485 



WALKER, ROBERT. 



WALLACE, SIR WILLIAM. 



486 



openly declared himself a papist, and, after having paid a visit to 

 London, during which he is understood to have been consulted by the 

 king on the measures to be taken for restoring the old religion, he not 

 only had mass celebrated in his lodgings, but converted two of the rooms 

 of his college, forming the lower half of the side of the quadrangle 

 next the chapel, into a Romish chapel, which he opened for public use 

 on Sunday the loth of August 1686. He at the same time obtained a 

 mandate from the kiug to sequester the revenue of a fellowship 

 towards the maintenance of his priest, and erected a statue of James 

 over the inside of the college gate ; and the next year he set up a press 

 in the back part of his lodgings in the college, under letters-patent 

 from his majesty, for the avowed purpose of printing books against 

 the established religion. Many tracts, principally written by Wood- 

 ward, issued in the course of the next two years from this press. 



These rash proceedings of course made him a marked man when 

 the Revolution came. He left Oxford on the 9th of November 1688 ; 

 and on the llth of December following, he, Andrew Pulton, a Jesuit, 

 and others, put themselves into a coach at London, in the hope of 

 making their escape to France ; but hearing that the populace in Kent 

 were seizing all papists that attempted to leave the kingdom, the 

 party turned back. They were however pursued, seized, and carried 

 fust to Feversham, and thence to London, where Walker was com- 

 mitted to the Tower. On the 4th of February following, the vice- 

 chancellor and doctors of the University declared him no longer 

 master of University College ; and on the 15th of the same month 

 liis place was filled up by the election of Edward Ferrer, the senior 

 fellow. 



On the 2oth of October Walker was brought up by habeas corpus to 

 Westminster Hall, and sued for bail ; but he was immediately sent for, 

 with other prisoners in the same circumstances, to the bar of the 

 House of Commons ; and the result of his examination there, in which 

 he denied that he had ever altered his religion, the principles which 

 he now professed being, he said, the same which had been taught him 

 in his youth by his tutor Mr. Anderson, was that he was remanded to 

 the Tower on a charge of treason. But on the 31st of January 1690, 

 being again brought up to the court of King's Bench, he was allowed to 

 give bail and was set at liberty; nor was he further troubled, although 

 he was excepted out of the Act of Pardon soon after passed (the 2 

 Will. & Mar., sess. 1, o. 10). He spent the remainder of his days in 

 retirement, and partly abroad ; but he died at London, on the 21st of 

 January 1692, iu the house of Dr. Radcliffe, who was one of his old 

 pupils, and "by whom he had been some time principally supported. 

 He was burie<?, at Kadcliffe's expense, in old St. Pancras churchyard, 

 the common place of interment of London Roman Catholics of the 

 upper classes. 



Walker, who is admitted on all hands to have been a man of learn- 

 ing and talent, is the author of various works, of which the principal 

 are, 'A brief Account of Ancient Church Government,' Lond., 4to, 

 1662; a 12mo. tract, entitled 'Of Education, especially of Young 

 Gentlemen,' first printed at Oxford in 1673, and for the fourth time in 

 1683; a Latin treatise on Lo?ic, entitled ' Artis Rationis, maxima ex 

 parte ad Mentem Nominalium, Libri Tres,' Oxford, 8vo, 1673 ; ' Some 

 Instructions concerning the Art of Oratory,' 2nd edition, Oxford, 4 to, 

 1682; ' An Historical Narration of the Life and Death of Our Saviour 

 Jesus Christ,' Oxford, 4to, 1685 (the sale of which was prohibited by the 

 vice-chancellor of the University, on the ground of the alleged popish 

 tendency of some things in it) ; ' Some Instructions in the Art of 

 Grammar,' Lon. 8vo, 1691 ; and ' The Greek and Roman History illus- 

 trated by Coins and Medals/ Lon., 8vo, 1692; a work which formerly 

 had a high reputation. 



WALKER, ROBERT, a clever English portrait-painter contemporary 

 with Vandyck, and the principal paiuter employed by Cromwell. 

 Walker painted several portraits of Cromwell, and those of most of his 

 officers, military and naval. One of these portraits of Cromwell is 

 now in the Pitti Palace at Florence. It was purchased by the reigning 

 grand-duke in Cromwell's lifetime for 5001. : he sent a person to 

 England for the express purpose of procuring a portrait of the Pro- 

 tector. The agent had much difficulty in procuring one to his satis- 

 faction ; but he at last found this by Walker, in the possession of a 

 lady who was related to Cromwell, and who, being unwilling to sell 

 the picture, in order to get rid of the importunity of the agent, 

 asked him what appeared to her the exorbitant sum of 500?. for it. The 

 amount was however immediately paid, and she was obliged to part 

 with her picture. A portrait by Walker of the Protector (half-length) in 

 armour, and holding a truncheon in his hand, is in the British Museum ; 

 of this portrait Mr. J. Tollemache has a duplicate. Another was in 

 the possession of Lord Mountford, at Horseth in Cambridgeshire, to 

 whom it was given by Mr. Commissary Greaves, who found it at an 

 inn in that county. There is a gold chain upon Cromwell's neck, to 

 which is appended a gold medal with three crowns, the arms of 

 Sweden, and a pearl : it was sent to him by Christina of Sweden in 

 return for his picture by Coopei', on which Milton wrote a Latin 

 epigram. Another was in the possession of the earl of Essex at 

 Cashiobury ; and another in Lord Bradford's collection, with the 

 portrait of Lambert in the same piece. 



