CHAPTER III.

THE EARLY STEWARTS.

On the death of David II. in 1371, the crown passed to Robert the Steward, grandson of the Bruce, in accordance with the succession settlement made at the Parliament of 1318. The first of the Stewarts was past middle life when he mounted the Scottish throne, and although he had been a man of war in his youth, he longed to spend his later years in the enjoyment of repose. To some extent his desire was fulfilled, for the war with England--which continued in spite of a truce--was of a fitful nature and not a desperate struggle for freedom. The King’s favourite seat was the Castle of Rothesay, but he occasionally made Stirling his place of residence, finding it a convenient resting-place between Bute and St. Andrews or Perth.

For a number of years Sir Robert Erskine had been keeper of Stirling Castle, and in 1373 the sovereign’s son Robert, Earl of Menteith and Fife, and afterwards Duke of Albany, was appointed to fill the office. For the maintenance of this important position the Earl received an annual grant of fourteen chalders of corn and twelve chalders of oatmeal from the lands of Bothkennar, as well as an income of two hundred merks from the Lord Chamberlain of Scotland.[24] The money was to be levied from the crown lands and from feudal dues in the shire of Stirling; but this arrangement did not long hold good, as a few years afterwards the fee was paid from the Treasury. It was in the power of the keeper to appoint and dismiss the constable and janitors of the castle. The Earl of Fife did not neglect the duties of his office, for the Exchequer Rolls bear witness to much strengthening and repairing of the fortress; alterations doubtless rendered necessary by the use of gunpowder in war. If Froissart is to be trusted, these fortifications served their purpose well, as he declares that an unsuccessful attack was made upon the castle by the soldiers of Richard II. Other chroniclers, however, do not refer to Stirling in connection with the invasion of 1385; they imply that the English army advanced little further than Edinburgh, being compelled by the wasted condition of the country to retreat across the Border.

Robert II. was succeeded in 1390 by his eldest son John, Earl of Carrick, who chose to reign as Robert III., John being considered an unlucky name for kings. Even less a man of action than his father, he allowed his ambitious brother, whom he created Duke of Albany, to manage the chief affairs of state. A younger brother, the Earl of Buchan, usually called the “Wolf of Badenoch,” lived like an independent sovereign in the Highlands, and with his sons committed depredations on the low-lying districts of Angus and Moray. These unruly sons were taken captive, however, and sent to prison in Stirling Castle, where they were under the eye of the keeper, their uncle, Robert of Albany.

The age of chivalry had hardly yet passed its zenith. It was still the delight of gentlemen to travel from Court to Court displaying their prowess in feats of arms. In 1384 a number of French knights landed in Scotland desirous of finding adventures in the Border wars, as their country afforded no field for their activities since peace had been made with England. Otterburn, a few years later, was more a chivalric tournament _à outrance_ than a serious battle between the armies of two hostile nations. A tournament for passages of arms was arranged to take place at Stirling in 1398. The principal combatants were to be Sir Robert Morley, a renowned English knight, and Sir James Douglas of Strabrock. The barriers were prepared and all was in readiness, when it was announced that the English champion, in a tilting match with a Scot named Thomas Traill, had suffered an unexpected defeat, and in consequence of the disgrace to his knighthood had taken to his bed and died.

A strange and ghost-like figure appeared in Scotland in the reign of Robert III. This was a half-crazed individual, called Thomas Warde of Trumpington, who bore a striking resemblance to King Richard II. He had been found in the castle of the Lord of the Isles at Islay, and was brought forward as a person likely to be of advantage in times of trouble with England. The uncertainty regarding Richard’s end led many on both sides of the Border to believe that the King had escaped from Pontefract Castle; but the simpleton at the Scottish Court denied that he was Richard, while a report was spread that the deposed English monarch was hiding in the mountains of Wales. At all events a so-called King of England, known in history as the “Mammet” or false King, was maintained for political purposes in Stirling Castle, where he died in 1419, without having ventured to cross the Border to fight for the English crown.

