[1296 A.D.] Redhall, by the tenure of defending it against the English: they did so to the last, and honourably perished amid the ruins of the edifice. Bruce the Competitor, the earl of March, and other Scottish nobles of the south, joined with King Edward, instead of opposing him. The first of these vainly flattered himself that the dethronement of Baliol might be succeeded by his own nomination to the crown, when it should be declared vacant by his rival's forfeiture, and Edward seemed to encourage these hopes. While the English king was still at Berwick, the abbot of Arbroath appeared before him with a letter from Baliol, in answer to Edward's summons to him to appear in person, renouncing his vassalage, and expressing defiance. "The foolish traitor!" said the king, "what frenzy has seized him? But since he will not come to us, we will go to him." Edward's march northward was stopped by the strong castle of Dunbar, which was held out against him by the countess of March, who had joined the lords that declared for the cause of independence, although the earl, her husband, was serving in the English army: so much were the Scots divided on this momentous occasion. Whilst Edward pressed the siege of this important place, the inner gate, as it might be termed, of Scotland, a large force appeared on the descent of the ridge of the Lammermoor hills, above the town. It was the Scottish army moving to the relief of Dunbar, and on the appearance of their banners the defenders raised a shout of exultation and defiance. But when Warrenne, earl of Surrey, Edward's general, advanced towards the Scottish army, the Scots, with a rashness which often ruined their affairs before and afterwards, poured down from the advantageous post which they occupied, and incurred by their temerity a dreadful defeat, which laid the whole country open to the invader. Bruce, after the victory of Dunbar, conceived his turn of triumph was approaching, and hinted to Edward his hope of being preferred to the throne which Baliol had forfeited. "Have we no other business," said Edward, looking at him askance, "than to conquer kingdoms for you?" Bruce retired and meddled no more with public affairs, in which his grandson, at a later period, took a part so distinguished. After the battle of Dunbar scarce a spark of resistance to Edward seemed to enlighten the general despair. The English army continued an unresisted march as far north as Aberdeen and Elgin. Baliol, brought before his victor, [in the churchyard of Strathcaro, July, 1296] was literally stripped of his royal robes, confessed his feudal transgression in rebellion against his lord paramount, and made a formal surrender of his kingdom to the victor. The king of England held a parliament at Berwick,' August 28th, 1296, where he received the willing and emulous submission of Scottishmen of the higher ranks, lords, knights, and squires. Edward received them all graciously, and took measures for assuring his conquest. He created John Warrenne, earl of Surrey, guardian of Scotland. Hugh Cressingham, an ambitious churchman, was made treasurer, and William Ormesby justiciary of the kingdom. He placed English governors and garrisons in the Scottish castles, and returned to England, having achieved an easy and apparently a permanent conquest. This was not all. Edward resolved so to improve his conquest as to eradicate all evidence of national independence. He carried off or mutilated such records as might awaken the recollection that [The most important result of the campaign was the capture and fortification of Berwick. That city, the key to the Lothians, was the commercial city, and Scotland was left without one until the rise, after the union, of Glasgow and the mercantile centres of the Clyde."] [1296 A.D.] Scotland had ever been free. The chartulary of Scone, the place where, since the conquest of Kenneth Macalpine, the Scottish kings had been crowned, was carefully ransacked for the purpose of destroying whatever might be found at variance with the king of England's pretensions. The Scottish historians have, perhaps, magnified the extent of this rapine; but that Edward was desirous to remove everything which could remind the Scots of their original independence, is proved by his carrying to London, not only the crown and sceptre surrendered by Baliol, but even the sacred stone on which the Scottish monarchs were placed when they received the royal inauguration. He presented these trophies to the cathedral of Westminster. This fatal stone, as already mentioned, was said to have been brought from Ireland by Fergus, the son of Eric, who led the Dalriads to the shores of Argyllshire. Its virtues are preserved in the celebrated leonine verse— Ni fallat fatum, Scoti, quocunque locatum Invenient lapidem, regnare tenentur ibidem. Which may be rendered thus: Unless the fates are faithless found, There were Scots who hailed the accomplishment of this prophecy at the accession of James VI to the crown of England, and exulted that, in removing this palladium, the policy of Edward resembled that which brought the Trojan horse in triumph within their walls, and which occasioned the destruction of their royal family. The stone is still preserved, and forms the support of King Edward the Confessor's chair, which the sovereign occupies at his coronation, and, independent of the divination so long in being accomplished, is in itself a very curious remnant of extreme antiquity. The unanimous subjection of a proud and brave nation to a foreign conqueror is too surprising to be dismissed without remark, especially since it was so general that most of the noble and ancient families of Scotland are reduced to the necessity of tracing their ancestors' names in the fifty-six sheets of parchment which constitute the degrading roll of submission to Edward I. [This is called the Ragman Roll, a corruption probably of Ragment, a