The fear of Scottish attack after Stirling was already present in the north of England before Wallace moved over the Border. At Carlisle, always a target, action had been taken in October to prepare for the expected assault. Command of the castle was entrusted to the redoubtable bishop of Carlisle, John de Halton. He replaced Robert Bruce, lord of Annandale, a victim perhaps of the questionable loyalty of his son, the earl of Carrick. Henry Percy brought a not inconsiderable force of fourteen crossbowmen and ninety-five foot soldiers to stiffen the garrison22 and it is probable that ditches were dug outside the city walls as a further defensive measure.23 But it was upon Northumberland that the Scots descended in that same month. Guisborough dates the start of Scottish attacks from the Feast of St Luke, 18 October. It has been argued that this early phase of the cross-Border operation was a series of raids which, if tolerated by Wallace, were not controlled by him.24 The argument is a strong one. There is some evidence that he turned his attention after Berwick to the reduction of Dundee.25 The argument may well gain greater potency from the possibility that, inevitably, the euphoria generated by Stirling would lead the Scots into uncoordinated but damaging attacks into enemy territory. There was the opportunity for revenge and with the English in disarray, for plunder. The Scots established their base on Rothbury Forest and raided the surrounding countryside with impunity.26
These first uncoordinated Scottish assaults on Northumberland, if in themselves ferocious and destructive were but a prelude to a period in which, we are told by the chronicler, ‘the service of God totally ceased in all the monasteries and churches between Newcastle and Carlisle, for all the canons, monks and priests fled before the force of the Scots, as did nearly all the people’.27 The words are familiar, for the burning and killings were reminiscent to the people of Northumberland of times as distant as those of Malcolm III and David I and as recent as 1296. Against indiscriminate and widespread raids such as occurred in late October 1297 only walled towns and castles offered protection. Newcastle itself was seemingly under threat; as with Carlisle, the garrison was strengthened, with six men-at-arms and a total of over a hundred and sixty archers and crossbowmen.
In November the Scots began to act in a more systematic manner. This change has been attributed, with some reason, to Wallace himself.28 He took control of what became an invasion of the north of England. He made no attempt on Newcastle, but instead turned west, into Tynedale. Corbridge, the scene in the previous year of the murder of two hundred schoolboys, if an English account is to be believed, was put to the torch. Wallace moved on to Hexham, where he arrived on 7 November. It was there that a strange incident is recorded. The priory had not been wholly abandoned. Three canons had come back and were found by a party of Scots, who called upon them to produce the priory’s treasures. The canons answered that everything of value had been stolen by other Scots. At this point Wallace arrived. He felt the need for the services of the canons and asked them to celebrate mass. In keeping with pious practice, he went from the abbey to lay down his arms after the Host had been elevated. In his absence some Scots entered and removed holy articles without which the service could not continue.
When Wallace learned of this, he ordered the capture and hanging of the thieves. A half-hearted attempt was made by the Scots to carry out his instructions. At this Wallace admitted to the canons that the thieves could not really be brought to justice and gave the canons a letter of protection. Barrow compares this incident with a similar one in the reign of David I.29 That king had hanged men guilty of attempted robbery from the same priory. It is Barrow’s view that Wallace’s failure to bring thieves to justice proves that, despite his success at Stirling, he had none of the royal authority which David enjoyed. It is no less likely he was wise enough to realise that the volatile Scots would not see the justice in the execution of a number of their comrades for that violence against the English clergy in which they had been encouraged, not merely by Wallace but by their own priests. Wallace was not without a sense of what was possible. The propaganda value of his pretence to capture the thieves and, still more to the point, his letter of protection to the canons would not escape him.
Cumberland and Durham felt the anger of the Scots. Wallace’s men ranged as far as Cockermouth. At Carlisle, always a challenge and a hurdle to the Scots, he essayed a brief assault, despite his lack of siege equipment. The citizens, as so often in the face of Scottish pretensions to the capture of Carlisle, were not impressed. They themselves were well prepared with defensive weapons. Wallace called upon them to surrender. His intermediary was a priest whose words are transmitted to us through the Chronicle of Lanercost, a fact which must cast some doubt on their accuracy. The priest, ‘shameless’ that he was, cried: ‘William the Conqueror, whom I serve, commands you to give up this town and castle without bloodshed; then you may leave unharmed with all your goods. But if you do not instantly obey him, he will attack and kill you all.’ Wallace’s summons cannot have been serious; he was too hard-headed to believe that surrender would follow. It was a formality, as was his presence, intended to parade before the citizens the army he led as a means of ensuring that no counter-attack would be mounted against him. If for his part he could not take this or other fortified places, he guaranteed that there would be no attempt on the part of their garrisons to interfere with his progress through the north of England. Wallace sought no battles on this raid.
