Stirling, the capital of the county of the same name, the seat of a presbytery, and one of the oldest royal burghs in Scotland, is a town of about nine thousand inhabitants, situated upon an eminence near the river Forth, thirty-five miles north-west of Edinburgh, and about twenty-seven north-east of Glasgow. It is in 56 degrees 12 minutes north latitude, and 3 degrees 50 minutes west longitude from London. It is a place little noted for manufacture or commerce, although not altogether destitute of these advantages, the weaving of carpets, of tartans, and of cotton goods, having long flourished in it to a considerable extent, and the Forth being navigable up to the town for vessels of small burden. It is chiefly for its antiquities and the interesting historical associations connected with them, together with the singularly delightful circumstances of its situation, that Stirling is remarkable, in the eyes of either the native of Scotland or the foreign tourist.
First, as to Situation. It occupies a central place in the southern moiety of Scotland, where the rivers Forth and Clyde contract the country into a narrow isthmus, the greater part of which is rendered impassable by a barrier of mountains, and which the Romans at one time completely fortified by a ditch and wall. Situated, with its castle, on a hill overlooking the only place where the mountains and river permitted this isthmus to be traversed, Stirling was, at an early time, a place of such importance as to be dignified with the epithet of ‘the Key of the Highlands,’ implying that it could open or obstruct the passage to that region at its pleasure. For this reason, the neighbourhood of the town abounds in fields of strife; at least a dozen, some of them the most remarkable in Scottish history, being pointed out from the walls of the castle. It used to be remarked of Stirling, that it was the only place in Scotland which could be approached, in any thing like a direct line, from any other part of the country, without crossing an arm of the sea; a fact which will be made plain to the reader by a glance at a map of Scotland, where he will not fail to observe, that all the principal roads of a longitudinal direction, have a confluence at Stirling, parting off at no great distance in all other directions. But, perhaps, the importance which the town formerly derived from this circumstance, could not be better illustrated than by a reference to the events of the insurrection of 1715, the whole of which turned upon the successful defence of the bridge by the Duke of Argyll; who thus, with only about fifteen hundred men, prevented an army, supposed, at one time, to have numbered ten thousand, from descending upon the low country.
Stirling enjoys the distinction, in local antiquities (which Edinburgh does not) of having been a Roman station. It is situated about ten miles to the north of the wall which Lollius Urbicus, the lieutenant of Antoninus, built between the firths of Forth and Clyde, to restrain the remoter barbarians; and the vestiges of a road of incursion, or military causeway, which the Romans afterwards led north by Ardoch, have been discovered in such a direction on both sides of the town, as to prove that the castle was upon its line. On the south side of the town, in particular, near the village of Newhouse, traces of this road were distinctly seen not many years ago, in improving a piece of marshy ground in the field called Clifford Park, immediately behind the house of the proprietor. At the conclusion of the seventeenth century, a stone near the castle bore this inscription: ‘In excu. agit. leg. ii.,’ which being extended into ‘In excubias agitantes legionis secundæ,’ means, that the soldiers of the second legion there held nightly and daily watch. (1)[A]
During the middle ages, when this country, like the Saxon heptarchy, was divided among various small parcels of people, Stirling was upon the confines of the Scottish empire on the south, and of the British on the north; that is to say, the predecessors of the present royal family of Britain were at the head of a tribe of Scots occupying the country north from this, while the three nations of provincial or Romanized Britons or Bretts, occupied various longitudinal stripes of what is now called the south of Scotland, and the north of England, having the Forth for their boundary. This fact seems to be alluded to by the insignia which figure on the obverse of the ancient seal of the corporation of Stirling—a bridge, with a crucifix in the centre of it, men armed with bows on the one side of the bridge, and men armed with spears on the other, and the legend, Hic armis Bruti et Scoti stant hac cruce tutt. While thus placed in command of a pass between the countries of two or three different savage nations, each of which was disposed to aggress upon the other, it may be supposed, notwithstanding the peaceful announcement darkly insinuated by this legend, that the bridge and fields of Stirling were often drenched with native blood.
