ABSTRACT
Wallace having emerged from his subterranean journey, according to the advice of Gloucester made direct to Sunderland, and arrived there about daybreak. A vessel belonging to France (which, since the marriage of Margaret with Edward, had been at amity with England as well as Scotland) was there, waiting the first favourable wind to set sail for Dieppe. Wallace secured a passage in her; and going on board, wrote his promised letter to Edward. - It ran thus:
'This testimony, signed by my hand, is to assure Edward King of England, upon the word of a knight, that Margaret Queen of England, is in every respect guiltless of the crimes alledged against her by the Lord Soulis, and sworn to by the Baroness de Pontoise. I came to the court of Durham on an errand connected with my country; and that I might be unknown, I assumed the disguise of a minstrel. By accident I encountered Sir Piers Gaveston, and ignorant that I was other than I seemed, he introduced me at the royal banquet. It was there I first saw her majesty. - And I never had that honour but three times: one I have named; the second was in your presence; and the third and last, in her apartments, to which you yourself saw me withdraw. The Countess of Gloucester was present the whole time; and to her highness I appeal. The queen saw in me only a minstrel: on my art alone as a musician was her favour bestowed; and by expressing it with an ingenuous warmth, which none other than an innocent heart would have dared display, she has thus exposed herself to the animadversions of libertinism, and to the false representations of a terror-struck, because worthless, friend.
'I have escaped the snare which her enemies had laid for me: - and for her sake, for the sake of truth, and your own peace, King Edward, I declare before the searcher of all hearts, and before the world, in whose esteem I hope to live and die; That your wife is innocent! And should I ever meet the man who, afer this declaration, dares to unite her name to mine in a tale of infamy, - by the power of truth I swear, that I will make him write a recantation with his blood. Pure as a virgin's chastity is, and shall ever be, the honour of William Wallace.'
