[73] Both Tytler and sir W. Scott condescend to borrow an exaggerated statement, that 17,000 persons fell in this storming of Berwick; but the complaint of the regents of Scotland, made a year or two after, states the number at “nearly 8000.” Allowing for some exaggeration, and remembering that some of the dead must have been English, we may believe that the Scotch lost some 5000 or 6000 men—a number not at all remarkable.
[74] Tytler, vol. i., p. 116.
[75] Tytler, vol. i., p. 121. But sir Walter Scott says: “Most of the noble and ancient families of Scotland are reduced to the necessity of tracing their ancestors’ names in the fifty‐six sheets of parchment, which constitute the degrading roll of submission to Edward I.”
[76] Mackintosh, Hume, etc.
[77] Pearson’s History, vol. ii., p. 310.
[78] Among the writs of that time we find many addressed to the sheriffs of counties, wherein the king “requests you to advise and take order how you can assist him with one thousand quarters of wheat, for which he will pay you punctually at Midsummer next.”
[79] Hemingford says, “Exiratus Rex prorupit in hæc verba, ut dicitur, ‘Per deum, comes, aut ibis aut pendebis.’ Et ille, ‘Per idem juramentum, O Rex, nec ibo nec pendebo.’”—See [Appendix].
[80] Matthew of Westminster.
[81] Pearson’s History of England, vol. ii., p. 399.
[82] That the name was, in his own day, William Walays, is a fact concerning which there is no room for doubt. The Scalachronica (recently printed by the Maitland Club of Glasgow), was written by one who personally knew the Insurgent leader, and he always writes the name Walays. Hemingford and Langtoft, two of the best English historians of that day, always write it Walays. In the “Wallace Documents,” printed by the Maitland Club, a Charter is given, granted by the Insurgent leader himself, and there the name stands Walays. A century later, Andrew Wyntoun, one of the earliest and best of the Scottish historians, writing about A.D. 1420, always speaks of Walays. Other writers, following the sound only, write of Walais, or Waleis. But when many other names suffered change—Botteville into Botfield, and De Moleyns into Mullins—Walays also was corrupted into “Wallace.” So entirely has this corruption rooted itself in our English literature, that we shall feel compelled to yield to it, and shall use, in the following pages, the customary name of “Wallace.”