CHAPTER IIWallace's Family and Early Years

'Ni fallat fatum, Scoti, quocunque locatumInvenient lapidem, regnare tenentur ibidem.'

That is to say:

'Unless the Fates are faithless grown,And prophet's voice be vain,Where'er is found this sacred stone,The Scottish race shall reign.'

For a hundred years before the death of AlexanderIII., the peaceful administration and firm policy of the Scottish kings had immensely strengthened Scotland both in her internal organisation and in her external influence. It had inspired respect in the strongest of contemporary English sovereigns. Between AlexanderIII.and Edward I. there prevailed a genuine cordiality, based not more on family relationship than on political conduct. On the unexpected death of Alexander, the active mind of Edward must very promptly have perceived a great opportunity of annexing Scotland, as he had just annexed Wales. But strong-handed and imperious as he was, he was also governed by ideas of legal procedure, and still more by policy. Warrior as he was, he would still prefer to attain his ends by politic address. He could not in decency raise his mailed hand against the infant granddaughter of his own sister, or arbitrarilypick a quarrel with a friendly nation at accidental disadvantage by the tragic and premature death of his amicable brother-in-law. The project of marrying the child Queen to his eldest son was a stroke of policy of the happiest conception for the peaceful attainment of his purposes. The death of the Queen and the rivalry of the competitors threw him on fresh lines of action, plausibly justifiable by the necessity of protecting his own kingdom from the results of internal discord on the northern border. The prolongation of the dispute as to the succession appears to have been very much due to his waiting for the opening up of the smoothest line of advance. The preference of Balliol, after an ostentatiously elaborate process of legal formality, not only wore the aspect of a profound homage to law, but also placed on the throne of Scotland the candidate that would be most plastic in his hands. The successive steps show clearly, from the first idea of the marriage at least, the gradual and deliberate tightening of a resolute grasp upon the kingdom of Scotland. If Edward had really believed that he was entitled to the over-lordship of Scotland, it is extremely difficult to understand why he did not at once claim the wardship of the infant Margaret. The enforcement of such a claim would have been awkward enough at a moment when he needed all his force elsewhere; but he might at least have put it forward. He could not have been unaware of this right if it had actually existed. Again, as Macpherson says, 'it seems very surprising that he did not claim the crown of Scotland for himself as heir of Malcolm Kenmore, whose grand-daughter Mald was his great-great-grandmother.' Such an astute intellect as his could not have been impressed with the documentary authorities arrayed by patriotic priests and supported by sycophantic officials. It is not easy to resist the conclusion that the claim was neither more nor less than a fraudulent contrivance of a semblance of legality to cover the aggression of a rapacious ambition. If the persecution of John was purely the outcome of Edward's 'exasperating legality,' it does as little credit to his political capacity as the atrocity of his vengeance at Berwick and his tyrannicalsettlement of the conquered country. Already, however, in the breast of an obscure young man in an obscure district of the west of Scotland there were surging turbulent feelings of personal and patriotic resentment, destined eventually to overturn all these calculations of ambitious aggression. That young man was William Wallace of Elderslie.

'Off Scotland born, my rycht name is Wallace.'Harry, ix. 247.'At Wallace' name what Scottish bloodBut boils up in a spring-tide flood?'Burns.'In happy tym for Scotland thow was born.'Harry, viii. 1646.

'Off Scotland born, my rycht name is Wallace.'

Harry, ix. 247.

'At Wallace' name what Scottish bloodBut boils up in a spring-tide flood?'Burns.

'At Wallace' name what Scottish bloodBut boils up in a spring-tide flood?'

Burns.

'In happy tym for Scotland thow was born.'Harry, viii. 1646.

'In happy tym for Scotland thow was born.'

Harry, viii. 1646.

William Wallace was the second son of Sir Malcolm Wallace of Elderslie, and of his wife Margaret, daughter of Sir Reginald Crawford of Crosby, hereditary Sheriff of Ayr.

Blind Harry, a perfervid Scot himself, and keenly jealous for the perfection of his hero, exhibits lively anxiety to impress the fact that Wallace was a thorough Scotsman—'of whole lineage and true line of Scotland.' Sir Malcolm, he says, at his marriage,

'Elderslie then had in heritage,Auchinbothie, and other sundry place.The great-grandson he was of good Wallace,The which Wallace full worthily then wroughtWhen Walter her of Wales from Warin sought.'

And for further information he refers to the history of 'the right line of the first Steward.' He does not pursue the female line.

