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The Battle of Stirling Bridge: An English Perspective

Michael Prestwich

At Stirling Bridge on 11 September 1297 the Scots under the inspirational leadership of William Wallace won a quite extraordinary victory. The Edwardian war machine, which had achieved the conquest of Wales and had routed the Scottish host at Dunbar in 1296, was revealed as vulnerable. The English warhorses proved to have hooves of clay. My purpose is firstly to set the battle of Stirling Bridge in its military context: how surprising was it that an ill-equipped army of Scottish foot soldiers should have been able to defeat an English host? Secondly, I will examine the political significance of the battle from the English point of view. It was fought at a time of major political crisis in England and had a considerable bearing on the outcome of the disputes between Edward I and his opponents.

At the time of Stirling Bridge, the English under Edward I were highly experienced in war. The various campaigns in which Edward’s armies had been involved had provided the king and his officials with immense experience in organising campaigns. They knew how to recruit men and how to organise the logistics of a campaign. It was no easy task to collect the vast supplies of victuals needed and to organise their transport. The financial mechanisms for funding war were tried and tested. The English were, however, relatively inexperienced in battle. It was more than thirty years since the two great civil-war battles of Lewes and Evesham. The Welsh wars had seen the English triumph in two battles, Irfon Bridge in 1282, and Maes Moydog in 1295, but neither was a full-scale engagement. In each case, English cavalry backed up by infantry had been successful against relatively ill-equipped Welsh forces, which lacked above all heavy cavalry. Nor had it all gone the English way, for the Welsh themselves had won one engagement, in 1282, near the Menai Strait. War against the French began in 1294, but neither side relished the prospect of battle, and there was no full-scale set-piece engagement. In Scotland, when war began in 1296, the English first engaged in a ferocious sack of Berwick, demonstrating a wholly unexpected and unacceptable degree of savagery. The subsequent campaign witnessed one field encounter, at Dunbar, when Earl Warenne’s forces defeated the Scottish army, routing a cavalry charge and destroying with it the main aristocratic military strength of Scotland. Edinburgh Castle resisted briefly, and there followed a military promenade around Scotland. This must have persuaded the English that the Scots were unlike the Welsh and would not offer serious resistance.

Following this triumph, the English did not expect war in Scotland in 1297, but their high-handed policies soon provoked rebellion. The main rising began in May, when William Wallace killed William Hesilrig, sheriff of Lanark, who, according to the official record, was presiding over the court in which the king’s pleas were being heard.¹ This was followed by a rapid raid on Scone, to attack William Ormsby, the English justiciar of Scotland. There was widespread support, both aristocratic and popular, for the rising. By 10 July Hugh Cressingham was informing the king that none of the English officials in Scotland could raise any money because of extensive hostility. Later in the month Edward was told that only Berwickshire and Roxburghshire were under proper control.²Yet at the first sign of English military reaction, when Henry Percy and Robert Clifford marched north from the western border to Ayr, the Scots began to negotiate terms. At Irvine, in July, James Stewart and William Douglas offered surrender. Wallace, however, was not to be dealt with so easily. In addition, there was a widespread popular rising in the north, headed by Andrew Murray.³

The English did not respond effectively to the continued resistance until late August, when an English army under Earl Warenne, assisted by Hugh Cressingham, marched north from Berwick to Stirling, presumably intending to move on farther northwards. Warenne was a man of considerable military experience. He had fought in the Welsh war of 1282–83 and was there again dealing with the rebellion of 1287. He commanded a substantial retinue in the final Welsh war, that of 1294–95.⁴ His main military achievement had come more recently still, for it was he who had commanded the English troops who achieved the striking victory over the Scots at Dunbar in 1296. Warenne had no enthusiasm for Scotland. He declared that the climate was bad for his health and that he could not possibly remain in the country, preferring to stay in the north of England.⁵ Early in August 1297 an attempt was made to replace him; this may have been because he was proving inadequate and incompetent in Scotland, but it is more likely that the king wanted him to take part in the forthcoming campaign in Flanders. Brian FitzAlan of Bedale was approached but protested that he was too poor for such a task: ‘In my poverty, I could not keep the land in peace to your profit and honour, when such a lord as the earl cannot hold it in peace with what he receives from you.’⁶ It must have been with a heavy heart that Warenne marched towards Stirling.

