by R J M Pugh
However, Wallace’s victory was bought at a price. Andrew Murray was mortally wounded at Stirling Brig, which left Wallace to continue the struggle as sole Guardian of Scotland. Wallace followed up his triumph by raiding East Lothian, then he carried the war into northern England, devastating parts of Northumberland as far as Hexham and looting Cumbria as far south as Cockermouth. For a month Wallace continued his raiding, sparing none – not even the clergy – then re-crossed the Border to be welcomed as the leader of Scotland’s armies ‘in the name of the illustrious King John [Balliol]’.13 There is more than a hint of irony and even sarcasm in this although Wallace always maintained he was fighting in the name of Balliol, the lawful king of Scotland.
Edward, preoccupied with his French campaign, did not return to England until March 1298. He convened a parliament at York, summoning his barons and those of Scotland who had affixed their seals to the Ragman’s Roll; most of these ignored his call to arms, perhaps not just because of Wallace’s spectacular victory at Stirling but also because they feared reprisals from Wallace if they did.
Edward moved quickly. On 25 June 1298 he ordered the English army to muster at Roxburgh; it was a formidable force numbering 3,000 cavalry and 26,000 infantry. As he proceeded through the south-east, Edward devastated the land he marched over; only Dirleton Castle in East Lothian held out against him. Wallace withdrew before him, laying waste to stores of food to deny sustenance to the enemy. However, Edward had had the foresight to commission a fleet of provision ships to offload stores at Berwick; bad weather prevented this and soon the English army began to run low on food. By July, having reached Kirkliston in Midlothian, Edward’s men were facing starvation when he received timely news. Wallace’s army was a mere twenty miles away at Falkirk.
Falkirk I
On 21 July Edward confronted Wallace outside Falkirk. The English force which took the field numbered 1,500 cavalry and 10,000 infantry; although numerically inferior, Wallace’s men were well positioned on rising ground. Formed up in four or five schiltrons, each containing 1,500 spearmen, with mounted spearmen in the centre, the Scots were determined to resist the invader at all costs. Apparently, the front rank in each schiltron knelt with their spear hafts fixed in the ground; the rear ranks levelled their twelve-foot long spears over the front rank’s heads. In between each schiltron were positioned Selkirk bowmen, arguably the only accomplished archers ever to serve in the Scottish armies other than Highland clansmen. The flanks were protected by what little cavalry Wallace commanded.
Battle was joined on 22 July. The initial charges of the heavy English cavalry were repulsed by the unbreakable resolve of the Scottish spearmen, secure in their virtually impregnable formations. The English infantry were committed next but fared no better. It was deadlock. Tragically, it was the Scottish cavalry which broke that deadlock. Led by the few lords who had decided to throw in their lot with Wallace, they simply quitted the field; there is no evidence to prove the Scottish horse acted treacherously or out of cowardice but there were rumours of this at the time.
With the withdrawal of the Scottish horse, the Ettrick forest bowmen were left exposed to the English cavalry which cut them to pieces. Then Edward committed his archers who took their toll of the men in the schiltrons suffering the onslaught of the grey goose-shafted arrows; flight after flight of the deadly missiles must have almost blocked out the sun above Falkirk. Tormented to the limit of endurance, the Scottish formations broke and ran. A massacre ensued, Wallace being forced to flee the field. His brief and bloody success was over. The defeat at Falkirk brought his leadership of the Scottish cause to an end.
Wallace resigned his role as Guardian of Scotland and visited the court of Philip IV in the hope of renewing the Auld Alliance in Scotland’s favour – meaning the despatch of a French army to Scotland to resist Edward. But Philip was too involved in fighting his own battles for survival against his Flemish opponents to trouble himself with a treaty he had signed in 1295 promising support for Scotland against England.
Wallace returned to Scotland, the fugitive outlaw the Scottish ‘Establishment’ of nobles had always believed him to be, the son of a lesser knight who had exceeded his place in the hierarchy of the day. In the years that remained to him, Wallace led a life of obscurity; these seven years are virtually unknown to us. Constantly on the run, his former friends and followers deserted him. In a parliament convened by Edward I at St Andrews in March 1303, Wallace was declared an outlaw; also, some 129 Scottish landowners accepted Edward as their liege lord. However, as late as 1304, Wallace was still carrying the fight to the English but only in what can be described as spoiling raids. His power was broken, his time was past.
