12
Mors justi rapida quam precessit bona vita
non minuit merita si moriatur ita.
The sudden death of a just man after a good life
does not lessen his merits if he dies thus.
PROVERB QUOTED IN THE SCOTICHRONICON, XII, CAP. 8.
AFTER Strathord in February 1304 Sir William Wallace was the only Scottish leader left at large to carry on the armed struggle. Wallace was now reduced to what he had been before 1297, an outlaw heading a band of desperate men. They roamed the countryside, relying on the wildness of the terrain and the help of those Scots who were still sympathetic or well disposed to the patriot cause. As Edward’s grip on Scotland tightened, with a military and administrative occupation more thorough than at any time since 1296, Wallace must have had problems enough just to stay alive and elude his pursuers, let alone engage in any major military operations.
The terms offered to the Scottish leaders by Edward, and which they accepted at Strathord, were comparatively lenient. Sir John Comyn, who had latterly been the rebel chief, got off lightly if ignominiously, being forced to make a grovelling submission which turned into a humiliating public spectacle. James the Steward and Sir John de Soulis were let off with two years’ banishment in the southern half of England. Sir John alone of all the magnates refused to abide by these terms and went abroad to spend the rest of his life in France. Sir Simon Fraser, who had been one of Edward’s most trusted and loyal supporters till 1301 when he changed sides, and who had then been one of the last to surrender, was more harshly dealt with, being sentenced to three years’ banishment from Scotland, England and France. That he did not pay with his life for his treachery is explained by the fact that he was a doughty warrior who had compelled the grudging respect of his adversaries and former allies. The lenient treatment of Comyn and Fraser, who had so recently defeated a large English army three times in a single day at Roslin, is a measure of Edward’s conciliatory attitude towards the Scots. So too, Bishop Wishart, now well on in years, was sentenced to two or three years’ exile ‘because of the great evil he has caused’ but this was soon mitigated, for the bishop was brought into the scheme for reorganising the government of Scotland which was eventually promulgated in the Westminster parliament in September 1305.1 Incidentally, this ordinance gave prominence to the Steward’s kinsman Sir John Menteith who had, in fact, been Constable of Dumbarton Castle for the English since 1304.
The various terms of banishment imposed at Strathord were, at best, only loosely enforced. Before long, sentences were remitted, lands and property restored, and the self-same rebel leaders gradually brought into Edward’s scheme for the reorganisation of Scottish government. Only one man was excluded from the terms of Strathord, and that was Sir William Wallace. When other and far greater men had demonstrated their perfidy and treachery, not once or twice but many times over, and yet were accepted into the King’s peace, Edward’s hatred for the younger son of an obscure knight seems obsessive to put it mildly. We have already seen how Edward referred to Wallace uncompromisingly as someone to whom unconditional surrender was the only course left open. On 25 July 1304, the day after the formal surrender of Stirling Castle, Edward held a ceremony at which he commanded fourteen of his leading barons to settle how they and others who had given long and valuable service in the Scottish campaign should be rewarded. This roll of magnates, however, also contained a paragraph which shows that, even at such a euphoric moment, Wallace was niggling in the back of Edward’s mind. This dealt with the terms offered to the Scottish leaders who had recently submitted to him and indicated that they were now being enlisted in the hunt for the arch-enemy.
According to Langtoft, Edward had previously put a price of three hundred marks on Wallace’s head; now nothing so crude as a blood price was stipulated, but the terms were clear enough. The Scottish leaders, Wallace’s former comrades-in-arms, were recruited to hunt him down, and on their success in this project would depend the severity or leniency of their own punishment. Sir John Comyn, Sir Alexander Lindesay, Sir David Graham and Sir Simon Fraser, all lying under sentence of banishment, were now enjoined to do their utmost ‘between now and the twentieth day after Christmas’ to capture Wallace and to hand him over 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 trespass, 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 surrendered to him.2
To their everlasting credit not one of these men appears to have complied with this extraordinary bargain. No doubt they agreed to it at the time but never took it seriously. That Edward continued to harbour a vindictive grudge against Wallace, even though he was now a fugitive, is shown by the fact that, on 28 February 1305, he gave orders for the release from custody of Ralph de Haliburton. This knight had been one of the handful of survivors from the obstinate garrison of Stirling Castle. After the siege he had been imprisoned in England, but seven months later was released into the care of Sir John de Mowbray, one of the Scottish quislings now working assiduously for King Edward, and taken by him back to Scotland for the express purpose of hunting down the outlaw Wallace. The records indicate that Sir John and others gave security to re-enter the said Ralph at the parliament summoned at London three weeks after Easter (18 April 1305) ‘after seeing what he can do’. So far as can be ascertained, this miserable renegade was unable to achieve his objective. Murison, however, speculates whether Ralph de Haliburton was the ‘Ralph Raa’ at whose house, four months later, Wallace was captured.3
The terms of Strathord had been confirmed and ratified by a parliament held at St Andrews in March 1304. This assembly, packed by Edward’s nominees, time-servers and collaborators, had agreed to Edward’s demand that Wallace, Fraser and the garrison still holding out in Stirling Castle should be branded as outlaws, and on this shameful matter the parliament dutifully legislated. For more than two years Scotland groaned under the mailed fist of the conqueror. English sheriffs, provosts, sergeants, constables, tax-gatherers and a whole host of other officials, backed by large bodies of troops, busied themselves with the repair of castles, the refortification of burghs and the restoration of law and order throughout the land. In doing their dirty work, the Anglo-Norman régime relied heavily on a large army of paid spies and informers recruited from the native population. The comparative docility of the Scots, especially after the fall of Stirling Castle and the submission of Simon Eraser (both occurring in July 1304), probably paved the way for the settlement of September 1305 whereby Scotland, no longer a realm but merely a ‘land’, was to be gradually assimilated.
