6

After Falkirk the guardianship of the country returned into the hands of the magnates. William Wallace had no fief and no vassals behind him. His leadership had depended upon his aura of success and when that was dissipated he had no platform of recovery. For the next seven years he remained in obscurity, harrying the English whenever he could with bands of lawless men, or acting as messenger to the King of France or His Holiness the Pope for his friend William Lamberton, Bishop of St Andrews.1

But something of his unselfish dedication to the cause of Scotland brushed off, for a short time, on the feuding barons. The new guardians were Robert Bruce, leader of the resistance in the southwest, and John Comyn ‘the Red’ of Badenoch, kinsman of the Earl of Buchan and representative of the pre-eminent family beyond the Tay.2 It was a surprising and uneasy alliance and argues generosity of mind and patriotism on the part of Robert Bruce, for the guardians were still acting in the name of the abdicated King, John Balliol, and thus effectively blocking his family’s claim to the throne.

Under the guardians‘ rule the normal machinery of government continued to operate throughout the major part of Scotland, for in spite of the Scottish defeat at Falkirk the English had not sufficient troops to occupy the country, and from 1298 to 1303 the only area under their full control was East Lothian, where their garrisoned castles were thicker on the ground than in other parts.

It was against Roxburgh, the most westerly of these, that the Scots made their first full scale raid in July 1299. The assembled forces of the two guardians and those of the Earls of Buchan, Menteith and Atholl and of James Stewart, Sir Robert Keith, Sir Ingram de Umfraville and other barons3 were accompanied by the Bishop of St Andrews, who had newly returned from France after evading the ships which King Edward had detailed to intercept him.4 The Scottish attack was abortive. The castle was too strongly held to be taken without heavy casualties and these they were unwilling to risk in view of the preparations that King Edward was putting in train to renew the conflict. They returned to Peebles in the forest of Selkirk to consider their next move.

Frustrated and quarrelsome after the failure of their expedition, they were soon at odds, as can be noted from the report of a spy planted among them by the Constable of Roxburgh Castle which is now preserved in the Public Record Office in London:

At the council, Sir David Graham demanded the land and goods of Sir William Wallace because he was leaving the Kingdom without the leave or approval of the Guardians. And Sir Malcolm, Sir William’s brother, answered that neither his lands nor his goods should be given away, for they were protected by the peace in which Wallace had left the Kingdom. At this the two knights gave the lie to each other and drew their daggers. And since Sir David Graham was of Sir John Comyn’s following, it was reported to the Earl of Buchan and John Comyn that a fight had broken out without their knowing it: and John Comyn leapt at the Earl of Carrick and seized him by the throat and the Earl of Buchan turned on the Bishop of St Andrews, declaring that treason and lèse majesté were being plotted. Eventually the Stewart and others came between them and quietened them. At that moment a letter was brought from beyond the Firth of Forth, telling how Sir Alexander Comyn and Lachlan Macruarie were burning and devastating the district they were in, attacking the people of the Scottish nation. So it was ordained then that the Bishop of St Andrews should have all the castles in his hands as principal captain and the Earl of Carrick and John Comyn be with him as joint-guardians of the Kingdom. And that same Wednesday, after the letter had been read, they all left Peebles.5

For the time being the old feud between Bruce and Comyn was patched up by the influence of the bishop whose whole thought was for the liberty of the kingdom and the independence of the Church. His bishopric was north of the Tay in Comyn land: his career had hitherto been in the southwest, the preserve of the Bruces, so no better link between the two could have been chosen. The Comyns returned to their homeland to deal with their erring relative and Bruce to Annandale in an attempt, which proved unsuccessful, to regain his hereditary castle at Lochmaben. Lamberton, Umfraville and Keith remained in Selkirk forest to watch the southern approaches, and other forces were placed under the command of Sir John Soulis to besiege the English garrison in Stirling Castle which had been left behind by King Edward after his victory at Falkirk.

