The Three Edwards (10 page)

The English marched into Edinburgh without encountering opposition, but the castle held out for eight days. Edward moved on then to Stirling, where the castle had been deserted on his approach, and from there he progressed to Perth. At the latter place he received notice of King John’s submission, that most spineless of rulers lacking the heart for protracted resistance. Edward received from him at Montrose the white rod, symbol of surrender, and promptly deposed him. Baliol was sent under armed guard to England and took no further part in the dramatic struggle between the two countries. At first he was a prisoner in the Tower of London, but the Pope interceded for him and he was allowed to go into exile on the continent. Here he lived in obscurity on his small French estates, not dying until 1315 and so knowing of the efforts of two brave leaders who rose after him to direct the resistance of the Scots.

After marching as far north as Elgin, receiving the submissions of the gentry everywhere, Edward returned to Berwick. He brought with him the Coronation Stone of Scone and the cross of
Halyrudhouse
, which was called the Black Rood. Nothing he could have done was more certain to create lasting enmity than his removal of the Coronation Stone. It remained an issue down through the centuries; and it is a sore point with the Scottish people at the present time, as witness the daring seizure of it, and its temporary removal to Scotland, in 1950.

At Berwick the English king received the submission of most of the Scottish leaders, the list filling thirty-five skins of parchment. This historic document was called the Ragman Roll for reasons not entirely clear, unless it was a term of contempt coined by the Scottish people. For an equally obscure reason the name became corrupted to the word “rigmarole,” which has made a permanent place for itself in the English language.

Edward had needed less than twenty-one weeks to bring about the submission of the country.

T
HE Scottish cause seemed hopeless. Their armies had dispersed and their leaders had sworn fealty to the conquering Edward. Their short-reigning and inglorious king had been deposed and was living abroad in exile. The Bruces, who were next in line for the succession, had thrown in with the English and were living on their English estates. Edward had placed his own garrisons in all the strong castles of Scotland and had appointed a group of hard-fisted officials to administer the country: John de Warenne as governor, Walter de Agmondesham as chancellor, William de Ormesby as justiciar, and Hugo de Cressingham as treasurer.

What the prostrate country north of the Tweed needed was a leader. When he came—and fortunately he appeared quickly—he was neither of the aristocracy nor of the people; he was from in between, the second son of a rather humble knight of Elderslie in Renfrew. His name was William Wallace and he was quite young when his rise to fame began; probably in his very early twenties, although there is much conjecture on this score, as there is indeed about almost everything that applies to the life of this remarkable man. He was, of course, a great fighting man and a born leader. The claymore (the dread two-edged broadsword of Scotland) became in his mighty hand a weapon to beat down antagonists and to shear through the strongest armor.

Years after his death an ancient lady, the widow of one of the lords of Erskine, who was living in the castle of Kinnoull, was visited by a later king of Scotland in search of information about Wallace. She had seen both Wallace and Bruce when she was a girl, she told the king. She affirmed without any hesitation that, although Robert the Bruce excelled most men in strength and skill with weapons, he was not to be compared with Wallace in either respect. In wrestling, she asserted, the knight from Elderslie could overcome several such as Bruce.

The answers she may have given to other questions have not been preserved, unfortunately, and so the chance to know Wallace as a man through the eyes of an acquaintance has been lost. Was he tall or short? Dark or fair? Was he handsome of mien? There is not a scrap of reliable evidence on any such points. It is believed, but largely because of his accomplishments, that he had the eye of a great leader; an eye that kindled in the threat of danger, that commanded loyalty, that shone like a beacon in the fury of battle; a
cler aspre eyn, lik dyamondis brycht
.

