William Wallace

by Andrew Fisher

  A comparison with part of the career of Robert Bruce may help to underline the above argument. When in February 1306 Bruce murdered his enemy and rival, John Comyn of Badenoch, in Dumfries, he was forced not long afterwards to emulate William and go into hiding to escape the vengeance of Edward I.17 Fortunately for Bruce, he was spared the years of pursuit suffered by William, for Edward was dead at Burgh-by-Sands in July of the following year and Edward II, although determined to retain Scotland, lacked his father’s obsessive drive. Bruce’s adventures are well enough recorded to make clear the strains under which he laboured while a fugitive from the first Edward’s justice. At the time of the murder of Comyn, Bruce was five months short of his thirty-second birthday.

  William’s relationship with Andrew Murray18 appears to support the view that in 1297 he was in his prime, perhaps of an age with Bruce. Murray was himself a young man when he and William joined forces, and he came of a family which was a major vassal of the Scottish Crown. He and William had, it would appear, nothing in common, the one the heir to a great and honourable inheritance, his new colleague at worst an outlaw. Yet, from the evidence available to us, we can see that each took at once to the other. Their alliance, however weighted,19 was to prove of inestimable value to the Scottish cause. It could hardly have come about without trust. That trust, and their relationship as a whole, is more easily explained if we accept that they were of the some generation. The attributes which they shared and which united them were, too, those of the young. They did not hesitate or prevaricate where their elders had faltered with such disastrous consequences for Scotland. They did not respect, nor were they overawed by reputation. The slow but impressive parade of the English army before Stirling did not break their resolve. Given an opportunity by the incompetence of Surrey and Cressingham, they fought and were right to do so. The decision to attack the English army, despite the great power it had demonstrated in previous encounters with the Scots, surely belonged to young men, as did the victory which resulted.

  We know that William had two brothers, John and Malcolm, both of whom we shall meet in intriguing circumstances. Blind Harry alone credits William with two sisters. William is said to have been educated by his uncle, a priest, and subsequently by a second uncle, also a priest, at Dundee. Quite why he should have been sent so far from home, and not nearby Paisley Abbey, with which the Wallaces had been associated at the latest since its inception, is not clear. But with such an educational background, wherever obtained, it is perhaps not surprising if, again according to Blind Harry, Wallace was considering a vocation in the Church as his life neared its close.

  While a student at Dunipace Wallace, we are told, was taught by his uncle an abiding love of liberty, usually quoted in the Latin couplet:

  Dico te verum, libertas optima rerum:

  Nunquam servili sub nexu vivito, fili!

  I tell you truthfully, freedom is the best of all things:

  Never live under the yoke of slavery, my son.

  If nothing else, this quotation rings true in the light of Wallace’s career, dedicated as it was to the pursuit of liberty for his native land. During his sojourn at Dundee, he is said to have made the acquaintance of John Blair, a Benedictine monk. Blair, at this time or later, left the contemplative life, and became Wallace’s personal chaplain, constantly at his side in the great struggle in which Wallace was embroiled. Typical of his day, Blair, according to Blind Harry, fought as well as preached and confessed. In his retirement at Dunfermline, where he died, Blair wrote a Latin prose life of Wallace, on which Harry, with due acknowledgement, drew. If we accept the traditional account, Wallace was for the time and given his origins, well educated. Thus he was familiar with Greek as well as Latin. His knowledge of the Bible was, it goes without saying, extensive. Since he was a younger son, with few prospects, he was, we are left to assume, intended for the priesthood, thus following in the steps of the uncles to whom he owed his education. What appears to have been an eventful and happy, perhaps even idyllic, life was interrupted by the machinations of the ruthless and evil Edward I of England, who saw in the death of Alexander III the opportunity to make himself master of Scotland.

