JAMES IV.’S GATEWAY (WHERE MARGARET TUDOR DEFIED THE COMMISSIONERS).
The defiance of his authority brought Albany with an armed force from Edinburgh. The Queen, therefore, realising the hopelessness of the situation, led the boy King to the gate, and made him with his own hands deliver the keys of the castle to the Duke. The Regent garrisoned the fortress with one hundred and forty men, and gave the charge of it, with the custody of the princes, to the Earl Marischal and Lords Fleming and Borthwick.[29] Queen Margaret, after a brief stay in Edinburgh, returned to her native land, but finding it impossible to relinquish Scottish politics, she recrossed the Border in 1517. Her most memorable residence in Stirling Castle after her reappearance was during the winter of 1522–3, when an attack of smallpox injured her beauty and nearly put an end to her inglorious career.
In 1522 the boy James V. was placed under the care of Lord Erskine, who at the same time received the appointment of keeper of Stirling Castle. Strict precautions were taken to prevent the young monarch from being seized and carried off like his great-grandfather, James II. Twenty footmen were commissioned to be the nightly watch, taking turn by fours to guard the door of the royal chamber; and when the King rode out to the park he was to be preceded by six or eight horsemen and accompanied by a bodyguard. Only in “right fair and soft weather” was James to be allowed to take his sport.[30]
The King was thought to be old enough in 1524 to do without Lord Erskine’s guidance. Margaret, consequently, took her son from Stirling to Edinburgh, where the nobles acknowledged the lad as an independent sovereign. His enjoyment of freedom did not last long, however, for in 1525 the Earl of Angus asserted himself, and by obtaining possession of the person of the King ruled the country for several years in his own and the English monarch’s interests. Two unsuccessful attempts were made to rescue James from the Douglases’ guardianship, but in 1528 he escaped to Stirling Castle by night, most probably from Falkland, as Pitscottie has it, although some have thought that the flight must have been from Edinburgh. The ambitious family was now to suffer for its insolent treatment of the King. Sentence of forfeiture was passed on the leading members of the house, and although Angus was for some time able to set his sovereign at defiance, he was at length compelled to retire for safety to England.
Archibald of Kilspindie was a Douglas who suffered banishment when his kinsmen fell into disgrace. Tiring of an exile’s life in England, however, he resolved to throw himself on James’s clemency. In 1534, accordingly, he made his way to Stirling, where he waited in the Royal Park as the King was returning from the chase. The monarch recognised the powerful figure of his old acquaintance, but did not stop to favour him with so much as a look of acknowledgment. Kilspindie ran by the side of the King, keeping pace with the horse up the hill towards the castle, but when they came to the entrance James rode straight on, leaving the breathless Douglas at the gate. The unhappy man’s desire to spend his remaining years in Scotland was not fulfilled, for the King first sent him to Leith with Robert Barton, and afterwards commanded him to cross the sea to France.[31]
As in the previous reign, a distinguished ambassador from Henry VIII. visited the Court at Stirling. The messenger on this occasion was Lord William Howard, whose purpose in 1536 was to induce the Scottish King to meet his royal uncle in England. James’s excuses seemed to irritate the English envoy, whose audacity and plainness of speech amounted almost to discourtesy. The King, at any rate, warned by his Council, would not promise to accede to Henry’s wish; for his capture or some such calamitous occurrence was an event to be expected from the treacherous Tudor monarch.
Mary of Guise, James’s second wife, as she journeyed from Fife to Edinburgh soon after her landing at Crail, crossed the Forth at Stirling, and beheld for the first time the towers of the castle in which she was afterwards to spend so many days. At this date the building known as the Palace was probably not completed, but nearly a year later, in the spring of 1539, when James V. came with his jousting gear to Stirling, he and his Consort may have lodged in the Renaissance addition, although it was still unfinished in 1541. The daughter of the first Duke of Guise took kindly to her adopted country and its people, and although in the years of her Regency, while Mary, her child, was in France, she underestimated the strength of the Reformation movement, and ruled mainly in the interests of her ambitious brothers, she nevertheless became a Scotswoman in sympathy, and learned to converse in the northern tongue as fluently as in French.
It was in James V.’s reign that the Reformation movement made itself manifest in Scotland. The King, not without hesitation, kept true to the Church of Rome, but his subjects were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the ecclesiastical situation. Amongst the clergy themselves heretical doctrines were rapidly finding favour. Towards the close of James’s life a Friar named Kyllour, or Keillor, set forth Christ’s Crucifixion in the form of a play, and attracted large crowds at Stirling. One Good Friday morning the King was present at a performance held not far from the castle, and although the Friar’s earnestness roused the wrath of the greater part of the audience against the bishops, and provoked at the same time the indignation of such priests as were present, James retired to his palace at the end of the display without showing whether his sympathies lay on the side of Friar Keillor or on that of the orthodox clergy.[32]
Many tales of James V.’s adventures in disguise must at one time have been current in the neighbourhood of Stirling, but unfortunately most of them have passed beyond recall. One story concerning the Gudeman of Ballengeich runs, however, as follows: Once when the Court was in residence at Stirling Buchanan of Arnprior commanded a carrier, who was journeying from the Lennox with commodities for the royal household, to leave him the entire load, for which a just price would be given. On the servant’s refusing to obey this order Buchanan boldly took possession of the goods, telling the carrier that James might be King in Scotland but that Arnprior was King in Kippen. A day or two later His Majesty rode with one or two attendants to Buchanan’s house in Kippen. James was refused admittance by a tall man bearing a battleaxe, who announced that the laird was at dinner, and would not be disturbed at his meal. A second time the disguised monarch demanded access to the house, and again he was denied entrance, but at length he persuaded the porter to carry in a message to the effect that the Gudeman o’ Ballengeich was desirous of an interview with the King of Kippen. Arnprior at once guessed the truth, and coming out humbly to the King, begged him to enter and grace his subject’s board. So well was James entertained that, before returning home, he requested Buchanan to take in future such provision as he should need from any royal carrier passing his door; also he invited the King of Kippen to return the unexpected visit by riding to Stirling Castle to see his neighbour, the King of Scots.