EDINBURGH CASTLE

In 1093 Queen Margaret wife of Malcolm III was seriously ill in Edinburgh Castle. She was brought the news that her husband had been killed at Alnwick in Northumberland. Broken-hearted, she too died. Husband and wife were buried side by side in the church at Dunfermline. Queen Margaret was made a saint by Pope Innocent IV in 1250. A tiny chapel, built on the summit of the castle rock in the early twelfth century, is dedicated to her memory and is the oldest building in Edinburgh Castle. In 1296 Edward I of England invaded Scotland. He besieged and captured Edinburgh Castle.

On the night of 14 March 1314, Sir Thomas Randolph, the nephew of King Robert the Bruce, and his men climbed the precipitous north face of Edinburgh Castle rock, took the English garrison by surprise and won the castle back. Robert the Bruce immediately ordered that Edinburgh castle be dismantled "lest the English ever afterwards might lord it over the land by holding the castles". Three months later, on 24 June 1314 near Stirling, the Scottish army crushed the English at the Battle of Bannockburn.

EDINBURGH CASTLEIn 1449, James II married Mary of Gueldres in Holyrood Abbey. That same year a great siege gun, made for the Queen's uncle, the Duke of Burgundy, was tested at Mons (now in Belgium). In 1457 Mons Meg (as she is now called) was shipped to Scotland as a present to the King and Queen. Three years later the King was dead, killed at the siege of Roxburgh Castle by one of his guns (not Mons Meg). Mons Meg was kept with the rest of the royal guns in Edinburgh Castle. She was used against the English and against rebellious Scottish noblemen. Her enormous bulk (she weighs over 6 tons) soon made her obsolete as a siege gun, but she was put to good use firing ceremonial salutes. In 1681, during a birthday salute for the Duke of Albany (later James VII and II, the last Stewart King) her barrel burst open and she was unceremoniously dumped beside Foog's Gate in Edinburgh Castle. The restored Mons Meg can proudly be viewed now on the upper levels of the Castle. In July 1565 Mary Queen of Scots married her first cousin and second husband, Henry, Lord Darnley. Almost a year later on 19 June 1566, she gave birth to their child, Prince James in Edinburgh Castle.

Edinburgh castle

Late in 1688 the Protestant William of Orange landed in England and the Catholic James VII of Scotland and II of England, the last Stewart King, fled into exile. William and his wife Mary (James VII's elder daughter) were proclaimed joint sovereigns of England. The Scots were undecided. The governor of Edinburgh Castle at the time was the Duke of Gordon, a firm supporter of King James, who prepared the place for defence. The siege began in March 1689 and lasted for three months, during which time William and Mary were offered, and accepted the Scottish Crown. On 13 June Gordon surrendered Edinburgh Castle. It proved to be the last real action the castle saw. In the subsequent Jacobite Risings of 1715 and 1745, Edinburgh Castle was picketed by the supporters of the "Old Pretender" and "Bonnie Prince Charlie" but was never seriously threatened. Peace has reigned at Edinburgh Castle ever since.

On 19 March 1707 the Act uniting Scotland and England was passed in the Scottish Parliament. When it rose, the Crown, Sword and Sceptre were brought back to Edinburgh Castle and locked away. In time people wondered whether the honours of Scotland, as they were known really survived at all. In February 1818 Sir Walter Scott, with permission from the Prince Regent, broke into the room where the Honours had supposedly been locked away. He found them lying at the bottom of a chest covered with linen cloths "exactly as they had been left". They were immediately put on display in the room where they were discovered, so beginning Edinburgh Castle's new role as Scotland's premier visitor attraction.

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ANNA