The Sun.
London, England, 1850-10-02 00:00:00

SIR WILLIAM WALLiIOE.

Great Britain appears just now to be smitten with
a mania for monuments and testimonials. In Eng•
land subscription lists are opened for the purpo,e of
perpetuating the memory of the go ,d Duke of C.un •
bridge and the Lune of the Poet Wordsworth; while
the pence of the millions are invited to bestow a like
honour upon Sir It ,bert Peel, the undertaker of
Protection, and upon Eherkzer Eliot, the midwife of
Free Trade. In Wales the virtues of Sir Charles
Morgan are committed to enduring marble, and in
Scotland we are informed by the Caledonian Mercury,
that " public attention has lately been attracted to
the propriety of erecting a national monument to Sir
William Wallace, the illustrious Champion uf Scot-
land."

Everybody has &tie homage to the goodness of
heart justly wtributed to the late Duke of Cambridge
---who has not felt and admired the poetic genius of
the high-principled Wordsworth ?—Sir Robert Peel's
name, for good or ill, has during the last quarter of
a century been sounded from Land's End to John o'
Groat's—the Cern-law Rhyther is not unknown as
poet laureate to the Manchester monster, on the altar
of which Sir Robert Peel sacrificed his party and his
country—even the excglions of the Welsh baronet to
make his native mountains pri;duce other stock than
goats, and her valleys other food than leeks, are of a
modern and practical character—but when we cross
the laJrder, we must leave corn and cattle, charity
and poetry, and travel at once into the regions of
romance.

Sir William Wallace is a hero whose deeds, like
those of Homer's warriors, are enwrapt in the mists
of ages, and are revealed only to modern gaze by the
verse of Thomas the Rhymer, the Scottish Homer, or
of his rival "The Minstrel." Lord Hanes, who
writes from these and like authorities, says
" Wallace, the must famous man of the age in which
he lived, deserved to be compared with the most re-
nowned captains of ancient times, buth for his great-
ness of mind in undertaking dangers, and for his
wisdom and valour in overcoming them. For love
to his country he was second to none, who, when
others were slave", was alone free ; neither could he
be induced by rewards nor moved by threats to for-
sake the public cause which he had once undertaken.
His death was the more to be lamented because he
was not conquered by his enemy, but betrayed by his
friend. He bad every excellence—strength of body,
keen courage, a spirit active and ambitious. By his
affability he conciliated the affections of his followers;
by the force of native eloquence he moulded their
passions to his will ; by calm intrepidity and perse-
vering wisdom he maintained an authority over the
rude and undisciplined multitudes which crowded to
his standard.

" The stature of Wallace is asserted by all his his-
torians to have been remarkably large, and his
strength extraordinary. Hollinshead says, he was
a young gentleman of so huge a stature and notable
strength of bodie, with such skill and knowledge in
warlike enterprises, and of such hardiness in attempt-
ing all manner of exploits, that his snatch was not
any where lightlie to be found.' "

The minstrel describes him thus:—
" Wallace statur of gretness and of hycht,
Was jugyt thus, be discretion off rycht,
That saw him, both in dissembil* and weid ;•f•
Nyne quarter:4 large he was in length, indeid:
Thryd part in schuldrys braid was he,
Rycht sembly, strong, and lusty for to see:
thwandi bron haryt, on bron and breis lycht;
Clear asprvil eyne, like to the diamonds brycht;
Under the on the left side, was seyne
Be hurt a wain; his colour was sanguine;
Wounds he had in many divers place;
But fair and weill kepyt was his face."
* Undress. f Dressed. t Six feet nine inches.
§ Curled. Sharp.
Oar Scottish neighbours will doubtless erect a mo-
nument worthy of so distinguished a patriot, and in
order to fasten the enterprise upon those who might
be stimulated by pride of descent, the Caledonian
Mercury, after a lengthened history of Wallace,
enters into an inquiry whether any of his descendants
still exist, and where the principal residence of the
family is fixed, from which it appears that the present
representative of the family is Mr. Bailie Cochrane,
the Member for Bridport.
" The following brief account (says our contem-
porary) of the Rallies of Lamington, who are lineally
descended from the champion of Scotland, is princi-
pally compiled from the same source to which we
have already been indebted for the narrative of "Wal-
lace, and may prove interesting to the admirers of
the Scottish patriot, by whom, after the lapse so many
centuries, a tardy act of national justice is about to
be performed to one who, when others were slaves,
was alone free ; and for love to his country was second
to none.'

