In August 1305, Wallace, taken near Glasgow, was hurried to trial in Westminster Hall and executed with all the horrors of a traitor's death. Some of his bravest supporters followed him to the scaffold.
Wallace was the leader of a résistance. He and his men had ravaged England and taken English lives; but a traitor he was not. He had never given his fealty to the usurper. Edward mangled his body and impaled his head on London Bridge; but he became the national hero of Scotland and his spirit lives still.
(J. D. Mackie, A History of Scotland, 2d ed. [New York: Dorset Press, 1978], 71)
