Hall, accompanied by the mayor, sheriffs, and aldermen of the city, and there
arraigned of treason. A crown of laurel was in mockery placed on his head,
because, as was alleged, he had been ambitious of the Scottish crown. The
king's justice, Sir Peter Mallorie, then impeached him as a traitor to Edward,
and as having burned villages, stormed castles, and slain many subjects of
England. "I could not be a traitor to the king of England," said Wallace, "for I was never his subject, and never swore fealty to him. It is true I have slain many Englishmen; but it was in the defence of the rights and liberties
of my native country of Scotland." Notwithstanding the truth and justice of his plea, Wallace was found guilty, and condemned to a cruel death. It is a stain on the character of Edward, and a reproach to the spirit of his age and country, that, while he pardoned, and even favoured many who had repeatedly violated their oaths of allegiance to him, he not only bestowed no mercy on this brave and true-hearted man, who had never professed allegiance, but, with an enmity which showed how little sympathy he had for his noble qualities, added insult to injustice, and endeavoured to heap indignity on the head of him
whose name shall be through all ages honoured and revered by every generous breast Sir William Wallace was dragged at the tails of horses through the streets of London to a gallows in Smithfield, where, after being hanged a short time, he was taken down, yet breathing, and his bowels torn out, and burned. His head was then struck off, and his body divided into quarters. His head was placed on a pole on London Bridge, his right arm above the bridge at Newcastle, his left arm was sent to Berwick, his right foot and limb to Perth, and his left quarter to Aberdeen. "These," says an old English historian, "were the trophies of their favourite hero, which the Scots had now to contemplate, instead of his banners and gonfanons, which they had once proudly followed." But he might have added, as is well remarked by Mr Tytler, that "they were trophies more glorious than the richest banner that had ever been borne before him; and if Wallace already had been the idol of the people, if they had long regarded him as the only man who had asserted, throughout
every change of circumstances, the independence of his country, now that his mutilated limbs were brought before them, it may well be conceived how deep and unextinguishable were their feelings of pity and revenge." Edward, assuredly, could have adopted no more certain way of canonizing the memory of his enemy, and increasing the animosity of the Scottish people. Accordingly, we find, although the execution of Wallace may be said to have completed that subjugation of the country which the English monarch had been straining for,
by force and fraud, during a period of fifteen years, that in less than six months from the death of her great champion, Scotland, roused to the cause now sealed and made holy by her patriot's blood, shook off the yoke of England, and became once more a free kingdom.
WALLACE, James, usually called Colonel Wallace, leader of the Covenanters at the battle of Pentland hills, was descended from the Wallaces of Dundonald, a branch of the Wallaces of Craigie. Neither the place, nor the year of his birth is known; but in the sentence of death, which was passed against him in absence, after the battle of Pentland, he is styled "of Auchens," an estate eituated in the parish of Dundonald, in Ayrshire, and which was the family seat of his ancestors, and most probably his own birth-place. Of his education
foot, accompanying him; and in the great hall at Westminster, he being placed on the south bench, crowned with laurel, for that he had said in times past that he ought to bear a crown in that hall, as it was commoiily/eported; and being appeached for a traitour by Sir Peter Mallorie, the king's justice, he answered, that he was never traitour to the king of England; but for other things whereof he was accused, he confessed them; and was alter headed and quartered."
