THE ASSOCIATIONS OF THE BUILDINGS.
In the preceding pages a description was given of the buildings of the
castle as they stand at the present day. In this chapter the purpose is
to remind the reader of the celebrated events that took place within or
beside these existing edifices, and to enable him to picture to himself
some of the scenes that have been enacted on the “well-trod stage” of
Stirling rock.
Since the gay days of the Jameses, and still more since the troubled
years of Robert Bruce, important changes have been wrought in the
buildings that have occupied Snowdon Crag. War has done its work of
destruction; government officials have disfigured noble halls; fire
has eaten up the dwelling-rooms of kings; and monarchs themselves have
sometimes thought it right to remove the ancient landmarks which their
fathers had set. Yet there still remains at Stirling a large cluster of
historical buildings sufficient to make the castle the most notable
place of its kind in Scotland, if not in the British Isles.
[Illustration: THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE.]
The first thing to strike the visitor after he has passed through Queen
Anne’s gateway is the ancient Keep, with its corbelled turrets, that
rises from the lawn and the Prince’s Walk. Associations lend interest
to the beauty, for there is the staircase leading to the schoolroom
where George Buchanan taught and punished his wilful pupil, James
VI., and on the terrace below the old wall that King’s eldest son,
Prince Henry, was accustomed to walk when released by his tutor for
a few minutes’ breathing-space in the fresh air. Other incidents are
quickly brought to mind on this same approach to the castle. Just in
front is James IV.’s entrance, shorn, it is true, of its lofty towers,
but still the same archway that witnessed, besides other memorable
events, two striking scenes in the time of James V. The first was
when Margaret Tudor, standing hand-in-hand with her son, the young
King, rang down the portcullis in these self-same grooves, suddenly
placing the ponderous grating between her precious child and the Regent
Albany’s dumfoundered commissioners. The second occurrence took place
some years later when James had become a grown man. A panting horse
clattered up the ascent, bearing a stern-eyed, hard-visaged monarch. At
the side ran Archibald Douglas of Kilspindie, almost collapsing with
fatigue, but gazing into the rider’s face in his eagerness to catch
a look of recognition. Here, at the entrance, Kilspindie sank down
exhausted, while the King, unheeding, rode on through the archway into
the castle yard. In his exile Douglas had thought the English people
too proud, “and that they had too high a conceit of themselves, joined
with a contempt and despising of all others.” But his treatment at the
hands of his sovereign and former friend must have been the bitterest
experience of his life. No affront that he received in England had been
harder to bear than this. It would be difficult to find in history a
more cruel, silent rebuff.
On emerging from the tunnel gateway the stranger is confronted by the
great imposing gable of the Parliament House. This building, although
altered and much defaced, is still a majestic pile, and is noteworthy
as having almost certainly been erected under the directorship of
Cochrane, the architect, one of James III.’s unpopular favourites.
Poor Cochrane was hanged at Lauder Bridge on the famous occasion when
the Earl of Angus thought fit to “Bell the Cat,” and show the King
that Scottish nobles would not suffer art-loving upstarts to usurp the
high places at Court. The quaint, twisted entrance below the old Mint,
to the north of the Parliament House, was the way of approach to the
castle up till the following reign, so that often in his later years,
when James III. rode into his courtyard, he must have shuddered as he
caught sight of the building that reminded him of Cochrane and his
miserable fate.
[Illustration: OLD ENTRANCE FROM BALLENGEICH.]
The Palace, which is chief among Stirling Castle’s buildings, can be
viewed on one of its three elaborate sides from this same spot near
James IV.’s gateway. Often must King James V. have walked about this
ground while the walls of his stately house were rising, and many a
day he doubtless stood watching the workmen shaping the pillars and
carving the curious figures. Out of these windows, before they were
barred, have looked Mary of Guise and the Regent Arran, and unhappy
Queen Mary has lain within these walls weeping sorely at the hardness
of her lot. Then came the time when the infant Prince James was brought
for his safety to Stirling, the stronghold that was to become his home
throughout his boyhood’s years. Yet, in the turmoil of politics and
religion, the royal child’s anxious guardians felt that the strong
position of the castle was not sufficient protection for their precious
charge. Consequently, the windows on the main floor of the Palace were
grated with heavy iron bars--the work, it is said, of a St. Ninian’s
blacksmith--which yet remain firmly fixed in their stones to remind
the peace-loving generations of the perilous days of the past. Many a
night has James VI. lain sleepless behind these gratings, dreading lest
by the morning light he should be carried a prisoner to Edinburgh or
Dumbarton.
