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STIRLING CASTLE




  PUBLISHED BY

  JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS, GLASGOW,

  Publishers to the University.

  MACMILLAN AND CO., LTD., LONDON.

  _New York_,   _The Macmillan Co._
  _Toronto_,    _The Macmillan Co. of Canada_.
  _London_,     _Simpkin, Hamilton and Co._
  _Cambridge_,  _Bowes and Bowes_.
  _Edinburgh_,  _Douglas and Foulis_.
  _Sydney_,     _Angus and Robertson_.

  MCMXIII.

[Illustration: STIRLING CASTLE.]




  STIRLING CASTLE

  ITS PLACE IN SCOTTISH HISTORY

  BY

  ERIC STAIR-KERR

  M.A. EDIN. AND OXON., F.S.A. SCOT.

  AUTHOR OF “SCOTLAND UNDER JAMES IV”

  _WITH EIGHTEEN ILLUSTRATIONS BY
  HUGH ARMSTRONG CAMERON_

  GLASGOW
  JAMES MACLEHOSE AND SONS

  PUBLISHERS TO THE UNIVERSITY

  1913




PREFACE


Stirling Castle is a many-sided subject that can be treated in more
than one way. The story of the castle might be dealt with in a book
divided into sections, each one taking up a special part, such as
Military History, Stirling as a Royal Palace, Notable Visitors, etc.;
but I have thought it better to set forth the whole of the castle’s
history in chronological order, and, after discussing the buildings and
their associations, to bring together the salient events connected with
the three chief Scottish strongholds, and to record what the poets have
said about Stirling.

With regard to dates, for the sake of simplicity I have adopted the
historical computation; that is to say, the years have been reckoned as
if they had always begun on the 1st of January and not on the 25th of
March, as was the rule in Scotland until 1600. For example, the date of
Prince Henry’s birth is given as February, 1594, although the event
was considered at the time to belong to the year 1593.

I am glad to express here my thanks to my uncle, the Rev. Eric
Robertson, for suggesting that I should undertake this work, and
for valuable hints given from time to time; to Mr. David B. Morris,
Stirling, who has always responded most willingly to any appeal for
help, and who has kindly read the proofs; and to Mr. James Hyslop,
Edinburgh, for guidance in the subject of the buildings of the castle.
To the artist, Mr. Cameron, I am grateful for the whole-hearted
interest which he has taken in my part of the work as well as in his
own.

  E. S. K.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE
     I. EARLY HISTORY                                                  1

    II. THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE                                       18

   III. THE EARLY STEWARTS                                            36

    IV. JAMES V. AND MARY                                             57

     V. JAMES VI.                                                     79

    VI. LATER HISTORY                                                114

   VII. THE BUILDINGS, THE PARK, AND THE BRIDGE                      133

  VIII. THE ASSOCIATIONS OF THE BUILDINGS                            161

    IX. STIRLING’S POSITION WITH REGARD TO OTHER CASTLES             178

     X. STIRLING CASTLE IN POETRY                                    197

        INDEX                                                        214




ILLUSTRATIONS


                                                                    PAGE
  Stirling Castle                                         _frontispiece_

  The Highlands from Stirling Castle                                  13

  The Abbey Craig and River Forth                                     21

  Stirling Castle from Bannockburn                                    29

  *The Prospect of Stirling Castle                                    32
    _From Engraving by Captain John Slezer, circa 1693._

  The Douglas Window                                                  45

  James IV.’s Gateway (where Margaret Tudor defied the
        Commissioners)                                                59

  The Pass of Ballengeich                                             67

  The Keep and the Prince’s Walk                                      89

  The Chapel Royal                                                   109

  *Stirling Castle                                                   112
    _From Engraving by Robert Sayer, 1753._

  Turret on Queen Anne’s Battery                                     125

  The Old Mint                                                       135

  Portcullis in James IV.’s Gateway                                  139

  James V. as the Gudeman o’ Ballengeich                             143

  *The Prospect of Their Majesties’ Castle of Stirling               144
    _From Engraving by Captain John Slezer, 1693._

  Stirling Old Bridge                                                155

  The Parliament House                                               163

  Old Entrance from Ballengeich                                      167

  Old Buildings in Upper Square                                      189

  A Chimney of the Palace                                            193


  _All the Illustrations, with the exception of the three marked
  with an asterisk, are by Mr. Hugh Armstrong Cameron._




CHAPTER I.

EARLY HISTORY.


For many centuries travellers have been struck by the remarkable
resemblance which Stirling bears to Edinburgh. In each case there is
a castle perched on a precipitous rock, and a town built on a narrow
ridge that <DW72>s from the crag to the plain. That two places so much
alike in situation should be found in Scotland, and but thirty miles
apart, may seem a matter for wonder, but a word or two on the geology
of the district may help to explain how the similarity arose.

