Gone Medieval - William Wallace, Scottish Rebel

Episode Date: September 5, 2025

Unmasking the Myth: The Real Story of William WallaceMatt Lewis and Dr. Fiona Watson get to know the true life of William Wallace, challenging the myths popularised by the film Braveheart. From Wallace's background and family origins to his role in Scotland’s fight for independence and ultimate demise, Matt and Fiona unravel the stunning real historical narrative. From Wallace's significant victories and strategic moves to his enduring legacy as a symbol of Scottish patriotism, free from the embellishments of Hollywood. Matt also ask the most important questions; did William Wallace wear a kilt, and did he bare his bottom to the English?!More:The Origins of ScotlandCastles, Kings and Courtly Life, StirlingGone Medieval is presented by Matt Lewis. It was edited by Amy Haddow, the senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.All music used is courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.Gone Medieval is a History Hit podcast.Sign up to History Hit to watch the new Rebel series starring William Wallace. Plus hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe. You can take part in our listener survey here: https://uk.surveymonkey.com/r/6FFT7MK Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life, only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries

with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. 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 with 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 Livingston 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's in Scotland, 1296 to 1305 and traitor outlaw king, which tells the story of Robert the Bruce. Welcome to gone medieval Fiona. Hello, lovely to meet you, Matt. 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. 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 Sterling University, when Mel Gibson came to Sterling for the European Premier 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 Sterling didn't have a medievalist. 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. Yeah, yeah. Eleanor and I have had several discussions about how much we, We love Braveheart, but decried the desecration of the history all around it, but still an amazing film. It is, yeah. 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 Wallace's family, his background, when and where he's born, that kind of thing? 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. So for English kings, but for Scottish kings, it's quite hard. We don't know exactly where Robert Bruce was born. Someone like William Wallace, who was never supposed to be famous, we were never supposed to have heard of them, is even harder. And then we've 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 Craigie, and we know that isn't true. But for years, it wasn't until the 1980s that we found out who Wallace'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 Lubick 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,

at the actual seal came from Lubbock 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. It doesn't get as much further. I mean, who is Alan Wallace? There is an Alan Wallace around at this time on the so-called Radman Roll that Edward I when Edward I conquered Scotland.

He got lots of landowner to swear fealty to him. And there is an Alan Wallace who is a royal tenant in Ayrshire. And that could well be our man or our man's father. 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? Yes. Well, he does. You know, he absolutely does. And it's this shocking murder, murder, on the 5th of May, 1297 in Lannock, which is in southwest Scotland. Yeah. You know, and of course, as Brevard 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 Lannock, William Heslerick, who was a Northumbrian. And we have to. 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 the house in Lalloch and William went and killed him

and then set fire to the house. And there was another night, another Northumbrian night called Sir Thomas Gray, who again, his son writes a chronicle, so it's kind of first hand. And he was left for dead. And someone who was with Wallace, a man called Sir Richard Lundy, actually went back and saved the first Sir Thomas Gray, 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 I didn't know that's what he was signing up to when he went to Lannock. 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 Wallace is trying to achieve here? Do we get any idea at this point of a manifesto that he's operating under? 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 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 ever the first 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 homogen fealty or to get a charter or anything that they need. 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 the Fourth of France. So, yeah, it was, if the English regime had sort of said, okay, we've taken over, we are a little bit more heavy-handed, more taxation, etc., etc., which, 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, etc. 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 human stock, I think you would say in England. So these people are being hit by the English regime in a way that they've never been hit by the Scottish Kings because Scottish Government is comparatively light compared to England. So these kind of people like Wallace are being hit very hard and Wallace is clearly somebody who is prepared to stand up and do something about it. 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 might have been otherwise.

Yes. Is there a sense as well at this point that Wallace 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 actually have a ring of truth about it. That Wallace is slightly frustrated with the Scottish nobility and they're sort of inaction in the face of the English. A lot 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 Wallace's rank perhaps. This is a fantastic myth of Scottish history. It very much chimes, I think, for more modern times, you know, that the nobility were useless.

