These accounts, however, are decidedly at variance with truth, both in regard to the amount of the English, and the person who commanded. It is more probable, that the enemy did not exceed eight, or at most ten thousand men, part of which appears to have been under the command of Roden, Lord de Whichenour. On the side of the Scots, Sir Walter Newbigging,[90] already referred to, headed a body of cavalry. His son David, a youth, at that time little more than fifteen years of age, held a command under him, and the well-tried military talents of the father were not disgraced by the efforts of the young patriot, whose conduct on this occasion was afterwards rewarded by the honour of knighthood, probably conferred by the hand of our hero himself. The family of Newbigging, as has already been noticed, came originally from England; and Sir Walter and his son, on this occasion, found themselves opposed to their near kinsman, the Lord of Whichenour. At the head of what might now be called an army, Wallace kept the field; and the celerity of his movements confounded all the calculations of the enemy. While the main body of his forces appeared in their formidable intrenchments, occupying the attention of the English, distant garrisons were surprised, and put to the sword by foes, who seemed to spring up as it were within their walls, and of whose approach they had not the slightest intimation. About this time, one of those iniquitous acts, so often met with in the cold-blooded and relentless policy of Edward, was perpetrated at Ayr, against the barons and gentry of the west of Scotland. This part of the country had been the nucleus, as it were, of the insurrection; and the ill-disposed and well-affected had now become equally objects of suspicion to the usurper’s government. Under the pretext of holding a Justice-Aire, they were summoned to attend; and those who appeared (among whom were Sir Raynald Crawford, Sir Bryce Blair,[91] and Sir Hugh Montgomerie) were treacherously seized, and hung up without even the formality of a trial. Wallace heard of the infamous proceeding, and determined on severe retaliation. Selecting fifty of his confederates, he hastened to the spot, and being joined by a number of the retainers of the murdered gentlemen, they surrounded the buildings where the English were cantoned, and who, indulging in fancied security arising from the terror which they imagined the late severity was likely to impress upon the Scots, had, after a deep carousal, betaken themselves to rest, little dreaming of the vengeance that awaited them.