Hardly had a period of six months passed since the Scots had bound themselves by the above-mentioned solemn oath of fidelity and subjection to the King of the English, when the reviving malice of that perfidious race excited their minds to fresh sedition. For the bishop of the Church in Glasgow, whose personal name was Robert Wishart, ever foremost in treason, conspired with the Steward of the realm named James, for a new piece of insolence, yea, for a new chapter of ruin. Not daring openly to break their pledged faith to the king, they caused a certain bloody man, William Wallace, who had been chief of brigands in Scotland, to revolt against the king and assemble the people in his support.26
Here we have Wishart and the Stewart not merely guilty of breaking their oath to Edward and indulging in a conspiracy against him, but in league with the most notorious outlaw and rebel of them all. Just as we cannot place Wallace’s first action against the English with any certainty before May 1297, so we are ignorant of the role of Wishart and the Stewart in events before then. It is reasonable to suppose that, perhaps like Wallace, they profited from a situation not of their making. If that is the case, we are left with the fact that the earlier disturbances were spontaneous and haphazard, not the work of any one person or group. This does not reduce the value to the Scottish cause of Wishart and the Stewart any more than it lessens the impact of Wallace.
What is to be made of Lanercost’s statement that Wishart and the Stewart persuaded Wallace to rebel? Failing reliable evidence to the contrary, we are free to believe that Wallace was a faithful son of the Church in Scotland. His later violence against English priests suggests an almost pathological hatred of those who had, as he understood it, persecuted the Scottish Church.27 It is a big step from accepting that loyalty to the Church, from accepting also that Wallace was an ally of Wishart and the Stewart in 1297, sharing their views, to agreeing that they had led him into rebellion against Edward I. However little we know of Wallace, it can be said with some assurance that he was, if nothing else, his own man. He can be pictured listening to the other two, giving them the respect due to them by reason of their station, sympathising with their distress at the English occupation of Scotland. Perhaps they were better able to articulate the emotions which all felt. It is far less easy to visualise his being led by these two representatives of that class which had so dismally failed to uphold the honour and freedom of Scotland in 1296. It is quite conceivable that as a preliminary he asked Wishart’s blessing – no doubt speedily given – for the undertaking upon which he was entering. A pledge of support from James the Stewart would be no less welcome. All of this would be in keeping with his dedication to due procedure, which manifested itself in its most extreme, and fatal, form in his allegiance to Balliol.
Such formalities apart, Wallace required no prodding, no permission. He was, then as always, fully capable of making up his own mind. We have only to compare the fierce, even explosive, nature of his conduct in May 1297 with the dithering of Wishart and the Stewart in June and July to see the truth.28 The English determination to denigrate Wallace at all costs may help us to understand why he is portrayed as subordinate to Wishart and the Stewart. Only be relegating him to a supporting role – all that his social origins entitled him to – could his achievement be explained. Those who wrote of him in this way could not see that, with Wallace, a new age was beginning. He rose to prominence through his own ability. What is true of Wallace – that he was essentially his own inspiration – was true of the friend and colleague he was about to make, Andrew Murray.29
The threads of the resistance to Edward I came together in the persons of Andrew Murray and William Wallace in the late summer of 1297. It is appropriate to rank Murray first for the reason that we know more of him at this time than we do of Wallace. The son of Sir Andrew Murray of Petty, he was present at the débâcle of Dunbar and there, with his father and uncle, made prisoner.30 During his incarceration at Chester he had occasion to reflect upon the futility of the Scottish tactics at Dunbar. Escaping from Chester,31 he made his way to the family lands in Moray and there, secure from English interference, planned rebellion. It does no disservice to Murray, ‘one of the chivalric figures of Scottish history’ as he has been called,32 to stress that, unlike Wallace, his prominence in the early days of his fame depended upon his position in society. He had, after all, gained no reputation as a soldier; Dunbar was no recommendation. That intriguing figure, Alexander Pilche, burgess of Inverness,33 may well have been a more potent factor in the north than Murray. But there is no question that, once he chose to exercise it, leadership of this part of the rebellion lay with Murray as of right. With Pilche and those others who had already made their mark on events added to his own following, Murray had a formidable force at his disposal. Mobile, urgent, impassioned, they struck at the English with such effect as can best be measured from the pleas for help sent from the north to Edward.34 If the writers of these pleas, ‘diligent and faithful friends’ of the English king as they were careful to describe themselves, were prone to hide behind the excuse of superior enemy numbers – Murray, they said, led ‘a very large body of rogues’35 – we cannot doubt that the pressure upon them was intense.
