This photograph, taken in 1921, shows a memorial to Bishop Robert Wishart in Glasgow Cathedral. The bishop's effigy lies in the open arch of one of the cross walls, at the east end of the crypt. It is supposed to have once covered his tomb.
Robert Wishart became Bishop of Glasgow in 1272, a post he was to hold for forty-four years. He was one of six Guardians of Scotland during the interregnum which followed King Alexander III's death in 1286. After the English occupation of Scotland under Edward I, Bishop Robert Wishart became one of the leading statesmen on the side of William Wallace and Robert Bruce in the war of independence.
Robert Wishart was captured and imprisoned by the English in 1306. After the Scots' victory at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 he was exchanged for the Earl of Hertford. By then he was frail and nearly blind, and he died two years later.
The historian Robert Barrow sums up Robert Wishart as "indisputably one of the great figures in the struggle for Scottish independence, the statesman of the period 1286-1291, the patron and friend of Wallace and Bruce, the persistent opponent of Plantagenet pretensions, an unheroic hero of the long war".
Reference: Mitchell Library, GC 941.435 REN
Reproduced with the permission of Glasgow City Council, Libraries Information and Learning
Keywords:
Battle of Bannockburn, bishops, crypts, effigies, Glasgow Cathedral, guardians, heroes, prisoners, statesmen, war of independence
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