Roslin
In 1303 Scotland’s morale was at a low ebb, particularly after Wallace’s defeat at Falkirk in 1298. However, in February 1303, an English expeditionary force, commanded by Sir John Seagrave, crossed the Border, ostensibly to restore his bruised ego. According to the annals of the St Clair (Sinclair) family of Roslin Castle, Midlothian, Seagrave had been promised the hand of Margaret Ramsay of Dalhousie; Margaret changed her mind and married Hugh St Clair. Accounts of the subsequent ‘battle’ have been greatly exaggerated, as well as the size of Seagrave’s army of 30,000 which was engaged by a Scottish force of 8,000 led by John ‘the Red’ Comyn, 3rd Lord of Badenoch. (William Wallace was present on the day but refused to assume command on account of his disgrace at Falkirk – or so it is said.) The strengths of the respective armies quoted above have been questioned; it is now thought that they numbered hundreds rather than thousands, yet another example of the exaggerations of chroniclers. Even so, the skirmish at Roslin was a victory for the Red Comyn and Scotland. (The highly-coloured account of Roslin in Walter Bower’s Scotichronicon is not supported by contemporary evidence, nor do modern historians accept Bower’s version of the ‘battle’. Prominent among the detractors is the eminent and highly respected medieval historian Dr Chris Brown.)14 Nonetheless, the bloody nose suffered by the English at Roslin must have restored the morale of many in Scotland, coming at a time when the country’s will to resist England was at a low ebb.
In May 1303 a peace treaty was signed between France and England, one which deliberately excluded Scotland. The former alliance between France and Scotland now being at an end allowed Edward to prosecute the war in Scotland to its final conclusion.
Happrew
Edward I invaded northern Scotland as far as Morayshire, spending the autumn and winter at Dunfermline Abbey. Then, early in 1304, an English force, commanded by Lord Robert Clifford and accompanied by Bruce the Younger, defeated Wallace and Simon Fraser at Happrew15 in the vicinity of Peebles. It was the last throw of the dice for Wallace even if he escaped capture. The Scots conceded defeat; in the first few months of 1304, John ‘the Red’ Comyn of Badenoch entered negotiations with Edward for a conditional surrender, which was accepted. The only unresolved issue was Wallace, an outlaw still at large.
Wallace was betrayed by his own countrymen and handed over to the English by Sir John Menteith, an uncle of Sir John Stewart who had bled and died for Wallace at Falkirk. On the night of 3 August 1305 Wallace was surprised by Menteith in a house at Robroyston, near Glasgow. Dragged to London at the tail of a horse, he was led before Edward’s judges in Westminster Hall. In a bitterly ironic and cruel, mocking imitation of Christ’s crown of thorns placed on his head before the Crucifixion, Wallace’s head was adorned with a crown of laurel leaves.16
Wallace’s trial was a travesty of justice. It was in point of fact not a trial in any sense of the word. To English eyes he was nothing more than an outlaw who had wrought havoc and death on England’s people. When accused of being guilty of treason, Wallace did not hesitate in his reply. He informed his judges that at no time had he sought to obtain the crown of Scotland nor had he ever sworn allegiance to Edward I – his name was absent from the Ragman’s Roll.17 He enquired why he could be called a traitor to England, it being a foreign country in his eyes.<
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Sir William Wallace, the patriot par excellence, was cruelly tortured and despatched on 23 August 1305. He was sentenced as a traitor, throttled within an inch of his death, then his genitals were cut from his body. His abdomen was sliced open by the same knife, his internal organs drawn from within. Finally, his heart was cut out and held aloft for the appreciation of the English mob. His corpse was beheaded, his head put on a spike and displayed on London Bridge. His remains were quartered, the four parts being taken to Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling and Perth.18
Edward was content to rest on his laurels; he did not realize that he had woken a sleeping tiger, with hundreds if not thousands of hearts determined to oppose England at every turn. Wallace’s death served to strengthen the resolve of the Scottish people. Patriotism and love of country were not the causes of the Wars of Independence – they were a product of them.