deed or convention.] The following circumstances here suggest themselves in explanation of the remarkable fact. The nobility of Scotland during the civil wars had, by the unvarying policy of Malcolm Canmore and his successors, come to consist almost entirely of a race foreign to the country. Two or three generations had not converted Normans into Scots; and whatever allegiance the emigrated strangers might yield to the monarchs who bestowed on them their fiefs, it must have been different from the sentiments of filial attachment with which men regard the land of their birth and that of their ancestors, and the princes by whose fathers their own had been led to battle, and with whom they had shared conquest and defeat. In fact, the Normans were neither by birth nor manners rendered accessible to the emotions which constitute patriotism. Their ancestors were those Scandinavians who left without reluctance their native north in search of better settlements, and spread their sails to the winds, like the voluntary exile of modern times, little caring to what shores they were wafted, so that they were not driven back to their own. The education of the Normans of the thirteenth century had not inculcated that love of a natal soil which [1296-1297 A.D.] they could not learn from their roving fathers of the preceding ages. They were, above all nations, devoted to chivalry, and its doctrines and habits were unfavourable to local attachment. The true knight-errant was a cosmopolite-a citizen of the world: every soil was his country, and he was indifferent to feelings and prejudices which promote in others patriotic attachment to a particular country. The feudal system also, though the assertion may at first sight appear strange, had, until fiefs were rendered hereditary, circumstances unfavourable to loyalty and patriotism. A vassal might, and often did, hold fiefs in more realms than one; a division of allegiance tending to prevent the sense of duty or loyal attachment running strongly in any of their single channels. Nay, he might, and many did, possess fiefs depending on the separate kings of France, England, and Scotland, and thus being to a certain extent the subject of all these princes, he could hardly look on any of them with peculiar attachment, unless it were created by personal respect or preference. When war broke out betwixt any of the princes whom he depended upon, the feudatory debated with himself to which standard he should adhere, and shook himself clear of his allegiance to the other militant power by resigning the fief. The possibility of thus changing country and masters, this habit of serving a prince only so long as the vassal held fief under him, led to loose and irregular conceptions on the subject of loyalty, and gave the feudatory more the appearance of a mercenary who serves for pay than of a patriot fighting in defence of his country. This consequence may be drawn from the frequent compliances and change of parties visible in the Scottish barons, and narrated without much censure by the historians. Lastly, the reader may observe that the great feudatories, who seemed to consider themselves as left to choose to which monarch they should attach themselves, were less regardful of the rights of England and Scotland, or of foreigners and native princes, than of the personal talents and condition of the two kings. In attaching themselves to Edward instead of Baliol, the high vassals connected themselves with valour instead of timidity, wealth instead of poverty, and conquest instead of defeat. Such indifference to the considerations arising from patriotism, and such individual attention to their own interest being the characteristic of the Scoto-Norman nobles, it is no wonder that many of them took but a lukewarm share in the defence of their country, and that some of them were guilty of shameful versatility during the quickly changing scenes which we are about to narrate. It was different with the Scottish nation at large. THE RISE OF WALLACE What King Edward gained by his own prudence, he lost by the negligence or imprudence of some of his officers. The earl of Warrenne lived chiefly in England, and the government of Scotland was left almost entirely to the treasurer, Cressingham, and the justiciary, Ormesby, who irritated the people, the one by his oppressive exactions, and the other by the severity with which he enforced the oath of fealty. The general discontent broke out in petty insurrections, and, in spite of the desertion of their nobility, the people of Scotland seemed to be animated by a general spirit of resistance. At first this feeling was shown by the numerous parties of outlaws and banditti who infested the roads, and plundered the English wherever they found them, sometimes burning and robbing their houses. These bands of maraud [1297 A.D.] ers became gradually more numerous; they ventured even to attack castles, and to make prisoners of their garrisons; and they often committed atrocious acts of barbarity. Young men of respectable families, who had nothing to hope from the English government, and with whose wild and restless dispositions this lawless life agreed well, joined the insurgents and became their leaders. Among these was one who soon rose to the highest pitch of fame, and who was, for a while, looked upon with justice as the saviour of his country. William Wallace (or de Walays) was the second son of Sir Malcolm Wallace of Ellerslie, near Paisley, a knight of small estate, but of an ancient family. Young Wallace was remarkable for his strength and stature; and, hasty and violent in his passions, he appears to have spent rather a turbulent youth. His hatred to the English was said to have been encouraged and fostered from his childhood by one of his uncles, a priest, who had perhaps suffered from the new state of things, and who instilled into the youthful mind of his nephew the