" From one of R. Symondes's pocket-books," says Walpole, " in 

 which he has get down many directions in painting that had been 

 communicated to him by various artists, he mentions some from 



Walker, and says the latter received ten pounds for the portrait of 

 Mr. Thomas Knight's wife to the knees ; that she sat thrice to him, 

 four or five hours at a time. That for two half-lengths of philosophers, 

 which he drew from poor old men, he had ten pounds each in 1652 ; 

 that he paid twenty-five pounds for the Venus putting on her Smock 

 (by Titian), which was the king's, and valued it at sixty pounds, as he 

 was told by Mrs. Boardman, who copied it, a paintress of whom I find 

 no other mention ; and that Walker copied Titian's famous Venus, 

 which was purchased by the Spanish ambassador, and for which the 

 king had been offered 2,5001. He adds, Walker cries up De Critz for 

 the best painter in London." 



Walker had for some time apartments in Arundel House : he died a 

 little before the Restoration. There is a portrait of him by himself in 

 the picture-gallery at Oxford, and there was another at Leicester 

 House : there is also a good print of Walker, holding a drawing, by 

 Lombart. Wadham College possesses a portrait of Blake said to be the 

 only portrait of the great admiral by Walker. Walpole speaks of a 

 capital half-length of General Monk at the countess of Montrath's, 

 Twickenham Park, which he supposes to be by Walker : he mentions 

 also by this painter a fine whole-length, sitting in a chair, of Keble, 

 keeper of the great seal in 1650. Buckeridge says that Walker's works, 

 by their life, best speak their own praises. His portrait of Cromwell 

 in the Pitti Palace is painted iu a masterly style : in the catalogue of 

 that gallery this picture is incorrectly attributed to Sir Peter Lely. 



WALLACE, SIR WILLIAM. The life and exploits of this most 

 popular national hero of the Scots have been principally preserved in 

 a legendary form by poetry and tradition, and are only to a very 

 small extent matter of contemporary record or illustrated by authentic 

 documents. There is no extant Scottish chronicler of the age of 

 Wallace. Fordun, the earliest of his countrymen from whom we 

 have any account of him, is his junior by nearly a century. Wynton, 

 the next authority, is still half a century later. His chief celebrator 

 is the metrical writer Blind Harry, or Harry the Minstrel, whose work 

 confesses itself by its very form to be quite as much a fiction as a 

 history, and whose era at any rate is supposed to be nearly two cen- 

 turies subsequent to that of hia hero. Some few facts however may 

 be got out of the English annalists Trivet and Hemingford, who were 

 the contemporaries of Wallace. 



There are contradictory statements of the year of his birth, but it 

 is probable that he was born about 1270. His family was one of some 

 distinction, and he is said to have been the younger of the two sons of 

 Sir Malcolm Wallace of Elderslie and Auchinbothie, in the neighbour- 

 hood of Paisley. His mother, who, according to one account was Sir 

 Malcolm's second wife, is stated by the genealogists to have been 

 Margaret, daughter of Sir Raynald or Reginald (other authorities say 

 Sir Hugh) Crawford, who held the office of sheriff of Ayr. 



The history of Wallace down to the year 1297 is entirely legendary, 

 and only to be found in the rhymes of Harry the Minstrel; though 

 many of the facts which Harry relates also still live as popular tradi- 

 tions in the localities where the scenes of them are laid, whether 

 handed down in that way from the time when they happened, or only 

 derived from his poem, which long continued to be the chief literary 

 favourite of the Scottish peasantry. Harry, who, it may be observed, 

 professes to translate from a Latin account written by Wallace's 

 intimate friend and chaplain, John Blair, makes him to have been 

 carefully educated by his uncle, a wealthy churchman, who resided at 

 Dunipace, in Stirlingshire, and to have been afterwards sent to the 

 grammar-school of Dundee. Here his first memorable act is said to 

 have been performed, his slaughter of the son of Selby, the English 

 governor of the castle of Dundee, in chastisement of an insult offered 

 him by the unwary young man : Wallace struck him dead with his 

 dagger on the spot. This must have happened, if at all, in the year 

 1291, after Edward I. of England had obtained possession of all the 

 places of strength throughout Scotland on his recognition as Lord 

 Paramount by tue various competitors for the crown, which had become 

 vacant by the death of the infant Margaret, the Maiden of Norway, in 

 September, 1290. 



This bold deed committed by Wallace, who in making his escape is 

 asserted to have laid several of young Selby's attendants as low as 

 their master, was immediately followed by his outlawry. He now 

 took to the woods, and gifted as he was with eloquence, sagacity, and 

 other high mental powers and accomplishments (to this the testimony 

 of Fordun is as express and explicit as that of his poetical biographer), 

 not less than with strength and height of frame and all other personal 

 advantages, he soon found himself at the head of a band of attached as 

 well as determined followers, who under his guidance often harassed 

 the English soldiery, both on their marches and their stations, 

 plundering and slaying, as it might chance, with equally little remorse. 

 Particular spots in nearly every part of Scotland are still famous for 

 some deed of Wallace and his fellow-outlaws performed at this period 

 of hia life ; but for these we must refer to the Blind Minstrel. The 

 woods in the neighbourhood of Ayr would seem to have been his 

 chief haunt ; and some of his most remarkable feats of valour were 

 exhibited in that town, in the face and in defiance of the foreign 

 garrison by which it was occupied. Both his father and his elder 

 brother are said to have fallen in rencontres with the English during 

 this interval. It was now also that he fell in love with the orphan 

 daughter of Sir Hew de Bradfute, the heiress of Larnington, having, it 



