Wallace

There are two principal theories for the origin of this name, both of which indicate an ancient British origin. The Waleis were originally Britons from Wales who held land in Shropshire and who may have come north with David I. More plausibly, it is believed that they were Britons who settled in the ancient kingdom of Strathclyde, having been driven north in the tenth century. The name is certainly found in records by the twelfth century in Ayrshire and Renfrewshire. Richard Walensis of Riccarton held land near Kilmarnock as a vassal of the High Steward of Scotland sometime before 1160. His grandson, Adam Walays, had two sons, the eldest of whom succeeded to the family estates in Ayrshire. Malcolm, Adam’s younger son, received Elderslie and Auchinbothie in Renfrewshire. Malcolm was the father of the great Scottish patriot, Sir William Wallace of Elderslie.

Adam de Waleys appears on the Ragman Roll of nobles paying allegiance to Edward I of England in 1296, but Malcolm of Elderslie was one of very few Scottish nobles who bravely refused to submit to Edward. He and his eldest son, Andrew, were both executed. His wife fled with her younger son, William, to the protection of relatives near Dundee. William gathered a number of young men around him, including a cousin from the Riccarton branch of the family. When he heard that Sir John Fenwick, his father’s executioner, was marching towards Dundee with a packed train of plunder from Scottish churches and monasteries, he determined to have his revenge. He met Fenwick at the path leading over Lowden Hill in Lanarkshire, and killed him. His success brought him many new followers, but to gain the support of the nobility he allied himself with Sir Andrew Murray, who was raising a revolt in the north-east. They were joined by the Grahams, the Campbells and the Earl of Lennox. There then began one of the earliest guerilla campaigns in military history.

The English, unable to capture Wallace, indiscriminately executed a number of the Scots nobility, including his uncle, who had been lured into their hands to discuss possible peace terms. A full-scale revolt commenced in the south-west of Scotland, but when a strong English army marched to suppress it, resistance melted. Wallace was forced to flee to the north, where he gathered a small force. By 1297 he had gathered enough popular support to lay siege to Dundee. The English sent another great army under the Earl of Surrey and Hugo de Cressingham. Wallace met the English at Stirling Bridge, where his superior tactics carried the day against overwhelming English odds. He was knighted and granted the title ‘Guardian of Scotland’. 

However, the guardian was defeated at a set-piece battle at Falkirk, when the English superiority of numbers finally prevailed and the Scots were defeated. Wallace escaped, but was later betrayed and taken to London, where he was tried for treason. At his trial it was argued that, as he owed no allegiance to the English king, no treason had been committed, but the outcome was predetermined, and Wallace was executed with great brutality.

The Wallaces of Craigie descended from the uncle of the great patriot. They obtained the estate by marriage to the heiress of Sir John Lindsay of Craigie, and in 1669 Hugh Wallace of Craigie was created a Baronet of Nova Scotia. Sir Hugh married Esther Kerr, daughter of the Laird of Little Dean but sadly their only son was brain-damaged. On Sir Hugh’s death, his grand-nephew, the grandson of his brother, the Reverend William Wallace of Falford, became the second Baronet. He was a distinguished lawyer who rose to the rank of Lord Justice Clerk, the second-highest judge in Scotland. The third Baronet left an only daughter, and was succeeded by his brother, who had married a daughter of Sir Hew Wallace of Wolmet. Sir Thomas Wallace was the fifth Baronet, and when his son, a captain in the Guards, predeceased him, the estates passed to his daughter, Frances. In 1760 she married John Dunlop of Dunlop, the friend of the poet Robert Burns. His eldest son, Sir John Dunlop, succeeded his maternal grandmother as sixth Baronet of Craigie, and assumed the name of Wallace.

The representation of the chiefly line then passed to another cadet branch, the Wallaces of Cairnhill, who had lived in Jamaica for several generations. Through marriage to an heiress, they inherited estates in Ayrshire at Busbie and Clancaird. In 1888, Captain Henry Wallace of Busbie and Clancaird established himself as chief of the name. Robert Wallace of that Ilk received both the French and Belgian Croix De Guerre during the First World War. His son, Malcolm, who served in the Second World War, Korea, and Borneo, rose to the rank of colonel. He was succeeded in 1991 by his brother, Ian, the thirty-fifth chief.