love of freedom and the hatred of oppression. Wallace soon became a marked man in his native district, and he seems to have associated with men of the same temper and sentiments as his own, whose conduct was equally suspicious. According to popular history, he seems at this time to have lived a life worthy of Robin Hood and his foresters. One day, in May, 1297, he was insulted by some English officers in the town of Lanark, and his resentment led to a street feud, in which he was overpowered, and would have been slain, but he escaped into the house of a woman who was his mistress, and by whose assistance he succeeded in making his escape to the woods in disguise." This woman was an orphan, Marion Bradfute, and according to some accounts she and Wallace had been secretly married, and she had borne him a daughter; according to others, she was his betrothed; according to yet others, she was simply his mistress. Wyntoun calls her his "leman." Blind Harry's account agrees with Wyntoun's very closely, yet he would seem to have had some other narrative before him, and possibly Wyntoun. and Harry may have drawn mainly upon a common predecessor. However this may be, Harry, with inflexible allegiance to his hero, expressly affirms: "Mine author says she was his rightwise wife." The point really needs no consideration. Harry lavishes a wealth of tender emotion over the loves of Wallace and Marion Bradfute, and his sympathetic feeling elevates him to genuine poetic expression, often touched with extreme delicacy. Marion lived at Lanark, "a maiden mild" of eighteen. Her father, Sir Hugh de Bradfute, and her eldest brother, had been slain by Hazelrig, the sheriff of Lanark; her mother, too, was dead; and such peace as she enjoyed was dependent on her having "purchased King Edward's protection," although that did not secure her from the offensive attentions of his local minions. "Amiable and benign she was, and wise, Her tongue well ruled, her face right fresh and fair. Humbly her led, and purchased a good name, And kept herself with every wight from blame. When Wallace first saw her, Hazelrig had just broached a proposal of marriage between her and his son. The inevitable conflict arose. The English sheriff, Hazelrig, forced his way into the house, and cruelly put the woman to death; in revenge for which Wallace soon afterwards [1297 A.D.] attacked and slew the sheriff. Wallace was proclaimed a felon and traitor; a price was put on his head; and he was thenceforth obliged to make his home in the woods and mountains. There he found companions who had been already driven to the same course, and joining with these, he became the chief of one of the small plundering bands which overran the kingdom. Wallace's band was seldom unsuccessful in its enterprises; and the young hero already discovered a talent for war, which gained him distinction among other bands of outlaws, as well as with his own immediate followers. These gradually united themselves under his command, and he in a short time found himself at the head of a little army of outlaws whom he accustomed to discipline and obedience to their leader, as well as to those rapid and decisive movements which were necessary to insure success in the kind of warfare in which he was now engaged. He now openly declared war on the English, and he was joined by a few persons of more consequence, who hoped that they might thus assist in liberating their country from the English domination. Among the first of those was Sir William Douglas, a baron of influence in Clydesdale, who had been taken prisoner by the English at the siege of Berwick, and had been liberated on his taking the oath of fealty to King Edward. The addition of the numerous vassals of Douglas to his already considerable force encouraged Wallace to attempt some bolder enterprise. It happened, fortunately for his design, that Ormesby, the English justiciary, was holding his court at Scone, with no great force to protect him, while the guardian of Scotland was attending the English parliament. Wallace marched suddenly to Scone in May, 1297, and surprised the justiciary, who escaped with difficulty, leaving a rich booty and many prisoners to the assailants. The latter now openly plundered and ravaged the country, putting all the English they found to the sword, and acting sometimes collectively, and sometimes in separate parties. They soon, however, collected all their forces into one army, and, leaving the scene of these exploits, threw themselves into the western districts of Scotland. This movement had, no doubt, been concerted with some of the great Scottish barons, who were weary of English rule, for Wallace had no sooner shown himself in the west than he was joined by the Steward of Scotland and his brother, Sir Andrew Moray, of Bothwell, Alexander de Lindesay, Sir Richard Lundin, Wishart, bishop of Glasgow, and other men of influence. The insurrection had now taken a formidable character, and Wallace, at the head of a considerable force, began to clear the districts in his power from the English. In doing this acts of great atrocity were daily perpetrated. The rage of the Scots was directed especially against the English clergy, and the victorious insurgents even amused themselves with torturing helpless women. ROBERT BRUCE JOINS WALLACE There was one man on whom all eyes were turned, and whose conduct had been hitherto indecisive. This was Robert Bruce, the son of Robert Bruce, lord of Annandale, who was at this time with King Edward. Young Robert Bruce was powerful by his extensive possessions, and by the number of ready vassals he could bring into the field, and he was looked on by the English rulers with so much suspicion that they summoned him to Carlisle, where he went with a numerous retinue, and made oath on the consecrated sacrament and the sword of Thomas à Becket, that he would be faithful to the king of England. |