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- [00:01]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis.
- [00:03]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
And I'm Dr. Eleanor Jaenega and we're.
- [00:05]
Matt Lewis
Just popping up here to tell you some insider info.
- [00:08]
Fiona Watson
If you would like to listen to Gone Medieval ad free and get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to.
- [00:14]
Matt Lewis
History Hit with the History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, such as my new.
- [00:21]
Fiona Watson
Series on everyone's favorite conquerors, the Normans.
- [00:25]
Matt Lewis
Or my recent exploration of the castles that made Britain.
- [00:29]
Fiona Watson
There's a new release to enjoy every week.
- [00:32]
Matt Lewis
Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe or find the link in the show Notes for this episode.
- [00:50]
Fiona Watson
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- [01:16]
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- [01:46]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
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- [02:20]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval From History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to Popes to the Crusades, we cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders, to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here, find out who we really were. We've Gone Medieval. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. If you've listened to our Medieval Movie Nights episode, you'll know that Braveheart is a solid favourite here at Gone Medieval. You'll also know that it requires a gentle setting aside or perhaps a violent launching into the stratosphere of history. In a new series of documentaries on history hit professor Michael Livingstone is taking a closer look at some famous medieval rebels. You can watch his film about William Wallace right now, if you're a subscriber. And we thought that gave us the perfect opportunity to look at the real William Wallace, the man behind the kilted, blue faced brave heart, to try and peel away the misty myths. I'm joined by Fiona Watson, whose books include under the Hammer, Edward I in Scotland, 1296-1305 and Traitor, Outlaw King, which tells the story of Robert the Bruce. Welcome to Gone Medieval. Fiona, hello.
- [04:13]
Fiona Watson
It was lovely to meet you, Matt.
- [04:15]
Matt Lewis
It's great to have you on to talk about William Wallace. I mean, I guess the first question has to be how often do you think about Braveheart? Because I think about it all the time.
- [04:22]
Fiona Watson
Do you indeed? I think I try not to think about Braveheart, but to be honest, I mean, I am hugely grateful to Braveheart because I started as a young lecturer at Stirling University when Mel Gibson came to Stirling for the European premiere of braveheart back in 1995, which is now way too long ago, and it did huge things in Scotland. I just started as a medievalist and Stirling didn't have a medievalist, so. So I taught Wallace and Bruce, so my student numbers were very healthy. And the Wallace Monument, they had to build a new, bigger car park. So it did great things for Scotland in terms of putting it even more on the map.
- [04:59]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. Eleanor and I have had several discussions about how much we love Braveheart, but decried the desecration of the history all around it. But still an amazing film.
- [05:07]
Fiona Watson
It is, yeah.
- [05:08]
Matt Lewis
But we'll set the film to one side a little bit because we're going to try and get to know the real William Wallace a little bit better. Hopefully a lot better. Can you tell us, to start off with how much do we know about William Wallis's family, his background, when and where he's born, that kind of thing?
- [05:25]
Fiona Watson
That's a very good question. And as you know, it's hard to get a lot of details about even some of the kings. Maybe less over for English kings, but for Scottish kings it's quite hard. We don't know exactly where Robert Bruce was born, but someone like William Wallace, who was never supposed to be famous, we were never supposed to have heard of him, is even harder. And then we got the huge layer of obfuscation that is the great poem about William Wallace called the Wallace that Braveheart is based on, but written 150 years after he was around. And right at the beginning he Blind Harry, who supposedly wrote the Wallace, he says that William was the son of Sir Malcolm Wallace of Creakie. And we know that isn't true, but for years it wasn't until the 1980s that we found out who Wallis's father actually was. And that's because I know it's jumping ahead. But William's seal was appended to a document that he sent out to Lubeck to say that Scotland was open for trade again after his famous victory at Stirling Bridge. So his seal is on there, cobbled together and on the reverse, which no one had looked at, the actual seal came from Lubeck to Glasgow in the early 1900s and a cast was made of it by a dentist and he had sat in the Mitchell Library in Glasgow for about nearly a century. And someone who was very keen on William Wallace actually turned it over and there on the other side was Wallace's personal seal and it said William son of Alan Wallace. So we know that doesn't get us much further. I mean, who is Alan Wallace? There is an Alan Wallace around at this time on the so called Ragman Row that Edward I, when Edward I conquered Scotland and he got lots of landowner to swear fealty to him. And there is an Alan Wallis who is a royal tenant in Ayrshire and that could well be our man or our man's father.
- [07:20]
Matt Lewis
So frustratingly you sort of left piecing together tiny little fragments that we have until he, I mean, eventually he just explodes onto the scene almost from nowhere, doesn't he?
- [07:31]
Fiona Watson
Yes, well, he does, you know, he absolutely does. And it's this shocking murder, murder on 5 May 1297 in Lanark, which is in southwest Scotland. Yeah, you know, and of course, as Blevard would have it, that's all about the murder of his wife. And we do have a lot of that detail quite early in Scottish chronicles, but again, not necessarily contemporary about why he did it. So he does definitely murder the sheriff of Lanark, William Hesselrick, who is a Northumbrian and we have quite a lot of detail in a Norwegian chronicle of all things, which gives us the date. And we know that the sheriff wasn't in the castle, he was in a house in Lanark and William went and killed him and then set fire to the house. And there was another knight, another Northumbrian knight called Sir Thomas Grey, who again his son writes chronicle, so it's kind of firsthand. And he was left for dead. And someone who was with Wallis, a man called Sir Richard Lundy, actually went back and saved the first Sir Thomas Grey. Otherwise he would have been dead and we wouldn't have known the story, I think, because he was a bit appalled by the murder of a man who represented the English King and was therefore likely to excite a lot of retribution for that action. So Richard Bundy was very, very worried and perhaps hadn't known that's what he was signing up to when he went to Lanark.
- [08:51]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, it's a big step to suddenly murder the man who is effectively the English King's representative in your area. It's a significant statement and kind of a leap that is very difficult to come back from. Do we have any sense of what Wallis is trying to achieve here? Do we get any idea at this point of a manifesto that he's operating under?
