conviction.  With his execution, the last stage of Edward’s triumph in Scotland was accomplished.  Though the full measure of Wallace’s fame belongs to a later age rather than his own, yet it was a sure instinct that made the Scottish people celebrate him as the popular hero of their struggle for independence.  His courage, persistency, and daring stands in marked contrast to the self-seeking opportunism of the great nobles, who afterwards appropriated the results of his endeavours.  Yet we can hardly blame Edward for making an example of him, when he fell into his power.  Even if Wallace had successfully evaded the oath of fealty to Edward, it is scarcely reasonable to expect that the king would consider this technical plea as availing against his doctrine that all Scots were necessarily his subjects since the submission of 1296.  It was Wallace’s glory that he fought his fight and paid the penalty of it.

A full parliament of the three estates sat with the king at Westminster from February 28 to March 21, 1305.  The proceedings of this assembly are known with a fulness exceeding that of the record of any of the other parliaments of the reign.[1] Among the matters enumerated in the writs as specially demanding attention was the “establishment of our realm of Scotland”.  Three Scottish magnates, Robert Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, and John Mowbray were particularly called upon to give their advice as to how Scotland was to be represented in a later parliament, in which the plans for its future government were to be drawn up.  They informed the king that two bishops, two abbots, two barons, and two representatives of the commons, one from the south of the Forth and the other from the north thereof, would be sufficient for this purpose.  This further “parliament” assembled on September 15, three weeks after the execution of Wallace.  It consisted simply of twenty councillors of Edward, and the ten Scottish delegates.  From the joint deliberations of these thirty sprang the “ordinance made by the lord king for the establishment of the land of Scotland”.

    [1] See Memoranda, de parliamento (1305), ed.  F.W.  Maitland
    (Rolls Series).

Following the general lines of the settlement of the principality of Wales, the ordinance combined Edward’s direct lordship over Scotland with a legal and administrative system separate from that of England.  John of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, the king’s sister’s son, was made Edward’s lieutenant and warden of Scotland, and under him were a chancellor, a chamberlain, and a controller.  Scotland was to be split up for judicial purposes into districts corresponding to its racial and political divisions.  Four pairs of justices were appointed for each of these regions, two for Lothian, two for Galloway and the south-west, two for the lands “between Forth and the mountains,” that is the Lowland districts of the north-east, and two for the lands “beyond the mountains,”