7
Then was the destruction of the English of such a kind and magnitude as the northern regions have never experienced the like.
SCOTICHRONICON, XI, CAP. 30.
THE Scots victory at Stirling Bridge was important psychologically for it finally gave the lie to the myth of English invincibility in general and the power of heavy cavalry in particular. What the common foot-soldiers of Scotland achieved that day, the Flemish at Courtrai and the Swiss at Morgarten would repeat with a vengeance. But Stirling Bridge was by no stretch of the imagination a decisive victory in the same sense as Bannockburn, fought seventeen years later a mile or two downstream. Wallace’s defeat of Earl Warenne did not put an end to English designs on Scotland — far from it. The humiliation of the English was something that King Edward now addressed himself towards avenging. For the time being, however, Wallace’s star was in the ascendant. If his role in securing the Scottish victory has been debated (notably by Evan Barron, a tireless champion of Andrew de Moray), there is no doubt that the guerrilla leader who had so dramatically been catapulted into the role of Scottish dictator was very much the man of the hour. Now William’s considerable intellect, administrative genius, diplomacy, charisma, personal magnetism, call it what you will, were pressed into service to consolidate his position and weld his battered country into a nation once more. Stirling Bridge expunged the scandal of Irvine and handsomely atoned for the defeat at Dunbar.
It also dealt a severe blow to the concept of feudalism, and goes far to explain the jealousy and fear of Wallace felt by the magnates as a whole. The Anglo-Norman upper classes were a self-serving bunch at the best of times, as their disgraceful behaviour at Irvine had shown. Now they were to hamper and eventually undo Wallace’s tireless efforts to govern Scotland. It is significant that, shortly after the battle, missives were sent from England to the individual Scottish magnates, praising them for their fidelity to King Edward and urging them to join forces with Brian Fitz-Alan for the purposes of putting down the rebellion. The nobles thus addressed included John Comyn of Badenoch; the Earl of Buchan; Patrick, Earl of Dunbar; Umfraville, Earl of Angus; Alexander, Earl of Menteith; Malise, Earl of Strathearn; James the Steward; Malcolm, Earl of Lennox; William, Earl of Sutherland; Nicholas de la Haye; Ingelram de Umfraville; Richard Frazer and Alexander de Lindesay of Crawford.1 The younger Earl of Carrick was conspicuous by his absence from this list, implying that his loyalty was suspect, to say the least.
For the moment, however, Scots of all classes rallied to Wallace. After pausing briefly at Haddington again after harrying the retreating English, William went straight back to the scene of his recent victory. The garrison at Stirling Castle apparently had no faith in Surrey’s promise, for it surrendered to the Scots after a very brief siege. On this occasion Wallace seems to have spared the lives of the defenders. Fitz-Warine, who had previously lost Urquhart Castle to Moray, was now marched away to captivity in Dumbarton Castle, along with Sir Marmaduke de Thweng. These knights were repatriated two years later in exchange for some Scottish prisoners.
Wallace now concentrated on reducing Dundee, which was continuing to hold out. This was the less glamorous aspect of warfare, and it is significant that Wallace should give priority to clearing out the pockets of English resistance before succumbing to the temptation of carrying the war into the enemy’s own country. According to the Scotichronicon, the defenders of Dundee Castle did not put up much of a fight once news of the disaster at Stirling reached them. This proved to be a rich prize, in arms and cash, and William rewarded Alexander Scrymgeour by appointing him governor of Dundee, with orders to dismantle the fortifications which had cowed the town. According to the Relationes of Arnald Blair, a chronicle which is not very highly regarded as to historical accuracy, Wallace’s men captured Cupar Castle and put its garrison of two hundred men to the sword.
This left only four castles in English hands. Edinburgh Castle continued to hold out under the redoubtable Sir Walter de Huntercombe, while Robert de Hastings held Roxburgh and Osbert de Spaldington hastily fortified Berwick. Dunbar also remained in the hands of the Earl of March, a rabid Anglophile. A Scottish force under Henry de Haliburton, continuing the good work of harrying the retreating English army, came eventually to Berwick where they found the town abandoned by its garrison, ‘because they had neither leader nor defender’ as Hemingburgh laconically records. The Lanercost Chronicle confirms this, saying that ‘the Scots entered Berwick and put to death the few English that they found there; for the town was then without walls and might be taken as easily by English or Scots coming in force. The castle of the town, however, was not surrendered on this occasion.’ Be that as it may, Haliburton occupied the town and remained there with his forces until Wallace’s invasion of England.
