Sir William Wallace - Scottish Freedom Fighter


Born between 1260 and 1278
Murdered - 23 August 1305

Tradition has long believed that William Wallace was born in Elderslie, Renfrewshire, although contemporary research would indicate that he may well have been born at Ellerslie, in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire. The son of Sir Malcolm Wallace and Margaret Craufurd he was a popular figure who led guerilla fighters against the forces of English occupation, and had his greatest victory on 11 September 1297 at Stirling Bridge. Much has been said and written about Sir William Wallace and the release in 1995 of the film Braveheart. Some of the comment concerning the historical accuracy of the film is true, some of it hysterical rhetoric.

What is not in doubt is that Wallace lived in a Scotland which was being subjected to a brutal occupation by the forces of the English King Edward I. Wallace would not succumb to this English rule and he fought for his country's freedom serving as one of the Guardians of Scotland. Wallace was the catalyst that sparked the revolution. He was betrayed by Menteith to the English, taken to London and accused of treason. At his mock trial he refuted the allegation, stating that he had never sworn loyalty to Edward, so how could he be guilty of treason ? He was dragged through the streets of London, hanged, castrated, and still alive at this stage, disembowelled. Finally he was decapitated and his body cut into quarters. His head was displayed on a pike on London Bridge, his four parts displayed around the country at Newcastle, Berwick, Perth and Stirling.

Nine years after his barbaric murder, at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314, the Scots, led by King Robert the Bruce, defeated the English army of Edward II, and so secured that Independence which had made Wallace a martyr.

Wallace's spirit and vision of an Independent and free nation live on in modern Scotland today. The Scottish National Party have been keeping that flame alive since 1934, and we are now closer than at any time in our history to achieving that goal.
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