  This popular version of Wallace’s life, with its combination of Blind Harry’s narrative skills and a little fact, has exercised a considerable fascination for Scots. It has much, it would seem, to commend it: the virtue of continuity in a family established in Scotland for over a century; three brothers, all knighted, all of whom served with varying degrees of distinction in the war with England; a maternal grandfather who perished in the same cause,20 and a villainous enemy. With this in mind, it is tempting not to dismiss it. We know little enough of Wallace before he made his explosive entrance on to the stage of history in 1297 to dare to discount entirely what has for many been not legend but truth. If Harry used the work of John Blair, now disappeared, who is to state categorically that he did not have access to other sources, also lost to us? Blair’s account of Wallace would, if it had come down to us, be invaluable, the sole contemporary authority. We might then be able the better to evaluate Harry’s contribution to the story of the patriot.21

  But we do not have Blair’s account and if we return to the popular version for enlightenment, we find at once that it fails on two crucial counts. The first concerns Wallace’s parentage. It is to Harry that we owe the name of Sir Malcolm Wallace of Elderslie as the father of the patriot. Harry does not identify the location of Elderslie, and this in itself has caused dispute.22 Despite Harry, there was no unanimity on the name of Wallace’s father. Both before and after Harry, sources offered Andrew rather than Malcolm.23 We now know that Wallace’s father was neither Malcolm nor Andrew but Alan. The evidence is indisputable. In 1297, after the battle of Stirling Bridge, the victorious Wallace and his wounded and dying colleague, Andrew Murray, sent a letter to the mayor and communes of the German towns of Lübeck and Hamburg. The purpose of the letter is discussed below,24 but appended to it was a seal which resolves the question of Wallace’s parentage. The inscription states ‘[Wilelm]vs Filius Alani Walais’, that is, William, son of Alan Wallace.25 For the most recent writer on Wallace, this fact will not change his (i.e. Wallace’s) status as Scotland’s foremost patriot since the fifteenth century, ‘any more than would certainty on his date of birth or his marital status’.26 Thus speaks modern man, acknowledging, a little wearily perhaps, the potency of the later accretions to the few facts we have about Wallace. It is not easy to disagree with this analysis.27 But the revelation of Alan, not Malcolm, as Wallace’s father provides, it can be argued, a new perspective on the patriot.

  Who, then, was Alan Wallace? We have one possibility, and an intriguing one. On 28 August 1296, at Berwick, an Alan Wallace made his submission to Edward I. He is listed on the Ragman Roll28 among ‘tenantz le roi du counte de Are’ or crown tenants, in Ayrshire. With him appear the names of John Crawford, Thomas Winchester, Robert Boyd, Alan fitz Grimbaud, Nicol Slanes and Patrick the Archer. If the Alan of the Ragman Roll was indeed the patriot’s father, then the current argument in favour of an Ayrshire rather than a Renfrewshire origin for Wallace can be said to be settled.29 We must also, as a consequence, reconsider the question of the relationship between the Wallace and Stewart families, which, as noted above, went back to the time of Richard Wallace and his lord, Walter FitzAlan. The relationship, if Alan, a crown tenant, was Wallace’s father, can no longer be viewed as feudal. The contemporary English opinion that Wallace, in his rebellion, was the creature of James the Stewart,30 is undermined.31 Wallace in 1297 needed no such prompting.32

  Another treasured belief that can now be challenged, assuming Alan to be Wallace’s father, is the attitude to, and role in, the war with Edward I of Wallace’s family as a whole. The contribution of Wallace’s brothers, Malcolm and John, whose existence is proven, to the war with England has tended to persuade us that the family was united in its purpose. That comfortable assumption is not necessarily correct. Where, to begin with, did the loyal
ties of the Alan Wallace of the Ragman Roll lie? We may be confident that they were more complex than those of his putative son.33 The name of William Wallace himself is, of course, absent from the Ragman Roll. Good reasons can be advanced for this.34 But even if he had been a landowner, and thus required to swear fealty to Edward, we would no doubt prefer to think that the Wallace with whom we are familiar would not have been numbered among those who submitted to the English king in 1296. Alan Wallace, however, as a crown tenant, may simply have followed the lead of John Balliol,35 a legalistic argument which Edward brought to bear on the patriot in 1305.36 Alan may also have been a realist who, like so many others, saw survival as paramount. In this he was not unique. Nor did submission in 1296 preclude adherence to the patriotic cause at a later date. Robert Boyd, one of those listed with Alan Wallace in the Ragman Roll, was an early supporter of Bruce’s rebellion and rose high in his favour, a fact reflected in the improvement in his family’s fortunes.37 No such change in status, as far as we are aware, awaited Alan Wallace, who may have been apolitical, devoid of any close interest in the evolving political situation in Scotland, his concerns local and personal rather than national.

