Part 6

The spirit of the nation was broken at this period. Edward marched northward to Aberdeen and Elgin, without meeting an enemy. No Scotchman approached, but to pay him homage. Even the bold chieftains, ever refractory to their own princes, and averse to the restraint of laws, endeavoured to prevent the devastation of their mountain homes, by giving the usurper early proofs of obedience. The bards alone stood firm; they sung to the music of their harps the high and moving strains which, in ancient days, had roused those who heard them to a pitch of the wildest enthusiasm.

Scotland being thus reduced to a state of seeming dependence, the English forces generally repassed the Tweed, although strong garrisons remained in every castle of importance. They had carried with them that ancient stone, on which, from the remotest period either of history or of tradition, the Kings of Scotland received the rite of inauguration. They believed, on the faith of an ancient prophecy, that wherever this stone was placed, their nation should always govern; it was also treasured up in the minds of men, among their fondest traditions, that the day would come when one of Scottish birth should rule over England. Scone was no longer permitted to retain the true palladium of their monarchy; it was proudly carried off, and placed in the palace of Westminster. There was seeming tranquillity throughout Scotland on the day of its removal from the ancient church at Scone, but the hearts of all who saw it pass, or who heard of its removal, burned within them. The deed was spoken of throughout all Scotland. Men heard of it in the remotest parts; the chieftain in his castle-hall, the peasant in his highland hut; they were constrained to smother the indignation that glowed within them, yet they secretly awaited a favourable opportunity to assert the independence of their country. Baliol, too, was carried, a prisoner, to London; his great seal was broken, and when, after the lapse of two years' confinement in the Tower, he was restored to liberty, it was with the harsh condition that he should submit to a voluntary banishment in France. Thither, accordingly, he retired, and died in a private station.

Scotland, meanwhile, was in a deplorable condition. Her king was powerless, and the administration of the country was in the hands of rapacious men--of Ormesby, who had been appointed justiciary by Edward; and Cressingham the treasurer. The latter had no other object than to amass money by rapine and injustice; the former was notorious for the rigour and severity of his temper: and both, treating the Scots as a conquered people, made them sensible too early of the grievous servitude into which they had fallen.

William Wallace was now grown to man's estate. His young companions had grown up also, and the group of merry children, that had played under the old Oak of Ellerslie, were now thoughtful men and women; for the troubles of the days in which they lived, made even the young grow thoughtful. The old men wished that they could wield their good weapons as in days of yore, for then, they said, stout-hearts that beat beneath the highland tartan, would not have tamely yielded to become the vassals of proud England. Their country had once held, they said, a station among the kingdoms of the earth, but now she was fallen and degraded; their king was taken from them, and mercenary men oppressed the people with heavy taxes. Thus spoke the old men of Ellerslie, and such were the thoughts of thousands throughout the land.

Wallace and his young companions, actuated by that enthusiasm which the oft-told tale of ancient valour and present degradation, was calculated to inspire; excited also by the conversation of strangers from the north, and stimulated by the present favourable aspect of affairs, (for the English troops were mostly withdrawn to their own country,) resolved to attempt the desperate enterprise of delivering their native land from the dominion of foreigners. Wallace was well-fitted for the purpose. He was a man of gigantic strength, his nerves were braced by a youth of hardihood and exercise; he possessed likewise ability to bear fatigue, and the utmost severity of weather. Nor were his mental characteristics less remarkable. He was endowed with heroic courage, with disinterested magnanimity, and incredible patience. The ill conduct of an English officer had provoked him beyond endurance, and finding himself obnoxious to the severity of the administration, he fled into the woods which surrounded his once happy home, and invited to his banner all those whom their crimes, or misfortunes, or avowed hatred to the English, had reduced to a like necessity.

Beginning with small attempts, in which he was uniformly successful, Wallace gradually proceeded to momentous enterprises. He was enabled by his knowledge of the country to ensure a safe retreat whenever it was needful to hide himself among the morasses and the mountains; and it was said, that he once concealed himself, with three hundred of his men, among the branches of the aged oak, beneath which he had played in childhood. But Ellerslie was not long a place for him, though he still loved to linger in its beautiful retreats. They were too well known to those who sought to take his life, for the village in which his parents lived, lay not far distant from one of the strong castles, in which the English had a garrison. He went, therefore, to Torwood, in the county of Stirling, and made the giant oak which stood there his head-quarters. It was believed to be the largest tree that ever grew in Scotland. Centuries were chronicled on its venerable trunk, and tradition traced it to the era of the Druids. The remains of a circle of unhewn stone were seen within its precincts, and near it was an ancient causeway. Wallace often slept in its hollow trunk during his protracted struggles against the tyranny of Edward, with many of his officers, for the cavity afforded an ample space.

