On the 6th June,[60] Edward besieged and took the Castle of Edinburgh, in which he found the regalia, consisting of the crown, sceptre, and cloth of gold. On the 14th, he was at Stirling and Linlithgow. On the 24th July, he encamped on the banks of the Spey. He was at Elgin on the 26th, where he remained two days. He was at Aberbrothick on the 5th August, and again at Stirling on the 14th, at Edinburgh on the 17th, and at Berwick on the 22d, having spent twenty-one weeks in his progress of subjugation.[61] For the final settlement of his conquest, he appointed John, Earl of Warren, Lieutenant or Guardian of the kingdom; Hugh de Cressingham, an avaricious ecclesiastic, treasurer; William Ormsby, justiciary; Henry de Percy, keeper of the county of Galloway and sheriffdom of Ayr; while Robert de Clifford had charge of the eastern districts. The ancient Great Seal of Scotland, surrendered by Baliol at Brechin, was broken in pieces, and a new seal in place of it, was presented to Walter de Agmondesham, as chancellor.
The conduct of these ministers was ill calculated to secure the conquest which the policy and talents of their master had achieved. Haughty and rapacious themselves, they imposed little restraint on the licentious soldiery, who lorded it over the wretched inhabitants with the most intolerable brutality. While property of every description was held by the frail tenure of the will of the usurpers, outrages were committed on the domestic feelings of the oppressed, which the delicacy of modern writers have withdrawn from the page of history. Neither was this galling oppression confined to the common people; the cup of misery went round; and the noblest of the land partook of its unmingled bitterness. The unlimited exactions of Cressingham, and the little controul he exercised over his underlings, soon banished commerce from the Scottish shores. Deprived, by his impolitic proceedings, of this lucrative branch of the national resources, with whetted appetite for plunder, he turned upon the wretched and already impoverished inhabitants, who looked in vain to their nobles for that protection afforded them in times past. Those chieftains who would have stepped forward in their defence, had either fallen beneath the axe of the executioner, or were languishing out the prime of their existence in the distant dungeons of the invader.
The fiendish policy that instigated the massacre of the Minstrels of Wales, lest their strains should animate their countrymen to revolt, had also suggested the idea of depriving the Scots of the monuments[62] of their ancient glory. The nobility still remained tame spectators of this fresh outrage, and relaxed not in their supple assiduities to conciliate the favour of the tyrant. Thus abandoned by those who ought to have been her protectors, the distracted country, crushed and bleeding at every pore, lay convulsed within the coils of this human Boa. But that Providence which “ruleth in the kingdoms of men,” had foreseen her calamity, and prepared a deliverer, with personal qualifications beyond the common lot of men, and a mind endowed with every requisite for the mighty undertaking.
CHAPTER V.
WALLACE AGAIN TAKES REFUGE IN THE WOODS.—ORGANIZES A SYSTEM OF WARFARE.—HARASSES THE ENGLISH IN THEIR CANTONMENTS.—CONFLICT OF BEG.—BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICES OF HIS EARLY COMPANIONS.—HIS DRESS AND ARMOUR.—ANECDOTE OF THE RELATIVE PERSONAL PROWESS OF WALLACE AND BRUCE.
Wallace, who had been stigmatized by the English as an outlaw and a robber, found it necessary, after the battle of Dunbar, to withdraw to his former mountainous retreat, from whence he would, no doubt, observe the gaudy pageant of the feudal power of England, as it traversed the devoted land in all the insolent security of conquest. And while the national distress deepened around, and every tale that reached him was fraught with tidings of the misery of his enslaved and degraded countrymen, the resources of the enemy, and the possibility of emancipating the beloved land of his nativity, formed the subject of his unceasing reflections. He had observed, that the reverses which the Scots had sustained in the field, arose more from a want of subordination and discipline among themselves, than from any superior valour on the part of their enemies. He was aware of, and deeply lamented, the jealousy and treachery which existed among the nobility, and their readiness to stoop in the most servile manner[63] to the will of the Usurper, if they might thereby obtain even a temporary exaltation for their party; and he justly conceived, that by banding together a few resolute spirits, allied to no faction, but, like himself, attached to the general good, that more could be done toward the restoration of his country’s independence, than by all the tumultuous hordes which the treacherous and disunited chieftains could bring together. Fully impressed with this conviction, his days and nights were passed in extending the number of his followers, and in organizing a system of warfare, which was soon destined to spread terror and dismay among the invaders. The elite of every district were instructed and disciplined in a manner peculiarly his own. With the simple, but well-known sounds of his bugle-horn, he could regulate all their operations. At the appearance of danger, he could disperse them, to seek more secure retreats,—or rally them around him, as circumstances might require. This mode of discipline, either by himself or his most trusty associates, he secretly extended over a great part of the Lowlands of Scotland; so that either amidst the fastnesses of Carrick, the deep recesses of Cartland, or on the shores of the Lomond, the rallying note of their country’s liberator was followed by the prompt appearance of well-armed warriors at their respective places of muster.
The prowess which he had displayed in his encounters with the English—his almost miraculous escapes—and the prediction given out in the name of the Seer of Ercildowne,[64] of his being destined to deliver Scotland from the tyranny of England,—all conspired to excite the hopes, and gain him the confidence, of the less wealthy classes of his countrymen.
His tactics were admirably fitted for harassing the foes he had to contend with. The fortresses in their possession were surrounded by secret enemies, ever on the watch to discover and convey to their leader any information that might enable him to way-lay their convoys, or surprise them in their strongholds. It was in vain the warders kept watch on their lofty stations: distant as the eye could reach, no enemy appeared, no foreboding sound met their ear, to warrant them in disturbing the tranquillity of the revellers within. Far in the woodlands, the sound of a horn might be heard; but it passed away unregarded, as proceeding from some lonely forester going his rounds. The drawbridge is let down to admit fuel or provisions for the garrison;—the loads are thrown in, the entrance of the gate;—the porter knocked on the head, and the burden-bearers bristle into resolute or well-armed assailants;—the wine-cup is dashed from the hands of the astonished governor, who is only made sensible of his situation by the carnage that ensues;—the castle demolished, and the spoil divided among his followers, who are now allowed to return home. Wallace, meanwhile, attended perhaps by a few select worthies, pursues his way, to call forth the avenging swords of his adherents, in some more remote part of the kingdom.
Such were the fruits of that admirable system of warfare which Wallace was engaged in explaining and enforcing at the meetings of his nonjuring countrymen, during the winter of 1296, and which it has been thought proper to allude to at this stage of the history, in order that the reader may be able to comprehend the possibility of certain of those exploits which afterwards obtained for the heroic champion of the Scots, the applause and admiration of mankind.