The time that William Wallace rose from the dead is just one of the things I want to tell you
as we tour five sites associated with Scotland s national hero.
because how much do you really know about William Wallace?
If you re interested in the people, places and events in Scottish history
then click the subscribe button at the bottom right of the screen.
In the meantime, let me tell you five stories like that time that William Wallace
rose from the dead That s right, it s an
event we Scots celebrate to this day by stabbing the English with chocolate swords at easter.
It all happened in Ayr. In fact, to this day
there s an Ayrshire bylaw that says; a Scotsman within sight of Ayr racecourse
is legally allowed to club an Englishman to death with a purple curly wurly.
Last year I went to the Grand National, and I was like a kid in a sweet shop.
I should probably tell you the story.
Wallace had been involved in a skirmish where he d killed one of the men of a certain Lord Percy.
But, having been overwhelmed by English soldiers, he was captured
and thrown into a dungeon to starve. When the time came for his trial they
went to get him out , but he d suffered from a fever then fallen into a coma.
Well, the English soldiers assumed he was dead and threw his body to rot on a rubbish heap.
But an Ellerslie nurse that s Ellerslie in Ayrshire
begged the English to let her bury him properly.
She staged a wake, but it turned out during the wake he was a wake, so it was a fake wake,
but they kiddied on tae the English that it wasnae a fake wake, but a real wake and that
he wisnae awake at a , he was deid.
But he wisnae. She nursed him back to health
but when he appeared again everyone knew that William Wallace had the power of resurrection.
People flocked to support him, The seer, Thomas the Rhymer,
made prophesies about him. Wallace went round the country sawing
ladies in half and catching bullets in his teeth. Thus Willliam Wallace took on mythical qualities
that inspired leadership more than lands and titles ever could.
No wonder they built a national monument to him But let me
take you to another monument to give you another fact about how his career began.
This is Elderslie near Paisley. Now in my video on How Scottish Was
William Wallace some people got upset that I said he was from Ayrshire,
because they d seen this monument in Renfrewshire so he must be from here
So, let s pretend there s no such place as Ellerslie near Ayr.
Don t want to upset the Buddies. They ve got a monument.
I m told the first real record of Wallace s activities was actually in my home town... Perth.
In 1296, shortly after Edward Longshanks English army defeated the Scots at Dunbar.
On St Botulf s day which we all know is 17th June
an Englishman Matthew of York and a theif William le Walyes William the Welshman
were accused of robbing Christina of St John s Toun of 3 shillings of beer.
Now today St John s Toun is called Perth and 3 shillings of beer would be two kegs.
This wasn t a: He nicked my pint! beer theft. This was wholesale.
I m imagining some landlady of a pub finds a couple of barrels have gone missing and sees
two blokes running down a vennel, each with a keg on his shoulder.
As it was Wallace managed to escape, but his accomplice was tried by the occupying
English Sherriff and only avoided the noose by claiming he was a cleric.
Now somebody in the comments section may say: It s mistaken identity.
Scotland had been recently occupied by English forces which would have contained Welsh archers.
It could be argued that Matthew of York and William the Welshman were two of the garrison
nicking a couple of barrels of beer from a local Scottish landlady.
Possible, but William Walyes is specifically named as a thief
assumed to be known and clearly not in the English Sheriff s good books...
and his accomplice isn t a soldier, but an English cleric.
It s just as likely that William Wallace, teamed up with a vicar with a drink problem
and it all went a bit Pete Tong.
When the vicar turned up for trial, drunk and incomprehensible
he just sounded English. You know they talk funny.
Of course the most likely explanation of a Scotswoman
a Welshman and an English vicar in a pub, is that somebody s found a medieval joke book
and forgot to mention the Rabbi. What we know for sure is that
somebody called William Waleys was living on the fringes shortly
after the English invasion in 1296 and was accused of stealing beer.
That life between outlaw and freedom fighter was shared by Rob Roy and Robin Hood.