Meanwhile, another strong force was sent to besiege Roxburgh. By the first week in October, less than a month after the victory at Stirling Bridge, Wallace had cleared the English out of Scotland and recovered almost all of the castles and other strongholds. By the efforts of one man, with precious little help from the nobility and a great deal of hindrance, the power of King Edward had been ripped asunder and Scotland was, for the first time in almost a decade, free of alien domination.
Hitherto Wallace had been regarded merely as a successful guerrilla and latterly as a skilful general. Now his political as well as physical stature became apparent. The de facto power lay in his hands, nominally shared with Andrew de Moray although he was hovering between life and death and would not survive much longer. Scotland was in the hands of a young man of twenty-three or thereabouts, a person of good family and impeccable antecedents perhaps, but a younger son without land or vassals — and in the late thirteenth century such a lack of status mattered. By the force of his personality alone, however, William Wallace emerged as the leader of Scotland. Overnight, the guerrilla chieftain became supreme ruler of the Scots. This position was dramatically underscored by a remarkable Latin document which was discovered in the archives of the Hanseatic city of Lübeck in 1829 and which is quoted here in full:
Andreas de Moravia and Willelmus Wallensis, leaders (Duces) of the army of the kingdom of Scotland, and the community of the same kingdom, to the prudent and discreet men and well-beloved friends, the mayors and commons of Lübeck and Hamburg, greeting and increase always of sincere friendship.
It has been told to us by trustworthy merchants of the said kingdom of Scotland, that you of your own goodwill are giving your counsel, aid, and favour in all matters and transactions touching us and the said merchants, although our merits had not deserved this; and so all the more are we bound to you, to give you our thanks and a worthy recompense, whereto we willingly engage ourselves to you; and request you that you will be pleased to make it known among your merchants that they can have safe access to all the ports of the kingdom of Scotland with their merchandise; for the kingdom of Scotland, God be thanked, has been recovered by war from the power of the English. Farewell.
Given at Haddington in Scotland on the eleventh day of October in the year of grace one thousand two hundred and ninety-seven.
We further request you to have the goodness to forward the business of our merchants John Burnet and John Frere, according as you would wish us to forward the business of your merchants. Farewell. Given as before.2
In other words, Wallace was letting Scotland’s trading partners know that it was a case of ‘business as usual’. It will be recalled that the most strenuous resistance to the English at the sack of Berwick the previous year had been put up by the company of thirty Flemish merchants who fought to the bitter end in the Red Hall. A reciprocal arrangement with Flanders found expression in the Scottendyk, the Scots mercantile colony in Bruges. The golden age of Alexander III had witnessed a remarkable growth in Scottish trade with the Low Countries, Scandinavia and the Hanseatic League, but this must have been wrecked by the upheavals of the past eighteen months. Now that Scotland was rid of the English, Wallace’s first priority was to resume diplomatic and commercial relations with foreign countries. Doubtless other letters were sent abroad about the same time, couched in the same proud and dignified terms, to let the world know that ‘the kingdom of Scotland is recovered by war from the power of the English’.
Evan Barron, in The Scottish War of Independence (1934), continually sought to promote Andrew de Moray above and beyond William Wallace. As the proprietor and editor of the Inverness Courier, Barron may be forgiven for his uncompromisingly partisan stance on behalf of the northern leader. In showing that there was another great patriot as well as Wallace, he often provides a valuable corrective to the uncritical adulation accorded the latter by many nineteenth-century historians. But occasionally Barron oversteps the mark. Whether Moray or Wallace was the main architect of victory is a matter for conjecture, but in support of his view that Moray was the real victor of Stirling, Barron cites the Lübeck document which places Moray’s name first. Other writers have ascribed the order of names merely to Wallace’s innate modesty; no one appears to have pointed out that, both in Christian name and surname, Andrew de Moray would have taken precedence in alphabetical order anyway. Both men were of equal social standing, the sons of knights, but Moray’s father was a substantial landowner whereas Sir Malcolm Wallace of Auchenbothie and Ellerslie was but laird of two insignificant estates. William’s connections with the Wallaces of Riccarton and the Craufurds of Crosshouse and Craufurdland were of little account compared with the Moray family which had vast estates in Clydesdale and even England as well as the county from which they derived their name. Andrew de Moray was probably older than Wallace, although the fact that he was married does not make this necessarily the case. His young wife was pregnant at the time of his death, but a few months later she gave birth to a son, named Andrew de Moray after his father, and this young knight would become one of the staunchest supporters, as well as the brother-in-law, of King Robert Bruce.
