In the Footsteps of William Wallace

by Alan Young

  The first Wallace to be associated with the Fitz Alans was Richard ‘le Waleys’ (Wallace). Whether a Welshman or a borderer, he had been ‘Normanised’ by 1166 when he appears in the records as a paid sergeant-at-arms in Shropshire under William Fitz Alan, Lord of Oswestry. It seems that this Richard was in the Shropshire party of dependants who followed in the train of William Fitz Alan’s brother, Walter, after he had been made Steward of the Scottish royal household in 1136. The date of Richard Wallace’s move is not known but he was certainly there before 1174 when he appeared in Walter Stewart’s entourage as a witness to Walter’s grant to Paisley Abbey in that year. Richard seems to have been given land by the early Stewarts, either Walter or his successor, Alan, in Ayrshire. Richard or a successor, by the same name, held land as tenants of the Stewarts in the Sanquhar, Tarbolton and Mauchline areas of Kyle, Ayrshire. In view of these contacts it seems probably that Riccarton (meaning Richard’s ‘tun’ or ‘manor’) was named after Richard Wallace and was part of the original grant of Scottish lands to him by the first Walter Stewart. The first Wallace named William to appear in the records occurs in the context of other Stewart lands, on this occasion in East Lothian. In the time of the first Walter Stewart (died 1177) it is recorded that Robert of Stenton’s rights in Stenton (East Lothian) passed to a William Wallace as husband of Robert’s daughter, Isabel. Professor Barrow has found seven Wallaces associated with the first three Stewarts in the period up to 1241. Their names were Alan, Adam, Henry, Stephen, William and two Richards.

  The Elderslie Yew. Local tradition claims that this ancient tree dates back to Wallace’s time.

  It is difficult to say whether the William Wallace of Stirling Bridge was descended from Richard Wallace or one of the other Wallaces mentioned above. It is within the context of Stewart landholding and the Stewart-Wallace relationship, developed from the second half of the twelfth century, that the early life of William Wallace must be assessed and the places associated with that life, perhaps, identified. The first site to be connected with William Wallace in historical record was Lanark where Wallace killed the English Sheriff of Lanark, whose jurisdiction may have covered some of Wallace’s lands. Given the uncertainty over the name of William Wallace’s father, it is no surprise that it is unclear where William Wallace was born and brought up. Tradition has made Riccarton the place of birth of William Wallace’s father. Blind Harry associates William’s father with the land ‘of Ellerslie’, which has long been accepted as Elderslie, near Paisley. Consequently Elderslie has been associated with William Wallace’s birth, though there is no proof that his family held this area at the end of the thirteenth century. They did possess it by the late fourteenth century and it lay in the heart of Stewart country.

  This plaque on the Elderslie Wallace Monument shows Wallace receiving the Guardianship of Scotland.

  The parish church at Riccarton. This town rivals Elderslie as the place most associated with William Wallace’s early life.

  It is interesting to speculate, though this must remain conjecture, whether any of Blind Harry’s tales of William Wallace’s youthful adventures contain some geographically accurate family traditions. Certainly one story involved William Wallace in a clash with English soldiers while he was fishing in the River Irvine near Riccarton. In this episode Riccarton was the home of his Uncle Richard and it is mentioned several times in Blind Harry’s story, indicating that it was a place of special family significance. Riccarton apart, Ayrshire generally is important in Wallace’s early activities, according to Blind Harry, with Ayr playing a key role. Wallace was apparently held prisoner at Ayr Castle for a while, and the infamous massacre of Scottish lords took place at the Barns of Ayr. These associations seem important in view of the known Stewart and Wallace connections in Ayrshire. If William Wallace’s father was Alan ‘Walays’, this may have been the Alan ‘Walays’ described as a tenant of the King, of Ayrshire, whose homage to Edward I was recorded in August 1296. Elderslie, on the other hand, seems central to the Wallace homeland according to Blind Harry’s testimony. As it was the focus of Stewart landownership in Renfrewshire this could add veracity to Blind Harry’s tale too. Lanark is also given a link with Wallace’s early life by Blind Harry’s story of Wallace’s mistress being situated there. This could have significance since Wallace’s first generally accepted historical action in 1297, the murder of the English sheriff, William Hesilrigg, also took place at Lanark.