In such a climate it is nothing short of a miracle that Wallace and his small band remained at large as long as they did. The Scots had been worn down by years of devastation, often wrought by their own leaders. They were war-weary and probably came to the conclusion that, no matter which side won, they would still be under the yoke of an alien, Norman administration. The struggles and hardships of scratching a living from poor soil in a harsh climate were bad enough without bothering much about the King to whom they paid their taxes, or the laws by which their lives were governed. There is good ground for suspecting that the erstwhile national hero was, at best, an embarrassment, and at worst the cause of considerable English reprisals, to those Scots unfortunate to live in areas where the Wallace gang were believed to be hiding. The temptation to desert from the shrinking band of guerrillas must have been enormous, and Wallace himself went to great lengths to prevent this.
This is vividly exemplified by the story of Michael de Miggel (Meigle in Perthshire). Michael had done homage to King Edward at the mass assembly of 14 March 1296, but had immediately forsworn himself, for he was one of those Scottish knights taken prisoner when Dunbar Castle capitulated six weeks later. For a year and a half he was incarcerated in Nottingham Castle, evidence that he was regarded by the English as a dangerous prisoner requiring close supervision. He had been repatriated in the autumn of 1299 in exchange for James de Lindesay, an English knight whom the Scots had held captive in Bothwell Castle. On 1 September 1305, at an enquiry held in Perth, there was raised the case of Michael de Miggel who was charged with having been a confederate of Wallace. The sworn deposition of his interrogators 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, 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 entreated for him; whereon he was told if he tried to get away a third time he should lose his life. Thus it appears he remained with William through fear of death, and not of his own will.4
Luckily for Michael, his story was believed and he was set at liberty. Although this statement was imprecise, ‘lately’ has been interpreted as referring in all probability to the early summer of 1305 when Wallace and his band were still at large.
After his defeat at Happrew near Peebles, Wallace is believed to have moved north, perhaps with the forlorn hope of somehow relieving the beleaguered Stirling Castle. After the castle fell, however, a brigade of cavalry and three hundred archers, under the command of Sir Aymer de Valence, was detached from the main English force to go after Wallace, for there is mention of a running fight with the guerrillas ‘under Earnside’ in Stirlingshire. Once more, though heavily outnumbered, Wallace’s men used their knowledge of the terrain so skilfully that the Anglo-Scottish task-force was beaten back and heavy losses inflicted on both men and horses by the guerrillas before they made good their escape.5
It has been surmised that Wallace continued to enjoy what little protection could be offered by Bishop Lamberton. Although the Bishop of St Andrews had formally submitted to King Edward at Strathord and been let off more lightly than the others, there is evidence that he had not entirely given up hope of resisting the English. On 11 June 1304, only five weeks after he had sworn fealty to Edward, he was intriguing with the Earl of Carrick, negotiating a secret bond of mutual assistance. It has been suggested that Wallace may even have had a hand in arranging this deal,6 although it might be supposed that the guerrilla had more pressing matters on his mind at that time. Such a combination, of Bruce and Lamberton, was all the more remarkable in view of the fact that the former had been appointed by King Edward to assist Sir John de Segrave, the new Warden of Scotland south of the Forth, in hunting down the last obstinate rebel. Writing to ‘his loyal and faithful Robert de Brus’ in March 1304 to express pleasure at the diligence with which the earl had served him, Edward concluded, ‘As the robe is well made, you will be pleased to make the hood.’ Bruce, however, may have been playing a double game, and the lack of real success in hunting down Wallace in the summer of 1304, by powerful forces led by Segrave, Clifford and Latimer (to whose staff Bruce was then attached), may have been due to warnings which the wily Bruce managed to get to the guerrillas.
On the other hand, although Wallace and Lamberton had been very close since the latter’s nomination to the diocese of St Andrews in 1297, if not earlier, there is no evidence to suggest that Wallace was well disposed towards Robert Bruce. For one thing, Wallace had invariably upheld the cause of King John who represented for Bruce the head of the rival faction. So long as Wallace regarded John Balliol as his rightful monarch, he could not have supported Bruce; and the latter’s frequent compromises, political trimming and downright unreliability would not have endeared him to such a man of principle as Wallace. But by 1304 the situation had changed. Balliol was a pathetic exile, resigned to ending his days in France, and although he had not formally renounced his throne, the prospects of his restoration were exceedingly remote. Fergusson argues that Sir John Comyn, the leader of the Balliol faction in Scotland, ‘had proved, in spite of his great services, an ultimately unreliable champion of the national cause’, the inference being that Wallace would not have looked on him as the future source of national redemption; but in 1304 Comyn was no more or less reliable than the slippery Bruce had been. Bruce’s personal redemption would not emerge till much later. In 1304–5 the probability that Wallace was beginning to regard the Earl of Carrick as a potential king seems very small. To be sure, Bruce had the strongest claim to the throne after Balliol, but he had been the first Scottish magnate to submit to Edward, and even if he had shown himself to be a capable soldier, his deviousness and total lack of faith in anything but his own ambitions would hardly have recommended him to Wallace.
