Robert The Bruce: King Of Scots. Ronald McNair Scott
and Alexander Comyn, whom he had captured at Dunbar on condition that they returned to their fiefs to quell the disturbances and then followed him overseas with their feudal levies.18
But when the noblemen arrived in Scotland they found the disturbances very much more serious than they had expected. They sent various messages to King Edward expressing their loyalty and hopes of success, but in practice they remained inactive, waiting to see how matters would evolve and taking no steps to prevent their retainers drifting away to join the insurgents. Hugh de Cressingham had no doubt that they were playing a double game and warned the King to give no credence to their protestations. As an English chronicler shrewdly remarks, ‘even when the Lords were present with the King in body, at heart they were on the opposite side.’19
By early August Moray had broken out of the Mounth and seized all the English-held castles in the north, including Inverness, Elgin and Banff.20 Sir Henry Lathom, Sheriff of Aberdeenshire, had joined in the revolt and handed over the castle at Aberdeen.21 Wallace, having built up his forces in the forest of Selkirk, moved northeast after the capitulation of Irvine, cleared Perthshire and Fife and, after making contact with Moray on the Tay, settled down to besiege the castle of Dundee. The whole area north of the Firth of Forth, with few exceptions, was in Scottish hands.
At last the Earl of Surrey, whom King Edward had appointed his viceroy in Scotland, bestirred himself. He was now an elderly man whose long military experience had taught him that foot soldiers in their hundreds could be scattered like chaff by a handful of armed knights. He had little doubt that with the Scottish lords, the core of their chivalry, sitting on the sidelines or in prison or in the retinue of his master, he would brush aside the common folk of Moray and Wallace like a fly from his face.
Marshalling at Berwick a formidable host of heavy cavalry and footmen, he marched towards Stirling where the crossing of the Forth was the key to the north.
On hearing news of his approach, Moray and Wallace joined forces and moved south to defend this vital position. One cannot admire enough the courage and determination of these two young men who were going to pit their inferior forces, woefully lacking in mounted men, against the armed might of a rich and powerful kingdom. The posture they took up bore all the marks of brilliant generalship. Overlooking a loop of the Forth river which was crossed by a single bridge was an abrupt rock, the Abbey Crag, from which a neck of ground led back to the nearby Ochil Hills, giving a safe retreat in the event of failure. Below the northern exit of the bridge and the causeway that prolonged it, was an area of boggy ground almost entirely encircled by the Forth. On this crag the Scottish commanders deployed their men.
The English forces spent the nights of 9 and 10 September on the south side of the river. They were supremely self-confident. Hugh de Cressingham had already advised Percy and Clifford that there was no need for their additional support.
James Stewart and the Earl of Lennox, who had been hovering on the outskirts with a troop of cavalry, uncertain whether to join Moray and Wallace, rated equally low the chances of the Scottish forces. To avoid a butchery of their countrymen they approached the Earl of Surrey with the suggestion that they should inaugurate a parley. The earl agreed, but Stewart and Lennox returned from the Scottish leaders with a blank refusal. Two Dominican friars were then dispatched to Moray and Wallace with offers of generous treatment if they would yield. ‘Tell your commander,’ was their reply, ‘that we are not here to make peace but to do battle to defend ourselves and liberate our kingdom. Let them come and we shall prove this in their very beards.’22
Sir Richard Lundin, a Scottish knight, who had gone over to the English from Irvine in disgust at the dissension in the Scottish camp, asked the Earl of Surrey to send him up river with a detachment to a ford where he could cross with sixty men abreast and take the Scotsmen in the rear, but his suggestion was ignored and the earl retired to bed.23
At dawn on 11 September a party of English infantry were sent over the narrow bridge but were recalled because the earl had overslept. Hugh de Cressingham, fuming with impatience, urged that no more time should be wasted and the earl gave him the order to cross. Riding arrogantly two by two, the cavalry were led by him over the bridge. From early in the morning until eleven o’clock the column moved forward until Moray and Wallace decided that the time had come to split the English army. The main force of the Scots fell upon the leading ranks on the causeway while a picked body of men seized the bridgehead and began to cut away its timbers. Jostled from the causeway, the heavy horses of the armed knights plunged and wallowed in the deep mire on either side, unable to manoeuvre or charge, tumbling their riders to the ground. Behind them their comrades on the south side were powerless to help them for the bridge was destroyed.24
A bloody massacre took place. Hugh de Cressingham met his fate at the hands of the Scottish spearmen. His body was flayed and his skin in small pieces was sent throughout the country as tokens of liberation from the accursed regime of which he was the symbol.25 Only Sir Marmaduke Tweng managed to hew his way through his opponents and take refuge in the castle of Stirling.26
The Earl of Surrey had not crossed the bridge. Aghast at the slaughter beyond it, he lost his nerve and galloped in such haste to the border that his horse had nothing to eat between Stirling and Berwick and foundered on arrival.
The rank and file and the baggage trains of the English were less fortunate than their commander. As they retreated down the road to Falkirk, James Stewart and the Earl of Lennox, who were lurking in the woods on either side until the issue had been decided, poured out with their men to kill the fleeing groups and seize the laden wagons of booty.27
The repercussions of the English defeat were immense. For the first time an army of professional knights had been overcome by the common folk. The dissenting barons in England were so shocked that they patched up an agreement with the regency who were ruling in the absence of the King abroad, and all talk of civil war was suspended.
In northeast Scotland, the Earl of Strathearn, the Earl of Buchan and the Comyns and other noblemen in that area, who had been making face-saving gestures to suppress the patriots, threw off their allegiance to the English Crown. In the southwest, Robert Bruce, who had gone to ground after the capitulation of Irvine, emerged to rouse the men of Carrick and Galloway to such effect that Sir Robert Clifford made two punitive expeditions, before and after Christmas 1297, from Carlisle to Annandale to try to check his activities.28 Outside the strongest castles all English resistance ceased. Moray and Wallace were masters of the realm.
But Moray had been severely wounded at Stirling Bridge. He survived long enough to send a letter in his name and that of Wallace on 11 October 1297, to the mayors of the communes of Lübeck and Hamburg, that ‘the Kingdom of Scotland had, by God’s grace, recovered by battle from the power of the English and that, in consequence, the ports of Scotland were once more open to their merchants’,29 but soon afterwards he succumbed to his wounds.30
A famous folk hero, William Wallace, was now to take upon his shoulders the sole government of the realm. Behind him was the Church, manning the chancellery, the civil service of that time, which had been displaced by King Edward but now returned to its administrative duties. ‘The common folk of the land followed him as their