- [09:14]
Fiona Watson
Well, I think we can only judge really from his actions because he himself obviously didn't tell us anything. And I think my sense, and it's no more than that, and you know, it's nice to have the hello, magazine version, you know, with the wife or girlfriend or whatever, is that he seriously objected to a, the English takeover of Scotland the year before. But also I think, more importantly, and I think this is where in a way, Edward I lost the war almost on day one, is the way that English officials were managing the administration of Scotland. And even English officials say that other people were asking a lot of money for people to swear homage and fealty or to get a charter or, you know, anything that they needed. I mean, they would normally pay, but maybe not that much. And so there was a lot of extortion perhaps going on because there wasn't really anybody keeping an eye on the government of Scotland. And Scotland was kind of presumably looked down upon for having capitulated so quickly. And Edward himself, King, was now concentrating on his war with France, with Philip IV of France. So, yeah, if the English regime had sort of said, okay, we've taken over, we are a little bit more heavy handed, more taxation, et cetera, et cetera, which we Scots obviously Love, I think, on the other hand, we will offer you very good justice. Everybody can get access to justice and we'll do things efficiently and we won't let people oppress you, et cetera, et cetera. There might have been a chance the regime would have stuck. And it's hitting people like William Wallace. William Wallace is not a peasant, contrary to Braveheart, he is. Well, if his father really is a royal tenant, he's a younger son, so he himself doesn't have lands, but he comes from the sort of yeoman stock, I think you would say, in England. So these people are being hit by the English regime in a way that they' been hit by the Scottish kinks, because Scottish government is comparatively light compared to England. So these kind of people like Wallis are being hit very hard. And Wallis is clearly somebody who is prepared to stand up and do something about it.
- [11:14]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. So Edward has kind of come in hard, but made no efforts to win kind of hearts and minds, we might say. You know, he's seeing no need to be gentle about the way that he's ruling and he's sort of stoking this opposition by allowing his officials to be more brutal than they. They might have been otherwise.
- [11:31]
Fiona Watson
Yes.
- [11:32]
Matt Lewis
Is there a sense as well, at this point that Wallis is. I mean, it's something that comes out in the Braveheart film and it's something that, you know, it seems to me, might, might actually have a ring of truth about it, that Wallis is slightly frustrated with the Scottish nobility and they're. They're sort of in action in the face of the English. Lots of them have land on the English side of the border too, so they're perhaps more reluctant to stand up to the English than those of, of Wallace's rank, perhaps.
- [11:55]
Fiona Watson
This is a fantastic mythology of Scottish history. It very much chimes, I think, from more modern times, you know, that the nobility were useless, they were half Norman, you know, all these. All these Normans that came into Scotland. Many of them did, but, you know, that was like 250 years earlier. Sorry. I think you can say they're Scottish, even if they do have English landed interests. Almost all the Scottish nobility backed the going to war in 1295, when the Scots had concluded an alliance with France, which was really their card, to take on the English king, who was making more and more outrageous demands, as they saw it, on their king, John Balliol, who'd been put in, well chosen by Edward. You may or may not want to talk about how useless he was. I don't think anybody would have stood a chance against Edward I, who's got a great legal brain and had sewn up the Scottish kingship under his jurisdiction. And the Scots either had to just basically take it or fight. And because England was about to fight France, Scotland became attractive to France as an ally and the Scots concluded an alliance. And almost all, apart from those very, very closely associated with the Bruces, who'd lost out to John Balliol for the kingship, sided against Edward I. The Bruces were in Edward's army, so the whole notion that the Scottish nobility didn't fight Edward is nonsense. Many of them had been imprisoned in England. If they had fought a battle, the Battle of Dunbar, against Edward, or were effectively on gardening leave on their English estates while Edward was in France, he didn't want them in Scotland because it might cause trouble. So there was very few of the leading nobility left in Scotland in this period. The Bruce is capitalised on that. The young Robert Bruce, the future king. He also gets involved after Wallace has killed the Sheriff of Lanark in his own rebellion, although he doesn't call it that. He says he's just complaining on behalf of the people like Wallace, the middling sort, because they're worried they're going to be taken to France to fight with Edward I, and that's a great imposition. So he's not saying that Edward is wrong to rule Scotland, he's just saying the way you're going about it isn't particularly good. So there was general revulsion against what the English regime meant in Scotland, but Wallace himself, because it's hard to pin him down, because traditionally he's supposed to have. His family supposedly lived on lands of James Stuart in the west of Scotland. But I think if his father's a royal tenant, chances are he's actually more closely aligned to the Bruces. His brother, he has a brother called Malcolm Wallace, is in the retinue of the Erlacharric, the future King Robert Bruce. But Wallis himself doesn't. He seems to have not particularly cared, as far as we can tell, for noble politics, because there is this Bruce Balliol split. Not Balian himself, he's out of the kingdom, but the Comyn family, who are the most powerful. That's C O M Y N. It's most unfortunate that they've got a name that sounds like common. They are the most powerful family in Scotland. They've been sent out the country, but they've been sent back because they're so powerful that Edward realises he probably has to rely on them to go after when the rebellion breaks out. So there is this bit of archy bargy in Scottish politics as well as the war with England, and Wallis just doesn't seem bothered. He's also very close to a man called Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, who's been at the forefront of asserting Scottish independence ever since the relationship with England started to break down. So he also seems to have been a bit of a mentor, as far as we can see, for Wallace. But what their relationship was, you know, how they knew each other, we really don't know. So Wallace does definitely, when you look at noble politics, does seem to be above, and he's quite single minded about getting on with the job and not worrying about all this politics.
- [15:39]
Matt Lewis
Someone else who crops up in Wallis's story quite soon after this, and who is so often cut out of it and completely forgotten, is a man named Andrew Murray. I wondered what you could tell us about him and how he and Wallis joined together.
- [15:52]
Fiona Watson
Thank you so much for bringing that up. He does often get missed out because he went and died just after the Battle of Stirling Bridge. So Andrew Murray is a nobleman's son. His father is imprisoned in both he and his father also Andrew Murray fought at the Battle of Dunbar in 1296 and his father was imprisoned in the Tower of London. But the younger Andrew was put in prison much near to Scotland. Well, he managed to escape anyway, and he went back to Scotland and raised his father's men in the Black Isle north of Inverness, in conjunction with the burgesses of Inverness, who were also being stung by Edward's taxes. And what you're basically seeing, okay, Wallis is the first at the beginning of May, but you get these outbreaks of rebellion or uprisings, freedom uprisings, depends on your point of view. All over the country, not necessarily coordinated. But that's the good thing about Scotland being an uncentralized kingdom, unlike England, which is comparatively very centralized, as is France, is that you don't need the top layer of leadership to be there for local communities to be perfectly capable of doing whatever they want to do. And this is exactly what happens. But. So Andy Murray is a much more traditional leader of his father's tenants, we probably surmise, because it's no more than this, because how did they know? How did Wallis and Murray know? They're in very different parts of the country. Wallis kind of goes round a bit. By the time that Andrew Murray is up in arms, Wallis is in the southeast of Scotland training men, gathering men to him. But probably the Scottish nobility there was certainly accused of this. Are, Although they did not want to be seen to aid this uprising because Edward might divert his army from France back to Scotland. They were covertly sending men in, you know, and communication and the church is very, very important in that, because monks and people like that can wander around. Nobody's going to stop them. So they can take messages. There's a huge network, and so it's probably that way. And somehow Andrew Murray comes south right over the mountains and joins up with Wallace, probably at Dundee, somewhere like that. And they know, they must know that an English army now, finally, because they hadn't been taken seriously, is coming from Berwick. And there's really only one way you can take an army, and that is over the bridge, Stirling, because there's only a little ferry. You're not going to use that. So they don't need to speak to each other to know that that's going to be the point at which they can both hook up with both sides.