Nevertheless, the possibility that Wallace was, in sheer desperation, beginning to see Bruce as a potential saviour of his country cannot be entirely ruled out. The agreement between Bruce and Lamberton was real enough, and Lamberton, next to Wishart, had never lost sight of the eventual restoration of independence as a goal to be devoutly wished. At the time of his arrest Wallace was found to be in possession of various papers which included ‘confederations and ordinances made between Wallace and the magnates of Scotland’. What this documentary evidence of a conspiracy amounted to we can only guess, for the documents themselves, like most of the others in Wallace’s possession, have long since vanished without trace; but they may have implicated both Lamberton and Bruce, and possibly others, in some plan to renew the struggle. Certainly it is a matter of record that Bruce was under suspicion by 1305, and fled from London when he was warned that his arrest was imminent. Furthermore, there is ground for thinking that the manner in which Wallace met his death was the last straw for Bruce and precipitated his final breach with King Edward.7
Interestingly, Blind Harry has an extensive passage in his last book, dealing with negotiations between Wallace and Edward Bruce, younger brother of Robert, who had been campaigning in Ireland. The tale of the younger Bruce’s landing at Kirkcudbright with fifty gallowglasses, and his subsequent exploits in Galloway, may have some grain of truth, despite the obvious error when Harry claims for Wallace unqualified success in clearing the Southrons from the south-west of Scotland. This could scarcely have been further from the truth at this time. But there may have been some substance in Harry’s assertion that Wallace invited Robert Bruce to return to Scotland and take the throne. According to the poem, Bruce sent word to Wallace by means of the ever-faithful Jop, suggesting a meeting on Glasgow Moor on 1 July 1305. In view of the incriminating documents found on Wallace at the time of his arrest, there may well be some truth in this story.
If we are uncertain what Wallace thought of Bruce, there are some indications of how Bruce regarded Wallace. In the first place, Sir Malcolm Wallace became one of Bruce’s staunchest adherents, and the youngest brother, Sir John Wallace, also stood high in Bruce’s service, paying dearly as a result. We know also that Malcolm sided with the Earl of Carrick at that stormy meeting in Peebles in August 1299 when the magnates came to blows. If, as has been surmised, it was the Earl of Carrick who knighted Wallace shortly after Stirling Bridge, then this must be taken as a sign of the respect and admiration which Bruce felt for the Guardian. On 5 December 1303, at a time when Bruce was in Edward’s peace, he confirmed to Alexander Scrymgeour the lands which Wallace had given to him in 1298. Such a confirmation alone might be taken as proof that Bruce was sympathetic to Wallace’s past actions; but this was immeasurably strengthened by Carrick’s reference to the former grant having been made not by plain William Wallace, nor even by William Wallace, Knight, but by Lord William Wallace. In the Latin document the formula was de dono Domini Wilhelmi Wallays, the style usually reserved for a baron or considerable landowner, neither of which Wallace was. This charter is all the more remarkable in view of the fact that it was drawn up at a time when Wallace’s fortunes were at their lowest and his influence in Scottish affairs negligible, and Bruce himself was in the King’s peace.
Things were getting too hot for Wallace in Perthshire and Stirlingshire so he moved south and west. The story, recounted by Blind Harry, of the meeting of Sir Aymer de Valence, Edward’s lieutenant in the south-west, and Sir John de Menteith at Rutherglen Kirk may be entirely fanciful, but something not unlike this must have taken place. Menteith’s background and career were not untypical of the period. A close relative of the Steward, he was the son of that Walter Stewart who had held the earldom of Menteith in right of his wife. He thus came from one of the most powerful Norman families in Scotland. He had been taken prisoner at Dunbar and had then, without compunction, changed sides, serving with Edward’s army in Flanders. In 1298 he returned to Scotland and espoused the national cause in which he was certainly active in October 1301, when he was described as ‘the King’s enemy’, and continued on the Scottish side until September 1303. He subsequently joined Edward once more and six months later was promoted in the King’s service. According to Harry, Sir John was chosen for the task of apprehending Wallace because he was on intimate terms with him. Harry tries to mitigate Menteith’s treachery with a speech in which he protests to Valence that Wallace has endured many severe struggles, ‘not for himself but for our heritage; to sell him in such a manner would be a great outrage’. Valence points out that Wallace has spilled the blood of Christian men and put souls in peril, and assures the good Sir John that Wallace’s life will be spared. He is to be held in prison for ‘King Edward would have him in subjection’. According to the poem, Menteith is offered Dumbarton Castle as a reward. In point of fact, however, Menteith was already Constable of Dumbarton, a position which he had held since 20 March 1304. He had not only submitted to Edward with alacrity but had been among the first of the Scottish collaborators to benefit from his submission.