Stirling was the lowest point at which the River Forth could be crossed, and with its castle it was a key point in English strategy. If the northern rising was to be dealt with, the army must pass the stronghold. When Warenne advanced towards Stirling, Wallace was engaged in besieging the castle at Dundee; he and Murray must have decided that Stirling was the best point at which to intercept Warenne’s force. From the Scots point of view, not only was it the obvious place to prevent an English advance farther north, but there were also many tactical advantages in challenging the English there. The narrow bridge limited English mobility; in addition, the meadows and fields on the north bank were unsuitable for the use of heavy cavalry.⁷ The Scots could observe the English manoeuvres and control the position from high ground to the north.

The problem presented to historians by most medieval battles is that of reconciling divergent versions. In contrast, Stirling Bridge was fully recorded by only one chronicler, the English Walter of Guisborough, and the problem is to decide how much credence to give to his account.⁸ According to him, Warenne advanced to the town of Stirling, where he was met by James Stewart, the Earl of Lennox and other Scottish magnates. They asked for some assistance, so that they might somehow be able to subdue their fellow Scots. After a few days they returned to Stirling and promised to come back the following day with forty men-at-arms. As they rode off, they encountered an English foraging party; Lennox attacked them, striking one foot soldier in the neck with his sword. The English troops were understandably agitated, accusing the Scottish magnates of treachery and breach of faith. Warenne promised action and issued orders that the army was to move out on the next day, 11 September, to cross the Forth. Duly, first thing in the morning, many of the infantry marched over the bridge. They were soon ordered back because Warenne himself had overslept. When he finally arose, he knighted some of his men, a traditional move on the eve of battle. Meanwhile the infantry advanced again across the bridge, only to return once more because James Stewart and the Earl of Lennox had arrived without the promised cavalry forces. Two Dominican friars were sent to negotiate with the Scots; Guisborough reports Wallace as declaring that he and his men had not come to make peace but to fight to vindicate themselves and to free their kingdom. ‘Let those who wish climb up here, and they will find us ready to trim their beards.’ There was much discussion in the English ranks as to what to do; some hotheads were in favour of an immediate attack on the Scottish position, which was on high ground. Sir Richard Lundy, who had surrendered to the English earlier in the year at Irvine, gave sensible advice. The bridge was too dangerous to cross, since the men could go only two abreast; the Scots would then attack from the flank when they reached the bank. Instead, Lundy offered to take a force across a nearby ford, where sixty could cross in a line, enabling him to attack the Scots from the rear, while Warenne and the remaining force crossed the bridge. It is easy, with hindsight, to condemn the English commanders for their response; it was, thought Warenne and Cressingham, far too risky to split the English forces in this way. There was much debate as to what to do, but Cressingham persuaded Warenne to proceed over the bridge. The English probably expected the Scots to face them formally in battle; a surprise attack was clearly not anticipated.

Given how narrow the bridge was, the troops must have taken a long time to move across it. Among the first to advance was the standard bearer of the king (it is not clear why this man was not in Flanders with Edward I), together with those of Earl Warenne and the notable Yorkshire knight Marmaduke Thweng. Once a number of English had made their way over the bridge, the Scots attacked, rushing down from the heights, and their pikemen seized the end of the bridge so that no one could cross in either direction. Thweng and his men charged into the Scottish ranks, with some success, but the numbers opposing them were too great, and none of the other English cavalry followed their example. After a struggle, Thweng was able to force his way back over the bridge, but a large number were slain by the Scots. A few Welshmen swam to safety, and one knight was able to force his horse into the water and across the river. Hugh Cressingham was killed. Warenne himself had not crossed the bridge, and once Thweng returned over it, he ordered it to be broken and burned. Thweng was put in charge of Stirling Castle. Promising faithfully to return with reinforcements in ten weeks, Warenne, no doubt thoroughly dispirited, made his way to Berwick as fast as he could. Many of the English were not so lucky. The retreating baggage train was caught by Stewart and Lennox, who naturally had turned to the patriotic cause once they saw how successful Wallace and his men had been. Many of the fleeing common soldiers were caught and killed by the pursuing Scots.