The connection of the Wallaces with the Stewards of Scotland is abundantly evidenced. Walter Fitz Alan, the first Steward, came from Oswestry in Shropshire,where his father, Alan, son of Flaald, a Norman, had obtained considerable lands from William the Conqueror, and had married a daughter of Warin, the Sheriff of the county. He was appointed Steward of the royal household by DavidI., who also assigned him extensive lands in Ayr and Renfrew. He would be followed to Scotland by families of local descent, who would settle under him in Kyle. A Richard Walense, who witnessed charters of Walter, is found at Riccarton (Ricardtun). Two more Richards follow, contemporary with the next three Stewards, the third Richard witnessing charters of the fourth Steward, and extending the territorial possessions of the family. At the head of the Elderslie branch appears a Henry Walense, supposed to be a brother of the first Richard, holding the lands of Elderslie under the first Steward. An Adam Walense, possibly a son of Henry, is found in connection with the third and fourth Stewards, and this Adam has been supposed to be the father of Sir Malcolm. The lands of Auchinbothie, in Lochwinnoch, were acquired by a Wallace of Elderslie.

It does not seem possible, on the available evidence, to place the known members of the Riccarton and Elderslie lines—if indeed they were parallel lines—in their definite positions of relationship, except with the caution of probability. Harry makes Sir Richard Wallace of Riccarton the uncle of his hero, William Wallace of Elderslie; but the use of the word uncle may be definite or lax. All that can be confidently affirmed—and it is enough for the present purpose—is this, that all these Wallaces of Riccarton, Elderslie, Auchinbothie, and 'other sundry place,' belonged to the same family, and that, at the birth of the hero, that family had been settled in Scotland for more than a full century.

The family of Crawford is traced back to Thorlongus, an Anglo-Danish chief, who was driven out of Northumberland by the Conqueror, and obtained lands in the Merse from Edgar about the commencement of the twelfth century. Early in the thirteenth century, at any rate, a Sir Reginald Crawford married the heiress of Loudon, and was created first hereditary Sheriff of Ayr; andhis grandson in the main line was the father of Margaret Crawford, the wife of Sir Malcolm Wallace. It may be confidently accepted that, on the side of the spindle as well as on the side of the spear, William Wallace's ancestors were domiciled Scots for more than a hundred years before he was born.

The ultimate origin of the Wallace family thus dwindles to extreme unimportance. It has been contended that the very name shows that the family was Welsh or Keltic; that the name 'was used of the Wallaces, or Welsh, of Elderslie, or elsewhere, not so much as a surname as a description,' and hence it is often given as 'le Waleys.' It may be so, but not at all necessarily. Again, it is certain that Wallaces came over among the Normans, and ancestors of the Wallaces of Kyle may have come over in the train of ancestors of the Stewards. But after the lapse of a century it is really not of the slightest practical consequence whether the family was originally Welsh or Norman—or otherwise. We do not, as did the English nobles of 1238, cavil at Simon de Montfort as a Frenchman; nor did the Irish of our own day cavil at Parnell as an Englishman. Much less, then, is it reasonable to cavil at Wallace as a foreigner; for he had behind him a hundred years of ancestry on Scottish soil, and his forebears were lowly enough to be associated in spirit with the people of the land far more than with the exotic barons, who preserved Anglo-Norman habits and feelings by free intercourse with England and the English court. Wallace was undoubtedly 'of whole lineage and true line of Scotland'; and through his social position he was thoroughly in touch with the national feeling.

At Elderslie, in all probability, Wallace was born. The times were perfectly quiet, and but for accidental circumstances, it seems unlikely that his mother would have been away from her home on the occasion. Harry makes the mayor of St. Johnston speak of Wallace as 'born in to the West.'

The precise date of his birth cannot be determined with certainty. The chroniclers describe him as a young man (juvenis) at the battle of Stirling Bridge in 1297.The description is elastic, but probably it would not have been used at all unless it had been intended to mark the fact that his youthfulness was particularly striking. Harry is definite—doubly definite; but he is vexatiously contradictory. He is, indeed, emphatic on the point of Wallace's youth; but he gives two violently conflicting statements without supplying the means of confident decision in favour of either.

In the first place, early in his poem, Harry makes Wallace eighteen when he killed young Selby at Dundee. The date he intends is evidently about December or January 1296–97. This would make Wallace about nineteen at Stirling Bridge—an age incredible to many, though, in our opinion, not very difficult to accept. The Selby episode, however, may readily be thrown back to 1291–92, in which case Wallace would have been of the more mature age of twenty-three or twenty-four at Stirling Bridge, while still his youth would be distinctive enough for special remark. This age is accepted by the Marquess of Bute, who would place Wallace's birth in 1274; and it is an age that would still favour the Marquess's impression that Wallace's extreme youth 'was one of the reasons for the shyness with which he was undoubtedly looked upon by many of the more leading among his own countrymen.'

In the next place, however, towards the end of his poem, Harry expressly states that Wallace was said to be forty-five when he was betrayed to the English; and here he seems to rely specifically on Blair and Gray, on whose chronicle of Wallace's deeds he professes to base his poem. In xi. 1425–8, he says:

'Thir twa knew best off gud Schir Wilȝhamys deid,Fra xvi ȝer quhill xxixtyȝeid.xl and v off age Wallace was cauldThat tym that he was to [the] Southron sauld.'