The reply of the citizens of Carlisle would not have surprised him. As it is reported to us, it contained no hint of compromise.30 They dared him to do his worst; they remained faithful to the king who had put the town and castle into their keeping. They were in any case under no illusion as to the temper of Wallace and the Scots; surrender to these men who had slaughtered and burned would not mean safety. They followed up their defiance with a show of the engines of war which stood on the walls of the town. Wallace did not delay at Carlisle; there were other, easier pickings. The Scots vented their spleen on the villages and hamlets which lay within the great forest of Inglewood. It was reported that at this time they were guilty of ‘devastating everything by way of the forest of Inglewood, Cumberland and Allerdale to the Derwent at Cockermouth’.31
If Wallace was defeated in Cumberland by the walls and castle of Carlisle, he met a far more formidable obstacle when he planned to ravage the county of Durham, which enjoyed the protection of St Cuthbert. Wallace’s route into Durham was the traditional one, over Stainmoor. At Bowes on or about 11 November, the Scots were turned back by the intervention of God and Saint Cuthbert. Supernatural events took place: ‘Such a storm of snow and ice rose up that many of them died of cold and hunger.’ Where before there had been no opposition to them, St Cuthbert had inspired the people of his county to rise against the invaders. An unspecified but large number of Durham men was reported by Scottish scouts to be marching against them, while the Scots themselves had fewer than one hundred horsemen and under three thousand infantry. This was nevertheless a powerful force; its size may explain the desertion of many Englishmen which even the English chronicler cannot disguise. Despite these defections the Scots were dismayed: ‘If men were lacking, the power of Saint Cuthbert was in no way diminished [and] the enemy’s plan to enter his land was foiled.’
By now the momentum of the Scots was halted. The weather was increasingly severe, they were weighed down by their booty, and their rebuff by St Cuthbert would have convinced them that they could expect no more. Wallace himself could not remain absent from Scotland indefinitely. In his absence those elements in the country over which he had to maintain the control which Stirling had brought him could not be relied on to adhere to the cause of Balliol. The invasion of the northern counties of England, if it had failed to capture a single town, had been successful in inflicting a memorable punishment on the English. The name of Wallace would not be readily forgotten. The Scots were bringing back a considerable booty with them as evidence of their weeks over the Border. As they returned home, the Scots still had time for a last o
rgy of destruction in the lower valley of the Tyne.
Wallace was back in Scotland towards the end of November. Guisborough relates that before the return over the Border, he gave to the contingent from Galloway their entitlement from the booty. The Gallovidians were not the easiest of allies for any Scottish leader, for they looked upon themselves as a separate entity. They had long enjoyed a reputation for cruelty, and it is certain that in 1297, as before, they were well to the forefront in the perpetration of the atrocities which occurred in the raid. For Wallace they would have been useful shock troops, brave if undisciplined, fearful to behold, utterly ruthless. It would be natural to see in them the thieves of the incident at Hexham priory. Wallace would not be unhappy to be rid of them once he had decided to return to Scotland.
The enterprise had achieved nothing in terms of practical or strategic value and may therefore be thought a luxury, an indulgence. Wallace himself would not, however, have seen it as such, for his aims were more immediate and limited. We cannot doubt that the enterprise was a popular move. Indeed, it was necessary to strengthen still further his hold over affairs. To those who, for him, counted – the people – it had brought retribution upon the English and plunder. Although a longer absence from Scotland would have been dangerous for him, the name he had earned at Stirling was sufficient to allow of no opposition from within the country. When, therefore, he came back to Scotland he was able to assume the reins of government with no apparent difficulty.32
By now, of course, he was deprived of the presence of Murray. If it made any difference to him, there is no record of it. His principal concern was to prepare for the onslaught which would come from Edward I. That and the continued government of Scotland would have taxed any man, of whatever origins. Wallace’s relatively humble birth was an obstacle to the co-operation of those who considered themselves his superiors. That obstacle, at least in theory, was removed by his knighting. That symbolic act took place at some time before 29 March 1298.33 On that date he was at Torphichen in West Lothian, where he issued the charter to Alexander Scrymgeour to which reference has already been made. In it we find him referring to himself both as Knight and Guardian. Who bestowed the knighthood is not known; from a remark in an English chronicle it must, almost certainly, have been one of the premier earls. A case has been made for Bruce,34 but definite proof is lacking. The knighthood moved Wallace several rungs up, as it were, on the social ladder. It afforded him of itself a certain authority, not least in his relationships with others.
More significant, although associated with the bestowing of knighthood, was Wallace’s election to the Guardianship. The two may, indeed, have occurred in the course of the same ceremony; there is no record of the date of either. Wallace was sole Guardian, the choice of a special council of nobles and churchmen. His was a massive achievement. The English, in one of their political songs, poured scorn and hatred on what he had done:
After this [Stirling] the leader of the plot calls together his part, knowing that our king would be gone over the sea; he made an order to ravage Northumberland … William Wallace is the leader of these savages … To increase the wickedness which they had hitherto perpetrated, these wicked men deliver Alnwick to the flames … Now the malignant people returns to Scotland; and the honour of knighthood is given to William; from a robber he becomes a knight, just as swan is made out of a raven; an unworthy man takes the seat, when a worthy man is not by.35
If we may wonder whether Wallace did not need to wait upon Edward’s departure for France to strike at the English, we may also readily believe that what he had been given, he had earned by his own merit. The abuse of this and other songs is the clearest proof of his accomplishment. The fear in which the English held him was well deserved. To their credit, the Scots, with the knighthood and the election as Guardian, had seen in him something more than the scourge of the English. They had seen in him a man possessed of unique talents: a soldier and a statesman. If it was an uncommon combination, the task ahead was daunting.