The old Oak of Torwood was to him a favourite haunt; perhaps it was associated in his mind with the one he had left at Ellerslie: but other, and far-off scenes, were often the theatre of his most heroic actions, when, having ensured a retreat from the close pursuit of the enemy, he collected his dispersed associates, and unexpectedly appearing in another quarter, surprised and routed the unwary English. Such actions soon gained for him the applause and admiration of his countrymen. They seemed to vindicate the nation from the ignominy into which it had fallen, by its tame submission to a foreign yoke; and although no man of rank ventured as yet to join his party, he was universally spoken of, by all who desired the independence of their country, as one who promised to realise their most ardent wishes.

Cambuskenneth, on the opposite banks of the impetuous Forth, became the theatre of a decisive victory, which seemed about to deliver Scotland from the oppression of a foreign yoke. Wallace, at this time, stood alone with a band of faithful men, who adhered to him in all his struggles and vicissitudes. Earl Warrenne, whom the king had originally appointed Governor of Scotland, on the abdication of Baliol, which office he had relinquished conditionally, from ill health, had crossed the border-land with an army of forty thousand men; he now sought by the celerity of his armament, and his march, to compensate for his past negligence in the appointment of Cressingham and Ormsby. Advancing with incredible rapidity, he suddenly entered Annandale, and came up with the Scots at Ervine, before their forces were collected, and before they had put themselves in a posture of defence. Many of the nobles being thus unexpectedly placed in a great dilemma, thought to save their estates by submitting to Earl Warrenne. But Wallace, nothing daunted, awaited his further progress on the banks of the Forth. Victory declared in his favour, and the wreck of the invading army, being driven from the field, made its escape to England.

Had Wallace been permitted to retain the dignity of regent or guardian of the kingdom, under the captive Baliol, all might yet have been well with Scotland. The elevation of the patriot chief, though purchased by so great merit, and such eminent services, was not, however, agreeable to the nobility; they could not brook that a private gentleman should be raised above them by his rank, still less by his wisdom and reputation. Wallace himself, sensible of their jealousies, and fearing for the safety of his country, resigned his authority, and retained only the command over that small troop, many of whom had been his companions in their boyhood days, whose parents had dwelt with his, beside the Oak of Ellerslie, and who refused to follow the standard of any other leader. Nobly, therefore, did he consent to serve under the Steward of Scotland, and Cummin of Badenoch, into whose hands the great chieftains had devolved the guardianship of their country. Meanwhile another army crossed the Forth, and the two commanders proposed to await its coming up on the banks of Falkirk river. Wallace was also there with his chosen band. In this battle the Scots were worsted, and it seemed to those who heard of it, that the ruin of Scotland was inevitable.

Wallace, although he continually exposed himself in the hottest of the fray, was enabled by his military skill and great presence of mind, to keep his men together. Retiring behind the Carron, he marched along the banks of the river, which protected him from the enemy. The country on either side was wild and picturesque; the yellow gorse was in blossom, and the continuous flowers of the heath seemed to shed a purple light upon the mountains. It was then in all its beauty, for even the sternest scenes are beautiful when decked in their summer glory, when gay flowers grow upon the rocks, and birds and butterflies sport among them. The heavens above were clear, and the shadows of flying clouds seemed to set the plain country in motion; where the grass grew wild and high, it looked as if innumerable pigmies were passing swiftly beneath the blades, and causing them to rock to and fro with their rapid movement. But not a sound was heard, except the heavy tread of weary men, and the murmur of the river over its pebbly bed.

Young Bruce, who had given many proofs of aspiring genius, and who had served hitherto in the English army, appeared on the opposite bank of the river. While standing there, and thinking, perhaps, as men are apt to think, when the loveliness of creation is presented in striking contrast to scenes of ruin and desolation, he observed the Scottish chief, who was distinguished as well by his majestic port, as by the intrepid activity of his behaviour. Calling out to him, he demanded a short conference, and having represented to Wallace the fruitless and ruinous enterprise in which he was engaged, he endeavoured to bend his ardent spirit to submission. He represented the almost hopeless condition of the country, the prevailing factions among the people, and the jealousy of the chiefs. He spoke concerning the wisdom and martial character of Edward, and how impossible it was that a weak state, deprived of its head, could long maintain such an unequal warfare. He told him, that if the love of his country was his motive for persevering, his obstinacy tended to prolong her woes; if he carried his views to personal aggrandisement and ambition, he might remember from past experience, that the proud nobles who constituted the aristocracy of Scotland, had already refused to submit to personal merit, although the elevation to which that merit attained had been won by the greatest privations, and by the consummate skill which had gained for them the hard-earned victory of Cambuskenneth.

