Holy Church in burning down churches, with the
vessels and litters wherein and whereon the body of Christ and the
bodies of saints and relics of these were placed, the heart, the liver,
the lungs, and all the internal organs of William’s body, whence
such perverted thoughts proceeded, be cast into fire and burnt;

‘And further, that inasmuch as it was not only against the Lord
King himself, but against the whole Community of England and of
Scotland, that he committed the aforesaid acts of sedition, spoliation,
arson, and homicide, the body of the said William be cut up
and divided into four parts; and that the head, so cut off, be set
up on London Bridge, in the sight of such as pass by, whether by
land or by water; and that one quarter be hung on a gibbet at
Newcastle-upon-Tyne, another quarter at Berwick, a third quarter
at Stirling, and the fourth at St. Johnston, as a warning and a
deterrent to all that pass by and behold them.’

In execution of this atrocious sentence, Wallace was
dragged at the tails of horses through the streets of
London to the Elms in Smithfield (i.e. Smoothfield—later
Cow Lane, now King Street). At the foot of the
gallows, he is said to have asked for a priest, in order to
make confession. Harry seems confused in placing this
incident before the procession to Westminster; and his
representation of the Archbishop of Canterbury as
shriving Wallace, in defiance of Edward’s express general
prohibition, is at any rate highly coloured in the details.
Harry further records that Wallace requested Clifford to
let him have the Psalter that he habitually carried with
him; and that, when this was brought, Wallace got a
priest to hold it open before him ’till they to him had
done all that they would.’ The sentence was faithfully
carried out through all its stages. The English chroniclers
gloat over the inhuman savagery, some of them describing
details of dishonour to the heroic victim’s body such
as may find no place on this page. The head was fixed149
on London Bridge, and the four quarters were taken to
their destined places of exposure by Segrave. The
chroniclers vary in the names of these places, Dumfries
and Aberdeen being specified by one or another instead
of towns mentioned above. There still exists an account
presented by the Sheriffs of London on December 1 for

15s. delivered to John de Segrave in August last for carriage of the
body of William le Waleys to Scotland, by the King’s writ;
and John’s receipt.

The record adds that ‘afterwards they were allowed 10s.
in the Roll’—a last royal meanness in connection with
Wallace.

Wallace was dead. Laboriously tracked and hunted
down by miserable hirelings—Scots, to their black
shame—he had been put through the farce of a formal
trial, and done to death by an accumulation of barbarous
cruelties and unmanly indignities, the revenge of a
pusillanimous mind. Wallace had never done homage
or sworn fealty to the English King: how could he
possibly be a traitor? His deadly crime, in fact, was
that he alone of all the prominent Scotsmen of the time
had never bowed to the usurper. Many a real traitor—doubly,
trebly, and deeper dyed—had Edward let off
with little or no punishment, and even restored to their
estates, and to his own favour and confidence. But let
a man show the genuine mettle of an independent spirit,
and his fate was sealed. Wallace could not be bent;
therefore he must be broken. In loose popular language
he might be called a traitor, and the justices of the
special Commission were not inclined to split technical
hairs of legality. But in fact Wallace was simply a
prisoner of war, an open enemy captured in arms.
Under judicial forms he was doomed to death in accordance
with a prearranged programme, under which there
was no necessity for the prosecution to call evidence, and
no opportunity for the victim to offer any defence. Of
course his life was justly at the King’s mercy. But
Wallace died, not because his life was technically
forfeited, but simply because Edward could feel no
security so long as his arch-enemy breathed. The150
formality of trial was a mere abuse of judicial process,
calculated to befool people already disposed to be
befooled. Once more Edward took care to shelter
himself under the forms of legal procedure.

The elaborate series of punishments assigned to the
various categories of Wallace’s alleged misdeeds illustrates
forcibly the base vindictiveness of Edward. A soldier
like him might have been expected to show soldierly
appreciation of the most gallant enemy he ever faced.
The zeal manifested in vengeance for the alleged dishonour
to God and the holy saints is sufficiently edifying,
even for the early years of the fourteenth century. It
cloaks the malignant gratification of personal malice
with the dazzling profession of the championship of
religion. When the spacious Abbey of Dunfermline was
burnt to the ground only eighteen months before, that
was presumably not for the dishonour, but for the
glory, of God and the holy saints. The point of view
is notoriously important.

Wallace was dead. His body was dismembered, and
distributed in the great centres of his activity and
influence, as an encouragement to English sympathisers,
and a sign of retribution to Scots that might yet cherish
the foolishness of patriotism. The moral has been well
rendered by Burton:—

‘The death of Wallace stands forth among the violent ends which
have had a memorable place in history. Proverbially such acts belong
to a policy that outwits itself. But the retribution has seldom come
so quickly, and so utterly in defiance of all human preparation and
calculation, as here. Of the bloody trophies sent to frighten a broken
people into abject subjection, the bones had not yet been bared ere
they became tokens to deepen the wrath and strengthen the courage
of a people arising to try the strength of the bands by which they
were bound, and, if possible, break them once and for ever.’

