William Wallace: Cressingham's Flayed Skin, Falkirk and a Treason Trial

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When Alexander III died in 1286 and his heir Margaret died in 1290, 13 claimants competed for the Scottish crown, and the leading nobles, who held estates on both sides of the border, invited Edward I of England to arbitrate. Edward made them accept him as Lord Paramount, chose John Balliol, then invaded in 1296 after the Scots allied with France, sacking Berwick and stripping the king's arms from his tunic. Into that vacuum stepped William Wallace, a lesser noble. A seal on his 1297 letter to Lübeck names his father as Alan Wallace and bears an archer, and his surname likely meant foreigner or Welshman. In May 1297 he killed William de Heselrig, the English sheriff of Lanark.

At Stirling Bridge in September 1297, Wallace and Andrew Moray waited until about half the Earl of Surrey's army had crossed the narrow bridge over the Forth, then cut off the vanguard with schiltrons of spearmen until the bridge collapsed. Made Guardian of Scotland and knighted, he raided northern England, but in July 1298 Edward came north with about 26,000 foot soldiers and broke the schiltrons at Falkirk with Welsh longbowmen and cavalry. Wallace resigned, sought help abroad, and was captured near Glasgow in August 1305 by John de Menteith.

• The Lanercost Chronicle says Wallace made a sword belt from a strip of the treasurer Hugh de Cressingham's skin.
• Later writers such as Blind Harry and Walter Bower turned him into a giant, while historians suspect he learned his trade in Edward's Welsh campaigns.
• A late 1300 letter from Philip IV of France instructed envoys in Rome to assist Wallace.
• At Westminster Hall he argued he could not be a traitor to a king he never swore allegiance to, and was also charged with atrocities against civilians, an early war crimes case.
• Executed at Smithfield, his head was tarred and spiked on London Bridge and his limbs sent to Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling and Perth.