  Alan Wallace’s apparent lack of involvement in the struggle against Edward I is not reflected in the careers of William Wallace’s brothers, Malcolm and John. Both fought on the patriotic side and John paid with his life, suffering the same death as his brother. But as so often in the story of William Wallace, little is straightforward. In an incident at Peebles in 1299, to which we shall return,38 Malcolm was involved in an unseemly brawl at a meeting of Scottish leaders. Malcolm had spoken out in defence of his younger brother, William, but was not, as one might expect, in the pro-Balliol camp, like William, but in the company of Bruce. This Bruce connection is also found in the case of John Wallace, who met his tragic fate in 1306 as a supporter of Bruce’s rebellion, a victim of Edward I’s retribution against any on the patriotic side unfortunate enough to fall into his hands. But can this conceivably be the same John Wallace who in December 1304 was in English service? John Wallace and Robert Boyd were at this time accompanying two English clerks on their royal master’s business in the west of Scotland.39 The possibility that John Wallace was acting on behalf of that same king who was even then hunting down John’s brother William is a disturbing one. It will be argued below40 that before his capture William was outside the mainstream of Scottish political thinking. His brothers Malcolm and John were both at times associated with Bruce, and this tends to suggest that in the Wallace family itself, it was William whose views had become outdated. For Malcolm and John the future for Scotland lay with Bruce, not with John Balliol or his son, Edward. When they reached this conclusion we cannot tell, but in the case of Malcolm it was not later than the year after Falkirk. But it is a far step from support for Bruce to serving Edward I, as John Wallace would appear to have done. Can it be that John took his lead from Bruce? At the beginning of 1304, the year in which we find John collaborating with the English, Bruce himself was in pursuit of William Wallace;41 perhaps by this time John had started on that association with Bruce which led to his death in London two years later.

  Alongside Malcolm and John Wallace as allies of Bruce, we can place Reginald Crawford, not the maternal grandfather of the popular version of the patriot’s life, but another of the same name, generally believed to be Wallace’s uncle. In 1296, with Edward’s defeat of John Balliol, Crawford was allowed to remain in office as sheriff of Ayr, an unusual decision in the circumstances. The date of Crawford’s confirmation as sheriff is interesting; it follows on the battle of Dunbar but precedes Balliol’s abdication. One modern writer sees this as a reward for service on the English side, along with the Bruces.42 Crawford continued for some time to enjoy Edward’s trust, but then is lost to us for some ten years. In 1306 his lands were forfeited for his adherence to Bruce.43 A year later, he was captured and executed by the English. In February 1307, Crawford, with two of Bruce’s brothers, Thomas and Alexander, together with Malcolm MacQuillan of Kintyre, and an unidentified Irish kinglet, landed on the coast of Galloway with a considerable following.44 They were at once set upon by hostile forces under Dungal Macdouall, a committed opponent of Bruce.45 Macdouall defeated them comprehensively, beheaded MacQuillan and the Irish kinglet on the shore, and despatched their heads to Edward, then at Lanercost. The two Bruces and Crawford were carried to Carlisle, to suffer the death of traitors after Prince Edward had seen them. Crawford was hanged and beheaded; although the possibility has been advanced that he died elsewhere,46 the record makes it clear that Crawford was executed at Carlisle.

  The evidence that we have thus tells us that Wallace’s family was not united behind him in the cause of John Balliol. Nor did it, if Alan was indeed Wallace’s father, come from Elderslie in Renfrewshire. The link with Ayr has gained strength from the Lübeck seal, as has the connection, through his brothers and, perhaps his uncle, with Bruce. The picture of Wallace as one who earned his living or fought as an archer has also been confirmed by the seal. The reverse depicts a hand or hands pulling an arrow on a bow. That this is Wallace’s seal, not that of his colleague, Andrew Murray, is borne out by an English account. This, while scorning Wallace’s origins and upbringing, tells us that it was through ‘bow and quiver’ that he made his living. Can it be that the seal supports the contemporary English denigration of Wallace’s social status? Alan Wallace, a crown tenant, would rank lower than Malcolm Wallace, a knighted landowner. Much also was made by English sources of William Wallace the outlaw. As we shall see, Wallace was undoubtedly outlawed at least once but the notion of Wallace as a Scottish Robin Hood has not been unpopular.47 The ‘bow and quiver’ description would seem to add some potency to that belief.