From the upper square of the castle another side of the Palace can be
examined, and from here can best be seen the corner statue of James V.,
disguised as “The Gudeman o’ Ballengeich.” The Parliament House, having
been so much changed for the worse, is hardly worth regarding from
this point of view; but the past can be recalled on the north side of
the quadrangle, where stands the Chapel of James VI. Immediately after
the re-erection of the building, that pillared doorway was thronged
with a gay procession, pressing in to witness the baptism of baby
Henry, the first-born son of the King of Scots. Great nobles of the
kingdom as well as powerful lairds accompanied James and the foreign
ambassadors into the sacred edifice; but the interior to-day has such
a profaned appearance that even the most imaginative persons find it
nearly impossible to picture to themselves the interesting religious
ceremony. A number of years later, when James VI. returned from England
to visit his native land, the Chapel was the scene of a long series of
discourses, which the Regents or Professors of the Edinburgh College
delivered to their sovereign in Latin and Greek. As the exterior of the
building is almost precisely the same as it was when King James looked
with pride upon it, so it is in the doorway again that the pedantic
monarch can be summoned up as he slowly leaves the Chapel--where he had
followed all the arguments--at the head of a company of courtiers and
scholars.
Now let the visitor proceed to the Douglas Garden, a name that conjures
up a passionate monarch’s crime. The tall buildings overlooking the
lawn do not contain the actual chamber where the Earl of Douglas supped
with James II. Fire made away with most of the apartments in this
interesting portion of the castle, but fortunately the little closet
was spared where the King and his attendants stabbed the nobleman to
death. There, above the old archway, it lies open to public view,
and the window still exists through which the body was hurled after
it had stained with blood the floor of the royal chamber. There is a
grim fascination about that little room. The Earl of Douglas, the most
powerful lord in Scotland, sat there and quietly but firmly refused
to obey his sovereign’s command, till James of the Fiery Face grew
hot with indignation and suddenly put an end to the career of his
over-powerful subject. The scene as the corpse was flung through
the window, while the King stood by half angry and half afraid, can
vividly be brought to mind even although the small apartment is not in
appearance exactly as it was in the middle of the fifteenth century.
The walk round the wall of the Douglas Garden is in itself a sufficient
attraction to bring passing travellers to the summit of the rock. The
view is not one that is to be compared with others in Scotland only;
it must have a place in the limited list of the world’s most famous
prospects. The great blue screen of the Highland mountains, including
Ben Lomond, Ben Venue, Ben Ledi and Ben Vorlich, stretches from west to
north with an outline of beautiful irregularity. Not in one long chain
are the hills, but peak behind peak and row behind row, they appear
as a compact phalanx of bens when the mist is lifted from off their
heads. Nearer are the Braes of Doune and the fertile fields of the
Vale of Menteith, in the midst of which the Forth can be seen gleaming
in its lazy windings. The lofty Ochils in the north-east bring the
Highlands near to Stirling and form a noble background to the historic
Abbey Craig; and in the opposite direction the eye finds rest on the
bleak Gargunnock Hills, that serve to shut from the observer’s mind the
remembrance that a great city’s turmoil lies not far beyond.
It is not, however, only for the beauty of the distant scene that the
wall of the Douglas Garden must be sought; close beside the castle
rock many spots of intense historical interest claim a share of
attention. The battlefield of Stirling Bridge, where Wallace won his
greatest victory, may be observed beyond the Heading Hill--that dismal
mound with its stone still showing the marks of the executioner’s
axe. Southwards from the scene of conflict the ancient tower of
Cambuskenneth Abbey rises from between two reaches of the River Forth.
Nearer, on the Gowan Hill, Edward I. placed the military engines that
succeeded in breaching the castle wall; and on the same eminence, in
1746, the Jacobites planted a battery. Slightly further to the right
is the hollow, now occupied by the houses of the Lower Castle Hill,
where Friar Keillor set forth his play before King James V. On the
other side of the rock the visitor will notice the extensive elevated
tract of land known as the King’s Park. There the Stewart monarchs
and their predecessors found delight in the excitement of the chase;
there the boy James II. was hunting when Crichton’s men surrounded him
and carried him to Edinburgh; there the youthful James VI., rejoicing
in the freedom from his guardians and tutors, found such zest in
his sport one summer day that he tarried till seven o’clock in the
evening, having left the castle at the early hour of five. The field
immediately below the rock on this south-west side of the castle was
formerly known as the Butt Park, for in olden times it was the place
appointed for the practice of archery and for shooting competitions. A
little further south the eye can detect the ancient mound called the
King’s Knot, past which Edward II. rode when refused admittance to the
castle after Bannockburn, and which in the days of the later Jameses
formed the centre of an ornamental garden. On account of the change
that has come over it, the ground that was once the Justin Flats makes
little appeal to the imagination. Villas and gardens cover the level
space where Douglases and Burgundian warriors fought for personal glory
and national reputation in the presence of young James II.; but the
flat nature of the land, well-suited for tournaments, can be made out
beyond the King’s Knot. The Field of Bannockburn, or that part of it
where the first of the fighting took place, can be distinguished from
the commanding position of the Douglas wall, and close beside the scene
of Bruce’s triumph may be discerned the site of the battle of Sauchie,
which resulted in King Robert’s descendant, James III., fleeing to his
death from the presence of his son.