Walter of Guisborough’s account of the battle is exceptionally detailed. He added colour to it by providing vivid dialogue that can hardly be relied upon as a verbatim account of what was said. No direct indication of his sources is given, but the important role accorded to Marmaduke Thweng is very striking. The chronicler gives a detailed and dramatic account of how Marmaduke’s nephew, unhorsed and wounded in the battle, asked for help. Marmaduke told him to climb up behind him, but he lacked the strength. Another member of the Thweng retinue then dismounted and helped the unfortunate man to mount, so that they could all ride safely to the bridge. This suggests that Marmaduke, or one of his followers, could have provided much of the information; this is made more likely by the fact that the Thweng family had close connections with the priory at Guisborough where Walter wrote.⁹ Other chronicles do not provide sufficient independent evidence with which to test Walter’s account. A briefer but essentially similar version was provided, for example, by a St Albans chronicler.¹⁰ The main hint of an alternative account is provided by Thomas Grey in his Scalacronica, relying on what he had been told by his father. He has it that it was the Scots who broke the bridge rather than this being done on English orders.¹¹ The Scottish tradition is startlingly uninformative, recording little more than the bare fact of victory.¹²

There has been little questioning of Walter’s narrative of Stirling Bridge, but significant doubts have been raised over his account of the battle at Irfon Bridge in Wales in 1282. J. Beverley Smith noted that this has ‘a disturbing similarity’ to Stirling Bridge. In both cases there was a bridge, a nearby ford and an attack from the flank or rear. As with the account of Stirling Bridge, that of Irfon Bridge is enhanced by vivid dialogue. Smith does not directly question the accuracy of Walter of Guisborough’s version of events in Scotland but argues that his version of the Welsh battle has to be treated very cautiously.¹³ It may be that Walter’s account of Stirling Bridge is more credible than that of the Welsh battle, for it was written nearer the time, but if he was capable of being inventive in one case, he may also have taken liberties in the other. Such elements as Warenne’s creation of new knights, and his sending friars to negotiate with the Scots, are features that might be expected in any battle account and could well have been added for effect.

One obvious reservation about Walter’s account concerns the numbers involved. He puts the size of the English force at about 1,000 cavalry and 50,000 infantry. Reinforcements under Percy totalling 300 horse and 80,000 foot soldiers were, according to the chronicler, dismissed by Cressingham on the grounds that he had sufficient troops and did not want to spend unnecessarily. The Scots force was put at 180 horse and 40,000 foot.¹⁴ These numbers are not credible. There are, unfortunately, no surviving payrolls for the English army; they may have been lost with Cressingham in the battle. There are no indications that there was substantial recruitment for the army in Scotland, and Guisborough’s figures are no more than the wild imaginings of a typically innumerate chronicler. It would be dangerous to hazard a guess as to the size of Warenne’s force, but it is worth noting that the king at this time had with him in Flanders a total of almost 900 cavalry and some 8,000 infantry.¹⁵ Warenne must have had a much smaller force than this at Stirling. Indeed, the chronicler Bartholomew Cotton stated with considerable plausibility that the English army was too small, since many had decided to abandon the expedition when they were convinced by the promises of the Scots that they were about to make peace.¹⁶

Walter of Guisborough is surprisingly vague about the casualties at Stirling. The total number he puts at about a hundred cavalry and 5,000 infantry. Hugh Cressingham is the one and only victim of the Scots he names; fat, proud and arrogant, he died what the chronicler clearly considers a deserved death. Cressingham was an unpopular official who had been Queen Eleanor’s steward – for all her reputation, she had been a harsh landlord. He was the man who would have been regarded as responsible above all for the harsh financial aspects of English rule in Scotland. In a touch of horror, Wallace’s men flayed his corpse, and distributed pieces of his skin as mementoes.¹⁷ Peter Langtoft in his chronicle adds the deaths of Robert de Somerville and his eldest son, but although he states that many noble men were also killed, he provides no more names.¹⁸ Others who died in the battle included Robert Delaval and Richard Waldegrave, constable of Stirling Castle.¹⁹ There can be little doubt that a considerable number of foot soldiers lost their lives, but it seems possible that knightly casualties were indeed at a low level. The normal reason for this was that knights were worth more alive than dead, given the value of their ransoms. In this case, however, there is no evidence of ransoms paid by the English, and the answer may be either that few English knights in fact crossed the bridge or that their armour and equipment protected them.

