11
David H. Caldwell
Big men have big swords. None comes any bigger for the Scots than William Wallace, so it can be no surprise that the sword enshrined in the National Wallace Monument at Stirling is a large weapon, technically a two-handed sword since it was designed for wielding with both hands. It is also appropriately plain and businesslike, reflecting Wallace’s ‘man of the people’ image, and looks as if it has been through the wars. Nobody has doubted that a sword was the weapon for Wallace. While swords were expensive, and may have been relatively rare amongst the rank and file in Wallace’s time, someone of his rank and stature could surely not have managed without one.
Hary’s Wallace is full of descriptions of how Wallace used his sword; for instance:
Than Wallace selff in-to that felloune throng
With his gud swerd that hevy was and lang.
The sword in Wallace’s hand was obviously capable of wreaking destruction although it was ‘a staff of steyll he gryppyt in his hand’, that is, a single-handed weapon. There is no suggestion that it was any more than a particularly effective working tool, but in a dream our hero imagined St Andrew giving him a sword with a pommel like a topaz and a hilt and grip glittering like glass.1
The Wallace Monument, completed in 1869, clearly needed a relic of the nation’s favourite hero to heighten the feeling of awe and reverence amongst visitors. Mementoes and relics of other famous Scots, including Robert Bruce, Mary, Queen of Scots and Bonnie Prince Charles, were conveniently coming to light as more and more interest was being taken in Scotland’s past. So why not Wallace? All that appeared to be available was a sword that had already been damned by expert opinion as the wrong thing, but this was the unpromising material that metamorphosed anew into the ‘Wallace Sword’.
On 17 November 1888, with due ceremony, the Wallace Sword was presented to the Rev. Charles Rogers in Stirling Castle by Colonel Nightingale, the commander of the garrison, acting on instructions from the Secretary of State for War. It was Rogers who had petitioned for the sword to grace the monument, the realisation of which was largely owing to him. This must have been a considerable moment of triumph for Rogers, the importance of which he was determined should be understood by the populace at large. As is evidenced by contemporary press cuttings in the library of the National Museums of Scotland, he was very successful in having his explanation of the sword and its significance widely reported.2 It is only fitting that we quote his words at length, from his The Book of Wallace, published in 1889:
This sword is associated with a glorious history, for it was wielded by one who, in his age when principle succumbed to expediency, was pure and without reproach; who never yielded allegiance where it was not strictly due; and who resisted oppression to the death. Consequent on two weldings the weapon has been reduced from its original length, but it was originally a noble blade, which, in respect of the owner, was, in the poet’s words,
‘Fit for archangel to wield,
Yet light in his terrible hand.’
Borne by the Patriot at the battle of Stirling Bridge, it signalled the commencement of a struggle which was not to terminate until the prostrate spirit of the nation was fully revived, not again to droop or decay till on the field of Bannockburn were repelled the hosts of the invader. When foully captured, as he slept at Robroyston, on the night of the 5th August 1305, Wallace had this great blade resting by his pillow; and when he was hastened to London to meet his cruel death, it was borne to Dunbarton [sic] as the prize of its governor, the recreant Scotsman who had betrayed its possessor. At Dunbarton the sword has for six long centuries remained as a protest against treachery and injustice, and now, from the hands of the commander at Dunbarton, it is to become a trophy in our Patriot’s monument. As governor of Dunbarton, Sir John Menteith received this sword in August 1305, and two hundred years thereafter, namely, on the 8th December 1505, the accounts of the Lord High Treasurer inform us that, at the command of James IV, the sum of twenty-six shillings, equal to about thirty pounds of our present money, was paid to an armorer for binding a riding sword and a rapier; also for the ‘binding of Wallas sword with cords of silk,’ and providing it with ‘ane new hilt and plomet,’ also with a ‘new scabbard and a new belt.’ And it will be remarked that while the rapier and the riding sword are named as being simply repaired, the Wallace sword is described as adorned with trappings of silk; also as having been furnished with the specified additions of a new hilt and pommel, a new scabbard and a new belt. Concerning the weapon we learn nothing further for three centuries, but in a letter which, in October 1872, I received from the War Office, I was informed that in the year 1825 it was sent for repair to the Tower, when the Duke of Wellington, as Master-General of the Ordnance, submitted it for examination to Dr Meyrick. This gentleman, afterwards Sir Samuel Meyrick, was an authority on ancient swords, but in estimating the age of the Dunbarton weapon, he was guided by its mountings only. Judging from these, he concluded that the sword was not older than a sword in the British Museum, connected with the earldom of Chester, and belonging to the reign of Edward IV. That I may not misinterpret his sentiments, I quote from Sir Samuel’s work on ‘Ancient Armour’, in which, at vol. ii, page 177, when referring to the reign of Edward IV, he writes, ‘The two-handed sword, shown at Dunbarton Castle as that of Wallace, is of this period, as will be evident to any one who compares it with that of the earldom of Chester, in the British Museum.’ The Chester sword was afterwards examined by Mr George Omerod, of the Society of Antiquaries, who, in the fifth volume of Vetusta Monumenta, shows that the weapon was the Sword of State which Edward V had borne before him, when, as Prince of Wales, he, in 1475, made his triumphal entry into Chester Castle. If then the Chester sword belongs to the year 1475, Sir Samuel Meyrick approximated nearly to the date of the mountings of the Wallace sword, which occurred just thirty years later. But the Wallace sword was, in 1505, an old blade, which required a new hilt and pommel, a new scabbard and a new belt. And as the weapon was then so materially shattered, it seems reasonable to conclude that it was decidedly ancient; moreover, that before it was allowed to rest in the Dunbarton armory, it had been subjected to much hard usage. And its being adorned with silk tassels by the King’s command leaves us in no doubt as to its being held in special veneration; while in the register the weapon is described as ‘Wallas sword’, no qualifying word of doubt being expressed as to its genuineness. And apart from the circumstance that by two separate weldings the blade has been shortened, it is otherwise a duplicate of the two-handed blade of Sir Richard Lundin, used at the battle of Stirling, now preserved at Drummond Castle. One blunder leads to another. Consequent upon Sir Samuel Meyrick’s judgment, propounded in 1825, the mountings of 1505 were removed, and a common handle of the 15th century substituted. So I was informed in the letter, which, in 1872, I received from the War Office. But now that we have got possession of the sword, we shall be careful that the weapon with which the hero was wont to ‘mak great rowme’ about him, will be mounted in the fashion in which he nobly grasped it, and we shall retain it as no unimportant addition to the national regalia.3
So Rogers’ case was that the sword had been misdated by the expert, Meyrick, to a later era on the basis of a restoration of the weapon that Rogers could now show took place in 1505. Despite his ingenious spin, no serious scholar has in recent times been inclined to give the Wallace Sword any credence as the hero’s own. It is generally well known that two-handed swords came into use only long after Wallace’s time. The earliest documentary reference to ‘twa handit swerdis’ in Scotland comes in government instructions for the arming of the lieges, issued weeks after the disaster at Flodden in 1513. It occurs in a list of weapons, perhaps at that time now deemed acceptable for the army as an alternative to pikes.4 They had probably been around since the late fifteenth century.
There we might be tempted to leave the story of the Wallace Sword, yet another example of a relic of the wrong type and the wrong date. In my opinion, however, it is worth re-examining Rogers’ account of the sword and the sword itself, which remarkably seems to have escaped detailed scholarly examination since the time of Samuel Meyrick.
The explanation of why William Wallace’s sword should have ended up in Dumbarton Castle is plausible, but mere supposition. It appears that the earliest record of its presence in that stronghold is in an inventory of May 1644 that lists ‘ane auld twa handit sward, without a scabbard’ in the Wallace Tower.5 The latter was erected only in 1617, primarily to protect the north entry to the castle.6 Why this structure should have been named the Wallace Tower is not clear. The general assumption is, of course, that it commemorates Wallace, but we are not aware of any tradition that would associate him directly with the castle. It seems unlikely that the tower should have been named from the sword. The converse has to be considered a distinct possibility.
When William Wordsworth visited Dumbarton Castle with his sister Dorothy in 1803, they were taken into the guardroom and shown ‘a large rusty sword, which they called Wallace’s Sword’.7 This appears to be the earliest actual identification of the Dumbarton Castle sword as having belonged to the patriot.
While the two-handed sword in Dumbarton Castle in 1644 might reasonably be the sword delivered to the Wallace Monument in 1888, serious doubts must be entertained as to whether it is the ‘Wallas sword’, repaired in 1505 with the addition of a new hilt, pommel and other fittings.8 It is difficult to believe that anyone at the beginning of the sixteenth century would have accepted a two-handed sword as the hero’s weapon. The craftsman who worked on it was Robert Selkirk, a cutler in Edinburgh. None of Selkirk’s work is known to survive, but payments recorded to him in the Treasurer’s Accounts indicate that he produced work of the highest quality. He held the position of royal cutler to James IV from 1497 until his death in 1512.9 There is a certain ambiguity about the use of the word ‘hilt’, which might mean just the sword handle itself or could include the guard and pommel as well. If we want to believe that the Wallace Sword is indeed the ‘Wallas sword’, it needs to be understood that the guard, as I will show below, is of a later date than Selkirk.