Menteith, therefore, could have claimed, if it had ever been put to him, that he was merely doing his duty to his liege lord — in the weasel words of much more recent times, ‘he was only obeying orders’. But it is an inescapable fact that he was a Scottish knight, previously high in the regard of the leadership of his country and an intimate friend of Wallace, who stood godfather to Menteith’s two sons. For these reasons his treachery has always been regarded as more deeply dyed than that of his contemporaries. But what Harry hints at may have been pretty close to the truth. Menteith was a realist. Aside from the fact that he was of Norman blood and therefore no different from the vast majority of the English Establishment, he had probably realised the futility of continuing a struggle which, given the vastly superior resources of England, the Scots could never hope to win. Anglo-Norman rule, by men of his own class and origins, was inevitable. The sooner that Scotland and its peoples were subjugated and assimilated the better it would be all round. The only obstacle to this tidy, convenient and peaceful solution was that stiff-necked brigand Wallace. This, or something like it, must have been in Menteith’s mind — and in the mind of almost everyone else who temporised, or passively accepted the situation, or enthusiastically worked for the new order.
Even so, according to Harry, Menteith was reluctant to act until he received a personal letter from King Edward exhorting him to get on with his mission. This can only be regarded as a flight of fancy; even two centuries later the treachery of Menteith seemed too horrible to contemplate unless it could be mitigated in some way. Harry claims that Menteith got his sister’s son to attach himself to Wallace’s band and keep his uncle informed of the guerrilla’s movements, so that a fool-proof plan for his capture could be devised. The name of this youth is given improbably as Jack Short by Robert de Brunne, and Harry adds that his hostility to Wallace arose because the guerrilla had slain Jack’s brother in some previous encounter. Whatever the truth of this allegation, it is a plain fact that Sir John de Menteith was the uncle of Sir John Stewart of Bonkill who fell at the Battle of Falkirk, and it has been suggested that Menteith harboured a grudge against Wallace for the manner in which Stewart was surrounded and killed by the English in that battle.
According to Harry, ‘Wallace was happy on receiving Bruce’s letter, and soon removed, with his personal attendants, to Glasgow’. He allegedly remained there for at least a month, waiting for Bruce to keep his appointment. Every night for a week, with only Kerly, the most trusted of his comrades, and his new page, Jack Short, Wallace rode out to Robroyston, north-east of the city, in the hope of meeting Bruce. On the eighth night Menteith is said to have received notice from his nephew, and ‘with sixty sworn men, of his own kin and of kinsmen born’, Sir John hastened to the scene. About midnight Wallace and Kerly both went to sleep — most unlikely and uncharacteristic in the circumstances. It may be that they had been drugged by the treacherous page before he stole their arms and gave the signal to Menteith. At any rate, around midnight, according to Robert de Brunne, Menteith ‘took him when he weened least, on night, his leman him by’, implying that Wallace was in bed with his mistress when he was seized. This story has a parallel in the metrical chronicle of Peter of Langtoft who wrote, ‘We have heard news among companions of William Wallace, the master of thieves; Sir John de Menteith followed him close at his heels; and took him in bed beside his strumpet.’ Oddly enough, this colourful touch is ignored by the other chronicles, and the story that Wallace was accompanied by Kerly rests entirely with Blind Harry. Robroyston was no more than a farm steading — the modern name is but a corruption of Ralph Raa’s toun — an isolated building in densely wooded country which was ideally suited to Wallace’s purpose, but which must also have made the task of his captors much easier.
Kerly, who had served Wallace faithfully for many years and come through countless battles and skirmishes unscathed, was taken outside and put to the sword on the spot. The brutal slaying of his companion must have disabused Wallace of any illusions that he would be treated honourably by King Edward. He leapt out of bed and reached for his weapons, but finding them gone he fought off his attackers with his bare hands. There was a dreadful struggle and Wallace, with all the desperate strength at his command, broke the back of one of his assailants on the window-sill and knocked out the brains of another. ‘Then as many as could, laying hands on him, seized hold of him to have him away by force; but the whole of them could not lead him one step out of the house, till he or they were dead.’ Harry has Menteith call out to Wallace that the house is surrounded by a large force of English barons and knights and that further resistance is pointless. He assured Wallace that he would be safe under his protection at Dumbarton Castle. In view of their former close friendship, Wallace was inclined to believe him, but made him swear that this was the truth. As Harry remarks, ‘That wanted wit; what should his oaths avail any more, seeing he had been long forsworn to him?’ But Menteith gave his promise and Wallace naïvely consented to be taken. Then, and only then, was he securely bound hand and foot and led out of the house. When he saw that there were no English barons and knights, only Menteith’s retainers, and beheld the corpse of Kerly, he realised that he had been duped. The manner in which Wallace was deceived into giving himself up strains our credulity to the limit; it is both derisory and a grave slight on his reputation.
Even as he was being conveyed south instead of to Dumbarton Castle as promised, Wallace probably comforted himself with the thought that the mighty King of England would treat him honourably, as a valiant foe who had never sworn fealty to him and who had fought well in times of war. Whether he was naïve enough to believe in Edward’s chivalry towards a fallen enemy, Wallace must have known how leniently the King had treated those who had sworn fealty to him, yet broken their word. If he did so, however, then he had not reckoned with the vindictive paranoia of His Majesty.
