Stone of Destiny upon which the kings of Scots had traditionally been enthroned along with the fragment of the true cross bequeathed by Margaret, wife of Malcolm III, sent to Westminster Abbey. Edward also sent the Scottish royal records and plate to England, never to be seen again. At a parliament held in Berwick during August 1296 the English king endorsed his authority by requiring all substantial Scottish landowners to pay an oath of fealty to him as lord of Scotland. About 1500, including clergy, signed what became known as the Ragman’s Roll – from the mass of tangled ribbons that carried their seals of authority – following which Edward issued his orders for garrisoning the country.
The short war was apparently over. In both its main engagements English leadership had proved markedly superior. Given their limitations in equipment the Scots could never have reasonably hoped to seize their chosen objective, the strong border fortress of Carlisle, and they were compelled to content themselves with the lesser one of burning and looting the surrounding countryside while the English experienced no such difficulty with their own chosen prize, the preeminent trading centre of Berwick. Similarly, at Dunbar, Warenne kept his military priorities clearly in mind. When it came to a choice between destroying the main Scottish army or relieving Dunbar Castle he much favoured meeting the army. He knew that if he could defeat the Scottish army they would have the greatest difficulty in retaining the castle. Warenne therefore attempted to prevent any sally from the castle’s garrison against his rear by dividing his forces. However, in this he was careful to use his less-seasoned personnel to threaten the castle, keeping his experienced leaders and the bulk of his troops to face the advancing Scottish cavalry. One can only speculate about the possible outcome if the English and Scottish leadership had been equally competent but in their eagerness to exchange blows the Scots revealed startling naïveté and over-optimism, playing directly into Warenne’s wily hands and allowing themselves to be caught at a massive disadvantage.
In September 1296 the English king crossed the Channel to conduct his war in Gascony. The country he now liked to think of as northernmost England seemed cowed; its nobility had sworn their loyalty to him and their disgraced king, John Balliol, was held securely in the Tower of London. The other main contender for the Scottish throne, Robert Bruce (his father, the Competitor, had died in the previous year), was being made to prove his loyalty as commander of Carlisle Castle while his son, the young Robert Bruce, was for the moment living quietly on his own estates.
In reality Scotland was far from cowed. Although large numbers of English troops, including armoured cavalry, were now garrisoned across the country, there was deep resentment against this English occupation from men of all classes, especially among senior members of the Scottish church, who supported two remarkable young leaders, William Wallace and Andrew Moray, in spearheading a new rebellion. Wallace was a squire and the younger son of Sir Malcolm Wallace of Elderslie near Paisley. Certainly no more than twenty-five years of age he was tall and extremely strong, and quickly demonstrated considerable powers of leadership when, in the spring of 1297, he began the fight-back by assassinating Edward’s officials. His first target was Selby, the son of Dundee’s English constable, and in May 1297 he followed it by killing William Heselrig, the English appointee as Sheriff of Lanark. Heselrig’s death caused many men from southern and central Scotland to unite with the daring guerrilla fighter, including a nobleman and professional soldier, William Douglas, former commander of Berwick Castle. Together they planned to kill one of Edward’s most senior officials, William Ormsby, his justiciar, who only narrowly escaped.
At this time another focus of revolt emerged headed by two senior figures, James Stewart, Wallace’s feudal superior, and Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow. Unlike Wallace, who kept to the great forests of Selkirk, they took the more conventional decision of openly raising their standard at Irvine in Ayrshire where they were joined by the twenty-three-year-old Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick. In response an English cavalry force under Henry Percy, Yorkshire nobleman and grandson of Warenne, together with Robert Clifford, a major landowner and keen soldier from Westmorland, was rapidly despatched to attack them. Although its leaders were from the Scottish nobility, by far the largest proportion of the Scottish force at Irvine were infantry. In addition, the Scottish nobles, particularly Robert Bruce and the Balliol supporters, were unable to agree on their respective rights to command and on whose behalf they were fighting. It was a disastrous situation for any army and as a result Stewart and Douglas emerged from the Scottish lines to meet the advancing English and ask for surrender terms. These proved lenient enough although hostages were demanded to act as guarantors of the Scottish leaders’ good faith. With this shameful capitulation the remaining hopes for resistance in southern Scotland depended on William Wallace and his growing numbers of followers. Although, with supreme confidence, Wallace ordered the Scottish nobles to join him, most remained unpersuaded of a modest squire’s ability to meet the all-conquering English, and few answered his summons.
Meanwhile further north a second young man had raised his standard against the invaders. Andrew Moray, son of Sir Alexander Moray of Petty, came from one of Scotland’s great Highland families. He started out with small bodies of men loyal to his family before being joined by a burgher from Inverness, Alexander Pilché, together with other citizens from the town. Initially he ambushed small English detachments but, as his numbers rose, he went on to attack and capture a number of northern castles, including the pivotal one at Inverness.
Further south Wallace knew the English were certain to seek him out and although, after Dunbar and Irvine, much the safest course would have been to continue with his guerrilla tactics, he took the amazingly courageous decision to meet the English in open battle – if strictly on his own terms – in an attempt to regain control of central Scotland. Wallace moved northwards to Dundee while the majority of his infantry continued to be trained in the forest of Selkirk. At Dundee he besieged the castle, which as Wallace had foreseen, provoked Edward’s senior commander, Warenne, into leaving his safe haven at Berwick. Together with further military units under Hugh Cressingham, Edward’s Scottish treasurer, he decided to seek out and destroy Wallace and his rebels.
On learning of their advance Wallace broke off his siege and moved towards Stirling where anyone intending to move northwards would have to cross the River Forth. Shortly before this Wallace and Moray had met and agreed that they would work together and, equally importantly, that Moray would serve under Wallace’s command. Their joint forces, together with Wallace’s infantry from Selkirk forest, converged on Stirling where Wallace’s conduct was to mark him, despite his youth and lack of formal experience, as a gifted military commander.
The battle of Stirling Bridge was a David and Goliath contest. Wallace and Moray’s forces totalled 10,000 men at the most, against more than three times as many English. Although mainly footsoldiers, the Scots included a small cavalry element under the separate control of nobles such as Malcolm, Earl of Lennox, and James Stewart, whose earlier behaviour at Irvine had been less than heroic. The infantry, drawn from widely different backgrounds, had been together for less than a month and their experience so far was limited to irregular operations. In contrast the English footsoldiers were not only numerically superior but they included a company of the famed Welsh bowmen.7 Most importantly, the comparatively large numbers of English heavy cavalry completely outmatched its few Scottish counterparts. In the Scots’ favour their two young leaders were determined to win back their country’s freedom and they had also both enjoyed a string of successes, albeit in small-scale operations. Crucially they were given the chance to choose the battlefield.
As for the English commanders, in the absence of the king, command devolved on John Warenne, Earl of Surrey, in poor health and older than the combined ages of the two young Scottish commanders. His experience of war, however, was immeasurably greater than theirs, even though most had been gained on the battlefield thirty years before. His ability had been clearly evident at Dunbar, but such a contest had been sufficiently undemanding to give him a dangerous measure of over-confidence. Nor was Warenne on good terms with Hugh Cressingham, his vanguard commander, whose own troops despised him for being both a bastard and a vain, self-opinionated individual.
Wallace positioned his men on Abbey Craig, an isolated volcanic eminence
