When the ship received the name of the Castle, these words also were adopted as its motto.
Dunottar Castle in olden time—from an old print.
Dunottar was besieged by the gallant Marquis of Montrose during the great Rebellion, the Earl Marischal of that time having been a Covenanter (1645). Montrose offered him fair terms if he would capitulate, but the Covenanting clergymen who had taken refuge within the Castle overruled him, as their kind overruled David Leslie at Dunbar; and he was not allowed to surrender. Thereupon the Marquis subjected the surrounding property to military execution, to the great dismay of the Earl, when he saw flames and smoke rising from his houses, and notwithstanding the assurance of Andrew Cant (ominous name) ‘that the reek would be a sweet-smelling incense in the nostrils of the Lord.’ Evacuation followed as a matter of course.
When Charles II. visited Scotland in 1650, he was entertained in Dunottar Castle by the seventh Earl Marischal. In the following year, when the English Parliamentary army overran Scotland, the Scottish Estates deposited the Regalia in Dunottar Castle, then deemed the strongest place in the kingdom, and George Ogilvy of Barras was appointed Lieutenant-Governor. It was besieged by Cromwell’s army, and Ogilvy held out until famine rendered his troops mutinous, whereupon he surrendered. Before he did so, however, the Regalia had been cleverly removed by Mrs. Granger, the wife of the minister of Kinneff—a village on the coast, four miles farther south. Having obtained the permission of the English commandant to visit her friend Mrs. Ogilvy, the Lieutenant-Governor’s wife, Mrs. Granger, carried with her, on leaving the Castle, a bundle of clothes, in which the Crown was imbedded, and also a huge distaff covered with lint, which was in fact formed of the Sceptre and the Sword of State.
The same night, the precious treasures were buried by the minister himself under the flags of his church at Kinneff; and there they remained till after the Restoration of 1660, when they were unearthed, and were presented to Charles II. by the same George Ogilvy who had formerly been Commander of the Castle. Ogilvy’s only reward was the title of Baronet, and a new coat of arms. The minister and his wife received no reward—not even thanks. Sir John Keith, the brother of the Earl Marischal, was made Earl of Kintore in 1677, and was the ancestor of the present Earl, who is the tenth to hold the dignity.
After its surrender to Cromwell, the Castle was partially dismantled and reduced to ruins. What remained of it was, like the Bass Rock, used as a State prison for the Covenanters during the persecutions under Charles II. and the Duke of York. One hundred and sixty-seven men and women were imprisoned at one time in its ‘Whig’s Vault,’ or Black Hole, and nine of them speedily died of suffocation. Driven to despair, some twenty-five of them one night crept out of a window and along the face of the cliff, in the hope of effecting their escape. Two of these daring men fell over the rock and were killed. The others were captured, and were subjected to terrible cruelties.
A few years after the forfeiture already referred to, the Castle was sold, and was completely dismantled. It was subsequently repurchased by the Keith family; and it passed finally into the hands of Sir Alexander Keith, Writer, Edinburgh, whose grandson, Sir Patrick Keith Murray of Ochtertyre, sold it in 1875 to Mr. Innes of Cowie, near Stonehaven.
Having studied the Castle and its surroundings long enough to deepen our impressions of it, we got up steam again, and went on our way past Bervie, with its outstanding Craig-David; past Montrose, stretched over a level site; past Arbroath, with its tall chimneys, its spires, and its ancient Abbey,—all seen in the dim distance, and reposing peacefully in the Sabbath calm.