The battle of Stirling Bridge witnessed the rout of a conventional English force, with its heavy cavalry, by a force of foot soldiers. Many successes for infantry over cavalry would follow in the fourteenth century. In Scotland there was Bruce’s first real triumph against the English, at Loudon Hill in 1307, and, of course, Bannockburn in 1314. Other successes for infantry forces included those in Flanders, with Courtrai in 1302 and Arques in the following year. In England there was Boroughbridge in 1322. Once the English had grasped the point that a line of dismounted men-at-arms assisted by archers was virtually unbeatable, there came a whole succession of celebrated triumphs, from Dupplin Moor and Halidon Hill in 1332 and 1333 respectively through to Crécy and Neville’s Cross in 1346 and Poitiers a decade later.²⁰ It is important to stress, however, that Stirling Bridge stands out from these infantry victories as untypical; its tactics did not provide a precedent for these later battles. In the great majority of cases, an army reliant on its foot soldiers established a strong defensive position, using ditches or pits to provide a defence against cavalry attacks. It was at Falkirk in 1298, not Stirling Bridge in 1297, that Wallace’s tactics presaged the infantry successes of the future. There, he made a major innovation by using the formation of the schiltrom. This was a dense circle of pikemen that formed an almost impenetrable obstacle to the English cavalry. On that occasion the tactic was, of course, unsuccessful, but at Bannockburn in 1314 the story would be a very different one. The English developed different infantry formations from those used by the Scots, notably the wedge of archers and the line of dismounted men-at-arms. The archers, placed on the flanks, were important in hindering and breaking up any attack before it reached the defensive line of dismounted knights and men-at-arms with its full impetus.

The rush down the slopes towards the bridge at Stirling therefore does not fit the later pattern of infantry successes. The English defeat in 1297 was not a classic set-piece battle; Warenne and his men, although aware of the Scots presence, did not expect to be attacked as they crossed the bridge. If Guisborough reported Wallace’s words to the friars correctly, the expectation was that the English would have to advance somehow up to the Scottish position to engage them. As it was, there was no time to draw up lines of battle. This was more ambush than open battle. Indeed, for Walter of Guisborough, it was not a battle but a confusio.²¹ Stirling Bridge was not the only ambush that the English suffered in 1297; earlier in the year at Bellegarde in Gascony the English army under the Earl of Lincoln was caught by surprise as it made its way out of a wood in the evening. The unprepared English forces were routed by a French army under Robert of Artois; many infantry were killed and a significant number of knights captured.²²

The English defeat at the hands of the Scots at Stirling Bridge undoubtedly came as a shock to contemporaries, but it should not be regarded as particularly surprising. It was not the first time that English troops had suffered at the hands of less well-equipped opponents close to a bridge. The battle had a distinct resemblance to the English defeat at the Menai Strait in 1282. Then, English troops under Luke de Tany, many of them mounted knights, were advancing towards a pontoon bridge that Edward’s engineers had constructed over the strait. They were in a spirit of high confidence at the end of a raid into Snowdonia, but their enemies were waiting, unseen by them. Choosing their moment brilliantly, the Welsh came down on the English from their position high on the hills. They were on foot, and, lacking the sophisticated equipment of the English, most of them were probably armed with spears. The English force was caught as part of it was crossing the bridge. One knight forced his horse to swim for safety, but at least sixteen others were killed, as were many men-at-arms. This was a major disaster: the news reverberated throughout England. Accounts of the engagement differ in detail. It may be, as Walter of Guisborough has it, that the Welsh, aided by a high tide, prevented the English from reaching the bridge and drove them into the sea.²³ Alternatively, the English knights, driven back by the Welsh, did succeed in reaching the bridge but, in their haste to cross, overloaded it. In this version, the barges supporting the roadway began to sink, and it was only a very few who managed to swim to safety. The loss of so many knights in a single engagement was a great shock to the English; the way in which the chroniclers recorded the casualties shows that this was not regarded as an accident of war but as an unprecedented catastrophe.²⁴