In November news was brought to the Scots that King Edward was raising an army to rescue the beleaguered defenders6 and the scattered guardians came together at the Tor Wood near Stirling to protect Sir John and his men against the threatened invasion. But their support was not needed. The levy ordered by King Edward to foregather at Berwick to raise the siege of Stirling was ignored. The military tenants of Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham, his right hand man, refused to serve beyond their shire and other desertions were so serious that Edward could not proceed so the castle fell to the Scots.7

Heartened by this display of weakness, the guardians wrote to King Edward that, through the mediation of King Philip of France, they would agree to a truce,8 but the King peremptorily refused and on 30 December 1299 issued further writs for a full and formally constituted feudal levy to meet him at Carlisle on 24 June 1300.

Before then the temporary advantage enjoyed by the Scots was dissipated by renewed dissension among the guardians. The Comyn faction argued that the main effort against the English should be directed in support of the men of Galloway, but this was unacceptable to Bruce and his friends. The men of Galloway were a law unto themselves and the sustaining thread through their history was a traditional hatred of the men of Carrick dating from the quarrels between Gilbert and Uhtred, the sons of Fergus, a century before. Ever since the abdication of their titular lord, John Balliol, they had spent as much time raiding their neighbours in Carrick and Annandale as harrying the English. To support them was in no way to preserve the amity of the guardians.

John Comyn, who had already evinced his hot temper at the meeting in Selkirk Forest, responded to these arguments by declaring vehemently that he would no longer serve with the Bishop of St Andrews. The Earl of Atholl and James Stewart, both supporters of Bruce, intervened on behalf of the bishop, but in the end it was Bruce who resigned and his place was taken by Sir Ingram de Umfraville, a kinsman of Balliol’s and ally of the Comyns.9 Bruce’s resignation may have been partly in the interests of harmony but more surely because he felt that if the Comyns were going to meddle in Galloway his presence was needed in Carrick to preserve his family interests in the southwest, and it is there that for the next two years he confined his activities. The remaining magnates, apart from the Earl of Buchan who in fact went to Galloway to try to enlist the support of the leading men against the English, held a parliament at Rutherglen on 10 May to prepare for a summer campaign.

 

Events overtook them. King Edward’s further writs for a feudal levy had been obeyed. On midsummer’s day 1300 he held a court at Carlisle accompanied by his young Queen, Marguerite, sister of the King of France, whom he had married the previous year,10 and there reviewed the assembled troops. So great was their number, according to a contemporary ballad, that the hills and valleys resounded to the neighings of horses and the ground was carpeted with tents, wagons and all the impedimenta of war. The chivalry of England, in its splendour, was marshalled in four great squadrons and an auxiliary force placed under the command of Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham, ‘ever at hand when there was fighting’. So with an army comparable to that which he had commanded at Falkirk, King Edward crossed the Solway Firth into Scotland while a fleet of fifty-eight ships guarded his flank and kept watch on the coast of Galloway. The conquest of the southwest seemed imminent.

But the outcome was a dismal anticlimax. After capturing the castle of Caerlaverock and its handful of defenders, this menacing force achieved nothing.11 King Edward marched them along the coastal plain as far as Wigton, hampered by appalling weather, and then retraced his steps.12 At Kircudbright on his outward progress, shadowed by the Scottish guardians in the rugged hills to the north, the King was waited on by the Earl of Buchan and John Comyn with Scottish proposals of peace: the restoration of John Balliol to the throne and the return to the Scottish magnates of their forfeited English estates. He regarded these terms as impertinent and dismissed them with contempt.13

Stung into rashness by Edward’s response, Buchan, Comyn and Umfraville descended from the sheltering hills and attempted to oppose his crossing of the river Cree but, after the first charge of his armoured knights, fled in disorder into the boggy moors to their rear where heavy cavalry could not pursue them, leaving Sir Robert Keith, Marischal of Scotland, prisoner in his hands.14

By the end of August King Edward was back in Sweetheart Abbey, hard by Caerlaverock, angry and frustrated. If his parade of power was meant to draw adherents to his cause, it had failed entirely. His barons refused to continue their feudal service beyond the prescribed two months, his foot soldiers, drawn mainly from the northern shires, were deserting in their hundreds.15