It is likely that in the aftermath of his knighting Wallace was forced to leave the fine detail of government in the hands of those more experienced in this work than himself: the clerks, the bishops, those officials who had returned to their posts as Cressingham wrote of the disintegration of the English hold over Scotland. Wallace’s strong hand was, however, seen in one crucial matter at least. On 20 August 1297, William Fraser, bishop of St Andrews and a former Guardian, died at Auteuil, near Paris. Fraser had played a leading role in the negotiations with France in 1295 and never saw Scotland again.36 Wallace, devoted to the Church in Scotland and well aware of its role in the struggle against England, saw the necessity of replacing the patriot, Fraser, with a man of like persuasion. How the English saw the election of a successor to Fraser is obvious from their later charge that Wallace had compelled the installation of William Lamberton.37 When the day came, as they hoped, that the English domination of Scotland was to be re-established, they would need reliable prelates sympathetic to the English cause to help maintain that domination. Lamberton was not one such, as his later career was to prove.38 He was to suffer greatly, on the orders of Edward I, for his part in the rising of Bruce. Threatened, abused, imprisoned with his fellow bishop Wishart, always with the knowledge that the paranoic English king was capable of having him executed, he was not deflected from his determination to see Scotland independent. This he lived to see, for it was not until 1328, the year of the Treaty of Edinburgh and its ratification at Northampton, that he died. It was on the instructions of Wallace, given while he was in England, that Lamberton was elected to the see of St Andrews. It was not the least of his bequests to the future of Scotland.
For the foremost authority on the period, ‘the three main achievements of Wallace’s régime were the invasion of Northumbria, the filling of the vacant see of St Andrews, and the successful revival of the idea of guardianship’.39 The first may be seen as the natural expression of the drive of an outstanding soldier bent on revenge against an enemy as implacable and violent as himself. The second, if it reflects a political wisdom, no less demonstrates a grasp of reality; he saw, and acted upon, the necessity of keeping the Church in the hands of those whose dedication to the Scottish cause was unquestioned. The third required of him outstanding, even unique qualities. He had to achieve and hold on to what was by no means open to him. If he had the support of the people, if the Church, practical as ever, recognised in him the saviour of its independence from English claims to superiority, the magnates would be sceptical if not cynical. They were as practical as the prelates. For the English, the magnates’ loyalty to Edward I was liable to melt away ‘as frost in May’.40 With Edward they had at least the rapport of nobility, the common experience of upbringing and aspirations. With Wallace they could not pretend to that. For later generations their loyalty to him was as dubious as that to Edward. That may be too simple an explanation. Wallace would, however, be unable to take their support for granted. When he was brought to trial in 1305, he faced the charge, among others, that he had persuaded and urged the magnates and prelates to fight with Philip IV of France against the English. His methods of convincing the recalcitrant were often, as has been seen, based more on fear than on reason. There is more than one kind of patriotism; Wallace’s was not necessarily that of the magnates. For them, more than for him, the ends, in the phrase, justified the means. Had he understood that, he might have survived. But he did not; it is unlikely that he could have done. He must have been conscious of the possibility of defection, even if he did not anticipate treachery. The problem of the magnates must have occupied a large part of his thinking as, in the first half of 1298, he looked to the south. Edward I had returned to England from Flanders on 14 March. The king, no less single-minded than Wallace himself, now devoted all his energies on the problem of Scotland and the defeat of Wallace. He was an angry man, one who considered himself betrayed. Nothing was to be allowed to interfere with his obsession.
NOTES
2 Most notably, of course, Barron.
3 The nature of the wound or the circumstances in which he received it are not recorded. Barron, chap. 7, deals with the former belief that he had, in fact, been killed in the battle.
4 It is surely based on nothing other than the appearance of his name, with that of Wallace, on such documents as have survived.
5 Cal. Docs Scot., iv, 1835.
6 McNamee: ‘William Wallace’s Invasion of Northern England in 1297’, Northern History, vol. 26 (1990), 43. There is no better and more stimulating account available than this.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 See Guisborough, 273–2, for Robert de Ros. Scrymgeour was executed at Newcastle on the orders of Edward I on 4 August 1306 as an adherent of Robert I.
10 It is impossible to say how much energy Wallace devoted to the capture of such castles. He does not appear, as far as we know, to have undertaken the building of the necessary engines or to have enlisted in his service engineers who might be capable of educating him. It was not, of course, an art in which the Scots in general seem to have been interested at this period.
11 The English were as enthusiastic as the Scots in this regard, e.g. Guisborough, 307–08.
12 Barron, op. cit., 78.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid. Traquair: Freedom’s Sword, Scotland’s Wars of Independence, 1998, 76, questions Barron’s belief in Murray’s primacy.
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