During the Great Ice Age, when the physical features of Scotland were
moulded into almost their present form, the extensive plain of the
River Forth was filled by a giant glacier, which swept down from the
Highland hills to the lower land on the south and east, clearing the
softer rocks from its path and exposing the hard basalt of igneous
sheets and old volcanic necks. These great eruptive obstructions
withstood the pressure of the eastward-moving mass of ice, and so
prevented the ground on their lee sides from being subjected to the
scouring action that hollowed out the land on the north and west and
south. Numerous examples of this “crag and tail” formation are to be
found in the track of the ancient glacier, but two of the rocks stand
out with striking prominence; on one is built the Castle of Edinburgh,
on the other that of Stirling.

It is strange that of such natural strongholds early history has so
little to say, for these fortresses were afterwards to have their
names writ large on almost every page of Scotland’s romantic story.
The third sister castle, Dumbarton, came earlier to the front. It was
a stronghold of renown in the days of the Strathclyde Britons; but as
time wore on its importance diminished, and the place which it had held
in the principality of Strathclyde was taken by Stirling and Edinburgh
in the consolidated Kingdom of Scotland.

On the Gowan Hills, to the north of Stirling Castle, traces of an
ancient fort show that the Britons considered it more important to
defend the rising ground overlooking the River Forth than to occupy
the crag, with its precipitous south-west face. When the Romans under
Agricola attempted the conquest of northern Britain they constructed
a chain of forts across the country, between the Firths of Forth and
Clyde. The untrustworthy Boece asserts that Stirling was fortified
at the time of those campaigns, but no real traces of their work have
been discovered to prove that the Romans occupied the castle rock under
Agricola in A.D. 81-82, or when Lollius Urbicus, Governor of Britain
for Antoninus Pius, erected the wall on the line of the earlier forts.
Near the Pass of Ballengeich is the so-called Roman Stone, with its
indistinct, almost unintelligible letters. Antiquaries of a former
day--Camden, Sibbald and Horsley--considered the inscription genuine,
but recent scholars are of opinion that the letters were carved many
centuries after the departure of the legions from Britain. Again, the
existence of a Roman causeway has not yet been proved. The natural
supposition that a military road, connecting the camp at Ardoch with
the south, passed near Stirling led to the belief that the highway
crossed the Forth at Kildean, or higher up at the Ferry of Drip. No
vestiges of a causeway of undoubted Roman origin have, however, been
discovered either at the river or on the Field of Bannockburn, through
which it was thought to have passed on its way to the station of
Camelon.

After the withdrawal of the Roman legions, Stirling Castle dimly
appears in the haze of half-real history. King Arthur is claimed as
a local prince in Brittany, Cornwall, Wales and Cumberland, but
southern Scotland seems to have, on the whole, the best right to the
hero of romance. His tenth battle, it would seem, was fought in the
neighbourhood of Stirling, and his victory over the Saxons gave him
possession of the fortress. Tradition has always associated his name
with the Round Table, which afterwards became the King’s Knot, and
William of Worcester, who flourished in the fifteenth century, wrote
that King Arthur preserved the Round Table in the Castle of Stirling or
Snowden.[1]

A less famous, though not a less real, person than the great British
warrior chief was Monenna or Modwenna, a high-born saint of Ireland. At
least two women bearing this name devoted themselves to the religious
life, and some confusion has arisen as to which of them it was who
became connected with Stirling. The Monenna who lived in the ninth
century, however, apparently visited both England and Scotland, and she
seems to have been the one who built, among other churches, the chapel
in Stirling Castle.[2]

Perhaps because the fortress was so obviously a place of strength the
early chroniclers have associated with it events which possibly never
took place. Boece mentions that Kenneth MacAlpine laid siege to the
castle during the Pictish wars; and the same historian asserts that
King Osbert of Northumbria occupied Stirling for a number of years, and
established a mint in the fortress. A “cunyie-house” at one time did
exist in the castle, but the oldest coins known to have been struck at
Stirling date from the reign of Alexander III. A site so favourable
for a stronghold, however, must have been the scene of many unrecorded
fights, so that “the place of striving,” which was formerly thought to
have been the meaning of the citadel’s name, would be no inappropriate
appellation. “Stirling” is now held to be a corruption of the Welsh
_Ystre Felyn_, signifying “The dwelling of Velin,” old forms of the
name being _Estrevelyn_, _Striviling_ and _Struelin_.[3] The more
poetic “Snowdon” or “Snawdoun,” a corruption perhaps of some Celtic
appellation, or else meaning merely the “snowy hill,” was the name
given to Stirling by some of the old chroniclers, as well as by Sir
David Lyndsay in _The