It was at this unpropitious moment that the Archbishop of Canterbury reached him after a long and arduous journey and, at the King’s request, read aloud before the assembled court a papal bull, indited more than a year ago, which he had brought with him.16 In this Pope Boniface VIII, after detailing in lucid phrases the devious means by which King Edward had imposed upon the trusting Scots, ordered him to desist from inflicting injuries on that unhappy people and withdraw from a country which ‘as thou knowest my son’ is and was a fief of the Holy See.17 The archbishop followed this recitation by an address imploring the King ‘for the love of Mount Zion and Jerusalem’ to yield to the Pope’s decree.

‘By God’s blood,’ the King exploded, ‘I will not keep my peace for Mount Zion nor silence for Jerusalem but while there is breath in my nostrils, I will defend my right, which all the world knows, with all my power.’18

The shaken archbishop was ushered from his presence and later informed that the King would consult his barons and then reply to the Pope.

The papal broadside was the culmination of Scottish diplomacy at the Vatican. Pope Boniface VIII, elected supreme pontiff in 1294 after a series of ineffective predecessors, was a determined and ambitious prelate. He believed that all the princes on earth owed sovereignty to the Vicar of Christ and that the Church of Rome, as it were the United Nations, should be the acknowledged arbiter of international disputes. His conversion to the cause of Scottish independence had been inspired, as early as the summer of 1298, by the arguments of William Lamberton who had been in Rome awaiting his consecration as Bishop of St Andrews, which took place on 1 June of that year. It had been confirmed by the passionate pleadings of David Moray, uncle of Andrew Moray, the young hero of Stirling bridge. David Moray had been appointed Bishop of Moray by Robert Bruce and John Comyn when they were joint guardians, and had followed his compatriot Lamberton to the Holy See for the laying-on of hands.

The public opposition of the Pope compounded the problems facing King Edward. His barons stubbornly refused military service until he reformed the Forest Charters, and the French King constantly postponed the translation of the truce between them into a formal peace treaty. In these circumstances King Edward recognized the need for a breathing space for manoeuvre. On 30 October 1300, at the instance of King Philip of France, he agreed a truce between England and Scotland to last until 21 May 1301 and, as a mollifying gesture to the Pope, released from prison Robert Wishart, the Bishop of Glasgow.19

But no sooner had he settled his differences with his barons and rallied them behind him in his rejection of the papal bull than he set in train measures for yet another invasion of Scotland, his sixth campaign, to take place in the summer of 1301. His intention was once again to deal with the Scottish stronghold in the southwest.20

 

Robert Bruce, since his relinquishment of the guardianship, had been building up his forces in Carrick and had made himself master of Turnberry Castle. It is probable that during that period he had visited the Bruce possessions in Northern Ireland and the northeast Highlands of Scotland as reservoirs of reinforcements. He kept his distance from the Comyns and his only link with them would appear to have been through William Lamberton, Bishop of St Andrews, who was desperately trying to prevent a complete breach between the two families.

It was with this aim, one must assume, that early in 1301 the bishop retired from the guardianship and persuaded John Comyn and his supporter Sir Ingram de Umfraville to do likewise in favour of Sir John Soulis as sole guardian. Sir John was connected by marriage with the Comyns but was also a close neighbour of the Bruces and could thus act as a stabilizing factor between the two.21 Sir John had now to deal with the two-pronged invasion which King Edward launched in July 1301.

His son, the Prince of Wales, was to drive up the coast of Galloway and Ayrshire from Carlisle, supported by ships in the Firth of Clyde, to inhibit any aid from Ireland and so, in his father’s words, ‘to gain the chief honour of taming the pride of the Scots’,22 while the King himself from Berwick would secure the defensive line of the Forth and Clyde, cut the link between the unsubdued Highlands and the south-west, and then, joining forces with his son, isolate and crush the latter area. This grandiose design was unfulfilled. Sir John Soulis with his forces operated between the two English armies, harrying the flanks of both without ever committing himself to a frontal attack, while Robert Bruce, after holding out in Turnberry Castle until September, withdrew his men, immobilized the troops who had captured the castle and forced the Prince of Wales by constant forays to retreat to Carlisle.23 The prince then moved east to join his father at Linlithgow to which the King had retired after his one success, the seizure of Bothwell Castle24 on the direct route between the Highlands and the southwest. The pincer prongs had never met.

