(Drawn from Sketch by Mr. R. B. Armstrong.)
In 1543 Queen Mary, as a child, found refuge here along with her mother after the battle of Pinkie, and she stayed here for some months until a favourable opportunity was found for sending her to France. Dr. John Brown has pointed out that amongst other interesting and suggestive relics in the garden may still be seen what seems to have been the young queen’s miniature or child’s garden—a small flower plot, the boxwood edging of which has now grown up into a thick shrubbery.
Fig. 542.—Inchmahome Priory. Monument of Fifth Earl of Menteith.
(Drawn from Sketch by Mr. R. B. Armstrong.)
At the south side of the island there is a high mound, called the “Nun’s Walk,” about which a romantic and tragic tale is told. This may, however, have been an artificial mote or mound, raised for the purpose of receiving an early wooden castle on its summit. There is a similar mound close to Lincluden College, Dumfriesshire.
ELGIN CATHEDRAL, Morayshire.
This once noble edifice, of which even the remaining fragments are amongst our finest examples of mediæval architecture, stands in the fertile plain of Moray, in the centre of the region which borders the Moray Firth, and is remarkable for the pleasantness and salubrity of its climate. This province was long a subject of contest between the Scottish kings and the Mormaers of Moray. The latter were defeated by Alexander I., and more permanently subdued by David I., who both proceeded to carry out the ecclesiastical policy of their family by founding in this newly-acquired land various religious establishments.
The priory of Urquhart, of which now not a stone remains, was established by David I., near the mouth of the Lossie, in 1125, for Benedictines from Dunfermline; and the abbey of Kinloss, near the Findhorn, was founded, in 1150, for Cistercians from Melrose. The churches of Birnie, Spynie, and Kineddar also come into notice about this period.