  Irvine Water, Ayrshire. According to Blind Harry, William Wallace, while staying with another relative at Riccarton, became involved in a fight with English soldiers at Irvine Water where he was fishing.

  Yet there are other references made by Blind Harry to places involved in William Wallace’s early life which seem to lack the same authenticity. M. McDiarmid, in his careful scrutiny of the text of Blind Harry’s The Wallace, notes the oddity of so many references to Wallace’s links outside western Scotland – that Wallace had an uncle in the Carse of Gowrie who had helped in his upbringing before he was sent to Dundee for his education, and Kilspindie (Perthshire) is given a specific mention here; that another relative, a parson, gave him temporary dwelling at Dunipace (Stirlingshire); that he had a mistress at Perth; that Wallace’s mother took refuge at one stage in Dunfermline Abbey. All of these links seem rather improbable without supporting evidence. Paisley Abbey rather than Dundee seems a more likely place for Wallace to have been educated. McDiarmid has pointed out that some of the detail in the poem may reflect Harry’s own environment and contacts and, perhaps, his own education. He concludes that as a writer Harry deliberately slanted the story of William Wallace to the environment known to himself and a series of family friends and contacts that he wished to compliment by including them in his tale. As a result, perhaps, areas between the firths of Forth and Tay, especially their inner reaches, i.e. north-east Stirlingshire, Linlithgow, south-east Perthshire, north-west Fife and south-west Angus, receive rather more attention than would be expected considering the Wallaces’ family and feudal connections in western Scotland.

  Cambuskenneth Abbey, near Dunipace, where Wallace, according to Blind Harry, lived with his uncle, a cleric. There is also a tradition that one of Wallace’s arms was buried at the abbey.

  Kilspindie church. Blind Harry, again, records how William Wallace was taken by his mother to stay with an uncle at Kilspindie (between Perth and Dundee). Apparently, Wallace received early education at Dundee.

  It is difficult to separate Wallace family traditions from Blind Harry’s personal affectations as a writer. Yet it is necessary to delve into William Wallace’s obscure family origins and background to try to find the answer to a key historical question. Was Wallace an independent adventurer spurred into military action against the English in 1297 by wrongs committed against his family and friends or was he simply a loyal ‘frontman’ carrying out the orders of feudal overlords, the Stewarts?

  The plaque at Dundee. This refers to an incident in Blind Harry’s account of one of Wallace’s first encounters with the English at Dundee. There is no historical record of Wallace’s connection with Dundee until 1297 when he was actively involved in besieging the town.

  John of Fordun implied that William Wallace was already in hiding or perhaps an outlaw when he killed the English Sheriff of Lanark: ‘William lifted up his head from his den.’ The rather more numerous contemporary English sources, as well as making disparaging remarks about Wallace’s family background, are unanimous in referring to him as a criminal in their first references. To the Guisborough chronicler he was ‘. . . a common thief’, ‘a public robber’, ‘a vagrant fugitive . . . who had been outlawed many times’. To the Lanercost chronicler Wallace was ‘a bloody man who had formerly been a leader of brigands’. To the anonymous author of Song on the Scottish Wars he was ‘a robber’. To Peter Langtoft Wallace was ‘the master of thieves’, while to Matthew of Westminster he was ‘a robber given to sacrilege’. To William Rishanger Wallace was ‘an expert archer who made his living b
y bow and quiver’, implying, perhaps, the life of an outlaw. Finally, in the Royal Manuscript Wallace was a ‘peasant rascal from nowhere’. If, as seems probable, William Wallace was already a criminal before he murdered the English sheriff in 1297, what were the circumstances behind this outlawry and was it connected with the actions of William Heselrigg, Sheriff of Lanark and Clydesdale?

  Wallace’s mother is said to have been buried in the churchyard of Dunfermline Abbey. A plaque now commemorates her life.

  A window at Dunfermline Abbey.

