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Myself and the remainder were turned out upon the waste. We retired to the Monastery of Cambuskenneth; but there oppression found us. Cressingham, having seized on other religious houses, determined to swell his hoards with the plunder of that also. In the dead of night the attack was made.
A day or two before the Bishop left London he instituted his friend Stephen de Cressingham to the Deanery of Cranwich in the west of Norfolk which had fallen vacant, but there is nothing to show that the vacancy was due to anything out of the common.
The mangonels and petraries, and other implements for battering walls, and the ballista, with every efficient means of throwing missive weapons, were ready to discharge their artillery upon the heads of the beseiged. A messenger, meanwhile, was sent into the citadel to apprise De Valence and the Governor Cressingham of the assault.
Cressingham, in the midst, was hallooing in proud triumph to those who occupied the rear of the straining beams, when the blast of a trumpet sounded from the till now silent and immovable Scottish phalanx.
Let them come and attack us; we are ready to meet them beard to beard." On hearing this answer, the English shouted to be led against the bold rebel; but the more prudent leaders thought it folly to attempt to cross the bridge, exposed as it, was to the enemy, but that a chosen body should cross a ford, attack them in the flank, and clear the way. Cressingham thought this policy timid.
Warrene and Cressingham drew together a mighty force, and marched to the relief of Stirling, which Wallace had threatened. The Scots had come together to the number of 40,000, but they had only 180 horse; and Warrenne had 50,000 foot and 1,000 horse.
The English army began to cross the bridge, Cressingham leading the van, or foremost division of the army; for, in those military days, even clergymen wore armor and fought in battle. That took place which Lundin had foreseen.
Cressingham became alarmed on seeing the retaliating menace of Wallace brought so directly before his view; and, dreading the vengeance of De Valence's powerful family, he ordered a herald to say that if Wallace would draw off his troops to the outer ballium, and the English chief along with them, the Lord Mar and his family should be taken from their perilous situation, and he would consider on terms of surrender.
"In the course of a few hours," returned Cressingham, "you will have no Stirling Castle to defend. The enemy will seize it at sunset, in pursuance of the very agreement by which I warded him off, to give us time to annihilate him before that hour. Therefore no hesitation, if we would not see him lock the gates of the north of Scotland upon us, even when we have the power to hurl him to perdition."
He, with Cressingham, having gone out to meet the man they had so basely drawn into their toils, De Valence himself saw the struggles of paternal affection contending against the men who would have torn a senseless daughter from his arms, and yet, merciless man! he separated us, and sent me, with my aunt, a prisoner to his house.
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