The parallels between the fight at the Menai Strait and the battle of Stirling Bridge are not, of course, exact. There is a striking contrast between the many casualties listed on the occasion of the Welsh battle and the few recorded for Stirling Bridge. Like the Scots in 1297, however, the Welsh had shown that English cavalry forces were vulnerable to an unexpected infantry attack. They demonstrated, as Wallace would do, the helplessness of a force as it moved across a bridge. The defeat in Wales was perhaps the first real manifestation of the effectiveness of infantry against heavily armed cavalry, but the lesson that the Welsh taught Luke de Tany and his men in 1282 was not to be learned for fifty years. It would need a whole succession of infantry triumphs before the message sank in.

The disaster at the Menai Bridge, together with that at Bellegarde in Gascony, shows that the English by 1297 did not have the kind of record of invincibility that they would achieve later, in the Hundred Years War. Even so, the defeat at Stirling Bridge was startling. The obvious explanation is that there was a fatal failure of command. Earl Warenne appears to have displayed a monumental degree of stupidity, which puts him alongside the Earl of Cardigan in the roll call of disastrous English commanders. Hugh Cressingham demonstrated the obvious fact that accountants do not make generals. Peter Langtoft places the blame squarely on him for attempting to cross the bridge with too small a force.²⁵ The English did try to find excuses for the defeat: spin doctors are not a purely modern phenomenon. According to a poem on the Scottish wars, Warenne was the first across the bridge, boldly and heroically driving into the Scottish formations, but he was driven back by treachery, not by force of arms. Lennox and Richard Lundy were named as the traitors.²⁶ Although the form of their treachery is not described, the accusation was presumably that they changed sides once the engagement began, although it could relate to the negotiations and discussions that took place before the battle.

One view, expressed by a medieval commentator, of the effects of Stirling Bridge was that it saved the kingdom of France from potential disaster, in that it led Edward I to abandon his campaign against the French in the Low Countries.²⁷ It is, however, most unlikely that Edward would have achieved much success against Philip IV of France. His army was too small and his allies unreliable. In practice, the consequences of the battle for the English were very different. It was fought at a time of acute political uncertainty and difficulty in England, and ironically did much to help resolve the crisis that Edward I faced.

There were several strands to the opposition that confronted Edward in 1297, but a common factor was resentment at the heavy burdens imposed on the country as a result of war, burdens that were made more acute by the fact that this was a period of bad harvests and high prices. War with France had begun in 1294; in that year there was a Welsh revolt, while 1296 had seen the campaign against John Balliol in Scotland. There were separate issues relating to the taxation of laity and clergy. Novel demands for military service in 1297 aroused much hostility, and very few troops were recruited. Prises, compulsory seizures of foodstuffs and of wool, were much disliked.²⁸ Edward was determined, come what may, to lead an expedition to Flanders, and was prepared to ignore both constitutional niceties and the pleas of impoverishment that came from his subjects.

Scotland provided Edward I’s opponents, notably the Earls of Norfolk and Hereford, Roger Bigod and Humphrey de Bohun, with an excellent argument in their case against the king. In the summer of 1297 the English reaction to events in Scotland was very limited. Late in June 1297 the English government sent £2,000 north to Hugh Cressingham, but this was no more than a loan, to be repaid out of Scottish revenues by 1 August. Such a requirement shows that there was no awareness of the scale of the problem. Cressingham protested on 10 July that the situation was impossible; English officials in Scotland were not in any position to collect funds, given the multitude of continuous and daily troubles that they faced.²⁹ In the so-called ‘Remonstrances’, drawn up by the opposition at the end of July, it was pointed out among other things that the Scots had already begun to rise in rebellion and that if Edward were to go abroad, the rising would intensify.³⁰ The argument was a good one, but the king was not to be diverted. Rather than make concessions to his opponents, he instituted a new tax of an eighth, with assessors and collectors appointed on 30 July. A wool seizure was also ordered. On 20 August the exchequer was told to proceed with a new tax on the clergy. Two days later Edward embarked at Winchelsea and sailed for Flanders the next day. His was a most remarkable display of obstinacy: he was determined to carry out his plans come what may.