Wallace had done his work right well and truly, as
builder of the foundations of Scottish independence. He
had sealed his faith with his blood. Probably he died
despairing of his country. Yet barely had six months
come and gone when his dearest wish was fulfilled. The
banner of Freedom waved defiance from the towers of
Lochmaben, and in the Chapel-Royal of Scone the
Bruce was crowned King of Scotland.

151

CHAPTER IX
The Patriot Hero

It is matter of deep regret that the facts of the personality
and career of Wallace still remain so obscure.
There is no alternative but to piece them together
painfully from the strange miscellany of available
materials, perplexed, distorted, fragmentary, and fabulous.
Yet when the misrepresentations of virulent foes
and adulatory admirers are firmly brushed away, the
patriot hero stands forth, incontestably, as one of the
grandest figures in history.

On the death of Alexander III., Scotland sank from
the crest of prosperity into the very trough of adversity.
The brief reigns of the infant Margaret and the puppet
Balliol only served as breathing-space for the marshalling
of the forces of internal conflict to the profit of a powerful
and remorseless aggressor. Industry was unsettled;
commerce was disorganised. The King was contemned;
the nobles were distrusted. Both King and nobles were
liegemen of the foreigner, while the free commons sullenly
nourished the passion of immemorial independence.
Scotland was indeed ‘stad in perplexytè.’ Her ‘gold wes
changyd in to lede.’ When, and whence, would ever
come succour and remede?

152
Succour and remede sprang, naturally, from the insolence
and oppression of the minions of the invader.
Little did Wallace know or reck of the solemn farce
enacted at Norham and Berwick, or of the feudal rights
of Balliol or another. Like a deliverer of old, ‘he went
out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens’;
‘when he saw there was no man, he slew the Englishman,
and hid him in the sand.’ An outlaw, he drew to him
friends, free lances, probably enough desperadoes, and
waged such guerrilla warfare as was possible against the
oppressors of his family and his countrymen. Some
other knights and squires similarly maintained themselves
in the forests and fastnesses of the land. But there must
have been some distinctive and commanding qualities in
the man that was able to step forward in that dark hour
from an obscure social position to lead the forlorn hope
of Scottish independence.

‘Wallace’s make, as he grew up to manhood,’ says
Tytler, ‘approached almost to the gigantic; and his
personal strength was superior to the common run of
even the strongest men.’ Even Burton dissociates
himself from belief in this statement. But surely,
though ‘the later romancers and minstrels’ have ‘profusely
trumpeted Wallace’s personal prowess and superhuman
strength,’ the assertion of Tytler makes no great
draft on one’s credulity. On the contrary, in an age
when warlike renown depended so essentially on personal
deeds of derring-do, the astonishing thing—the incredible
thing—would be if Wallace had not been a man of pre-eminent
physical strength and resourcefulness in the use
of arms. By what other means, indeed, could the second
son of an obscure knight, a mere youth just out of his
teens, living the life of an outlaw, uncountenanced by
the support of a single great noble, by any possibility
have maintained himself, attracted adherents, impressed
the enemy, and become the hero of a nation, if he did
not possess quite exceptional physical strength and
prowess? How is it possible that a man that had gone
through the hardships of a desperate guerrilla, as Wallace
must have done, should be other than a man ‘of iron
frame’? Ajax was taller than Agamemnon; and Jop153
may have stood a head higher than Wallace. But the
substantial fact of his impressive physique is not to be
denied. The romancers exaggerate, of course; but on
this point even Harry scarcely outdoes Major or Bower.

Harry’s slight sketch of Wallace as a ‘child’ of eighteen
prepares us for the description of his hero in his prime
by ‘clerks, knights, and heralds’ of France, which, he
says, Blair set down ‘in Wallace’ book.’

It is futile to dispute over fractional details. Let the
most exacting historical critic array the indisputable facts
of Wallace’s birth, breeding, and career, and frame upon
these his conception of the figure of the man. It is
impossible that there should be any substantial difference
between such a picture and the picture exhibited by
Harry. Fordun states that Wallace was ‘wondrously
brave and bold, of goodly mien, and boundless liberality’;
and that he ruled with an iron hand of discipline.154
Major declines to commit himself to Wallace’s alleged
feats of strength; yet he does not scruple to affirm
that ‘two or even three Englishmen were scarce able to
make stand against him, such was his bodily strength,
such also the quickness of his dexterity, and his indomitable
courage,’ while ‘there was no extreme of cold
or heat, or hunger or of thirst, that he could not bear.’
And Bower’s description bears out fully the account
given by Harry. The objector is not to be envied in
his task of explaining how Wallace fought in the thickest
of the battle, how he defended the rear against mailed
horsemen on barbed chargers, and how he stood at the
head of the Scots in the battle of Stirling Bridge.

