Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 1.djvu/337

A.D. 1298.] was encamped not far off in the wood of Falkirk. The news is said to have been brought to the king privately by two of tho Scottish nobles, the Earls of Dunbar and Angus. He immediately determined to go forth to meet the insurgents, and on that night the royal army lay in the fields. Edward himself, sleeping beside his horse, received a kick from the animal, which broke two of his ribs. The news soon spread through tho camp that the king had been killed, and a state of confusion ensued which threatened the complete demoralisation of the troops. Edward, however, restored discipline among them by mounting his horse, and riding at their head, regardless of the pain he endured.

The English army began its march at dawn on the 22nd of July, 1298. Within a short time the enemy were observed to have taken up a position in a field which lay at tho side of some rising ground in the neighbourhood of Falkirk. The force under the command of Wallace was greatly inferior to that opposed to him; but he had posted his troops with groat judgment, and for a long time the Scottish infantry repelled the furious attacks directed against them. Not so the cavalry, of whom Wallace possessed no more than 1,000. These did not even attempt to resist the superior numbers of the enemy, but, without striking a blow, they turned and fled from the field. Cowardice is certainly not tho characteristic of the race to which these men belonged, and therefore their flight can only be attributed to treason on the part of their leaders. Be the cause what it might, the loss of this division speedily decided the fate of the day, and the heroic resistance of the infantry was rendered totally unavailing. The Scots at length gave way before the repeated charges of heavy cavalry, and the victory of the king was complete. Little or no quarter seems to have been asked or given, for we are told that 15,000 Scots were left dead upon the field.

Wallace effected his escape with a remnant of his army, and fell back on Stirling. The English followed fast on his steps; but when they arrived at that place he was gone, and the town was a heap of smouldering ruins. St. Andrews and Perth were afterwards also burnt to the ground; the first by the English, and the latter by the inhabitants themselves. As the king passed through the country, he laid waste the villages and the cultivated fields with fire and sword. But tho land was poor, and not all the activity of the marauding forces could procure the necessaries of life for so large a body of men. Edward was compelled to retreat, and in the month of September he quitted Scotland, having regained possession only of the southern part of the country.

For several years after the signal defeat he sustained at Falkirk we hear no more of Wallace. Ho resigned the office of guardian of the kingdom, and, in an assembly of the barons, William Lamberton, Bishop of St. Andrews, John Comyn the younger, John do Soulis, and Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, were appointed guardians in his stead. Tho new appointments were made, like the old, in the name of Baliol, although that dethroned monarch was then a prisoner in London. It would appear that bitter feuds of long standing were buried in the arrangement by which Bruce and Comyn consented to act together in the name of the man who had successfully rivalled both of them in the contest for the crown. The events of the after life of John Baliol may be told in a few words. In the year 1299 the Pope Boniface VIII. interceded in his behalf, and the fallen king was liberated from his confinement, and conveyed to the estate of Bailleul, in Normandy, from which his ancestors took their name. There he passed the rest of his days in retirement, scarcely resembling his former high position, and little heeding the important events which were deciding tho destinies of his country. He died in the year 1314.

Allusion has already been made to the heavy burdens entailed upon the English people by the repeated wars of their king. When constitutional means failed to raise the required sums, Edward did not hesitate to resort to any expedients which suggested themselves to enable him to fill his exhausted treasury. On one occasion he avowed that he had taken the cross, and should make a second journey to the Holy Land; a pretext by which he obtained a tenth of the entire income of the Church for six years. At a later period he seized a large portion of the wealth deposited in the religious houses, stating his intention of repaying it on some future day. This promise was accepted by tho clergy for no more than it was worth; and when he subsequently made a demand upon them of one-half of their whole incomes, tho whole body of ecclesiastics strongly resisted the exaction, and ultimately complied with great reluctance. A further demand of a fourth, which was made upon them in the following year (A.D. 1295), was successfully resisted, and the king was compelled to be satisfied with a tenth. In addition to these causes of complaint, the clergy were oppressed by the officers of the crown, who seized their stores and ransacked their granaries for supplies for the king's troops. At length they applied for aid to the Pope; but the only result of the application was to make their condition still more miserable. The Pope granted them a bull, directing that the Church revenues should not be devoted to secular purposes without the permission of tho Holy See. But at this time Boniface was himself in a position of difficulty, and the bull being opposed in France, he was compelled within a year to issue another, which virtually restored matters to their former position, and removed the papal protection from the goods of tho Church. Acting upon tho authority of the first bull, some of tho English clergy refused to satisfy the demands of the king, who then took tho extraordinary course of outlawing the whole body. The whole of the property of bishops, abbots, and inferior clergy was seized, insomuch that in many cases they were left without bread to eat or a bed to lie upon. Tho influence of the clergy upon the people must at this period have been extremely small, as it does not appear that these arbitrary proceedings excited any indignation or interference on their behalf.

Having obtained all that ho could from the Church, the king extended his proceedings to the nobles, merchants, and citizens of the kingdom, whose goods ho seized without a shadow of pretext. The landowners and the burghers, however, were made of more stubborn stuff than the clergy, and the opposition ho here encountered was of the most decided character. In February A.D. 1297, Edward was engaged in collecting two armies to proceed, the one into Flanders, and the other to Guienne, when the Earl of Hereford, tho constable of England, and the Earl of Norfolk the marshal, who had been required to quit the