In fact there s more similarities to Robin Hood to come .
Before that let s go to where Wallace was actually born
Ayrshire.
It s right that this Ayrshire lad should have a monument in his home county
and this one was built before the one in Elderslie, or the National one near Stirling.
But here s another thing you might not have considered about Wallace.
They had to create a new job for him In just over a year he d gone from a beer stealer
to the leading commander of the Scottish army, with the responsibility for an entire kingdom.
but they didn t know what to call him or whether he should get the key to the executive washroom.
It took months for the HR department to work things out.
In his letters that survive from the weeks after his victory at The Battle of Stirling Bridge,
Wallace described himself and Andrew de Moray as leaders of the army of the Kingdom of Scotland
acting on behalf of the community of the realm and John Balliol, the illustrious King of Scotland .
Now this was true , but was more a job description than a formal job title.
You know when somebody has the words Acting in front of their job
you never quite take them as seriously.
So they had to come up with a title for whatever it was that Wallace was doing ,
and the Community of the Realm decided to revert to the idea of a guardianship.
That had been used where a body of nobles and clerics
could collectively act as a legal government when the king s not around.
but Wallace wasn t a collection of nobles and clerics he was a guy.
His buddy Andrew de Moray was now dead, and Wallace was named sole Guardian.
He alone wielded the authority of the Crown in the name of King John.
Not only had this office never existed before for a single individual,
but for the powers of the crown be given to someone not of royal blood , not even a baron.
When he was named Guardian, Wallace wasn t even a knight.
He didn t have any land. His dad, Alan, and his elder
brother, Malcolm, were still alive, so he wasn t even head of his own family
but he was in charge of the country. That was mental!.
He even had to invent a seal for himself, which we ll come on to.
In a strict hierarchical, society, the idea that this guy would be standing in for the King,
would have seemed mad to the English. You can just see them taking the piss!
The beer thief?
When he was made Guardian they had to knight him so he would have recognition
. It s like saying everyone in management needs to have a degree ,
but the Managing Director doesn t have ANY qualifications.
Shit! Can we give him a degree now?
Any degree. Just tell them it s from Glasgow Caley
Mines is from Paisley Tech
This is the monument at Robroyston on the outskirts of Glasgow
commemorating the place Wallace was finally captured by teachery and John of Menteith
before being delivered to Edward I of England In his possession Wallace had letters from
various European leaders but the most famous letter that
he wrote was sent by him and Andrew de Moray to the merchants of Lubeck and Hamburg, after the
Battle of Stirling Bridge, to tell them that Scots were back in control and Scotland
was back in business. You can see the letter
in the Museum of Scotland today. On it is his personal seal that I
mentioned earlier. Now your personal
seal is important to you, right? The symbol you choose is going to have meaning.
It s your identity on paper for everyone to recognise.
William Wallace s choice of pattern was a bow and arrow.
If you don t think that seems unusual then consider this...
a bow was seen a low prestige weapon.
It wasn t the sort of thing you d use in medieval heraldry.
So this was a deliberate choice of somebody proud of being an archer.
An English chronicler unflatteringly reported of a certain young man by the
name of William le Waleis, an archer, who sought his
living by his bow and quiver. Of lowly birth and reared as an outlaw
How disparaging! Now Wallace wasn t REARED as an outlaw.
Nor was he quite of low birth , but late birth. I mean he had an elder brother.
You see William Wallace s dad WAS a minor land owner,
but didn t have the kind of wealth that would allow him to kit out and train all of his sons
as knights in shining armour. That was an expensive business.
Nobles were expected to turn up prepared to fight mounted as heavily armed and armoured knights,
with warhorses, plating and equipment. It was like owning a tank.
I don t know if your dad could afford a tank. I don t think we could ve fitted
one in our driveway... because we lived in a tenement.