But, as Burton justly remarks, ‘Wallace’s achievements
demanded qualities of a higher order.’ Now Burton’s
cautious reticence gives especial emphasis to his decided
affirmation that Wallace ‘was a man of vast political and
military genius.’ ‘As a soldier,’ the circumspect Burton
freely admits, ‘Wallace was one of those marvellously
gifted men, arising at long intervals, who can see through
the military superstitions of the day, and organise power
out of those elements which the pedantic soldier rejects as
rubbish.’ Yes, Wallace had to create, and then to train;
not merely to organise and marshal and order in the field.
Wallace started with the sole equipment of his single sword.
With his small and inexperienced body of comrades,
without mailed barons or mailed chargers, he was driven
by sheer necessity to devise means of conserving his force
and at the same time making it as effective as possible
in offence. At Stirling, his masterly selection of the
ground practically decided the issue; the rash confidence
of Cressingham only rendered the victory more complete.
At Falkirk, as Burton points out, ‘he showed even more
of the tactician in the disposal of his troops where they
were compelled to fight’—tactics amply vindicated on
many a modern battlefield. ‘The arrangement, save that
it was circular instead of rectangular, was precisely the same
as the “square to receive cavalry” which has baffled and
beaten back so many a brilliant army in later days.’ But
for the defection of the cavalry, comparatively weak as
they were, Falkirk might have been Stirling Bridge.155
These tactics, however, admirable as they are universally
acknowledged to have been, and even original, were no
doubt developed by painful experience in the guerrilla
period. And, on the other hand, it is to be remembered
that, while Scotland had had no experience of war for
more than a century, Wallace was not only crippled by
the operation of the feudal allegiance, but had for his
opponents the ablest generals and the most seasoned
warriors of the age.

On the moral side of war, Wallace must indeed have
been a sanguinary barbarian if any apology for his
severities be due to the murderers of his wife, to the
conqueror that made Berwick swim in blood, to the
insolent tramplers upon the common human feelings
of his countrymen, or to the juggling reivers of the
independence of his country. We decline to apologise
for his alleged private reprisals: if you madden a man
with open injustice and intolerable oppression, if you
gaily lacerate his soul in his physical helplessness, it is
you yourself that invite him to have recourse to the
primal code of retaliation. If Wallace, as Harry says,
never spared any Englishman ‘that able was to war,’ it
was an intelligible principle in the dire circumstances of
the time; and he is not known to have deprecated the
application of the principle to himself. If he imagined
that there had come to him an admonition, divine and
imperative, to slay and spare not, we decline to censure
him because he hewed his enemies in pieces before the
Lord.

Yet such deliberate and inexorable rigour of policy
is a wholly different matter from gratuitous cruelty.
Wallace did not war on women, priests, or other ‘weak
folk.’ It is not the strong man that is a cruel man.
True, the English historians brand him as brigand, cut-throat,
man of Belial, and so forth—latro ille, latro
publicus, etc.—and ascribe to him inhuman atrocities.
This indeed is by no means unnatural for writers of the
cloister, starting from Wallace’s outlawry and his guerrilla
warfare, and cherishing a full share of the virulent
international enmity. But while no doubt very rough
deeds were done in those days on both sides, ‘Herodian156
cruelties’ are but the stock allegations of dislike at this
period; and they are hurled from both sides indiscriminately.
Major expressly admits that ‘towards all
unwarlike persons, such as women and children, towards
all who claimed his mercy, he showed himself humane,’
though ‘the proud and all who offered resistance he knew
well how to curb.’ The strong impression remains that
Wallace never, at any rate never without some overpowering
constraint, either did or permitted mere cruelty to
any person. Hemingburgh’s account of the episode at
Hexham speaks volumes in his favour.

The regrettable inadequacy of historical criticism of
Harry’s poem prevents us, in the meantime, from
illustrating the minor military qualities of Wallace. But,
admitted that he was ‘a man of vast military genius,’
there is little necessity for detailed remarks on his care
and consideration for his men; on his men’s confidence
in him and affection for him; on his sleepless vigilance,
his high courage, his cool daring, his masterful rule, his
resolute tenacity and endurance, his keen sense of honour,
his singular unselfishness, his lofty magnanimity. Undoubtedly
he did not lack that ‘bit of the devil in him,’
without which, according to Sir Charles Napier, ‘no man
can command.’ Nothing in all Harry’s panorama is
more nobly touching, or more illuminative, than the
fidelity of the men that stood closest to Wallace. Is it
not true, though Harry says it, that, when Steven of
Ireland and Kerly rejoined their lost leader in the Tor
Wood after the annihilation of Elcho Park, ‘for perfect
joy they wept with all their een’? Is not the lament of
Wallace over the dead body of Sir John the Graham on
the field of Falkirk the true, as well as the supreme,
expression of the profound affection and confidence that
united the goodly fellowship of these tried comrades and
dauntless men?