It must be a matter of regret that we do not know the source of the new Scottish tactics, for such they were. It is quite understandable that the likes of Pilche should rely upon hit-and-run. But what of Murray himself? He had been raised in a tradition which, as Dunbar demonstrated, was both outmoded and self-destructive. Yet it does appear that, once returned to his homeland from Chester, he had no difficulty in adapting to the situation. Did he come to realise, once involved, that the tactics of the Pilche and the others with him were the only ones suitable in the circumstances? Or had he reached the obvious conclusion while a prisoner of the English? If we had the answer to this problem we might be closer to a realistic assessment of the respective merits of Murray and Wallace. All that can be said with any pretensions to accuracy is that Murray was swift to learn and a charismatic leader of the rebellion in the north. Throughout the summer, from May to August, he continued to pose an insuperable problem for the English and their supporters. Arrogantly he laid siege to Castle Urquhart, and although foiled in that attempt, he was not diverted from his purpose. He took from the English other castles, Inverness, Elgin, and Banff among them.
Edward had not been slow to react to news of the events in the north. Not all Scots were sympathetic to Murray; on them Edward had relied to keep the country quiet. Murray had not taken long to prove that the administration, in which Henry Cheyne, bishop of Aberdeen, and Effie, countess of Ross ranked high, could not cope with him. To stiffen their resolve, Edward released from his retinue of the Scottish lords whom he had summoned to join him on his continental expedition, John of Badenoch and John, earl of Buchan, both of them Comyns.36 They, like a number of other Scottish lords, were perhaps less dedicated to the English cause than Edward would have wished. That at least was the opinion of Cressingham who was driven to report to Edward in the following terms:
The peace on the other side of the Scottish Sea is still in obscurity, as it is said, as to the doings of the earls who are there. But at all events we hope that if our business succeeds well on the day of Saint Laurence as to the bishop of Glasgow and the others, as far as the people on the other side of the Scottish Sea are concerned, we hope soon to have them at our pleasure by God’s grace. Sir Andrew de Rait37 is going to you with a credence, which he has shown to me, and which is false in many points and obscure, as will be shown hereafter, as I fear; and, therefore, sire, if it be your pleasure, you will give little weight to it.38 Thus Cressingham relayed both his suspicions and his concern.39 Indeed, Cressingham had seen his suspicions confirmed. By the time he was writing to Edward,40 the volatile nature of the Scottish lords had already declared itself.41 But both they and Cressingham had been overtaken by one far greater than they. In May, William Wallace, in the words of Fordun, had ‘raised his head’. It is a curiously effective and telling phrase. Wallac
e, we learn from it, had suddenly erupted upon the scene, no longer obscure, to embody henceforth the spirit of Scottish nationalism. With the murder of the sheriff of Lanark, he sprang full-blown, as it were, into the national conscience and has remained there since. It was an act which was accorded a significance which it has not lost.
As is so often the case with Wallace, the events of May 1297 are unclear. The reason for the murder of William Heselrig, Edward’s sheriff of Lanark, escapes us even now. The traditional account has not lost its potency:
Wallace had become a magnet for the discontented. He had recently married a young woman who lived in Lanark. Visiting her by stealth, as a marked man, he clashed with an English patrol. Fighting his way clear, he retreated to her house and as his pursuers hammered on the front door he escaped by the back to the rocky Cartland Crags. Enraged by the failure to capture him, Sir William Heselrig,42 Sheriff of Lanark, ordered the house to be burned and all within it, wife and servants, to be put to the sword. From that day Wallace vowed an undying vengeance against the English.
Gathering together a band of desperate men, he fell by night on the sheriff and his armed guard, hewed the sheriff into small pieces with his own sword and burned the buildings and those within them.
For the first time one of the high officials of the hated conquerors had been slain and a ripple of jubilation spread through the oppressed.