  Tradition established by the two fifteenth-century sources Andrew Wyntoun and Blind Harry states that the young William Wallace had a confrontation with a group of English troops in Lanark. English soldiers formed an army of occupation in key centres of southern Scotland following the disastrous defeat of the Scottish army at Dunbar on 27 April 1296, when an estimated 10,000 Scots (undoubtedly an exaggeration) died. Wallace, though outnumbered, inflicted heavy casualties among the soldiers before fleeing to his ‘lemman’ or mistress – Harry named her as Marion Braidfute and described her as Wallace’s wife. She was eventually captured and executed on the orders of William Heselrigg, Sheriff of Lanark. This story may explain Wallace’s act of vengeance. However, there is no supporting evidence for the existence of Marion Braidfute, whose name, it has been suggested, was suspiciously close to the family name of one of Blind Harry’s neighbours. This account also does not explain Wallace’s probable status as an outlaw before the event.

  The Abbot’s House plaque at Dunfermline Abbey. Another memorial to William Wallace’s mother and her traditional association with Dunfermline Abbey.

  Both Andrew Wyntoun and Blind Harry mention the hardship and suffering of the Wallace family itself. Wyntoun states:

  Willame Walays in Clyddysdale,

  That saw hys kyn supprysyd hale

  Blind Harry refers to the scattering of the Wallace family:

  The ruins of the parish church of St Kentigern, Lanark, where, tradition has it, Wallace married Marion Braidfute.

  The Norman doorway at Lamington church. Lamington is an estate on the Clyde with a castle, the remains of which mainly consist of a tower house. Lamington is associated with the Wallace tradition through William Wallace’s wife or mistress, Marion Braidfute, heiress of Lamington. This doorway would have been present in Wallace’s time though there is no documentary evidence, only myth, to connect him with the site.

  For at this time Scotland was almost lost,

  And overspread with a rude South’ron host.

  Wallace’s father to the Lennox fled

  His eldest son he thither with him led . . .

  To Ellerslie he and his mother went,

  She on the morrow for her brother sent,

  Who told her, to her sorrow, grief and pain,

  Her husband and her eldest son were slain

  It is feasible that William Wallace’s villain status prior to 1297 may have been related to some of the Wallace family’s refusal to swear fealty to Edward I following his twenty-one-week victory march around Scotland after the Battle of Dunbar. Edward I gathered the fealties of all landholders of substance in Scotland, who, by so doing, acknowledged his position as overlord of Scotland, and these were collected in a document known as the ‘Ragman Roll’. Over 1,500 landowners between May and August 1296 swore:

  Tinto viewed from Lamington. This is an area associated, by Blind Harry, with the courtship and relationship of William Wallace and Marion Braidfute, who was, apparently, heiress of Lamington, which is 12 miles from Lanark.

  I will be faithful and loyal and will bear fealty and loyalty to King Edward, king of England and his heirs . . . and will never bear arms nor give counsel nor help to anyone against him nor his heirs, whatever should happen in the future, with the help of God and the Saints . . .

  It has been remarked that William Wallace’s name was not on the list of those pledging their allegiance to Edward and that this explains his outlaw standing in 1297. Wallace, perhaps, as a younger son did not have sufficient status as a property owner to appear on the list. However, there is no sign either of William’s known elder brother Malcolm or the elder brother Andrew named in Bower’s Scotichronicon. There are some Wallace names in the ‘Ragman Roll’ – Adam and Alan (two names associated with the Stewart lordship earlier in the thirteenth century), John la Wallace Fitz Thomas le Wallace (noted as being from the country of Fife) and a Nicol le Wallace as well as a John le Wallace of Over Etone. If Alan Wallace, of Ayrshire, was the father of William Wallace it is possible that William Wallace’s homage, as a younger man, may have been deemed unnecessary. John of Fordun implied that William Wallace’s father had died just prior to 1297 and that William’s elder brother (named Andrew by Walter Bower) had ‘inherited a landed estate’. Of course, he would not be allowed to succeed to the estate if he had not submitted to the new English regime in 1296.

  Perhaps property and inheritance is at the heart of William Wallace’s complaint against Heselrigg in 1297, a grievance liable to be more fierce if either Wallace’s father and/or elder brother had been slain, as claimed by both Andrew Wyntoun and Blind Harry. Heselrigg’s jurisdiction in the sheriffdom of Lanark would include both the organisation of fealty-taking as well as property matters and he was apparently holding local assizes in Lanark when the attack by William Wallace and his men took place.