Now, if Wallace was forty-five in 1305, he would have been born in 1260, and would have been thirty-seven at Stirling Bridge; but then he would hardly have been described asjuvenis; nor does forty-five fit in with Harry's previous chronology, which ought also to agree withBlair's record. Carrick makes a desperate effort at reconciliation, by suggesting that the transcriber of Harry wrote 'forty' instead of 'thirty'; but 16 + 29 = 45 in incontrovertible arithmetic. There remains, however, this insuperable difficulty—twenty-nine years back from 1305 brings us to 1276, some ten years before the death of AlexanderIII.; and during this decade, as well as for at least five years later, there was profound peace, and there could have been no 'deid' of Wallace's for Blair and Gray to know.

Lax as Harry is, one hesitates to saddle him with such an egregious contradiction. If it were worth while to bring him to reasonable consistency, one might reject the forty-five couplet as an arithmetical exercise of the transcriber, with his nose on the preceding line and his mind vacant of all other considerations. Then Harry might be taken to say that Blair and Gray were intimate with Wallace from his sixteenth year till he was out twenty-nine. If he was in his thirtieth year in 1305, he would have been born in 1275. If he killed Selby in 1291–92, he would have been in his seventeenth year, which is close to Harry's statement, and at Stirling Bridge he would have been in his twenty-third year.

If we put Harry out of court as an irresponsible romancer, then we are thrown back upon the elastic epithetjuvenisof the chroniclers, and the date of Wallace's birth becomes movable according to the fancy of the reader. At twenty-two or twenty-three Wallace must undoubtedly have been a man of exceptional (or at any rate impressive) physique, commanding energy of mind, and magnetic enthusiasm. More than that, he must have been at least as experienced a soldier as any Scot in the army on the slope of Abbey Craig. There must be an accentuated meaning in the epithetjuvenis. In fact there need be little hesitation in reconciling Harry with the chroniclers and with himself. Wallace may be taken to have been born in 1274 or 1275.

Wallace had certainly one brother, Malcolm, who was older than himself; possibly another brother, John; and perhaps two sisters. It is recorded in an extant letter, written on August 20, 1299, that at the meeting of Scotsbarons at Peebles on the previous day, Sir Malcolm Wallace and Sir David de Graham drew their knives on each other over a demand of the latter for the lands of Sir William Wallace, who was going out of the kingdom without leave. The accuracy of the writer almost conclusively bars the supposition that he could have blundered on the name Malcolm instead of John, as has been suggested. If this be so, it supports Wyntoun's statement that the 'elder brother enjoyed the heritage,' and negatives Harry's assertion that young Sir Malcolm was killed, with his father, at Loudon Hill in 1296—or rather in 1291. Bower mistakenly calls him Sir Andrew.

A Sir John Wallace was undoubtedly executed in London in 1307. The sanctimonious Langtoft gloats over the details of the execution, and says his head was 'raised with shouts near the head of his brother, William the Wicked,' on London Bridge. It has been doubted, on no very clear grounds, whether Sir John did not belong to the family of Riccarton. Harry mentions that Wallace, during his Guardianship, 'his brother's son put to his heritage'; but this is on the presupposition that Malcolm was slain at Loudon Hill; and Sir John could hardly have been young Sir Malcolm's son. Even Langtoft may for once be right.

For the sisters there is only the authority of Harry. He mentions Edward Little as Wallace's 'sister's son,' and Tom Halliday as 'sib sister's son to good Wallace.' If Harry be correct, these sisters must have been much older than Wallace.

The position of the Wallaces among the county gentry was by no means pretentious. 'I imagine them,' says the Marquess of Bute, 'in a position of easy fortune, with a certain number of free tenants paying rent in kind and divers services in peace, and, if need had been, in the event of war. And then with a surrounding of peasants, working at Elderslie itself and for their tenants feudally attached, paying no rent, and receiving no wages.'

As a boy, Wallace was almost certainly schooled in the elements of formal education, secular and religious, by the monks of the Abbey of Paisley, then 'the centre ofreligion and learning in the quasi-principality of the High Stewards, to which he belonged.' 'Taking it as a whole,' says the Marquess of Bute,

'I conceive that there can be no doubt that his mental culture was at least as great as would be that of a person in a corresponding position at the present day.... Sir William Wallace at least knew how to read and write three languages—namely, his own, and Latin and French; and it appears also that he knew Gaelic. He knew the ancient and modern history, and the common simpler mathematics and science of his own day.'

In his boyhood, his deep religious feeling must also have been powerfully fostered. The Abbey of Paisley was the parish church of his family. 'The community of Paisley,' says the Marquess of Bute, with great probability,

'was then in all the fervour of its first love, and it was there that William Wallace imbibed his consistent and unfading veneration for the Church and respect for her ministers.... It was as the sublime compositions of the ancient Hebrew poets alternately thundered and wailed through the Abbey Church of Paisley, that William Wallace contracted that livelong love for the Psalms which lasted until he died, with a priest holding the Psalter open, at his request, before his darkening eyes.'

