In the days of Wallace, and of Bruce and Balliol, Edinburgh Castle was the scene of many a fight and many a siege. Edward I. of England, whose name must ever be a black one in Scotland, garrisoned the Castle with English soldiers and took away all the documents of national interest to the Tower of London; and he also stole Queen Margaret’s Black Rood of Scotland; and it was in Queen Margaret’s own little oratory that he received the enforced oaths of fealty from a small band of five Scottish clergy, among them the Abbot of Holyrood, and a Prioress. Sir William Wallace recaptured the Castle, and the English took it again; and then comes a romantic incident of the days of Bruce. The Bruce had entrusted the retaking of Edinburgh Castle to Sir Thomas Randolph of Strathdon. Among Randolph’s soldiers was one named Frank, who, long before this, when he had been stationed at the Castle, had found out a way of getting up and down the Castle Rock in order to visit a sweetheart who lived in the town below. Frank undertook to lead a small body of men up the perilous path he had so often traversed alone. Randolph consented; and, one dark and stormy night in March 1314,—March has ever been a fateful month in Scottish history,—when the howling wind and lashing rain would help to cover the sounds of stealthy climbing, thirty men crept after Frank up the precipitous cliffs, the walls were silently scaled, the English garrison was overpowered, and Edinburgh Castle was once more in the hands of Scots. Randolph, to prevent further fighting, dismantled the whole place; and for twenty-four years the proud old fortress stood silent and deserted,—neither clash of arms nor call of bugle, neither shout of command nor shriek of dying,—only the rain and the sunshine, day after day, high above the city. But this was not to last; and, after all the English garrisons had been driven out, Edinburgh became the favourite residence of David II., the Castle was refortified, and “David’s Tower” built, in which King David II., the last of the Bruce line, died. Since then, no king has died in Edinburgh,—though in Edinburgh many a king has been born and many a king has been married.
When Henry IV. of England besieged the Castle, the young Duke of Rothesay, eldest son of Robert III., was in command,—that gallant and fascinating and profligate prince who was afterwards, tradition and Sir Walter both aver, starved to death at Falkland. From the Castle he looked down on the hated English hosts, and the story is that he sent a challenge to Henry to meet him in mortal combat, with a hundred men of good blood on either side. Although it was the month of August, the invaders had been troubled with excessive rain and cold. The climate of Edinburgh had risen to the occasion; and the chilly Plantagenet on the plain sent a verbal message to the hot Stuart on the height, and hurried home amid dripping banners and rusty lances.
The first of the royal Stuart widows who watched over a baby king in the Castle was Queen Jane,—that gentle consort of the poet King James I., who had seen her first from the window of his English prison, as she walked in the gardens of Windsor.
And therewith cast I down mine eyes again
Where as I saw, walking under the Tower
Full secretly, new comen her to playn,
The fairest and the freshest youngé flower
That ever I saw, methought, before that hour:
For which sudden abate anon astart
The blood of all my body to my heart....
King James had married Jane Beaufort in London at St. Mary Overie,[1] and had brought her back to Scotland with him as his Queen. Thirteen years later he was assassinated in her presence at Perth. It was to Edinburgh Castle that she fled with her little son for safety after the tragedy. But “Fair and false and fickle is the South”; and, less than a year after the murder of the poet King, his “fairest and freshest youngé flower” married Sir John Stuart, the Black Knight of Lorn, and so passed out of view, leaving her little son to be wrangled over by the great rival barons of Scotland.
And now there took place in the Castle one of the most tragic scenes ever enacted there,—the “Black Dinner.” The old Earl of Douglas, head of the great house of Douglas—ever in the history of Scotland struggling for supremacy with the royal house of Stuart—died, and was succeeded by his son, a youth of seventeen. When the young earl surpassed the King in the splendour of his state, and rode out with a retinue of two thousand lances, and sent ambassadors to the Court of France, the ten-year-old King “admired his bold and haughty ways”; but the King’s guardians thought it time to interfere. On the 24th of November 1440 the Earl of Douglas and his only brother and their old adviser, Sir Malcolm Fleming of Cumbernauld, were invited to a banquet at Edinburgh Castle, and their retinue were excluded. Whilst they feasted with the boy King and the Court, suddenly a black bull’s head was set before them. The warlike young Douglases instantly recognised and understood the ancient Scottish symbol of the death-doom, and sprang up, drawing their swords, but were overpowered by armed men, the poor little King being powerless to save them. After a form of trial for treason, the two brothers and Sir Malcolm Fleming were executed on the Castle Hill.
Edinburgh Castle, towne and toure,
God grant thou sink for sinne!
And that even for the black dinoir
Erl Douglas gat therin.
Another story of the Castle is that of the escape of the Duke of Albany, the brother of James III. Albany, imprisoned in the Castle on suspicion of treason, was to die next day. But Albany was twenty years old and full of life and daring; he had a faithful “chalmer chield”[2] in the Castle with him, and he had a strong castle at Dunbar, and knew he would be safe could he reach it. What more was needed? Just what was brought to him concealed within two flasks of French wine—a rope, and an unsigned message that a vessel lay awaiting him in the roads of Leith. The Captain of the Guard and three soldiers were invited to taste the French wine, and “the fire was hett and the wine was strong.” At a late hour Albany “lap from the board and stak the captain with ain whinger.” The drunken soldiers were then despatched, and Albany stole out and knotted the rope over two hundred feet of jagged cliff. The Groom of the Chamber went down first; but the rope was too short, and he fell. The young Duke returned from the cool night air to the hot scene of the butchery, and brought sheets to lengthen the rope. When he reached the bottom of the Castle Rock, this young Stuart who had just killed four men, and who was doomed to death next day, would not forsake a “chalmer chield” with a broken thigh-bone, but carried him on his shoulder the two perilous miles to Leith and safety.
And there to-day stands the Castle, so grim and old and full of memories; but down that northern cliff dangles no rope, and the two miles between the Castle and Leith are two miles of busy, crowded streets.
A few years later, James III. was himself a prisoner in the Castle; and, by a strange irony of fate, it was this same brother, the Duke of Albany, who helped him to escape,—not in the same picturesque fashion he had adopted in his own case, for this time it was the provost and citizens who assisted in place of one “chalmer chield.” For their loyalty, the provost was rewarded with the “Golden Charter,” giving the city magistrates right of Sheriffdom within burgh, and the citizens received their “Banner of Blue,” embroidered by the Queen and her women.