- [18:23]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And does those two coming together in particular, does that mark a step change in the revolt, the rebellion in Scotland, in that it's becoming more coordinated, that there is now focus that these disparate rebellions are beginning to join together into something more coordinated and more serious?
- [18:41]
Fiona Watson
Yes, that's a very good question. I think you may be right there, that we can't see the mechanism of that, because obviously neither of those young men have a mandate, if you like, to raise the Scottish army, only the king can do that or his proxies. And it's interesting that after the battle of Stirling Bridge, they name themselves as commanders of the army of Scotland. They don't have any official position yet. So, yeah, I think that it does very much hint at that underlying organization, local organization that can be mobilized, if you like, to create a national movement out of almost nothing. And that certainly is what happened. And I think we definitely can see that that army as the national army of Scotland, even though it does not contain the traditional cavalry component that you would expect, although the Scottish army is mostly an infantry army.
- [19:34]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And you mentioned that Edward I had been quite happily pursuing his campaign in France up until this point. Almost as if he's not taking this very seriously. Does the fact that he now sends an army north, does that mark a change in his opinion of the rebellion? Is it beginning to look more threatening?
- [19:52]
Fiona Watson
The guy who is in charge in Scotland, in theory, is a man called the Earl of Surrey. He won the battle at Dunbar, which is why he's got this job. And he probably wished he hadn't. He doesn't like coming to Scotland. The weather's shocking and so he dilly dallys, if you like. In England, the person who's really running Scotland is a man called Hugh Cressingham, who is the Treasurer of Scotland, which is offensive in itself because the Scottish financial officer is the Chamberlain. So, I mean, Edward had no sensitivity whatsoever to a Scottish sense that their Scottish customs and ways of doing things are perfectly fine. You don't need to change them. So why are you doing it? Just really gets up people's nose. That sort of thing really sticks in the graw. So Hugh Cressingham is sitting in Berwick. He is the only one who realizes the rebellion that Robert Bruce, the heirloochanic, James Stewart, his neighbour in Ayrshire, and Robert Wishart, the Bishop of Glasgow, that's the rebellion that the regime in Berwick takes seriously. And that is diffused in June, which is obviously September, is the Battle of Stirling Bridge. So that is, they all disband and there is no battle between those two lots. Once that aristocratic uprising or complaint has been dealt with, everybody else seems to think that's it. But Cressingham in Berwick realises it's not that. All over Scotland, it's very hard for the sheriffs that Edward put in to operate at all. And many of them have already left and gone back to England. It's just too dangerous for them. So he realizes that he can't collect money anymore. So Edward's desperate for money for his French campaign. And so he is the one who says, look, we have to take this seriously. It's getting bigger, it's not going away anytime soon. And eventually Surrey brings some men north. Cressingham's already mobilized people in Northumberland, and so that's the core of the army that goes north to meet Wallis and Murray at Stirling.
- [21:46]
Matt Lewis
And I guess we ought to get to Stirling Bridge, really, because it's. Again, if we go back to the film, it's an interesting battle where there's obviously no bridge to start off with, but it's. It's an important moment for this uprising in Scotland, isn't it? And a slight stroke of military genius, I think. Could you. Could you give us kind of an overview of. Of what happens at Stirling? How do the armies meet there? You've mentioned that this is the one place that everybody knows you're going to have to cross. So the Scots, presumably, are sort of lying in wait for the English, knowing that they're coming?
- [22:15]
Fiona Watson
Yes, yes, they seem to have. And they probably would have marched down. There's an old Roman road that comes down round the back of the Ochil Hills that I can actually see right now down to Stirling. And there's a causeway on the north shore leading to the River Forth. So the Scots are on that side, the English are on the southern bank. Now, there's various stories about Stirling Bridge, that Surrey was in the castle and he overslept, as you do, and Cressingham's the one at the front going, goodness sake, time is money. And he sends some of the English knights over the bridge. Sorry, still not up. Brings them back, sends him over again. Nope, he's still not up. And this is when Richard Lundy, Sir Richard Lundy, whom I mentioned at the beginning, was with William Wallace at Lanark, and he had capitulated very quickly when he'd kind of gone with Robert Bruce and that lot and capitulated to the English army sent out against them, because I think he was so worried about what he'd done or what had happened at Lanark. And what he says to Cressingham is, look, there's fords upstream. If you give me 500 horse, I'll go round behind the Scots. And then we've got a pincer movement. Very sensible. But I think what discombobulated the English, which they hadn't understood, is that the Scots are not likely to allow the English knights to come across the bridge, form up and then beat them. They are going to have heard Michael Prestwich, the biographer of Edward I say it was an ambush in plain sight, in the sense that the Scots did not do what the English expected them to do, or thought was the chivalrous thing to do, because in that case, they would have lost Wallace and Murray. They must have been watching whatever nonsense was going on on the English side. But they had to judge it. They had to bring their men down the causeway so that they, in effect, have a beachhead, if you like, the northern end of the bridge. And they have to allow so many English over to make it worthwhile attacking them, but not so many that they're likely to overwhelm the Scottish pikemen. So it was strategically very well thought out. But it's the fact that the English do not think that's what the Scots should have done. I think that kind of. They can't really believe that. Stupid. Yeah, exactly. From their point of view. So, yeah, and that's exactly what they do. And of course, there's a bottleneck on the bridge. Once the attack starts from the Scots, there's nowhere for the English knights who've reached the other side to go. So everyone's stuck. Some of the knights jump in the river and they're in heavy armour, so they don't survive. And we know that one of the most fantastically named knights of this period, Sir Marmaduke Tweng, who's a Yorkshireman, he manages to cut his way back across. So he just, you know, he wasn't taking no for an answer. So he, he got away and actually went into the castle to try to save the castle, though he didn't manage it. So, so it was utter chaos. I mean, it would have been carnage and, and, and all the people still on the southern bank would have just been totally appalled. Because, remember, in this period, knights don't tend to die in battle, not very often. They, they're going to learn that, particularly in the Hundred Years War. But, you know, this is, this is catastrophic and, and yes, there'd be a lot of whooping Scotsmen on the, on the other side of the bank.