There are no clues in the Treasurer’s Accounts as to where Selkirk acquired the sword. It might be supposed it was a royal possession, and possibly it was not a coincidence that it should receive attention on the 200th anniversary of the hero’s death. Robert Bruce’s sword had been held in such veneration by James IV’s father, James III, that he had taken it with him to battle in 1488,10 ironically meeting defeat and death on almost the same terrain where Bruce achieved his greatest victory, Bannockburn, in 1314.
Samuel Meyrick’s lengthy statement is capable of more than one interpretation. Rogers believed that Meyrick was comparing the fittings, especially the pre-1825 grip, to those on the state sword of the Earl of Chester (Edward, Prince of Wales). The latter has the enamelled arms of the prince on its grip and pommel and a simple bar guard. It would surely be amazing if Meyrick, a fine scholar, should have been party to the removal of anything so fine on the Wallace Sword and that no record should be kept of it. It is surely better to interpret Meyrick’s statement comparing the two swords as referring solely to their size and proportions. It might also be noted, incidentally, that Meyrick’s work was published in 1824, suggesting some inaccuracy in Rogers’ account, perhaps deriving from a letter sent to him by the War Office.11 Bob Savage of the Royal Armouries has confirmed to me that no contemporary papers concerning the sword’s trip to the Tower of London are known to survive.
Finally, in dealing with Rogers’ case for the Wallace Sword, something should be said about the sword used by Sir Richard Lundin at the battle of Stirling Bridge. This is a claymore – a two-handed sword of the type used by Highlanders in the sixteenth century. An alternative tradition, that it was used by Lundin of that ilk at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, was published a few years before Rogers made his comparison.12 It is still in a private collection, and I studied it a number of years ago. There is no reason to think that any of it is of an earlier date than the sixteenth century.
While the Lundin sword is a Highland weapon, the Wallace Sword is a two-handed sword of Lowland type. The term ‘Lowland’ has been assigned in recent times by experts on the basis that such weapons are associated with Lowland families. Their main defining feature is their cross-guard, consisting of long rod-like quillons at right angles to the blade. The ends are turned down, or in, and terminate in knobs. Many have open ring-guards on both sides, sometimes with decorative infills. All have langets – reinforcing tongues extending down the blade. They appear to date to the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century.13
The Wallace Sword has a blade length of 131.5 centimetres and an overall length of 168 centimetres. The guard is of iron and of typical Lowland form, with two side rings. One of them has been bent so that its outer portion lies parallel to the blade. A crude strap has been welded on, running from one of the quillons to the bottommost part of this ring. This arrangement is secondary, and unusual. The most likely explanation is that it was done to aid in mounting the sword flat against a wall. The quillons are diamond shaped in cross-section, with faceted and pointed knobs. The guard has a maximum length of 26.7 centimetres, with relatively long langets and quillon terminals well turned in. This may be a late feature in Lowland swords since it seems to mirror the form of quillons on Scottish ‘clam shellit’ swords, first documented in 1583 when Robert Lyell, an Edinburgh lorimer, was required to make such a hilt as part of his essay for admittance as a freeman of the Hammermen.14 The wooden grip is covered in leather and is presumably of early nineteenth-century date. So, probably, is the solid iron, pointed oval pommel.
Many of the blades on Scottish two-handed swords are clearly German imports, but the blade of the Wallace Sword offers no clues as to its origin. If it ever had any maker’s marks – which typically would have been inlaid in copper or brass – they have disappeared through corrosion and overzealous cleaning. It has a rounded tip and a ricasso – that is, a section adjacent to the hilt that is unsharpened so that it might the more readily be gripped by the user. Apart from the reshaping of the guard, this sword does not appear particularly untypical of the two-handed swords in use in the Lowlands of Scotland in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries. In construction, it appears cruder than many and shows signs of having been mistreated, although there are no obvious nicks on the blade from use in combat.
A close examination of the blade explains Rogers’ mention of two weldings. Remarkably, the blade, as we now have it, seems to have been welded together from at least three separate pieces. The obvious conclusion might be that the blade has been put back together after having been snapped in pieces. Rogers, ever anxious to see everything about his hero as big, concluded that this was a side-effect of an even larger blade being made smaller. The opposite could well be the case since at least two of the pieces do not seem to match up well. The bottom 87.7 centimetres has for the most part a flattened diamond section, unlike the flattened profile of the upper portion, and seems to belong to a relatively narrower weapon. The other break approximates to the position of the ricasso. Possibly this amounts to a single-handed blade that has been deliberately enlarged to give it the appearance of a two-handed one. A close date could not be put on such a single-handed blade, but it might well be of thirteenth-century date.
Does this offer just a very faint ray of hope for those who would believe this to be William Wallace’s actual weapon?15