During Wallace’s wilderness years between Falkirk and his brutal execution Edward I believed Scotland was prostrate. In 1304 Stirling Castle fell and, with it, the last of the hopes of many Scots. Edward took it upon himself to provide Scotland with a constitution; ten Scottish and twenty English commissioners were appointed to draw up an ‘Ordinance for the Government of Scotland’. Edward’s nephew, John of Brittany, was appointed Guardian of the country. The ink was scarcely dry on the parchment when the Scots rejected it out of hand. The Scots would no longer accept anything from England; eight years of Edward’s harsh and imperious dealing had stiffened their resolve. Yet again, Edward was forced to invade Scotland.
Matters came to a head on 10 February 1306 when Bruce the Younger slew John ‘the Red’ Comyn, the former regent, in the chapel of the Franciscan Minorite Convent of the Grey Friars at Dumfries. The Red Comyn, nephew of former King John Balliol, had a certain, if tenuous, claim to the throne. There was no love lost between the Bruces and the Comyns; they had been at loggerheads even before the Great Cause had set the crown on Balliol’s head. Bruce the Younger also had a claim to the throne after his father Bruce the Elder died in 1304. Comyn had been acting in Edward I’s interests – at least on the surface like his rival Bruce the Younger. Whatever passed between these two men in the chapel at Dumfries that cold winter morning is not recorded. However, we know that an argument flared up; possibly Bruce learnt that Comyn had informed Edward that Bruce was not to be trusted and harsh words were exchanged by the two men. In a fit of temper, Bruce drew his dagger and plunged it into his rival’s body. Comyn was taken to the kirk vestry to be tended by the friars and given the sacrament, although he was still alive; some accounts19 credit Sir Roger Kirkpatrick of Closeburn with the coup de grace that despatched Comyn, fulfilling the promise he made to the Bruce that he would ‘mak siccar’ [make sure] of Comyn’s demise. Having disposed of his strongest rival for the throne, Bruce, tainted with ‘the dark stain of treachery’20 had no recourse other than to proclaim himself King of Scotland. Six weeks after the murder of the Red Comyn, Bruce had himself crowned at Scone on 25 March 1306. It was hardly a significant event. Bruce was attended by earls – Atholl and Lennox – and possibly only one bishop, David Murray of Moray. The ceremony was performed by Isabella of Fife, Countess of Buchan, as the Earl of Fife, whose traditional and ancient privilege it was to inaugurate a new Scottish king, was a prisoner in England.
Methven
When he learnt of the Red Comyn’s murder and Bruce’s audacity in assuming the throne of Scotland, Edward I was beside himself with anger. For his part, Bruce informed the English king that he should recognize him as lawful king of Scotland or else he would ‘defend himself with the longest stick’ that he had.21 This challenge added insult to injury in Edward’s mind; he sent Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke (brother-in-law of the murdered Comyn), to Scotland with orders to quell what he saw as yet another rebellion. In June 1306 Pembroke surprised Bruce’s small force camped at Methven, near Perth, forcing Bruce with an entourage of about 200 followers to flee into the mountains. Undeterred by this setback, Bruce made a sortie on the borders of Argyle and Perthshire, where he was attacked and beaten by John, Lord of Lorn, uncle of the slaughtered Comyn.22 With no army, little money and few provisions, Bruce had no option but to quit the mainland. With a mere handful of followers he spent the winter months on Rathlin Island, off the north-east coast of Ireland. Contrary to popular belief Bruce did not spend his time there studying arachnidology, the science of spiders and the way they spin their webs. In point of fact he used the time to plan how best he might prosecute the civil war now raging in Scotland. For that is what it had become, a Bruce-Comyn/Balliol conflict to determine who was Scotland’s king.
Edward I lost no time in punishing Bruce’s supporters. Bruce’s brother Neil was butchered in the same way as Wallace had been, John of Strathbogie, Earl of Atholl was taken prisoner while attempting to spirit away Bruce’s twenty-four-year-old daughter Mary and Isabella, Countess of Buchan. Strathbogie was hanged and Mary and Isabella were placed in cages at Roxburgh and Berwick Castles; the cages were suspended from turrets so that all could see the women languishing within. (The two women would remain thus until 1310, when they were probably removed to convents.) The eleven-year-old Marjorie, Bruce’s daughter by his first wife Isabella of Mar, was confined in a Yorkshire nunnery, as was Bruce’s sister Christian; his queen, Elizabeth de Burgh, was placed under house arrest in Holderness, Yorkshire.