They were half Norman, you know, all these Normans that came into Scotland, many of them did. But, you know, that was like 250 years earlier. Sorry, I think that you can say they're Scottish. Even if they do have English landed interest. Almost all the Scottish nobility backed the going to war in 195 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 had 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 closely associated with the bruses who'd lost out John Balliol for the kingship cited against Edward I. The bruses were in Edward's army. So the whole notion that the Scottish ability 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 first 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 Stewart 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 Bruce's his brother, he has a brother called Malcolm Wallace, is in the retinue of the Earl of Carrick, the future king, Robert Bruce. But Wallace himself doesn't, he seems to have not particularly cured, as far as we can tell, for noble politics. Because there is this Bruce Bayleo split, not Baileyle himself, he's out of the kingdom, but the common family who are the most powerful, that's C-U-M-Y-N, it's all, 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 realise he probably has to rely on them to go after when the rebellion breaks out.

So there is this bit of argy-bargy in Scottish politics as well as the war with England. And Wallace 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 that.

And he's quite single-minded about getting on with the job and not worrying about all this politics. Someone else who crops up in Wallace'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 wonder what you could tell us about him and how he and Wallace. join together. 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 Mori, 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 are also being stung by Edwards' taxes. And what you're basically seeing, okay, Wallace is the first at the beginning of May, but you get these outbreaks of rebellion or uprisings, freedom, uprisings on your point of view, all over the country, not necessarily coordinated, but that's the good thing about Scotland being an uncentralised kingdom, unlike England, which is comparatively very centralised, that's just France, is that. 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, Andrew Murray is a much more traditional leader of his father's tenants. We promise from lies, because it's no more than this, because how did they know? How did Wallace and Murray know they're in very different parts of the country? Wallace kind of goes round a bit by the time that Andrew Murray is up in arms. Wallace is in the southeast of Scotland, training men, gathering men to him. But probably the Scottish nobility, there was certainly accused of this, 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 than 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 Bedrick. And there's really only one way you can take an army, and that is over the bridge at Sterling, 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 could both. hook up at both sides. 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? Yes, that's a very good question. I think you may be right there,

that it's, and 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 organisation,

local organisation that can be mobilised, 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 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. 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? The guy who is in charge in Scotland in Thewi 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-dallies, 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? It just really gets up people's nose. That sort of thing really sticks in the growl.

So Hugh Cresingham is sitting in Berwick. He is the only one who realises the rebellion that Robert Bruce, the Arle of Carrick, James Stewart, his neighbour in Ayrshire, and Robert Wishart, the Bishop of Glasgow. that's the rebellion that the English 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 Crescentham in Barrick realises it's not. That all over Scotland is 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 any time soon. And eventually, Surrey brings some men north. Cresingham's already mobilized people in Northumberland. And so that's the core of the army that goes north to meet Wallace and Marie at Stirling. And I guess we ought to get to Sterling Bridge, really, because, 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 an important moment for this uprising in Scotland, isn't it? And a slight stroke of military genius, I think. Could you give us kind of an overview 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? Yes, absolutely, yes, they seem to have, and they probably would have marched down. There's an old Roman road that comes down around the back of the Oco Hills, that I can actually see right now, down to Sterling and there's a causeway on the north shore leading to the river fourth. So the Scots are on that side. The

English are on the southern bank. Now, there's various stories about Sterling about that Surrey was in the castle and he overslept, as you do, and Cressingham's the one at the front going, Goodness sick, time is money. And he sends some of the English knights over the bridge. Sorry, he's 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 Lannark. 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 Crescentham is,

look, there's Ford's 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, I've heard Michael Press, which, the biographer of Edward I first, 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. What 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, at 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 they can't really believe.