The narrative given by Blind Harry and Brunne, and touched on briefly by Bower and Fordun, is amplified by documentary evidence. There is, for example, the record of a payment of forty marks made to un vallet qui espia Will. le Waleys (a servant who spied out William Wallace), and a further gratuity of sixty marks ‘to be given to the others . . . who were at the taking of the said William, to be shared among them’.8 Menteith’s own reward is amply testified by the grant of land with an annual rental assessed variously as a hundred pounds or a hundred and fifty pounds, as well as other marks of royal favour. When the ten Scottish commissioners attended the English parliament in mid-September 1305 to negotiate the regulations for the government of their country, Sir John de Menteith was appointed by the King in place of the Earl of March. On 20 November Edward ordered his Chancellor to issue letters of protection in respect of certain burgesses of St Omer passing with their goods and merchandise through his dominions. The letters were drafted ‘in such especial form as John de Menteith shall wish in reason, to last for two or three years as pleases him most’. Finally, on 16 June 1306, King Edward commanded Sir Aymer de Valence to deliver to Sir John Menteith the temporality or revenues of the bishopric of Glasgow, and on the very same day drew up a charter granting to Sir John the title and earldom of Lennox, ‘as one to whom he is much beholden for his good service, as Sir Aymer tells him, and he hears from others’. Nothing that Menteith did, merely in his capacity as Constable of Dumbarton, could ever have justified such valuable rewards in Edward’s eyes.
In view of the fact that Wallace was reviled by the contemporary English chroniclers as ille latro — ‘that brigand’ — it is surprising that he was not slain on the spot like his faithful squire Kerly. The elaborate plans for his capture — alive — and his subsequent treatment surely give the lie to the monkish propaganda which had tirelessly worked on Edward’s behalf to diminish the fame of Wallace and cut the great patriot down to size. But Edward now had in his clutches no mere robber chieftain, and a quick despatch in the dead of night at Robroyston would be too merciful for the man who had stood up to Europe’s most powerful monarch, routed one of his armies, resisted another commanded by the King himself, and maintained an obdurate and uncompromising campaign against his power for more than eight years. Now he must be taken all the way to London, to be humiliated and degraded publicly by the mockery of a trial at Westminster, and finally to be done to death in as sickening and fiendish a manner as human cruelty could devise.
Wallace was bound securely to a horse and escorted by a large band of turncoat Scots south to Carlisle. On the journey from Glasgow to the border Menteith’s men went to great lengths to ride only by night and avoid passing through towns and villages where they might be observed in their treacherous work. There was always the possibility that Wallace’s own men, once they realised what had happened, would follow in hot pursuit, or that the common people of Scotland, seeing their great hero in fetters, would rise up spontaneously and set him free. On the south side of the Solway sands Menteith handed over his prisoner to Sir Aymer de Valence and Sir Robert de Clifford, who conducted him as rapidly as possible to Carlisle where he was briefly lodged in a dungeon. Now Sir John de Segrave took over the custody of the important prisoner. To him fell the task of bringing Wallace down to London, a tortuous journey which lasted seventeen days.
News of the approach of Segrave and his entourage sped ahead of the column and as they progressed at a leisurely pace through the towns and villages of England, crowds turned out to gape at the young giant who had proved such a formidable enemy. English propaganda had painted a black picture of the bloodthirsty brigand who raped nuns and tortured priests, who burned women and children and mutilated the still-living bodies of English soldiers. As the cavalcade approached the capital, multitudes gathered to gaze with curiosity and hatred at this rebellious savage.
On the afternoon of Sunday, 22 August, Segrave’s party finally reached London. The prisoner was lodged that night in the house of Alderman William de Leyre, a former Sheriff of London, at the end of Fenchurch Street in the parish of Allhallows Staining. It seems strange that such an important captive was not held in the Tower where, it has been suggested, Wallace might have made a formal submission to the King. It was stated in the Scalacronica that, at some point on the journey south, Wallace was brought before King Edward, but the statement is very vague and, being written a generation after the event, has tended to be discounted. Matthew of Westminster added that ‘the King wished judgment to be done of himself’ (de ipso fieri judicium). An anonymous, but apparently contemporary, writer says that Wallace ‘was taken and presented to the King, but the King would not look at him, and commanded him to London for his trial’.9 These accounts suggest that the two great adversaries did at least meet. Fergusson adds, ‘It would be interesting to know if Edward turned from Wallace as Argyll, looking from the window of Moray House, turned away from the steady gaze of the captive Montrose.’10
The choice of a private house rather than the security of the Tower may have been dictated by sheer necessity. It is more probable that the jeering and abusive crowds that thronged the narrow streets and alleys leading towards the Tower made further progress by Segrave’s cavalcade impossible, and in the end it seemed simpler to secure the prisoner under heavy guard in a house from which he could be taken the following morning to Westminster Hall. Certainly no time was lost in dealing with Wallace. Edward had already decided his fate but, ever the lawyer, he was determined to observe the judicial proprieties. He had decided to stage a show trial as a propaganda exercise, with the intention of impressing France and the Papacy as much as the peoples of England and Scotland. In the days between news of Wallace’s capture and his arrival in the capital, Edward and his minions laid their plans with meticulous care.