During the regencies of Robert of Albany and his son Murdoch, who succeeded to the dukedom and to the office of keeper of Stirling Castle, carpenters and masons were employed from time to time in repairing and improving the fortress. The Chapel was to a large extent rebuilt in 1412, the year that saw the erection of the Chapel of Linlithgow Palace. Duke Robert died in Stirling Castle in 1420, and four years later James I. returned to his native country after eighteen winters of captivity in England.

The author of _The Kingis Quair_ was an eminent poet, an accomplished knight, a constitutional monarch and a man of iron will. He was determined to strengthen the power of the Crown, not for his own selfish ends, but for the purpose of bringing the country into order. Unfortunately, however, he carried out his policy with haste and with merciless severity. Stirling was made the scene of James’s relentless harshness only a year after his coronation at Scone. The King came to reside in the castle, and held a court on the 24th of May, 1425, at which he presided crowned and in his robes of state. A jury consisting of twenty-one barons, among whom were the Earls of Douglas, March and Angus, condemned Walter Stewart, Albany’s eldest son, on a charge of robbery. The unfortunate man was promptly executed on the Heading Hill of Stirling. Next day the same jury, evidently acting in accordance with the King’s desires, pronounced Duke Murdoch and another son guilty, although the crimes for which they suffered have not been brought to light. Doubtless James believed that the lawless state in which he found his kingdom was due to the misgovernment of the Albanys, and he may have thought that the Regents did not sufficiently exert themselves to procure for him an earlier release. The prospect of acquiring the estates of his kinsmen may also have influenced James. At any rate, the blood-stained Heading Hill witnessed the deaths of the father and the brother of its previous sufferer, as well as that of Albany’s father-in-law, the aged Earl of Lennox. Sir John Kennedy, a nephew of the King, was, a few years later, imprisoned in Stirling Castle.[25]

It is little wonder that the pitiless policy of James stirred up feelings of revenge amongst the nobles. His relatives were not the only prominent persons who felt their sovereign’s severity. Sir Robert Graham, who had once been imprisoned by the King, and whose nephew had been deprived of the Earldom of Strathearn, resolved to rid Scotland of her rigorous ruler. The assassination took place at Perth; but Graham was captured and brought to Stirling, where he was cruelly tortured to death. He felt sure he would be looked upon as a national deliverer; but neither his own contemporaries nor later generations so considered him, for the Poet-King, in spite of his heartless repressive measures, has always been a popular hero in Scotland.

The boy King, James II., was crowned in Holyrood Abbey, and some time afterwards was brought by the Queen-Mother to Stirling Castle, which was at that time in the charge of Sir Alexander Livingstone of Callendar. The marriage of the Queen in 1439 to Sir James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorne, gave Livingstone a pretext for taking over the guardianship of the royal child. Compelling Queen Jane to keep within the walls of her own chamber, he threw her husband and his brother into prison; after which an irregular Parliament acknowledged his right to the custody of the King. At the same time, the Queen made over to Livingstone her right to the tenure of Stirling Castle. Sir William Crichton, the Chancellor, however, envious of his rival’s power, determined to take possession of young James. Accompanied by a troop of horsemen, he secretly left Edinburgh with the intention of kidnapping the King as he took his exercise in the Royal Park. The enterprise was successful; for early one morning the boy was surrounded by a body of armed men, and was straightway carried to Edinburgh Castle, of which fortress Crichton was governor.

This James of the Fiery Face--so called because of a dark red mark on his cheek--made Stirling Castle a dower-house for his Queen, Mary, daughter of the Duke of Gueldres. In 1449, the year of the King’s marriage, a knightly tournament was held in the level ground to the south of the castle, the combatants being two Burgundian knights, Jacques and Simon de Lalain, with a squire called Meriadet, and three Scottish champions, James, brother to the Earl of Douglas, James, brother to Douglas of Lochleven, and John Ross of Halket. The six warriors were entertained by the King before the jousting took place, and on the appointed day they appeared before James as he sat in his pavilion, and received from him the order of knighthood. The nobles of Scotland flocked to Stirling to witness the encounter, which was to be fought to the death or until the King should command the combatants to desist.