There is probably but little stretch of fancy here, considering the natural disposition of the man.

The foundation of Wallace's acquirements must have been well and truly laid in his early youth. How much of his education was imparted to him at Paisley, it is quite impossible to say, with any approach to definiteness. Whatever he learned there, however, must have been powerfully reinforced by his association with an uncle, a brother of his father's, the comfortable priest of Dunipace, who is described by Harry as 'a man of great riches,' a 'mighty parson,' and 'a full kind man.' The precise period of Wallace's stay at Dunipace cannot be fixed; but he must have been well out of childhood, if it be true that the priest inculcated in his pupil's mind moral maxims compactly framed in Latin, and frequently drawn from the classical Latin authors. In particular, the good priest is credited with the noble purpose and achievement of instilling into Wallace's soul a passionatelove of liberty, which is the key-note of his elevated character and his glorious career. The very formula employed to imprint the memorable injunction has been preserved to us through the centuries:

'Dico tibi verum, libertas optima rerum:Nunquam servili sub nexu vivito, fili.''My son, I tell thee soothfastlie,No gift is like to libertie;Then never live in slaverie.'

'Dico tibi verum, libertas optima rerum:Nunquam servili sub nexu vivito, fili.'

'My son, I tell thee soothfastlie,No gift is like to libertie;Then never live in slaverie.'

Artificial as the Latin couplet may be deemed, it has become invested for ever with an interest peculiarly touching to all lovers of human freedom, and especially to the compatriots of Wallace.

At a still later period, according to Harry, Wallace was sent for further instruction to Dundee. The occasion of this was, in fact, the break-up of the Elderslie home. Harry intends the date as 1296, when 'Scotland was lost' after Dunbar; but he does not recognise that Scotland was lost in 1291, which seems likely to have been the true date of the episode. On June 11, 1291, the Scots Guardians surrendered the kingdom and the castles to Edward as over-lord; and on June 12, Edward, 'with the advice of the prelates and magnates of Scotland there present,' settled a general ordinance requiring 'homage and fealty to be made by all, both clerical and lay, who would have been bound to make it to a living King of Scotland.' Sir Malcolm Wallace, however, did not appear before Edward's deputies at Ayr, nor did he send an excuse; there is no evidence, indeed, to show that he ever made submission—worthy father of his heroic son! According to Harry, he retired to the Lennox, taking young Malcolm with him; while Sir Reginald Crawford, who bent to the storm as hereditary Sheriff of Ayr, took charge of Lady Wallace, his sister, and the boy William, and sent them for refuge to an uncle, a priest at Kilspindie in the Carse of Gowrie. Whether the priest was Sir Reginald's or Wallace's uncle is not clear; but since Harry describes him as 'an aged man,' he may be taken rather as Sir Reginald's uncle. Assuming Harry's connection ofevents, the flight to Kilspindie must have taken place in 1296 or 1291—preferably 1291, when Wallace was in his seventeenth year.

Sir Malcolm seems to have soon ventured back from the Lennox, if Harry is right in stating that shortly afterwards he was killed at Loudon Hill in a conflict with an English party under an officer named Fenwick. According to Harry, young Malcolm was slain with his father; which, as we have seen, is almost certainly a mistake. His desperate valour, as described by Harry, anticipates the Chevy Chace minstrel's picture of Widrington, who, 'when his legs were hewn in two, yet he kneeled and fought on his knee.' But it is curious to observe that the first edition of Harry's poem (1570), by the transposition of two lines (as compared with the existing MS.), assigns the description to Sir Malcolm the father; and no doubt this is right.

'His hough sinews they cuttèd in that press;On knees he fought, and many English slew;To him more fighters than enow there drew;On either side with spears they bore him down;And there they stabbed that good knight of renown.'

Meantime Wallace was living at Kilspindie, and proceeding with his studies at Dundee in some school connected with the Church. There he met John Blair, who subsequently became a Benedictine monk, but left the cloister to attend his friend as chaplain, to bear a hand in many a tough fight, or to conduct diplomatic negotiations, and who eventually wrote the biography that formed the basis of Harry's poem, probably in the retirement of Dunfermline Abbey. There, too, according to Harry, he met Duncan of Lorn, who figures in one of his early enterprises; Sir Niel Campbell of Lochawe; and probably others of his later trusty comrades.

The question arises why young Wallace was staying at Kilspindie and studying with the monks in Dundee when his father and his brother were so sore bested. He must have been a big fellow, well capable of wielding arms to purpose. It may be that his father judged thathis own and his eldest son's lives were a sufficiently heavy stake, and that it was desirable that one of his sons at least should be near his wife, even in a place of comparative shelter. If it had been intended that William should rejoin his father and brother by and by, the early disaster at Loudon Hill would have rendered his presence in the West worse than futile. There may, indeed, have been another idea. There may have been an intention to dedicate him, a younger son, to the service of the Church. Harry indicates, at a late period of his career, some purpose of religious retirement 'to serve God and the Kirk'—a tendency that may readily connect itself with an early bent of mind.

