Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 5.djvu/169

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ROBERT BRUCE 105 not included in the capitulation, one of the clauses of which (printed in the orig- inal French in Ryley's " Placeta Parliamentaria ") is to the effect that as for Wal- lace (Monsieur Guillaume de Galeys), he might, if he pleased, give himself up to the king's mercy (" quil se mette en la volunte et en la grace nostre seigneur le Roy, si lui semble, que bon soit "). He was soon after summoned to appear be- fore a parliament or convention of Scotch and English nobility, held at St. An- drew's ; and upon their not presenting themselves, he and Sir Simon Frisel, or Fraser, were pronounced outlaws. For some time his retreat remained undiscov- ered, although his active hostility still continued occasionally to make itself felt A principal person employed in the attempts to capture him appears to have been Ralph de Haliburton ; but how he was actually taken is not known. Sir John Menteith (a son of Walter Stewart, Earl of Menteith), to whose treachery his delivery to the English king is attributed by Blind Harry and popular tradition, appears to have really done nothing more than forward him to England after he was brought a prisoner to Dumbarton Castle, of which Menteith was governor under a commission from Edward. On being brought to London, Wallace was lodged in the house of William Delect, a citizen, in Fenchurch Street ; and on the next day, being the eve of St. Bartholomew, he was brought on horseback to Westminster, and in the hall there, " being placed on the south bench," says Stow, " crowned with laurel for that he had said in times past that he ought to bear a crown in that all," he was arraigned as a traitor, and on that charge found guilty, and condemned to death. After being dragged to the usual place of execution the Elms, in West Smith- field at the tails of his horses, he was there hanged on a high gallows, on Au- gust 23, 1305, after which he was "drawn and quartered." His right arm was set up at Newcastle, his left at Berwick ; his right leg at Perth, his left at Aber- deen ; his head on London Bridge. Wallace's daughter, by the heiress of Lam- ington, married Sir William Bailie, of Hoprig, whose descendants through her inherited the estate of Lamington. ROBERT BRUCE BY SIR J. BERNARD BURKE, LL.D. (1274-1329) ROBERT BRUCE was born in the year 1274, on the Feast of the trans- lation of St. Benedict, being March 2ist, and was undoubtedly of Norman origin. In an annual roll containing the names of those knights and barons who came over with William the Conqueror, we find that of Brueys ; and from the Domesday Book it appears that a family of the same name were possessed of lands in Yorkshire. Coming down to a later period, 1138, when David I. of Scotland made his fatal attack