- [25:31]
Matt Lewis
And I guess losing this battle feels like it must have been a real shock to the system for the English, both in that moment where they're, they're caught kind of off guard, but also in, you know, to this point, not particularly taking this uprising in Scotland very seriously. And all of a sudden an English army has lost. Yes, to the Scots, it's a fairly significant moment.
- [25:52]
Fiona Watson
First of all, it's unbelievable. That's not in the playbook. That doesn't happen. So, yeah, they're absolutely shocked. I mean, bearing in mind how easily they'd conquered Scotland in 1296, they just couldn't get their heads around it. I have heard it argued and I've heard people argue against this too, but that actually from Edward's point of view, in terms of, you know, Scotland is not a popular posting. We've seen this with Surrey and a lot of the English people like Sir Robert, Clifford, Henry Percy, these guys want to fight in France, they don't want to be in Scotland. So it wasn't popular in England and especially once Scotland started to cost England, which it wasn't supposed to do. So they have to take it seriously now. And Edward finds it easier to sell the Scottish War year on year after this coming back because the English lost, because they want to erase that from the collective memory. So, yes, so in some ways it makes it easier for Edward to reconquer Scotland in the succeeding years.
- [26:50]
Matt Lewis
It's interesting. So Stirling kind of creates this impression that Scotland has done something to England now, something. They've offended England and we need Vengeance for that. And that hadn't existed before.
- [26:59]
Fiona Watson
You're absolutely right. And this is the terrible thing about wars. It doesn't matter who starts it, because very quickly, somebody, the other side does something to you, and then therefore, you're absolutely right, you've got a reason to keep going. It doesn't really matter who started it. It's catastrophic on both sides. And both sides, but I'm sure committed war crimes and all of the usual stuff. They certainly banded that to each other. So, yeah, it's horrific.
- [27:21]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. Should we think of Stirling as William Wallace's victory or Andrew Murray's victory? Or is it a combination of the two?
- [27:29]
Fiona Watson
I don't think we can separate. You know, who came up with the idea to do this? I mean, they seem to work well together, which is interesting. Andrew Murray's name comes first because he's the higher status. But his death, and we don't know how quickly he died. It's possible that he sustained quite serious wounds in the battle of Stirling Bridge and was pretty much out the game from then on. But that leaves the Scots with a conundrum. Their king is in England. Murray would have been very acceptable as a guardian, which is the Scottish office for holding the post of king if the king is incapacitated or not there. So they probably hold off in kind of announcing his death or just pretend he's still alive while they try and sort that conundrum out. So the letters, the Lubeck letter that has Wallace's seal in it is written in both their names. It's just that his seal is on that one. And Andy Maurice is on. On the other one to Hamburg. So quite clearly, people step into the breach again. Probably the churchmen go, right, okay, this is what we need to do. We need to have a functioning chancery. You know, we need to put the mechanisms of state back in place to some extent. And Wallace would not have any experience, as far as we can tell, of that side of things. He's a. He's a soldier. So they would be allowed to get on with organizing Scotland because very quickly after Stirling Bridge, Wallace, all the English garrisons apart from Berwick Castle are expelled. There's no English soldiers or administrators left. Cressingham is killed very brutally at Stirling Bridge. You kind of feel that Murray's death was a great shame for the Scots, because making Wallace guardian, I mean, who is he? He's not even a knight. That is problematic. But they do go down that route because they don't have any choice. There isn't anybody else. So yeah, they just have to get on with it, make it up as they go along.
- [29:20]
Matt Lewis
Just before we leave Stirling Bridge behind us, is there any truth, do we know to the myth, the story, the legend, that Wallis made himself a sword belt and a scabbard out of Cressingham's skin?
- [29:29]
Fiona Watson
I think that was true. That's in the contemporary chronicle. I mean, and it does feed into the legend of Wallace. But again, coming back to the question you asked me early on is, you know, his motivation for the initial murder of William Hess. You can see a visceral anger in him. He is really angry. Now, whether that's personal or whether that's about the situation Scotland's found itself in, we'll never know. And he, Cressingham, is the big bogeyman, the cartoon villain figure of the English regime. He's the one who's been dinning people for money and going on and on at the Scotsburg, paying up huge taxes they're not used to for Edward's wars. And, I mean, England is groaning under Edward's taxation. So you can imagine that the Scots, who are just not used to it, feel that as a nationalist issue rather than just kind of an oppressive issue, which it certainly is. So I do feel that because Cressingham was so symptomatic of the oppression of the English regime, that it is entirely possible that he did that and that everybody cheered him on to do it. I mean, to us, that's the absolute tragedy of this war, given the good relationship between Scotland and England before 1296, is the utter hatred on both sides that grew up so quickly and which was so hard to get rid of.
- [30:44]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, yeah. Shout out to Henry iii, who managed to maintain a really, really good relationship with Scotland for a very, very long time, which his son then came along and completely and utterly wrecked.
- [30:53]
Fiona Watson
Utterly wrecked.
- [30:55]
Matt Lewis
What does it mean for Wallis to be made. You mentioned he's made Guardian of Scotland, perhaps in the absence of Andrew Murray. Is that an established office that is used often in Scotland? There's not really a parallel in till the 15th century, when you get something like a protector, but you get regents in France. Is it that kind of feel of a Regency?
- [31:13]
Fiona Watson
That's it exactly. The minute you get primogeniture as your method of deciding who's king, then you're going to get minorities, so you would tend to then have somebody put in. And this has happened before and it's most recently happened when the Scottish King. This is what kicked the whole thing off. The Scottish king, Alexander iii, died much earlier than he should have done. And there are guardians put in, representing the church, the earls and the lords, you know, so it's all very carefully balanced. It's a very civilized and effective way of working in the absence of the balancing force of the King. So the Scots are used to that and they did a very good job in a very difficult situation before John Balliol was chosen as king. So this guardianship is traditional, one person. I think what's different about this is it's not normally one person and it's normally a bit more of a spread of interests. And I think, I'm sure Wallis would have been guardian, but along with Ande Murray would have been slightly easier on the Scots in terms of habit and custom. So, yes, the fact that he becomes a single sole guardian is unusual. And in fact, to jump ahead. Sorry, what happens next? The next Guardians are again the two representatives of the leading opposing families in Scottish politics, which is what you would expect.
- [32:45]
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Fiona Watson
What?
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- [33:15]
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- [33:30]
Fiona Watson
It's safe. Ish.