"Perhaps no family in Britain can boast of a des-
cent more illustrious than that of Baillie of Laming-
ton, that has so fully preserved its original possessions,
and that retains still among its numerous descendents
so much of its original talent, than is, the subject of
the present memoir.
" It is well known that Sir William 'Wallace mar-
ried the only daughter and heiress of ---Braidfoot,
of Lamington, about the year 1296, by which he ac-
quired that valuable property in Lanarkshire (con-
sisting of about 4,000 acres, on the right banks of
the Clyde, about twelve miles south-east of Lanark),
and by that lady had an only child, a daughter, who
was married to Sir William Balliol, or Baillie, of
Hoprig and Penstoun, but afterwards designed of
Lamington, as being the more extensive domain, and
both these other places (in the East Lothian) con-
tinue in the possession of the family to the present
day, as also Lamington itself.

'‘‘ Alexander Willie, of Castlecary, who was held
to have been a very learned and ingenious antiquary,
deduces the Baillies from the Balliols, and, in parti-
cular, traces the pedigree of Baillie, of Lamington
(the head of the family), from that illustrious house.'
William de Balliol, according to this authority, was
the second son of Sir Alexander Balliol, of Givers,
uncle to John Balliol, King of Scots, and Great
Chamberlain of Scotland in 1298. He was possessed
Of the lands of Penstoun and Hoprig, in East Lo-
thian, and Carnbrace in Clydesdale, which are the
most ancient possessions the Baillies of Lamington
had, and which circumstance is of itself corroborative
of their being the same with the Balliols, which name
was afterwards softened down to Millie, the modern
appellation. This Laird of Penstoun, after the abdi-
cation of his cousin John Balliol, King of Scots,
joined with great zeal the other patriots in defending
the liberties of their country against the encroach-
ments of the English, which rendered him so obnoxious
to King Edward 1., that he was fined in four years'
rent of his lands in 1297. This William de Balliol
appears to be the same with 'William Baillie, who
married the daughter of 'Wallace, the heiress of La-
mington. This will accord with what Blair, the his-
torian of Wallace, writes, as quoted by the continu-
ation of Nisbet Sir William's daughter was mar-
ried to a squire of the Balliol blood, who in that way
got the barony of Lamington. The date of this mar-
riage I have nowhere met with. But as Wallace, in
revenge for the death of his wife, slew Hesilrig, the
Governor of Lanark, in the year 1297, his daughter
must have been born before that time ; and it may be
concluded that, as she was an heiress of so valuable a
property as Lamington, she would not be beyond the
ordinary years of life when she was married. This
may therefore be stated, as a probable conjecture, to
have been about the year 1315, or a year or two
sooner or later.'

" Our limits prevent us from referring more parti-
cularly to the successive heads of this distinguished
family, equally distinguished for the alliances which
they contracted, and for the part which they took in
the service of their Sovereigns and country for many
generations. To come to more modern times, we find
the representation of the descendants of Wallace and
the succession of the ancient property of Lamington
devo ving on a female heiress of Margaret Baillie,
daughter of the fifteenth Byron of Lamington, by a
daughter of William, the sixteenth Earl of Crawford.
The heiress of Lamington married Sir James Carmi-
chael, of Bonny toun (of Bonnington), who sunk hie
estate into that of Lamington, and to the heirs of the
marriage, the heirs male being to use the name of
Baillie and the arms of Lamington. This lady, wbo
died on the 11th of September, 1759, had by Sir
James Carmichael, William Baillie, of Lamington,
who died without issue in 1738, and a daughter Hen-
rietta Baillie, the heiress of Lamington, Hoprig, and
Penstouo. She married on the 11th of October,
1741, Robert Dundas, of Arnistoun, afterwards Lord
Piesident of the Court of Session, and was succeeded
by her son William Baillie, of Lamington, who, dyin
shortly after his mother, the representation of Wallace's
descendants, and the estates of the Lamington
devolved on his eldest sister, Elizabeth Baillie, who
married, on the 6th of September, 1762, the gallant
`Captain Lockhart, of the Tartar,': afterwards Admiral
Sir John Lockhart Rose, of Lockhart Hall and B ilna-
gown. Bart. By this distinguished officer, who died
in 1790, she had five sons, the late General Sir
Charles Roes, of Balnagown, Bart.; James, a post
captain in the navy, who married Miss Farquharson,
heiress of Invercauld ; George, formerly one of the
judges of the Cuusistorial or Commissary Court in