Significantly, the letter to Lübeck was written from Haddington on 11 October. This town, one of the leading burghs of Scotland and a favourite royal residence, was an important administrative centre for the Lothians. We have seen how Blind Harry claims that Wallace stayed there before and after his pursuit of the English to Belton, but the minstrel may have confused that with a somewhat later date, when Wallace paused briefly before mounting his invasion of England which began exactly one week later, on 18 October. The date of Moray’s death is not known, but it has been surmised that he succumbed to his wounds in November, as letters were still being issued in joint names up to that time. Certainly he could not personally have had a hand in the composition of these letters sent out in his name.
From the list of magnates addressed in the name of King Edward, it will be seen that Wallace had a great deal to contend with if he were to win the great nobles over to his cause. Some of the magnates must have been giving covert support — the ambivalent position of the Steward and Earl Malcolm has already been noted — but among the other earls were some of Edward’s staunchest supporters and, by the same token, Wallace’s most implacable enemies. In particular, Patrick, Earl of March, was a thorn in the flesh that could not be left unattended. Earl Patrick who, in the words of the chronicles, ‘held the key of the eastern marches at his girdle’, continued to hold the castle of Dunbar for Edward even after the English army had fled south, and it was therefore essential that he be won over. Accordingly, Wallace summoned Earl Patrick to a council at Perth early in October to swear his loyalty to the Scottish realm. The recalcitrant earl, however, had no intention of submitting to this young whelp and sent an insulting reply, with a jocular reference to William’s origins. He would not submit to this ‘King of Kyle’, alluding to the legendary King Cole or Coill as well as Wallace’s Ayrshire birthplace.
Now Earl Patrick, or Cospatric as he is sometimes known, was a prime target. As the Scottish army headed south round the coast the earl summoned up reinforcements, contingents being sent to him by Bishop Bek and allegedly also by the young Earl of Carrick. It is curious that Earl Robert was not included in the missives sent from Westminster, and his role, before and after Stirling, has been a matter of controversy ever since. At any rate, Wallace’s forces reduced the castles and strongholds of Earl Patrick in the Merse and the Lothians, known as his Seven War Steeds. Patrick himself fled south with Bek’s men and sought refuge at the English court.
Once this formidable adversary had been eliminated, the Scots were free to advance on Berwick. The town had, since its sack the previous year, been resettled by English families, and Wallace’s army now took their revenge by indulging in an orgy of destruction. Later the citizens of Berwick would petition Westminster concerning the losses they sustained in this attack after which ‘the earl of Warren and the barons who were in his company recovered the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, which William Walleys, and other enemies of the king, had seized’.3
On 18 October the Scots crossed the Tweed and entered Northumberland. The inhabitants, who had but recently witnessed the astonishing spectacle of their invincible army heading south in disarray, had plenty of warning of the imminent invasion and a stream of refugees fled for the walled protection of Newcastle, taking their cattle and their household property with them. The Scots vented their spleen on the deserted cottages and farmhouses by consigning them to the flames. Realising that the Northumbrians had vanished before them, the Scots now turned westwards and invaded Cumbria. This was not so much an orgy of wanton destruction as the systematic looting and stripping of the county. Scotland was desperately short of foodstuffs, thanks to the very scanty harvest that autumn, and apart from teaching the hated Southrons a bitter lesson the object of the invasion was to exact reparations. Anything and everything of value was removed and shipped over the border. The whole of Cumbria, from Inglewood Forest to Cockermouth, was meticulously ravaged. During this prolonged raid the Northumbrians, believing that the danger had passed, returned to their farms and villages. When this was reported to Wallace by his scouts, he ordered a rapid and unsuspected return to the district so recently visited. The Forest of Rothbury, midway between Berwick and Newcastle, became the headquarters of the flying columns that roamed at will over Northumberland, rounding up the wretched inhabitants and robbing them before putting them to the sword. Northumberland was now even more thoroughly pillaged than before, and what could not be removed was promptly burned to the ground.