Burton, as we have seen, also acknowledges freely that
Wallace was ‘a man of vast political genius.’ The particulars
are most limited, and yet they are ample to
ground a large inference. It will be sufficient to recall
his endeavours, in the midst of warlike activity, to
resuscitate industry and commerce, to reorganise the157
civil order, to secure the aid of France and Rome, to
minimise the friction with the barons, and to observe
and to enforce deference to constitutional principle. It
is a striking testimony to his greatness of mind that he
was absolutely destitute of ambition, as ambition is
ordinarily understood. Emphatically he was a man that

Even at the height of his power and popularity, he does
not seem to have had the faintest impulse to seize the
crown, or indeed to seize anything, for himself. Harry
tells an extraordinary story, with a definiteness that
commands attention, how he took the crown for one day,
on Northallerton Moor, expressly and solely and most
reluctantly ‘to get battle.’ Whether he could have taken
the crown and held it—if he had so wished—need not
tempt speculation. It is a singularly bright leaf in
Wallace’s laurels that there remains no shadow of evidence
of any inclination on his part to swerve from the straight
course of pure and unselfish patriotism.

‘Wallace,’ says Major, ‘whom the common people, with
some of the nobles, followed gladly, had a lofty spirit;
and born, as he was, of no illustrious house, he yet proved
himself a better ruler in the simple armour of his integrity
than any of those nobles would have been.’ And
again: ‘Wise and prudent he was, and marked throughout
his life by a loftiness of aim which gives him a place, in
my opinion, second to none in his day and generation.’

But beyond and above the exceptional tribute of ‘vast
political and military genius’—a tribute doubly ample for
any one man in any century of a nation’s history—it is
the unique glory of Wallace that he was the one man of
his time that dared to champion the independence of his
country. More than that, though he died a cruel and
shameful death amidst the exultant insults of his country’s
foes in the capital city of the enemy, he yet died victorious.
He had kept alight the torch of Scottish freedom. He,
a man of the people, had taught the recreant nobles that
resistance to the invader was not hopeless, although those
that took the torch immediately from his hand failed to158
carry it on; and the light was preserved by the commonalty
till the torch was at length grasped by Bruce.
Wallace, in fact, had made the ascendency of Bruce
possible—a possibility converted into a certainty by
the death of Edward I. Lord Rosebery has justly
pointed to the attitude of Edward towards him in
1304, as ‘the greatest proof of Wallace’s eminence and
power.’ The true Deliverer of Scotland was Sir William
Wallace.

The prime consideration is very finely singled out and
expressed by Lord Rosebery, in the address he delivered
at the Stirling Celebration in 1897—

‘There are junctures in the affairs of men when what is wanted is
a Man—not treasures, not fleets, not legions, but a Man—the man
of the moment, the man of the occasion, the man of Destiny, whose
spirit attracts and unites and inspires, whose capacity is congenial to
the crisis, whose powers are equal to the convulsion—the child and
the outcome of the storm…. We recognise in Wallace one of
these men—a man of Fate given to Scotland in the storms of the
thirteenth century. It is that fact, the fact of his destiny and his
fatefulness, that succeeding generations have instinctively recognised.’

The instinct of the Scottish nation is thoroughly
sound. Though at one time nourished by Harry’s poem,
it is rooted in the rock of historical fact. And, despite
the sneers of the inconsiderate, it is a great imperial
influence. Who will assert that the empire has suffered
from the intense passion of freedom that Scotsmen
associate with the name of Wallace? Is it not the
obvious fact that the free national feeling by transmutation
swells the imperial flame? If it is fundamentally
due to Wallace’s heroic heart and mind that the national
spirit of freedom saved Scotland from union with England,
on any terms less dignified than the footing of
independence, then the results of his noble struggle
entitle him to a foremost place among the great men that
have established the foundations of the British Empire.
One sovereign at least of England as well as of Scotland
acknowledged—and handsomely acknowledged—’the
good and honourable service done of old by William
Wallace for the defence of that our kingdom.’ Wallace159
made Scotland great; and, as Lord Rosebery proudly
and justly claimed, ‘if Scotland were not great, the Empire
of all the Britains would not stand where it does.’
In the work of imperial expansion, consolidation, and
administration, Scotsmen have done, and are doing, at
least their fair share; but that share would have been
indefinitely deferred, and indefinitely marred, but for the
uncurbed passion of freedom pervading their nature.
And to Scotsmen, in all the generations, Freedom will
ever be nobly typified in the immortal name of Sir
William Wallace.