Thanks to Mel Gibson's rollicking adventure film, 'Braveheart', William Wallace has moved from being a name barely known outside Scotland to that of a figure known worldwide as a Scottish national hero. It's gratifying that a person from the history of a small country such as Scotland should be the inspiration for a story which gets worldwide exposure, especially given that, uniquely in European countries, schools in Scotland do not have an obligation to teach their own country's history. Unfortunately, in the past and particularly amongst our 'nobility' there has been a willingness amongst some Scots to see an alien culture as superior to our own, and to suppress our own traditions in favour of a foreign view. Be that as it may, fictional stories based on historical events tend to obscure history rather than illuminate it because drastic liberties are taken with the facts as anyone currently knows them. In this case, though, we know very little about William Wallace, so that even historians are led into speculation, an occupation with which they are more familiar than you might expect. Mel Gibson's William Wallace is probably somewhat at variance with the real man but since we don't really know much about him we might just as well simply enjoy a film which happens to be loosely based on real events. That doesn't mean, though, that we can't examine what few facts are known about the real William Wallace, because historical 'truth' is generally more complex and interesting than any simplified and fictionalised narrative.
There exists no contemporary account of Willian Wallace's life so even things which are generally accepted by us today are not provable (and therefore not necessarily true). The usual account is that William was descended from a Richard Wallace or le Waleis who was connected with the Fitzalan family in England. Richard owed the Fitzalans service under the feudal system. David I of Scotland, who had grown up in England, had invited Walter Fitzalan to Scotland to become steward of the royal household in about 1136. (A descendant of Walter founded the royal house of Stewart which was to figure so significantly in Scottish history.) Richard Wallace came to Scotland, presumably because of his connection with the Fitzalan family, and was granted lands in Kyle. William Wallace's family relationship with Richard Wallace is not provable but he is said to have been the great-great-great-grandson of Richard. The historical accounts which are all we have to rely on for the story of William's life cannot always be trusted because they were written as propaganda. On the other hand the early writers had access to evidence which no longer exists. If we are sceptical about some of the myth we can also say that other things are consistent with known historical events and we can also make some deductions as to what sort of a man William Wallace must have been if we consider his achievements.
In 1286 an event occurred which was finally to result in the circumstances which brought William Wallace into prominence. That event was the death of the Scottish king, Alexander III. The heir to the throne was his granddaughter who was only about three so the most powerful men in the land agreed that the country should be ruled by a committee of six 'custodes' or guardians. The six initially chosen maintained a balance between the most powerful families in the land. It seemed that the independence of Scotland was as secure as it had been in the latter years of Alexander III's reign but gradually events moved to a stage where Edward I of England planned to subjugate Scotland. Relations between the two nations were good when Alexander was alive, Alexander having married Edward's sister, and the two men getting on. English kings had long claimed suzerainty over Scotland but Edward did not press this while Alexander was alive, however, unexpected events over the decade after Alexander's death slid Scotland into war with England. The popular view is that Edward I had always planned to take over Scotland but given his previously patient diplomatic approach this is unlikely. He was not a man to spurn an opportunity, though, and when the heir to the Scottish throne, Margaret, 'The Maid of Norway', died in 1290 the previous balance of power in Scotland gave way in the face of rival claims to the throne. These rivals presented Edward with an excuse to interfere by asking him to! They were all agreed that Edward should decide which one of the rival candidates had the best claim on the Scottish throne. It is not clear why Edward did not at this stage simply declare himself King of Scotland given the ongoing claim of suzerainty. In fact acceptance by the Scots of the claim of suzerainty was a condition Edward laid down for deciding the successor to the Scottish throne. The Scots had no choice but to accept since the alternative was civil war in Scotland. There were several claimants to the Scottish throne but the two main contenders were John Balliol (to whom William Wallace was to hold allegiance) and Robert Bruce (Robert Bruce was the grandfather of 'Robert the Bruce' of popular fame.). These were men from families who were traditionally enemies and who both had extensive estates in both Scotland and England. Edward turned the decision into a long drawn out process, finally choosing John Balliol at the end of 1292. The Bruce family did not accept the decision.