The Northumbrians, in effect, were being made to suffer for the sack of Berwick the previous year. They had had little or nothing to do with that atrocity, but they now paid the grim penalty for just happening to be the nearest Englishmen available. Hemingburgh’s terse comments on this calamity summed up the dreadful situation:
In that time the praise of God ceased in all the monasteries and churches of the whole province, from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Carlisle. For all the monks, the canons regular, and the other priests, the servants of the Lord, with almost the whole population, had fled from the face of the Scots. Thus the Scots had liberty for fire and rapine from Saint Luke’s Day [18 October] until Martinmas [11 November], and there was none to stop them, save for a few of our men who were in the castles of Alnwick and other places and who sallied out sometimes and cut off a few stragglers.
Indeed, the castles of the two northern counties remained in English hands. The Scots lacked the necessary engines to assault them and Wallace wisely refused to get bogged down in futile sieges. This was a lightning war of movement, the sort of campaign in which he excelled by experience and inclination, and it was no part of his remit to occupy the northern counties with a view to permanent subjugation. The sole exception to this policy was Carlisle Castle which, it may be remembered, had been governed by the elder Robert Bruce. Ironically, the son of the Competitor and father of the future king was removed from his command on 13 October, only five days before the Scottish invasion of Northumberland, because of the suspect loyalty of his son. Bruce had handed over the castle to the Bishop of Carlisle and presumably withdrew across the Solway to Annandale thereafter. Towards the end of the campaign, about the middle of November, the Scottish army entered Carlisle and sent forward a priest with a message from their commander:
My Lord William, the Conqueror, commands you to have a care for your lives and to yield this town and castle to him without bloodshed; and he will grant to you your lives and limbs, and all your beasts. If you will not do this, he will immediately attack you and destroy you utterly.4
Someone cried out from the battlements, ‘Who is this Conqueror?’
‘William,’ answered the priest, ‘whom you call Walays.’
According to Hemingburgh the English garrison returned a dignified defiance and prepared to defend the walls. The castle was very strong and housed over a hundred men-at-arms, and under normal circumstances Wallace would not have persisted in his attempt to take it. But Carlisle was the western gateway to Scotland, a formidable barrier to any future Scots incursion into Cumbria as well as the main supply base for English invasions of Dumfriesshire and Galloway. A large force was therefore left behind to invest the castle, but no serious attempt was made to attack it.
Meanwhile, a second force was despatched south to invade County Durham. This was a much richer province than the northern counties and, moreover, it was the see of the hated Antony Bek. Bishop Bek, however, is said to have invoked the powers of St Cuthbert, patron of the diocese. At any rate divine intervention, in the form of a severe snowstorm on the Octave of St Martin (8 November), halted the Scots in their tracks. The importance of this storm has probably been exaggerated by the English chroniclers. The Scots had come as far south as they dared and, taking the storm as a portent of an early and harsh winter, deemed it more prudent to head for home. Hemingburgh would later reveal that it had been a close-run business. So severe had been the panic about the coming of the Scottish army that he doubted whether Bishop Bek could have mustered more than a hundred horse and three thousand foot to withstand the onslaught.
One other episode from this invasion deserves mention. During the first week of November, before the Scots turned their attention on Cumbria, they came upon Hexham where the priory, devastated in April 1296, still lay in ruin, abandoned by all except three canons who had returned to rebuild the oratory. When the Scots were observed approaching the monks took refuge in the ruined building but the soldiers pursued them and at spear-point demanded the treasures of the church. One of the monks defiantly replied, ‘It is not long since you and your people carried off everything to your own country as if it were yours, and you know best where you hid it. We have gathered little since then, as you now see.’
