William Wallace

In May 1297, a freeholder from Ayrshire, William Wallace, apparently already outlawed as a robber and brigand, murdered the newly imposed English sheriff of Lanark. Perhaps with the tacit approval of the bishop of Glasgow, perhaps as an independent agent claiming to act on behalf of King John de Balliol, Wallace now launched himself on a campaign of terror. He attempted the assassination of the English justiciar, William Ormsby. At Stirling Bridge, in September 1297, he lured an incompetently led English cavalry into slaughter by his own Scots spearmen. The army’s commander was so determined to observe the chivalric conventions that he effectively required the battle to be started twice, recalling more than 5,000 troops who had already crossed over to the Scots side of the bridge, in order that he might publicly confer knighthood on various of those about to fight. Edward I’s treasurer of Scotland, Hugh of Cressingham, was killed in the ensuing bloodbath. His body was flayed and his skin reputedly used to make a sword belt for Wallace’s waist.

A great deal of myth-making obscures our image of the true William Wallace. Much of what is recorded of him depends upon the testimony of a fifteenth-century Scots bard, ‘Blind Harry’, whose writings are as wildly romantic as his name and who seems to have made up most of what he wrote. Blind Harry’s lead here has been followed by any number of later bards, romantics and Hollywood film producers. What is clear is that Wallace’s rebellion could not have come at a worse time for Edward and the English. Stirling Bridge was followed by a wholescale invasion of Scotland by Edward I, for the first time making use of Welsh archers and infantry as a major contingent in his army, culminating in the defeat of Wallace’s spearmen at Falkirk in July 1298. In English eyes, one set of defeated barbarians was to be used to bring order to another.

Wallace melted away in the confusion and was not captured for a further seven years. Tried in Westminster Hall, he was eventually hung, disembowelled and quartered, like Dafydd of Wales before him, and his head displayed on London Bridge.