an age inconsistent with his being 45 at the time of his death. If we are to suppose that Henry dated the loss of Scotland from the solemn surrender of the kingdom, and all its fortifications, to Edward on the 11th June 1291, it will nearly correspond with the correction now offered; and if his words are to be taken in the strict literal sense, that he was thirty-five years of age on the day he was betrayed to the English, it will follow, that he was born on the 5th August 1270. Wyntown, who first introduces him to notice in the spring of 1297, says that he had already distinguished himself in such a manner, as to have excited the envy and animosity of the English soldiers. In accordance with the above date, Wallace would then be in his twenty-seventh year; which, considering that there was no open rupture to call forth the fiery spirits of the age till 1296, was allowing him no more than a reasonable time for spreading his fame among the English garrisons stationed in Scotland.
1291. His early years are said to have been passed under the superintendence of his uncle, a wealthy ecclesiastic at Dunipace in Stirlingshire, from whom he received the first rudiments of his education. This worthy man had been at great pains in storing his mind with the choicest apophthegms to be found in the Latin classics, particularly those where the love of liberty is most powerfully recommended; and the efforts of the tutor were amply rewarded by the _amor patriæ_ excited in the breast of the pupil. How long he remained at Dunipace is uncertain; but he appears to have been at Elderslie in 1291, when the order for an universal homage of the people of Scotland was promulgated by Edward, in his assumed character of Lord Paramount. “All who came were admitted to swear fealty. They who came and refused, were to be arrested, until performance; they who came not, but sent excuses, to have the validity of their excuses tried in the next parliament; they who neither came nor sent excuses, to be committed to close custody.”[46] The family of Elderslie appear to have been among the last class of recusants. Sir Malcolm, setting all the penalties of non-conformity at defiance, resolutely refused to take an oath so subversive of the independence of his country. Aware, however, that the strength of his fortalice at Elderslie was insufficient to protect him against the consequences of his refusal, he retired with his eldest son to the fastnesses of the Lennox, while William, along with his mother, sought the protection of a powerful relation at Kilspindie in the Carse of Gowrie; and from this latter place he was sent to the seminary attached to the cathedral of Dundee, to receive what farther education the learning of the age afforded. Here he contracted a sincere and lasting friendship with his biographer, John Blair, a young man at that time of great promise, who, on finishing his studies, became a Benedictine monk, and afterwards officiated as chaplain to his heroic friend.