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Fiona Watson
I need a coffee.
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- [34:58]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, it's interesting then that we get one single guardian and that that is Wallace, who, as you say, you know, he's not even knighted at this point. He's not a significant political actor in Scotland, but he's also, he's kind of the sharp end of the sword, isn't he? He's, he's the, the vicious front of this, you know, he's killing sheriffs and to the point where someone is going back and almost apologizing for, you know, sorry for what Wallace has just done. I'll help you out with this fire kind of thing. And all of a sudden you're putting this man, this blunt instrument, front and center and in charge of the whole country. Does that suggest that Scotland was, was absolutely behind Wallace at this point? Or is there another reason maybe that he's, he's set there as an outlier?
- [35:40]
Fiona Watson
He is a total outlier. And of course his weakness is that he doesn't have a political party behind him or a group of nobles. He is backed by some of them, probably more in the Bruce faction, the commons who have returned to Scotland. They don't take part in Stirling Bridge, but now they do start to show their colours, as they were described as doing against England. They think they should be running the show, but obviously they failed. They were the ones who allowed Edward to come in and lost in 1296. So Wallis is there because he did a job and Wallace has proved he's good at that job. And you're absolutely right, he is what Scotland needs in that he can take his men and go rampaging as he does after Stirling Bridge. Take the war into England and try to persuade England that they don't want this, they really don't want this. Didn't work. But it's also a period we shouldn't forget of declining climate, we've getting bad harvests, we're getting very, very cold winters in the medieval sort of warm period is, is weakening. And so there are a lot of places where there's famine, and I think both sides raid the other side in order to get grain and cattle to feed their own people. So that dimension, Wallace certainly does that. He goes into Northumberland and Cumberland, the northern counties of England, and then there's retaliatory raids by the English for the same reason. And so it acts as both engines and part of the war effort and. And just in some cases, pure survival. So that's going to become a theme for the war as well.
- [37:15]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. It's interesting because we often think. We often talk about how far Wallace gets into England and how much of a threat that might have appeared to the English. It's interesting that that might have been about getting supplies and also a little bit about, rather than, you know, an act of almost conquest in return. This is more about saying to the English, you know what? Scotland's more trouble than you actually need right now. Why don't you just leave us alone?
- [37:38]
Fiona Watson
I think that's exactly right. That's exactly what the Scots are trying to say. But I think, I mean, Wallace does this. It's a tactic that the Scots employ time and again, and Robert Bruce does it par excellence, but it doesn't work because England is a huge country. The King sits in the south of it. And although the northern counties of England suffered dreadfully in this war, because it is right in the war zone, as do the border counties of. Of Scotland, but particularly northern England and later, it doesn't matter to the King. He's not got as much money. Okay. The taxes are not ruling in from the north, but he's got the rest of England, and so he. And he just doesn't care. And so you cannot force an English king to capitulate on Scotland from that method. But then it's very hard to see what else you can do, because, as you say, the Scots are not going to conquer England. That's just daft. So all they can really do is wreak havoc and take as much as they can from England. Yeah, yeah. It's horrible.
- [38:37]
Matt Lewis
And all of this is going to lead to what will be a significant reversal for William Wallace at the Battle of Falkirk. Can you talk us through what leads to that? How do the armies end up coming together at Falkirk?
- [38:48]
Fiona Watson
Yes, well, initially, after Stirling Bridge, you know, Surrey goes home with his tail between his legs and goes down to England because Edward's still away and sort of reports to the Regency government, nominally under the control of Prince Edward, but he's still 14 or something, he's not very old and he Sorry. Organizes another army to come back into Scotland and sort of does manage to save Berwick, you know. So there's a few. You know, there's a toehold the English have. But Edward, of course, who's still. He takes a long time to come back. He doesn't seem that bothered, or at least he's more bothered by what's going on in the continent and getting a peace deal with Philip. But he basically says, just stop. It's a kind of, if you want something done, do it yourself. I'll be back, I'll sort it out. Just don't do anything, really. You're hopeless. So that's exactly what happens. So the orders, I mean, hats off to Edward. I mean, he's just campaigned right through the winter on the continent in Flanders, and now he's signing up for the next campaign over the summer in Scotland. So it's not really. Wasn't really on his agenda, but there we are. So the orders, the muster orders go throughout England to go north again. But what Wallace does, which is very, very savvy, is used a scorched earth policy in Lothian in the Borders. So he guesses rightly that the English are going to come up the eastern route, probably because they may know where the muster is to take place. So they basically destroy everything, all the crops, remove all the livestock. There's supposed to be one cow left in the entirety of Lothian. And combined with that. Cause this is another major component of warfare that, that probably doesn't always get its due is contrary wind. Because, of course, they do have supplies, the English have supplies. But if the wind's going the wrong direction, the boats can't sail up to Scotland. And that's exactly what happens. They are running out of food and they end up near Edinburgh and they've no idea where Wallis is. And what Edward's really worried about is that Wallis is going to outmanoeuvre him. He's going to come down underneath him and read the north of England, which reflection would have been a more sensible idea, while there's nobody there, almost. So he is concerned about that. And then the two Scottish earls who are on the English side and always were, they inform Edward where Wallis is and he's at Falkirk. Well, they have to basically jog overnight through Linlithgow and on to Falkart. I don't know, it's about 20 miles, something like that. And Edward is stood on by his horse. He has a quick kip and he's stood on by his horse. He's got broken ribs as well. I do have to take my hat off to him sometimes. You can't. Fault is energy. Wallace has got a lot of flak for Falkirk. I think that's unfair because what Wallace has done is choose his site. He's on an incline hill, there's a bog at the bottom. Because what the Scots are expecting, which is what the English usually throw at them, is the cavalry charge, because that's what they've tended to do. But Edward, particularly through his Welsh wars, now has a lot of Welsh structures, bowman in his army. And he. Well, again, it's not quite clear exactly how the battle was fought, but what seems to have been the case is that there might have been an initial cavalry charge that wasn't sanctioned by the King. The king didn't say, off you go, two brigades as usual, kind of vying noblemen tank at the Scots have to veer round the bog and then start charging uphill. Now that's exactly what the Scots want because pikemen can deal with that. But Edward manages to get them back and then unleash the bowmen who pick holes. The Scottish infantry formation is called a shotram, just like a hedgehog, basically, with these. So large enough body of men with spears. You did see a bit of that in Braveheart to repel cavalry. That's what it's designed for and it's a very good way of doing that. But bowman, there's nothing they can do. So the bowmen start picking holes in the Sheltrums and there are some Scottish cavalry and some bowmen too. Scottish bowmen, but they're tiny numbers. There's nothing they can do to protect the Schiltrams. So once there are enough holes in the Schiltrans, then the English cavalry can sweep through and knock them apart because they're not the tight, bristling formation that they should be. So that seems to have been what happened. So it's not necessarily that the bowmen won Falkirk, but they certainly played an important part in negating the Scottish sensible tactic against what they. They expected from. From Edward. So, yes, you may have heard that the Scottish cavalry don't come out in glowing colours out of this one. The commons, they. They all run away. Well, sort of Wallace, to be fair. But I think they recognized there was nothing they could do. You know, the game was over. And they, like Wallace, thought it's better to leave now and fight another day than just take part, be part of this, what is effectively a massacre. So English loss is very, very negligible. I mean, there probably were some infantry killed. They don't get counted, but in terms of important people, whereas I'm sure there was quite. We have no figures for the Scots, but it would have been a bit more carnage from that side of things.