Just not cricket. Yeah, exactly, from their point of view. So, yeah, and that's exactly what they do. And then, of course, there's a bottom leg 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

he wasn't taking low for an answer so he got away and actually went into the castle to try to save the castle though he didn't manage it So it was utter chaos. I mean, it would have been carnage. And all the people still on the Southern Bank would have just been totally appalled. Because remember, in this period, lights don't tend to die in battle.

Not very often. They're going to learn that, particularly in the Hundred Years' War. But, you know, this is catastrophic. And yes, there would be a lot of whooping Scotsmen on the other side of the bank. 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 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 to the Scots. It's a fairly significant moment. 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 Persick, 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 he 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 re-conquer Scotland in the succeeding years. It's interesting. So Sterling 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. 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. I'm sure committed war crimes and all the usual stuff,

they certainly banded that to each other. So yeah, it's horrific. Should we think of Sterling as William Wallace's victory or Andrew Murray's victory, or is it a combination of the two? 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 has 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 kings 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 Lubbock letter that has Wallace's a seal in it, is written in both their names. It's just that his seal is on that one and Andrew Maurice is on the other one to Hamburg. So quite clearly, people step into the breach

again, probably the churchman 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 soldier. So they would be allowed to get on with organising 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. Cresingham is killed very brutally at Stirlingham Bridge.

you kind of feel that Murray's death was a great shame for the Scots because making Wallace Guardian, who is it? 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. Just before we leave Stirling Bridge behind us,

is there any truth do we know to the myth, the story, the legend, that Wallace made himself a sword belt and a scabbard out of crass? I think that was true. That's in a 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 Heswick. 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

Scots but 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 a 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. 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. 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 utterly wrecked. Utterly wrecked. What does it mean for Wallace, 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

England, is there, 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? 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 civilised 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 the Dronbelia 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. It's normally a bit more of a spread of interests. And I think, I mean, I'm sure Wallace would have been guardian, but along with Andrew 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, when 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. Yeah, it's interesting then that we get one single guardian and that that is Wallace, 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's the vicious front of this, you know, he's killing sheriffs and to the point where

someone who is with him is going back and almost apologising 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 centre and in charge of the whole country. Does that suggest that Scotland was absolutely behind Wallace at this point? Or is there another reason maybe that he's set there as an outlier? He's 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 Wallace is there because he did a job. 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 Sterling Bridge and take the war into England

and try to persuade England that they don't want this. They really don't want this. It 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. The medieval sort of warm period 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 vengeance and part of the war effort and just, in some cases, pure survival. So that's going to

become a theme for the war as well. 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? 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 X the loans. 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 suffer dreadfully in this war because it is right in the war zone, as do the border counties 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 just doesn't care. And so you cannot force an English king to capitually 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. 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? 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, Surrey, organizes another army to come back into Scotland and sort of does manage to save Berwick. So there's a few, you know, there's a toehold. the English have. But Edward, of course, who's still, even when 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 in the continent. 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 he used a scorched earth policy in Lothian in the borders. So he guesses rightly that the English are going to cut the eastern route, probably because they may know where

the muster is to take place. they basically destroy everything. All the crops, remove all the livestock. They're supposed to be one cow left in the entirety of Lothian. And it combined with that, because this is another major component of warfare 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 Wallace is. And what Edward's really worried about is that Wallace is going to outmaneuver him, is 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 Wallace is and he's at Falkirk. But they have to basically jog overnight through Lin Liffgo and on to Falkirk. It's I don't know, it's about 20 miles, something like that. And Edward has stood on by his horse.

