LATER HISTORY.
In the times when the King of Scots’ capital was Edinburgh, a royal
visit to Stirling was an occurrence of an ordinary kind. Preparations
were made in the interior of the castle for the housing of the Court,
but naturally the sovereign’s arrival was not regarded as an event of
historic importance. After the Union of the Crowns, however, when the
royal family was domiciled in England, and the people in the north
had grown unaccustomed to the sight of a monarch’s pomp, a visit of
the King to his ancient castle was eagerly looked forward to by the
inhabitants of Stirling, and elaborate preparations were undertaken for
his reception both within and without the building.
King Charles I. was a native of Scotland, but he left his fatherland
when a child of tender years, and although he was anxious to travel
north with James when that monarch obeyed what he called his
salmon-like instinct, not until 1633 did Charles set foot again
upon Scottish soil. Each year after his accession to the throne
his northern subjects had expected his arrival, but time after time
their sanguine hopes had been doomed to disappointment. In November,
1631, the Privy Council believed that Charles’s promised visit was at
length near at hand. Not only were the royal apartments at Stirling
made ready for the King, but, in order that he might enjoy the sport
his father loved, the hunting of hares was strictly forbidden within
eight miles of the castle. At last, when Charles had finally made up
his mind to venture into Scotland, the Privy Council reissued the
decree regarding the protection of ground game.[74] The townspeople
of Stirling, however, were to have but poor reward for their long and
patient waiting. During his Scottish visit in 1633, the King passed two
nights in the castle in the beginning of July, as he journeyed from
Edinburgh to Fife and Perth, and when a few days later he returned to
the Scottish capital he avoided the detour by the Old Bridge of Forth
and crossed the Firth in a storm.[75]
The outbreak of the Great Civil War brought Stirling Castle again to
the front. The Covenanting party being dominant at the time, Parliament
decreed in 1640 that the fortresses should be placed in the charge of
trusty natives of Scotland, although the Earl of Mar was not deprived
of his heritable right to the custody of the castle.[76] In this year
Archibald, Earl of Argyll, while endeavouring to force the Covenant on
the Highlanders of Central Scotland, seized the Earl of Atholl in his
camp in Strathtay and sent him prisoner to Stirling Castle.[77] After a
brief stay in the fortress, however, the nobleman was conveyed to the
capital, where an agreement was entered into by which he recovered his
freedom.
In 1644 the great Marquis of Montrose began his brilliant series of
military successes. Not only did the Highland clans rise, as always,
for the House of Stewart, but a considerable body of Scoto-Irish
troops had landed in the west to support the King’s cause. After the
Covenanters’ defeat at Tippermuir the Government began to be seriously
alarmed, and Sir Archibald Primrose, Clerk to the Privy Council, was
ordered to write to Livingstone of Westquarter, urging him to look
well after the town, castle and bridge of Stirling, in case the Irish
soldiers should take their route that way.[78] The castle, however,
though garrisoned and prepared, did not figure in the wars of Montrose;
for the Marquis turned northwards after Tippermuir, and when he
eventually descended on the Lowlands he crossed the Forth by the Fords
of Frew and not by Stirling Bridge.
Although the “Great Marquis” suffered death for his devotion to the
King, the cause for which he laid down his life was not lost in his
native country. In 1650 Charles II., a young man of twenty, landed at
the mouth of the Spey, and although England at the time was under the
Protectorate, the youthful adventurer was crowned King of Scots. In the
end of July he spent some nights in Stirling Castle, delighting the
townsfolk with his courtly manners and reminding the old inhabitants of
the splendid days that had gone. Charles was the last of a long line of
monarchs to take up residence within the old walls. A few months later
Holburne, the captain of the castle, was suspected of being a Royalist
only by pretence, and of having held treacherous communications with
some of the agents of Oliver Cromwell. The officer obeyed the summons
to appear before the Parliament of Perth, and there he succeeded in
clearing himself of the charge which his enemies had brought up against
him.[79]
Young King Charles did not long enjoy the ancient crown of his fathers.
Cromwell’s victories of Dunbar and Worcester made the continuance
of the monarchy impossible, although all the Scottish strongholds
did not at once surrender to the rule of the Protector. Under the
governorship of Colonel William Conyngham--who as an undoubted Royalist
had been placed in Holburne’s position--the garrison of Stirling Castle
determined to hold the fortress for the King. This defiance brought
General Monk to the gates, with over five thousand men, on August
6th, 1651. The day after his arrival he ordered his soldiers to raise
earthen platforms for mounting his guns. One of these batteries was
erected in the churchyard, whence for three days a fire was kept up,
causing considerable damage to the castle. At the same time Colonel
Conyngham’s ordnance played hard upon the graveyard platform: a
cannonade that has left its traces on the church to the present day.