Wallace was not slow to answer. He told young Bruce, that if he had acted as the champion of his country, it was solely because no leader had arisen, beneath whose banner he could lead on his faithful men. Why was not Bruce himself that leader? He had noble birth, and strength; he was in the vigour of his days, and yet, although uniting personal merit to dignity of family, he had been induced to desert the post which Heaven had assigned him. He told him that the Scots, possessed of such a head, would gladly assemble to his standard; that the proud nobles would submit to him, because he was of more exalted birth than any of them, being himself of royal descent; and that even now, though many brave, and some greatly distinguished men, had fallen on the battle-field at no great distance, and it seemed as if all hope as respects the future weal of Scotland was about to be extinguished; yet, if the noble youth to whom he spoke would but arouse himself, he might oppose successfully the power and abilities of Edward. Wallace urged him further to consider, that the Most High rarely offered a more glorious prize before the view either of virtue or ambition, than the acquisition of a crown, with the defence of national independence. That for his own part, while life remained, he should regard neither his own ease, nor yet the hardships to which he was exposed; that Scotland was dearer to him than the closest ties that entwine themselves around a brave man's heart, and that he was determined, as far as in him lay, to prolong, not her misery, but her independence, and to save her if possible from receiving the chains of a haughty victor. Bruce felt that what he said was true. From that moment he repented of his engagement with Edward, and opening his eyes to the honourable path, which the noble-minded Wallace had pointed out to him, he secretly determined to embrace the cause, however desperate, of his oppressed country.

Armies met again; other battles followed, and for two miserable years did the Scots and English fight hand to hand for the liberty or subjugation of Scotland. Edward at length triumphed, and Wallace became his prisoner. The boy of Ellerslie, he, who in after life thought only to preserve his country from spoliation; who was determined, amid the general defection, the abrogation of laws and customs, and the razing of all monuments of antiquity, still to maintain her independence, was betrayed into Edward's hands, by a false friend, whom he had made acquainted with the place of his retreat. He was carried in chains to London, to be tried as a rebel and a traitor, though he had never made submission, nor sworn fealty to England, and to be executed on Tower Hill.

The old Oak of Ellerslie is still standing, and young children play beneath its shade; the birds fly in and out, and around it the life and business of husbandry proceeds, as if neither grief nor death, had ever visited the beautiful hills and dales that lie around.

More than five centuries have passed away since young Wallace played with his companions beside the tree, and a few short years, subtracted from that period, since he took shelter with many of his playmates, when grown up to manhood, among its ample branches. But though long since barbarously executed, and though his bones might not be laid to rest in the land which he sought to save, he is not forgotten in the hallowed spot--the birth-place of his parents--which he loved above all others. The children of the village are still taught to lisp his name, and are carried to hear of him beneath his own old tree. All his favourite haunts by glen or burn, or up the mountain-side, are fondly traced by the young men and maidens when their work is done. Here, they say, he used to sit and listen to the strain of the pibroch, and from off the margin of the little stream he gathered flowers in his days of childhood. Yonder are the mountains, through the secret passes of which he used to conduct his small company of valiant men, when the storm of war gathered dense and dark, and from which he rushed like a mountain-torrent on the enemies of his country. Close at hand, say they, and extending even to the verge of the common on which stands the village of Ellerslie, are a few trees of the ancient wood, which often served for a hiding-place during his rapid alternations of advance and of retreat, and when in the small beginnings, which suited best with his youth--with the youth, too, of his companions--he gave good earnest of what his single arm might have effected, if secret jealousies and discordant counsels had not undermined his best concerted plans.

Oh many a one that weeps alone, And whom the stern world brushes by, Has friends whom kings might proudly own, Though all unseen by mortal eye.--M. R.

"Away with that unseemly object!" said the stern St. Hugh, bishop of Lincoln, to the sisters of Godstow Nunnery, when he came in the course of visitation to their quiet dwelling among the rich meadows of Evenlod. "Away with that unseemly object! the hearse of one who was a Magdalen, is not a fitting spectacle for a quire of nuns to contemplate, nor is the front of the holy altar a proper place for such an exhibition."

