HOLYROOD PALACE.
But, once across the Girth, one becomes, not a sanctuarian, but a Stewart.
The situation is a little dreary, a little flat. And the palace, as a palace, is altogether uninteresting to look on. It is not the building of David or of the earlier Stewarts. But of that Merry Monarch who harboured so long in France, when England was determining whether it would be royal or republican, and Scotland was determining whether it would be covenanted or uncovenanted. The Merry Monarch was ever an uncovenanted person, not at all Scottish, although somewhat like the errant James—whose errancy was of his own choosing. Charles had acquired a French taste at the court of his cousin, Louis the Grand. So the new Holyrood was built in French baronial style. And no monarch has ever cared to inhabit it for any length of time. Only King Edward VII, who would have been a happy successor to James, but Edward was very studious in those days of 1859, when he lodged here and studied under the direction of the Rector of the Royal High School. Still I can but think that it was in this Stewart place that Edward developed his Stewartship.
There is not a stone to speak of the magnificence, of the strength, of David. The Abbey was burned and burned again, by Edward and Richard the Second, and entirely rebuilt when the Stewarts were beginning to be splendid and assured. Over the west doorway, high-arched and deep-recessed, early English in its technique, Charles I, who was crowned here in 1633, caused the stone to be placed.
"He shall build ane House for my name and I will stablish the throne of his kingdom forever."
The tablet still stands above the doorway. But Charles is lying for his sins in a vault at St. George's chapel at Windsor far in the south, having paid his penalty on the scaffold in Whitehall. And the House is in ruins, "bare ruined choir," where not even "the late birds sing." Although Mendelssohn in speaking of the impression the Abbey made on him, does say, "I think I found there the beginnings of my Scotch symphony."
This "magnificent Abbey-Kirk of Halirude" was no doubt very splendid; although in architectural beauty it cannot compare with Melrose, not even the great east window with its rich quatrefoil tracing. But what scenes have been staged in that historic drama, that theatrical piece, we call the history of the Stewarts!
Before the high altar, under that east window, when James I was kneeling before God in prayer, there appeared the Lord of the Isles, come repentant from burning Inverness and other rebellion, to kneel before the king, his own sword pointed at his breast.
Before this altar James II was married to Mary of Gueldres. James III was married to Margaret of Denmark, who brought the Orkneys as her dower. James IV was married to Margaret Tudor, the union of the "Thistle and the Rose." James V was not married here, he went to France for his frail bride, Magdalene, who lived but seven weeks in this inhospitable land, this hospitable Holyrood. She was buried in Holyrood chapel, only to be dug up and tossed about as common clay when the Edinburgh citizens made football of royal skulls.