On the fourteenth of the month, owing to a mutiny in the garrison, the
governor sent out a letter to Monk desiring a treaty of surrender,
although two days before, not foreseeing this contingency, he had told
the besiegers that he would hold the fortress as long as he could.[80]
It was agreed that the castle should be handed over to Monk, that the
prisoners in the building should be released, and that the garrison
should be allowed to march out. Also that noblemen, gentlemen and
inhabitants of the town, whose goods were in the castle, should have
liberty to transport their property to other places.[81] Forty pieces
of ordnance and twenty-six barrels of powder, along with a large number
of barrels of beef and beer and many vessels of claret, fell into
the hands of the besiegers. The spoils of the castle included also
two coaches, the Earl of Mar’s coronet and his robes of Parliament,
and some of the King’s hangings. The national records which had been
preserved in the fortress were sent to the Tower of London. Some were
returned to Scotland a few years later; others were lost at sea shortly
after the Restoration.
Colonel Reade was left by General Monk in charge of Stirling Castle;
and in his plan for the defence of Scotland, which he laid before the
Protector in 1657, Monk proposed to garrison Stirling with thirteen
companies of foot and a regiment of horse.[82] The Erskines’ right to
the custody of the fortress was overlooked by Oliver Cromwell, but
after the Restoration, in 1661, Parliament granted to John, Earl of Mar
and his heirs male, the governorship of the castle with its parks and
pasturage and their rents and duties.[83] Quarter of a century later
King James VII., angry at Earl Charles’s opposition to his plans for
the relief of Roman Catholics, deprived the nobleman of part of his
hereditary right; but when William of Orange ascended the throne the
keeping of the castle, with all the privileges attached to the office,
was again entrusted to the family of Mar.
During the reign of Charles II. Stirling Castle was notable as a
prison. All kinds of offenders--persons convicted of treason, holders
of unlawful conventicles, disturbers of the public peace--were placed
in ward in the fortress. One of these prisoners was Patrick Gillespie,
who as a staunch supporter of Cromwell, had been made Principal of
Glasgow University. On Charles’s return he craved pardon through his
wife for his anti-monarchical conduct, but in September, 1660, he was
confined in Stirling Castle,[84] although in March of the following
year he was released from a rigorous captivity.
Sir Patrick Hume of Polwarth was another of Charles II.’s distinguished
prisoners. In 1673 he had spoken “with abundance of freedom and
plainness” against the Duke of Lauderdale’s policy;[85] and two years
later he petitioned against and refused to pay for the support of,
the garrison which was stationed in his shire in order to curb the
Covenanters. Consequently, in 1675-6, he was compelled to spend some
months in Stirling Castle, and a year or two later he was warded there
again, though his wife was allowed to be with him.
Although Charles II. never saw Stirling after his Restoration, his
brother James, the heir-presumptive, visited the castle in 1681.
During the time of his sojourn in Scotland he resided chiefly at
Holyroodhouse, but his interest in Linlithgow and Stirling was such
that he determined to make a progress to those ancient seats in the
early days of February. The weather, indeed, had been uncommonly mild,
but on the 3rd of the month, when the Duke of Albany and York set forth
from Holyrood, accompanied by John Churchill, afterwards the famous
Duke of Marlborough, the ground was covered with a heavy coat of snow.
James arrived at Stirling that evening, and passed the night, not,
as would have been appropriate, in the palace of his fathers, but in
Argyll’s Lodging on the Castle Hill. Next day he was conducted round
the royal fortress after the great guns had fired a salute and the Earl
of Mar, with the garrison under arms, had received him at the gate. The
Duke examined all the important rooms in the Palace and inspected the
castle walls; he expressed his admiration for the buildings and for
the situation of the fortress, as well as for the extensive prospect of
the windings of the river and the country through which it meandered.