  That William Wallace was already a man on the run in 1297, suggested by Fordun, incorporated into a more detailed account of his family’s hardships by Andrew Wyntoun and Blind Harry and fervently argued by all contemporary English chroniclers, is given extra weight by a Scottish legal record of 8 August 1296 which refers to a ‘William le Waleys, thief’. This document accuses ‘William Waleys, thief’ in his absence of assisting a renegade priest, Matthew of York, to rob Cristiana of St John (Perth) at her house in Perth and taking by force beer to the value of 3s (approximately 36 gallons by modern prices). The date of the offence is given as Thursday next before St Botulph’s Day, i.e. June 1296. This would fit in with the notion that Wallace and some of his family fled from his home area in the aftermath of the English victory against the Scottish army at Dunbar on 27 April and the subsequent attempt, sheriffdom by sheriffdom, to extract oaths of fealty from landowners. The place of the robbery also tallies with the many adventures of William Wallace in this area described by Blind Harry, which, as has been seen, would otherwise appear to lack historical substance.

  Wallace and the Stewarts.

  Glasgow Cathedral. Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, played a major part in supporting Scottish resistance to the English. He backed Wallace and was a major source of assistance to Robert Bruce’s coup in 1306. Wishart was buried here.

  The legend-making of Bower, Wyntoun and particularly Blind Harry naturally concentrate attention on William Wallace himself and his family and perhaps give the impression of an individual adventurer acting either on his own behalf or that of his family. This approach does not set William Wallace’s motivation in the wider context of the Wallaces’ overlords, the Stewart family, or indeed the broader political interests of that major landowning family. Those English chroniclers who are held in respect for their detailed contemporary commentary on the Scottish wars, such as the Lanercost and Guisborough chroniclers, suggest two leaders of the Scottish nobility as being the principal initiators of the 1297 revolt against the English. James Stewart (c. 1260–1309) was certainly one of the main leaders in 1297. To the Lanercost chronicler, the issue was clear-cut:

  . . . [the Bishop of Glasgow, Robert Wishart] conspired with the Steward of the realm, named James for a new piece of insolence . . . Not daring openly to break their pledged faith to the king, they caused a certain bloody man, William Wallace, who had formerly been chief of brigands in Scotland, to revolt against the king and assemble the people in his support . . .

  What were the Stewarts’ motives, especially after their very rapid submission to Edward I after the Battle of Dunbar?

  As
has already been said, the Stewart family had established themselves as a powerful landowning family by 1200 as a result of grants of property from Scottish kings. The growth in their landed fortunes continued throughout the thirteenth century and was consolidated particularly in the west. James Stewart, the head of the Stewart family at the time of William Wallace, had inherited the family’s lordships in Renfrewshire and Ayrshire but also had gained new Stewart land in Bute and Cowal, acquired in the thirteenth century. A younger member of the family, Walter, had received the earldom of Menteith in about 1260. With greater landed possessions came political offices and more power. Walter, Earl of Menteith was Sheriff of Ayr by 1264 and Sheriff of Dumbarton between 1271 and 1288; he was also prominent in royal witness lists. Alexander Stewart and his son, James, were regularly seen in the royal circle after 1260. James Stewart was Sheriff of Ayr in 1288 and Sheriff of Dumbarton in 1289. The Stewarts exercised their influence, political, military and economic, through a series of private castles – Renfrew, Rothesay, Dundonald and Dunoon, and perhaps also Glassary and Eilean Dearg. Their control over the royal castles at Ayr and Dumbarton through the offices of sheriff (still held in 1292) consolidated their power in the west. Under the kingship of John Balliol (1292–6), James Stewart was further bolstered when the 1293 Parliament sought to establish a new sheriffdom, of Kintyre, under his authority. This comprised Bute, the Cumbraes, Kintyre and probably Arran and both complemented and extended Stewart authority in this region. Stewart control over the entire Firth of Clyde zone would have been dominant if the scheme of 1293 had been put in force. Even without this, James Stewart was in charge of Kintyre at the beginning of the Scottish wars and had either Skipness or Dunaverty as his chief castle in the region.