Stirling Castle, its place in Scottish history

by Eric Stair-Kerr

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.