attribute the defeat to Cressingham's penuriousness as treasurer and folly as a general. Warenne was at least equally to blame. Nor is it fair to try to lessen the merit of Wallace. Where others had faltered or gone over to the enemy, he had almost alone kept alive the spirit of his countrymen. He selected the field of battle at the place and moment when a smaller force could engage a larger with best hopes of success, and had been in the thick of the fight. His colleague in the command was Andrew Moray, son of Sir Andrew Moray, then prisoner in the Tower [see under Murray or Moray, Sir Andrew, d. 1338].
Nothing succeeds like success. The Steward and Lennox aided Wallace in the pursuit of Warenne, but Wallace himself was now sole leader. His army grew by volunteers, but also by forced levies of all able-bodied men between sixteen and sixty. Bower, Fordun's continuator, probably a chaplain of Aberdeen, relates that the burgesses of that town having refused to obey Wallace, he marched north and hanged some of them as an example; and there is other evidence of his forcible methods, as in the petition for reparation to Edward of Michael de Miggel, who was twice captured and forced to join the troops of Wallace (Calendar, ii. 456). The castle of Dundee, probably by the aid of Scrymgeour, who was soon after made its constable, at once surrendered. Edinburgh and Roxburgh were taken. Henry de Haliburton recovered Berwick, but the castles of these towns were still held by English captains (Chronicle of Lanercost, p. 190). There is no specific mention of the fall of Stirling, which Warenne before his flight had committed to the custody of Marmaduke de Thweng, but we know that it passed into the hands of the Scots. Roxburgh and Haddington, and nearly all the great towns on the English side of the Forth, were burned (ib. p. 191). Scotland was free, and Wallace, still acting in the name of John de Baliol, crossed the border, and before 18 Oct. harried Northumberland, and afterwards marched through Westmoreland and Cumberland, wasting the country, but without taking any stronghold. At Hexham some Scottish lancers threatened to kill the few canons left in the convent unless they gave up their treasures. Wallace interposed, and asked one of them to celebrate mass. Before the host was elevated, he left the church to take off his armour, as was the pious custom, but some Scots lancers carried off the holy vessels while the priest was washing his hands in the vestry, so that the service could not be completed. Wallace ordered the sacrilegious soldiers to be sought for, but they were not to be found. He took the canons under his own special care, and on 7 Nov. issued letters of protection in his own name and that of Andrew Moray, as leaders of the army of Scotland in the name of Baliol. Their terms refute the calumny so often repeated, that Wallace was an indiscriminate persecutor of the clergy. Against English clerks who accepted Scottish benefices he was beyond doubt severe, nor could he always restrain his followers. But the man who had a chaplain as one of his friends, and was countenanced by the chief bishops of Scotland, Robert Wishart [q. v.] and William de Lamberton [q. v.], was not an enemy of the church of Rome or of Scotland, but of the churchmen of England and of Edward. On St. Martin's day, 11 Nov., he appeared before Carlisle, which was summoned to surrender in the name of William the Conqueror. The burghers prepared to defend it, and Wallace, declining a siege, wasted the forest of Inglewood, Cumberland, and ‘Allerdale,’ as far as Cockermouth. A snowstorm prevented him from ravaging the bishopric of Durham, whose deliverance was attributed to the protection of its patron, St. Cuthbert.
Wallace returned to Scotland about Christmas 1297, and, apart from a casual though possibly true reference to his being again in the forest of Selkirk, the next certain fact in his life is that he was at Torphichen in West Lothian on 29 March 1298. A grant of that date by Wallace has been preserved. He styles himself ‘Wilelmus Walays miles, Custos regni Scotiæ et ductor exercituum ejusdem nomine principis domini Johannis Dei gratia regis Scotiæ illustris de consensu communitatis ejusdem. … per consensum et assensum magnatum dicti regni,’ and confers on Alexander Skirmisher (Scrymgeour) six marks value of land in the territory of Dundee and the office of constable of that town in return for his homage to Baliol and faithful service in the army of Scotland as bearer of the king's standard. This document refutes the assertion made at the trial of Wallace that he had claimed the kingdom for himself. It also proves that after the death of Moray he acted as sole guardian, and probably also that some of the nobles were still on his side, and that he had been elected guardian, though the remark of Lord Hailes appears just that how he obtained the office will for ever remain problematical. John Major, who thinks he assumed it, states that there were families in his own time who held their lands by charters of Wallace, which indicates that his authority was recognised
