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The Scotch rose everywhere and joined Wallace, who soon found himself at the head of a formidable army. With this lie captured the English fortresses, and finally defeated the chief English army under Earl Warren. Scotland was now free, but the English king hastened back from Flanders to punish the Scotch. The battle of Falkirk was fought July 22, 1298, and the Scotch were entirely defeated.

Standing on the site of the old church of S. Salvatore, of S. Reparata, it is a building of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, begun in 1298 from the designs of Arnolfo; and it is dedicated to S. Maria del Fiore.

The remarkable fact is mentioned by Walter de Hemingford, the English historian, that when the castle of Dirleton, in East Lothian, was besieged by the army of Edward I., in the beginning of July, 1298, the men, being reduced to great extremities for provisions, were fain to subsist on the pease and beans which they gathered in the fields.* This statement is all the more remarkable on two accounts: first, that pease and beans should then have been so plentiful as to afford anything like sustenance for an army; and second, that they should have been fit for use so early in the season, even allowing for the difference between the old and new styles in the reckoning of time.