On 9 February Comyn, with eleven associates, surrendered at Strathord near Perth. The terms which he had been able to obtain from Edward need not concern us here.41 Wallace was not among those who submitted to Edward. He had excluded himself from the negotiations and was, in turn, with Soules and Fraser, excluded from the terms accepted by Comyn. There is no indication in any source that Comyn or Bruce or any of the Scottish leaders now in Edward’s peace interceded for his life. Even Robert Wishart, the bishop of Glasgow, said by the English to have been the instigator of Wallace’s first actions, did not speak up for him at this moment of reconciliation with the English king. Wishart was not a young man, his courage did not always stand the test, and he was still viewed with suspicion by Edward, who insisted on his brief exile. Lamberton and James the Stewart, the former Wallace’s appointee, the latter the man who in English eyes had instigated his rebellion in 1297, returned from France to make their peace. No doubt they were, like others, glad to have it. No doubt they could claim that no one was capable of influencing Edward’s attitude towards Wallace. The sad fact remains that the Scottish leaders cannot be exonerated of the charge of, at best, indifference to Wallace, with whom they had served and with whose sentiments they had claimed to sympathise. In the eighteen months left to Wallace after the surrender at Starthord, we can find no evidence that his former colleagues, some of them friends, made one positive move to save him from the fate which became increasingly inevitable once Edward was free to concentrate on him. They made no intervention at Edward’s court, they entered no plea, they offered no bargain, and at the end they cannot satisfactorily be cleared of possible complicity – through their neglect if for no other reason – in his death. They left him to Edward. A foretaste of what that could mean came with the fall to the English of Stirling Castle.
NOTES
1 Barrow: Robert Bruce, 116.
2 Winchelsey, archbishop of Canterbury from 1293 to 1313, was less than eager to confront Edward on this occasion. He was also unhappy at the prospect of travelling through Galloway with its hostile population and landscape. In the event, he was well enough received by Edward at Sweetheart Abbey, but his relations with the king were not always amicable. See Prestwich: Edward I, passim.
3 Watson: Under the Hammer, 143–44; Barrow: Robert Bruce, 118–9; Prestwich: Edward I, 495.
4 Watson, 144; Prestwich, ibid.; Barrow: Robert Bruce, 116–19.
5 Below, note 23.
6 Prestwich: Armies and Warfare, chap. 8, particularly 211ff.
7 Above, chap. 7.
8 Watson, 61.
9 Wright: Political Songs, 278ff; Prestwich: Edward I, 38–83.
10 Stevenson: Docs, ii, 301–03.
11 Prestwich: Edward I, 221.
12 Prestwich: Armies and Warfare, chap. 11, for Edward’s use of the navy.
13 Prestwich: Edward I, 397.
14 Prestwich: Armies and Warfare, 268.
15 As, for example, in Langtoft’s Chronicle, excerpts in Wright: Political Songs, Appendix, 273ff; Wright, Song on the Scottish War, 160ff.
16 Chap. 7, above.
17 Ibid.
18 Fordun, i 331.
19 Barrow: Robert Bruce, 162.
20 Docs Illus. Hist. Scot., 276.
21 On the delegation, see Barrow: Robert Bruce, 166ff.
22 Cal. Docs Scot., ii, 1191.
23 He had, of course, never accepted Balliol as king. On his motives see Barrow: Robert Bruce, 172–75, and McNair Scott, 60–61.
24 Rishanger.
25 Wallace’s relationship with Comyn is as difficult to judge as that with Bruce. Comyn, of course, suffered, as Bruce did not, from Scottish chroniclers, but in his apparent dislike of Wallace he cannot have been unique, any more than in his wish to see him toppled.
26 He would undoubtedly have been mentioned had he been present, especially in the light of Rishanger’s comment.
27 Fordun, i, 333–35.
28 Prestwich: The Three Edwards: War and State in England 1272–1377, 1980, 50.
29 Cal. Docs Scot., ii, 1687, 1386. The siege of Brechin ended on 9 August with the death of the constable, Sir Thomas Maule, and the surrender of the garrison.