- [44:02]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting because I think the usual view, and probably the one that I had before, is that Falkirk is where Wallace makes a mistake. He makes some kind of error. Either he's overconfident or it exposes the fact that Andrew Murray was actually the military genius behind what had happened at Sterling or something like that. But it sounds like he did everything as well as he possibly could have done. And in fact it's a move by Edward to rely on his archers more. That changes the dynamic of the battle in a way that Wallis couldn't really have expected.
- [44:30]
Fiona Watson
That would be my view. I mean, not all historians would agree with that. I mean, I suppose it's a mistake is to think that he could take on the English army in a pitched battle. This is not an ambush like Stirling Bridge was. There was maybe a bit of hubris, but he would have been under a lot of pressure. You know, he's not, as we said before, you know, his guardianship is dependent on his military success. That's the only reason he's there. He doesn't have a political clout behind him. So he is probably under pressure. He maybe did think, okay, if I do it the traditional way, then it will be shown that, you know, Scotland isn't worth it, that we can take you on in any way you want and we'll win. So that may be part of his thinking and he thought it through and he just wanted, he probably just wanted this all to end. And in this battle though, as you know, battles rarely bring wars to an end. But unfortunately for Wallace, Falkirk spelt the end of his political career as guardian. He had no longer had any mandate to run Scotland and whether he jumped or was pushed, who knows? The end result is that we end up with a more traditional two person guardianship in the form of Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick and John Comyn of Badenocht, representing the two political factions in Scotland and Wallace. Then of course he stays in Scotland for a little bit. But then he embarks on a change career which is to join the diplomatic cor.
- [46:12]
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- [46:42]
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- [46:57]
Fiona Watson
It's safe. Ish.
- [46:58]
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- [47:27]
Matt Lewis
And he spends a period kind of almost in exile, but in France, doesn't he? What is he doing there? Is he still. Is he still pursuing the idea of Scottish independence? Is he still holding onto an idea that he can go back and lead anything?
- [47:39]
Fiona Watson
Yes. I mean, I think again, you have to take your hat off to Wallace as well. You know, this is a man who. He's got his eyes on the prize, just like Edward I. He wants an independent Scotland, and he will, you know, not leave any potential stone unturned in trying to find a way through to that. So, yes, he goes to France. We know that he was at the court. We know for sure that he's at the court of Philip iv, who is just making a truce with Edward. Well, their relationship is marginally better. It's never good, but it's marginally better than it had been. But Philip is still happy to encourage the Scots. It's the usual things. If the Scots do something for France, that's great, France probably won't bestir itself very much for Scotland. We haven't seen the old alliance. The treaty between Scotland and France, that was supposed to be mutual aid, didn't really work from the Scottish point of view because they were left to England. But Philip is very happy to loan Wallace some money and to also. What he also does is write a letter of recommendation to the Pope, Boniface VIII in Rome. Now, we don't know if Wallace made it to Rome. We know he had. Well, no, this is hugely controversial. And I' trouble the National Archives in London has the letter of recommendation. There's big, huge debate about how the English got it. I think for many people, and I was on a committee set up to look into that, and both the Scots and the French, in a nice tie up there, agreed that the most likely explanation is when Wallace was captured, he had a lot of letters on him and that that's how it found its way into the Tower of London and then subsequently to the National Archives. But. But the truth of that will never be known for sure. So, anyway, Philip gives Wallace this letter of recommendation. He goes to the continent with a number of notables who are associated with the King, the Scottish King, John Balliol, who by this time has been released into papal custody, but in France, in papal lands in France. And then the French king acquires John Balliol, we're not quite sure how, and Balliol ends up in his ancestral lands in Picardy in the north of France. And we know that Wallis must have gone to see John Balliol, because again, when Wallis is captured, he has a letter, a safe conduct from John Balliol that he couldn't have got at any other point, because by the time Wallace was rebelling, Balliol was in English custody. So, again, what's fascinating, and despite the fact that his brother is in the retinue of the Earl of Carrick, who wants to be king, Wallis just goes, do you know, I'm not interested in the whole kingship issue, because that is just going to allow the English to conquer, to reopen that Balliol's the king, I'm fighting for him, end of story. And that is what he does. So he is very good at seeing through the garbage of Scottish politics, or any politics, and going straight for what is most likely to get Scottish independence. And John Balliol is still, at that point, seen as the rightful King of Scots by most Scots, apart from the Bruces. So he's conforming to that. So he spends two, three years. When does he go? He goes 1299, 1300. He comes back to Scotland in 1303. And what's interesting then is by this time, we've had the uneasy relationship between two men who hated each other, Robert Bruce and John Colman. John Common is the soul guardian. So Robert Bruce does really well, bearing in mind that his family had fought against the Scots in the initial conquest in 1296. He's done very well in convincing people that he's worth supporting to the point of becoming. Becoming a Guardian. Even with John Colman, who would expect. He would expect to be guardian. But it's a very uneasy relationship. It's very noticeable that Robert Bruce tries really hard not to say that he's Guardian in the name of King John. And it's John Colman who insists that that is exactly what he is. The Commons related to John Balliol and backing John Balliol. So eventually the Commons managed to force Bruce out. There's a bit of argy, bargy and fisticuffs. That's how we know that Malcolm Wallace was in the retinue of the heir of Carrick. It gives us a very unseemly scuffle in Selkirk Forest when one of the adherents of John Common, the Guardian, accuses William Morllas of treason because he's about to go to the Continent. And maybe they suspect that William might also be arguing for the Bruce cling to the throne since his brother's with the Earl of Carrick. I don't think there's any evidence that William would have done that. But whatever, they're taking exception to him going without anybody saying so, because again, Wallis discloses and ploughs his own, Furrow doesn't ask the Guardian's permission. And