Stirling seems to have been made a royal burgh, some time after the Scottish sovereign, Malcolm the Second, pushed his empire across the Forth, in the early part of the eleventh century. In 1119, less than a hundred years after this extension of the kingdom, Alexander the First granted the town its earliest known charter as a burgh which, however, is only a confirmation of some one which had been granted before. Stirling thus ranks with Edinburgh, Berwick, and Roxburgh, in a list which Chalmers presents of the four earliest institutions of this kind in Scotland; an association, by the way, which for some centuries enjoyed a sort of superiority or jurisdiction over the other royal burghs of Scotland, in the shape of a commercial Parliament, styled the Curia Quatuor Burgorum, (the earlier form of the present Convention of Scottish Burghs.) It is a circumstance strongly characteristic of the time when Stirling procured its first known charter, that the four royal burghs of Scotland were the appendages of the four principal fortresses. This is proved by the fact that King William the Lion was, in 1175, ransomed by his subjects from the English, who had taken him prisoner, by delivering up ‘the four principal fortresses, Stirling, Edinburgh, Roxburgh, and Berwick.’ From what different sources do the wealth and dignity of towns now arise!
As it was the importance of its castle which caused Stirling to become a royal burgh, so does the town seem to have been extended in proportion to the value or use of that fortress. We have few data for ascertaining the progress which the town has made from age to age in size, prosperity, or population. It must have been benefited by the establishment of the neighbouring Abbey of Cambuskenneth in 1147, and by that of the Convent of Dominican Friars in 1233. In the reign of Bruce, when the castle was so considerable a place that that sovereign fought the battle of Bannockburn, mainly that he might get it into his possession; the town could not fail to have become larger than it was at the time of its receiving burgal honours. After the accession of the house of Stuart, when the castle became a royal residence, its prosperity must have received a great impulse. There is a tradition that at one time Stirling had a keen struggle with Edinburgh, for the honour of being pronounced the capital of the kingdom, and only lost the object of contention by a sort of neck heat, the provost having unluckily ceded the head seat, at a grand public banquet, to the provost of Edinburgh, which was held decisive of the matter at issue. Of course, the tradition is a vague one, and cannot be set forward as authority; yet such an impression could only have been made upon the popular mind, in consequence of a strong conviction, long entertained, of the eminence of Stirling in the list of Scottish burghs. Throughout the successive reigns of the Jameses, as they are called, the town must have increased very considerably in wealth and trade. We can see from the books of the royal treasurers, which are preserved in the Register House at Edinburgh, that Stirling then possessed tradesmen and artists of a high order, who purveyed articles of luxury to the court, such as could not now be produced in Stirling. Without some considerable resources, the town could never have produced citizens able to found such hospitals as those of Spittal in the reign of James V. and Cowan in the reign of Charles I. Yet, it is probable that what trade it enjoyed in these reigns, was chiefly the result of its being the residence of the courtiers, and of the noblemen and gentlemen of the country around. Spottiswood the historian, characterises it, in 1585, as a town, ‘little remarkable for merchandise.’ It had then a number of booths or shops, formed of the vaults on which all houses were built in those days; and what is a remarkable enough feature, all the shop-windows were defended by stauncheons, as in some places of Ireland at the present day. The border thieves, who accompanied the expedition of the banished protestant lords in the year just quoted, made but little, Spottiswood says, of the ‘booths;’ it was in the stables of the nobility that they got their best prey. It was easy to conceive, however, that at the time when the houses of the courtiers in Broad Street were comparatively new; when the houses of the Earls of Mar and Stirling were occupied by their respective proprietors in the splendid style of those days; and when the buildings of the castle and the adjacent royal gardens were in their first and best state, Stirling must have been a very handsome town, without the assistance of shops; but, in all probability, the town never possessed, throughout those times of its greatest splendour, above three thousand inhabitants. It was found, in 1755, to contain only 3951; and assuredly, when the circumstances of the country at large are considered, the number must have rather encreased than decreased, during the preceding hundred and fifty years. This is rendered the more probable by the fact that, in 1792, the population had encreased to 4698, and that it is at present supposed to be nearly double that number.
