Blair, John, [note] the chaplain of the renowned Sir William Wallace, [note] was a monk of the order of St. Benedict. From a history of Wallace, written jointly by him and one Thomas Gray, [note] in Latin verse, Henry the Minstrel professed to have chiefly derived the materials of his vernacular version; but it is not certain, that any part of that history is now extant. In 1707, Sir Robert Sibbald [note] published a fragment, which his friend, Sir James Balfour, had found in the Cottonian library, entitled “Relationes qædam Arnaldi Blair Monachi de Dunfermlen et Capellani P. Willielmi Wallas Militis;” and this he conjectures to have been part of the work referred to by Henry the Minstrel. Sir Robert accounts for the difference in the Christian name, given to the writer of these Memoirs, by supposing, that, after the death of Wallace, John Blair found it prudent to change his name to Arnald. John must have been a simple monk truly, to expect to escape detection by so slight a disguise; more especially, if what other writers relate be true, that he had the courage to shew

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himself on the scaffold with Wallace, and to assist him in his dying moments.—But both accounts are equally improbable. Either the addition “et Capellani D. Willielmi Wallas Militis” is spurious, or we must conclude that Arnald, and not John, was, from the first, the real name of Wallace's chaplain. And if Arnald Blair was the name, his merit, as an historian of the achievements of the champion of Scottish freedom, vanishes at once; for, according to Dr. Irving, [note] the “relations ascribed to Arnald Blair merely consist of indigested transcripts from the Scotichronicon.”

Dempster says, that John Blair was also the author of a work De Liberata Tyrannide Scotia; but as no such production is extant or mentioned by any second author, it may be safely ranked with the many other imaginary works with which that biographical romancer was pleased to enrich the literature of his native country.