'That the said William, for the manifest sedition that he practised against the Lord King himself, by feloniously contriving and acting with a view to his death and to the abasement and subversion of his crown and royal dignity, by opposing his liege lord in war to the death, be drawn from the Palace of Westminster to the Tower of London, and from the Tower to Aldgate, and so through the midst of the City, to the Elms;
'And that for the robberies, homicides, and felonies he committed in the realm of England and in the land of Scotland, he be there hanged, and afterwards taken down from the gallows;
'And that, inasmuch as he was an outlaw, and was not afterwards restored to the peace of the Lord King, he be decollated and decapitated;
'And that thereafter, for the measureless turpitude of his deeds towards God and Holy Church in burning down churches, with the vessels and litters wherein and whereon the body of Christ and the bodies of saints and relics of these were placed, the heart, the liver, the lungs, and all the internal organs of William's body, whence such perverted thoughts proceeded, be cast into fire and burnt;
'And further, that inasmuch as it was not only against the Lord King himself, but against the whole Community of England and of Scotland, that he committed the aforesaid acts of sedition, spoliation, arson, and homicide, the body of the said William be cut up and divided into four parts; and that the head, so cut off, be set up on London Bridge, in the sight of such as pass by, whether by land or by water; and that one quarter be hung on a gibbet at Newcastle-upon-Tyne, another quarter at Berwick, a third quarter at Stirling, and the fourth at St. Johnston, as a warning and a deterrent to all that pass by and behold them.'
In execution of this atrocious sentence, Wallace was dragged at the tails of horses through the streets of London to the Elms in Smithfield (i.e. Smoothfield—later Cow Lane, now King Street). At the foot of the gallows, he is said to have asked for a priest, in order to make confession. Harry seems confused in placing this incident before the procession to Westminster; and his representation of the Archbishop of Canterbury as shriving Wallace, in defiance of Edward's express general prohibition, is at any rate highly coloured in the details. Harry further records that Wallace requested Clifford to let him have the Psalter that he habitually carried with him; and that, when this was brought, Wallace got a priest to hold it open before him 'till they to him had done all that they would.' The sentence was faithfully carried out through all its stages. The English chroniclers gloat over the inhuman savagery, some of them describing details of dishonour to the heroic victim's body such as may find no place on this page. The head was fixed on London Bridge, and the four quarters were taken to their destined places of exposure by Segrave. The chroniclers vary in the names of these places, Dumfries and Aberdeen being specified by one or another instead of towns mentioned above. There still exists an account presented by the Sheriffs of London on December 1 for
15s. delivered to John de Segrave in August last for carriage of the body of William le Waleys to Scotland, by the King's writ; and John's receipt.
The record adds that 'afterwards they were allowed 10s. in the Roll'—a last royal meanness in connection with Wallace.
Wallace was dead. Laboriously tracked and hunted down by miserable hirelings—Scots, to their black shame—he had been put through the farce of a formal trial, and done to death by an accumulation of barbarous cruelties and unmanly indignities, the revenge of a pusillanimous mind. Wallace had never done homage or sworn fealty to the English King: how could he possibly be a traitor? His deadly crime, in fact, was that he alone of all the prominent Scotsmen of the time had never bowed to the usurper. Many a real traitor—doubly, trebly, and deeper dyed—had Edward let off with little or no punishment, and even restored to their estates, and to his own favour and confidence. But let a man show the genuine mettle of an independent spirit, and his fate was sealed. Wallace could not be bent; therefore he must be broken. In loose popular language he might be called a traitor, and the justices of the special Commission were not inclined to split technical hairs of legality. But in fact Wallace was simply a prisoner of war, an open enemy captured in arms. Under judicial forms he was doomed to death in accordance with a prearranged programme, under which there was no necessity for the prosecution to call evidence, and no opportunity for the victim to offer any defence. Of course his life was justly at the King's mercy. But Wallace died, not because his life was technically forfeited, but simply because Edward could feel no security so long as his arch-enemy breathed. The formality of trial was a mere abuse of judicial process, calculated to befool people already disposed to be befooled. Once more Edward took care to shelter himself under the forms of legal procedure.
The elaborate series of punishments assigned to the various categories of Wallace's alleged misdeeds illustrates forcibly the base vindictiveness of Edward. A soldier like him might have been expected to show soldierly appreciation of the most gallant enemy he ever faced. The zeal manifested in vengeance for the alleged dishonour to God and the holy saints is sufficiently edifying, even for the early years of the fourteenth century. It cloaks the malignant gratification of personal malice with the dazzling profession of the championship of religion. When the spacious Abbey of Dunfermline was burnt to the ground only eighteen months before, that was presumably not for the dishonour, but for the glory, of God and the holy saints. The point of view is notoriously important.
Wallace was dead. His body was dismembered, and distributed in the great centres of his activity and influence, as an encouragement to English sympathisers, and a sign of retribution to Scots that might yet cherish the foolishness of patriotism. The moral has been well rendered by Burton:—
'The death of Wallace stands forth among the violent ends which have had a memorable place in history. Proverbially such acts belong to a policy that outwits itself. But the retribution has seldom come so quickly, and so utterly in defiance of all human preparation and calculation, as here. Of the bloody trophies sent to frighten a broken people into abject subjection, the bones had not yet been bared ere they became tokens to deepen the wrath and strengthen the courage of a people arising to try the strength of the bands by which they were bound, and, if possible, break them once and for ever.'
Wallace had done his work right well and truly, as builder of the foundations of Scottish independence. He had sealed his faith with his blood. Probably he died despairing of his country. Yet barely had six months come and gone when his dearest wish was fulfilled. The banner of Freedom waved defiance from the towers of Lochmaben, and in the Chapel-Royal of Scone the Bruce was crowned King of Scotland.