Robert The Bruce: King Of Scots. Ronald McNair Scott
rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_b0e4d8e2-4d7a-5243-8830-6a4b3097f61c">31 but the most striking tribute to his personality and pre-eminence was the drawing together of the feuding magnates under his leadership in a common front against the English.
In March 1298 in the forest of Selkirk, which Wallace had made the base of his armed forces, the earls, barons and knights, the bishops, abbots and friars who were then in Scotland met to resolve the future of the realm. In the presence of them all, William Wallace was dubbed knight by Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick,* and by the general voice of those assembled proclaimed guardian of the kingdom.32 From that date edicts were issued in the name of ‘William Wallace, Knight, Guardian of the Kingdom of Scotland and Commander of its armies in the name of the famous prince, Lord John, by God’s grace, illustrious King of Scotland, by consent of the Community of that realm.’
Between the battle of Stirling and the Forest Parliament, Wallace had led his army south. There was famine in the lowlands. To gain corn and cattle he ravaged the northern counties of England from late October 1297 into the New Year until snowstorms and severe frost forced him back to Scotland laden with immense spoil. ‘During that time,’ writes the English chronicler Guisborough, ‘the praise of God ceased in all the monasteries and churches of the whole province from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to Carlisle: for all the monks, canons regular and other priests, the servants of the Lord had fled, with one may say, the whole of the common folk from the face of the Scots.’33
During the absence of Wallace on this campaign, Bishop Fraser of St Andrews, who had remained in France since the parliament at Berwick in 1296, disenchanted by and hostile to King Edward, passed away. Acting on Wallace’s instructions, the St Andrews chapter elected in his place the Chancellor of Glasgow Cathedral, William Lamberton, friend and compatriot of Bishop Wishart. He was to become one of the key figures in opposition to English rule.34
Meanwhile King Edward had been having little success in Flanders to which he had sailed on 22 August 1297. Matters had come to a stalemate and on 9 October a short Armistice was signed between France and England which was then prolonged to 6 January 1299. King Edward had now the opportunity to turn his attention to Scottish affairs.
He landed in England on 14 March 1298 and by 25 May had transferred the headquarters of government to York, where it remained for the next six years. Scotland was to become the obsession of his remaining life and even beyond the grave, for it is said he gave instructions that on his tomb should be inscribed the vengeful words, ‘The hammer of the Scots’.
Such a hammer he now began to fashion. Writs were sent to his tenants in chief to join him with their vassals, horses and arms. Other armed knights were recruited at his own expense. A corps of Gascon lords, knights and crossbowmen were summoned from the duchy. Orders were given for the paid conscription of numerous Welshmen, archers and footmen.35 A fleet of ships was commissioned to ensure supplies. Reconciliation was arranged with the recalcitrant Earls of Hereford and Norfolk, respectively Constable and Earl Marshal of the Kingdom, and their powerful forces were put at his disposal.
A wave of patriotic fervour supported his preparations. From ecclesiastical pens issued a stream of propaganda. Wallace was depicted as an ogre of unspeakable depravity who skinned his prisoners alive, burned babies and forced the nuns of the Holy Church to dance naked before him.36 So when King Edward mustered his troops at Roxburgh on 25 June some 2500 heavy cavalry and 12,000 foot had answered his summons.
This vast army with its attendant baggage train set off along the Lauderdale route to Edinburgh. The clank of armed knights, the tramp of footmen, the creak of wagon wheels sounded in a silent land from which man and beast had vanished. There was neither fodder nor food nor information to be found. The inhabitants had fled to the forests driving their cattle and sheep before them, leaving behind a scorched and wasted land. By 15 July the English army had reached Kirkliston beyond Edinburgh. Here King Edward learnt that Dirleton and two other castles in East Lothian were held by the Scots and sent Antony Bek to capture them while he remained encamped.37
The whereabouts of Wallace and his men was still unknown. The food ships due at Leith had been delayed by contrary winds and the army was faced with starvation. The few ships that had struggled through happened to carry only barrels of wine.38 When this was issued to raise the spirits of the troops, the effect on the empty stomachs of the Welshmen, who always got the worst of the meagre rations, was disastrous. They got very drunk, brawled with the English soldiers, killed some and were killed in turn and then grew mutinous and threatened to decamp to the enemy.39
The whole expedition was in danger of collapse. Indeed, King Edward had already decided to return to Edinburgh when the ride of fortune, due no doubt to the intervention of Saint John of Beverley to whose shrine the King had made a pilgrimage on his way north, turned miraculously in his favour. Antony Bek returned with the news that Dirleton had surrendered and that the other two castles had been abandoned by their defenders; the food ships had made harbour at Leith and a message was received from the Earl of Dunbar that the Scots were only thirteen miles away in Callendar Wood beside Falkirk.
A wave of elation swept through the army. All discord ceased. The quarry had been viewed. The hunt was on. Immediately breaking camp, King Edward led his troops along the road to Falkirk and bivouacked just east of Linlithgow, each man sleeping on the ground with his horse beside him, the King among his men, the horses ‘tasting nothing but cold iron, champing their bits’.41
In the dead of night a cry of alarm aroused the sleeping warriors. The King had been trampled upon by his charger and was injured. But the King, despite two broken ribs, had himself hoisted into his high-back saddle and set his knights in motion through Linlithgow in the early light of morning. They had not gone far when the rising sun glinted on lances lining the top of a nearby hill, but as they pressed towards them the spearmen melted away. It was not until they reached the bank of the West-Quarter burn, where a halt was called for the King and Antony Bek, Bishop of Durham, to hear Mass, that they saw in full daylight Wallace deploying his troops on the slope of Slamman Moor.42
Wallace’s main anxiety was the overwhelming superiority of the English cavalry, and he made his dispositions with this in mind. Immediately to his front was a boggy marsh, to his right scattered woodland and rocks and on his left the deepening valley of the burn. On the hard ground behind the marsh he drew up his men in four schiltrons (shield rings): packed circles of spearmen drawn up with their long spears slanting outward with butt on earth and the front rank kneeling. Round each schiltron wooden stakes were driven into the ground and roped together. Between the schiltrons he lined the Ettrick archers, equipped with their short bows, under the command of John Stewart, brother of James Stewart. On the crest of the hill behind he placed his slender force of cavalry, contributed by several earls: too few to be effective in attack but of decisive value in pursuit of a demoralized foe.43
Wallace’s logical action would have been to retreat before the English army, wasting the land as he went, and let hunger defeat the enemy, but there is reason to believe that he was overruled by his impatient troops and hence his famous valediction, ‘I have brought you to the ring: hop if you can’.44
On the English side King Edward divided his