What we are offered here is the account by Blind Harry,43 rendered into today’s English. Wallace thus gains his revenge for the murder of his beloved in that bloody fashion which so characterises him in the work of Blind Harry. Heselrig, in this scenario, cannot simply be killed; his body must be dismembered.44 Those who made up the sheriff’s suite, whether they had played a part in the murder of Marion Braidfute or not, cannot escape retribution and must be made to suffer, and with appropriate horror.45 Measured against certain of Wallace’s later recorded actions, this version of events at Lanark, open to question though it may be, has the ring of authenticity. The fate of Heselrig compares with that of Cressingham after Stirling. The burning of buildings in Lanark differs only in scale from what Wallace did in the north of England. The burning alive of English soldiers was something of which he was capable, especially if the story of the Barns of Ayr is based on fact.46 That Wallace behaved violently at Lanark is indisputable. He was a ferocious man; however motivated, he employed no half-measures when faced with the enemy. Something of the horror of Lanark can be gauged from the words of Thomas Grey of Heton, whose father, also Thomas, survived the event. Wallace
came by night upon the said sheriff and surprised him, when Thomas Grey, who was at that time in the suite of the said sheriff, was left stripped for dead in the mêlée when the English were defending themselves. The said Thomas lay all night naked between the two burning houses which the Scots had set on fire, whereof the heat kept life in him, until he was recognised at daybreak and carried off by William Lundy who caused him to be restored to good health.47
The origins of Wallace’s ferociousness at Lanark need not lie in the death of Marion Braidfute. She, like another and far more celebrated Marion in an earlier age, belongs to the outlaw tradition rather than to history. Revenge may, of course, have taken Wallace to Lanark, revenge for an unknown friend or for other actions on the part of the English. A less romantic era, such as our own, might look for the reason for the murder of Heslerig in more reliable if pedestrian sources. Perhaps the most important clue to the circumstances it to be discovered in the indictment laid against Wallace at his trial in 1305.48 There he was charged with having slain Heselrig on a day when the latter was holding a country court in Lanark. If this is the case, two explanations may be offered for Wallace’s actions. The first is that he had personal reasons for murdering Heselrig. Heselrig in his official capacity may have entered some judgement against Wallace which led to a quarrel, then to murder. It will be remembered that neither Wallace’s own name nor that of his brother Malcolm appeared on the Ragman Roll. Should that omission indicate that one or both of the brothers had been outlawed or found guilty of some offence against Edward, Heselrig’s assize at Lanark may have been connected to the previous event. Wallace’s descent on Lanark may therefore have been prompted by a desire to right a wrong; a refusal or threat on the part of the unfortunate sheriff may have brought about his death. The second explanation, more perhaps in keeping with Wallace’s reputation, is that the assize at Lanark offered the chance to strike a blow at the representative of the English king as he was dispensing justice to an oppressed people. Wallace, therefore, would have no personal reason for acting. This second explanation, at least in retrospect, would seem symbolic, as was the absence of the Wallace name from the Ragman Roll.
It is debatable whether Wallace’s motives at Lanark mattered at all. Premeditated or not, the timing of the murder was remarkable. Much of Scotland was already in a ferment; news of the disturbances could not entirely be suppressed by the authorities. The murder of Heselrig, dramatic, barbarous, had an immediate impact. Heselrig’s death had several consequences. Of these, one perhaps has not always been given sufficient emphasis. Whatever his status before Lanark, Wallace was now an outlaw, one whom Edward was unlikely to pardon.49 Like Bruce after Dumfries, Wallace after Lanark could not go back to what he had been. He was no longer anonymous; he was now identified as an enemy, soon no doubt to be the prey, of the English king. At Lanark Wallace had posed a challenge and offered an insult; Edward was not the man to ignore either. Strangely, however, in the light of the later significance attached to the murder of Heselrig, we can find no evidence of Edward’s own reaction. This contrasts vividly with his behaviour in 1306, when he was informed of the incident at Dumfries. At first apparently loath to believe in Bruce’s guilt, he did at length order action of the most extreme kind. Aymer de Valence was instructed, as Barbour tells us, ‘to burn and slay and raise dragon’,50 and Edward without doubt planned for Bruce the same punishment he had inflicted on Wallace. If in 1297 he was as angered by the murder of Heselrig, we have no proof of it. His later viciousness is usually explained by the events of the intervening years and his own instability. Despite this, one cannot but wonder why, as far as we are aware, Wallace did not in 1297 seem to affect him personally.
