Scotland/Scots > Life of Sir William Wallace, Knight of Ellerslie, and Guardian of Scotland

SIR WILLIAM WALLACE.
1ST
battle is very singular, provided he was not
there. How they should all be in this state of
ignorance is rather unaccountable, considering
the facilities they had of informing themselves,
as some of them must have wrote from author¬
ity, if not of eye-witnesses, at least of those
who derived their accounts from such. It is
not at all likely that Bruce, who is universally
acknowledged to have been a monarch of great
political sagacity, would have allowed a tale,
so likely to injure him in the opinion of his
subjects, to get into general circulation, while
the contrary statement, if true, would have
tended to exalt him in their estimation. There
appear so many irreconcilable circumstances
involved in the belief of this opinion, that we feel
much inclined to suspect some little discrepancy
in the evidence to which his lordship so confi¬
dently alludes ;* more particularly, as Wintoune,
* Among the various documents -which his Lordship appears to
consider authentic is the following, which he thus introduces:—
“ I have seen the title of a public instrument, which runs thus:
‘ Acte contenant les responses faites par Pierre Flotte, Seigneur de
Revel, commis par le Roy (de France) pour traitter et conferer avec
les Ambassadeurs Anglois, touchant I’execution du traite de trcve et
reparation des infractions d’icelle. Simon de Meleun 1’arbitre nomme
par le Roy offrit au Roy d> Angleterre de delivrer tous les prisonniers
Anglois en rcndant par lui le Roy de Escosse et son fils, et les Escossois
detenus en Angleterre et ailleurs, ou les mettant en la garde d’un pre-
lat Francois qui les gardera soubs le nom du Pape pendant que le
Pape jugera de leur differend.’ The original, if extant, might servo
to explain several circumstances respecting this treaty, particularly