William Wallace, The Covenanters and the Torwood Wallace Oak

Posted at Jardine's Book of Martyrs:

In September, 1680, Donald Cargill excommunicated king Charles II somewhere near the Wallace Oak at Torwood in Larbert and Dunipace parish, Stirlingshire.

The Torwood Oak

The Torwood Excommunication will be discussed in detail in later posts. One great mystery surrounding the events is where they took place in the Torwood.

According to the Rev. George Harvie’s parish entry in the Old Statistical Account of 1794:

‘In Dunipace parish is the famous Torwood; in the middle of which there are the remains of Wallace’s tree, an oak which, according to a measurement, when entire, was said to be about 12 feet diameter. To this wood Wallace is said to have fled, and secreted himself in a body of that tree, then hollow, after his defeat in the north. Adjoining to this is a square field, inclosed by a ditch, where Mr Donald Cargill excommunicated King Charles II.’ (OSA, III, 336.)

The Wallace Oak, or Wallace Tree, was first recorded by name in 1687 when a contract was agreed for harvesting areas of the Torwood ‘excepting [the] Wallace Tree’. (FNH, Vol.22, 80.)

The consensus among modern historians is that the Wallace Oak lay close to the edge of the Wallacebank Wood on the Woodside/Glenbervie estate. On modern OS maps it lay about here.

Continue reading here.

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