And so Queen Margaret made her last journey from Edinburgh Castle across the Forth by ferry to Dunfermline, to the Abbey she had built, where, a century and a half later, silver lamps were kindled on her tomb, for she had been canonised by Pope Innocent IV. Of the group of children who helped to carry their mother’s coffin down through the mist that day, four of the five sons were Kings of Scotland in their turn, and one of the two daughters became a Queen of England.
The Castle was always a safe royal residence; and, though the Scottish Kings had palaces and castles elsewhere, they all lived from time to time in this Castle of Edinburgh. Also, because of its impregnable strength, it was used as a place of safety in which to stow away such things as monks and nuns, political
Immediately beneath the Half-Moon Battery is the entrance to the Castle. To the extreme right of the picture on the north side of the Esplanade shows a bronze statue of the Duke of York, whilst the Celtic cross in its foreground was erected to the memory of the 78th Highlanders, behind which is the Forewall Battery. Men of the Black Watch in khaki occupy the south side of the Esplanade, with a drummer in the foreground.
prisoners, royal brides-elect, young widowed queens, and the coveted persons of infant princes. Scottish sovereigns, especially in the Stuart days, seldom died peaceful deaths; and so there were generally left a youthful queen-widow and a little crowned boy chafing under a long minority in the Castle. Weary days must all these semi-prisoners have spent there, looking out over wooded and hilly country to the Forth.
One such fretted treasure kept in the Castle was Margaret, the daughter of Henry III. of England, when she was betrothed to Alexander III. The King was only ten years old when he married her at York; so the little Queen could not have been very aged, and she complained in letters to her father of the sad and solitary place she was kept in, and that it was “without verdure,” and, “by reason of its vicinity to the sea, unwholesome.”