Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/114

 joined him in a rapid march on Scone, where the court of William de Ormesby [q. v.], the justiciar, was dispersed, much booty taken, and the justiciar saved his life only by flight. They then separated. Douglas recovered the strongholds of his native Annandale, where he took the castles of Sanquhar and Durisdeer, while Wallace overran the Lennox. It may have been at this time he expelled Antony Bek [q. v.], the warlike bishop of Durham, from the house of Wishart, the bishop of Glasgow, of which Bek had taken possession. Wallace put in force with all the stringency in his power the ordinance of the Scottish parliament of 1296, by which English clerks were banished from Scottish benefices—a necessary measure if Scotland was to be delivered from the English domination, for English priests and friars minor took an active part as envoys and spies throughout the war. In July 1297 the troops of Wallace and Douglas were reunited in Ayrshire. This was not a moment too soon, for Edward I's governor, Warenne, had sent his nephew Sir Henry Percy and Sir Henry Clifford, with the levy of the northern shires, to repress the Scottish rising. Collecting their forces in Cumberland in June, they had invaded Annandale, and, burning Lochmaben to save themselves from a night attack, advanced by Ayr to Irvine, where the Scots force was prepared to engage them. At Irvine Bruce, who had suddenly transferred his arms to the side of the Scottish patriots, again changed sides, and on 9 July, by a deed still extant (Calendar, No. 909), placed himself at the will of Edward. It is uncertain whether Wallace was present at Irvine; a fortnight later he had retired ‘with a great company’ into the forest of Selkirk, ‘like one who holds himself against your peace,’ writes Cressingham to Edward on 23 July (ib.), and neither Cressingham nor Percy dared follow him into the forest, whose natives were good archers and strenuous supporters of the Scottish cause. The absence of Warenne was made an excuse for the delay, which enabled Wallace to organise and increase his forces. Neither Warenne nor his deputies were capable generals, and they allowed Wallace to lay siege to Dundee, and to occupy a strong position on the north side of the Forth, near Cambuskenneth Abbey, in the beginning of September, threatening Stirling Castle, the key of the Highlands, before they advanced to meet him with fifty thousand foot and a thousand horse.

Wallace took up his position at the base of the Abbey Craig, the bold rock where his monument now stands, which faces Stirling. It commands a retreat to the Ochils inaccessible to cavalry, easily defensible by agile mountaineers against heavy-armed troops. On the plain below there is on the north side one of the many loops of the Forth as it winds through the carse land called the Links. The English lay between the river and the castle of Stirling. Attempts at mediation were made twice by the Steward and the Earl of Lennox, a third time by two friars minor. ‘Carry back this answer,’ said Wallace, according to Hemingburgh, who has left so clear an account of that memorable day: ‘we have not come for peace, but ready to fight to liberate our kingdom. Let them come on when they wish, and they will find us ready to fight them to their beards.’ He adds, ‘Wallace's force was only forty thousand foot and 180 horse.’ When this answer was reported, the opinions of the English leaders were divided. The wooden bridge over the Forth—probably not far from the present stone one—was so narrow that some who were there reported that if they had begun to cross at dawn and continued till noon, the greater part of the army would still remain behind. But, provoked by Wallace's challenge, the English leaders mounted the bridge. Marmaduke de Thweng [see under ] and the bearers of the standards crossed first. Thweng, by a brilliant dash, cut through the Scots force, attempting the manœuvre which, if Lundy's advice to cross by a neighbouring ford and take the Scots in the rear had been taken, might have succeeded. Thweng failed through want of support, and recrossed the bridge with his nephew. Few others had such good fortune. As they defiled two abreast over the bridge they were caught as in a net. Wallace's troops had descended from the Abbey Craig when he saw as many English as they could overcome had crossed. The defeat was signal and soon became general. No reinforcements could be sent over the bridge, now choked with the dead and wounded. The story that Wallace had, by loosening the wooden bolts which held one of its piers, broken it down, appears less likely, though there is evidence in the English accounts that the bridge had, soon after the battle, to be repaired. Some tried to swim the river and were drowned. A few Welsh foot escaped by swimming, but only a single knight. Five thousand foot and a hundred knights were slain. Among these was Cressingham the treasurer, whose skin was cut in strips, which the Scots divided as trophies. Wallace, says the ‘Chronicle of Lanercost,’ made a sword-belt out of one of the strips. English writers