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 slopes 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...