Balliol soon found out what Edward's view of the Scottish king's role would be; that of Edward's puppet. It took a while and many humiliations at Edward's hands but finally a group of Scots nobles were provoked into seeking allies against Edward. They signed an offensive and defensive alliance with Philip IV of France, England's traditional enemy. No-one knows what John Balliol's attitude to this was but he was now on an inevitable collision course with Edward I to whom he had sworn homage. In 1296 Edward assembled his army to punish the Scots for their attempt to assert their independence, treason in his eyes. Edward's military campaign was typically brutal but it was a brutal age and atrocities were committed by both sides. Edward's sacking of Berwick-on-Tweed, at that time a Scottish town, was perhaps the lowpoint. His troops spent two days massacring the inhabitants and burning the town. Significantly the Bruce family did not join the Scottish army. They were, after all, traditional enemies of the Balliol family and hoped to displace John Balliol as the monarch of Scotland, a hope encouraged by Edward. In an age where oaths of allegiance were short term expedients they used, on this occasion, the excuse of having sworn an oath of allegience to Edward in 1292 as their reason for not resisting his invasion of Scotland. The war ended with the Scots' army being routed, mainly as a result of the incompetence of the military leaders, a not unfamiliar tale in Scottish history. Scotland now effectively belonged to Edward. John Balliol was forced to plead for terms which involved several public confessions of so-called crimes against Edward and surrendering the Kingdom of Scotland to Edward officially. He became a scapegoat for the collective failure of the Scots. English officials were installed to administrate Scotland for Edward and significant landowners were required to swear loyalty to him.
The relative ease of Edward's victory over the Scots gave the English rulers full scope for the expression of their arrogance. They simply could not conceive that any serious challenge to their power would occur in the short term and they ruled Scotland in a manner which openly expressed their contempt for the Scots. The Bruce family, who had thought to gain the throne of Scotland by the contemptible tactic of de facto collaboration with the enemy, found out quickly how much Edward needed them now he was in control of Scotland, that is to say, not at all. Not for the last time in history English arrogance was to lead to violence in a country they had invaded. Edward I left Scotland in September 1296. By the early months of 1297 trouble was breaking out and there was soon unrest throughout the country.
William Wallace first appears in historical accounts, however fictional, in May 1297. The accounts say that he murdered William Heselrig, Edward's sheriff of Lanark. The story, based on a poetical account written decades later and of a propagandist nature, has Wallace avenging the murder by the sheriff of his lover. Whatever else is true it seems that the murder of the sheriff was the point at which Wallace burnt his boats. There was no going back as a rebel and he did not attempt to hide. After such a symbolic gesture against English domination he gained immediate support. The conventional view is that he was an individual through whose impetuous action at Lanark became a national leader almost by accident. It seems unlikely that the incident at Lanark came from nowhere and Wallace's continuing action against the occupying forces imply a deliberate campaign of which Lanark was not necessarily the first event, though to us is the first known. The fact that the English did not retaliate to the murder of their sheriff indicates that they were not in full control of the country when the Lanark incident occurred. Wallace now planned to raise his sights. Willliam Ormsby, Edward's justiciar, was at Scone (about 80 miles from Lanark). Wallace undertook a raid accompanied by Sir William Douglas (who had surrendered the castle at Berwick at the time of the notorious massacre mentioned above) but Ormsby learned of the raid and ran away. If Wallace was as unknown as historians make out it is unlikely that Sir William Douglas would have particularly sought him out for this adventure as we are told he did. Whatever the truth Douglas was soon allying himself with another rebellion separate from Wallace's rebellion. This other was a rebellion of Scottish nobles. Generalisms are not always helpful but in Scottish history you can usually assume that the nobility had only ever one thing in mind; their own interests. Therefore it is no surprise to learn that the rebellion of the aristocracy against the English was short lived. When faced with a military force they surrendered without a fight.
This pusillanimity (others might say pragmatism) on the part of the Scottish nobility was the root of their differences with Wallace. Wallace challenged the cosy common class values the Scottish nobles shared with the English nobles. The Scots and English nobles might be enemies but they could unite against an upstart from a lower social order and one who, in the case of the Scottish nobles, could make them feel guilty in terms of how they had fulfilled their duty to their country. In one sense Wallace had it easier than them; as an outlaw he had no land or possessions to lose. He also had that quality which all great commanders possess; the ability to take quick advantage of opportunities which arise. After the surrender at Irvine of the nobles' rebellion Wallace pursued his own plans and he pursued them vigorously. For Wallace to have been successful required him to have been a man of extraordinary energy, aggression and ruthlessness. Those very qualities, insofar as they brought him into conflict with the Scots nobility, led to his ultimate downfall. For a commoner to dominate the nobility, in complete contradiction of rigid social convention, was unique and it is clear that to maintain this domination Wallace would take any action he felt necessary. He regarded not only the English force occupying Scotland as the enemy but also any Scots who did not share his goals. Nevertheless, in 1297 it must have been the case that Wallace had the tacit support of at least some of the nobles, since the large force he managed to assemble must have contained professional soldiers, men who held allegiance to feudal overlords. Wallace himself, it has been speculated, may well have been a professional soldier as it is difficult to explain his military skill otherwise.