Nonetheless, Wallace, in May 1297, may be said to have had no alternative to full-scale rebellion. In this he could not have succeeded, unless he is acknowledged to be of the stuff of heroes. After Lanark he did not run into hiding; he was available, visible, potent. For once English and Scottish chroniclers agree; Wallace’s original band of some thirty men grew at once. It is to be expected that in the English accounts those who joined him would be characterised as scum and criminals. Thus we read: ‘He [Wallace] … convoked all who were outlawed to himself, and acted as if he were the chief of them, and they increased to many people.’51 Guisborough’s description of Wallace’s followers, who in his eyes are nothing but ‘vagrants, fugitives, and outlaws’, is balanced on the Scottish side by Fordun.52 Here more honourable motives are ascribed to the Scots: ‘From that time there were gathered to him all who were of bitter heart and were weighed down beneath the burden of bondage under the intolerable rule of English domination, and he became their leader.’ For these unfortunates, rebellion was preferable to slavery. The calibre of person drawn to Wallace, whether we accept the one or the other version of events, cannot have been high. It tells us much of his ability that he was able to weld them into a coherent and successful force; no mere rabble could have defeated the English at Stirling.
In the increase in his force we may find a second consequence of the murder of Heselrig. It has been argued above that the assertion of the Lanercost chronicler that the bishop of Glasgow and James the Stewart inspired Wallace to rebellion is erroneous. His success at Lanark in killing the representative of the English king, and its effect upon recruitment, cannot have been unknown to the other two. It is at this point, rather than earlier, that they are likelier to have become involved wit
h Wallace. Here was the opening for these rather timid men to stand with the new hero, to give him advice, above all perhaps, to provide men, horses, equipment. This is a less important role than Lanercost allocates to them. It is not to be disparaged, however. The support of Wishart and the Stewart, given their standing in Scotland, must have guaranteed Wallace a certain legitimacy and, with it, power.
With Heselrig dead, Wallace acted with great energy. That he was able to move, apparently, with total freedom cannot wholly have been the consequence of Lanark. A riposte on the part of the English was called for in these circumstances; no such is recorded. The English administration was either paralysed by the speed of events both in the west and elsewhere or unable for some reason to put troops in the field. It is possible that attention was, after Lanark, concentrated on the border; the fear of a Scottish incursion was ever-present and Wallace’s murder of Heselrig may have been seen as a preliminary to a raid south. Certainly, the atmosphere on the English side of the border was already tense; ‘all the knights and free tenants (of Westmorland) are in Cumberland to defend the march between England and Scotland against the coming of the Scots.’53 The propaganda value of Lanark was no doubt considerable, but English inertia gave Wallace space and time in which to plan and carry out his next endeavour.
Heselrig had been an important official but Wallace now aimed for a more senior figure. He raced to Scone where William Ormsby, like Heselrig the dispenser of Edward’s law, was in residence. At Wallace’s side was a new colleague, Sir William Douglas, who had surrendered the castle of Berwick to Edward in the year before. Douglas, know as ‘Le Hardi’, the Bold or the Rash, shared a propensity for violence with Wallace; it did not require the sack of Berwick, where the inhabitants ‘fell like autumn leaves’,54 to turn Douglas to extreme conduct. In his early years, he had survived an attack on the family home at Fawdon in Northumberland. According to his father, the assailants wounded William so badly that they all but severed his head from his body.55 Well before the outbreak of war, Douglas had fallen foul of Edward I, by whom he was imprisoned, because of ‘certain transgressions imputed to him’. One such transgression concerned the circumstances of his marriage to his second wife, Eleanor of Lovain or Ferrers. While Eleanor, the widow of the lord of Groby in Leicestershire, was staying at Tranent with friends, Douglas abducted her and forced her into marriage.56 Because Eleanor had given her word not to remarry without permission from the English king, Edward reacted angrily, had Douglas’ lands in Northumberland seized, and ordered his arrest. Douglas’ imprisonment was brief enough, and where he had defied Edward with his marriage to Eleanor, he also treated the Guardians of Scotland with as much contempt.57 He found himself in prison once again, for imprisoning three of their men unlawfully; one escaped, one Douglas had beheaded, and the third died in prison. Under King John, he manifested the same disregard for authority, when he kept royal officials locked in his castle against their will.
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