The idea of making Wallace a priest, if it ever existed, was promptly dispelled by the force of circumstances. One day, Harry says, he was grossly insulted in Dundee by a young Englishman named Selby, a son of the 'Captain,' who was strolling about with several companions. Wallace restrained himself till Selby attempted to wrest his knife from him, whereupon he seized the aggressor by the collar and struck him dead on the spot. Defending himself knife in hand, he made for a house his uncle had used to frequent, and was quickly disguised by the lady of the house, who rigged him out in a dress of her own, and set him down with a 'rock' (distaff) to spin. He thus eluded his pursuers; and at night he escaped out of the town by some irregular way. The English authorities at once put the law in active motion in Dundee, and made it impossible for him to remain longer in such dangerous neighbourhood.

This episode, the very first of Harry's stories, has been overclouded with doubts. In deference to the scruples of those that cannot imagine Wallace as only at the end of his teens at Stirling Bridge, we have ventured to throw back the occurrence some five years. Who was Captain of Dundee in 1296–97 we do not know. Was Selby, then, the 'Captain' in 1291–92? The Captain of Dundee Castle from July 18, 1291, to November 18, 1292, was Sir Brian Fitz Alan. But Sir Brian was at the same time castellan of Forfar, and(from August 4) of Roxburgh and Jedburgh; and on June 13 he had also been appointed one of the Guardians, and he was (at any rate, by August 23) one of the three Justices. His hands must therefore have been very full of official business, and he could not be always in Dundee. It has accordingly been suggested that Selby might have been his deputy, or lieutenant, in Dundee—the acting 'Captain.' But he may, on the other hand, have been the Captain, not of the castle, but of the town. Or would it be extravagant to suspect that 'Selby' may be a popular degeneration and perversion of 'Fitz Alan'? The story, if accepted at all, probably dates in December 1291, or January 1291–92. Wallace would thus have sojourned at Kilspindie about half a year.

The experiences of this half-year may well have made a profound impression upon a youth of Wallace's sensitive temperament and martial spirit. Harry represents him, with dramatic truth at least, as brooding painfully over the death of his father (and brother), and as being stirred to uncontrollable resentment of the treatment of Scots within his personal observation. On Harry's statement, the desolation of his house, the exile of his mother, and the oppression of his countrymen, had already nerved his heart and hand to terrible reprisals—such reprisals as, apart from the controlling circumstances, would be justly reprobated as monstrous. Harry himself is consistently 'dispitfull and savage' against the Southron; yet one cannot but hesitate to ascribe to his bloodthirsty imagination the private deeds of revenge he attributes to young Wallace. In those hard days, the removal of an enemy did not touch the conscience as it does in modern civilised society, accustomed to peace and security, and informed with a developed sense of humanity; and the justification derived from intolerable oppression is, at any rate, a vastly more efficient salve in the actual case than it is in mere historical contemplation. At all events, Harry relates that young Wallace, on finding an Englishman alone, never hesitated to cut his throat or to stab him dead. 'Some disappeared, but none wist by what way.' The weak,maddened by tyranny, will do as they may; there is ample testimony to the exacerbation of Scottish feeling at this period; and, while we may deplore, we need not be so childishly unhistorical as to affect not to understand. The iron of English oppression had already entered deep into the soul of Wallace.

About eighteen, then, young Wallace bore the brand of an outlaw for the shedding of English blood in peculiarly daring circumstances. The family council at Kilspindie decided that he and his mother had better travel westward again. They assumed the disguise of pilgrims to St. Margaret's shrine at Dunfermline. At Dunipace, they resisted the urgent invitation of the priest to stay till better times; and thence they made straight to Elderslie. Sir Reginald Crawford would have had the outlawry annulled, but Wallace was obdurate and irreconcilable. There were many Englishmen in the neighbourhood; and Sir Reginald, to get his spirited nephew out of the way of harm and of temptation, sent him to Sir Richard Wallace at Riccarton. There they kept him quiet and safe for a time—possibly till the English occupation of 1296.

At a Christmas time a few years later, when Wallace (according to Harry) was closely engaged in the far west—Harry intends 1297, but he cannot be right—there came to him the heavy tidings of the death of his mother. She is said to have been compelled to leave Elderslie once more, and to have returned on pilgrimage to Dunfermline, to seek at the holy shrine of St. Margaret the rest denied her in her own home. Unable personally to render her the last offices of affection, Wallace despatched John Blair and the sturdy Jop to represent him on the mournful occasion. The bitterness of his heart is expressed by Harry in two pregnant lines:

'Better him thought that it had happened so;No Southron should her put to other woe.'