then John Colman seizes Bruce by the throat and, yeah, they don't get on. And eventually, of course, one of them will murder the other. So when Wallis comes back to Scotland in 1303, by this time, John Comyn is the sole Guardian and he's got rid of Bruce. And what's interesting is that William Wallace slots in as a commander of the Scottish army. That is, although they don't know it, is going to try to deal with the final push by Edward I to reconquer Scotland. Edward has managed to get pretty much up to the fourth, and he's hoping to get over the fourth into Northern Scotland, which is what you might call Free Scotland, where the Guardians have operated out of. And that's exactly what he does. And he manages to winter in Scotland over 1303-4, which is a major achievement, even just in having the cash to pay soldiers. So he manages to do that, which he hasn't done before. The Scots are set. They operate in the southwest of Scotland, while Edward's in the northeast, because a lot of the men have been withdrawn from the English garrison, so they think they might be able to capture them, but they can't. So by the beginning of 1304, John Comyn decides to sue for peace. He decides that Scotland's exhausted. Edward is now in his part of Scotland, John Comyn's part. So he makes terms, and they're very good terms, and they basically attest to Scottish success at holding England at bay. And most Almost all. There were a few exceptions made that didn't make it to the final cut. All Scottish noblemen could get their lands back, wouldn't lose lives or limbs, you know, they would be intact to get their lands back. And Edward does. He initially thinks that they should serve some time in exile and then he thinks actually no, I want hard cash, that's what I need more. So there's a series of fines before they get their lands back. The one exception does stick right to the end to make it into that agreement is Wallis. Wallis is to grovel, Wallis is to throw himself on Edward's mercy. And Edward wasn't promising anything to him. And I think what you have is two characters who are probably very similar in their single mindedness, their ability, their energy and Wallis is never going to agree to that. So you have story about him and his mother wandering around Dunfermline. That's actually where Edward was during the winter of 1303-4. I think what Wallis does is try to get out of Scotland. He is chased off. Well, he's chased off with Simon Fraser, who's someone that will go on to support Bruce in the borders where Simon Fraser's lands are. Fraser then submits to Edward. He's one of the last to do that. Stirling Castle falls to Edward. That's in Outlaw King, if you saw that. So that's the last garrison to fall to Edward. So it's just Wallis really and everybody is all the Scots and this is understandable but very distasteful. All the Scots who've just submitted are supposed to be out looking for Wallis. He's chased off from Dundee by the English garrison there. And I think that's a port city and that's why, I mean, I don't know about you, but when you go in the run, do you take your archive with you? And he's got all these letters of protection from before. So that's what it seems to me that he's trying to do. He's trying to get out and get to France and a number of Scots were in France and did stay there. He ends up of course being betrayed, as they put it. But it was just the bad luck of Sir John Menteith that hits in his jurisdiction that Wallis is found and thank goodness from Robert Bruce's point of view, because he is now he's submitted and he is an officer for Edward I. Wallace wasn't found in his jurisdiction and handed over and you know, once and there's loads of Scots, I mean of all stripes, all Classes, prepared to spy on Wallace, prepared to hand him over. Because that was the thing now, that was. That was stopping respite from this war. Whether the Scots were genuine in thinking, yeah, we'll make peace, it's over, or whether they just thought, you know what, we'll have a few years of peace and then we might go again because Edward's getting on a bit when Edward goes. I suspect the latter, but we can't prove that.
- [56:22]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, but you can imagine, I think it's easy to imagine William Wallace wanting to leave Scotland simply because this is a man who has. Has focused everything that he has on achieving Scottish independence. He must have felt like he'd been sold out by his fellow Scots, who have now caved, I imagine, in his view, caved to the English. And not only that, but they're after him as well. He must have thought, like, what is the point? I might as well just go, I.
- [56:45]
Fiona Watson
Don'T see I have a problem. I don't think it detracts from Wallis's stature in Scottish history to say that he wouldn't when he left Falkirk. Why would he not leave now and fight another day? You know, Baillio's in France, you know, maybe he thought he could persuade the French king to invade, who knows? But, yeah, I don't have a problem with it. It seems eminently sensible to me. But he didn't manage it, I suppose.
- [57:08]
Matt Lewis
Having been captured, then he's taken to London for, I mean, essentially a show trial. Edward is very keen to make a spectacle of Wallis, isn't he? What does Edward charge Wallis with? And how does Wallis defend himself?
- [57:20]
Fiona Watson
Yeah, well, it's treason in medieval law. That's self evident. I mean, you just read the charges out. You did this, you called. Well, there's the murder. That's not going away. And that's how we know about it, actually, to be honest, apart from the Scala Chronica, the Thomas Gray thing. So you can read the list of charges against Wallace that he called Parliament, that he raised armies, that he put in officers of state and got rid of English ones, as Wallace's success says. But obviously, from the English king's point of view, he had absolutely no business doing that and there is no resolving that circle. So, I mean, as far as Edward is concerned, the Scots had submitted to him in 1296, the Pope had exonerated them of their oaths of loyalty to him. They said it was under duress, which is an excuse, but people say, oh, Wallace did. Didn't seal the Ragman rule. No, he Wouldn't. He's a younger son, his father may have done so. He doesn't have a leg to stand on as far as English law is concerned. So they just read out the charges. They do say that Wallace did speak in his defence, although he knew that it was pointless in terms of the result. And basically he just said, you have no right to judge me, you have no jurisdiction over me, you have no right to Scotland. And again, as far as England is concerned, self definitely they do. So, yeah, the end result, which is the hanging, drawing and quartering, it was never in doubt and it's timed to mark the beginning of the St. Bartholomew's Fair in London. So it's part of that spectacle, as you say. It was very much designed to be a spectacle and put an end to the whole Scottish thing as far as England was concerned.
- [58:57]
Matt Lewis
Yeah. And a brutal way to go as well. Well, in front of a significant crowd, what would you say is the immediate legacy of Wallis's life and death, you know, in the months and years after he dies, where does Wallis sit in Scottish culture then?
