A picture of Stirling

The High Street, or Broad Street, as it is now commonly called, is the principal street in Stirling. It lies, in the shape of a parallelogram, on the upper part of the hill whereon the town is built; and, what with the height of the houses, their substantial, and, in various instances, antique architecture, the steeple of the town-house, and other favourable circumstances, it makes a very respectable appearance. The present draught represents it as seen from the bottom, looking upwards to the castle, the view at the top being closed by the ruins of the house of the regent Earl of Mar.

In the centre of this street, opposite the town-house, once stood a market-cross, of beautiful workmanship. It was a lofty stone pillar, to the base of which there was an ascent on all sides, by flights of steps. On the top of this pillar sat a figure of the Scottish unicorn, extending the shield of the royal arms of Scotland, surmounted by the crown. This cross was barbarously pulled down about thirty-five years ago. The unicorn, however, was preserved, and is, at present, to be seen in front of the building in Spittal Street, containing the fire-engine.

At the time when Stirling was an abode of the court, Broad Street appears to have been chiefly occupied by noblemen. The situations of the houses occupied by the Earls of Morton, Glencairn, Lennox, and other bold figurants in the history of Mary and James, are all here pointed out; as also, a house at the bottom, now the office of a branch of the Bank of Scotland, which is said to have been the residence, successively, of Darnley, and of the young Prince Henry, his grandson, when at nurse. On the site of the present weigh-house, was the house of the family of Lennox.

Broad Street was the scene of an incident very remarkable in Scottish history, which occurred in 1571. The party which espoused the falling interest of Queen Mary, was then in possession of Edinburgh, while the Protestant faction, which supported her infant son against her, had Stirling for its head-quarters. The whole of the leading men of the king’s party were assembled at Stirling, early in September 1571, to attend a parliament, when the queen’s men at Edinburgh projected a daring enterprise against them. In the dead of night, a band, several hundred strong, consisting chiefly of borderers, was led off from the capital towards Stirling, under the command of Lord Claud Hamilton, and the Lairds of Buccleugh and Fernieherst, being guided to their destination by a man of the name of Bell, who was a native of Stirling. They entered the open, defenceless, unwatched town, long before day-break, and immediately planting a guard at the door of each slumbering noble, soon had the whole in their power. The Earl of Lennox, regent for James, surrendered at discretion, and, with many of his friends, was placed on the back of a horse behind a sturdy borderer, to be carried off prisoner to Edinburgh. Unfortunately for them, the Earl of Morton repelled their assault for such a length of time as gave occasion to a counter-surprise. The noise having disturbed the Earl of Mar in the Castle, he brought down sixteen harquebusiers into his lodging at the head of the street, (then in the process of building,) and, having planted them securely, he commanded a volley to be fired down the street at the enterprisers, who, without stopping any time to ascertain the force of this contemptible enemy, at once took to their heels, crowded through the narrow pass at the bottom, where many were trodden to death, and instantly left the town. Many of the queen’s men, on this occasion, yielded themselves prisoners to the very men who had been seated behind them in that capacity a few minutes before. The Earl of Lennox, however, did not thus recover his freedom. He was cut down, by an invidious enemy, at the village of Newhouse, about half-a-mile from the South Port, on the way to Edinburgh. This was altogether an affair very characteristic of the time when it happened,—a time when the bravest exploits were sometimes rendered naught by the want of a little discipline, and surprise was almost sure to be attended by success.

The house of the Earl of Mar is almost the only one of the private palaces of that age, now surviving in any shape. It faces down Broad Street, from any part of which it must have had, when entire, a fine appearance. It was, originally, a quadrangular building, with a small court in the centre. We are now only left the ruins of the front of the square. In the centre of this front are the royal arms of Scotland, and, on the two projecting towers on each side, those of the regent and his countess, all in a state of fine preservation; but a number of figures jutting out from the rest of the wall, are in a most mutilated state, and only remain to give us some idea of the costumes of the age when the house was built. The date on the building is 1570, the year before the Earl of Mar became regent. He procured the greater part of the stones from the ruins of Cambuskenneth Abbey, of which he had got a grant. John Knox exclaimed against this as sacrilege, and prophesied the consequent ruin of his family, not remembering, apparently, what share he himself had had in the demolition of these fine buildings. The Earl, either to disarm the criticism which might be directed against the curious taste in which his house was built, or to deprecate the charge of sacrilege, put the three following inscriptions over various door-ways giving entrance to the building:

Plate VIII.