30 Barron, op. cit., 193.
31 History of England, 1945, 218.
32 Robert Bruce, 130.
33 Cal. Docs Scot., ii, 1374.
34 He was in charge of the garrison of Ayr and took part in the attack on the Scots at Peebles.
35 As circumstances had altered since the truce of January 1302, the Scottish confidence was surely misplaced. Perhaps the view from Paris was a more favourable one, and king Philip was adept at saying what the Scots there wanted to hear, despite his treaty with Edward.
36 Barrow: Robert Bruce, 128.
37 Watson: op. cit., 212, takes issue with this conclusion. I am afraid that I have not changed my view. Bellamy: The Law of Treason in England in the Later Middle Ages, 1970, 33, deals with the question of Wallace’s supposed approaches to Edward.
38 See chap. 10 below.
39 Chap. 5, above.
40 Cal. Docs Scot., ii, 1424.
41 Foedera, i, 974–75. See also Young: op. cit., 186ff; Barrow: Robert Bruce, 129–30 and 132–33.
9
The Time of Betrayal, 1305
‘The king will take careful note of how each conducts himself’
Stirling Castle was held for the Scots by a young and, as Edward was to discover in the high summer of 1304, courageous man. Sir William Oliphant was of a family which had come to the attention of David I when he was earl of Huntingdon. An early member of the family, David Olifard – the original spelling of the name – saved the king’s life at the battle of Winchester in 1141, when the latter was fighting for his niece, Matilda, in the struggle against King Stephen. Oliphant or Olifard was granted lands by his grateful monarch in Roxburghshire and prospered under David I and his successor, Malcolm IV, under whom he was justiciar of Lothian.1 No Oliphant served Scotland better, it might be argued, than Sir William in 1304.
Oliphant appears to have been guided by a more esoteric code than that to which Wallace subscribed. That is not in any way to decry his contribution to the patriotic cause by his defiance of Edward. That cause, like any other, needed heroes, even martyrs; as constable of Stirling Castle, Oliphant was the former and came near to being the latter, along with his colleagues. Two incidents, however, illustrate that not all Scots were motivated in the same way as Wallace. Yet their role, as in the case of Oliphant, cannot be disregarded. The submission of the Scots in February 1304 had forced Edward to carry out what might nowadays be called mopping-up operations. One such, albeit a great undertaking, was the siege of Stirling Castle. It is in connection with this event that we find the evidence to demonstrate how Oliphant’s attitude differed from that of Wallace. By 1304 it was Oliphant rather than Wallace who represented the face of Scottish opposition to Edward.
The castle had been left alone by Edward in the campaign of 1303. The reason, according to Guisborough, was that, if held by the Scots, it would act as a deterrent to potential deserters from Edward’s army.2 If as illustrious a knight as Giles d’Argentan could desert, as he did, then Edward clearly had a point.3 But in 1304 Edward was ready for Stirling; with him, having redeemed himself, was the same d’Argentan.4 Stirling stood as a stronghold but, perhaps of more moment to Edward, it represented through Oliphant’s stubborn refusal to surrender the kind of obstacle to the king’s total subjection which Wallace personified. When he began the siege of Stirling in May 1304, therefore, Edward was in no mood to be tolerant of any opposition. This was at once made evident to Oliphant. Custom dictated that before the siege proper could begin, negotiations should take place. In action which today strikes us as strange, Oliphant asked permission to seek the advice of Sir John Soules who, as Guardian, had put the care of the castle into his hands.5 Oliphant required to know of Soules, he argued, whether he should fight or surrender. Soules was in France and Oliphant’s gambit was surely no
more than a tactic to gain time. We can hardly be surprised if Edward, no mean prevaricator himself when circumstances demanded, saw it as such. Yet it is Edward’s rejection of Oliphant’s proposal which has aroused comment.6 Oliphant’s manoeuvre marks him out from Wallace; for the latter, to contemplate communicating with Edward rather than offering defiance, as before Stirling, would surely have seemed incomprehensible. Unquestionably, Oliphant was a man of great heart, who subscribed to a set of values which however had no place in Wallace’s reasoning.
