bowled over defenders before trampling them with their iron-clad hooves, while their riders’ swords, maces and axes were used to terrible effect on those still struggling to keep their footing and point their lances outwards. Within the circles discipline loosened and the Welsh bowmen now gleefully joined in the hand-to-hand fighting that had become a slaughter. Of the Scottish nobles who fought dismounted, Wallace’s great friend Sir John the Graham, together with MacDuff and his two sons and Andrew Moray of Bothwell, died where they stood.1 About a third of the spearmen, many carrying serious wounds, reached whatever cover they could and Wallace rallied a group that turned savagely on the English who pursued them into Callendar Wood. During the engagement it was probably Wallace himself who killed Brother Brian de Jay, the master of the English Templars. But nothing could reverse the scale of the defeat. Many spearmen who found temporary hiding places in the open were subsequently killed as they attempted to flee north, run down by the rampaging cavalry as they searched desperately for opportunities to cross the slippery, treacherous banks of the river Carron.
Following the battle, Scottish patriots were bound to ask each other, ‘Where can Scotland go now?’ Wallace had assembled the best army his country could supply and after equipping and preparing it thoroughly he had not risked it in open battle until his English pursuers were half-starved and wearied due to a continuing lack of supplies. While his chosen defensive position on Mumrills Hill was undoubtedly not that impressive, it enjoyed protection on three sides from a burn and wet broken ground. And after the English had taxed their horses ascending it they came onto a flat top that favoured Wallace’s formations quite as much as theirs.
The soldiers who survived the defeat and succeeded in returning to their townships would have left no one in any doubt about the stringent training they had undergone with Wallace, and they had good reasons to be proud of their own performance in the battle. Such survivors would have doubtless felt far differently about their cavalry – men who from childhood were trained in war but who fled the field at the very sight of the larger numbers of English knights. However, the plain fact was that in spite of the courage and tenacity shown by both the Scottish spearmen and their archers at Mumrills, they had been unable to counter overwhelming English arms.
Given England’s superior military resources, Scottish fighting men, nobles and soldiers alike, had the strongest reasons to question how anyone could do better against such adverse odds.
Section One: The Path to Battle
CHAPTER ONE
SCOTLAND UNDER SIEGE
(Edward I) ‘decided with an oath that he would lay the whole of Scotland waste from sea to sea and force its people into submission.’
Chronicle Rishanger
IN THE LATE THIRTEENTH century Scotland faced a challenge to its continuing survival from a strong and acquisitive English king who as early as 1291 told his privy council that he had it in his mind ‘to bring under his dominion the king and the realm of Scotland’.1 While Scottish monarchs had always in some respects held subordinate positions compared with their more powerful English counterparts (the Pope, for instance, withheld their right to be anointed at their coronations) they had consistently rejected any suggestions that they could be considered vassals of the English crown. In accordance with this tradition, on 29 October 1278 King Alexander III stood before the Court of Westminster and denied that his brother-in-law Edward I had any degree of feudal superiority over him. ‘(Although) I become your man for the lands which I hold of you in the Kingdom of England for which I owe homage … No one has a right to homage for my Kingdom of Scotland save God alone, and I hold it only of God.’2
Notwithstanding such close family ties and the generally friendly relations between the two countries, Edward, who by the 1280s had become the most respected monarch in Europe, became obsessed with extending his own claims of suzerainty over Scotland. Such a challenge could not be taken lightly for Edward was a monarch whose ambitions were matched by endless energy and single-minded ruthlessness. He had, for instance, already codified English law to his own pattern, justifying the changes by citing previous cases of corruption and miscarriages of justice, and had gone on to abrogate Welsh powers of jurisdiction in those parts of the principality brought under his control.
Whether a subtle-minded reformer or not (particularly when it was to his own advantage), this tall, commanding figure was essentially a warrior king who was quite prepared to achieve his objectives by mounting a military challenge to Scotland. However, with his on-going conquest of Wales, and almost continuous warfare with France, a third military front seemed very likely to place almost unbearable strains on the English exchequer.
Edward could never have doubted that Scotland, with its unbroken line of kings stretching back to before William the Conqueror and its geographical remoteness, represented a quite different and more difficult proposition than Wales. Apart from the amicable relations between the two crowns many of Edward’s powerful and ambitious nobles, such as Balliol, Bruce and Umfraville, held lands on both sides of the border and their allegiance was therefore divided. Edward needed a strong pretext to involve himself in the affairs of Scotland and to justify despatching an English army into that country.
Such an opportunity presented itself through what many men in medieval times considered a stroke of fate. In March 1286 Alexander III met with a sudden and untimely death; on a storm-swept night he was hurrying to join Yolande, his new French wife, at Kinghorn by the Firth of Forth when in blizzard conditions he outdistanced his escort and his horse carried him over a steep crag along the foreshore. The role of the monarch was pivotal in the affairs of a medieval state and the tragedy for Scotland was that Alexander had no living male issue. A strong, wise king was succeeded by his four-year-old granddaughter, Margaret, the Maid of Norway, the only child of Alexander’s daughter Margaret, who had died giving birth, and Eric II of Norway.
Alexander had shown himself well aware of the dangers that could come from internal unrest in the event of his death and he had arranged that prior to the Maid’s enthronement, no fewer than six men should act as joint guardians of the kingdom made up from two representatives of the country’s senior nobles, its earls, two representatives of the bishops and two representatives of the barons. The two most likely contenders for the Scottish throne, Robert Bruce, known as the Competitor, and John Balliol, were not included because the king foresaw a very real threat of civil war between their two factions. However, he had seen that support for Bruce and Balliol was evenly divided among the six guardians.
Bruce was much the older of the two men. By 1286, in spite of his continuing ambitions and still abundant energy, he was fully seventy-five years of age. Even in the event of his claim to the throne proving successful he was unlikely to have reigned for long. Fortunately for the Bruces their male line was well represented. The old Competitor’s eldest son, another Robert Bruce, was Lord of Annandale, a vast estate in the Scottish southwest. Bruce of Annandale was forty years of age at this time and his eldest son also carried the family name of Robert Bruce. Although still a boy of twelve he was destined to become King Robert I. In 1286 John Balliol too, had a son, called Edward, from his marriage during 1281 to Isabel, daughter of John de Warenne, Earl of Surrey.
One of the guardians’ first actions was to inform their seemingly friendly senior monarch, Edward I, of the plans being made to govern Scotland in the absence of the Maid. It is also likely they initiated the arrangements for a marriage to be negotiated between Edward Caernarvon, Edward I’s heir, and Margaret, the Maid, for with Edward I acting as her guarantor the guardians could feel sure Margaret’s succession would be implemented. Their concerns seemed justified for while their envoys were in England the Competitor and his son seized the two royal castles of Dumfries and Wigtown along with the Balliol fortress of Buittle
