The William Wallace family tree, from the record to the legend

The only document that names Wallace’s father is his own seal. On 11 October 1297, at Haddington, William Wallace and Andrew Murray wrote as leaders of the army of the kingdom of Scotland to the mayors and communes of Lübeck and Hamburg, asking German merchants to trade with Scotland again.¹ The seal on the letter shows a lion rampant on one side and a bow with an arrow on the other. It is the only known impression of Wallace’s own seal.¹

Two historians read the words around the seal as William, son of Alan Wallace.¹ An Alan Wallace held land of the crown in Ayrshire and is listed in the Ragman Rolls of 1296, but no record joins that man to the patriot with certainty.^1,7 Alan Wallace heads the William Wallace family tree for that reason, with no years beside his name.

Tradition places Wallace’s birth at Elderslie in Renfrewshire, and the estate of Ellerslie in Ayrshire has also been proposed, though no document of the time links him with either.⁷ The National Records of Scotland note that an Ayrshire father casts doubt on the link with Renfrewshire.¹ The year of birth is also unknown. Wikipedia gives about 1270, Undiscovered Scotland says most writers choose 1272, and the Dictionary of National Biography says only that he was still young in 1297.^7,4,5 The William Wallace family tree therefore gives the year as about 1270 and names no birthplace.

A report of August 1299 names Malcolm Wallace as William’s brother. Robert Hastang, the English sheriff of Roxburgh, sent it to Edward I from what a spy had seen in the Scottish camp.³ Sir David Graham had demanded William’s lands and goods, and Malcolm quarrelled with him in front of the Scottish leaders.^5,3

The report does not name the brothers’ father, so the William Wallace family tree draws the line from Alan to Malcolm as probable. The Dictionary of National Biography calls Malcolm the elder brother, and adds that the chronicler Fordun calls the elder brother Sir Andrew.^5,6

John Wallace is harder to place. A Sir John Wallace was executed in London in 1307, two years after William, and the English chronicler Langtoft wrote that his head was raised on London Bridge near the head of his brother.^6,5 Wikipedia finds no verifiable evidence that John was William’s brother, so the William Wallace family tree draws his line broken, as disputed.⁷

Most of what is told of Wallace’s family comes from The Wallace, a poem by the minstrel known as Blind Harry. Wikipedia dates it to about 1477, some 172 years after Wallace died, and Undiscovered Scotland to 1470.^9,4 Most historians now read it as a historical novel in verse.⁹

In the poem the father is Sir Malcolm Wallace of Elderslie, and the mother is a daughter of Sir Reginald Crawford, sheriff of Ayr.⁶ The biography on Electric Scotland calls her Margaret, and the Dictionary of National Biography calls her Jean.^6,5 Neither parent appears in a document of Wallace’s time, so the William Wallace family tree keeps Alan and draws no mother.

The wife is the best known figure of the legend. The earlier chronicle of Andrew of Wyntoun calls a woman at Lanark the leman, or lover, of Wallace. Harry makes her his lawful wife, the heiress of Lamington, whose father had been killed by Hezelrig, the English sheriff of Lanark.⁶ In the poem the sheriff has her killed, and Wallace takes revenge by killing him.⁸ The Dictionary of National Biography finds the story more dramatic than historical.⁵

The name Marion Braidfute came later still. In 2005 the researcher Ed Archer argued that she appears in no text before a revised version of the poem of 1570, and The Times reported that the wife was fictional.⁸ Harry also gives Wallace a daughter who married a squire named Shaw.⁶ She has no name and no trace in the records. No document of Wallace’s time names a wife or a child of his, and both stand on the William Wallace family tree as legend.

Braveheart, the film of 1995 directed by Mel Gibson, drew on Harry through Randall Wallace’s screenplay.^10,9 It shows William losing his father and brother to the English as a boy and marrying a childhood friend, Murron, in secret. It also gives him an affair with Isabella of France and implies that her son Edward III was his child. Isabella was a child in France at the time of Falkirk, and Edward III was born seven years after Wallace was executed.¹⁰ No line on the William Wallace family tree comes from the film.