The sisters dared not refuse, and the coffin which contained the remains of Fair Rosamond was removed to the church-yard. But they said among themselves, that the stern bishop needed not to have thus harshly judged, for Rosamond had lived among them for many years, in the utmost innocence and seclusion. They knew too, for so tradition tells, though the truth could not then be safely spoken, that poor Rosamond did not deserve the harsh aspersions of St. Hugh. It was believed that King Henry had married her in early life, but secretly, and without such witnesses as might avail, to have her constituted queen of England. Henry himself, when driven nearly to distraction by the rebellion of his acknowledged sons, spoke unadvisedly certain words, that confirmed the belief of the simple-hearted nuns. He said to one of the sons of Rosamond, who met him at the head of an armed company, "Thou art my legitimate son; the rest have no claim on me."[3]

Rosamond was told, most probably by the queen herself, of King Henry's conduct, for the queen, having seen him walking one day in the pleasure-grounds at Woodstock, with the end of a ball of silk attached to his spurs, and wondering greatly at the circumstance, resolved to follow him. She took up the ball, and when he went away, she followed warily, the silk meanwhile unwinding, till at length he suddenly disappeared in a thicket belonging to the celebrated labyrinth of Woodstock. The queen went no further, and kept the matter to herself. She, however, took advantage of his absence on a distant journey, and having threaded the mazes of the labyrinth, she began searching the thicket into which the king had disappeared. Finding a low door carefully concealed, the queen caused it to be forced open, and passing on with a beating heart, through a long, winding, subterraneous passage, she emerged again into the open air, and following on a little further, she discovered a lodge, situated in the most retired part of the forest. Beautiful trees grew round, with a spacious garden, and a bower, in which a young lady was seen busily engaged in embroidery. This isolated fact records merely the circumstance which led to the finding of Fair Rosamond by Queen Eleanor; it speaks, not of the bitter misery of the one, nor the distress occasioned to the other, nor, most probably, the making known by Rosamond, in the first moment of her dismay, that she believed herself the wife of the man who had entailed such wretchedness upon her. But whatever might have passed at that interview, its result was, the retiring of Fair Rosamond from her secret bower to the nunnery of Godstow, where she passed twenty years of her weary life, and died when she was forty years of age, in "the high odour of sanctity." Her grave remained unclosed, according to the fashion of the times, but a sort of temporary covering, somewhat resembling a tent, was raised immediately above it. The coffin and the tent were both before the altar, and over them was spread a pall of fair white silk, with tapers burning round, and richly emblazoned banners waving over. Thus lying in state, it awaited the erection of a costly monument, till St. Hugh commanded its expulsion. But the nuns remembered their poor sister, whom they had laid to rest in that open grave; and when the bishop died, they gathered her bones from out the place of their interment into a bag, which they inclosed in a leather case, and tenderly deposited before the altar.

The altar has long since been broken, and the place wherein the memorial tent, with its pall of fair white silk, was stationed, is roofless now. Instead of tapers burning round, and emblazoned banners waving over, springs up a solitary nut-tree--the Nut-tree of Rosamond's grave. It bears a profusion of nuts, but without kernels, empty as the deceptive pleasures of this world's pageants.[4]

And silent too, sad, vacant, and unpeopled, is the mound on which once stood the castle of William Longespé, poor Rosamond's eldest son. It was a drear and treeless elevation, rising over the wide extent of downs, that were seen spreading far as the eye could reach; yet there were glad hearts within, young children and cheerful voices, the lady Ela and William Longespé, with their visitors and dependants, and those who came and went, making that stately castle to seem a royal residence.

William Longespé was distinguished for his chivalry and feats of arms, the lady Ela for her mild and benignant virtues. They had married in early life, and her estates and honours, according to the customs of the feudal ages, had served to enoble a brave and deserving youth, who had no other patrimony than his sword. Ela was born among the beautiful shades of Amesbury, whither her mother had retired before her birth. It was called the ladies' bower, and was appended to the castle of Salisbury, as that of Woodstock to Oxford castle, and there her young days passed among trees and flowers, till, as years passed on, she became the delight and ornament of her father's court. Earl William stood high in favour with King Richard. He carried the dove-surmounted verge, or rod, before that monarch at his coronation; and to him was confided the responsible office of keeping the king's charter, for licensing tournaments throughout the country.[5] His titular castle frowned over the stern ramparts of Sarisbyrig, where no stream was heard to murmur, nor the song of birds came remotely on the ear, except the joyous warble of the soaring lark, or the simple unvaried note of the whinchat, seeking its insect food among the thyme hills. But instead of woods and streams, the castle was surrounded with extensive downs, covered with short herbage, and in the space where two valleys obliquely intersected each other, was one of the five fields, or steads, for the holding of feats of arms. The field was full in view of the majestic fortress of old Sarum, and although it seemed as a dip, or rather hollow in the elevated downs, it afforded ample space for the combatants and spectators, and those who stood on the highest point of what--had seats been cut in the broad slope--might have been termed an amphitheatre, looked down on the rich and smiling banks of the Avon and the Nadder, with the venerable towers of Wilton Abbey.[6] Here then, were often witnessed the proudest exhibitions of chivalric enterprise, and often did the little Ela gaze with awe and wonder from the windows of her father's castle, on knight and banners, and all the pomp and pageantry of those heroic games.