Early on the morning of Monday, 23 August 1305, William Wallace was led on horseback from the City to Westminster to take part in the farcical ritual which Edward had decreed. Sir John de Segrave and his brother Geoffrey commanded the escort, and were accompanied on horseback by the King’s Justiciar, the Mayor, Sheriffs and Aldermen of London, followed by an enormous crowd on horseback or on foot. Wallace came to his trial like no common prisoner but with all the pageantry of a great monarch on a state visit. On arrival at Westminster Hall, he was placed on a bench on the south side. A wreath of laurel leaves, the traditional victor’s crown, was placed on his brow, allegedly to bolster the English propaganda that the proud, vain bandit chief had once boasted that some day he would be crowned king at Westminster. Some twenty years earlier, however, the head of Llewelyn had been exposed on the Tower battlements crowned with an ivy wreath, said to be in fulfilment of a prophecy of Merlin. Llewelyn had been slain in battle in 1282 but had never sworn fealty to Edward either, and it may be that Wallace’s derisory adornment was based on this precedent. The following year, Sir Simon Fraser, who was to meet a similar fate, was dragged through the streets of London ‘with a garland of periwinkle on his head after the new guise’.11 Langtoft, on the other hand, says that Fraser’s head was impaled on London Bridge ‘without chaplet of flowers’ as if the omission were a notable breach of custom. It would therefore be a mistake to suppose that the laurel crown was a special insult to Wallace. It may have marked the satisfaction of victory over a noteworthy enemy. The biblical parallel with Christ’s crown of thorns is obvious.
Five days earlier the commissioners to try Wallace were appointed by the King. They included Sir John de Segrave, Sir Peter Mallory, Ralph de Sandwich, John de Bacwell and Sir John le Blound, any three or four of whom could constitute the King’s justices; in the event, however, all five turned up. According to one contemporary account, Segrave’s brother Geoffrey was also included, though this seems unlikely.’12 Mallory (or Mallore as it is sometimes spelled) was Justiciar of England, the chief law officer of the crown, and his name is frequently encountered in important documents of the period. His sanguinary exploits were particularly notorious in the aftermath of Bruce’s seizure of the throne the following year, and included the condemning of such notable figures as Christopher Seton, Alexander Scrymgeour and John de Strathbogie, the Earl of Atholl. Mallory was assisted by another experienced judge, Sandwich, who rendered great service in this and the succeeding reign. As Constable of the Tower, he had been responsible for the confinement of many Scottish notables taken prisoner at Dunbar, including the Earls of Atholl, Menteith and Ross and Sir Andrew de Moray of Petty. Within the year he would preside over the court that sentenced Sir Simon Fraser to death. Sir John le Blound or Blunt was present on this auspicious occasion in his capacity as Mayor and chief magistrate of London. The fourth judge, John de Bacwell or Banquelle, is remembered solely for the gruesome manner in which he met his own death two years later, when he was suffocated in the crush at the coronation of Edward II.
Last but not least, there was Sir John de Segrave, a professional soldier and therefore the only one among his judges whom Wallace could respect. Segrave had fought in France and the Welsh campaigns, had served with distinction at Falkirk, been briefly captured and badly wounded at Roslin, and had taken part in the sieges of Caerlaverock and Stirling. It is interesting to speculate that Wallace and Segrave might have come face to face before that ignominious handover at Carlisle, for Sir John had commanded the troops who defeated Wallace and Fraser at Happrew in 1304. Since his appointment as Warden in March that year, Segrave had devoted himself single-mindedly to extirpating the last of the rebel Scots, and it was a point of honour that he should personally escort Wallace through the length and breadth of England to face trial at Westminster. It may have been as a signal mark of the King’s approval that Segrave was appointed to sit alongside the distinguished panel of judges.
The life and exploits of Sir William Wallace were shadowy at best, obscure most of the time; but the whole course of his trial, sentence and execution was well documented by an eye-witness.13
The indictment, read out by Mallory, was comprehensive, William Wallace, ‘a Scot and of Scottish birth’, being charged with sedition, homicide, spoliation and robbery, arson and sundry other felonies. The charge of sedition or treason was based on Edward’s conquest of Scotland. On Balliol’s forfeiture in 1296 Edward had reduced all the Scots to his lordship and royal power; he had publicly received the homage and fealty of the magnates, prelates and a multitude of other people; he had proclaimed his peace throughout the land and had appointed wardens and other officials to maintain the peace and 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 attacked the King’s wardens and men. In particular he had attacked, wounded and slain William de Heselrig, Sheriff of Lanark, ‘and, in contempt of the King, had cut the said Sheriff’s body in pieces’. He had assailed towns, cities and castles in 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.
Even worse, Wallace had treasonably urged the Scots to submit themselves to the fealty and lordship of the King of France, and to aid that sovereign to destroy the realm of England. As if these crimes were not heinous enough, he had had the temerity to invade the realm of England,
entering the counties of Northumberland, Cumberland and Westmorland, 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.
How Edward, the destroyer of the Border abbeys and burner of Dunfermline with its holy relics, had the unmitigated gall to frame this last charge is beyond comprehension. The indictment continued:
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.