During the winter, while King Edward remained at Linlithgow engaged in building a castle25 and organizing the shipment of horses, fodder and supplies from England, the King of France negotiated with him a truce on behalf of the Scots, to run from 26 January 1302 to the end of November. Effectively this meant a lull in hostilities until campaigning weather in the late spring of 1303.26

At the court of France, King Philip felt a growing ascendancy over the English monarch. Twice in two years King Edward had failed in his Scottish campaigns. Twice in two years he had been forced to accept the French demands for a truce with the Scots which previously he had utterly rejected. His arguments at the Vatican court against the papal bull had been brilliantly demolished by the Scottish envoy, Master Baldred Bisset.* Judgement had been given in favour of the Scots and in the summer of 1301 their abdicated King, John Balliol, had been released from the jurisdiction of the Pope, to whom King Edward had handed him over in July 1299, to dwell as a free man in the kingdom of France.27

In Scotland the significance of this move had not been lost. Writs which before that time had been issued by successive guardians as on behalf of King John were now issued as by King John ‘to be valid at our will or that of our dearest son Edward or of John de Soulis Guardian of our Kingdom’, and a new seal was struck with the name and title of King John on the obverse, and the name and arms of John de Soulis, knight, only on the reverse.28

A strong rumour swept through the Scottish kingdom that the King of France was to restore John Balliol to his throne at the head of a powerful French army.

 

No news could be more unpalatable to Robert Bruce. For five years he had fought for the independence of Scotland, sacrificing his personal standing and inheritance in England. In Scotland his lands in the southwest, during the last two years, had been the main object of English attacks and had been ravaged and burned by the invader, while those of the Comyns north of the Forth had been untouched by war. Yet increasingly he had been cold-shouldered by the Comyns and cut off from the inner councils of state. If John Balliol was restored to the throne, John Comyn ‘the Red’ of Badenoch would in effect become the ruler of the realm and there was no man more jealous of Bruce or more given to outbursts of temper. In 1295, John Balliol had handed over to his relation, John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, the Bruce patrimony of Annandale. If he returned in triumph with a French army at his back, all the Bruce inheritance in Scotland – Annandale, Carrick and Garioch – would be at risk.

King Edward was no less apprehensive of the rumoured threat. On the spiritual and secular plane, he had never been so weak. His designs on Scotland still aroused the grave displeasure of the Pope and the sword of excommunication was rattling in its sheath. The King of France was at peace with all his European neighbours. He had annexed Flanders and had Gascony firmly under control. Now at last he had a secure base from which he could afford to divert his military forces to the support of the Scots.

This threat to both Bruce and King Edward forced an understanding between the two. The truce arranged in January 1302 gave an opportunity for negotiations to be opened, and on 16 February 1302 Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, made his submission to the English king on the following terms:

Be it remembered that Robert Bruce the younger, who was in homage and faith of the King of England for the Earldom of Carrick, rose in rebellion against the said King his Lord, through evil counsel and has submitted himself to the peace and will of the same King, in hope of his good grace, the King for the sake of the good service which Robert’s ancestors and family have rendered to the King and his ancestors, and the good service which Robert himself has promised to render in the future, has declared his grace and will in this manner.

That is to say that Robert and his men and his tenants of Carrick will be guaranteed life and limb, lands and tenements, and will be free from imprisonment.

If it should happen that by Papal ordinance or by a truce or by a conditional peace touching the war against Scotland or the war against France, the aforesaid Robert should be at a disadvantage, so that he may not be able to enjoy his own lands, of which he has possession at present in Scotland, the King promises to take his loss into consideration so that he may have reasonable maintenance, as is proper for him.

And the King grants to Robert that, so far as it lies in his power, he will not be disinherited of any land which may fall to him by right from his father, in England or in Scotland.

