Originally Posted by
[b
Quote[/b] ]Date May 1297.
Place Mill of Fullarton. On the River Irvine. Ayrshire.
Recorded by Walter Bower in the ‘Scotichronicon.’ And other historical records in the University libraries of Scotland and Oxford.
The Speaker, William Wallace in the days before he was knighted.
He is addressing a gathering of the great and Powerful Nobles and Knights from SW Scotland. They had gathered together to discuss a truce with a superior English army. William Wallace would have none of it. His speech has been recorded and translated from the Latin.
There has been an acrimonious argument between Wallace and some of the Nobles and Bishop Wishart. He opens by apologising to Bishop Wishart :
‘I regret, my lord Bishop, if I spoke ill. But - - it may be that I speak for other than do you. You all. You my lord speak for Holy Church. And these noble lords - - who do they speak for? Themselves. Their lands. The Power of the Realm. But who speaks for the folk of Scotland, my lords? Does any here? The Folk. The Nation. This Scotland is more than a realm, my friends - - it is a nation. A people, an ancient people. A people that has been betrayed and sold and spurned. All but forgotten by those that seek the power. But it is the people who will pay for what is decided this day, the people who will be ground under the heel of the tyrant. You Lords, I swear, will survive, whoever rules Even if Scotland is no more, you will still be lords. But not the common folk. Not the Scots. Do you ever think of them my lords? I, for want of a better, must be their spokesman this day.’
What a crap politician he was.
Also for your information, Wallace wasn't a Norman nobleman. He was younger son of a minor knight and small landowner. How much influence his family had in Scotland was shown when Edward I conquered Scotland, over 2000 names of all men of worth in the kingdom (nobles, knights and landowners) were recorded in the Ragman Roll. All persons in it were those who were persuaded to accept Longshank's lordship. Wallace's father wasn't even on the list. It is obvious that he wasn't considered that important.
The best that could have been said is while Wallace was not strickly a commoner, he was the next thing to it. I have always found it amazing that with his background, he became the military leader in a national revolt. In a medieval world where the Great Chain of Being existed, when everything had its natural place and order, it certainly was some achievement. It was because of this that explained the downright antipathy of the Scottish nobility (who, by all rights, ought to have been fulfilling his shoes) and the near-paranoid determination of Edward I to bring him to the scaffold.
I am also curious to know where you got the idea that Wallace wasn't really Scottish? He was born and raised in Scotland. If it is name Wallace (Welshman) you are on about please don't follow that analogy that his ancester must have came from Wales. Wallace was a common name in the west of Scotland through the old British kingdom of Strachclyde which fell to the Scots in the 11th Century. Welsh was widely spoken by the inhabitants of this area until the 1300s. It is much more likely he got his surname through his forebears, who still continued to speak Welsh while Gaelic and English (which was still a minority language in Scotland until the 16th Century) took over.
While it is true that Wallace fought in the name of the exiled King John. It didn't matter to Wallace what Toom Tabard (that nice name which King John is known to us Scots today) had done and his poor qualities as a king. He was considered the true and rightful king and that was what mattered to Wallace.
The only thing I agree with your post is that the film Braveheart was a load of overblown historical crap. When I watched it the first time I was half expecting the Loch Ness Monster to make an appearance.
Bookmarks