Edward left a country seething with indignation. The government was under the nominal leadership of the young Prince Edward, but in practice Reginald de Grey led the council. The two earls, Bigod and Bohun, appeared with an armed force at the exchequer on 22 August and prevented the collection of the tax of an eighth.³¹ There was an atmosphere of imminent civil war. The events and debates that took place in September are not well recorded, but there was evidently much alarm. A number of meetings were held in an attempt to settle the political disputes. Knights were asked to attend a meeting at Rochester on 8 September with the king’s son. In writs dated 9 and 15 September respectively, the prelates and magnates were summoned to attend parliament in London on 30 September and knights of the shire on 6 October.³² At the same time, military preparations began. Sheriffs were asked to retain men in royal service and to muster at London.³³ Royal castles were put in a state of defence. At Tickhill in Yorkshire, for example, iron bars were fitted to prevent access to the drawbridge, for which new ropes were bought. A new lock was fitted to the gate. The walls were repaired, the ditches recut, and thirteen crossbowmen and twenty archers hired.³⁴ The situation in England was critical.

The king made no move to resolve matters. The grievances that had led to the crisis were not tackled. Edward’s attention was fixed on his war against the French; perhaps he hoped that if he achieved some signal success, the means he had adopted to finance his campaign would be seen as justified and his opponents confounded. Yet the situation in the Low Countries was not encouraging for the king. His own army was small. A letter of 18 September shows that he expected the man regarded as the chief English ally, the German ruler Adolf of Nassau, to join him shortly, but in the event Adolf neither met Edward nor sent troops.³⁵ Many of Edward’s other allies had been defeated on the eve of the English king’s landing. The townspeople of Bruges and Ghent were less than eager to support Edward. He left Bruges because of rumours that the citizens were about to rise in support of the French, and at Ghent he faced repeated troubles with the local inhabitants.³⁶ Not only, therefore, was the political situation in England very serious, but also the military position in the Low Countries was critical.

The triumph of the Scots under Wallace at Stirling Bridge, fought on 11 September, was the catalyst that transformed the situation. It is not clear how quickly the news travelled, but it must have been known within a very few days. The first indication that the government was aware of what had happened, however, is an instruction, issued on 21 September, to take Hereford Castle into the king’s hands, as the previous keeper was Hugh Cressingham.³⁷ On 24 September the council in England wrote to Roger Clifford, instructing him to give all his assistance to Warenne. This letter refers to bad news about the condition of Scotland, which strongly suggests that news of the defeat was known.³⁸ A letter in Edward’s name, written at Ghent on 5 October, suggests that the king may still have been unaware of the defeat at that date. It notes that Earl Warenne and Hugh Cressingham had testified in their letters that John de Vaus had done well in royal service in Scotland and had promised to go to Flanders to serve the king there. The government at home was asked to restore Vaus’ lands to him.³⁹ The terms of the letter would surely have been different if Cressingham’s death had been known. Edward’s reaction to the news from Scotland is not recorded, but it is easy to guess at the initial fury of this irascible man. The French alliance with the Scots had yielded effective results, while his own allies had not achieved any worthwhile success against the French. The odds on a successful outcome to the war were becoming longer. There must have been wise heads suggesting that what was urgently needed was for the king to cut his losses and agree to a truce with the French, so that he could return home to deal with the problems created by Wallace’s success. At the same time, Edward was still optimistically expecting help from his German allies. Even as late as mid-October, after the truce had been agreed, there were still hopes that Adolf of Nassau, king of the Romans, would join Edward with his troops.⁴⁰

The council in England was surely determined to try to settle the political disputes so that full attention could be paid to Scotland. Edward’s opponents in England must have felt the same way. The news of the defeat proved the point that they had made in the Remonstrances; they had been absolutely right. The situation in Scotland had indeed deteriorated badly once the king had left the country for Flanders. They must have considered that they were under a strong obligation to redirect whatever forces they had gathered against the possibility of civil war to the defence of the north and revenge against the Scots.

