Menteith
Benedict Arnold, the traitor whose betrayal of trust and attempt to sacrifice his country will, through all time, be regarded as the highest height and the lowest depth of infamy, had a fitting prototype in Sir John Menteith, who betrayed the great defender of Scotch liberty, Sir William Wallace, into the hands of the English invaders, and, with the deliverance of his person, the surrender of the liberty of his country, leaving a name and memory loaded with disgrace. Sir Walter Scott, in his “Tales of a Grandfather,” says,—
“The King of England, Edward I., possessed so many means of raising soldiers, that he sent army after army into the poor, oppressed country of Scotland, and obliged all its nobles and great men, one after another, to submit themselves to his yoke. Sir William Wallace alone, or with a very small band of followers, refused either to acknowledge the usurper Edward, or to lay down his arms. He continued to maintain himself among the woods and mountains of his native country for no less than seven years after his defeat at Falkirk, and for more than one year after all the other defenders of Scottish liberty had laid down their arms. Many proclamations were sent out against him by the English, and a great reward was set upon his head; for Edward did not think he could have any secure possession of his usurped kingdom of Scotland while Wallace lived. At length he was taken prisoner, and shame it is to say, a Scotsman, called Sir John Menteith, was the person by whom he was seized and delivered to the English. It is generally said that he was made prisoner at Robroyston, near Glasgow, and the tradition of the country is that the signal for rushing upon him and taking him unawares, was that one of his pretended friends, who was to betray him, should turn a loaf which was placed on the table, with its bottom or flat side uppermost. And in after times it was reckoned ill-breeding to turn a loaf in that manner if there was a person named Menteith in company; since it was as much as to remind him that his namesake had betrayed Sir William Wallace, the champion of Scotland.