Still more distressful was the fate of Wallace's wife, Marion Bradfute, the heiress of Lamington. Wyntoun calls her his 'leman'—a designation not necessarily contradictory, but at least ambiguous. Harry's accountagrees with Wyntoun's very closely, yet he would seem to have had some other narrative before him, and possibly Wyntoun and Harry may have drawn mainly upon a common predecessor. However this may be, Harry, with inflexible allegiance to his hero, expressly affirms: 'Mine author says she was his rightwise wife.' The point really needs no consideration.

Harry lavishes a wealth of tender emotion over the loves of Wallace and Marion Bradfute, and his sympathetic feeling elevates him to genuine poetic expression, often touched with extreme delicacy. Marion lived at Lanark, 'a maiden mild' of eighteen. Her father, Sir Hugh de Bradfute, and her eldest brother, had been slain by Hazelrig, the Sheriff of Lanark; her mother, too, was dead; and such peace as she enjoyed was dependent on her having 'purchased King Edward's protection,' although that did not secure her from the offensive attentions of his local minions.

'Amiable and benign she was, and wise,Courteous and sweet, fulfillèd of gentrice,Her tongue well ruled, her face right fresh and fair.Withal she was a maid of virtue rare:Humbly her led, and purchased a good name,And kept herself with every wight from blame.True rightwise folk great favour did her lend.'

When Wallace first saw her, Hazelrig had just broached a proposal of marriage between her and his son. Harry dwells strongly on the division of Wallace's mind between the claims of war and the urgency of love; and he tells how the faithful Kerly's pointed advice broke down his hesitations. The inevitable conflict with Hazelrig arose. The Sheriff's emissaries fastened a quarrel on Wallace. Taken at disadvantage, he was compelled to retreat to his house. His wife, having admitted him and his men, and let them out by another way, held the pursuers in parley till his escape was assured. Whether then, or immediately after (on Hazelrig's return to town), she paid for her courageous fidelity with her life. Wallace, with a handful of men, came upon Hazelrig at dead of night, and slew him in his bedroom with his own hand.The Lanark rising and the death of the Sheriff certainly took place in May 1297.

Harry further asserts that a daughter was born to Wallace and his wife, that she married a squire named Shaw, and that 'right goodly men came of this lady young.' The edition of 1594 at this point inserts a few lines not found in the existing MS. stating that this daughter of Wallace's married a squire of 'Balliol's blood,' and that

'their heirs by line succeeded rightTo Lamington and other lands of worth.'

This points to an alleged second marriage with Sir William Baillie of Hoprig. To this allegation it is by no means a conclusive answer that Sir William Baillie, second of Hoprig, as son-in-law of Sir William Seton, obtained a charter of 'Lambiston' barony as late as 1368.

According to Harry's narrative, Wallace found some of his most active and trustworthy allies, especially in his earlier career, among his own relatives. This is at least extremely probable. Sir Richard Wallace of Riccarton gives him shelter and provision, and sends him his three sons, of whom Adam, the eldest, distinguishes himself conspicuously. The priests of Dunipace and Kilspindie we have already met. Wallace of Auchincruive, 'his cousin,' provides supplies for the outlaw of Laglane Wood and his single 'child.' Edward Little is Wallace's 'sister's son.' Tom Halliday, too, is Wallace's 'nephew'—his 'sib sister's son'; and Halliday's eldest daughter is the wife of Wallace's great lieutenant, Sir John the Graham; while his second daughter is the wife of Johnstone, 'a man of good degree,' installed as castellan of Lochmaben, the first castle that Wallace attempted to hold permanently. Young Auchinleck of Gilbank becomes Wallace's 'eyme' or 'uncle,' by marriage. Kirkpatrick is 'of kin,' and to 'Wallace' mother near.' And Kneland (or Cleland) and William Crawford are both designated his 'cousins'; Kneland, indeed, his 'near cousin.' The family tree must have thrown out shoots in many directions, and more likely than not Harry may be substantially right.

Wallace, as we have seen, and as the indictment on his trial stated, was a Scotsman born and bred. His ancestors on both sides, whether Keltic, Norman, or Saxon, had been domiciled in Scotland for more than a century, and had entered into the feeling and thought of the mass of the Scots population. Wallace himself, possibly with a view to the Church, had received as good an education as the times afforded. Whether or not the good priest of Dunipace inculcated in his opening mind the inestimable value of liberty, he was aroused, while yet 'in his tender age,' to bitter reprisals on the oppressors of his family and of his countrymen. A younger son, without rank or fortune or the experience of age, he girded on his sword 'both sharp and long,' and appealed to the justice of Heaven. Scorning intercession for relief of his outlawry, he betook himself to the fastnesses of his country, resolute to right his wrongs in the only way open to him, and filled with undying hatred to the tyrants of his native land.

'Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem.'—Enn.ap.Cic.Off.i. 24, 84.'Now, for our consciences, the arms are fair,When the intent of bearing them is just.'—Shakespeare,Henry IV., Part i., v. 2.'Thryldome is weill wer than deid.'—Barbour,The Bruce, i. 269.

