Scotland: The Story of a Nation. Magnus Magnusson
on the Moray coast. At Kinloss Abbey he paused while his forces took Urquhart Castle and tightened the English grip on the north.
Resistance continued in the south, sporadically. The Red Comyn, who had conducted the defence against the invasion in his capacity as Guardian of Scotland (again), still had a small army in the field, and Wallace, it seems, exhorted and supported by the patriotic Bishop William Lamberton of St Andrews, was prominent in several unavailing guerrilla actions. But the Scottish cause was becoming more and more hopeless.
At the end of the summer campaigning, Edward did not return to England, but stayed for the winter at Dunfermline; he was determined to keep up the pressure on the Scots to submit to his authority. For the Scots, the idea of peace (or at least ‘returning to the king’s peace’, as Edward put it) was beginning to look a tempting option after the long and wearisome years of perpetual warfare. After much preliminary parleying and negotiation, the end came on 3 February 1304, when the Red Comyn surrendered on behalf of the Community of Scotland – but not unconditionally. The terms agreed by Edward showed unexpected forbearance: the leading magnates were allowed to retain their lands and positions in Scotland, with one or two token sentences of temporary exile, and some were even appointed sheriffs. Edward clearly felt that he needed the active support of the Scottish nobility in order to ensure acceptance of his government.
One member of the Scottish nobility seems to have been active on the English side throughout: Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick. His relations with King Edward, however, were wary at best. Then in March 1304 Brace’s position in life changed significantly: his father, Robert Bruce senior, the Lord of Annandale, died, and now the long-standing Bruce claim to the throne devolved directly on the Earl of Carrick, the new Lord of Annandale. This was to make Robert Brace’s position extraordinarily difficult.
As for William Wallace – King Edward’s mercy to the leaders of the Scots resistance stopped short at forgiving Wallace his past sins. There are some indications that Edward offered him some sort of guarantee that his life would be spared if he surrendered himself unconditionally to the king’s will but, if so, Wallace can only have refused. In March 1304 the king convened a parliament at St Andrews, at which 129 Scottish landowners took Edward as their liege lord, and a declaration of outlawry was passed on Wallace and his close comrade-at-arms Sir Simon Fraser. Two former Guardians – Sir John de Soules and Sir Ingram de Umfraville – were not to be granted letters of safe-conduct until Wallace surrendered (de Soules, unwavering in his patriotism, made no attempt to return from France, where he stayed until his death).
Now only Stirling Castle remained defiant, held by Sir William Oliphant in the name of King John Balliol – a forlorn cause if ever there was one. Edward made his preparations for the siege with meticulous care. He gathered a huge collection of siege engines and an impressive arsenal of lead, iron, crossbows and bolts, and took lodgings in the town from which the ladies of his court were able to watch the fun in safety. The siege began on 22 April 1304 and lasted for three months. Every day the mighty siege engines, led by a monster named Warwolf, battered at the castle walls. Lethal earthenware bombs of ‘Greek fire’ (sulphur and saltpetre, mixed with pitch and charcoal) showered down on the defenders. Despite all this formidable firepower, however, Stirling Castle was only surrendered, on 24 July, when the garrison ran out of food. Its leaders were publicly humiliated, but their lives were spared.
Before the end of the siege, Sir Simon Fraser put discretion before valour and submitted to King Edward; but at the same time, Robert Bruce was making a move in a very different direction. On 11 June, while he was a bystander at the siege, he slipped away to nearby Cambuskenneth Abbey1 where he had a meeting with Bishop William Lamberton of St Andrews.1 What they discussed can only be surmised; but at the end they signed a private bond in which they promised
that they should mutually help each other in all their several business and affairs and at all times and against all other persons whatever without any deceit, and that neither of them should undertake any important business without the other of them. They will mutually warn each other against any impending danger and do the best to avert the same from the other.
The document made no specific mention of Bruce’s claim to the throne, but commentators agree that this must have been the motive behind it.
King Edward knew nothing of this private treaty when he left Scotland in triumph in the summer of 1304, and Robert Bruce dutifully took part in Edward’s plans for a new administration for Scotland as a province of England. In September 1305 this would be formalised as an ‘Ordinance for Government of the land of Scotland’ – a new constitution, no less, with an English viceroy (Edward’s nephew, the Earl of Richmond), drawn up in consultation with a commission consisting of twenty English representatives and ten Scots.
One piece of important business had been left outstanding when King Edward left Scotland, however: the matter of William Wallace. On the very day after the showpiece siege of Stirling ended, Edward had ordered the people of Scotland, but especially Sir John Comyn, Sir Simon Fraser and others, ‘to exert themselves until twenty days after Christmas to capture Sir William Wallace and hand him over to the king, who will watch to see how each one conducts himself so that he can do most favour to whoever shall capture Wallace, with regard to exile or legal claims or expiation of past sins’.
Wallace was now clearly marked as Public Enemy Number 1, the object of an intensely personal and vindictive royal vendetta. In addition to the pressure he had put on Comyn and Fraser, King Edward suborned a number of other Scotsmen with tempting bribes. He also put a price of £100 on Wallace’s head. For Edward, Wallace symbolised the spirit of Scotland’s resistance which could only be finally broken if the Scots themselves turned in the already legendary folk-hero to face the king’s punishment.
William Wallace was now on his own, and his capture – and inevitable death – could only be a matter of time.
Capture and death
In Sir Walter Scott’s house at Abbotsford, crammed with antiquarian memorabilia, there is a rather special chair. It was made from the wood of the rafters of a barn in Robroyston, a district at the northern rim of Glasgow, and presented to Scott in 1822. This barn, long since demolished, is said to have been the place where William Wallace was captured on 3 August 1305. A tall monument in the shape of a Celtic cross with a great sword embossed on the front was unveiled to mark the spot in 1900; it was restored in 1986, when new housing estates were extending the urban boundaries of Glasgow. It now stands islanded in oak trees beside a quiet stretch of the B812 from Robroyston to Lenzie.
What had Wallace been doing in the months before his capture? Documentary references to him at this time are scanty, but we can safely surmise that he lived an ever more desperate life on the run, perhaps with a handful of fellow-outlaws, a fugitive hiding in caves and forest fastnesses as the net closed in on him. Any resistance to English subjection was now over, and Wallace cannot have found many sympathisers who were willing to risk their lives to help him, however much they had admired his exploits in the past.
In the end, inevitably, he was captured; and, just as inevitably, his capture was effected not by a military action but by a fellow-Scot. Sir John Menteith has come down in history as an arch-traitor, the man who betrayed and delivered into his enemies’ hands the great war-hero who had led the Scots in their struggle for freedom and the restoration of their rightful king.
The circumstances of Wallace’s capture, like so much else, have been the subject of much embroidery, by folklore and by Blind Harry. Sir John Menteith was a member of the Stewart family, and uncle of the gallant Sir John Stewart who had died with his archers at the Battle of Falkirk. Like so many other Scottish knights he had fought for the Scots at the Battle of Dunbar in 1296 and been imprisoned for his pains, then earned his release by fighting for King Edward on the expedition to France in 1297. When he returned he had joined the Scottish cause, and by October 1301 he was described in English documents as ‘the king’s enemy’. Again, like so many other knights, he submitted to