After trumpets had been sounded and proclamations had been made, the warriors eagerly advanced to the contest. The Earl of Douglas’s brother and Jacques de Lalain managed to disarm each other and so continued the fight by wrestling; Simon de Lalain’s coolness of head enabled him eventually to obtain a slight advantage over the Laird of Halket; the Lochleven Douglas, though twice struck to the ground, persistently returned to the attack, but was hardly able to hold his own with the skilful Meriadet. When at last the King threw down his truncheon as a signal for the conflict to cease, the marshals of the field laid hold of the struggling champions and compelled them to disengage. Neither side could claim a decisive victory, though the advantage, on the whole, lay with the foreign knights. King James, however, praised the valour of each individual, and before the Burgundians returned to their own country, he entertained them sumptuously in Stirling Castle and loaded them with gifts.

If the feats of arms of the Douglases brought honour to the chivalry of Scotland, their insatiable ambition was a danger to the King and gave rise to the evils of civil war. Earl William’s vast estates--increased by his marriage with the Fair Maid of Galloway--and his descent from King Robert II., led him to consider himself the equal of his sovereign, and tempted him to plot against the throne. James was at this time doing his utmost to make himself master in his own realm. He had already imprisoned Sir Alexander Livingstone and his sons, and had given to Sir William Crichton the keepership of Stirling Castle. The conspiracy of Douglas is a somewhat mysterious affair. His loyalty had been questioned, but in the beginning of 1452 he seems to have been on friendly footing with James. There was, however, a rumour that Earl William had formed a plan of rebellion in conjunction with the Earl of Ross and the Tiger Earl of Crawford. Hoping to persuade his mighty subject to abandon his treasonable designs, James invited him to visit Stirling Castle and sent him a letter of safe-conduct under the privy seal. Douglas accordingly presented himself to his sovereign, and as the interview was marked by mutual goodwill, the Earl was asked to dine and sup with the King on the following day. At their second meeting all went well till after the evening meal, when James ventured to broach the subject of the Ross and Crawford league. Douglas’s obstinate refusal to break the band roused the royal wrath to such a pitch, that, exclaiming, “False traitor, if you will not I shall,” the King twice plunged his knife into Earl William’s body. Sir Patrick Gray, Sir Alexander Boyd, Stewart of Darnley and other courtiers soon dispatched the helpless noble, and having finished the work of butchery, rudely flung the corpse out of the window.

James’s hasty deed was a blunder as well as a crime. He had great provocation, it is true, but even if he had not pledged his word that Douglas should be safe, he had no right to slay him without a fair trial. His act gave excuse to the slaughtered man’s family to rise against their King, and thus he fomented the civil strife which he was so anxious to suppress. After the lapse of several weeks, James, the new Earl--he that had fought in the tournament with the knights of Burgundy--accompanied by his brother, the Earl of Ormond, and by Lord Hamilton, rode to Stirling with six hundred men to defy the King of Scots. After exhibiting in public the letter of safe-conduct and dragging it at a horse’s tail through the principal streets, they showed their open disregard for their sovereign by plundering and burning the town. James’s throne was at this time in considerable danger. Public sympathy was to some extent with the Douglases. A three years’ struggle ensued, in which the King gradually strengthened his position, till the Douglases were crushed in 1455 at the battle of Arkinholm in Eskdale.

Stirling Castle was the birthplace of James II.’s son and successor in 1451. Eight years later the bursting of a cannon killed the father at Roxburgh, so that Scotland had again the misfortune to be under a minor King. Many of James III.’s early days were spent in royal Snowdon, the residence that soon became his favourite dwelling-place. Lindsay of Pitscottie remarks that “he took such pleasure to dwell there that he left all other castles and towns in Scotland, because he thought it most pleasantest dwelling there.” When Margaret of Denmark, in 1469, married James III., she received the castle as a portion of her dower, and within its gates she breathed her last, two years before the death of her husband. It was at Stirling that James entertained his low-born favourites: Cochrane, the architect; Rogers, the musician; Andrews, the astrologer; Hommyl, the tailor; and others. From the towers of the fortress he studied the stars, anxious to know what the future held in store. A King devoted to music, arts and science, but disliking war and manly sports, was not a monarch suited to fifteenth century Scotland. James’s brothers, Albany and Mar, would have made better rulers. It was long, however, before the smouldering discontent in the country burst into the fire of rebellion.