William Wallace has been a controversial figure for centuries. At first the long rhymed narrative of Henry the Minstrel, better known as Blind Harry (although now it is not even conceded that he was blind), was the chief source for the Wallace story. Blind Harry lived nearly two hundred years after the events of which he told. He made his living as a wandering minstrel, his stock in trade being a long narrative poem about Wallace, nearly twelve thousand lines in length, which he had written himself and committed to memory. For this epic effort he had drawn on the legends which were still in circulation in the country during his youth. Undoubtedly he had added to them and had depended on imagination whenever he deemed it necessary. The poem fortunately is still in existence, written in the Lothian dialect. Many editions of it have been printed. It has exceeded in sales all other publications in Scotland with the exception of the works of Bobby Burns and Sir Walter Scott. That Blind Harry lived the precarious life of a wandering minstrel is generally accepted, because in his old age he was granted a pension by James IV of eighteen shillings twice a year.

His version of the appearance of Wallace is summed up in one line,
Proportionyt lang and favr was his wesage
. He becomes rather more detailed as to the “wesage” by declaring,
Bowand bron haryt, on browis and brois lycht
, which means “wavy brown hair on brows and eyebrows light.”

Historians and antiquarians are disposed to accept little of the old minstrel’s story, knowing that so much of it is spurious; and that leaves them with the barest of bones from which to construct a figure of this heroic man. It is generally assumed that he was born at Elderslie near Ayr, that his father held his land of James the Steward, that his mother was a daughter of Sir Hugh Crawford, sheriff of Ayr. He had two brothers, Malcolm the elder, and John the younger. William is supposed to have gone with his mother at some crisis to find protection in the household of a powerful relative at Kilspindie in the Carse of Gowrie and to have completed his education, such as it was, at the seminary attached to the cathedral of Dundee. Blind Harry’s story that the boy stayed with an uncle in holy orders at Dunipace is not accepted now, which throws doubt on one of the most popular anecdotes: that he had one Latin verse dunned into his head by this uncle which went as follows:

There were countless valiant souls in Scotland not content to live in “slaverie” after Edward left the country, convinced that he had stamped out all resistance. They began to manifest themselves in Galloway, Ross, Argyll, and Aberdeenshire. In the spring of the year following Edward’s departure, a stout knight named Andrew de Moray led an outbreak which threatened to weaken the English hold on the north of Scotland.

Had the spirit of Wallace been less resolute, he might have been daunted by the strength with which the English held that part of the Upper Plain where so many hundreds of small streams feed the volume of the Clyde. A discerning eye on Tinto Top might see Dumbarton Castle and the castle at Ayr, swanriing with English soldiery, and the town of Lanark, where one William de Heselrig held down all resistance with an iron hand. There was nothing here of the majestic aloofness and strength of the mountains in the Highlands, nothing but sloping plain and moor and a few hills which were rounded and accessible; no country, this, for the only type of warfare open to patriotic Scots, the kind that later would be called “guerrilla.” Nevertheless, Wallace soon became known as the daring leader of a small band of patriots who struck here and there at unexpected times, who appeared and disappeared and led the occupying forces a wild and unprofitable chase. His most spectacular feat was an attack with thirty men on the headquarters of Heselrig in Lanark, in which the English sheriff was killed. It was long believed that in retaliation the English destroyed the home of Wallace and killed his wife, whose maiden name was Marion Broadfute. Blind Henry was the sole authority for this anecdote. Wallace did kill William de Heselrig, but he did not possess a home and he was not married.

That Wallace quickly won a nationwide reputation is proof that he possessed a genius for warfare. He was not as favored as an earlier guerrilla fighter in the first stages of the French invasion of England to unseat the hated John, the colorful Willikin of the Weald. Willikin kept a large part of the French army in continuous alarm; but he had the dark, thick forests of the Weald into which he could disappear and from which he could emerge at the most unexpected times. Wallace was ringed about by the strongly held castles already mentioned and he operated in a country which was better suited to farming than to the strike-and-run-and-strike-again tactics of the guerrillas. As he lacked the thickets, deep gorges, and high wooded hills for concealment, it must have been that his safety was assured by the silent aid of the country folk. Even this would not have sufficed entirely, for the shepherd seldom left his sheep run and the farmer’s feet were chained to his tilled fields. There were many wandering
friars in the Lowlands, particularly the Culdees, the Allies of God, who had left the monastic life of their round bare towers for a secular addiction to the care of the sick and the poor. These lowly friars, moving about so quietly, may have supplied the eyes for the irregular troops fighting so successfully under Wallace.