The whole matter was cut and dried, the case treated as a fait accompli. There was no pretence at an examination of witnesses, no elaborate pleading by learned counsel at the bar, no deliberation among the judges. The long and detailed bill of indictment, a mish-mash of fact and fantasy all served up with a fine legal garnish, left the defendant no room to manœuvre. As a declared outlaw, Wallace was apparently not even asked how he pleaded, but notwithstanding the tyrannical attempt entirely to shut the prisoner’s mouth, at some point in the proceedings he loudly asserted, in tones that reverberated around the crowded hall, that he had never been a traitor to the King of England, although he conceded the other charges against him. They were tantamount to the unremitting war which he had waged for eight years, sometimes virtually single-handedly, and he might as well admit it, and with pride. This outburst seems to have been Wallace’s sole contribution to the trial.
We can imagine the prisoner standing alone, a majestic figure despite his shabby appearance, surrounded by scowling faces and the barely concealed hatred of those who had already determined his death. Perhaps, as the sonorous cadences of the King’s Justiciar reciting the indictment rolled on, Wallace cast his mind back over the past eight years, to his triumphs and moments of glory, the crushing disappointments and the thankless struggles. Probably he was already resigned to his fate and determined to die as he had lived, with dignity and nobility. Perhaps he could even look forward to a time when his own spectacularly violent death would prove to have been the necessary sacrifice on the altar of freedom.
There was no deliberation among the commissioners, no withdrawal of a jury to consider the verdict. Immediately after the indictment had been read, Sir John de Segrave delivered sentence:
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 subversion of his crown and royal dignity, by bearing a hostile banner against his liege lord in war to the death, shall 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 other relics of these were placed, that the heart, the liver and lungs as well as all the other intestines of the said William, from which such perverted thoughts proceeded, be cast into the 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.
Contrary to widely held belief, this was not some special punishment devised by the ‘feline brain’ of King Edward; it was, in fact, the standard punishment for treason, from the eleventh till the nineteenth centuries, although the full severity was not always invoked. In 1814, for example, the law was modified and that part of the sentence relating to partial hanging followed by disembowelment of the still-living felon was altered to hanging until death supervened; but drawing to the place of execution, and beheading and quartering of the corpse after hanging, were not abolished until 1870. Until 1790 the Common Law stipulated that a woman should be drawn to the place of execution and there burned at the stake, but in that year hanging was substituted for burning in the case of female traitors. These punishments, barbarous in the extreme, applied only in England; in Scotland the law was content with beheading (often performed by surgeons) after death by hanging.
The sentence on William Wallace was carried out the very same day. Outside Westminster Hall he was stripped naked and bound to a hurdle, face upwards, head pointing towards the ground, and dragged through the streets at the tails of two horses. The four-mile journey through the fetid streets on a hot summer’s day would have been extremely unpleasant at the best of times but the circuitous route was chosen with care to ensure maximum exposure to the London populace who jeered and gloated, who pelted their humbled enemy with offal and garbage and excrement, and struck him with their cudgels and whips as he bounced along the cobblestones. Thus reviled and mistreated by the mob, Wallace bore the pain, the insults and the humiliation with noble stoicism. His religious training would have reminded him forcibly of the sufferings of Jesus on His way to Calvary.
At length, this ghastly procession came to a halt at the Elms in Smoothfield (later Cow Lane and today King Street in Smithfield). Now barely conscious and smarting from the missiles and blows sustained along the way, Wallace was unshackled from the hurdle and dazedly hauled to his feet. 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 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 forth, Wallace got a priest to hold it open before him ‘till they to him had done all that they would’. Then, with his hands still bound securely behind him, the naked giant — a fine figure of a man despite the privations of the past eighteen days — was made to mount the ladder to a high scaffold, affording a splendid view to the vast crowd which had gathered to watch the fun. The execution of traitors was a triple business, designed to degrade and humiliate, to inflict unspeakable pain and suffering, and finally to cause death. The hanging, mutilation and disembowelling, and final beheading were also regarded as death three times over. Matthew of Westminster was an onlooker and described the spectacle with immense relish in his Flores Historiarum:
About the feast of the assumption of the blessed Mary, a certain Scot, by name Wilhelmus Waleis, a man void of pity, a robber given to sacrilege, arson and homicide, more hardened in cruelty than Herod, more raging in madness than Nero, after committing aimless atrocities had assembled an army and opposed the King at Falkirk. This man of Belial, after numberless crimes, was seized by the King’s agents, carried to London, condemned to a most cruel but justly deserved death, and suffered this, all in the manner prescribed by the sentence but with additional aggravations and indignities. He was drawn through the streets of London, at the tails of horses, until he reached a gallows of unusual height, specially prepared for him; there he was suspended by a halter, but afterwards let down half-living; next his genitals were cut off and his bowels torn out and burnt in a fire; then, and not till then, his head was cut off and his trunk cut into four pieces . . . Behold the end of the merciless man, who himself perishes without mercy.