And the King grants to Robert the wardship and marriage of the Earl of Mar’s son and heir. And because it is feared that the Kingdom of Scotland may be removed out of the King’s hands which God forbid and handed over to Sir John Balliol or to his son or that the right may be brought into dispute or reversed or repealed in a fresh judgement, the King grants to Robert that he may pursue his right and the King will hear him fairly and hold him to justice in the King’s court. If, by any chance, it should happen that the right must be adjudicated elsewhere than in the King’s court, then in this case the King promises Robert assistance and counsel as before, as well as he is able to give it.

And if, after the Kingdom is at peace in the King’s hands any persons should wish to do injury to Robert the King will maintain and defend him in his right as a lord ought to do for his man.

And in witness of all these points the King has ordered these letters patent to be made and sealed with his privy seal.29

The admission by King Edward of John Balliol’s possible restoration underlines how real that danger appeared and the difficult dilemma in which Robert Bruce was placed. He was estranged from his father who had retired to his English estates, but he had many of his brothers and sisters to consider and a new influence had entered into his life. He had fallen in love with Elizabeth de Burgh, daughter of the Earl of Ulster, one of King Edward’s staunchest lieutenants. How or when they met is not recorded but it could have been in early days at the English court or in Northern Ireland, where the lands of the two families were adjacent, or at the house of James Stewart, whose wife, Egidia de Burgh, was Elizabeth’s aunt.

As soon as Robert Bruce had made his peace with the English King, thus ensuring that he would not become landless, his marriage to Elizabeth took place. Bruce’s second marriage was to last through stress and tribulation, separation and reunion until his wife’s death twenty-five years later.30

The submission of Bruce eliminated one of the bastions of Scottish independence. King Edward, as an experienced strategist, had long recognized that he could not carry out operations north of the Forth so long as the army of Carrick under its brilliant young commander could threaten his communications from the rugged hills of the south-west. In two successive campaigns he had sought to destroy it. But what he could not achieve by force had been brought about by politics and his fertile mind began to contemplate measures to bring to subjection the unsubdued areas of Scotland which it had hitherto been unsafe to attempt.

In January 1303 he obtained the consent of Parliament to exact by various means funds to finance the raising of a new and mighty army which he ordered to assemble in May. In February he dispatched Sir John Segrave, his viceroy in Scotland, and Ralph Manton, his cofferer, to make a reconnaissance in strength towards Stirling with three brigades of armed knights and report back on the condition of the country and the whereabouts and strength of the Scottish forces.

By the evening of 23 February the three columns had reached the neighbourhood of Roslin, south of Edinburgh, and owing to the nature of the ground had each pitched their tents at some distance from each other. News of their advance had reached John Comyn ‘the Red’ and Simon Fraser, who were hidden with their men in the thickets of Selkirk forest. With a picked force of mounted troops they rode through the night and as dawn broke fell upon the unsuspecting detachment commanded by Sir John Segrave.

Ralph Manton was slain and Sir John Segrave severely wounded and made captive, but a fugitive from the onset alerted Robert Neville who was quietly hearing Mass some miles away. Calling to arms his knights, Sir Robert galloped to the fray and after a sharp struggle rescued Sir John Segrave and drove off the Scots from the plunder on which they had been engaged. The Scots made much of the encounter and spread it abroad as a major victory. It was the last triumph they could claim.31

 

Events on the continent had undergone a startling revolution. Boniface VIII and Philip of France had quarrelled, and the very Pope who had thundered against the pretensions of King Edward in Scotland was now wooing his support and admonishing the Scottish bishops to show to their overlord the obedience and respect which was his due.32 In Flanders the Flemings had risen in revolt and slain the French garrisons in their towns and at Courtrai on 11 July 1302 the flower of French chivalry, arrogant and contemptuous of their pedestrian foes, had hurled themselves to death in their hundreds against the massed spears of the citizens of Bruges and Ghent.33 In December of the same year the burghers of Bordeaux, inspired by the Flemish example, expelled the French from their city.34