King James III. wrought many improvements at the castle. The Parliament Hall, which is still in existence, dates from his reign, and was probably designed by Cochrane. A new chapel was built at this time, and the King intended to make it a collegiate church, but its erection to that dignity did not take place till his son had been some years upon the throne. His interest in the welfare of the Chapel Royal was the occasion, though not the main cause of James’s fall. He endeavoured to attach to it the revenues of Coldingham Priory, a religious house in the Merse, in the country of the Homes and Hepburns. Patrick and James Home, however, had already annexed the funds, which they considered were their due, and they determined to resist an encroachment on their rights. The alliance of the Hepburns with the Homes was the beginning of the insurrection that soon spread far and wide, involving among other lords the Earls of Angus and Argyll.

The King at once made preparations for the struggle. Having placed his son, the Duke of Rothesay, in Stirling Castle, under the care of Shaw of Sauchie, he journeyed to the north to raise the subjects whom he knew to be loyally disposed. During the King’s absence the rebels secured the person of the heir-apparent, who was treacherously handed over by the fickle Shaw. James returned south with a large army to meet the insurgents at Blackness, where a skirmish and a subsequent pacification took place. Hostilities, however, broke out afresh. The King was refused admittance to Stirling Castle, and the rebel army was advancing from Falkirk. A battle called Sauchieburn or the Field of Stirling was fought near Bannockburn, on June 11th, 1488, in which the charges of the Border spears eventually drove the King’s Highlanders from the field, and during the flight the unhappy monarch was overtaken and slain. His body was buried near the High Altar in the Abbey of Cambuskenneth, where his Queen Consort, Margaret of Denmark, had not long before been interred. The engagement at Sauchieburn is interesting as being the only occasion in Scottish history in which Highlanders and Borderers were opponents on the field of battle.

The rebel Duke of Rothesay, a lad in his sixteenth year, mounted the throne as King James IV. in his luckless father’s room. Soon after his accession he visited Stirling Castle and there expressed contrition for his part in the late insurrection, but a few months later he gave the keeping of the fortress to the traitor, Shaw of Sauchie. All through his later life, however, James IV. felt remorse for his conduct towards his father, and he often retired from Holyrood to Stirling when fits of depression were upon him.

Yet, subject as he was to sudden changes of mood, James could turn quickly from fasting and praying to the pleasures of society and the excitement of the chase; indeed, his reign was probably the gayest period in Stirling Castle’s history. The King’s genial nature broke through the gloom of remorse and gave mirth and gladness to a brilliant Court. The affairs of state having been transacted, the days were often spent in hawking expeditions, or in tilting matches, in which foreign knights sometimes took part, while the evenings were passed in playing cards and in listening to performances given by the royal minstrels on various musical instruments. James’s expeditions in pursuit of the deer were not confined to the Royal Park. He often set out with a large retinue from Stirling to enjoy his sport in the neighbouring Highlands, and on those occasions tents were taken for the accommodation of the King and his nobles.[26] After one of those excursions, more than three hundred men were paid for having assisted James and his suite in their hunting in the forest of Glenartney.[27]

In 1496 the King’s mistress, Margaret, daughter of John, Lord Drummond, resided for some months in Stirling Castle before being sent to Linlithgow.[28] James seems to have wished to have married this lady, but many of the leading nobles envied the power of the Drummonds, and the King saw what trouble would arise if he were to raise another member of the family to the throne; for David II. and Robert III. had both wedded daughters of that house. In 1502 Margaret and her two sisters fell suddenly ill, and died at Drummond Castle, but whether poison was administered at the instigation of envious nobles or not has never been ascertained. The three sisters were interred in Dunblane Cathedral, where, at the King’s command, masses were said regularly for the welfare of Margaret’s soul.

