While Wallace was thus employed in expelling the English ecclesiastics from the west of Scotland, Sir William Douglas was engaged in forwarding the same object in the south. In these proceedings they are charged by the English authors with extreme cruelty. “The unhappy priests,” says Knighton, “had their hands tied behind their backs, and in this helpless state were thrown from high bridges into rivers, their dying agonies affording sport to their merciless captors.” Fordun merely says, that Wallace pretended to execute the edict of 1296, which appointed all English ecclesiastics to be expelled from Scotland. On which Lord Hailes remarks, “I hope this is not true; it has too much the appearance of a political pretext, by which defenceless individuals might be persecuted.”[96] There was little occasion for his Lordship’s sympathy. The thirteenth century was not the period when _churchmen_ were the objects of _causeless_ persecutions. Their expulsion appears to have been the result of their political intrigues and criminal interference with the records of the country intrusted to their charge. And from their placing these documents in the hands of Edward at Norham, he was enabled to give a colouring of justice to his attempts upon the independence of Scotland. The evidence which these falsified muniments afforded is mentioned by Langtoft,[97] as being submitted by Edward to the English barons for their advice before the business of the submission respecting the Scottish crown was entered upon. When the Scots reflected on the many thousands of their nation, of all ages, who had already been butchered at Berwick and Dunbar,--the oppressions that had followed,--the apparently interminable war entailed upon them in support of the pretended proofs of the supremacy of England; it is not to be wondered at, that they should attempt to get rid of those canker-worms who had nestled in their country, and ungratefully betrayed its sacred and most invaluable interests. The edict was early published, and at a time when it could serve no other purpose than a protest against the baseness of their conduct. When the insurrection, therefore, broke out under Wallace, it was not to be expected that individuals who had rendered themselves so deservedly obnoxious, would be treated with much lenity, if they still attempted to retain their temporalities at the expense of the people they had endeavoured to enslave.[98]