Oliphant’s later career offers a further example of the distinction between the two men. A prisoner in Rochester after the battle of Dunbar in 1296, Oliphant was in English hands from the fall of Stirling until 1308. The English valued his courage and experience; it was by agreeing to fight for Edward II against Robert I that he obtained his freedom.7 In October he was in command of the English garrison in Perth, the town in which one part of the dismembered body of Wallace had been displayed on the orders of Edward I.8 Thus, two Scots – Oliphant, was a Perthshire man – had defied Edward. Now, after 1308, one fought on the English side and was in no way condemned by contemporaries for doing so. Wallace died for the same cause that Oliphant had embraced, and then, to save himself, forsaken. Oliphant had been a Balliol man at the outbreak of war but that, apparently, was a less than firm commitment. He would later give his allegiance to Bruce, who had for so long striven against the Balliols. Oliphant was not by any means unusual in his interpretation of loyalty. We need not turn to Bruce for an example. Sir William Douglas, as we have seen, was prone to changes of heart; nor can his son, the Good Sir James, entirely escape censure in this regard. Relatively few paid with their lives for such behaviour. One who did after a career of equivocation was Sir David Brechin, executed by Bruce for his part in the Soules plot of 1320.9 Even so notorious a man as Brechin could, however, raise sympathy; the sentence passed on him by the ‘Black Parliament’ so angered Ingram de Umfraville, a former Guardian of Scotland, that he left Scotland never to return. Brechin had fought both for and against the Scots. So too had Oliphant, the heroic defender of Stirling. The thinking of Brechin and Oliphant and their equals was not for Wallace; he would surely have dismissed it. But in the summer of 1304 he and Oliphant were comrades-in-arms against Edward.
It took Edward three months to capture Stirling. He used the siege to demonstrate and experiment with the most advanced technology of the age. Thirteen siege engines, including two from Brechin and one from Aberdeen, were deployed. Robert Bruce supplied his own engines for Edward’s benefit. Crossbows and bows and arrows were ordered from a number of sources; in this regard the mayor of Newcastle was particularly assiduous.10 Some kinds of explosive devices were prepared for use against the defenders of the castle. Edward’s favourite weapon at Stirling was the ‘Warwolf’, built on the site. The Scots, in the long term, could not hope to succeed in the defence of the castle. Their only siege engine proved ineffectual. Even so, Edward narrowly avoided death from a springald. The spectacle of the siege was watched by Edward’s queen, Margaret, and her ladies. On July 20 the garrison was allowed to surrender after Edward had used the castle with them inside for a day’s target practice for ‘Warwolf’. The king was only dissuaded from hanging and disembowelling the garrison by the intervention of those about him, notably his wife.11 Oliphant and the survivors of the siege were sent to various prisons in England.
The siege of Stirling was in its way as much of a showpiece, designed to impress and overcome the Scots, as would be the trial of Wallace in the following year. Edward’s treatment of Oliphant and the Stirling garrison could leave no further doubt of the reception which awaited Wallace upon capture. Edward had been guilty at Stirling of a breach of that code of chivalry which, like Oliphant, he claimed to hold dear. To act so, Edward must have been dominated by an extreme passion. It came, perhaps, from frustration, from that rage which he had inherited from his Plantagenet forebears, from inherent defects at which we can only guess. While it would be foolish indeed to eliminate these from the attempt to explain his behaviour towards Wallace, it may well be that Edward was colder, more controlled in his pursuit and execution of Wallace than is generally believed. Certainly, as will be argued,12 the trial of Wallace was not merely contrived but directed by a man not swayed by emotion alone.