By the summer of 1297 Wallace and his forces were based in the Forest of Selkirk, in the region of Scotland near the border with England. From the English point of view conditions in Scotland had deteriorated to the extent that only Berwick and Roxburghshire were under English control. The English forces at Berwick were unwilling to move against the Scots until their commander arrived from the south but interestingly, although Wallace supposedly had a large force he did not move against the English there. Instead he led a rapidly moving force north into Fife and Perthshire and cleared out the occupying forces there. This had the effect of provoking the English finally to advance from Berwick, confident that they could once again crush the Scots militarily. The confrontation was to occur at Stirling which the English marched on as the most important strategic point in the lowlands of Scotland.
On the 11th September 1297 the battle of Stirling Bridge took place. The English army had been encamped, across the River Forth from the Scots, for a few days when, on the 9th, a delegation of Scots nobles, led by James the Stewart and the Earl of Lennox, apparently offered the English commanders, Cressingham (the treasurer of the English forces) and Surrey, a deal whereby they would arbitrate with the Scot's forces led by Wallace and Sir Andrew Murray. It is a mystery what their motives were. It could have been the typical treachery of the aristocracy; more charitable voices have suggested that they were attempting to avoid a slaughter of the Scots. Whatever the truth, when the Scots nobles returned to the English camp to tell Surrey that they had been unsuccessful in their negotiations with Wallace, they said that on the next day, the 11th, they would join the English forces with forty knights!
Surrey decided that the English army would cross the river on the 11th. The snag with this was that they had to use a narrow bridge, nevertheless the plan went ahead. The Scots' forces watched from their position on Abbey Craig as the English started crossing the narrow bridge two abreast. It is likely that Wallace and Murray had not yet decided whether to engage the English since they did not attack as the numbers of English across the bridge built up. Bizarrely, the English across the bridge, and one English chronicler put the number at five thousand, were recalled because Surrey was still asleep. Once awake Surrey ordered the crossing to begin but then recalled his forces when it was seen that James the Stewart and the Earl of Lennox were approaching. As they were not accompanied by the promised forty knights, Surrey assumed that they were coming to tell him that the Scots wished to surrender. James the Stewart and Lennox, however, only made excuses. These Scots nobles having failed in negotiation with Wallace and Murray, Surrey decided to try other negotiators in the form of two Dominican friars. 'Negotiation' is really the wrong word as they carried a demand from Surrey that the Scots surrender. Wallace is said to have told the friars:
"Tell your commander that we are not here to make peace but to do battle to defend ourselves and liberate our kingdom. Let them come on, and we shall prove this in their very beards."
That the English chose to do battle where they did is almost incredible unless you know that military commanders did not generally achieve their rank through merit but through social position. Wallace was a remarkable exception to this rule, common to both English and Scots. The site of the battle was the worst imaginable for the English forces. As mentioned above they had to cross a narrow bridge. Once across, the ground between them and the Scots forces was too soft for Surrey's heavy cavalry, vital to the normal English battle technique. Whatever forces could be deployed across the bridge would then be trapped on three sides by the river which formed a loop. Nonetheless, with stupidity remarkable even by the standards of military commanders, Surrey, urged on by Cressingham, rejected the tactic of a two-pronged attack on the Scots in favour of a straightforward attack over the bridge. In the words of Guisborough, the English chronicler:
"There was indeed, no better place to deliver the English into the hands of the Scots, and so many into the power of the few."
And so it proved. The advance section of the English army crossed the bridge while the Scots watched and waited. Just as the English forces crossing the bridge were about to complete their deployment, Wallace and Murray ordered the Scots forces to charge. The major part of the English army who had not yet crossed the bridge had to watch as their comrades were massacred. The superior weaponry of the English was useless in the close combat. A hundred knights and a large number of infantry, possibly up to the oft quoted five thousand, died. Some escaped, including Welshmen who were able to swim the river since they customarly fought without armour which weighed down and drowned their English colleagues.
Surrey and Cressingham, the men who had led their soldiers to disaster met different fates. Surrey fled to Berwick on Tweed, leaving Stirling castle (still in English hands, therefore) in the stewardship of Sir Marmaduke de Tweng who had survived the massacre by riding his horse through the Scots and back over the bridge before it was destroyed (some accounts say by Wallace, others say by the English to save the greater part of their forces). Cressingham, the money man, had been at the forefront of the English attack, eager for glory. The Scots dragged him from his horse and after the battle flayed the skin from his corpulent flesh. Strips of it were sent throughout Scotland as indicators of the victory at Stirling and Wallace had a sword belt made from it. Brutal times indeed.
However brutal either side was in battle, at least they were prepared to fight. There is no evidence that James the Stewart and the Earl of Lennox were at all involved in the battle but once the battle was over they pursued and attacked the retreating English baggage-train with its civilian camp-followers, killing many and seizing much booty. Such was the heroic contribution of most of the Scots nobility to the Battle of Stirling Bridge.
[TO BE CONTINUED]
© Copyright Len Nicholson, 1996, 1997. All rights reserved.