  It was stated above that the popular version of Wallace’s life fails on two crucial counts. The first was the matter of his parentage. The second is the lack of conclusive evidence to answer the fundamental question of the transformation of the unknown younger son into the colossal figure of 1297. The standard account does have one advantage, it must be said; it leads quite naturally to what might be called the romantic and cataclysmic view of Wallace’s first recorded assault upon the English. Wallace, we are to understand, could only have been forced out of the quiet and placid life he had known by some single violent act or by personal tragedy or, better still, by a combination of the two. In this context, the intervention of Edward I in the internal affairs of the kingdom of Scotland must, of course, provide the setting, the murder by the English sheriff of Lanark, the unspeakable William Heselrig, of Wallace’s wife or mistress, Marion Braidfute, heiress of Lamington, the occasion. This explanation of the supposed conversion from the student of theology to the practitioner of warfare appears to contain a contradiction within itself. The relationship with Marion Braidfute, whether that of her husband or lover, is not what one would expect of a man bent, we have already been led to believe, on the life of a priest. The hot-blooded, savage murder of Heselrig, with no thought given to the consequences, is, on the other hand, exactly the reaction of the young man Wallace is generally perceived to have been in 1297.

  The legend of Marion Braidfute, with its accompanying account of Wallace’s life, persists. But even if based on truth, it is not enough. It does not address an absorbing question: the origins of Wallace’s military skill. Nothing in the words of Blind Harry or in those who follow him prepares us for the genius of 1297–98. How, then, are we to explain that genius? There would appear to be three possible answers. The first is that, unknown to us, he had before 1297 served an apprenticeship as a soldier. It follows from this that he had left Scotland to fight, for no opportunity was to be found in his homeland. Whatever adventures he conjures up for Wallace, not even Blind Harry hints at such a passage in Wallace’s life before 1297. Yet can we ignore this possibility? What better career existed for a younger, ladless son than that of a soldier, the more so if the young man was, as later events were to show, exceptionally equipped for
the role? If Wallace did indeed seek employment as a soldier and therefore went abroad, both Wales and France suggest themselves as areas to which he might have directed his steps in, for example, 1293–94. In both countries Wallace’s later enemy, Edward I, was engaged. It is an intriguing thought, but one incapable of proof, that Wallace might have already served in a campaign in which the English king was involved. It is even more intriguing to think, but just as incapable of proof, that he, like more than one of his fellow-countrymen, fought not against but with Edward.

  If Wallace was a soldier, his involvement in the war with England prior to 1297 must be considered. While the possibility cannot be ignored, it seems unlikely that his involvement would have escaped the attention of later writers, whether Scottish or English. For the former, it would underline his total commitment to the Scottish cause; for the latter it would surely be used as an indication that his treason was of longer standing than is usually accepted. Each school of thought would be confirmed in its prejudice and not fail to give it expression.

  The second answer, which, like the first, helps to fill part of the gap in our knowledge of his life, is that he learned something of the skill of a soldier while an outlaw. Wallace the outlaw is, of course, a familiar and appealing theme.48 Blind Harry could not resist it. There is about Wallace’s adventures, in the form they are transmitted to us by Harry, the mark of the outlaw: the bravado, the challenges given and taken, the impudence, the insults, the exceptional talent with the bow, the carelessness of death, the protection of and by the poor, above all, the heroic stature in the face of great odds. Thus, Wallace slays the son of Selby, the English constable of Dundee,49 as, historically, he slew Heselrig, as an affront to a superior and detested enemy. The outlaw does not hide from the enemy but instead seeks him out. All this we can recognise as traditional outlaw lore. But it has a basic flaw. As will be seen, Wallace was a careful, even painstaking man. Far from seeking out the enemy, he prepared to meet him on Wallace’s own terms. Neither at Stirling nor Falkirk did William seek battle.