He has a quick kip and he stood on by his horse. He's got broken ribs as well. I do have to take my hat off to him sometimes. He's like, you can't fault his energy. Wallace has got a lot of flack for Falkirk. I think that's unfair. Because what Wallace has done is choose his sight. 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 bowmen 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 nobleman 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 chotron, just like a hedgehog basically with these. So large number of body of men with spears. You did see a bit of that in Braveheart to really. repel cavalry. That's what's designed for. And it's a very good way of doing that. But Bowman,

there's nothing they can do. So the Bowman start picking holes in the Schiltrams. There are some Scottish cavalry and some bowmen, two, 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 Shelterms, 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 like that the Bowman won Falkirk, but they certainly played an important part in negating the Scottish sensible tactic

against what they expected from Edward. So yes, you may have heard that the Scottish cavalry don't come out and glowing colours out of this one. The comments, they all run away. But so Wallace, to be fair. But I think they recognised 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 and just take part of this what is effectively a massacre. So English loss is very, very negligible. I mean, there probably were some infantry kill, 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. 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 Wallace couldn't really have expected. That would be my view. I mean, not all historians would agree with that. I mean, I suppose his mistake is to think that he could take on the English army in a pitch battle. This is not an ambush like Sterling Bridge was. There was maybe a bit of hubris, but he would have been under a lot of pressure. 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. And so that may be part of his thinking and he thought it through and he probably just wanted this all to end in this battle. You know, 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 Common of Badenough to represent him 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 corps. And he spends a period kind of almost in exile, but in France, doesn't he? What is he doing there? Is he still pursuing the idea of Scottish independence? Is he still holding onto an idea that he can go back and lead anything? 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 the first.

He wants an independent Scotland and he will 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 VIII, who is just making a truce with. Edward. Well, their relationship is marginally better. It's never good. But it is 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 8th 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'll get into trouble. The National Archives in London has the letter of recommendation. There's a 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 French, in a nice tie-up there, agreed that 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 subsequently to the National Archives. 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 Wallace must have gone to see John Balliol

because again, when Wallace 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. 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, Wallace 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 us more easily. We don't want to reopen that. Baleo's the king. I'm fighting for him. End of story. And that is what he does. So he's very, he is very good at seeing through the garbage of Scottish politics or any politics and going straight for what is more. likely to get Scottish independence. And John Balliol is still at that point, seen as the

rightful king, old Scots, by most Scots, apart from the Bruce's. So he's conforming to that. So he spends two, three years. When does he go? He goes 1299, 1,300. 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 Coleman. John Coleman is. the sole guardian. So Robert Bruce does really well, bearing in mind that his family had fought against 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 a guardian, even with John Coleman, who 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 Coleman. 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 Arab Carrier. It gives us a very unseemly scuffle in Selkirk Forest when one of the adherents of John Common, the Guardian,

accuses William Wallace of treason because he's about to go to the continent. And maybe they suspect that William might also be arguing for the Bruce claim to the throne since his brothers with the Earl 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, Wallace disclosed and plows his own furrow. It doesn't ask the guardian's permission. And then John Coleman 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 Wallace comes back to Scotland in 1303, by this time, John Common is the sole guardian. and you've 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 first 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 to 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 sensible. They operate in the south-west of Scotland while Edward's in the north-east because a lot of the men have been withdrawn from the English garrison,

so they think they might be able to catch them, but they can't. So by the beginning of 1304, John Common decides to sue for peace. He decides that Scotland's exhausted. Edward is now in his part of Scotland, John Common'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, to make it into that agreement, is Wallace. Wallace is to grovel. Wallace 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 probably very similar in their single-mindedness, their ability, their energy. And Wallace is never going to agree to that. So you have stories about,

him and his mother wandering around Dunfermline. That's actually where Edward was during the winter of 1303 to 4. I think what Wallace 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. Sterling Castle falls to Edward. That's in Outlaw King, if he saw that. So that's the last garrison to fall to Edward. So it's just Wallace, 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 outlooking for Wallace. 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? 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 Menteeth that it's in his jurisdiction that Wallace has found. Thank goodness from Robert Briss'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 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. 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 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 thereafter him as well. He must have thought, what is the point? I might as well just go.