- [59:12]
Fiona Watson
Well, I think that Wallis does represent, and almost immediately and possibly even at the time, is this being above Scottish politics, because obviously Scottish politics is going to take a very serious diversion with the murder of John Comyn, who was probably, in my view, setting himself up to become John Balliol's replacement. John Baliol gave up his title to Scotland to the French king. He's not coming back. John Colman is John Balliol's nephew, his nearest living relative in Scotland. John Balliol's son Edward is in England. The Commons themselves have some V credentials to the throne. They're not very good but they are circulated at this time. And I think it's because Robert Bruce realizes that John Comyn, who's led the Scots for most of the previous period of war warfare, the minute Edward dies and everyone can see that's not going to be long, that John Common will get himself to Schoon, the traditional inauguration place for Scottish kings, and be made king before Bruce can make a move. So that in my view, getting controversial is why Bruce murders him before Edward dies, which is very tricky. So for Wallis, for many Scots, given that Scotland is then thrown into civil war as well as war with England, many churchmen as well. Wallace symbolizes someone who doesn't play those kind of games, who doesn't play politics, who's not interested in their families self, his family's self aggrandizement. That is like the churchman fighting for Scottish independence and not for personal reasons. So I think that is his immediate legacy is the. That sense of devotion to Scotland that carries right through to Braveheart. Well, through Blind Harry and into Braveheart. And I think we'll never leave him. And I think it's fair. I mean, that's what nobles do, they just try and acquire more. And Wallace didn't seem to gain anything much. Well, obviously he died in the cause of Scottish independence, but even as Guardian, he didn't make lots of money or get lots of lands, which is highly unusual. So I think he can genuinely be seen as a fairly selfless patriot, as far as we can tell.
- [61:25]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, it's fascinating. And as you say, you know, he becomes a subject for poets and writers and, you know, up until 30 years ago, well, movie makers can be added to that list. Albeit that film is Braveheart. And maybe the truth, the history isn't quite correct in the film, but spoiler alert. But he's still there, isn't he, as part of the Scottish national conscience. What does William Wallace is mean in Scotland today?
- [61:48]
Fiona Watson
That period is incredible in Scottish history for having these two colossus, if you like, colossi in Wallis and Bruce. And of course very early on it happens in Braveheart, but it happens early on in Scottish Chronicles 2. And Blind Harry's poem is that there has to be a relationship between Wallis and Bruce and that after Falkirk, Wallis hands on his fight to Bruce, which as far as we're aware didn't happen at all. Think Robert Bruce was at Falkirk. But let's not spoil the good story, you know, that the mantle is handed to Robert Bruce and he will fulfil Wallace's promise, which is utter nonsense. The only promise Bruce was fulfilling was to himself, but that's another story. So he's very, very important in terms of the success. I mean, the irony is, of course Wallace wasn't successful, but he did kickstart something that ultimately was successful. So he's part of a story that not always is true in Scottish history that was about success and not just failure, even though in individual battles, of course, Wallace lost. So he's very, very important. And of course he becomes a working class hero in sort of 18th and 19th centuries because he's seen as a man of people, which again, I think is justified, even if class wise. That's not particularly true. He's not a peasant. But I think the fact again, that he's not a nobleman in the, in the political sense, it means that he can be appropriated as a working class hero and he still is very, very much. He never sold out. Unlike Robert Bruce, who changed sides many times. Wallace never did that. And the other thing about him, which we alluded to at the beginning is how little we know about him. So you can paint him any way you like, you can put a backstory on that's all about romance and vengeance and, and it's black and white, you know, wrong was done to him and he righted that wrong, whether that's his wife or whether that's Scotland. So he's very easy to make into anything you want him to be, and he has been made into that. But I think at heart there is a fascinating and core story about someone who didn't compromise, whom y wouldn't have wanted to argue with in any way anymore. And I wouldn't argue with Edward I, but who had his eyes on the prize and did in the end make the ult ultimate sacrifice.
- [64:04]
Matt Lewis
And to some extent he feels like someone who, had he not come up against someone as capable as Edward I, might have even achieved more success. It's kind of his misfortune that he arrived onto the scene in the face of one of the most capable English kings of the period.
- [64:19]
Fiona Watson
I think that's fair. Yeah. I mean, what happened at Falkirk, as I said before, is I don't think he can be blamed too much for that other than fighting the battle at all. And yes, Edward, Edward, you know, really, he was so dedicated to whatever task he had in mind and to he. And he really learned from the Scottish wars how to fight the Scots. So, yes, it was a great misfortune for Wallis that it was Edward I and not Edward II whom of course, Robert Bruce was up against only five years later.
- [64:50]
Matt Lewis
So this has been absolutely fascinating, Fiona. I feel like you've uncovered for me new sides to William Wallace and I find him impressive in brand new ways that are nothing to do with the Braveheart film anymore. I wanted to ask you three quick fire questions before we finish. Two I think are easy to answer. The other one might be a little bit trickier. Did William Wallace ever wear a kilt?
- [65:08]
Fiona Watson
No. He did come from Ayrshire, so it is a Gaelic speaking part of Scotland because it's on the coast and the Gaels were all over the coast, so. But no kilts?
- [65:19]
ADT Advertiser
No.
- [65:20]
Matt Lewis
Did he ever paint his face blue?
- [65:21]
Fiona Watson
No. He might have buried his bottom. No, I don't. No, he didn't.
- [65:26]
Matt Lewis
Yeah, we'll leave it at that. He bared his bottom, we'll have that. But he didn't place his face blue. If you and I were going to make an historically accurate film about William Wallace and his life, who could you see playing William Wallace on screen?
- [65:41]
Fiona Watson
Oh, that's a tricky question. Gosh. I actually think we would have to follow in the spirit of Wallace and we would have to search for the schemes of Glasgow or Edinburgh or Dundee or wherever, Aberdeen, and find a new face of William Wallace, because that would be exactly like him. He came from obscurity to greatness. So I think that's what we'd have to do.
- [66:05]
Matt Lewis
That sounds like a night out in Glasgow, though. You and I can go find the next face of William Wallace. That sounds like a good night, eh?
- [66:11]
Fiona Watson
Fantastic.
- [66:12]
Matt Lewis
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Fiona. It's been absolutely fascinating to get to know William Wallace a little bit better. And just a quick reminder that Mike Livingston's fantastic new documentary about William Wallace is out now on History Hit. And you can catch Fiona sitting with Mike in Edinburgh talking all about William Wallace in that as well. Really enjoyed our chat. Thank you.
- [66:30]
Fiona Watson
My absolute pleasure, Matt. Thank you.
- [66:34]
Matt Lewis
Hope you enjoyed this episode and continue to enjoy Braveheart despite its departure from the True Story. If you haven't listened to our Medieval Movie Nights episode, you can find it in our back catalogue and listen to Eleanor and I musing about about our favorite medieval films. Last week there was also an episode on Edward the First, the Hammer of the Scots, to have a look at William Wallace's story from the other side. There are new installments of God Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back and join Eleanor and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week, and all of History Hit's podcasts ad free. Head to historyhit.com subscribe anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hit.
- [67:52]
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- [68:00]
Fiona Watson
I need a coffee.
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- [68:21]
Dr. Eleanor Jaenega
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