early morning in useless discussions and
altercations. When at last he woke up, he rejected the advice of a
Scottish knight to send part of his cavalry over the river by a ford
which thirty horsemen could traverse abreast, and ordered all his
troops to cross by the bridge.
Wallace, seeing that the enemy had delivered themselves into his hands,
remained in the woods until a fair proportion of the English
men-at-arms had made their way over the stream. He then suddenly
swooped down upon the bridge, cutting off the retreat of those who had
traversed it, and blocking all possibility of reinforcement. After a
short fight the English to the north of the Forth were cut down almost
to a man. The English on the Stirling side, seeing the fate of their
comrades, fled in terror, and their Scots allies went over to their
country men. Among the slain was the greedy Cressingham, whose skin the
Scots tanned into leather. Warenne did not draw rein until he reached
Berwick, and in one day all Scotland was lost. The castles of Roxburgh
and Berwick alone upheld the English flag. Wallace and Moray governed
all Scotland as "generals of the army of King John". Within a few weeks
of their victory, they raided the three northern counties of England.
Wallace had freed Scotland, but his wonderful success taught the
contending factions in England the plain duty of union against the
common enemy. A new parliament of the three estates was summoned for
September 30. The opposition leaders came armed, and declared that there
could be no supply of men or money until their demand for the
confirmation of the charters was granted. No longer content with simple
confirmation, they drew up, in the form of a statute, a petition
requiring that no tallage or aid should henceforth be taken without the
assent of the estates. This was the so-called _statutum de tallagio non
concedendo_ which seventeenth-century parliaments and judges erroneously
accepted as a statute. The helpless regency substantially accepted their
demands, and, on October 12, issued a confirmation of the charters, to
which fresh clauses were added, providing, with less generality than in
the baronial request, that no male-tolts, or such manner of aids as had
recently been extorted, should be imposed in the future without the
common consent of all the realm, but making no reference to tallage.[1]
Liberal supplies were then voted by all the three estates, and
Winchelsea, who all through these
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