At this juncture Wallace himself entered the chapel and rebuked his followers. Then he turned to the monks and asked them to celebrate mass. One of them began the service and everything went smoothly until the moment of elevating the host. At that point William reverently withdrew from the chapel to lay down his weapons, but as soon as he was out of sight the soldiers grabbed the celebrant and stripped him of his robes, chalice, candlesticks and crucifix, even the missal itself. A few moments later Wallace re-entered and found the trembling priest alone. Instantly he ordered that the perpetrators of this sacrilege be hunted down and decapitated. Hemingburgh, who reported this incident, comments that, naturally, the robbers were not apprehended, ‘for they only pretended to search for them’. Wallace tried to protect the monks, telling them to stay close to him and admitting that he had little control over his men. Over the next two days, while his army was busy looting the surrounding countryside, Wallace kept the three monks close by him and when he left Hexham he granted a document to the priory giving it protection in the name of himself and Andrew de Moray, together with a safe-conduct pass for a canon of Hexham, his squire and two servants. These two documents were quoted verbatim by Hemingburgh and are of considerable interest, on account of the language in which they were couched and the terminology used:
Andreas de Moravia and Willelmus Wallensis, Leaders of the army of the kingdom of Scotland, in the name of the excellent prince, Lord John, by the grace of God, the illustrious king of Scotland, with the consent of the community of the same kingdom, To all men of the said kingdom, to whom these present letters shall come, Greeting: Know ye that in the name of the said king, we have taken the prior and convent of Hexceldsham in Northumberland, their lands, their men, and whole possessions, with all their goods, moveable and immoveable, under the firm peace and protection of the said lord the King, and ours; Wherefore we strictly forbid you to do them any hurt, mischief or injury whatsoever, in their persons, lands or goods, under penalty of forfeiture of your own goods and estates, to the said lord the King; or to kill them or any of them, under pain of losing life and members: These presents to remain in force for one year to come and no more. Given at Hexceldsham the seventh day of November.5
The safe-conduct follows much the same formula, enjoining everyone to ‘bring them under safe custody unto us, so that no one of them, in their persons or their goods, may be in any way molested’. Interestingly, from that time onwards Hemingburgh drops his customary epithet of ille latro (‘that brigand’) when referring to Wallace.
Continuing to rove eastwards again, Wallace’s marauding army advanced on Newcastle. On the march they came to the little town of Ritton whose inhabitants, believing themselves safe because they were on the south bank of the river, taunted the Scots with jeers and catcalls. A number of Scots, however, caused consternation by swimming the river and chasing off the foolish villagers before razing their houses. The people of Ritton fled southwards screaming, ‘The Scots are coming!’ and this spread the panic even further. The English of the northern counties were by now so thoroughly demoralised and in such abject terror that few men were prepared to remain behind to offer resistance. One of the exceptions was the garrison of Newcastle which marched out to do battle with the Scots, but wisely Wallace gave the castle a wide berth before turning north for home.
A lament, composed by the Prior of Alnwick shortly after the Scottish invasion, sheds some light on the devastation caused. It names the Northumbrian nobles slain in the course of the campaign (Vescy, Morley, Summerville and Bertram) and describes the burning of Alnwick in graphic detail. It also singles out Willelmus de Wallia as the leader of the army.6
According to Wyntoun and Bower, Wallace remained in England until Christmas, but the Lanercost Chronicle is probably more correct in stating that he and his troops recrossed the frontier on St Cecilia’s Day (22 November). Their operations in England had netted a vast amount of booty of which, says Hemingburgh, ‘they gave the Galloway men their share’. The western army continued to invest Carlisle Castle until 8 December, by which time they were running short of provisions and were glad to cross the Solway without realising their objective.
Shortly afterwards, however, the failure to reduce this English stronghold became painfully evident. A few days before Christmas, Sir Robert de Clifford launched a revenge attack from Carlisle on Annandale. This was a large operation by all accounts, involving several thousand men (though Hemingburgh’s figure of twenty thousand was probably an exaggeration). These foot soldiers were a northern levy and were fundamentally untrained, although their ranks were stiffened by some hundred men-at-arms from Carlisle Castle. As soon as they had crossed the Solway this host was given a free hand to plunder at will, each man keeping booty for himself. There was a massacre of 308 Scots who were driven by cavalry into the swamp known to this day as the Lochar Moss, where they were cut down by the infantry. Ten towns and villages were burned before Clifford’s men took a brief Christmas break.
Then they crossed the border again, resumed their depredations, and sacked the town of Annan in February 1298, even destroying a church in the town which was a daughter establishment of Gisburn (Walter of Hemingburgh’s own church) which the Bruce family had presented to the monks. The Annandale incursions were intended as retaliation for Wallace’s attack, but they may also have been designed to teach the Bruces a lesson. This vindictive action reinforces the view that the young Earl of Carrick at least had been in arms against England, though not involved at Stirling Bridge or in the subsequent operations in the northern counties of England. The destruction of the Gisburn church at Annan was as barbarous as anything perpetrated by the Scots at Hexham or elsewhere. Strangely enough, the Annandale raid has been either ignored by historians or brushed aside. One suspects that the atrocities committed on that occasion were every bit as horrendous as anything the Scots did in Cumbria or Northumberland, the sole difference being that there was no Scottish counterpart of Hemingburgh or the Lanercost Chronicle to put the matter in perspective. By the cruel and indiscriminate usury of war, the people unfortunate enough to inhabit these Border districts suffered out of all proportion.