I don't see, I don't have a problem. I don't think he detracts from Wallace's stature in Scottish history to say that he wouldn't, when he left at Falkirk, why would he not leave now and fight another day? you know, bailioles 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 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 Wallace, isn't he? What does Edward charge Wallace with and how does Wallace defend himself? 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 parliaments, 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, O' Wallace didn't seal the Ragman rule.

No, he wouldn't. He's a younger son. His father may have done. So, you know, 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 English concerned, self-definitely they do. So, yeah, the end result, which is the hanging, drawing and watering. 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. Yeah, and a brutal way to go as well in front of a significant crowd. What would you say is the immediate legacy of Wallace's life and death? In the months and years after he dies, where does Wallace sit in Scottish culture then? Well, I think that Wallace does represent 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 Coleman, who was probably, in my view, setting himself up

to become John Balliol's replacement. John Belio gave up his title to Scotland to the French King. He's not coming back. John Coleman is John Balliol's nephew, his nearest living relative in Scotland. John Balli'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 Common, who's led the Scots for most of the previous period of warfare, the minute Edward dies, and everyone can see that's not going to be long, that John Common will get himself to scoon 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 Wallace, for many Scots, given that Scotland is then, thrown into civil war as well as war with England. Many churchmen as well, Wallace symbolises someone who doesn't play those kind of games, who doesn't play politics, who's not interested in his family's self-aggrandizman, that is like the churchman fighting for Scottish independence and not for personal reasons. So I think that that is his immediate legacy is 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, you know, as garden, he didn't make lots of money or get lots of lands, you know, which is highly unusual. So I think he can genuinely be seen as a fairly selfless patriot as far as we can tell. 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 make it 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 Conscious. What does William Wallace mean in

Scotland today? That period is incredible in Scottish history for having these two Colossus, if you like, Colossi in Wallace and Bruce. And of course, very early on, it happens in Braveheart, but it happens early on in Scottish Chronicles 2 and the Blind Harry's poem is

that there has to be a relationship between Wallace and Bruce, and that after Falkirk Wallace hands on his fight to Bruce, which as far as we're aware, didn't happen, I don't think Robert Bruce was at Falkirk, but let's not spell the good story. You know, that the mantle is handed to Robert

Bruce and he will fulfill Wallace's promise, which is such a 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 just a fact 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 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 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 it's black and white. You know, his 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 I wouldn't have wanted to argue with in any way anymore. No, we don't to argue with Edward I, but who had his eyes on the prize and did in the end make the ultimate sacrifice.

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. I think that's fair. Yeah, I mean, what happened at Falker, 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, you know, really,

he was so dedicated to whatever task he had in mind and he really learnt from the Scottish Wars how to fight the Scots. So yes, it was a great misfortune for Wallace that it was Edward first, and not Edward II, whom, of course, Robert Bruce was up against only five years later. 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? No. He did come from Ershare. So it is a Gaelic-speaking part of Scotland because it's on the coast. and the gales were all over the coast.

But no counts, no. Did he ever paint his face blue? No. He might have buried his bottom. No, I don't. No, he didn't. Yeah, we'll leave it at that. He bared his bottom.

We'll have that. But he didn't paste 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? Oh, that is a tricky question. Gosh. I actually think we would have to follow in the spirit of Wallace

and we would have to search 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. 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 out. Fantastic.

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Fiona. It's been absolutely fascinating to get to. to know William Wallace a little bit better. And just a quick reminder that Mike Livingstone's fantastic new documentary about William Wallace is out now on history here and you can catch Fiona sitting with Mike in Edinburgh talking all about William Wallace in that as well.

I've really enjoyed our chat, thank you. My absolute pleasure, Matt. Thank you. I 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 our favourite medieval films.

Last week, there was also an episode on Edward I, The Hammer of the Scots, to have a look at William Wallace's story from the other side. There are new installments have gone 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 yet to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and all of History Hits podcasts ad-free. Head to historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with history hits.