William Wallace
William Wallace was a knight's younger son with no land and no claim who killed the English sheriff of Lanark, destroyed an English army at a bridge, governed Scotland for a year as Guardian in the name of a king in the Tower, lost the next battle, and was hanged, drawn and quartered in London for a treason he denied, since he had never been Edward's man. He was born about 1270, probably at Elderslie in Renfrewshire, and nothing is known of him before May 1297, when he killed the English sheriff at Lanark, Heselrig, in a quarrel the later poem gave a murdered wife to. Scotland had been without a king since Edward I deposed John Balliol in 1296 and was garrisoned as a conquered province, and risings were breaking out everywhere; Wallace's, in the south-west, joined with Moray's in the north, and on 11 September 1297 at Stirling Bridge they let half the English army cross the Forth by a bridge two men wide and killed it on the far bank, the treasurer Cressingham among the dead, whose skin was made into belts. Moray died of his wounds. Wallace raided Northumberland, was knighted and made sole Guardian of the kingdom in Balliol's name in the spring of 1298, and wrote to Lübeck and Hamburg that Scotland was open for trade again. Edward came himself in July. At Falkirk on the 22nd the Scottish nobles' cavalry left the field and the English archers shot the schiltrons to pieces; Wallace escaped and resigned the guardianship to men with land. He went to France to seek help from Philip IV, was back by 1303, and fought on after the nobles had submitted in 1304. On 5 August 1305 the knight Menteith's men took him near Glasgow and handed him over; he was tried in Westminster Hall on the 23rd wearing a crown of oak leaves, answered the charge of treason by saying he had never sworn fealty to Edward, and was dragged to Smithfield, hanged, cut down alive, disembowelled, beheaded and quartered, the head on London Bridge and the limbs at Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling and Perth. Bruce rose the next February.
- Lived: 1270 CE – 1305 CE
- Nationality: Scottish
- Roles: rebel, general, guardian