Great improvements were carried out both within and without the castle during the reign of James IV. The main gateway, much of which is still standing, was erected in the first decade of the sixteenth century. Other buildings were enlarged during the same period, while plasterers, painters, glaziers and wrights were in almost constant employment. Towards the end of the fifteenth century part of the low ground below the castle rock was converted into a garden, which soon was stocked with vines and fruit trees, as well as flowers and vegetables. In the June of 1508 the gardener of Stirling travelled twice to Holyrood with strawberries for the King.

James IV. was often at Stirling when ambassadors and other foreign visitors sought his presence, but the most famous alien who was received within the castle was the impostor, Perkin Warbeck. He arrived in Scotland in 1495, and was welcomed with great magnificence at Court as the son of Edward IV. The nobles, like their sovereign, received him with favour, Huntly actually, at James’s request, bestowing the hand of his daughter upon him. A pension of £1200 a year was given to the princely visitor, whose clever acting completely deceived the generous King of Scots. James made war on England, mainly for Perkin’s sake, in 1496 and the following year, but the impostor and the King of Scots eventually became estranged, and Warbeck set sail from Ayr in July, 1497.

The King carried out his father’s wish regarding the raising of the Chapel Royal to the position of a collegiate church. In 1503 Parliament confirmed the appropriation of the rents of various lands and churches in the King’s patronage for the support of the increased staff of clergy in the castle. Next year Pope Julius II. appointed the Bishop of Whithorn or Galloway Dean of the Chapel Royal, thus uniting the new collegiate church with the southern See of St. Ninian.

The clans of the west had troubled James IV. for many years, but before the end of his reign the defiant chiefs were subdued. The turbulent West Highlander, Donald Dubh, son of Angus of the Isles, having been captured by the Earl of Huntly, was imprisoned in Stirling Castle in 1506, before being removed to Edinburgh. He was probably one of the “Erschmen” mentioned in the Lord High Treasurer’s Accounts as having been conducted by Andrew Aytoun “fra Striviling to Edinburgh,” although the payment for clothes provided for Donald seems to have been long in reaching Aytoun’s hands.

In 1507 an experiment, more foolish than interesting, was made at Stirling Castle in the presence of James IV. and his nobles. John Damian, a foreigner, known as the French Leech, had wormed his way by various arts into the King’s favour. The alchemical investigations which he carried on at Stirling and elsewhere led James to reward his labours by appointing him Abbot of Tungland, in Galloway. Feeling that he was losing his place in the royal favour, however, Damian determined to reinstate himself by means of a hazardous enterprise. Announcing that with a pair of wings of his own making he would fly from the battlements of Stirling Castle and be in France before the King’s ambassadors, he convoked a large assembly to witness his bold adventure. He sprang into the air, but fell at once to the ground, and was fortunate in escaping with no greater injury than the fracture of a leg. The jeers of the disappointed multitude caused the Abbot more pain than did the broken limb; but the King, ever fascinated by the foreigner’s fatuous practices, received him again at Court. This incident is the subject of Dunbar’s satirical poem called the “Ballad of the Fenzeit Freir of Tungland.”

The brightness of the Court at Stirling was clouded by the shadow of approaching Flodden. Revels were interrupted by visits of ambassadors; the King was unable to cast care aside. Nicholas West, the envoy of Henry VIII., held several interviews with James in the castle in April, 1513. West did his utmost to induce the Scottish monarch to abandon the league with France. He was unwilling to leave James without extracting a promise that no invasion of England would take place when Henry crossed the Channel. The King of Scots stood firm, however, and would not agree to desert his old ally, so the disappointed and angry ambassador departed from Scotland, hating the people and being hated in return. Not many months later James lay dead on Flodden Field, and the nation suffered a blow from which it did not completely recover until its existence as a separate state had ceased.