'Unus homo nobis cunctando restituit rem.'—

Enn.ap.Cic.Off.i. 24, 84.

'Now, for our consciences, the arms are fair,When the intent of bearing them is just.'—Shakespeare,Henry IV., Part i., v. 2.

'Now, for our consciences, the arms are fair,When the intent of bearing them is just.'—

Shakespeare,Henry IV., Part i., v. 2.

'Thryldome is weill wer than deid.'—Barbour,The Bruce, i. 269.

'Thryldome is weill wer than deid.'—

Barbour,The Bruce, i. 269.

Apart from the Hazelrig and Ormsby episodes, the chroniclers plant Wallace at Stirling Bridge almost as if he had just started from the ground, or come down from the clouds, ready to command an army in the field. Yet they call him brigand, public robber, cut-throat, and other suchlike names, strangely inadequate as explanation of his command of the Scots against a mighty English host. Wallace's leadership really has to be accounted for on some more rational principle.

Now, Harry is the main guide up to the Hazelrig episode; and Harry has been grievously discredited. As the criticism of his poem stands, each reader must be left free to make his own deductions; but at least it may be claimed for Harry that each episode be judged on its merits, not by the jeers of Lord Hailes or an echo thereof. In any case, it is beyond all question that Wallace must have gone through some such experience as Harry details. Stirling Bridge was not an historical miracle.

It might be possible to refer some of the earlier exploits of Wallace, as recorded by Harry, to 1292, withoutmuch more violence than is involved in the like reference of the Selby episode. But there is no similar necessity. They all imply the presence of Sir Henry de Percy in the Ayr district, and Percy was appointed Warden of Galloway and Ayr and Castellan of Ayr, Wigton, Cruggelton, and Buittle on September 8, 1296, though he did not reach his post till well into October. It is excess of stringency to bind Harry definitely to particular months.

What Wallace had been doing in the gap between 1292 and 1296 remains unknown. It seems hopeless to connect him in any way with the events of March and April 1296, at Berwick and Dunbar; and it is likely enough that Sir Richard Wallace sedulously kept him out of mischief and danger, at Riccarton, till the fresh occupation of Galloway and Ayr by the English in October 1296. On the assumption, however, of his marriage with Marion Bradfute, which cannot easily be placed later than the first months of 1296, there must have been considerable intermissions of his restraint. Sir Reginald Crawford had duly submitted to Edward, who confirmed him in the Sheriffdom of Ayr on May 14 at Roxburgh.

The fresh involvement of Wallace with the English is ascribed by Harry to an accidental conflict with five men of Percy's train at the Water of Irvine. Wallace was fishing as Percy passed, and the men proceeded to appropriate his takings. He killed three of the five. Sir Richard was distracted. Plainly, Wallace could not remain longer at Riccarton. Taking a youth as his sole attendant, he rode straight to Wallace of Auchincruive, and sought shelter in Laglane Wood, where his relative secretly supplied him with necessaries.

Wallace, however, chafed in inaction. He would see what was doing in Ayr. At the market-cross he fell in with a champion, who was offering English soldiers and others a stroke on his back with a rough bucket-pole for a groat. Wallace gave him three groats, delivered his stroke, and broke the man's backbone. The English at once attacked him, and he had to slay five of them before he could escape to his horse, which he had leftwith his man at the edge of the wood. Further pursuit was in vain.

This affair having blown over, Wallace would again visit Ayr. It was market-day. Sir Reginald's servant had bought fish, when Percy's steward insultingly demanded them; and on Wallace's interposing a gentle remonstrance, the steward in choler struck him with his hunting-staff. Wallace instantly collared him, and stabbed him to the heart: 'caterer thereafter, sure, he was no more.' Some fourscore men-at-arms had been told off to keep order on market-day, and Wallace was at once assailed. After a fierce struggle, with many casualties, he was borne down and taken prisoner—'to pine him more' than forthright death. Cast into an ugsome cell, and badly fed, he fell very ill; and when the gaoler was sent down to bring him up for judgment, he found his prisoner apparently dead, and so reported. In the result, Wallace's body was tossed over the wall into 'a draff midden,' presumably lifeless. Hearing of this, his old nurse, who lived in the New Town of Ayr, begged leave to take the body away for burial; and, her request being contemptuously granted, she had it carried to her house. Her tendance revived Wallace, but she kept up the outward pretence that he was dead. It argues a good nurse and a good constitution if he made recovery within the limits of time indicated by Harry.

At this period the famous Thomas the Rimer happened to be on a visit at the neighbouring monastery of Faile (St. Mary's). He felt deep concern for Wallace's fate. The 'Minister' of the house despatched a messenger to ascertain the truth privately. On hearing that Wallace was really alive,

'Then Thomas said: "For sooth, ere he decease,Shall many thousands in the field make end.From Scotland he shall forth the Southron send,And Scotland thrice he shall bring to the peace.So good of hand again shall ne'er be kenned."'