In the space of a few months King Philip’s commanding position had been seriously undermined. His feudal host had been decimated, his conquered territories were in revolt, he was embroiled with the Pope and threatened with excommunication. In the bitter struggle with the supreme pontiff, which was to end in the capture and death of Boniface VIII and the move of puppet popes to Avignon, he needed a concentration of his resources. After rejecting year after year the overtures from King Edward for a definitive peace, he now offered to return whatever territory in Aquitaine had been surrendered by the English. King Edward responded with alacrity and in exchange for this restitution sealed on 30 May 1303 a treaty of offensive and defensive alliance, and on the same day the Prince of Wales, by proxy, plighted his troth to Isabel, the King of France’s daughter.35

In vain a powerful delegation of Scottish nobles including John Soulis, Bishop Lamberton, the Earl of Buchan, James Stewart, Ingram de Umfraville and William Balliol had sailed to Paris to keep the French King staunch to his Scottish alliance. His main objective demanded their sacrifice. Their country was excluded from the treaty and they were left to face alone the full onslaught that King Edward had already planned for their subjection.

Never had his preparations for a campaign been more thorough and elaborate. The latest siege engines were transported to Scotland by sea. Three huge prefabricated bridges were towed to the Firth of Forth so that the English army could bypass Stirling Castle and cross directly into Fife.36 The Prince of Wales and the Earl of Ulster commanded an army in the west and the King himself in the east.

In the event it was a military parade. Leaving Roxburgh in May 1303, King Edward marched up the eastern route, as in 1296, to reach Kinloss Abbey near Elgin in September without meeting any serious resistance. Only at Brechin Castle was his progress halted. There, with superb defiance, Sir Thomas Maule held them at bay until on 9 August he was killed on the battlements and the garrison capitulated.37

The King remained at Kinloss Abbey for long enough to strengthen his hold on turbulent Moray and receive submissions, and then retraced his steps to Dunfermline Abbey for winter quarters from October to February 1304. There the history of 1296 repeated itself. Men and communities flocked to submit. John Comyn ‘the Red’, who had taken over the guardianship when John Soulis sailed to France, was still at large with a fighting force in Selkirk Forest, but on 9 February at Strathord near Perth he came to terms with the King.38 The settlement he negotiated ‘on behalf of the community of the realm’ was very different from the abject surrender of John Balliol and reflected a new approach by King Edward. In the conditions it was laid down that the Scottish people

should be protected in all their laws, usages, customs and liberties in every particular as they existed in the time of Alexander III unless there are laws to be amended in which case it should be done with the advice of King Edward and the advice and consent of the responsible men of the land.39

There should be no disinheritance of the Scottish leaders and forfeited estates could be redeemed by their owners on the payment of varying fines.40 For some there should be short periods of exile but all in all it was a generous settlement and it is not unreasonable to believe that it was the advice of Robert Bruce which in part persuaded the King that only by a magnanimous gesture could he hope to confirm a peace.

 

The magnanimity of the monarch was diminished by two vindictive actions. Sir William Oliphant, who held Stirling Castle in the name of King John by order of Sir John Soulis, asked permission to send a messenger to his master to find out whether he might surrender it or whether he should defend it to the last. King Edward refused this reasonable request for no other cause than his determination to test in action the great siege engines he had transported from England.41 So for three months from May to July 1304, Oliphant and his men, loyal to their commission, were subjected to the battering of every ingenious invention of King Edward’s engineers. The Vicar, the Parson, the Gloucester, the Belfry, a baker’s dozen of engines in all, pounded the castle walls while the English Queen and her ladies amused their idle hours by watching the proceedings from a balcony in Stirling town. Even when the garrison finally offered to surrender unconditionally, King Edward delayed his reply until his latest and greatest machine, the Warwolf, had had time to reach him and be tried out in a massive bombardment against the now suppliant defenders.42

But even more malignant was his treatment of William Wallace. He had never forgotten nor forgiven that it was this man alone who, in all the successive campaigns against Scotland, had inflicted the one decisive defeat upon the English. In his negotiations with John Comyn the terms for the Scottish surrender contained these baleful words:

For seven years little had been heard of Wallace except a fleeting reference to his presence in Paris and in Rome. Now at the very time when the Scottish nobles were bending their knee to the conqueror, he emerged from the shadow, still defiant, to clash with the English near Peebles in February 1304 and again at the Bridge of Earn in September 1304; then there is silence again until the fateful day of 3 August 1305 when he is betrayed and captured in Glasgow in the house of Robert Rae, a servant of Sir John Menteith.44

For four hundred miles along the dusty summer roads, he was led on horseback to London with his legs tied beneath the belly of his beast. On his arrival in the evening of 22 August he was lodged for the night in the house of Alderman William de Leyre in the parish of Allhallows Fenchurch, and from there next morning he was taken in procession by the Mayor of London, the aldermen and the sheriffs, through the thronged streets and jeering crowds to Westminster Hall. There, with his huge frame bound and shackled, he was seated at the south end of the hall to face his judges. A coronet of laurel leaves was mockingly placed upon his brow because of his alleged boast that one day he would be crowned at Westminster. He was not allowed to plead or make defence, but in silence listened to a long indictment of all his crimes against the English, culminating in the charge of treason in that he had been unmindful of his troth and allegiance.

Only then he spoke. He admitted all his acts against the English which he had done in defence of his country against her enemy, but he denied that he had ever been a traitor to the King of England for never had he pledged to him his allegiance. Nevertheless, it was of treason that the court found him guilty and it was for that offence that the King had devised an appalling penalty.

It was inflicted on Wallace the same day. He was chained flat to a hurdle and for the greater entertainment of the populace was dragged by horses along a circuitous route over four miles of cobblestones from Westminster to Smithfield. There he was hanged but cut down half-strangled and still alive. Then he was castrated and disembowelled. His genitals and entrails were burned before his eyes and, after his unspeakable agony had been ended by the headman’s axe, his heart was ripped out and added to the flames. His body was then hacked into four pieces. His head was mounted on a pike on London Bridge and the four quarters were distributed to Newcastle-on-Tyne, Berwick, Stirling and Perth to be displayed to the public eye as menacing symbols of King Edward’s might.45

But the flesh had hardly shredded from his dismembered bones than he had become a legend among the common folk of Scotland. A sense of injustice rankled in their minds. The great nobles had vowed and disavowed their allegiance to an alien monarch and yet had retained their territories and their lives, but a landless man of lesser rank, who had never broken his oath because he had never done homage, was condemned to degradation and a vile death simply for doing his duty in defence of his country. King Edward thought to make an example. He made a martyr instead. The name of William Wallace has echoed down the centuries as a trumpet call to Scotsmen in whatever corner of the globe they dwell.

NOTES - CHAPTER 6

1 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1184

2 Barrow 147

3 ibid., 150

4 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1071

5 ibid., ii, 1978

6 ibid., ii, 1092, 1111

7 Rishanger, 402

8 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1109

9 Barrow, 158

10 Rishanger, 395

11 ibid., 440

12 Langtoft, 247

13 Rishanger, 440

14 ibid., 442; Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1147

15 ibid., 445

16 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1069

17 Stones, 163–75

18 Rishanger, 447

19 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1163

20 ibid., ii, 1193

21 Barrow, 161

22 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1191

23 ibid., ii, 1236, 1239

24 ibid., ii, 1235

25 ibid., ii, 1250

26 ibid., ii, 1269, 1282

27 S.H.R., xxxiv, 130–31

28 Barrow, 169

29 Stones, 237–9

30 Dunbar, 128

31 Pluscarden, ii, 169

32 Rishanger, 211

33 ibid., 211

34 ibid., 211

35 ibid., 213

36 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1375

37 Flores Historiarum, ii, 564

38 Palgrave, 279

39 ibid., 286–7

40 ibid., 287

41 Flores Historiarum, ii, 570

42 Cal. Doc. Scots, ii, 1599

43 Palgrave, 276

44 Barrow, 193

45 ibid., 193

* note IV