There surely cannot be the smallest question, that if the king, with the treaty in his hand which promised him quiet possession of all the castles of Scotland, and with the declaration of the parliament of St. Andrew’s before him, had given the garrison of Stirling notice, that unless the castle was surrendered within three days, he would hang every one of them as rebels, he would have been fully justified. Yet, instead of this, he patiently submitted to the toils and perils of a long siege, in which many of his men were killed, and in which his own life was repeatedly endangered.
The castle was exceedingly strong, and the battering artillery of modern days was entirely unknown. It is probable that Oliphant, confident in the natural strength of the place, hoped that he might weary out Edward and his army, and so win for himself a lasting fame. “The siege,” says Mr. Tytler, “had continued from the 22nd of April to the 20th of May, without much impression having been made. But determination was a marked feature in the powerful character of the king. He wrote to the sheriffs of York, Lincoln, and London, commanding them to purchase and send instantly to him, at Stirling, all the balistæ, quarrells, and bows and arrows, which they could collect; and to the governor of the Tower, requiring a similar supply.”[124]
Two months more elapsed before these engines could be collected and brought to bear upon the castle. Meanwhile the king exposed himself in the siege as freely as any of his men. On one occasion a javelin struck him on the breast, and lodged itself between the steel plates of his armour. The king plucked it out, and shaking it in the air, called out to the besieged, that he would hang the man who had aimed it. On another day, a great stone, discharged from one of the engines in the castle, struck his horse such a blow, that he backed and fell. His soldiers rushed forward, and carried the king off—crying out against his rashness; to which he only replied, “We have undertaken a just war in the name of the Lord, and we will not fear what man can do unto us.”[125]
At last, in July, a considerable breach was effected, and the ditch was nearly filled up with the rubbish and faggots thrown into it. A general assault would now have carried the castle; but, seeing their imminent peril, the besieged sent to beg for terms of surrender. They asked for “security of life and limb,”—a request which the king would, doubtless, have granted readily, if preferred at the beginning of the siege, instead of at the end of it. But it was now too late. They had forfeited their lives, by all the military laws that ever were known. They had been making war for three months past, not in behalf of the king of Scotland, for there was no king except Edward; nor yet in behalf of the regency of Scotland, for the regents had submitted, and made their peace with the king. They had made war with their lawful sovereign, simply to gratify their own feelings of animosity; in a word, they were rebels, taken in the act. Hence Edward’s stern reply was a just and proper one: “I will not receive you to my grace, but only to my will.”
“Sir John de Mowbray and Sir Eustace le Poer accordingly proceeded to the castle‐gate, and summoned the governor. Oliphant, with his kinsman Dupplin and a squire, met the English knights, and proceeded with them to an interview with the earls of Gloucester and Ulster. At this meeting they consented, for themselves and their companions, to surrender unconditionally to the king of England; and they earnestly requested that he would permit them to make this surrender in his own presence, and would himself witness their contrition.”[126]
It is quite evident that, like David of Snowdon, who, in 1283, prayed to be allowed to see the king, they understood Edward’s character; and that their best or only hope lay in the real kindness of his heart. They came, accordingly, before the king, in the attitude and garb of criminals. Doubtless, if in the present century, such an act had been done, the doers of it, either by martial or criminal law, would have been declared rebels, and would have been condemned to die. They said, “My lord, we submit ourselves to your will” The king answered, “My will is to hang you all; and if you dislike that, you may return to the castle.” But they still had faith in his mercy; and they persisted in leaving themselves wholly at his disposal; kneeling before him in the attitude of criminals. At last, after a pause, “the king being moved, turned away his face for a time; and those who stood round broke into tears.” He then ordered them to be sent to certain English castles, adding, “Do not chain them.”[127] Not a man suffered any punishment beyond a temporary confinement; except one Englishman, who had aided the Scots in getting possession of the castle. He, dragged forth and hanged, died for his treason.
Yet Edward’s noble acknowledgment of their soldierly bearing, even in a cause in itself wholly unjustifiable, which was implied in his orders to put no fetters on them, is thus ungraciously noticed by Lord Hailes: “This was the only hope of pardon indulged to men whose valour would have been revered by a more generous conqueror.”
Why, such a conqueror as Wallace, of whom the Scots are so proud, would have butchered every man upon the spot! This, indeed, as his own eulogists admit, was his constant practice. A monarch of the ordinary kind, after having been put to so much trouble and loss by a defence which was wholly contrary to the law of nations, would have hanged up the commander, as the chief offender, and have thrown the rest of the garrison into a dungeon. The third Edward, provoked by the long but far more justifiable defence of Calais, actually ordered six of its defenders to execution; only recalling that order at the earnest entreaty of his queen. But the king now before us, after seeing many of his men killed before his eyes, and after having had his own life twice endangered, in a warfare which he knew to be wholly unjustifiable, still so far honours soldierly firmness and tenacity, that he spares all their lives, and commands that no fetters shall be put on them. And yet, after this, he is reproached as “ungenerous!” Such is the sort of justice which this great king commonly receives at the hands of Scotchmen.
Scotland was now once more quieted and at rest. The entire surrender made by Baliol in 1296, to a superior lord who justly claimed a fief forfeited by rebellion, had now been a second time confirmed by the voluntary homage and oath of fealty of every baron, knight, or landed proprietor in Scotland. There remained but one man still contumacious, the once terrible, but now despised William Wallace. And he, at last, wearied of the vagrant, outlaw life of the last six years, “prayed his friends that they would beseech Edward that he might yield himself on terms.”[128]
The rebel leader, as we have already observed, was, for some reason or other, entirely deserted by the whole Scottish nation. We have already cited Mr. Tytler’s admission—that during all the years which elapsed between his defeat at Falkirk in 1298, and his apprehension in 1305, “his name does not occur as bearing even a secondary command in the wars against Edward.” Sir James Mackintosh endeavours to account for this, by saying that “the jealousy of the nobles, or the unpopularity of a signal reverse, hide Wallace from our search for several years.” But “the jealousy of the nobles” had not hindered Wallace from gathering an army in 1297, and another in 1298; nor did “the unpopularity of ‘several’ signal reverses,” in 1306, prevent Bruce from bringing fresh forces into the field in 1307. How it happened that, after 1298, not even a score of “men of desperate fortunes” could be got to follow Wallace, must remain a mystery. One suspicion has occurred to us, grounded upon the known facts, of his delight in cruelty, a trait which is seldom found in the truly brave; and of the absence of the slightest record of any deed of daring, either at Stirling or at Falkirk. These two circumstances seem to point to the conclusion—that Wallace was taken to be, by his countrymen, during all these years, something very much the reverse of “a hero.” One trifling incident in his life is briefly mentioned as occurring during this period. Blind Harry, in his romance, sends Wallace to France, where Philip makes him “Duke of Guyenne.” But the real truth of this part of his story is briefly told us in the “Chronicle of St. Albans” (Cotton MSS.), in the following terms:—