Alan Wallace probably didn t have enough land for each of his sons to fit a tank in the driveway
If you were a younger son of middle-class parents working on a budget,
you probably weren t going to get the full armour-plated dinner suit
William had to make do with a bow and arrow. but this was still a weapon that
took strength and skill to use, and professional, well-equipped archers
with their own horses were in demand. They d be on better wages than common
foot-soldiers, but not as good as men-at-arms, and not likely to ever win a knighthood.
Being an archer tells you something about his position in his family and society.
The fact he needed to invent a seal for himself rather than his family arms his brother would
inherit from their father tells you even more about
his lack of social standing. Choosing a bow and arrow as that seal
tells you something about the man. No pomp or pretention,
but pride in his own abilities. Having drawn many other men to him,
having risen to the role of national leader the seal he chose reminded everyone that he was
one of Jock Tamson s bairns and proud to be so.
In a time when REAL noblemen seemed to flip sides like
a pancake on Shrove Tuesday, Wallace stood out because he never did.
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This is the monument to the Wallace Oak. After being ferried across the Clyde Wallace
was apparently chained to an oak tree here as he awaited the escort of English troops
to take him to London for the inevitable and
brutal fate that awaited him. After hundreds of years the tree
itself could no longer be preserved, so in 2021 it was replaced by this monument.
Often when people talk about William Wallace they think in terms of the guy who ultimately lost,
hung drawn and quartered whilst OTHERS went on to fight for Scotland.
but I guess that depends on what you mean by winning and losing.
If we re talking about Scottish patriots, then he was the great survivor.
We could take various events as the start point for the wars of independence.
I suppose technically it was probably when John Comyn led a small Scottish force
across the border to attack Carlisle Castle. Does that make us the baddies? .
The slaughter of townspeople at Berwick followed by military defeat at Dunbar
meant that most of the Scottish nobility very quickly gave in to Edward
by re-signing a document called the Ragman s Roll originally signed in 1291.
Now nearly everyone who s anyone signed submission to Edward,
so you could almost say that the only Scots patriots who survived after 1291...
certainly after 1296 were those who didn t sign. Willliam Wallace didn t.
Even if you cut some slack to the Andrew de Morays the Robert the Bruces they still
didn t outlast Wallace as patriots. Once Edward had garrisoned Scotland
you could argue that the first spark of uprising was when Wallace attacked Lanark,
but he did it in collaboration with his social better Sir Richard Lundie
Now Lundie later switched sides at a standoff between the Scots and English at Irvine
known as the Noble s revolt. Robert the Bruce capitulated at the same time.
Wallace then joined forces with Lord William Douglas,
the father of the famous Good Sir James Douglas or if you re English The Black Douglas...
Willliam Douglas had also signed the ragman s Roll, but he and Wallace attacked Scone together
Douglas was later captured, imprisoned and eventually
died in the Tower of London just after Wallace s victory at Stirling Bridge.
Of course Stirling Bridge was Wallace s most famous victory ,
alongside another nobleman, Andrew de Moray. De Moray died of his injuries shortly after.
A year later Sir John de Graham was killed at the Battle of Falkirk and many others fell.
Whatever fight was left, by 1304 it all seemed over
when John Comyn the man who had led that first attack on Carlisle Castle
now led the remaining Scottish Lords in submitting to Edward I in February 1304.
Further ignominy followed, when a Scottish parliament was made to outlaw Wallace once more.
In the time that he d gone from outlaw to Guardian of the realm and back to outlaw,
pretty much everyone had been killed or capitulated.
So when Wallace stood at his show trial at Westminster the following year and said:
I can not be a traitor, for I owe him no allegiance.
He is not my Sovereign; he never received my homage;
and whilst life is in this persecuted body, he never shall receive it.
He was saying something that few, if any, others in Scotland could.
He was the last man standing. William Wallace was a survivor.
If you want to know more about William Wallace and his patriotic struggle then you should really
watch the video coming up on screen now. In the meantime