It would be easy, that is, to see in Edward no more than the anointed guardian of that hatred of Wallace which is found in popular form in, for example, Lanercost:
The vilest doom is fittest for thys crimes,
Justice demands that thou shouldst die three times.
Thou pillager of many a sacred shrine,
Butcher of thousands, threefold death be thine!
So shall the English from thee gain relief,
Scotland! be wise and choose a nobler chief.13
Edward would undoubtedly wish to be associated with these sentiments; he gave expression to them, in legal terms, at the trial in 1305. That he was paranoic or had become so in the course of the war is also indisputable. But he was a subtle man, as well as devious. It is possible that in his treatment of Wallace there may lie a greater subtlety than that with which he has hitherto been credited. The surrender terms which Edward offered to the Scots in February 1304 were never open to Wallace. Edward was categorical: ‘As for William Wallace, it is agreed, that he shall render himself up at the will and mercy of our sovereign lord the king as it shall seem good to him.’14 There were others of the Scots, of course, who were not permitted to capitulate on the same conditions as Comyn: Wishart, James the Stewart, Fraser and Soules were excluded. With time, however, they were to come into Edward’s peace. Wallace could not. Why Edward was so utterly severe towards Wallace is an absorbing question. With Scottish resistance crushed in 1304, Edward’s exclusion of Wallace from the peace terms seems vindictive to us. The matter may resolve itself into the simple answer of Edward’s abhorrence of defiance and Wallace’s intransigence. But in the case of Edward, the matter is more complex. Wishart, James the Stewart, and above all, Fraser, were guilty of treason, if Edward chose to regard their behaviour as such. English sources point to Wishart and Stewart as the prime movers behind Wallace’s rebellion. Fraser, a member of Edward’s household, was constantly under suspicion, and with reason. But it was not until they joined in Bruce’s rebellion that condign punishment was visited on Wishart and Fraser. The former avoided death because of his calling. Fraser finally went to the scaffold, to suffer the same barbarous death as Wallace. James the Stewart, described by Bruce’s biographer15 as ‘cautious and devious, possessed of a recognisably ‘Stewart’ canniness …’, was under threat on various occasions but was allowed to live. All three men had broken their word to Edward, and more than once; Wallace had not, of course. Their opposition to Edward had not been as spectacular as that of Wallace, it had been rather more insidious, more calculating. It is this characteristic which makes them seem less attractive than Wallace. Whatever their contributions to the struggle against Edward – and Fraser, for one, could not have given more – they cannot stand alongside Wallace. Yet for Edward, however hard they tested his patience, they were worthy, for years, of his tolerance.
Not so Wallace, in whose case Edward repeated his theme of unconditional surrender in March in what appears to be a reply to a request for clarification from Alexander de Abernithyn:
… and in reply to the matter wherein you have asked us to let you know whether it is our pleasure that you should hold out to William le Waleys any words of peace, know this, that it is not our pleasure by any means that either to him, or to any other of his company, you hold out any word of peace, unless they place themselves absolutely and in all things at our will, without any exception whatever.16
In the same letter Abernithyn is commended by Edward for his good work in keeping ‘watch at the fords of Forth’. Here may be an indication that Wallace was in or expected to be in the vicinity. If so, he eluded the enemy, as he continued to do until August of the next year.
The readiness with which the Scots consented to Edward’s treatment of Wallace is cynical. It does, however, suggest that as early as the St Andrews parliament they were being led by the English king towards the settlement of September 1305.17 For Edward the capture and execution of Wallace were essential not simply on the grounds of removing the most stubborn of his opponents. The Scottish leaders acquiesced, by default at best, in the execution with its gruesome details. The suspicion that the death of Wallace satisfied them and Edward alike by his symbolism, the end of the old Scotland of resistance and the beginning of a new Scotland of full collaboration, cannot be overlooked. Edward brought the Scots, not unwillingly, in this direction in the months between February 1304 and August 1305.
William Wallace Page 20