Across a natural moat of great depth, on a cliff crag, stands the castle. The road picks its way down perilously; only a mule path, and that precipitous. Then it crosses the dry bed where once may have hung a draw bridge, and, entering through a portcullis, it climbs to the castle, through a winding, tortuous way, sometimes a climb, sometimes a flight of steps, sometimes open to the sky but ramped sternly on either side, sometimes through stone canyons; a place impossible to surprise. Finally you reach the top, the sky.
The top is three acres large.
Far back, no doubt in Culdee times, a church stood there. Because churches must be sanctuary they took the high places; otherwise why should one lift prayer to God when the mad sea was continually contradicting the faith?
Sir William Keith, being a warrior with a warrior's eye, looked on the place, found it strategically good, and built a tower thereon. He was excommunicated by the Bishop of St. Andrew's—who did not anticipate the Lords of the Congregation and the Covenanters. Sir William appealed to Rome. Rome ordered the ban removed. And ordered Sir William to build a church on the mainland, beyond the protestantism of the waves.
It began its war history early. In 1297 four thousand English took refuge here to escape Wallace. Nothing daunted, Wallace scaled the cliff, entered a window—the proof is there in the window—opened the gate, let in his men, and slaughtered the four thousand.
Edward III took it, and Montrose besieged it.
Then it swung back into loyal legal possession, and experienced a bit of history worth the telling. In 1652—Montrose had been dead two years—the Countess Dowager had taken into safe keeping the regalia of Scotland. The castle was besieged by those who had killed their king and would destroy the king's insignia. If the castle should fall the very symbol of the king's royalty would be melted, as Cromwell melted the regalia of England. The defense was not strong. At any moment it might be forced to surrender. But the regalia must be saved.
So the Lady Keith plotted. It was a woman's plot—always there is the woman in Jacobitism. The wife of the minister at Kinneff paid a visit to the wife of the governor of Dunnottar; Mrs. Grainger called on Mrs. Ogilvie. She had been "shopping" in Stonehaven, and was returning to Kinneff five miles down the sea. When Mrs. Grainger left the castle she carried with her the crown of Scotland. Sitting on her horse she made her way through the besieging lines, and her maid followed with the scepter of Scotland and the sword in a bag on her back. The English besiegers showed every courtesy to the harmless woman—and to the Honours of Scotland. Mrs. Grainger carefully buried the treasure beneath the paving of Kinneff church, and not until her death did she betray their hiding place to her husband.
Meanwhile Lady Keith sent her son Sir John to France. A little boat escaping in the night carried him to the French vessel lying off shore, and the Lady sent forth the rumour that Sir John had carried the regalia to the King o'er the water, to Charles II at Paris. It was after the Restoration that the aureate earth at Kinneff was dug up. The women had saved the Scottish crown for the rightful lawful king.
A dark chapter runs a quarter of a century later. The castle was still loyal. In truth it was always loyal except in brief usurpations, as all this corner of Scotland was loyal and royal and Jacobite. In 1675 in "Whig's Vault" there lodged one hundred and sixty-seven Covenanters as prisoners, and they lodged badly. Many died, a few escaped, the rest were sold as slaves. Coming on ship to New Jersey as the property of Scott of Pitlochry, Scott and his wife died and almost all the covenanting slaves. Only a few saw the plantations of the New World, and could resume the worship of their God. The story of Dunnottar is dark. The castle looks the dark part it played.