He remarked that he had been told a great deal about that noble seat,
but that it much exceeded all that he had heard of it. “It was,” His
Highness said, “inherent and natural to all the Royal Family for many
years past to have a particular kindness for Strivling.” As James
departed from the castle the guns again sounded a salute. Next day he
travelled back to Holyrood.[86]
Coming events do not always cast their shadows before. As the
heir-presumptive to the British throne walked round the castle with Mar
he did not foresee that soon, as King, he would curtail the privileges
which the Earl enjoyed as governor of Stirling, and that the hereditary
office would be fully restored by the supporters of the man who was
to tear his crown from his brow. Nor could he picture to himself his
grandson, a disinherited prince, striving to recover this bulwark of
the north from the servants of an alien sovereign.
Rivers winding in rich valleys were favourite scenes with James. When
an exile in France he used to enjoy the view of the Seine from the
terrace of St. Germain, partly because of its intrinsic beauty and
partly because it reminded him of the prospect of the Thames from
Richmond Hill. Doubtless his thoughts often travelled to Scotland too,
and the Seine must sometimes have brought to his mind the tortuous
river that he once admired from the ramparts of Stirling Castle.
As the Restoration sent Patrick Gillespie into captivity at Stirling,
so the Revolution brought the fourth Earl of Perth a prisoner into the
castle. Earl James had been one of Scotland’s leading men under the
last Stewart king; but the days of his prosperity were brought to a
close with the flight of his sovereign in 1688, and as he had espoused
the Roman Catholic faith and had profited by the King’s dispensing
power, he had only punishment to expect at the hands of his political
opponents. After an attempt to flee the country he was thrown into
Stirling Castle, where he lay a prisoner till 1693. At first the Earl
was somewhat harshly treated, but on his Countess’s petitioning against
his want of privacy the Estates agreed to relieve him of the constant
attendance of his guards.[87]
Although Queen Anne never saw Stirling Castle, her name is associated
with the fortifications that were constructed outside the gateway which
James IV. had built. This addition consists of massive embrasured
walls with outlook turrets, and an archway bearing the initials A. R.
surmounted by a crown. The probability, however, is that the battery
existed before the time of Anne, but that during her reign it was
repaired and strengthened, an extra protection being the fosse. Thus
the castle was fortified for the Jacobite rebellion that was yearly
expected and dreaded, but that did not break out until 1715, a year
after the death of the Queen.
On the accession of George I., John, Earl of Mar, being suspected
of having Jacobite sympathies, was deprived of the governorship of
Stirling Castle. Since that time the office of hereditary keeper has
never been revived. The new King’s prompt action not unnaturally
strengthened the Jacobite predilections of the Earl, who awaited a
favourable opportunity of raising the standard of James VIII.
[Illustration: TURRET ON QUEEN ANNE’S BATTERY.]
In Mar’s insurrection of 1715, as in former days, Stirling, with
its bridge and castle, was a valuable military post. King George’s
Government lost little time in concentrating forces upon it, in order
to prevent the Highland Jacobites from joining their friends in the
south. In the end of August the royal army under General Wightman
encamped in the Park and secured the castle and the bridge. The Duke of
Argyll, to whom the supreme command of the forces was given, arrived
at Stirling on the 17th September, and before long found himself at the
head of nearly four thousand men.
The insurgents proposed to cross the Forth by detaching a portion
of their army for the apparent purpose of effecting a passage at
Stirling, and by sending their main body by the upper fords while the
Royalists were engaged at the bridge. Argyll, however, having heard of
his enemies’ intentions, determined to take the initiative. Marching
out of Stirling on November 12th, he blocked the Highlanders’ way
at Sheriffmuir, where on the following day an indecisive battle was
fought. The right wing of each army was successful, and both sides
claimed the victory, but as Mar was prevented from crossing the Forth
the advantage really lay with Argyll. During the absence of the army
at Sheriffmuir the town and castle of Stirling were garrisoned by five
hundred volunteers from Glasgow, who had camped for nearly two months
in the Park with Wightman’s regular troops.