A narrow street leads off from the upper end of Broad Street towards the Castle, and is called the Castle Wynd. It has been thought proper to give a sketch of this alley, both on account of the interesting character of the historical objects which it contains, and their strikingly picturesque effect, when fore-shortened by a view from the upper end. The nearest object, on the left side of the plate, is the front of Argyll’s Lodging; the house, with the projecting stair-case, is a very ancient one, which has a coat-of-arms on the front of the wall, now nearly obliterated. Farther on, is Mar’s Work; and, in the extremity of the view, is the north side of the chancel of the East Church. Such a picture of antiquity, we believe, is nowhere now to be seen in Scotland; but, a few years ago, it was even more striking than it is at present, another curiously antique house having then stood on the east side of the street, between Mar’s Work and the Church.

Argyll’s Lodging is a large quadrangular house, built in the lordly style which prevailed during the reigns of James, and the first Charles. It was erected at the expense of Sir William Alexander, a personage who rose, in consequence of his genius and courtly qualities, from the condition of being Laird of Menstrie, (a small estate to the north-east of Stirling,) to immense wealth, and high title. Prince Henry, who was baptised in the castle, honoured him with his particular notice, and introduced him at the Court of England, where James the Sixth knighted him, and made him master of requests. He addressed a Parœnesis to the Prince, which is said to be his master-piece, and wrote an elegy on his death, in 1612, in strains nowise inferior to those of Drummond of Hawthornden, who bewailed that mournful event in an ‘elegy on the death of Mœliades,’ a name by which the Prince was known. King James appointed him preceptor to Henry’s brother, Charles; and Charles, coming to the throne in 1625, gave him a right of appointing the hundred baronets of Nova Scotia, from each of whom he received £200 sterling; raised him to various high offices of state in succession; and, finally, on the occasion of his coronation at Holyroodhouse, in 1633, created him Earl of Stirling, Viscount Canada, and Lord Alexander of Tullibody. Nova Scotia, and Canada, he is said to have discovered and colonised; and he had other extensive possessions in America. James the Sixth used to call him his philosophical poet; Ben Johnson, who travelled to Scotland to visit Hawthornden, corresponded with him; and Addison said of his whole works, which are not a few in number, that ‘he had read them with the greatest satisfaction.’ His prosperity not being continued to his offspring, this splendid house, which must have been the wonder of its day, fell into the hands of the Argyll family. Here the unfortunate Earl of Argyll received and entertained the Duke of York and his family, in 1680, when they came to visit Stirling Castle. Only five years after, he suffered death at the instance of his royal guest, who had then become James II. By another singular vicissitude of fortune, John, Duke of Argyll, in 1715, here held his counsel of war, when employed to break the interest of the son of the same James. Sir William Alexander built the centre and northern wing in 1633; and over the principal door of the centre, leading by an oaken staircase to the grand hall, is his full coat-of-arms, with the motto ‘per mare per terras,’ still perfectly entire. Over the windows of these parts of the building too, may still be seen the initials of William, Earl Stirling, and Jane, Countess Stirling, surmounted by a coronet.

From the Argyll family, the building passed successively into the hands of other individuals. In 1799, the crown purchased it, and converted it into a military hospital, and apartments for the barrack-master and his serjeant. No other damage, however, has been done, than that of removing a balcony above the outer gate, or entrance from the Castle Wynd, which added considerably to the effect of the building. The roof being somewhat in a state of disrepair, it is now proposed, we understand, to modernize it. May such a piece of sacrilege be averted! May the baronial taste of Sir William Alexander, one of the most accomplished men of his age, and the favourite of Princes, be respected! The southern wing appears to have been added by some of the Argyll family, as one of the doors of entrance to it from the court-yard, is dated 1674, and the crest of the Campbells (a boar’s head), is observable, in ludicrous multiplication, over the windows of all that part of the building.

The Castle Wynd was, on the 17th of March 1578, the scene of the death of John, Lord Glammis, a sagacious nobleman, who held the office of Chancellor of Scotland. He had a ‘deidly feid,’ as it was called, with David, Earl of Crawford. The two happened to pass each other in the Castle Wynd, very nearly opposite to the Earl of Mar’s house. No collision took place between themselves; but, unfortunately, two fellows who went in their respective retinues quarrelled and began to fight; on which a pistol was fired, the ball of which went through Lord Glammis’ head. He immediately expired.