A similar prophecy is mentioned by Harry as lying heavy on the mind of Percy—a prophecy that a Wallace should turn the English out of Scotland. 'Wise men,'said Percy, 'the sooth by his escape may see.' The same view, according to Harry, took a strong hold of the popular mind.

Sending his benefactress and her family to his mother at Elderslie, Wallace got hold of a rusty sword, and set out for Riccarton. On the way he encountered an English squire named Longcastell (Lancaster), with two men, who insisted on taking him to Ayr. Wallace pleaded to be let alone, for he was sick. Longcastell pronounced him a sturdy knave, and drew his sword. Wallace at once struck him dead with his rusty weapon, and then killed the two followers. Taking the spoils, he hurried to Riccarton. There came Sir Reginald and Wallace's mother and many friends, and great was the rejoicing.

Wallace, however, was eager to avenge him on his enemies. He would not rest at Riccarton. Accordingly, he was furnished forth, and was accompanied by several lads of spirit, his relatives and friends. Adam Wallace, Sir Richard's eldest son, now eighteen, Robert Boyd, Kneland, 'near cousin to Wallace,' Edward Little, 'his sister's son,' and Gray and Kerly, with some attendants, bound them to ride with him to Mauchline Moor. Learning there that an English convoy from Carlisle to Ayr was approaching, Wallace rode to Loudon Hill and lay in wait. The convoy came in sight. It was conducted by Fenwick, the officer that had commanded the English in the recent combat here, when Wallace's father was slain. This concurrence of circumstances exalted Wallace's spirit, and steeled his mind to a resolute revenge. He had but 50 men against 180; and his men fought on foot. By throwing up a rough dyke of stones, he had narrowed the approach of the harnessed English horse, whose riders fancied they had no more to do than to trample their enemies down. Wallace promptly disabused their minds of that time-honoured superciliousness. His men plied them first with spears and then with swords, keeping close order,and defying the horsemen's efforts to scatter them. Wallace himself in fury struck Fenwick from his horse, Boyd giving the finishing blow; and a hundred of the English lay dead on the field. The superstition of the invincibility of armed horse by footmen was exploded by Wallace's tactics and fierce resolution. The victors carried off Percy's convoy to the depths of the forest of Clydesdale, whence they freely distributed 'stuff and horses' privately to friendly neighbours. The success of this daring effort tended to corroborate the prophecy of True Thomas and spread the fame of Wallace.

Wallace's Loudon Hill exploit came under the cognisance of Percy in council at Glasgow. Sir Reginald was taken bound for the culprit's good behaviour, and, in order to shield the Sheriff, Wallace's comrades induced him to consent to a peace for ten months—a peace limited to Percy's jurisdiction. Presently Wallace would yet again see Ayr, and went to Ayr with fifteen men. Invited by an English buckler-player to try his sword, Wallace cut through buckler, hand, and brain down to the shoulders. At once a fight ensued, at great odds, and the Scots had to retire, Wallace protecting the rear. Harry says 29 out of 120 English, including three of Percy's near kin, were slain. Percy, however, recognised that Wallace was not the aggressor, and contented himself with binding Sir Reginald to keep him from market-town and fair and like resorts. So for a week or two Wallace stayed at Crosby.

Another Council was now summoned at Glasgow, 'to statute the country.' Sir Reginald, as Sheriff, obeyed the summons, taking Wallace with him. Wallace rode ahead, overtaking the Sheriff's baggage, which soon came up on Percy's. Percy's horse was tired, and Percy's conductor insolently appropriated Sir Reginald's fresher beast, despite Wallace's remonstrance. 'Reason him ruled,' and he returned to Sir Reginald, who took it very calmly. Wallace, however, fired up, and swore that, peace or no peace, please the Sheriff or otherwise, he would exact amends for the wrong. Spurring forward again in high dudgeon, with Gray and Kerly by his side, he quickly overtook Percy's baggage east of Cathcart,slew the five attendants, and took the spoil. Then said Wallace, 'At some strength would I be.'

The Council promptly outlawed Wallace, and made Sir Reginald swear to hold no friendly communication with him without leave. Meantime Wallace, with his two men, had passed to the Lennox. Harry sends him to Earl Malcolm, who proposed to make him 'master of his household.' The Earl had, in fact, already sworn fealty to Edward, not once, but twice (March 14 and August 28), though Harry says, 'he had not then made band'; but that consideration would be open to easy interpretation in the remote fastnesses of Dumbartonshire. In any case, Wallace is said to have declined the offer, his mind being set upon wreaking revenge on the English. He was joined by about sixty men, some of them Irish exiles, and all of them pretty rough. Two of them must be signalised: Fawdon, a big dour fellow; and Steven of Ireland, a most valuable recruit, who soon became a great friend of Kerly's.

Back to Index Next