The next appearance of Stirling Castle in history is during the
Rebellion of the Forty-five, although not until after the retreat from
Derby did the enemy come before its gates. True, in September, 1745,
the Highlanders passed so close to the castle that guns were fired
from the battlements, but Charles was pushing on rapidly to Edinburgh
and had no mind for a siege by the way. It was on the 6th of January,
1746, that the Highland army appeared again in the neighbourhood of
Stirling. Charles Edward took up residence in Bannockburn House, while
his soldiers camped in the vicinity, and on the same day the town of
Stirling was summoned to surrender. Seeing no prospect of holding out
against the dreaded mountaineers, the citizens capitulated on the 8th
of the month, but the castle garrison under General Blakeney prepared
to resist to the last extremity. To Charles’s demand for the delivery
of the fortress the General proudly replied that His Royal Highness
must have a bad opinion of him to think him capable of surrendering the
castle in such a cowardly manner.[88]
An engineer of the name of Grant had arranged to erect batteries in
the old churchyard, as it occupied a high piece of ground, commanding
the entrance to the castle. The citizens, however, objected to this
plan, as General Blakeney’s guns would have reduced their town to
ruins. Charles therefore ordered the Frenchman, Mirabelle de Gordon,
whom the soldiers ironically called Mr. Admirable, to undertake the
siege operations. Mirabelle, according to the Chevalier Johnstone, had
little knowledge of engineering and was totally destitute of judgment,
discernment and commonsense; but because he was a French engineer,
decorated with an order, it was supposed he was a person of experience,
talents and capacity. The Frenchman began to dig trenches on the Gowan
Hills, at a place where the solid rock was only fifteen inches below
the surface of the ground, so that bags filled with wool and earth had
to be brought from a distance to afford some sort of cover. The battery
after all did little damage to the castle, and when Blakeney’s guns
were turned upon it Mirabelle’s men were slaughtered in great numbers,
and the position had soon to be abandoned.[89]
This ill-conducted siege was an unsuccessful enterprise, but it gave
to Charles’s Highlanders their victory at Falkirk. History never
repeats itself, but sometimes it nearly does so. As Edward II. had
marched to Bannockburn in order to relieve the Castle of Stirling,
so General Hawley advanced by the same route from Edinburgh for the
purpose of saving the same ancient stronghold from falling into the
hands of Bruce’s descendant. Charles left the Duke of Perth with over
a thousand men to continue the blockade while the rest of the army
barred the way near Bannockburn, as King Robert had done long before;
but finding that Hawley was in no haste to attack, Charles quitted the
field of happy omen and advanced to unpropitious Falkirk. The memory
of Wallace’s defeat, however, did not oppress the eager Highlanders,
for they routed the Government troops in a storm of wind and rain, and
drove them back on Linlithgow. After this victory Charles returned to
Stirling to proceed with the siege of the castle, and twice on the
day of his arrival the garrison was summoned to surrender. Blakeney,
however, answered that he had always been looked upon as a man of
honour, and that the rebels should find that he would die so.[90] In
their desperation a number of Highlanders tried to scale the castle
rock, but they were driven back with heavy loss of life in their daring
attempt to imitate the feats of medieval warriors. The chiefs at length
saw the hopelessness of the undertaking, and with difficulty managed
to persuade their Prince--who at times was bravely exposing himself
to the fire of the garrison’s guns--to withdraw his troops to the
Highland hills. On February 1st the army began its disorderly retreat,
taking the road to the Fords of Frew, for Blakeney had some time before
destroyed the south arch of the old Bridge of Forth, and next day the
Duke of Cumberland, who had superseded Hawley, entered and occupied
Stirling town.
To many people the history of Scotland seems to cease with the
suppression of the Rebellion of Forty-five. This idea doubtless takes
its rise from the fact that no battle has been fought on Scottish soil
since the Jacobites were vanquished by Cumberland. Up to that point
strife and bloodshed are so characteristic of the nation’s history,
that the important half-centuries that have elapsed since Culloden
are apt to be considered as having no connection with the story that
began in the early ages and ended when “Prince Charlie” took ship at
Lochnanuagh. Yet because royalty has forsaken its former seat, and
because in times of peace a fortress cannot play a glorious part, the
retiral of the Highlanders in 1746 does mark the close of Stirling
Castle’s long and noble history.
Since that time the building has been used as barracks and has become
a recruiting depot for the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. Once or
twice in the course of the nineteenth century its former days were
recalled. In 1820, Hardie and Baird, two prominent leaders in the
“Radical War,” were imprisoned in the castle before their execution,
like Archbishop Hamilton and other political offenders in the times of
the Stewart kings. On the 13th of September, 1842, the pleasanter days
of the past were brought to mind when the presence of Queen Victoria
and Prince Albert within the walls revived the old associations
of royalty. Seventeen years later their son, the Prince of Wales,
inspected the ancient building where his ancestors had lodged, and
from the spot where his mother had surveyed the scene, he admired the
view which kings have enjoyed of the Vale of Menteith and the Highland
hills. To Queen Victoria and her son thoughts must have occurred
similar to those which passed through the mind of James, Duke of Albany
and York, when he observed that it was inherent and natural to all the
Royal Family to have a particular kindness for Stirling.