On the difference one man can make......

Watched the movie Braveheart with my young son the other day.
While the true story of what exactly happened more than 700
years ago is illusive, I was curious enough to search the book
shelves to find D. J. Gray's William Wallace:  The King's Enemy.

An excerpt:

    Among the entertainers in the market-place was a local champion, offering to let anyone give him a blow from a bucket-pole on payment of a groat - a painful way, one would have said, of earning a living.  Wallace handed him three groats, gave the fellow a tremendous wallop and sent him, sprawling.  A number of soldiers on duty, delegated to keep order on market day, on hearing the uproar at once made for Wallace, and in the ensuing fight several were killed.
   The excitement of seeing a lone Scotsman taking on a troop of English soldiers must have set the rooftops of Ayr ringing.  Heads would appear at windows, catcalls and cheers resound, the braver would take the opportunity of pelting the English with refuse, and in the midst of it, Wallace would be dashing for the edge of the wood where he had left his horse, and vanishing before a pursuit could be organized.
   The exploit had been witnessed in a crowded market-place and carried by word of mouth before the day was over.  The talk of the alehouses, the gossip conveyed by peddlers and carters to the next town, must soon have identified the tall, good-looking young man as William Wallace of Elderslie.  The realization that a flame of rebellion still burned in a people bullied into submission by Edward of England must have spread with joyous rapidity.