Wallace, for some such reason, seemed to have a charmed life. The alien governors of the country angrily demanded that an end be made to the raids of
de Waleys
, and word of his activities reached even to the ears of Edward, stalemated in an abortive campaign against the French in Flanders. It followed that when a few of the Scottish nobility decided the time was ripe to organize the forces of revolt, they turned to William Wallace as one of the leaders.

The hills of Lanark were yellow with the mountain pansy and the tormentil when Wallace gathered his men about him and started north to answer the summons. At Perth he met Sir William Douglas, the first man of real consequence with whom he had come in contact. Sir William had commanded the garrison at Berwick and had been held a prisoner in irons for some time, gaining his release on taking an oath of obedience. It seems that oaths sworn under pressure were not regarded seriously, for here was the head of this great family, which through long centuries would be the proudest and most spectacular in all Scotland, in open rebellion again, his sword at his side and his heart filled with zeal for the cause. It was at a later date that the Black Douglas, as the head of the senior branch of the family was known, took as a motto:

But Sir William had all the pride and the courage which were the distinguishing traits of the Douglases and had already earned for himself the sobriquet of The Hardy. The Douglas castle and estates were in Lanarkshire, so in a sense he and Wallace were neighbors, but it is doubtful if they had ever laid eyes on each other until they met on this occasion. They must have conceived a mutual respect, for they proceeded to work in concert with the best of results. They decided on an operation which appealed mightily to both of them; they would march on Scone, which lies close to Perth, and pay their respects to William de Ormesby, who was acting as justiciar of the country.

Scone was holy ground to all Scots. It was only a small village, but far back in history it had been the capital of the Picts. The legislative
meetings which corresponded in Scotland to the English Parliament had met there on Moot Hill. The abbey still stood, despite Edward’s threat to destroy it after carrying off the Coronation Stone. William de Ormesby may have thought that his presence at Scone would lend validity to his actions. In any event, he had set up his courts there and was making himself the persistent gadfly which stung most deeply the pride of the Scots and lightened their purses at the same time. His specialty seems to have been the levying of fines. If a man of any consequence refused to come to Scone and swear fealty to the English monarch, he was either outlawed or fined.

The combined forces of Wallace and Douglas marched to Scone but encountered no resistance there. The justiciar, considering himself too weak to oppose such a determined thrust, had gathered up his records and documents and taken flight.

This was the first substantial success for the insurgent forces, and all Scotland rejoiced at the freeing of Scone, even though the stone on which the head of the dying Columba had rested was no longer there. It proved a costly exploit for Douglas. The English king confiscated all of his estates in England and put his wife and children under arrest. Later Douglas himself became a prisoner and was sent back to Berwick, to the familiar cell he had occupied before and the same irons in which his wrists and ankles had been clamped. He died there within the year.

After the success at Scone, Wallace proceeded to sweep like a new broom of rebellion through the country as far north as the circuitous Tay. His forces had been augmented by many of the leaders of dissent, and this gave him a greater prominence in the eyes of the nation; but it would prove a weakness in the end. The Scottish leaders had absolute power in their own clans and they could not be brought to accept the theory of united command. They would fight in their own good time and wherever they saw fit, but they would accept orders from no one. The result of this pigheadedness was a defeat in which Wallace had no part.

Under prodding from the impatient Edward, the English officials in Scotland put together an army and marched unopposed through the Lowlands to a point beyond the Forth. The Scottish leaders could not agree on any plan of military action, and when the two armies met at Irvine no serious opposition was offered the English. The proud Scottish lords, who would not yield an inch in place or precedence to one another, yielded everything to the invaders. After the merest tiff, they laid down their arms and capitulated.