Meanwhile, Bruce was languishing in a cave somewhere off the Scottish coast, although some historians maintain that he took refuge in Ireland or Norway. Whatever the truth of it, in the spring of 1307, Bruce returned to mainland Scotland to resume the struggle. He planned a three-pronged attack; his two brothers, Alexander and Thomas, landed in Galloway with a small force. This came to grief at the very outset; the brothers were captured, their men either killed or taken prisoner. On Edward I’s orders, Alexander and Thomas Bruce were taken to Carlisle Castle where they were executed. The second attack on the Isle of Arran, led by James Douglas and Robert Boyd achieved some success; they ambushed the garrison of Brodick Castle while the English troops were unloading stores, although they failed to take the castle. Laden with booty, Douglas and Boyd returned to their galleys and sailed off.
Bruce, commanding the largest of the three forces led the main attack. His group numbered about 300, mainly Irishmen led no doubt by a kinsman of his queen, Elizabeth de Burgh. He landed on the Ayrshire coast at night, entering his earldom of Carrick near Turnberry Castle, where he had been born in 1275. However, the support he expected there never materialized; also, Turnberry Castle was garrisoned with a strong force so numerous that the overspill had to camp in the village of Turnberry. Bruce, shaken by the lack of support from his own vassals, was nonetheless encouraged by his brother Edward to attack the English camp. The small party fell on the sleeping English, killing as many as they could but Edward I’s forces soon recovered and scoured the west coast to find Bruce. Once again, the unhappy king was forced to go into hiding.
Glen Trool
With few men under his command Bruce was obliged to resort to guerrilla tactics in which he particularly excelled. Unlike Wallace who whenever he gathered a sizeable force fought set-piece battles, Bruce husbanded his scarce resources, using them to maximum effect. Edward I charged Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, the victor of Methven, with the task of hunting down Bruce. In March 1307 Bruce surprised Pembroke’s much larger force at Glen Trool, a steep-sided glen containing the cold waters of Loch Trool, in Galloway. Bruce’s men were positioned just outside a wood through which the English were advancing, having received word that the Scots were in the vicinity. When the vanguard of the English emerged from the wood, they found Bruce’s spearmen waiting for them. Bruce led his men forward and caught the English off balance, driving them back into the wood. However, it seems that the English were in even greater strength than Bruce supposed, so he withdrew in good order although his small force was pursued for several miles.
Two months after Glen Trool Pembroke threw down th
e gauntlet, intent on finally crushing Bruce in the field. Curiously, Bruce accepted the challenge which went against his usual guerrilla tactics; however, he had no intention of fighting the set-piece battle Pembroke envisaged, with knights charging in full armour against Bruce and the rabble he commanded. Bruce chose his ground carefully.
Loudon Hill
Pembroke expected Bruce to respect the rules of chivalry, a fatal error on his part; the king had endured much privation, grief and frustration, hunted like an animal over the past year, with the deaths of three brothers still to be avenged. Loudon Hill, near Darvel in Ayrshire, would be no set-piece affair. The English knights were animated by the prospect of a brisk gallop over the gentle, rolling fields of Ayrshire, winning honours and acclaim from their king.
Bruce chose the only high ground in the vicinity, the volcanic plug rock of Loudon Hill, with its boggy base. There, the road was narrow due to the encroaching slopes of the hill; the English would have to charge uphill to reach the Scottish spearmen. In addition, Bruce had his men dig trenches bristling with sharpened stakes, with gaps to allow egress only by limited numbers of the English heavy cavalry, drawing them piecemeal on to his foot soldiers. (Bruce would employ similar tactics at Bannockburn seven years later.) At Loudon Hill, Bruce’s strategy was simple; what he lacked in strength – his army of 600 was outnumbered five to one by Pembroke’s 3,000 – would be compensated for by his careful preparations.