MEDIEVAL letters relating to William Wallace and Robert the Bruce are to be exhibited together for the first time.

The exhibition, Wallace, Bruce and Scotland's Contested Crown, opens at Stirling Castle next month and brings together two manuscripts which provide insight into the different paths taken by the two leaders in securing the ­Scottish crown.

On display will be a 700-year-old letter from King Philip IV of France to his agents in Rome commanding them to ask Pope Boniface VIII to support Wallace. Written in November 1300, the letter was discovered in the Tower of London in the 1830s and is currently on loan to the National Records of Scotland from The National Archives.