The defeat at Stirling Bridge therefore paved the way for the king in Flanders to agree to the truce of Vyve-St-Bavon on 9 October and for the government in England to agree on 10 October to the issue of the Confirmatio Cartarum, which conceded in very general terms much of what the opposition had demanded. The change of mood in England was very striking. It was possible to obtain a grant of a new tax of a ninth, equivalent to the loathed eighth, with no apparent difficulty, on 14 October.⁴¹ Arguments with the clergy ceased. Attention turned to the problems in the north. On 18 October new appointments were made to command in Cumberland, Westmorland and Northumberland. On 23 October levies of almost 30,000 infantry were ordered; the troops were to muster at Newcastle on 6 December. In the same month contracts for three months’ service were agreed with the two opposition leaders, the Earls of Hereford and Norfolk, and with Warenne, Warwick, Gloucester and Henry Percy. A prise, or seizure, of victuals was authorised in November.⁴² Such prises had been a major issue for the king’s opponents, but there was no hostility to the measure now that it was so obviously necessary. Various military operations took place, of which the most important was the relief early in the new year of Roxburgh and Berwick, but a winter campaign was difficult, and further activity was halted, for a request came from Edward, who was still in the Low Countries, asking the earls to delay until he could lead the expedition in person.⁴³

One consequence of their success at Stirling Bridge was that the Scots began to raid England, establishing a base at Rothbury from which to operate. The Scottish operations began in the second half of October, but it seems likely that Wallace himself was not involved until the following month. On 7 November he was at Hexham and then moved his forces west, burning and plundering. Later in the month he returned to Northumberland and soon went back to Scotland.⁴⁴ Although damage was extensive, the Scots could not take any castles apart from the minor one at Mitford. As Walter of Guisborough would have us believe, St Cuthbert successfully defended Durham by organising severe weather conditions. Reports of this raid did much to turn Wallace into a figure of hate for the English. There were various stories of what happened on the raid into England. It was alleged that English priests, their hands tied behind their backs, were forced to jump into a river to drown. Boys were burned alive in schools and churches. Choirs of naked English men and women were made to sing for Wallace’s amusement.

News of the Scottish ravages in the north of England must have re-emphasised the message that the defeat at Stirling Bridge had given to Edward I. The situation in Scotland must have been a factor in persuading him to agree formally to the settlement of the crisis in England by means of the issue of the Confirmation of the Charters. It was abundantly clear that the urgent problem was that presented by the Scots and that the political problems in England had to be resolved. The changed mood in England was displayed very clearly in the new year, once Edward had returned. The king was able to organise a new campaign against the Scots on a massive scale. The defeat at Stirling Bridge was avenged within less than a year, for in July 1298 Wallace and his followers were overwhelmed at Falkirk. The schiltroms were broken, and the bubble of Wallace’s astonishing reputation was pricked. Once defeated, he could not continue to play the leading role in resistance to Edward I.

It is no longer fashionable to regard battles as decisive. The effects of the Scottish victory at Stirling Bridge were, however, both striking and unexpected. Without Wallace’s victory at Stirling, Edward I’s position would have been very different. He would have been under far less pressure to come to terms with his political opponents in England. Success in Flanders against the French was most unlikely, and the political crisis of 1297 might well have developed into civil war by the autumn of that year. As it was, Stirling Bridge was a signal triumph for the Scots, but it was a deceptive one. The victory must have given Wallace a false sense of what he could achieve. Defeating Warenne’s unprepared forces was quite a different matter from facing a full-scale English army under Edward I at Falkirk in 1298, but the Scots clearly believed that they could repeat the trick of the previous year and that their schiltroms could rout Edward’s formidable forces. Stirling Bridge was without doubt a remarkable success, but the consequences of the battle were not what the Scots would have wished. It led to a reinforcement of Edward I’s position in England and prepared the way for the English triumph in battle at Falkirk.