Before the invention of the drop gallows, hanging was an excruciating death by strangulation, a process which could take twenty minutes or more before life was snuffed out of the twitching corpse, the neck stretched grotesquely, the tongue swollen obscenely, the eyes popping out of the head. Great care would be taken to ensure that the running noose was at the side, rather than the back of the neck, so that the neck would not be broken and cause death prematurely. Victims, writhing in their agony, invariably urinated and defecated during the process and men, as a final obscene touch, had a massive erection and involuntarily ejaculated, to the amusement and entertainment of onlookers. In this instance, however, the executioners judged matters finely, cutting the rope before Wallace went into his death throes. Fiendish care would be taken to revive him partially — a bucket of water would do the trick — so that he would be conscious of the next part of the execution. His penis and testicles would be neatly sliced off, not so much in allusion to the fate of Cressingham but as part of the routine punishment meted out to traitors since the time of William the Conqueror, and keenly regarded as the last dishonour that could be inflicted on manhood.
Then, what the bloodthirsty mob had been looking forward to most of all, the deep gash in the belly and the drawing out of the intestines, consigned to the bonfire before the agonised eyes of the yet-living felon. Life would only be extinguished when the executioner reached into the chest cavity and plucked out the pulsating heart which would be held aloft with a flourish for all to see. The removal of the liver, the lungs and the other internal organs, one by one, would be accompanied by the rousing cheers of the mob, but a special shout of acclaim would greet the striking off of the head which, likewise, would be brandished aloft. The final act of butchery, performed with a heavy cleaver, was the division of the mangled torso into four parts, each with a limb attached. This, then, was the capital punishment known as hanging, drawing and quartering, which remained on the statute books of England until well into the nineteenth century, although the full rigour of the sentence had been a dead letter long before that time.14
Wallace’s noble head was spiked and placed on London Bridge. It was dipped in pitch beforehand to delay the process of putrefaction as long as possible. Segrave, to whom had fallen the task of conveying the Scottish hero to London, now had the odious responsibility of ensuring that the four quarters of his body were taken to their appointed destinations. The chroniclers differ as regards the names of these places, Dumfries and Aberdeen being specified by one or another instead of the towns mentioned in the sentence. Wallace’s right arm was hung above the bridge at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, ‘over the common sewers’, his left arm at Stirling, his right leg at Berwick and his left at Perth. There still exist two documents connected with Wallace’s execution and the disposal of his body. One of these is a memorandum of expenses taken from the Chancellor’s Roll (now in the British Library), in which his offences were recapitulated, and the manner of his death described, the expenses amounting to sixty-one shillings and tenpence. The other document is the account from the Memoranda Roll of Edward I, presented by the Sheriffs of London on 1 December 1305 for
fifteen shillings of like money paid by the Sheriffs of London to John de Segrave in the month of August in the 33rd year of the King’s reign, for the carriage of the body of William le Waleys to different parts of Scotland, conform to the King’s writ; and receipt by the said John.15
The record shows, however, that the sheriffs were short-changed, being paid only ten shillings from the Treasury. One would like to think that this was nothing more or less than a piece of bureaucratic pettiness — surely Edward Plantagenet would never have behaved so meanly in connection with the disposal of the noblest enemy he ever faced.
In life Wallace had had a brief moment of power and glory, followed by seven years in the political wilderness, discredited but never quite defeated. Wallace in adversity became a folk hero, a cross between King Arthur and Robin Hood, and the chronicler Wyntoun could write of him ‘Of his gud dedis and manhad, gret gestis, I hard say, ar made.’ His death, rather than any achievement in life, assured him of immortality. The spirit of Wallace, indeed, rallied the people of Scotland. Edward committed the supreme folly of giving the Scots a martyr — and that made them a nation more surely than a decade of oppression.
As the flesh rotted away from the right arm and shoulder of the martyred hero, and the sun-dried sinews tightened, the skeletal hand of Wallace seemed to rise on the gibbet of Newcastle and point longingly to the north. Wallace had been denied the opportunity to die on his native soil, his mighty sword in his hands; now, it seemed, his mortal remains were directing his spirit remains back to Scotland. Eventually the bones would fall from their appointed places, to be scattered to the four winds. There is no record of so much as a fingerbone having been preserved after the manner of the relics of saints. It is almost as if the people of Perth and Stirling did not venerate the man who had, so recently, been their hero. Perhaps in the short term, like the English, they saw his horrible death as the end of an era. With the much-vaunted peace settlement of September 1305, only three weeks after Wallace’s execution, perhaps they could do no more than hope that everything would work out for the best.
But before long, the tarred and laureated head of Wallace would be joined by others: those of Sir Simon Fraser, William’s own brother John (executed in 1307) and John de Strathbogie, Earl of Atholl, the first nobleman of his rank to suffer this dread punishment since William the Conqueror disposed of Earl Waltheof at Winchester in May 1076. For the time being, however, the noble head of Sir William Wallace, sometime General of the army and Guardian of the realm of Scotland, remained alone. The sightless eyes gazed down upon the wherries and barges going up and down the Thames, the jumble of warehouses and booths, the hustle and bustle of Londoners going about their daily business. The pitch-filled ears were deaf to the plaintive cries of the seabirds soaring and wheeling about his lofty spike, high above the massive wooden bridge. Eight years previously, seagulls had wheeled with the same artless grace, the same indifference to the bloody deeds of men, above the flimsy, narrow bulwarks of Stirling Bridge.
Exactly seven months later, Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, was crowned King of Scots at Scone.