The view from the castle could not fail to have some effect upon the
minds of the monarchs who have gazed from the walls. To William the
Lion, old and sick, the remembrance of the winding Forth and the purple
peaks of Ben Lomond and Ben Ledi came as a light in the darkness, and
he urged his attendants to carry him to Stirling that the breezes from
the hills of the Lennox and Menteith might blow again upon his aged
cheek. When James IV. looked out upon Ben Vorlich he was reminded of
the merry hours of hunting near its base, and often did he plan an
expedition to Glen Artney when the mountains in one of their genial
moods tempted his eager spirit. The effect which the view had on James
V. was to arouse in that “King of the Commons” the desire to become
acquainted with the customs of the people who inhabited the spacious
strath spread out beneath his feet. The burdensome pomp of royalty was
gladly thrown aside, and, disguised as “The Gudeman o’ Ballengeich,” he
enjoyed for a time the rude society of the humblest of his subjects.
The beautiful prospect of mountains and vales brought tears to Queen
Mary’s eyes. When at the time of the Prince’s baptism she stole away
with an aching heart from the presence of unsympathetic guests and
gazed in the direction of the Lake of Menteith, she doubtless recalled
how as a little child she had been carried from Stirling to Inchmahome,
and she must have felt a passionate longing to recover the golden
girlhood days that she might live again through the happy years in
France, and make a new beginning to her reign as Scottish Queen. James
VI., on the whole, preferred the view towards the east and south to
that in the direction of the Highlands. The peace-loving monarch
realised that disturbed as was often the state of Lowland Scotland, it
was a tranquil part of his realm compared with the region of mountains
and glens. A sight of the purple peaks sometimes made him shake his
head as he thought of the wild Macgregors and other kilted warriors,
and felt that the day was not near at hand for their swords to be
turned into ploughshares.
So striking is the beauty and range of the scenery which is displayed
before the observer, that even a practical man of affairs of the
sixteenth century could not refrain in a business document from
expressing his admiration of the view. This was Sir Robert Drummond of
Carnock, who, as Master of Works under James VI., drew up a report in
1583 on the condition of the buildings of the castle. His _Inventory_,
which is preserved in the Register House at Edinburgh, recommends that
the west-quarter of the Palace be pulled down and rebuilt to a height
sufficient to make it command the four cardinal points, “by reason it
will have the most pleasant sight of all the four airts: in special
Park and Garden (deer therein), up the rivers of Forth, Teith, Allan
and Goodie to Loch Lomond, a sight round about in all parts, and down
the river of Forth where there stands many great stone houses.” This
project of Drummond’s was not carried out, probably because of the
greatness of the expense. The buildings were doubtless put in repair,
but the west side of the Palace remains in the unfinished state in
which it was left by the workmen of James V.
The visitor who has knowledge and appreciation of Stirling’s majestic
past will leave the castle with a sense that he has existed long before
his present life, or with a feeling that the hands of the Clock of Time
have gone back and have counted the years again. The early kings, such
as William the Lion, Alexander III. and Robert the Bruce, will seem to
have passed like ghosts before him, but he will almost persuade himself
that he has seen the Regent Morton in the flesh, crossing from the
Palace to the Parliament Hall, and George Buchanan, old and infirm,
ascending the stair to the schoolroom in the Keep. It may be that he
will fancy he has seen some other outstanding figures belonging to the
past, for Stirling Castle is not given over to the shades of one or two
personalities. A building may be visited by pilgrims on account of its
memories of one great individual. It is Queen Mary’s presence that
dominates still the deserted chambers at Holyrood and Craigmillar, and
that gives Loch Leven Castle the glamour which its other associations
have failed to impart; but although the famous Queen of Scots spent
many days at Stirling, the castle is so wealthy in romantic history
that the elsewhere pre-eminent personality here takes its place side
by side with other figures and does not occupy the forefront of the
pageant of the shades.