In external appearance, Stirling bears a striking resemblance, though a miniature one, to Edinburgh; each town being built on the ridge and sides of a hill which rises gradually from the east, and presents an abrupt crag towards the west; and each having a principal street on the surface of the ridge, the upper end of which opens upon the castle. The truth is, the hills on which Edinburgh and Stirling are situated, are evidently the peculiar result of some strange convulsion of nature, which has suddenly projected them above a level surface. Of the same order of hills are Arthur’s Seat, Salisbury Crags, and the Calton Hill, near Edinburgh, and the hill of Craigforth, and the Abbey Crag near Stirling; the whole of which present a precipice to the west, and decline gently towards a low plain on the east. The interior and more ancient streets of Stirling, present rather a mean appearance, being generally long, narrow, and containing many old fashioned and decayed houses. The High Street, however, or Broad Street, as it is now less happily called, has long furnished an exception to this remark, its appearance being spacious and imposing, and its houses lofty, though, in various instances, antique. Since the commencement of the present century, several of the other streets, such as Baker Street, King Street, and Port Street, have been much improved, and filled with shops, which formerly were scarcely to be seen out of the limits of Broad Street; a very striking proof, if any were wanting, of the prosperity of the neighbouring agricultural district, on which Stirling, in these times, mainly depends. Every road, too, which leads out of the town, is now lined with neat modern villas, which speak towards the wealth and comfort of the inhabitants; many of these are occupied by persons of fortune, or annuitants, who have retired, after an adventurous life, to spend the conclusion of their days in their native town. The stranger is apt to exclaim against the pavement of the streets of Stirling, which is very uneasy and irregular; but at the more open parts of the town, there is a flag pavement for foot passengers. The town has been lighted of late years with a very brilliant gas. One circumstance in its environs is much to be admired, the prevalence of gardens and orchards, which serves to give an inexpressibly pleasing air of comfort to the tout ensemble, as seen from any point. The stranger, moreover, will scarcely fail to envy the citizen of Stirling, for the delightful walks which are laid out for his convenience, along the south-west side of the town, and around what are called the Gowlan Hills. These I can safely pronounce, so far as prospect is concerned, to be matchless in Scotland.
Stirling has its affairs administered by a town-council, consisting of fourteen merchants or guild brethren, and seven trades councillors or deacons, who are all annually chosen. The office-bearers in the council are, a provost, four bailies, a dean-of-guild, treasurer, and convener. The present set, or burgal constitution, was granted by his late Majesty, with advice of his privy council, on the 23d of May 1781. It is characterised as one of the most liberal in Scotland; but, in the opinion of the intelligent and respectable men of all parties in the burgh, few if any beneficial consequences have resulted from it, and it still calls loudly for amendment.
The provost and bailies have a very extensive civil and criminal jurisdiction, in virtue of a charter granted to the town by King James IV., which erected the burgh into a separate sheriffship: they had previously gratified the hereditary sheriff of the county, for the cession of this part of his right. The jurisdiction of the dean-of-guild has latterly been much circumscribed. His being called, along with the bailie of the quarter, and the convener of the trades, to inspect and report, in disputes between conterminous proprietors, relative to their properties, is almost the only remnant of his former authority. Anciently, the provost wore a black gown and bands; now, his only mark of distinction is a gold chain, which is only of modern date (2). The dean-of-guild, when installed into office in the guild-hall, has a ribbon thrown round his neck, at which is suspended a very ancient gold ring, set in precious stones, with the inscription, ‘Yis for ye Deine of ye Geild of Stirling.’ Of late years, the guildry have presented him with a splendid gold chain, to which is attached a medal, bearing the more modern arms of the town. The costume of the town-officers or sergeants, who are four in number, is evidently very ancient. It consists of a cocked hat, turned up with broad silver lace; a long scarlet coat, richly decorated, and having a white button, on which are engraved the town’s arms; scarlet breeches, buckled at the knee; white stockings; a basket-hilted sword, and the ancient Scottish halbard (3).
Besides its burgh court, Stirling is the seat of a sheriff, a commissary, and a justice of peace court. The circuit court of justiciary meets in it twice a-year; and the jury court occasionally. It contains two churches of the establishment, one episcopalian chapel, and five other places of worship for different orders of Christians. Stirling is remarked by the inhabitants of neighbouring towns, to be a place of extraordinary sanctitude. The principal sect which has parted from the church of Scotland, since its establishment at the revolution, began here about eighty years ago, under the auspices of the Reverend Ebenezer Erskine, who was originally minister of what was called the third charge of the parish of Stirling. The place of worship occupied by this divine, after his secession from the church, continued in use till lately, when a new one was erected behind it. It is now proposed to erect a monument to Erskine on its site, exactly at the spot where he was buried. The parish of Stirling comprehends the burgh, properly so called, and all its extensive burgal domains, with the exception of Spittal and Causewayhead (4).